DISCLAIMER: Power Rangers, Power Rangers in Space and Power Rangers Wild Force are property of Saban and Disney. Not me.
She got off the bus in front of her small, one-bedroom apartment, and shook her head. It hadn't been two hours since she had left for her job interview, and she'd been naive enough to believe that she'd return with the promise of a new job as a teaching assistant at William L. Donovan Magnet that very afternoon.
"Unbelievable," she said to herself. "With all these rejections, I should be so jaded by now, and here, I still really thought I had a chance this time."
The apartment lawn badly needed mowing, and a broken bottle lay right in front of the door. An overweight man sat on the front stoop, fanning himself with a newspaper ad for a hardware store.
Karone lowered her eyes and tried to get into the building as quickly as she could to avoid getting into a conversation with the man, but the door was stuck.
"Door don't work," the overweight man grumbled.
"At all?" Karone asked incredulously.
"I ain't sittin' out here for my health," the man replied. Karone was suddenly aware of a six-pack of beer, a box of chocolate cream cakes, and a bag of Doritos next to him.
"No, you're sure not," she said. "Does the back door work?"
The man suddenly burst into a series of staccato guffaws. He clumsily reached behind him, and pulled a thick piece of metal out of the door frame. It had been jammed in to a crack in the wood, and it prevented the bottom hinge from working.
"I been doin' that to people all mornin'!" the man roared, laughing hysterically.
Karone managed a weak smile, and started to slip through the door. The man was screaming about "the look on your face!" and he took a large bite of his chocolate cake.
Karone got on the other side of the door, and suddenly threw it open with all the force she had. She heard a rewarding "smack" as the door slammed against the man's generous bulk. He choked on his cake and consequently started coughing uncontrollably and swearing in between coughs.
"Sorry, Mr. Murphy," Karone called to him in a sweet voice. "I've been doing that to people all morning!"
Mr. Murphy let out a string of expletives which questioned the legitimacy of Karone's mother's gender and her father's sexual preference.
"Mow the damn lawn already," Karone muttered. Her head was pounding.
Her apartment was on the third floor, and there was no elevator. Ordinarily, she didn't mind the effort of taking the stairs, but today, it seemed as if gravity was working against her, and it took her ten minutes to reach the third floor.
She pushed through the door to the hallway, and noticed a new piece of graffiti carved into the door. It spoke concisely of a young woman named "Shante"'s sexual prowess and affinity for fruit, and Karone raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"Who'd think to do that with a watermelon?" she whispered, and grimaced in imagined pain.
Upon opening the door, she was greeted with the sight of a badly groomed, dirty t-shirt and ripped jeans-clad young man. He was clearly a good deal younger than she was, and he was standing outside her door.
"Excuse me," she said, pushing through.
"Hey, hey, hey, yo, yo, yo, yo, hold up," the man drawled. He carried a distinct herbal odor, and his green eyes stared at the floor as he spoke to her. "You're Karrie, right?"
Karone looked at him irritably and let out a sharp breath. Only one other person in the galaxy ever referred to her as "Karrie", and that person that was her roommate, Joan.
"My name is Karone," she said shortly. "If you're looking for Joan, she's not here. Excuse me."
"Well, uh, I know she's not here. Because, um, like, I've been, like, knocking on the door for like, ten minutes. But, like, um, see, she kind of told me that if I came over and she wasn't home, like, as long as this Karrie person was around, she'd let me hang out and wait for Joan, like, inside."
Karone rolled her eyes. Joan hadn't said anything to her about any visitors. She wasn't surprised, as Joan rarely asked permission for favors, but she was still irritated.
"No, you can wait outside. Joan will be home soon."
"Um, like, okay. I don't know if Joan ever mentioned me, but I'm Matt. We're kind of, like, seeing each other."
"She's never mentioned you. You can wait outside." Karone shut the door in his face.
"Um, okay, because-"
Karone sighed exasperatedly, turned around, and suddenly let out a cry. Joan was standing right in front of her.
"You're home?!" Karone cried. Joan shook her head frantically and put her hand over Karone's mouth. She frantically gestured toward the bedroom, and ran in and jumped on the bed.
Karone gritted her teeth. If there was ever a time when she wasn't in the mood for Joan's antics, this was it. She reluctantly went into the bedroom that the two women reluctantly shared. The apartment was not meant to house two people, but both Karone and Joan had so little income that they had little choice but to live the way they did.
"Shut the door!" Joan hissed. She was lying on her stomach. "Don't stand in front of the window! We can't stand in front of the window! He might see us from outside!"
Karone shut the door.
"How can he see you from outside if he's standing in front of the door in the hall? He's been standing out there for ten minutes. Why did you say I'd let you wait inside? Don't you know how dangerous that is? I don't know him."
"Oh my god, thank god you didn't let him in!" Joan whispered. Her long, black hair streamed over the edge of the bed and she giggled. Karone noticed several empty bottles that once contained fruit flavored malt liquor all over the floor, and Joan was clearly a good ways into the bag. "That would have ruined everything."
"Well, I don't let strange people into my house. Who is he?"
"That's MATT. Remember, I told you? From Esposito's?"
Karone walked over to the closet that she and Joan shared, and she took off her black jacket.
"Esposito's, which is a... restaurant?"
Joan ignored her.
"Thank god you didn't ruin it. See, what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna leave him wait outside until he's just getting ready to go home, and then right as he's getting ready to go, I'm gonna come out and be all like, 'Oh my god, where have you been, I've been waiting forever!'"
Karone began unbuttoning her dark navy blue blouse. She stared at Joan incredulously.
"Why?" she asked.
"We're always playing jokes like that! Like, didn't I tell you about that one time when... you're wearing a black bra, too?"
Karone looked down self-consciously, and pulled her shirt closed.
"Don't watch me get undressed."
"What? Honey, it's nothing I ain't seen before! Here," she sat up, forgetting her earlier insistance that no one stand in front of the window. Her shirt was tucked into her shorts, and she clumsily began untucking it. "You want to see mine? I'll show ya!"
Karone turned away and began buttoning her blouse back up.
Joan had gotten off the bed, nearly going through the window screen in the process. She staggered over to Karone and steadied herself against the closet door.
"What's the matter? We're roommates, aren't we? Ain't we roommates, Karrie?"
"You're drunk, Joan. Are you and Matt going out, or what?"
"I dunno. You think we should go out? You wanna come with us, Karrie? I think you better. I think you better come with us. It'll be good for you."
"No, Joan, you go ahead. I had a really, really bad day-" Karone started to turn toward Joan, but realized that Joan had somehow managed to get her shirt off on the way to the closet, and she snapped her eyes shut. "Joan, put your clothes back on!"
"What's the matter? Karrie, do you realize that you and me, we been roommates for six months now and you still won't get changed in front of me? Like, what are you afraid of? You afraid I'm gonna find out you're really a guy? Because that wouldn't exactly break our lease."
The knocking was steady and constant now, and Karone was losing patience.
"Joan, will you go and do something with him, for god's sake?"
"Let him wait it out," Joan said. She was holding her shirt in front of her, but she was only partially covered. "Hey, listen, Karrie, do you mind if I wear this tonight?"
Karone looked. Joan was gesturing at a short black dress that Karone had only worn a few times. It had been quite expensive, but she'd bought it during her first year on Earth, when she didn't understand the value of American dollars yet. It was quite outdated as far as fashion was concerned, and Karone was wary of Joan's intentions.
"Why do you want to wear that?" Karone asked.
"Because it's nice, and I like it," Joan slurred. "You don't mind. You don't never go nowhere."
"Why do you really want to wear it?"
"It's real easy to get off in a hurry."
"No. Wear something of your own."
Joan kept fingering the fabric and hovering around Karone.
"Joan, will you PLEASE! I just want to go to sleep. I had a horrible day."
"Have one of these," Joan giggled, holding up an empty bottle. "I was having a horrible day too. Not anymore, boy."
"You didn't leave any. And I don't drink, anyway."
"Well, there's your problem, right there. You don't never drink, and all you ever wear is black. Look at this. It's nothing but black. Black, black, black-"
She was rifling through Karone's hung-up clothing, and Karone turned away.
"I'm going to go and tell Matt you're here. You can deal with him."
"No! Karrie, don't do that! Come on! I'm makin' a real nice surprise for him."
"He's just going to be mad. And he has every reason to be. Come on, put something on and go answer the door. I can't listen to this banging all night."
Joan had already grown bored with nudity, and was taking a floaty pink summer dress out of her "half" of the closet, which was actually closer to two thirds of the closet.
"I wouldn't need to take this one off at all, I don't think. Hey, Karrie, that reminds me, I talked to Chris. He says you cancelled your date!"
Karone sat down on the bed and sighed. She took her hair out of its twist and shook it out. It had a coarse consistency, and she couldn't get her fingers through it.
Chris was one of Joan's coworkers, a twenty two year old former goth who still had plugs in his ears and still enjoyed wearing black, but who had a glaringly dull personality. Karone had protested when Joan had set them up on a date, claiming (while sober) that "you guys have so much in common! You both like black!", and she hadn't gotten much of a response either negative or positive when she'd called Chris and explained that she couldn't come.
"Yeah, I called him."
"Well, he was pissed!" Joan exclaimed.
"What? He didn't act angry."
"He was. He was pissed."
"Well, you knew I wasn't interested in him! Why did you make that date?"
"You ain't interested in nobody. When's the last time you had a date? Huh? It was sure as hell before you met me. I ain't never seen you go anywhere except on job interviews and out with that Cassie person."
"I don't go on dates," Karone muttered, lying back on the bed. "It's all wet here."
"What, the bed? I spilled my drink," Joan said.
"Which one?" Joan pulled the dress down over her head and smoothed down the skirt.
"How come you don't go out on no dates?" she asked.
"Because I don't want to. Your dress is on backwards."
Joan looked down.
"No, it ain't."
"Fine. I should make you change the sheets before you go. How am I going to sleep in this?"
"There ain't that much. Hey, did he stop knocking?"
Karone listened. She didn't hear anything.
"You better go catch him. He's probably going to leave."
Joan hissed an expletive and ran out to the front door. She still had her shorts on underneath the dress, and appearance-wise, she was in no condition to go out.
Of course, her date was a far cry from the Best Dressed list himself.
Karone took advantage of the momentary absence of Joan and opened the dresser that the two of them shared. The top two drawers belonged to Karone, and the other three, as well as nearly the entire floor, were reserved for Joan's wardrobe.
Karone pulled out a black tank top and a black and green spotted pair of pajama pants and ran into the bathroom to change. On her way, she saw Matt and Joan giggling in front of the door. Apparently Matt had appreciated the joke after all.
When she came out of the bathroom, Matt was sitting on the floor in front of the front door, with Joan in his lap. They were in the middle of a very serious make-out session, and Karone all at once felt a cold, sick feeling deep within her chest.
She watched them for a moment, and then slipped into the bedroom as quietly as she could. Her day had been bad before, but the sight of the two ravenous, intoxicated lovers gave her a disgusting, helpless feeling with aspects of jealousy, disgust and rage, but not enough of any of the three emotions to be identifiable as such.
Of course, Joan was right. Karone hadn't been on a date in the entire time the two had known each other. And, in actuality, Karone had not been on a "date" for nearly eight years.