Disclaimed.

Liv-sters, sorry for this being super belated, and I wish that I had a valid reason, but I don't have one. All I can say is that you're amazing and I love you and stay amazing (:

-o-

Prompts: "it doesn't work that way," old pennies, & Marvel t-shirts

Pairing: Tassie

Genre: friendship, humor (or, at least, I tried to add humor in there…), romance, & angst (yeah, not so much…sorry!)

-o-

Turn My Sorrow into Treasured Gold

a [belated] birthday fic. for livvy

-o-

"Hello? Is this dang thing even on?" A slightly raspy yet sweet voice asked. "By the red light that keeps on flashing, I'm going to say it's safe to assume that this is on."

He sighed. "I guess I should introduce myself, huh? Well, I'm Todd Lyons, and what you're listening to, is me recording myself on a tape recorder. Why, you mentally ask yourself? I have a story to tell, so why not tell it somehow? Repeating it to everyone would just take so long. And if I tell one person to tell another person who tells another person … well, what if that doesn't work out so well? I'll only say this once, but when I'm done, you can go ahead and reply this endlessly if you want to.

"Just don't forget to pass it on to someone else."

-o-

Everything happened a week ago.

A week ago, my grandmother got remarried.

A week ago, I decided I would one day find my mom.

A week ago, my older sister Claire decided to drop out of college and take a trip to California with her current boyfriend (and apparently, her "soul mate"), Dune, so that she could pursue her dream to act, and his dream to make it big in the music business.

A week ago, I met Massie Block.

I knew right off the bat that she was no ordinary girl. She liked Marvel t-shirts and she liked McFly and she didn't listen to all those top 100 songs or any of that pop music.

She was like me, except she was female.

We met like any other normal people would: I accidently stole her seat in the cafeteria.

Now don't go thinking, "Wow, that is so cliché" or anything like that because it's not like it was love at first sight.

"Excuse me, you're kind of … sitting in my spot…" A soft voice rang out from behind me. I turned, about to tell whoever it was to go away, but then I actually took a good look at whoever had spoken.

She was pretty in the plainest way, whoever she was. There was no sign of make-up plastered on her face, and she had doe-like caramel eyes, and dark, dark red hair, almost a deep brown, but not quite. She stood there, her lunch tray in one hand, and the other on her hip. Gazing at me (or more likely my t-shirt), she said, "Oh no way! I have that same t-shirt! I was about to wear it to school today."

I glanced down at my Marvel t-shirt (the Crunch Time one) and then looked back up at her. "It's my favorite one." I slid my lunch tray to the very front of me, almost to the edge of the table on the other side and stood up. "And sorry for taking your seat."

Doe-eyed girl took the seat, and Layne Abeley, the one who doe-eyed girl was sitting next to, stood up. "Everyone," she spoke to our table only, "this is Massie Block. Massie Block, this is everybody."

Massie gave a little wave to everyone at the table and they all acknowledged her. Some said, "Hey" or "Hi," some smiled, and others just nodded their heads.

I stretched my hand across the table towards her. "Hi, I'm Todd."

She shook my hand. "And you know who I am."

Our hands returned to our own sides. I smiled and said, "That I do."

I can't say that after that day we 'fell in love' or that everything went downhill from there, because truth is, neither of those happened.

-o-

We started to hang out more after our group of friends decided to pair off together. We were mainly together most of the time.

One day, a couple of months after we first met, we took a walk to Starbucks afterschool. We were crazy, really, because I had a car, and I could've driven us there, but she made walking seem so much fun. We were dancing crazily as if no one was watching, which a lot of people probably were.

We sat a booth in the very far corner of the café, Massie sipping her Vanilla Bean Frappuccino, while I was openly slurping my Caramel Macchiato. What can I say? It was the coldest day of the winter season (near Christmas) and we walked (slowly, I might add) almost three-fourths of a mile to Starbucks.

In the freezing cold. The dancing helped out a bit, though.

We halved a cinnamon chip scone and when we were both warm, fed, and still had our unfinished drinks in our hands she broke the silence that I didn't even know we were having.

"How come glue doesn't stick to the inside of the bottle?" I gave her a quizzical look. "I mean, I've been wondering that for a while now. It just doesn't make sense."

I had to ponder this for a while. "Well, I mean, that makes sense. Kind of. I guess not everything is supposed to make sense. Y'know, to give the world some suspense or curiosity. Because if everyone knew everything, it'd be a little boring, don't you think?"

I watched her as her forehead crinkled like it always does when she's thinking real hard about something. "Yeah, I guess. But I'd still like to know why the glue doesn't stick to the bottle."

I laughed. She glared at me playfully. My laughter died down. She was still glaring at me. I picked up my spoon and held it up in front of my face. "Don't kill me, please," I pleaded in a little boy voice, "my momma's waiting for me to come home with a carton of milk."

I saw her eyes narrow at me, but then she started laughing so hard [and loud], she could be heard over the chatter and the blender and the workers' yell of how many coffees they need "pronto!" or precisely how many old fashioned donuts a customer wants. "You're pretty funny, Lyons," she told me.

I pretended to tip an imaginary hat. "Why thank you, m'lady."

She giggled. "Now you're just being plain silly."

"Silly is my middle name," I retorted.

"Really? I never knew that … Todd Silly Lyons?"

"Yes?"

She leaned forward, and poked my chest. "What's your real middle name?"

"Jonathon."

"Why are you being so honest with me?" Her eyebrows wrinkled together.

"Because you're my friend."

"What kind of friend?"

I considered this, and chose my words carefully. "The kind of friend that … I can trust my middle name with."

She snorted (yes, the Massie Block snorted; I'm surprised, too, you're not the only one) and said, "Seriously, Todd. For real; what kind of friend am I to you?" She looked at me in the way that I just knew that she was serious and wouldn't take another ridiculous answer from me.

I sighed. "You're the kind of friend that I know would be there for me. You're the person who I can actually bring out … me."

Her forehead crinkled again. "What do you mean, Todd? You're always like this."

Adamantly, I shook my head. "I'm not, though. I'm not funny or silly and I never make girls laugh. I never tell anyone anything that's going on in my life. I never … have fun."

"But … you tell me the things that go on in your life. You were just having fun with me on the way over here." She shook her head, too. "What are you talking about?"

"Yeah, I tell you those things because you're different."

"How am I different?" Her gaze at me hardened.

"You don't know." I looked away.

"I don't know what, exactly?" Her eyes narrowed.

"My past."

-o-

We kind of … avoided each other after that. Not entirely, though. Our friends were still paired off and neither of us had bothered to make friends out of our usual circle, so we hung out a little bit. But most of it was in silence because one of us was either studying or doing homework (her) or texting (me). Occasionally, out of the corner of my eye, she would dare to look at me and open her mouth like she was about to say something, but she never did. It frustrated me so much, and I didn't even know why.

One lunch, it was just us two, sitting across from each other. Layne and Kemp were probably in some abandoned classroom doing God-knows-what (how terribly cliché, right?), Alicia and Danny were undoubtedly hitting it off somewhere, Layne and Derrick were "sick," and Nikki and Josh were in the corner arguing over if Josh was checking out some other girl. Yeah. Our friends are like that.

My eyes skimmed over the cafeteria, and they somehow landed on the girl in front of me, furiously writing so fast it looked non-human. I internally debated whether or not I should say something. Glancing down at my (very greasy) pepperoni pizza, I grabbed the napkin on my tray and started dabbing at the pizza to get the grease off. "So … why are you writing to fast it looks like your hand could fall off any second?"

She stopped writing for hardly a second. "My. Myner decided that we have to write an essay about our childhood as homework tonight."

I rumpled my nose in confusion. "Isn't Myner your chemistry teacher?"

"Yep." I watched her as she wrote something about old pennies.

"Old pennies?" I questioned.

"You're reading it?" She incredulously shrieked softly? "How can you read it?"

I shrugged. "It's a bit slanted. And yes, I'm reading it." I paused. "Unless you don't want me to, of course."

"It's fine. I'm practically done anyways."

"So what's the story with old pennies?"

"I used to collect them."

"Really now?" I grinned.

"Really," she confirmed.

"And what'd you do with them?"

"I gave them to the homeless."

"That's nice of you."

"Well, I was six. I wasn't that interested with pennies; not even the old ones. Not even if they had some quite of past. Not even if any celebrity or someone famous had kept it." She replied.

"You don't sound too happy about that whole 'homeless' thing."

Massie rolled her eyes. "Why should I tell you anything when you don't tell me anything?"

"Anymore," I reminded.

"Whatever."

Silence fell between us. And not like the cheerful kind we had that one day at Starbucks. This type of silence was bad. We couldn't find anything else to talk about.

I took a deep breath. "My grandfather died when I was three. He was the closest thing I've ever had to a dad. My real dad … well, he never wanted a child. He was a heinous man. Even as a little boy I could tell that he wasn't nice. I found my mom crying most nights, and always mumbling about how marrying him – my dad – was just a complete mistake. As I gradually got older, my mom started to tell me things that suddenly made more sense. We would go on walks to the park, and one time in the winter, she just broke down crying. I could remember everything clearly. The frost on the ground was refulgent in the moonlight, the trees were as bare as ever, my shoelace was untied …"

I could feel her sympathetic gaze on me. "You don't have to tell me, y'know."

I continued and made it seem like I never heard her. "She told me that my dad never loved her. That he only lusted after her. Nothing more. It never would have bothered me, but then she told me that somewhere along the way, she fell in love with him, despite his crude attitude and his lack of responsibility. I grew up as the one in charge, and my dad did not like that. My mom went to me for advice on what to do with him. And I found out the most disturbing news of all.

"My dad was cheating on my mom, and he was beating her. Not just mentally, but physically, too. He had a baseball bat, and whenever she would do something – anything – wrong, which seemed to be all the time, he would beat her, and she would cry and plead for him to stop, but he never did. He was set on being the one with power in the family. And that's how he showed it. My mom always told me to not tell anyone because she still loved him; she always saw the good in people.

"One day, though, I woke up to find my mother gone, and my dad started to beat me. I was sixteen then, only two years ago. He's dead now, but the only way to remember him is by the bad deeds he's ever done, because that's all he's ever shown."

She worked her way around the end of the table and sat down next to me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders. "It's okay, Todd, everything's fine. Your mom is probably off somewhere living her dream."

"That's not what I'm worried about," I gulped. "What if someone new comes along in her life, and does the exact same thing? She's already gone through it once; it'd be too much for her to go through it again."

I heard her sigh. "My last trip to the homeless shelter, my parents came with me. And they found this girl, only about two months younger than me. They loved her instantly. They adopted her, and she became their number one priority; like I wasn't what they wanted. Skye – that was her name – was perfect. She was everything I've ever wanted to be. She danced, she had everyone under her spell, she sweet-talked all the boys … and where was I in all of this? I was left in the dust, forced to take her hand-me-downs and leftovers."

I started rubbing her back. As a friend, of course.

"All my friends left me to go and be friends with her. My parents always asked me why I couldn't be more like Skye: social, funny, outgoing, bold, creative. It just killed me inside to know that I wasn't good enough for any of them." Tears started falling down her face, and I wiped them away with my thumb.

"Well, you're better than good enough for all of us here, so you don't need to worry about that." I confessed.

Massie sniffled. "Thanks." Another sniffle. "And so I ran away from home, went to my friend's house, found out they were moving here, and here I am now."

-o-

"It was after that conversation that I had with Massie that I realized that I really and truly did like her. As in, more than a friend. She's beautiful, she's smart, she has a great sense of humor, she likes Marvel t-shirts … and I know that I can trust her. I told her everything, and she told me about her past.

We had a connection, but I had to make sure that I wasn't the only one feeling it."

-o-

Things went back to normal after that day. Maybe a little too normal. We acted too friendly to each other. Whenever she was near me, I would always be just a bit too cheerful, and she would reciprocate the action. Whenever we were with our circle of friends, however, we would just share glances, and occasionally jump into a conversation, or start a random one.

"So what's going on with you and Massie, huh?" Danny Robbins asked me one day during soccer practice.

I raised my eyebrows at him, and caught his failing attempt at a goal. "Nothing, man. Absolutely nothing." I threw the ball back to him.

He caught it. "You guys looked pretty cozy that one time in the cafeteria. With you rubbing her back and all." Danny smiled his famous mischievous smile. "You're falling for her, aren't you, Lyons?"

He kicked the ball, but I just stood there, letting it go in. "Yeah, I am," I whispered, but he heard me.

"What'cha gonna do 'bout it?"

"Nothing."

"What? Are you crazy, man?" I swear, his eyes were probably out of his sockets by now.

"She doesn't like me that way, dude."

"You sure?"

"No."

-o-

"Danny's being weird," Massie complained to me as we walked home from school. Her car was towed, and mine was being repaired (flat tires).

"Danny's always being weird," I replied. "But how weird, is the question."

I saw her open her mouth to speak, but I guess she thought better of it, because she closed her mouth. Then she opened it again. "Well, I mean, he's always mentioning you and stuff, and always nudging me whenever I'm talking to you, or he's looking at us with his eyebrows raised. It's just weird."

Biting my tongue, I had a sudden urge to break every bone in his body. "Well, that's Danny for you; he's somewhat of a matchmaker."

"Well, he needs to shove it, because he's really creeping me out." She shuddered. "I mean, we're just friends, right?"

I nodded, slightly bothered by her words. "Right."

Just friends.

-o-

[AN: for a second, i was thinking about just cutting it there, leaving it at them being just friends. and i don't know if i should continue it and end it in some spontaneous way that they become a couple ... or leave it at this dead end. feedback on what i should do (which means reviews) would be lovely. and LIVVY, i know i didn't use all your prompts. :/ i'm sorry. this is belated, and it sucks, and i hope your eyes didn't burn and turn into ashes because of me :/ that would just be terrible. and complete proof that i am terrible at writing and non-procrastinating. this is a long authors note. oh, joy.]

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