Rating: PG-13
Summary: 'A thin piece of violet cloth, tied to the foot of a four-poster bed.' April and Don-centric.
Pairings: very slightly April+Donny...if you look through a microscope or have a vivid imagination.
Warnings: coupl'a F-bombs...generally foul language because the characters in this fic all need to have their mouths washed out with soap. Except Donny. Features psychic!April. Because I said so. Yeah, she suppressed it once she got to high school, but occasionally, Casey, she really can read minds. She's also a bit of a tomboy. :)
Notes: assuming that April is 22 years old when she meets the Turtles in 2003 (she skipped a few grades, okay?), she is 6-7 years older than they are. So in this fic, she is 14/15/23 and Donny is 8/(9)/17. Based loosely on newtoon!Turtles (though I've never even seen the episode where April meets our boys), whatever else I've managed to glean from various sources regarding April's past, and my own mind. For the record, April's biological father died a couple years before the start of this fic. The man she refers to as her father in the new toon is actually her grandfather. /flimsy justification As for the title? Yeah, I don't know either. It just sounded cool. Kidding! It's very symbolic and deep. For the record, I haven't slept in a while. (It seems insomnia is common among TMNT fans...?) Thank you to all the wonderful people who reviewed my first Turtlefic! bows Ya'll rock my shy little socks off!
Disclaimer: Don't own the cool characters like April ("Apple") and Donatello-san (that honor goes to Mirage Studios, Fox, and whoever else has a finger in the TMNT franchise), but I do own April's psychic!powers. No? Okay, I don't own them, either. Or the Yellowcard quote. Or Yellowcard. Or my soul. depressed
Chernobyl
by Becky Murakawa
There's a piece of you that's here with me,
it's everywhere I go, it's everything I see.
When I sleep, I dream, and it gets me by;
I can make believe that you're here tonight.
If I could find you now, things would get better...
--Yellowcard
August 30, 1995
Steve Beecham hit her again today.
The sun is like a big orange M&M glowing and sinking just beyond the twin apartment complexes across the street, and the cool evening air hits the sweat on her forearms and brow and almost bare chest and she's shuddering, from the chill and from fear, too.
tired so damn tired stop fuckin naggin at me just wanna get in bed and never get out--
oh no oh no oh nooooo mama my mama crying why is she crying mama is hurt mama is crying the floor is hard and i am cold and mama is crying
that's what you say but you don't mean it baby, ha ha ha
hee hee
knife. just a kitchen knife. or pills. can't decide. pills are not manly somehow. i don't know...
Her shirt is at the very top of the dirty laundry pile, like a bloodied snowcap crowning a hulking, strangely colored mountain, all this on Mom's and Beecham's bed, and Apple wonders where they sleep...if they sleep at all. She doesn't like to sleep herself anymore, afraid of what awaits her in her dreams, and also what might be going on in their apartment while she is out of it.
The shirt, emblazoned with a Museum of Arts and Sciences logo, was Apple's uncle's, but her uncle gave it to her last time they'd seen one another, which was...two years ago...and it isn't really bloody, just stained with Cherry/Watermelon Kool-Aid and grayish from being long unwashed. And it probably will never be washed. She's run out of shirts and Steve Beecham hasn't supplied a substitute--just sent Apple to the laundry room, which is really her bedroom, since they don't own a washer and dryer. She can see Mom and Steve's bedroom across the living room, and between her and Mt. Dirty Linens, the beige armchair that Beecham has claimed as his, the only one they own, which sinks in on one side. Beecham's head rests against the chair's back, thick blond hair fanning out behind, one huge, browned hand curled onto the armrest and nestling the universal remote control. The Married With Children theme song is booming from the television. The t.v. is the only light on in the apartment.
Apple glances over into the kitchen, which is really just a tiny extension of the living room with a stove and a refrigerator that alternately freezes and rots their food. She'd been standing by the sink, where she'd washed out a crusty cup so she could get a drink, and Beecham told her to keep her overactive trap shut. Smarter than to ask her stepfather to make the Kool-Aid for her, and of course she's old enough to read the directions herself and pour in the cup and a half of sugar (more than called for, but she likes it sweet) and the little packet and then cool water. It's ten minutes later, when she's pouring herself a glass, that her hands start to shake, and so violently that she loses her grip and for a moment all the world is--
white spots flashing and green light it was a green light i had the right of way but why and i am breathing still coughing hacking need air need air bryan where is bryan we have to get to the restaurant we have a reservation damnit i had the right of way but something yes something hit us hit me pavement and cops and white spots and oh my god bryan no no no no nononononoNONONONONONO
--and then Steve Beecham is standing over her and glaring at the Kool-Aid spreading quickly across the tile and all down the Museum of Arts and Sciences t-shirt. The blow that connects with the right side of her face isn't really unexpected. Apple sees white spots like the young man whose anguished cries still resound within the walls of her mind. She doesn't weep. She can tell that this angers Beecham even further, but Apple thinks of herself as a woman, and a woman must not be weak. Like her mother.
"Fuckin' brat," Beecham says crankily. His handsome face is squinched up, studying the girl. "You better clean up this shit b'fore your mama gets back."
Apple takes a shuddering breath. 'If Mom gets back,' she replies mentally. But silence is her best weapon against her stepfather, and she employs it masterfully.
"Dint I tell ya not to bother me? Dint I? Look at this mess--this place is a shithole. Why the hell your mama had to get knocked up with a filthy kid like you and that bitch sister of yours, Ape--," the familiarity sets Apple's teeth on edge, "--only God knows but damn, you're one hell of a pain in the ass. Eat us outta house and home. 'S fifty nine cents for one 'a them Kool-Aid packets. Sugar's almost two bucks now. That's money you're spillin' all over the goddamn place, kid, cold cash. You wanna hurt your mama and me, you doin' a hella good job. Fuck."
That was a good three hours ago. She cleaned the drink up with her shirt, but it's still sticky in there, and she knows it'll attract more bugs but she couldn't think of anything else to do once the shirt was saturated. Drank water from the sink, even though it was yellowish. The worst part is, she knows Beecham is right; they don't have money to waste like that, and Beecham's been paying all the bills ever since Mom latched on to him. So Apple is at her stepfather's mercy, in that respect.
Mom still hasn't gotten back. Apple figures she's drugged up somewhere out there. She tries to pick the twisted thread of her mother's thoughts up from the millions out there in the city, and can't, only gives herself a headache.
Breeze picks up, but she doesn't shut the window. The sun is only a faint splash against a darkening sky. She shivers, in just her bra and jeans.
Today she is fourteen years old.
September 3, 1995
After school she comes home to find Steve Beecham in a foul mood and Mom passed out on their bed. Beecham was laid off from his job yesterday, and Mom has been too high to care much since he tracked her down; Apple isn't entirely sure if she's glad she's back home at the apartment or not. She misses her mother's long warm arms and Tresemme hair; now, she's cold to the touch and snoring loudly and smells of vomit. Sometimes it's better not knowing.
She got in a fight at lunch with a 7th grade boy who said that she stank. The teacher gave Apple detention and a little slip of paper for her mother to sign. Apple tiptoes past Mom and like a thief shuffles through the mail on her dresser. Finally finds an unsent letter, addressed to her grandmother, and tears it open. Mom's signature is scrawled across the bottom, under the perfunctory "love," even though the letter expresses anything but. Apple knows that her grandparents want custody of her. She knows Mom will never give her up. Copies the signature carefully across the dark line on her slip, hides it in her pocket, shoves the opened letter back into the pile of letters. Clothes are in heaps all over the room--Steve Beecham must have moved them so Mom wouldn't puke on them. She's mumbling in her sleep now.
Gently Apple brushes a tired lock of hair off her forehead, kisses her temple. Tells her she loves her and means it. Even if she's the reason Apple's clothes stink.
"'S all your goddamn fault," Beecham remarks from the doorway. "She never could take the pressure. Looking after you. Bein' responsible for you. Feedin' and dressin' and all that shit." Beecham crosses the room and when he looks at Mom he looks sad and disgusted all at once, and when he looks at Apple, it's just like he's looking at some insect he'd like to squish. "Guess it's been just me doin' that for a while now, huh?"
Rests his big square hand upon Mom's head, and Apple hates her stepfather for that intimacy.
Wordlessly the girl departs their room and once in her own bedroom, slides her back down the wall until she's seated on the tile floor, feet almost spanning the diameter of the room, and she stares at the bare mattress to her right and the window to her left and then pulls out her homework and tries to forget.
September 7, 1995
She stayed with her grandparents the summer before last, when Mom wasn't so paranoid and the custody battle currently raging wasn't even thought of. Before Mom's new husband Steve Beecham, before Nathan O'Connell, before Darrick Batts, before any of Mom's "boy-toys" as she calls them lightly. When Apple and her dad, and her older half-sister were the only important people in Mom's life, besides the wrinkled photo in Mom's wallet, herself and Bobby LeRue at their high school prom, the night before he left for the West Coast and two weeks before she found out she was pregnant. Before Dad started rotting from the inside out, died smelling of stale urine, unable to recognize any of them. Before Mom started trying to imitate him.
Apple's grandparents live ten miles outside of Buffalo, and they sent twelve year old Apple to Vacation Bible School every night for a week, and she always came back with popsicle stick crosses and coloring book pages all in pink and green and purple (her favorite colors at the time) and Play-Do Jesuses and Davids. She learned Bible verses off by heart and recited them proudly for her beaming grandmother. Still remembers a few now (for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son) and she sometimes says them over and over to herself in the night, staring out the laundry window at the blank sky where no stars can be seen for the orange streetlights. Like a prayer, but she stopped praying when Mom started coming in at one a.m., staggering all over the place and barely recognizing her, when they moved to this cockroach infested apartment and she realized that no matter how hard she prayed, Mom would never take her back to their old home, she would never sleep in the bedroom with the airplane stickers on the walls and the seashell night-light, she would never wake up to find her mother smiling softly and her sister back from the West Coast and Steve Beecham half a continent away.
Begins to believe that it's all been an elaborate, kindly hoax, this praying business. Like Santa Claus, who stopped coming the year before Apple's last visit to her grandparents, and the Easter Bunny. She thinks that it must mean she's more (or less) than a kid, now. No magic. Just what comes on the news: the crime, the death, the politics, the weather. Fractions, decimals, natural science. Computers. No mystery there.
When the voices become too much for her she sometimes recites her Bible School mantras but more often than not lately she's taken to calling out the periodic table of elements in a singsong that distracts her from all the screaming and laughter, the human drama. The first time she ever picked up on someone's thoughts, she was in the supermarket with Mom, soon after they moved into the new (ha ha) apartment. The lady next to Apple kept saying, "I'm gonna do it, tonight. Tonight. Tonight. I'm gonna kill the fucker," and Apple turned to stare at her and her mouth wasn't moving but she was smiling this cold little smile that scared the little girl so bad she felt like she had to pee.
The power, or whatever it is, was erratic and not very strong then. Sometimes she'd pick up on it, sometimes not.
Wasn't too long before it was every second of every day. At times too loud for her to hear anything else over the sheer volume of it, even her own thoughts, and then she panics and starts singing at the top of her lungs, "Hydrogen, helium, lithium, berylliiiium..." Once she fainted, but she's too strong for that now.
She's chanting the elements in the laundry room. Some woman two floors below is wimpering in her head, too tired and injured to even think much beyond ohgodohgodohgod and Apple's watching the clock carefully and eight minutes later, at 8:23, Apple runs. Isn't even sure what she'll do when she gets there, but the noise is just too much, the crying of the woman and the redhot wordless formless anger of the man beating her and all around them the whisper of millions of other people, every one of them calling out for help or attention or a sign, and Apple thinks for no reason she can ascertain, I am a sign, I am a sign, and then she's down the stairs, turning the corner. The hallway is silent, but there, apartment 305B, ("Cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc and gallium tooooo, germanium, arsenic--") and she can hear it with her ears now. Thump, thump, sob, thump. He's kicking her.
Apple's small fist connects with the chipped brown paint of the door, dislodging brittle paint fragments as she pounds. It's like the pressure moves up her arm and into her head, settling clumsily behind her eyes and there it blossoms, until the drumming in her mind is worse than the drumming her hands make, frantically connecting with the metallic surface of the door. I am a sign.
The kid who answers the door is much younger than Apple, and paper pale, eyes rolling a little with suppressed fear. It takes Apple a few seconds to realize why she can't pick up on her thoughts. Her mouth is slack, her fingers keep clutching at air. She's mentally retarded. Apple touches her cheek lightly and darts past her, into their living room which is so like their own. The fake mantelpiece, beige carpet, fingerprint smeared windows. Little cat figurines set up everywhere, and a lot of them on the floor now, broken. In the kitchen. Orange bars of light filter through the blinds, because the lights are off, and those red picture-thoughts keep flashing like heat lightning (a pretty woman in flannel pajamas; the little girl in a light summer dress blond hair up in tri-ponytails; they waited for him to get home from work, and the girl is excited; candles on a cake being lit like tiny bonfires, flickering and unpredictable, the girl reaches for them and he swats her hand; so sick of getting nagged at 'cause your kid's a fucking ignoramus, so sick of you defending the little bitch, I'm your man, not her, do you hear me, do you HEAR me Marie--!)
Her sneakers make almost no noise against the tile, but the man is frozen and his thoughts are organizing again into words, angry words, killing words. Apple is very, very afraid, but she catches sight of the woman on the floor, her pretty mouth all swollen and bloody on one side and her flannel pajama top hiked up around her armpits, bruises dotting her like continents on earth, big and yellow and ugly.
The man's hands are on Apple's shoulders and he's talking calmly, very calmly, even though the killing thoughts are still there.
"Shut up," Apple says, pleased to note that her voice is steady. A little higher than usual, maybe. "You just shut up, you sick fuck. I--I've called the police." A lie, because Mom doesn't own a telephone. But this man doesn't know that.
"You--you--" The man's face breaks into a smile. Then his open palm connects with Apple's head, and white sparks fly all over the place. The little retarded girl is crouching by the refrigerator, crying silently. A single bar of umber light falls across her wet face, those huge blue eyes. Apple stares at her as the next blow connects, this time a solid kick to her gut that has her vomiting all over the kitchen floor.
For God so loved the world--
Another kick, sickening crunch. Her ribs. She tries to scream but can't get the air to do it. Stupid, stupid. This was stupid. Big blue eyes watching, begging her to do something, but she didn't plan much beyond the police bluff, and that obviously worked out very well for her.
--that He gave His only begotten Son--oh God please don't let me die here, please--
Sound of shattering glass, and a shadow blocks out the streetlights. Tiny shards all over her, but she can't move to brush them off--the man steps back and Apple swears that the shadow actually grabs for the guy's throat, and there is a wet, gurgling sound, a snap, and then no more. What must be just a corpse now falls to the tile. Apple stares at the man's open eyes, still damp, and knows she's looking at Death.
And she's next.
That's her immediate thought, but she catches the retarded girl's pretty gaze again, and she's smiling. The shadow, which actually isn't so big after all--a little shorter than Apple, who is tall for her age--is right next to the girl and speaking in a soft tenor (rather than the brassy growl Apple has been expecting). One hand tenderly brushes against the girl's long, blond hair, which having fallen out of those wacky tri-tails is curling around her wet face. The shadow ripped the blinds down when it came in through the window, and now the light falls upon its face, and Apple gasps.
Not human.
And there is blessed quiet in the room--between the unconscious woman, the retarded girl and the monster, no thoughts thunder into Apple's overburdened consciousness. Only the distant murmur of the city. She tastes the unique flavor of her own thought processes clearly for the first time in ages.
"God," the retarded girl says softly, and Apple thinks maybe she's as shocked as she is after all. Then she realizes she's addressing the creature. "Thanks bunches, God. Love ya, God."
"Be good, Hannah."
The creature backs towards the window. Apple is on her feet before she is really aware what she is doing, wincing with the pain. Already the thing is half out into the night, fully out--balancing on the thin ledge surrounding this floor, which is--Apple blinks--the fifth. How the hell did it get up so high? Then she's leaning out after it, and it's out of the glare of the streetlight now; hard to discern those strange, broad features, the large, sentient eyes, the mouth too wide--
"Who are you really?" Apple calls out.
The creature keeps shuffling nimbly along.
"I know you're not God!" Apple says, louder this time.
The creature pauses. "How can you be sure?"
"Because He--it--doesn't exist," Apple replies, a wicked thrill going through her. It's the first time she's said it aloud. "Why'd you lie to her?"
"...It was a brave thing you did tonight, kid."
"You don't sound older'n me." Apple strains to see the creature. Holds her breath when it jumps nimbly down only to catch hold of the edge of a third floor windowpane. So fast. Suddenly Apple is doubting herself--if such a thing as this exists, what else might be out there in the world, equally mysterious, once dismissed by her and now, suddenly, revisited? If this creature can exist--and she's still trying to place the name of the animal it reminds her of--who's to say that trolls and demons and even God can't exist?
Hard to breathe still. Headache back in spades.
"I'm April O'Neil," Apple says to the creature. It's gone down another floor, and she realizes it will be gone soon.
Just when she thinks she's lost her chance, the soft tenor drifts back up to her from the second floor. "Donny," it says.
She's not sure how it happens, but one minute she's staring down at the creature, concealed as it is by darkness, and the next minute she can't find it anywhere. Like it's disappeared in thin air.
Donny.
And then the name of the animal she's thinking of comes to mind--
The creature looks like a giant turtle.
September 7, 1996
Hannah greets her by the front stoop of her new apartment complex, her blameless blue eyes wide with excitement. Pink Strawberry Shortcake jumper, white blouse, tri-braids. Typically Hannah. A warmth settles in Apple's stomach; it's strange, but this girl is the only person she can really consider a friend. Easy to forget she's a halfwit, when she's throwing her plump little arms affectionately around her neck. God, she hopes no one's looking. Somewhat abashed, she carefully extricates herself.
Kind of overcast, great plumes settling moodily overhead, and Apple guesses she won't take Hannah to the park, after all.
"Bubbles!" the retarded girl says in reply to her decision. And Apple follows her (hiding a smile) up to the second floor, into the apartment that smells of her--Dove soap and Campbell's tomato soup, an interesting combination--the apartment that just laughs out her presence in general. Drawings hung on the walls like Michelangelo, primitive attempts at portraying animals that Apple, knowing Hannah, assumes to be of the feline persuasion. Hannah's mother kisses Apple's cheek, light and cool even in the late summer heat. Brief shock of memory--this same woman, a year ago today, sprawled on her kitchen floor unconscious, her heavyset boyfriend standing watch over her like a grave marker. Hannah's mother doesn't remember that day, or the strange visitor it brought. Her thoughts are typically adult--not the cotton candy consistency Apple imagines her daughter's to be, of course, but not all thunderheads and rain, either. A happy medium.
Trembling with eagerness, Hannah races in ungainly circles around the sofa, making soft whirring sounds, before zooming into her bedroom. Apple follows a little reluctantly. Hannah's room stirs within her a faint uneasiness. Cats are everywhere. Worn plushies on the bed and scattered on the floor, plaster statues lined up on the dresser, cat bed linens, cats sketched clumsily by Hannah's mom on the pink paint in yellow and purple and white. The cats don't bother her so much. It's the other stuff. The way every photograph on her bedside table is turned face down, and all the pictures on the wall are hung up backwards. She's fine with photos elsewhere in the house, but in her room they have to be hidden. And the uncompromising neatness, as though Hannah thinks she can make up for all she can't do by being the best at what she can. Well. Apple's making assumptions in that respect; Hannah's mind is like a blank slate to her.
Despite how uncomfortable the room makes her, she is intrigued by one item. As Hannah searches through her pristine dresser drawer, humming lightly to herself, Apple reaches out and trails her brown fingers over the cat-infested bedspread, until they brush against the heavy piece of cloth tied carefully around one of the end-posts in a neat bow. A light purple, almost indigo. Two openings, out of which eyes that are not human had once stared. Wonders, for probably the hundredth time, why the turtle creature gave it to Hannah. Apple has her own hypothesis--but she'll never know for sure. And Hannah...
"Have you spoken with God lately?" Apple asks suddenly.
"Nope. He's awful busy. Busy, busy, busy--okay!" She holds up a florescent pink tube triumphantly. "Let's blow bubbles!"
"All right."
The concrete of the front stoop is cool against their buttocks. Hannah sits pressed against Apple, and they share the same wand, sending little incandescent spheres into the rest of the world, among the rough group of children playing street hockey and in between the swishing legs of adults hurrying to unknown destinations. Apple's mind is in the place it usually is--thinking about the creature that called itself Donny, and that helps her forget that when she goes home this evening, it will not, ultimately, be to the miserable little apartment across the street.
She intends to tell Hannah the truth--that this is probably the last time they'll ever see each other--but three hours later she's waving a nonchalant goodbye, the words still unsaid.
Away from the quiet of Hannah's mind, thoughts start cramming in through the door to her consciousness; it's 6:30 p.m., and most of the occupants of her complex are in the near vicinity. The noise is deafening. But it's almost a welcome distraction from what awaits her in the fifth floor apartment. She takes the stairs, to delay her arrival, but by the time she makes the second floor, she can hear him.
She liked this shade. Floral dreams. Why don't they just call it pink? Never understood that. So simple. They make it complicated. Everything is (complicated oh god ellen you know i didn't mean to) different now. Gotta throw it away. Her sisters won't want it. A dead woman's make-up. Dead. Ha ha. I wonder if (did you cry out did you regret it at the last minute why wasn't i good enough why wasn't i there i could've taken off work could've got you help but no no no kept putting it off and putting it off until you fuckin went too--) the girl will be getting in soon.
Steve Beecham's thoughts, both more collected and more jumbled than Apple has ever known them to be. Weird paradox. She knows that there's no risk of Beecham seriously harming himself, no matter the extent of his guilt--the man is too practical for that--but Apple does wonder what will become of her stepfather, in the same way that she might wonder at the fate of a missing sock. She doesn't really care, because Mom is--
Well. Mom is about six and a half feet underground. And her grandfather is waiting for her up in that fifth floor apartment. The custody papers went through the day before. Tonight, she will be staying at a hotel with Grandpa, all of her worldly possessions in tow. And tomorrow, they will be heading north for her grandparents' home just outside of Buffalo.
December 24, 2004
"Hi, April."
She looks up from her tattered copy of The Lord of the Rings. Brushes her hair out of her eyes. At first he's little more than a shadow, but as he climbs expertly in from the fire-escape he morphs into familiar Donatello, modestly averting his eyes and taking a seat across from her. Folds his muscular legs up into the chair. Leans his arms on his kneepads. His smile is shy. "I've been reading Tolkien, too," he admits.
"The movies," she says, understanding.
"Mmhmm. Mikey's getting to you, too?"
"Oh, yeah."
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, she finishing up the page she's on, he staring politely at the photographs on her coffee table and not at her flimsy pajama shorts and the long legs issuing from said shorts. April fights the urge to laugh at his awkwardness, but she remembers what it's like to be seventeen and running on a short fuse. Not that her laughter would offend him; he's too...stolid for that. But it could potentially erase the dreamy little smile he's currently exhibiting and, if April is completely honest with herself, she likes that smile.
Focusing more on her friend than on her book. She goes back to telling herself that Tolkien did not intend for Frodo and Sam's relationship to be as gayer-than-thou as it obviously is.
"Personally," Don says after she closes the paperback and sets it next to the remote control before switching on the television, volume mute, "I think there's this thin line between hobby and mental illness, and Mikey's finally crossed it."
April smiles ruefully. Wants to ask him what drove him from his home a quarter to midnight. Doesn't think his brother's (somewhat annoying) extracurricular activities have much to do with it.
"But he's been like that since we were kids," Don sighs, staring at two old white men arguing noiselessly on the 'tube.
The thought of a young Donatello is very cute. She grins. "You don't say? And I suppose you were a bastion of moral behavior?"
Don snorts, unable to conceal a self-satisfied smirk. "Does my mask look blue to you?" His eyes settle on the chess set laid out neatly across the room on her kitchen table. "Wanna go a round?"
"No, and yes," she answers both questions. He lets her be white. After she takes his first pawn, she says, "So what dastardly deeds did you commit in your early years, Donatello?"
"Oh, you know. The usual. Home-made weapons of mass destruction. World domination. Sacrilege." He taps his chin. "Am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah. I also killed Mikey's pet rat."
April blanches. "R-r-rat?
"Yeah. Unintentionally. It got into these wires I was repairing and--well, I won't go into detail." Don captures two of her pieces. "Mikey wouldn't let me get near Splinter for weeks."
"Because of the...biological resemblance?" April swallows, with some difficulty. She never has been able to overcome her discomfort--okay, blind terror--of rats. Splinter is one matter. Little creeping, crawling sewer rats is another matter entirely.
"Just call me Death-to-Rats," Don says sardonically.
"You bad boy, you."
"Designed a neat little interface for NSB," he says after a while.
"I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it utilizes, and not necessarily in this order, cute anime-style ninja--" she moves her rook expertly across the board, "--those weird ninja throwing-asterisk things as buttons, and a cleverly coordinated color scheme that was probably suggested to you by Michaelangelo."
"Shuriken," he says. "They're called shuriken."
"That's what I said. Throwing-asterisk things."
"You're...pretty close in your assessment. Except I thought up the color scheme myself." She gives him a Look. "What? It's still cleverly coordinated!"
"Ninja Spyware Blocker," she murmurs while contemplating her next move. "Think it'll really sell?"
"You saw the programming yourself. It works. I guess it's a matter of marketing at this point." He looks up at her. "What about you? When you were a kid."
"Oh, I--" Her mother passed out on the bed, an immense pile of clothes beyond her. The sting of a sharp blow against her cheek. A pretty blonde girl with spaced-out eyes. And voices--always voices. She thinks her childhood must have been composed entirely of people talking to her. Most of it's a blank, anyway. Except for those few images. And then life with her grandparents, before her grandfather opened the antiques shop in the city.
A thin piece of violet cloth, tied to the foot of a four-poster bed.
"They called me 'Apple,'" she says finally.
"Ah!" Don smiles at the sound of her clock chiming the midnight hour. "Merry Christmas, April. Or, should I say, Apple?" There's a secret glint to his eyes that bothers her--like he knows something she doesn't.
She shakes away the feeling and the stale memories. Returns his smile. "Back at you, Don--or, should I say, Death-to-Rats?"