"Surprise, Rei!" Her mother exclaims, "We managed to get up here. You get to go home!"
Rei jumps up excitedly from where she'd been reading on her bed. "All right?" She says cheerfully. "Give me a few minutes to pack up and we can blow this popsicle stand!" She's a flurry of movement as she tosses clothing and books into her suitcase.
Blayde sits at her desk, leaned back in the chair, watching all of this. Rei gets to go home. Rei gets a real Christmas. Rei's parents cared enough about her to find a way to take her home. It isn't fair. She sighs. Then a thought occurs to her. "Rei, what about the party?"
Rei stops packing for a moment and looks at her roommate. "Hmm...Good question. I'm going to call the Gundam boys and the girls and tell them all to come to my house instead. You can do whatever you want, I guess."
A silence fills the room as Blayde ponders over this. All her friends didn't know Rei's friends so it would probably be better this way. The Slayers might be happier to not have strangers around for the holidays. She shrugs and stares back at the screen of her laptop. The pink coloring of the wallpaper illuminates her face, casting strange shadows over her and contorting her features.
"Look, I didn't want this to happen. I wanted to have the party." Rei says quietly, "But I'm going home and you'll have to make due." She pulls on her jacket as she says this, twines her navy blue scarf around her neck.
"I didn't say anything." Blayde brushes her off, "Hope you have a Merry Christmas. I'll see you in January."
"Right. Happy Holidays." With this, the family moves out the door and Blayde is left alone.
She powers down the laptop and flops onto her bed. What a miserable holiday it will be; no one to hang out with, no one to talk to. She wonders if Randiriel is home yet. The other girl is nineteen and in her sophomre year at a school three hours away. Her family lives in the "party central" where Blayde's college is and the two are good friends. However, she doubts Randiriel will want to spend the holidays hanging around with a brooding, angsty misfit with no place to go.
The phone rings, shattering the silence which has filled the room. Blayde reaches lazily over and fumbles for the receiver. The call is undoubtedly for Rei -she's far more popular than Blayde- and she has no real desire to answer it. "Hello?"
The voice at the other end is unfamiliar. It's a rather pleasant voice that hesitantly asks for Blayde.
"This is she. Who's calling?" She mutters. She's trying to sound cruel and distant; hoping to make some one as miserable as she feels. Her voice is like ice and, could she see him, she would have laughed at the expression on the poor boy's face.
"I...I'm a friend of Rei's from her Latin class. My name is Suichi." His voice is soft and polite, still with that same edge of hesitation. "I wanted to know if you'd like to-"
"If I'd like to go out with you? Forget it." She snaps. Then she drops the phone back in the craddle. No, her heart is far too mistrusting for dates. After the crap that bastard Sabre had pulled on her all her senior year of high school, she doesn't think she'll ever go out again.
She lays there on the bed for a while, thinking over the transition she'd had with that boy. What I did, she tells herself, was very cruel. But I have reasons why I don't want to get involved with a guy. He could be as big of a son of a bitch as Sabre. For all I know, Rei could have paid him to ask me out because I'm alone all the time and I hate seeing her with Andrew. Then it would be nothing but a repeat of what that bastard did to me. No, she finally decides, it's far better not to get involved.
She looks at the clock on the hightstand between the two beds. It's only nine-thirty, but she suddenly feels very tired, as if she can't keep her eyes open another second. She gets up and slides out of her blue jeans. Her favorite flannel pants are somewhere amid the blankets pilled on her bed and she roots around for them. She pulls them on, yanks off her socks and crawls under the covers.
She flips on her CD player and -wonder of all wonders- her Bruce Springsteen CD is in there. She falls alseep listening to the strains of "Lonesome Day" and thinking to herself, tomorrow will be quite the lonesome day...