A.N./ Just a series of little vignettes that I felt like writing...read, cry your eyes out, start typing in the review box, and fav. Love you guys.
This chapter features Shane and Tori.
i: footsteps
They want me to become someone important. Like, maybe a lawyer. The CEO of Microsoft. A businessman. The President of the United States. They want me to go on the "path to a bright future". "They", of course, meaning my family.
Hell, no. I, for one, know that if I become the U.S. President, the whole country would collapse within hours of my inaugaration. If not minutes, but I'm not sure if that's wholly possible, even for me.
Ha. I can't even lead my own Ranger team properly. The rest assure me that I'm doing fine, but I know I'm not. Like that time when we were only three, we went looking for a scroll in the middle of a desert. If I can't even get the three of us to walk properly when our legs aren't even tied together, there is no way that I'm going to become a CEO. Let Simba become the Lion King. I certainly do not care.
But no matter how many times I try to explain to them, they just. Won't. Get it. And it irks the hell out of me. Especially Dad...well, only Dad and Porter, really. Dad's constantly pressuring me to follow Porter's successful footsteps. Not, I really don't want to end up like Porter. He makes a lot of money, sure, but as Tori once told me before clamming up and turning red—even though she had no reason to; I agreed with her whole-heartedly—Porter just doesn't seem really empathetic or...well, nice.
And yet, he wants me to be like him when I grow up. He tells me that I'm wasting my life away skateboarding, and the fact that I'm not paying attention to school will harm me in the future. He tells me that I wouldn't be helping the world in any way when I'm older.
The fuck? I am charged with leading the battle to save the world. What's Porter to talk about me not helping the planet? I'm helping it by trying to prevent a pot-bellied evil space ninja from blasting it to bits.
The "right path", my ass. It depends on how you look at it, because I'm fairly sure that if saving the world is the "wrong path" to take, we would have been dead about five thousand years ago.
Oh, if only Dad and Porter knew...think abou tlal the things I could say back to them...
...Or not. I mean, I get what they're trying to tell me; I really do. But I still can't help but to think resentfully, Who are they to judge my "do's" and "nays"?
Goddamn it. Sometimes, I just want to scream to the whole world that I'm the Red Wind Ranger. Then, we'll see who has the last laugh.
But I can't do that. Because I have to do what's right.
ii: shadows
If no one in the world fought with each other like cats and dogs, then there would be a whole lot less wars and arnarchy on the planet.
We're all living in the shadows, that's what. We've all done something that we regret in our lives, and if you say you didn't do anything wrong, that you're a Little-Miss-Perfect—well, then, I know that you're lying. Everyone's guilty of something that we lied about, whether it be stealing cookies from Grandma's kitchen, or causing two planes to crash into the World Trade Center. Although the latter wasn't really a lie, was it?
Me. Huh. Well, I'll bet you that I'm stuck in the shadows more than you will ever be. I'll never be able to crawl my way out of the shit that I had surrounded myself with...
The guys don't know a thing. I never told the incident to them. To them, I'm the "nice" and "logical" one. And I guess that's true, compared to some of the other numbskulls in the world, and trust me on this, but I wasn't always like that.
Nah, I was a cold-hearted bitch who didn't do a single thing to prevent my sister from committing suicide. Rather, I probably heralded it.
At that time, it seemed like the right thing to do. Don't intervene with the bullies, she can handle it by herself, it's all good.
God. Damn. It. I never actually listened to all that anti-bullying crap that Blue Bay Harbor High constantly campaigned for, but now, because of my freaking ignorance, I paid for it, big time.
The problem actually weren't the bullies at school, because I'm pretty sure it was mostly me...for one, my sister and I constantly argued about the pettiest things back at home, now that I actually think about it. I remember yelling at her once because she had just accidentally spilled milk all over my term paper, which just happened to be due the next day. I was up all night writing another one, muttering curses under my breath. Another time, I recall that my sister annoying me about homework and school and this and that, which, for some reason, drove me over to edge. I ended up calling her a goddamn bitch.
Yeah, I'm the one who's a goddamn bitch.
October 11, 2000.
She was only twelve when she went to the pills.