June 1st, 2011

There was cotton in my mouth and I was pretty much slobbering everywhere, still a little loopy post-surgery. It was totally gross, but I was determined. I slammed my hand down on the counter, then slowly opened my palm. A (for the most part) unscathed golden tooth rolled quietly from it and hit the surface with a tiny ping.

"THISTH. TELL ME WHAT THISTH ISTH WORSTH."

"... Excuse me, Ma'am?"

My dad placed an authoritative hand on my shoulder. "We wish to pawn this, for whatever we can get for it."

"WHAEVA WE CA GETH? NO! I WANSTH A FA'A PRICE! I'LL GET MA' LEGA OFFICIALS INVOL-"

"Heather. You're going to hurt yourself. Turn off."

I pouted,as well as I could with a swollen mouth and a ball of cotton preventing me from fully closing my lips. My dad sighed and smiled; A wide, intimidating smile that I proudly inherited from him.

"Her oral surgeon informs us that this is legitimate. We're here to pawn it."

The old man behind the counter slowly picked up the morsel and inspected it, a wheezy laugh whistling through his throat. "Well, I can't exactly just take your word on that-or your oral surgeon, for that matter." He laughed again, and I rolled my eyes hard.

"WATSTH IT WORSTH?"

"Well… Assumin' that it is genuine, you could probably get between $550 to $600 for it."

"YESTH!"

Okay, so it wasn't a million bucks. Not even close. But squeezing even a small amount out of that show, even inadvertently, felt like a win.

Besides, absolutely no part of me expected the gold from those amazonian actor boys to be genuine! I was already excited to get whatever disgrossting imitation crap that was out of my mouth. But… Genuine gold?

I had a huge, malevolent smile on my face in the car-Another expression I shared with my dad. He had an evil streak in him. (It was me.)

Omitting cotton-related speech impediments: "Five hundred and forty, five hundred and sixty, five hundred and eighty…"

My dad's eyes were on the road. "Whatcha gonna spend it on, you heathen?"

A loving nickname. More often, 'Godless Heathen.' My mom's never been a huge fan of it, but I've always thought it was hilarious.

"Five hundred and ninety nine dollar-goldfish."

He laughed, and he seemed legitimately happy, the creases around his mouth appearing when he smiled. That's how you can tell a real smile from a fake one. Err.. In people over forty. That's probably what I missed most about my dad-He got my jokes.

"What about the last dollar?"

"Savings!"

He laughed again and for a second I remembered what it felt like to hang out with him every day, back before Total Drama started.

"You could use it to fly out and see your boyfriend."

I was completely blindsided. It was like he reached out and slapped me.

"Fly out and do what!?"

"Oh come on. What was his name? Al?"

I felt like the entire world just froze, myself included. "Alejandro." I corrected, movements mechanical. I stared out the window and felt very isolated.

"I know you think he's not going to forgive you. But… Contributing to the hospitalization bills could be a decent gesture. One you could do without talking, no less."

My mind didn't want to process those words. Why did my dad think he knew what he was talking about?

Why was he always right about me?

I stayed silent.

-ℋ

June 3rd, 2011

Prompt: Fear

Yet another horribly vague prompt. This one is actually even vaguer. I'm going to roll with the punches the same way I did last time Dr. Kenwar gave me a crap prompt, and go with the first thing that came to mind. Vulnerability.

Have I mentioned how much I hate feeling vulnerable? Because feeling vulnerable is the worst kind of torture, and this is coming from someone who survived three years on Total Drama and had my head shaved.

It's worth mentioning straight off though that feeling vulnerable and being vulnerable are two completely different things. And usually, people that are vulnerable, don't feel it. And people who aren't just deal with the crippling fear of being perceived that way.

It's like… How do I put this.

It's like you're a product.

You are a product that needs to be sold, but you've got no marketing team or anything. You're expected to sell yourself.

And you want to act like you're way too cool for that. Like, you totally don't want anybody to buy you. Even though you do. But acting like you don't want to be bought sort of makes people want to buy you in theory, because of the "forbidden fruit" thing, or whatever.

And so you just go by this system of "fake it till you make it", and even though you don't think you belong there, you stomp straight into the most expensive and well regarded store there is and set yourself up on a pedestal. And then you slap a price tag on yourself that's got six zeros on the end of it, and no decimal points. And you cross your arms and scowl, and glare at everyone at the store like you'll hurt them if they even think about making an offer.

And then something totally crazy happens.

Nobody wants to buy you.

Nobody even glances in your general direction.

And you start to get scared. So you get meaner and ruder and you frown harder, try to make it seem more like you belong in the super expensive too-good-for-anyone store. But it doesn't change anything.

You're hit with the horrible realization that pretending really hard doesn't make something true-Surely, everyone else can see through your charade, right? You were a polished piece of trash, sitting among diamonds and just pretending you were one of them. And they knew all along, when you thought you were fooling them! How EMBARRASSING!

So at this point in the game, you've got two options.

The first one is to admit to yourself that you were wrong… And slowly climb down the ladder.

Mark down your price. Five zeros. Four. Three.

You get embarrassed of the pedestal you built for such an unworthy product, and you move to the floor. You smile modestly. "FOR SALE! SHORT TIME ONLY!"

When people still don't consider buying what you have to offer, you move down another rung or two.

You leave the fancy, expensive store and try to sell yourself for a buck at the dollar store, you try to always smile.

And it keeps down spiraling more and more and more…

Until eventually you are on the side of the street with a cardboard sign, tears down your cheeks yelling "FREE! PLEASE TAKE ME! I'LL DO ANYTHING! PLEASE, GOD, SOMEBODY TAKE ME!"

…

Or, maybe that option is your worst fucking fear. And you're not ready to face that bitter truth yet.

So you take the second option.

And you don't lower your price.

You stay right where you were at the top of the pedestal in the fancy expensive store and the 6-zero price tag. In fact, you add another two.

Your frown grows more relentless.

If you act hard enough, they have to believe you.

And so you stay in that cycle forever and ever, refusing to outwardly accept the fact that nobody wants you.

…

You can't stand the idea of turning into that desperate figure on the side of the street.

And at this point, the idea of lowering your standards even a tiny bit feels like the equivalent of being that person.

So you don't budge.

that was kind of more depressing than I meant it to be.

-ℋ

June 4th, 2011

Can I say something stupid? You can't really stop me.

I've always sort of wondered what it was that set Alejandro apart from all the other contestants for me, and I think yesterday's entry made me realize what it was.

Even though Alejandro was never explicitly kind and loving to me, and overall he didn't treat me a whole lot nicer than anyone else, something always set him apart.

I think that the difference between him and everyone else on the show is that he never treated me like my pedestal was undeserved.

He didn't bow before me and my seven-digit price tag, but he also never scoffed at it like it didn't belong there.

Alejandro never saw me as trash masquerading as a diamond, even when he was angry at me.

…

He thought I was a diamond.

-ℋ

June 5th, 2011

I haven't touched the $600 or anything.

Of course I've been thinking about my dad's suggestion. How could I not? He had an obvious point. And the more I dwell on thoughts of Alejandro and pedestals and lava-gushing volcanos and hail spiking off of train tops, the more I want to see him again and fix things while there's still enough time to.

A couple of massive things stand between me and that fate, though. First, that I have no way of contacting him whatsoever, and second, if I did have a way of contacting him, I'd…

I could spiral into a panic attack just thinking about having that conversation.

But I guess that second problem can wait for now. I may as well tackle them in order.

This morning I decided I'd do some basic Google searching, just in case finding a number or an address would actually be that simple.

It took me an hour to find the courage just to open my laptop.

As I suspected, Google didn't have much information for me. In fact, it had pretty much no information for me. But after clicking through enough pages of search results for "Alejandro Burromuerto," I did find someone I hadn't been looking for.

Sierra Skyze.

I had stumbled upon the link to one of her many, many Total Drama blogs, that to my surprise was still being frequently updated. Her last post was dated "ten minutes ago", and was a series of screenshots of Noah and Justin standing beside each other in crowd shots, followed by five paragraphs of "ship speculation" that was…

I don't even know how to put it. It was just so… Sierra, that there was no doubt in my mind she was the one who wrote this. She is the only person in the world who could've possibly written that.

I sat and scrolled through the blog for pages and pages, grinning like a loon. An embarrassing loon.

Not a single thing on it made sense, but it made no sense in a Sierra kind of way that made me feel back at home. I mean, back on the show.

I was so convinced after the finale that I would never make contact with any of the previous contestants ever again.

I'd never even considered Sierra's online presence.

There was an animated envelope in the bottom left corner of the screen, blinking and flipping in circles. "MSSG ME!" was labeled beneath it in tacky 3D-text.

I clicked on it, and it redirected me to a much less decorated page. Awfully straightforward; a text box and a "send" button.

I considered my words very concisely.

At first, I wanted to ask her if she happened to have any of Alejandro's contact info. She did seem to have a lot of information on everyone, after all. But after seeing ten or twenty "Aleheather" posts (no comment), I knew if I sent her something like that, she'd post it for evidence in a heartbeat. I couldn't have that floating around.

So I hatched up an alternate plan.

I asked her if she knew how I could contact Cody. Because I knew for sure she'd have that info at the ready, and… I had my reasons for wanting to talk to Cody.

For one, I could ask him about Alejandro without being a blog risk.

And… I wanted to thank him.

-ℋ

Author's note:

Thank you so much to those of you who have clicked follow on this story, and those of you who left nice reviews or prompts.

Like last time, if you want to leave a prompt for Heather to write about, you can leave it in the review section and I'll most likely do it (though it might not be in the very next chapter, I'll try to make it happen!)

If you read this and enjoyed it, please let me know!

Until the bitter end,

-ℋ