rebels with a cause.
Harper is wandering in the third floor corridors rather aimlessly. There's a chair with her name on it in Biology but today what Harper needs is silence and not the shrill voice of her teacher shrieking in her ear. She assures you, she doesn't do this often, this blatant flouting of rules, something so inherent to Alex's nature. But some days, some days she just has to. Just so that she can convince herself that she is someone. A person with feelings and a brain.
Yeah, a cupcake hair band doesn't usually say much for a person's intelligence but Harper needs to know that she can wear rainbows and whatnot and still be three-dimensional.
So she wanders the corridors aimlessly and enjoys the breeze wafting in from the windows. Nobody is here on the third floor because the classrooms are used as dumping grounds for all kinds of clutter that have accumulated over the ears. Broken desks and chairs, lost notebooks, just about everything that no one has use for anymore. It's why she wanders here. Sometimes, she feels useless and yet amongst all of this clutter, she's the only one alive and living and that makes her special in a way and not useless.
//
She's currently rearranging her work desk in her head—books go to the left, pencil on the top right— when she hears a movement to the side of the corridor. Curious, she follows the noise only to find that it's the crushing of a soda can by a foot shod with worn trainers. She looks and is not really surprised to the note that said foot belongs to Dean.
Yeah, Dean, Alex's ex-boyfriend and the guy who hangs out in the bathrooms and runs a removable tattoo business.
"Hey Finkle." Dean is the first one to talk as he greets her with an engaging smirk.
"Dean." Harper politely smiles back. Maybe in an earlier time, she would have been scared of meeting him, but today Harper is not. Dean is a 'bad boy' but he's just like a bad little boy who steals candy. Nothing spectacular. And Harper has seen a little more of the world so now she thinks about his rebelliousness and chuckles inwardly at the tameness of it.
"Come here to get a tattoo?" Dean looks over her, with her neatly parted hair and bright preppy clothes and thinks that she's just another girl who wants to annoy the parents at home with something scandalous.
"No thank you. I already have a permanent one." Harper tells him politely. She isn't even showing off really. The fact is, she does have a tattoo and yeah, it's more permanent and real than waterproof ones will ever be.
"You. Really?" Dean asks, supremely amused. He cannot believe, that someone like Harper, someone so rule abiding and eager to please would ever get a tattoo that would blemish perfectly pale skin. It's like a blot on the unblemished canvas of society. Something like him actually.
"Yes. Really." Harper replies, already bored and ready to move on. Normally, she isn't like this. She likes talking, more like babbling actually but today she has no patience for people who cannot comprehend that we are not what we wear or how we look.
She's already walking up, leaving him behind, an action that confuses him so much that he runs up to walk with her.
"You're not pulling my leg are you?" He asks skeptically. Irritated, she looks him square in the eye and pulls down the shoulder of her shirt, to reveal a line of words etched onto her skin. Satisfied at the incredulous expression on his face, she pulls it back up.
And the first words that come out of his mouth are, "I expected you to get a unicorn or a butterfly or something."
He doesn't expect these words:
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
They just aren't her. With her bright smile, her hair, her eyes and her constant chatter. These words so grave and heavy aren't her.
"And I expect you to wear a faux leather jacket but what we think doesn't always have to meet expectations does it?" Harper says quietly. It's just that she's tired of being typecast as the kooky sidekick who doesn't mind getting walked all over and laughed about. Look at her; she's a person with feelings. It shouldn't be so hard to comprehend that.
But sometimes, everyone seems to forget that. Even Alex. No, mostly Alex. Others yeah, they remember or they ignore her.
Alex forgets.
//
"So what does it mean?" Dean asks, grateful for the fact that nobody thinks he's a wordsmith capable of comfort. He just doesn't know what to say to this girl. And if he doesn't have anything nice to say then he's not going to speak shit.
"To me?" Harper questions with a laugh.
"Yeah, to you. Nobody gets a tattoo unless it means something. Unless they are stupid. And you're many things, but not stupid." That's the most he has said all day and it's his way of obscurely making up for thinking she was just someone else. But the thing is, she is just someone else. Someone else with feelings though.
"I guess it's a way of telling myself, no reminding myself that all the mistakes, tears and anger, it's just me living life the way it's meant to be." She pauses before thoughtfully continuing."And someday I'll look back upon these shitty days and think, 'wow, my teenage sure was shitty but if it weren't, I wouldn't be who I am and I wouldn't be living.'". She then amends, unconsciously. "At least not the way I want to."
"That's pretty cool…" he trails off realizing that he doesn't even know her first name.
"Harper. Thanks Dean." She smiles at him amused and continues walking on.
"You have a tattoo?" She questions, titling her head to the side and gazing at him in a way, that's non invasive yet curious.
"Sure, it's right here along with with my faux leather jacket and weed stash." He's not one for smart talk but there are times when yeah, he can break out the sarcasm, you know.
And Harper giggles. Uncontrollable giggles which make her shoulders shake and her eyes tear up. She's not brightening up the corridor or something but in that moment, she becomes more real to Dean. She isn't someone else. She's Harper Finkle.
"I'm glad. Leather would be a bad look for you anyways." She says once she's done laughing and is now sane enough to look him in the eyes. But all the same, there's a twinkle in her eyes, like she's not being all that serious. Dean smiles back.
"Yeah, I'm a simple kind of guy and my rebellion is sadly simplistic too."
"Which brings me to my next question, cutting class, yeah, that's sufficiently badass, but waterproof temporary tattoos? That's like spitting in the name of rebellion." This time Harper is genuinely curious. Sure, her tattoo was for her but in a small way, it was also a rebellion against the social restrictions that had been imposed upon her and quite simply a teenage sign of dissent against her parent's strict authority.
"It's easier being a rebel without a cause then a rebel with a cause." Dean smirks at her and Harper smiles back sweetly.
"Like you said, I am many things but not stupid. So what's the real reason?" Dean's face twists into a grimace when he realizes she's not buying any of his bullcrap. Which is a little aggravating because everyone has bought it so far. Even Alex.
"I guess it's what people expect me to do. So I do it. They think I'm not that clever so I act up. I am not clever. But I'm not dumb either. But it's just easier to make them think I don't care." The answer when he says it now sounds very lame, even to his own ears. He sighs. It's what he means but it's a very poor representation of what he means. What he means is that, it's easier to be something that people want you to be rather than expend all your energy being something people do not expect. It's a silly thing but he supposes that she'll get it. He hopes she does cause he's got no other way of explaining it better.
"So as opposed to being, I don't know, rule abiding and book smart, you're playing to type and that too so badly?" She clicks her tongue in a disapproving manner before continuing, "I expected better." She then smiles at him, her eyes twinkling in an amused fashion. But then the twinkle disappears and her eyes soften in the slightest. "But yeah, I get it though."
Dean grins. He sure as hell didn't expect that but all the same, it's nice. Because all he ever hears is, wasted potential or no potential. She isn't even making any judgment calls on him and in his books that makes Harper Finkle a damn sound person.
"You're a good person Finkle." He says warmly as he slings a friendly arm around her.
"Thanks Dean, that's nice to hear." And it really is. Because nobody ever says that anymore. They so many things, like how she's nice and how's she's sweet but somehow it never feels as solid as the weight of the words coming out of his mouth.
//
They spend the rest of Biology, well Biology for her and World Studies for him wandering around and talking. It's nothing earthshaking and nothing soul searching but it's the kind of mundane everyday speak that soothes and comforts and makes everything seems normal. In this hour, they don't have to pretend and they don't have to play to type.
Its freedom of a kind and it's an expression of self.
The bell rings and Harper freezes but not before squaring her shoulders like she's making a decision.
"Dean, how do you feel about pacts?" she asks turning around to him and gazing at him thoughtfully as he comprehends.
"It depends on what I promising for," he says eyeing her warily.
"I think we should make a pact to not play to type. Let the world screw with us if it wants to but we have the right to be happy in our own skins. And if being kooky does that for me and not being rebellious does that for you, than so be it." She holds out her hand and then draws it back before realizing something.
"I understand if you don't want too. It's a little too much to ask." But this time it's Dean who shakes his head and extends his hand.
"And if I want to learn French because I like the language, I'm damn well going too." Harper grins and extends her hand and they both firmly shake on it. And then with embarrassed smiles they depart.
//
Sometimes Harper see's him in the hallways and grins. He's doing everything he was not supposed and yeah, it's a little hard but when he grins back at her like he shares a personal secret, and yeah they do, she knows it's worth it.
It's far better being your own person and even if you want to rebel, then you can do so with a cause.
Because at least real rebels get to wear real leather jackets.
a/n - hangs head in shame and wails – You know that idea which seems so glorious in your head but when it comes down to it, or rather typed onto screen really feels like a huge ball of suck? Yeah, this is it.