Hey all! Here is a small piece of Introspective!Eustace. I thought he wanted to be cute and angsty (he keeps trying to become my second muse) so I let him. This is my first experiment with the present tense, and so I would particularly welcome any comments on how I can improve that. Otherwise, all the same-I don't own it, etc. Oh, and for those of you who might follow my stories, this comes after Not Meeting the In-Laws (by about two years, heh) and is shortly before Why Eavesdropping Never Solves Anything.
Eustace Scrubb is convinced that someone is playing a not-very-friendly trick upon him. He isn't sure who it is, and has gone through various stages (some more rational than others) of blame, including Jill, Edmund, Lucy, Caspian, Reepicheep, Puddleglum, Rilian, and, perhaps most frequently, certainly most accurately, his own emotions, apparently no longer subject to his will.
He turns his hands over and inspects the palms with interest, hoping to find hairs growing so he can plead insanity and have an excuse for all this. There is no such loophole. Ah. Back to blaming Puddleglum, then.
Because it isn't supposed to happen, you see. All those writers and filmmakers get a fortune from pretending that it does, but it doesn't, really. Oh. He realises that he is not being very clear with himself. Perhaps that's because he isn't really sure what exactly he needs to be clear about.
Well. He isn't sure, but he suspects that Edmund has been right all along, and he might, possibly, conceivably, have fallen for his best friend. This is extremely irritating, and he is momentarily glad that Ed isn't around to eavesdrop on the mutterings he is almost sure he is making.
This is completely unexpected, but with the dubious pleasure of hindsight, he wonders how anybody could not fall for Jill. Perhaps everyone has, he thinks, and feels a sudden surge of paranoid protectiveness towards her. He thinks, privately, that it is all Jill's fault-she had to go and be noble and brave and ridiculously stubborn, and have that look about her that he can't quite define, but that is most definitely confusing and bewitching and thoroughly unnecessary. Briefly, he is angry with her. If he can only think this through rationally, however, he is sure it will be proved to be only a trick of the light. Or something.
It all started this morning. He had woken up perfectly normally, in the dorm he now (as a privilege of being a fifth) shared with only one other lad. He did not know where Peterson was, but he didn't really care. It's a Saturday, today, and this morning, it seemed as innocuous a Saturday as had ever passed before. This evening, he is still planning to go into town to see a farce with Jill, Tate, Peterson and a handful of other people. It was this morning that he first realised that he had paid for Pole's ticket, along with what that meant according to Experiment House etiquette. His ears ad turned a little red, but he dismissed it at the time.
It is, he realises with a sudden start, all Frank Sinatra's fault. This is the clearest conclusion he has reached so far, and he is pleased with himself. Yes, the whole situation-which he now realises has been mounting for months, more likely years-was brought into sharp and unwelcome focus that morning, when he was popping by her dorm to give her the tickets for the evening. He had kept them himself until then, because she has a rather endearing habit of losing the most important things, whilst still possessing three empty inkwells and several items of clothing that were too small for her.
He had caught her in the middle of tidying her dorm, which looks uncharacteristically clean. The last time Pole and Tate's room had looked that tidy, it had been because they had both been threatened with Saturday study periods if they didn't do something about it. He walked in without knocking, because he could hear her clattering about in a way that seemed to indicate she was up and dressed. He knew Tate wasn't in there-he had passed her on the way into the girls' dorms. Of course, Experiment House had rules against such casual interaction between the sexes, but they were summarily ignored, even by good students.
It always gave him a warm feeling to see her listening to the portable record player he and Tate had bought her, in a moment of rare co-operation, for her sixteenth birthday. It was playing when he walked in, the room filled with light from the late winter sunrise, and she was singing along happily with a schmoozey Sinatra track. She has always had a beautiful voice-his initial dislike for her, before Narnia and before his voice had broken, had come when she stole the lead soprano from him in the school choir. Right then, she made a very pretty picture, set against the sunrise and singing along with "Fly Me to The Moon," and he had watched her for a few moments with a smile on his face.
It hadn't been then.
It hadn't even been when she had turned around, pretty and pink-cheeked, with curls falling scrappily into her face and dust all over her right cheek. It hadn't even been then, although he admits that his heart had done strange gymnastics at the sight. His heart has always done unaccountable things in Jill's presence-well, for a couple of years, anyway. He had learnt to live with it long before today, choosing to believe it was something as minor as a selective cardiac complaint that would probably kill him one day. It hadn't been then.
No, it had been shortly after that.
Shortly after that, when he had found himself, cloth in hand, helping her with the chore he most despised-polishing, because Brasso made him sneeze-at his own suggestion, laughing and singing along with her, even though he knows that he's not wonderful in the voice department any more, certainly not compared with her. She had been standing on her bed, dusting the top corners of the room, singing snatches of "I've got you under my skin" and pretending to be angry with something he had said. And suddenly, she had stopped singing, and he had missed it very much. And it had been then.
Thinking about it darkly, he feels in his pocket, and realises he has forgotten to give her the ticket for tonight. He wonders if he can pass it to Tate or Peterson to give to her, because now he doesn't think he'll be going after all.