Disclaimer: I am not C.S. Lewis and I don't own any of the Narnia characters.
I love EustacexJill and I had to write something about them. I got the idea for a list like this from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III, which has an entry called "Why Girls Like Guys".
I guess this story is a little cheesy and cliché, but I thought it turned out okay. An explanation about #7: I know it doesn't really have anything to do with Eustace, but I thought I might as well say something about the Pevensies because I think they would be pretty important to Jill.
Anyway, this is my first Narnia fic so reviews would be great. I hope you like it! :)
Reasons
1. He smells nice.
He really must be addicted to peppermints; he always has a stash in his pockets when Jill is around. And he always offers her one.
He eats them all the time, too, so in class when he leans in close to her face to ask in a whisper if he can borrow a pencil, her thoughts go all fuzzy from the heady smell of his breath. Or maybe it's because he's so near to her that if she tilted her head over just a little, they could…
…Anyways!
Jill doesn't mind when he asks her for pencils, even though she rarely sees them again; she likes the smell of peppermint.
2. It's fun to watch him play sports.
Jill loves to watch when he goes out to the parking lot to play football or something with the other boys. She sits at her usual lunch table, head rested on her hand, following him with her eyes. It's kind of funny to see him get excited when the ball comes his direction, and he hurtles after it, or when he hops from side to side, or up and down. He looks like he's having the time of his life, even when he misses the ball or crashes into another one of the players and lands on the ground.
Jill especially likes when he comes back inside after his team has won a victory, his cheeks flushed, his knees scraped and filthy, his hair drenched from dumping water over himself, and a huge smile on his face. His smile has this weird quality- Jill can't look at it without breaking into one herself.
3. He always knows what buttons to push, and then how to make everything better again.
Just about everything he does bothers Jill in one way or another, and he knows it. Sometimes he does annoying things on purpose just to bug her, because he can; he knows her better than anyone else on earth. Quarreling is what they spend a lot of their time doing, if they aren't talking about Narnia, and their classmates are sick of it. Some people say, "How can they possibly be friends?" and other people say, "How can they not?"
On the other hand, he is not okay with anyone else making her angry or upset. If she loses her temper, he treats her like a princess for the next hour or so and listens to her vent, and he always knows exactly the right things to say to make her calm down. If she's sad, he puts his arms around her and she lays her head on his shoulder and cries. He doesn't mind her tears; he holds her against him until she feels better. It usually doesn't take long.
For some reason, just being with him raises her spirits.
4. They can talk about anything.
Sometimes they walk to the back of the school and sit up on the hill, against the wall by the door. It's sort of an unspoken agreement that they don't argue in that place- they just talk. About everything. They don't keep very many secrets from each other; they could list all the crushes they've ever had, all the times they've been humiliated by a teacher, all the times one of them has taught the other something new.
That wall is their favorite place in the world.
5. He sets her self-image.
She used to hate looking in the mirror because of what she knew she'd see there. It was hopeless; she'd never be as pretty as so many of the other girls at Experiment House. She despised the shape of her face, her nose, her hair. It made no difference how much she fussed over her reflection every morning; she still looked the same as always.
Jill hated make-up, too, but she wore it anyway, because it was the only thing that kept her from shoving a paper bag over her head.
One day her low self-esteem got the better of her and he found her crying up in their place by the wall. "What's wrong?"
It took her a minute (and a peppermint) to sit up and dry her tears, and then she told him why she was upset.
He was flabbergasted. "I don't think you're ugly, Pole!"
She bit her lip. "Everyone else does."
His response? "Who cares?"
She decided to stop wearing so much make-up after that.
6. He always remembers her birthday.
Even when she is caught up in school and life and forgets, every year on the morning of her birthday she finds a wrapped box in the hallway outside her door, with a little tag:
For Jill; Happy Birthday! Love, Scrubb.
7. He has such lovely cousins.
One of Jill's deepest wishes is to be invited to a Pevensie family reunion.
She's only met them a couple times, but she adores them to pieces: kingly Peter, graceful Susan, stubborn Edmund, bubbly Lucy.
They never grudged her and Scrubb their trip to Narnia, which Jill thought was incredibly nice of them. If Scrubb went to Narnia again, and brought some random girl with him, Jill was pretty sure she wouldn't ever forgive him. Which is why, she decided, the Pevensies made much better royalty than she ever would.
Jill and Lucy immediately clicked when they first met, and they write to each other a lot. In one letter, Lucy gave Jill the best compliment she ever received: If anyone deserved to go to Narnia, Jill, it was you.
Jill couldn't stop smiling.
8. He worries about her so much.
It's sweet how he asks after her all the time.
Once she got sick at school and had to spend the rest of the day in her room, feeling miserable. That afternoon her roommate showed up, and told her that he had asked about eight people where on earth she was when she hadn't been in math class that morning. "He looked like he was going to have a heart attack or something, he was so anxious about you," the roommate said.
Later he came to her room to check on her. He sat on the edge of her bed and told her about the classes she had missed, all the while trying not to breathe in her germs too much. His attempts to talk without breathing made Jill laugh, and by the time he was going to leave she felt quite a bit better. He stood up and faced her, staring into her dark eyes. He gently reached out and brushed his thumb across her cheek, sending shivers down her spine. "I'm glad you're okay," he said quietly, giving her a solemn half-smile.
Jill couldn't help thinking of that instance when, years later and a world away, he asked again, frantically, where she had been.
It was nice to have someone watching out for you.
9. He introduced her to the other One who is watching out for her.
Her world used to be so big and bleak and lonely. She faced each day stolidly, following her monotonous routine of school and being bullied by Them and whatever else was tossed into her way without much response. She thought of herself as a shadow.
But her desolate life suddenly and unexpectedly became much less so, because the girl who liked doing essays and believed in magic and never had many friends all of a sudden made some of the best ones anyone could ever hope for; and as a result, she discovered the Father and King who would never, ever leave her side.
10. He loves life.
Jill never minded rain, as long as it was outside and she was inside.
On a cold, drizzly afternoon she was in her room, staring out her foggy window at the sheets of icy rain. And also avoiding her homework.
There was a pounding on her door. It was him, of course, soaked clean through and dripping.
"What do you want?" Jill said, exasperated and also knowing perfectly well what he wanted.
"Come outside!"
"Why?"
"It's raining!"
"I know it's raining! It's always raining. That's exactly the reason I don't want to go out-"
He grabbed her hand, cutting her off. "Come on, Pole."
He dragged her along behind him, down the hallway. His hand was damp and clammy and oh, rapture…
That last thought left Jill blinking, horrified, and she tried to pull her hand away. He only held it tighter as he pushed open the exit door and led her out into the pouring rain.
A shock of freezing water pummeled down on her and she gasped. "It's wet," she squawked, trying to turn around and go back to the cozy shelter of indoors.
"Yes!" he said, not letting her take a step. "Isn't it fantastic?"
Jill did not think it was fantastic. She stamped her feet and lowered her head so her chin was in her collar. "Please, can we go back in," she begged.
"No," he told her. "Not yet. I think you need to see this- learn how wonderful our world is. How wonderful life is." He took a deep breath, inhaling the stormy air. "Look, it's clearing up a little."
Jill lifted her head again and gazed, squinting, at the dark, cloudy sky. There was a faint ray of sun breaking through the clouds, and very slowly, the rain began to let up.
The two children stood there together, watching the storm stop. It took a long time, and they both caught colds afterwards, but it was worth it.
There was a rainbow.
11. He's her best friend.
She is not sure what she would do without him; he is not sure what he would do without her.
She's doubted a lot of things (confidence is hard to master), but one thing she knows for certain is that wherever she goes, whatever happens, (and she could ask for nothing else), he will be right there with her.
He will.