The same day…
Puck walked into the school cafeteria wearing her backpack like a total loser when everybody else left theirs hanging in their lockers because she needed the battery built into the bottom of the shabby blue nylon bag.
It was either wear the damned thing or run down and fall flat on her face in a total shutdown.
Then everybody would know she wasn't, ummmm, human.
I'd just as soon keep everyone guessing because it's none of their damn business what I am!
The mechanical cat girl paused near the table of populars, giving Maggie, her twin, the stinkeye.
Maggie, sitting next to Draculaura, pointedly looked the other way.
There'd been a big fight in their shared room just before Uncle Mike dropped them off at school on his way to work.
Well, Puck, anyway.
Last week, Cleo deNile's dad gave the snooty bitch a custom Nile blue convertible with a gold scarab on the hood as a reward for FINALLY getting her driver's license after TEN tries. This morning, all the girls in the neighborhood, including Maggie and Josie (who'd kiss any ass she was offered), piled in.
When Puck tried joining them, Cleo made a giggly apology that wasn't: "Tee-hee! Daddy says only FIVE passengers - sorry, insurance! Tomorrow maybe?" So, off the little Porsche zipped in a cloud of high-performance exhaust, leaving Puck facing the choice of walking a mile to school by herself or riding the school bus, which was elementary, junior high, and loser seniors who didn't have friends with cars, and doubtlessly smelled like ass.
Maybe get a job and buy one of those little scooters you didn't need a license to drive? Better yet, a real motorcycle like Uncle Mike's. Or Aunt Raina's.
As for the fight, it started the second Puck's twin shrilly asked Puck why she had to be so darned nasty all the time.
Maggie, uncharacteristically aggressive, plowed deeper, loudly listing everything she hated about Puck: her terrible fashion sense, her rotten temper, her messy hair, her not choosing to let the Stein's fix her like they'd done Uncle Mike, Aunt Raina, and herself – why did Puck have to be so clunky in her ugly old body and baggy, concealing clothes when she could be pretty like Maggie? Or NICE, like Josie?
Spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste, Puck returned fire: reminding Maggie that she'd watched Springtrap murder her and laughed about it the whole time with her scuzzy boyfriend, Vinnie before those two ran off to do God knows what.
Maggie, who didn't like being reminded of their shared past, hurled a sunlamp at her, clipping Josie, who'd scampered down the folding attic stairs at the first sign of trouble to see if she could intervene before things got too far out of hand.
While Maggie tried to stop Josie's nosebleed, Puck stormed out the back door and into the Stein's driveway so she didn't have to listen to Josie's whining. Hell, it's not like Josie was a real person or anything!
That was where Maggie banged the back door open, hurled the bloody washcloth at Puck, and called her a bitch. Puck then grabbed Maggie by her pink curls and kicked her feet out from under her, the two of them going down into a screeching, clawing tangle.
Uncle Mike, barefoot and face half-covered in shaving cream, strode out of the back door and dragged the angry tangle between the Stein's house and their borrowed one where he tossed them one after the other into the Stein's new koi pond, or he would have, only Puck, not wanting to deal with shorting out and killing the koi because the koi were cool, (plus she had a brand new copy of Lord of the Flies in her backpack that she didn't want ruined) scrambled up his arm and crouched hissing on his shoulder at her bawling, soggy sister.
Yelling at all three in Polish as Jeremy bounced around them barking hysterically, Aunt Raina pulled the weeping Maggie out of the pond where Josie, nose swollen, wrapped a towel around her.
Shit.
Aunt Raina getting involved had been the neon pink icing on the (very dropped) singing cupcake with eyes, because:
Aunt Raina getting involved meant they all had to stay away from each other until it was time to go to school or work while Aunt Raina stood in the hallway directing bad-tempered traffic.
Aunt Raina getting involved meant that Puck had an audience when Maggie, now dry and dressed as if it had never happened, looked her in the eye from the back of Cleo's Porsche and said, "You know what Puck? I used to be able to stand being around you for more than fifteen minutes."
Aunt Raina getting involved meant that Puck got to hear Aunt Raina say, "Why can't the two of you get along? You're TWINS, for God's sake!" before she went back to getting ready for work, leaving Puck standing alone on the curb in front of the Stein's big ol' ugly house for the whole world to gawk at.
At least Lord of the Flies hadn't ditched her.
(So far.)
Minutes later, Puck had the additional grossness of watching Aunt Raina, in her Tepesco flight suit GRAB Uncle Mike's ass as he climbed aboard his Goldwing motorcycle while handing him the big metal lunchbox that contained his spare battery pack before the two of them (OMG, could this day get any WORSE?) KISSED!
Squicked at public old person cake sampling, Puck reluctantly climbed onto the back of the big motorcycle only to regret her existence further when Uncle Mike dropped her off in front of the new High School where people could see before driving around to the back to park in the School Resource Officer's slot.
Oh God, no!
Uncle Mike not only got a job with the local police department, but for some reason the Universe which clearly HATED Puck, had seen fit to humiliate her further by getting him assigned to Merston High as one of two official SROs.
Why not a direct lightning strike?
There was a rumble of thunder - a few drops of rain hit the sidewalk. Now thoroughly miserable, Puck pulled her old bomber jacket up over her head, wanting to pull her arms in its voluminous sleeves, followed by her legs so that she'd just be a nameless, faceless brown leather lump on the ground that somebody might want to spray paint their initials on.
Or words with four letters.
Like "Fuck".
Puck liked the word 'Fuck'. It was short, easy to spell, and covered any situation.
Avoiding the further humiliation of a public shorting out, Puck had walked into the building, pushing past a kid with a pink cowlick wearing a purple sweater and a vacant, idiotic smile, without her sister.
The same sister who, along with Josie, didn't even want to sit with her at lunch.