Eep! Im supposed to be doing hmwk.
*
Chapter Four: Preparation
One Week Later:
Jennie bounced on her suitcase, face dark. "Tessaaaaa. . ."
"Whaaaat?" her cousin mocked, piling her copies of Lost Tales of Middle Earth into a bookbag. "Hand me the Silmarillion, would you?"
Obliging, the fifteen-year-old watched as the other crammed a few more Lord of the Rings things into her bag. "And that printout we got of Frodo Defies Shelob. . ."
"That's not even a good picture!"
"Yesitis!" Tessa yelled, eyes flashing.
"No, it's not."
Sighing, the hobbit-obsessive girl conceded. "Yeah, okay, maybe it's NOT the best picture, but the printer was out of blue ink, so it's not MY fault it came out messed."
Rolling her eyes, Jennie bounced on her suitcase again, trying to get it to close. Something snapped inside. "DAMN! There goes my nail polish remover!" Fishing inside, she gave a yelp and withdrew her hand; it was coated a vivid, sparkly red. "Never mind. . . it wasn't the remover. . . it was the nail polish."
Snickering, Tessa admonished, "If you got nail polish on your copy of the Hobbit, I'm going to laugh."
"Ohcrap!" Eyes panicked, Jennie hauled her suitcase open and stared at the pool of red liquid seeping from her bathroom bag. Grimacing, she extracted a ruined hairbrush, a ruined toothbrush, and three ruined bras. "Yick. . ."
"Jennie!" Tessa smothered a laugh. Her cousin threw the bras at her, and she squealed, diving aside. "Ewwww!"
The older girl was hurriedly taking out everything that hadn't been stained crimson. The smell of nail polish lingered in the air, making her cousin grimace. "Now you know why I never pack nail polish when we go on trips."
"But the red would've gone so well on my toenails, especially with my new apricot single-strap sandals," Jennie protested, taking out a ruined spaghetti strap shirt and tossing it aside.
Tessa yelped and charged after it. "You're going to get red all over my carpet!"
"Omigod!" Jennie's eyes were saucers of horror. "Look at my forest bathrobe!"
Both cousins sized up the dark-green garment, green no longer. Red blotched over a third of the silky fleece.
"You had to pack it right next to your bathroom bag, didn't you?" Tessa sighed, coming over at last to inspect the damage. "Isn't it amazing how all that fluid can fit in one of those tiny containers?"
Her cousin sat back, tears filling her eyes. "M-my bathrobe," she whispered miserably.
The other had a last card to play. Leaning close, she whispered shrewdly, "Now we can go shopping in Ireland."
That did it. Cheerfully, Jennie threw the rest of her damaged clothing aside and left the room, heading towards her own bedroom for some unscathed shirts, as well as a hefty wad of cash for foreign shopping. After all, she needed a new bathrobe now, and some other clothes wouldn't go amiss while she was at it. . .
Smirking, Tessa turned back to her own suitcase. A thought struck her, and she dove under the bed for her own money. Rummaging through her pickle jar, she came up with forty dollars, envisioning the Ireland bookstores.
"Frodo Baggins, here I come!"
The melodramatic words were somewhat spoiled by Leah opening the bedroom door at that precise moment. Imagine, if you will, the view of brilliant- red clothing articles heaped in a corner, dying the newly-cleaned carpet red; in the opposite corner, Tessa sat, one arm protectively draped around a splitting bookbag amid numerous Elijah Wood pictures.
Thin-lipped, trying to prevent herself from screaming hysterically, the woman demanded, "What happened here?"
"We're packing, Mom," Jennie said ecstatically, pushing her way into the filthy room. A spark of somewhat devious nature made her add, "Can't you tell?"
"What-" Leah pointed at a stained bra "-is that?"
"Oh, my nail polish broke," her daughter said wickedly. "It's the permanent one, you know - Electric Apple - so you can go ahead and throw those away."
"We're leaving tonight - in two hours - and you're still not packed?" Leah swooned. The sight of permanent Electric Apple - whatever the hell that was - seeping into the fibers of a twenty-dollar fleece bathrobe, staining the carpet she had only days ago cleaned to a shine, and ruining the rest of her daughter's clothes was a little too much for the crestfallen mother.
The scream broke loose.
"JENNIEEEEEE!"
"Uh-oh," Tessa remarked, trying to avoid the stricken gaze of her aunt, "we're in trouble now."
"I'll say," Jennie muttered, striding over to her suitcase with an armful of new, clean clothes. Halting as she saw the blotch of red on her suitcase lid, the girl chewed her lip. She blinked up at her mom with all the innocence she could muster. "You wouldn't have a sponge, would you?"
The hand of justice came down, and, as is common to hands of justice, smacked its daughter on the head. "Clean it up right now!"
"That's why I asked for a sponge," Jen said patiently.
Bored with the theatrics, Tessa was beginning to read the Tolkien Encyclopedia. "There's a sponge in the kitchen," she mumbled.
Leah glared. "Go get it!"
Her niece looked up, startled. "But I didn't do anything!"
Feeling the beginnings of a migraine, the woman glowered at her daughter. "You. Go. Get. It. Now."
"Oh. Okay." Tessa went back to the past bravery of Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil. "Jen, did you know he saved an entire colony of fugitives during the Fall of Gondolin?"
"Now isn't the time," her cousin hissed out of the side of her mouth. Under the piercing gaze of her mom, she slowly got to her feet and made for the kitchen.
Several more pages of Legolas and five minutes later, Jennie sat scrubbing her suitcase with a somewhat pungent sponge. Wrinkling her nose, she paused for a moment to look at the other girl, who was now engrossed in the history of the Shire.
"Don't help, will you," she gritted.
The book was laid aside, revealing two blue-gray eyes watching her in amusement. "I'm not the one who packed nail polish."
Jen grinned suddenly. "Oh yeah?"
Making her way over to the other's suitcase, she rummaged inside the bathroom bag. Alert and panicky, Tessa tried to stop her.
Easily holding her cousin off, Jennifer felt about, suspicion, malice, and laughter blended into her features. The other's eyebrows snapped together, as, snarling, she heaved against the girl's intruding weight, pushing her onto her back.
"Oh, you want to wrestle, do you," the older one growled, climbing to her feet.
Smirking, the other held her chin high in their traditional "Winner" pose. A fist rammed her in the stomach. Doubling over as if to couch the pain, Tessa brought her chin down into her attacker's forehead.
Jennie immediately turned herself and rolled, forcing the other backward as her knees bent painfully. Yelping, her cousin braced herself against the bed and heaved, sending the other slightly forward. She snarled and raked visible flesh with bitten nails, inflicting scores of red.
Nursing her rent arm, Tessa clawed at the other's face. The teenage girls rose onto their knees, battling, until fingers slammed together and locked.
Muscles straining, backs arching, both cousins strove to budge the other. Tense moments passed. Tessa had the advantage of the bed behind her; she used its iron weight to heave against the stronger girl.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Leah entered again just as her daughter began to force the younger cousin into the bed. "Jennifer Lyn!"
Jennie let go, smiling innocently. "Yeah?"
"Work!"
As soon as her mom had left, the girl looked back at her cousin, beaming in triumph. "I won. You know what to do."
Grumbling to herself, Tessa went and got a rag to help her cousin scour the stained suitcase. ((A/N: whew!)) Smirking, Jennie gave herself a metaphorical pat on the back and took up the sponge.
They worked together for about twenty minutes, scraping off loosened red chips with their nails occasionally. As Tessa scratched the final spot from the sides, she gave her cousin a broad grin. Purposefully, she walked back to her own suitcase, reached inside her bathroom bag, took out a container, and - with complete innocence - began to paint her own nails a silvery blue.
"I knew it!" the other shrieked. "You did have nail polish in your bag!" In a leap towards her cousin, Jennie's foot caught on the Tolkien Encyclodpedia.
It was as though time had slowed to a crawl. Almost in slow motion, the teenager hung in a frozen jump, teetering on the edge of a fall.
Then the ground - or rather, Tessa's lap - came rushing upwards.
"Eep!"
The small cry was jolted from her cousin as Jennie crashed into her, sending the blue nail polish spinning out of her grasp. Both girls watched with bated breath as it whirled neatly into her suitcase, spilling silvery fluid everywhere.
Irony was sometimes a kind name for the vilest of fate.
Jennie managed a small, halfhearted smile before Tessa gave a roar and attacked her.
*
At the airport, that night:
Leah marched behind the sorry-looking girls. Both, for a reason unknown to the passerby, were wearing gloves despite the boiling weather. The only hint as to why were flecks of silver-blue up their arms.
Dragging their suitcases behind them (one was flecked with red, the other silver) the girls entered the airport, walking to the front desk with their parents and Jennie's older sister Alison.
"Isn't Lindsey coming?" Tessa hissed at the other, referring to Jen's oldest sister, who had her own house in Arizona.
"She's busy this summer," her cousin whispered.
Leah stood a little ways off and took her fourth aspirin.
Kristin ignored everyone and marched up to the desk. As she opened her mouth to speak, the clerk crooned, "And how is everyone tonight?"
There was a very tense silence. The cousins attempted to look innocent.
"Well, then," said the clerk, unnerved. "Where are you flying, Mrs., uh-"
"Chillumka."
"Oh?" the clerk mumbled, typing away. C, H, I, L -
"Ah yes," she nodded, "you have a flight to Washington in five minutes."
Kristin looked briefly flummoxed, before she shook her head. "No, I don't! I'm Mrs. Chillumka. That's Chill, U, M, K, A."
"Oh! Yes, you have a flight to West Virginia's central airport in half an hour."
Mollified, Kristin nodded. Behind her, her daughter whispered. "We're not going to Ireland?"
"We're going to Ireland from West Virginia."
"Okay!"
Jennie began to lift her nail-polish-speckled suitcase. The clerk noticed her trying to hoist the splitting luggage up and immediately came out from behind the desk. "Let me help you with that, little girl."
Tessa saw her cousin's fists clench. "I can manage," the girl said distinctly. "I am fifteen."
"Yes - what a big girl you are!"
Had the clerk known how near sudden pain she was, she might not have been as cocky. Jennie's eyes flashed, and as the clerk lifted the bag, the owner subtly loosened the strap fastener and down went the suitcase, right on a toe.
Going white, the clerk managed a whimper.
"Oh, very good," Leah said sourly, fishing for her aspirins, "very good indeed, Jennifer."
Her daughter allowed herself the barest smirk before putting on an innocent face. "I didn't do anything! The strap came undone."
"By itself?" her mother probed.
"Yes," the girl lied smoothly. "What, did you think I did that?" She gestured at the pasty clerk.
"I saw you!"
"Oh."
As Leah frog-marched her daughter away from the counter for a good telling- off, Tessa watched them, feeling that it would be a very long vacation indeed.
*
Chapter Four: Preparation
One Week Later:
Jennie bounced on her suitcase, face dark. "Tessaaaaa. . ."
"Whaaaat?" her cousin mocked, piling her copies of Lost Tales of Middle Earth into a bookbag. "Hand me the Silmarillion, would you?"
Obliging, the fifteen-year-old watched as the other crammed a few more Lord of the Rings things into her bag. "And that printout we got of Frodo Defies Shelob. . ."
"That's not even a good picture!"
"Yesitis!" Tessa yelled, eyes flashing.
"No, it's not."
Sighing, the hobbit-obsessive girl conceded. "Yeah, okay, maybe it's NOT the best picture, but the printer was out of blue ink, so it's not MY fault it came out messed."
Rolling her eyes, Jennie bounced on her suitcase again, trying to get it to close. Something snapped inside. "DAMN! There goes my nail polish remover!" Fishing inside, she gave a yelp and withdrew her hand; it was coated a vivid, sparkly red. "Never mind. . . it wasn't the remover. . . it was the nail polish."
Snickering, Tessa admonished, "If you got nail polish on your copy of the Hobbit, I'm going to laugh."
"Ohcrap!" Eyes panicked, Jennie hauled her suitcase open and stared at the pool of red liquid seeping from her bathroom bag. Grimacing, she extracted a ruined hairbrush, a ruined toothbrush, and three ruined bras. "Yick. . ."
"Jennie!" Tessa smothered a laugh. Her cousin threw the bras at her, and she squealed, diving aside. "Ewwww!"
The older girl was hurriedly taking out everything that hadn't been stained crimson. The smell of nail polish lingered in the air, making her cousin grimace. "Now you know why I never pack nail polish when we go on trips."
"But the red would've gone so well on my toenails, especially with my new apricot single-strap sandals," Jennie protested, taking out a ruined spaghetti strap shirt and tossing it aside.
Tessa yelped and charged after it. "You're going to get red all over my carpet!"
"Omigod!" Jennie's eyes were saucers of horror. "Look at my forest bathrobe!"
Both cousins sized up the dark-green garment, green no longer. Red blotched over a third of the silky fleece.
"You had to pack it right next to your bathroom bag, didn't you?" Tessa sighed, coming over at last to inspect the damage. "Isn't it amazing how all that fluid can fit in one of those tiny containers?"
Her cousin sat back, tears filling her eyes. "M-my bathrobe," she whispered miserably.
The other had a last card to play. Leaning close, she whispered shrewdly, "Now we can go shopping in Ireland."
That did it. Cheerfully, Jennie threw the rest of her damaged clothing aside and left the room, heading towards her own bedroom for some unscathed shirts, as well as a hefty wad of cash for foreign shopping. After all, she needed a new bathrobe now, and some other clothes wouldn't go amiss while she was at it. . .
Smirking, Tessa turned back to her own suitcase. A thought struck her, and she dove under the bed for her own money. Rummaging through her pickle jar, she came up with forty dollars, envisioning the Ireland bookstores.
"Frodo Baggins, here I come!"
The melodramatic words were somewhat spoiled by Leah opening the bedroom door at that precise moment. Imagine, if you will, the view of brilliant- red clothing articles heaped in a corner, dying the newly-cleaned carpet red; in the opposite corner, Tessa sat, one arm protectively draped around a splitting bookbag amid numerous Elijah Wood pictures.
Thin-lipped, trying to prevent herself from screaming hysterically, the woman demanded, "What happened here?"
"We're packing, Mom," Jennie said ecstatically, pushing her way into the filthy room. A spark of somewhat devious nature made her add, "Can't you tell?"
"What-" Leah pointed at a stained bra "-is that?"
"Oh, my nail polish broke," her daughter said wickedly. "It's the permanent one, you know - Electric Apple - so you can go ahead and throw those away."
"We're leaving tonight - in two hours - and you're still not packed?" Leah swooned. The sight of permanent Electric Apple - whatever the hell that was - seeping into the fibers of a twenty-dollar fleece bathrobe, staining the carpet she had only days ago cleaned to a shine, and ruining the rest of her daughter's clothes was a little too much for the crestfallen mother.
The scream broke loose.
"JENNIEEEEEE!"
"Uh-oh," Tessa remarked, trying to avoid the stricken gaze of her aunt, "we're in trouble now."
"I'll say," Jennie muttered, striding over to her suitcase with an armful of new, clean clothes. Halting as she saw the blotch of red on her suitcase lid, the girl chewed her lip. She blinked up at her mom with all the innocence she could muster. "You wouldn't have a sponge, would you?"
The hand of justice came down, and, as is common to hands of justice, smacked its daughter on the head. "Clean it up right now!"
"That's why I asked for a sponge," Jen said patiently.
Bored with the theatrics, Tessa was beginning to read the Tolkien Encyclopedia. "There's a sponge in the kitchen," she mumbled.
Leah glared. "Go get it!"
Her niece looked up, startled. "But I didn't do anything!"
Feeling the beginnings of a migraine, the woman glowered at her daughter. "You. Go. Get. It. Now."
"Oh. Okay." Tessa went back to the past bravery of Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil. "Jen, did you know he saved an entire colony of fugitives during the Fall of Gondolin?"
"Now isn't the time," her cousin hissed out of the side of her mouth. Under the piercing gaze of her mom, she slowly got to her feet and made for the kitchen.
Several more pages of Legolas and five minutes later, Jennie sat scrubbing her suitcase with a somewhat pungent sponge. Wrinkling her nose, she paused for a moment to look at the other girl, who was now engrossed in the history of the Shire.
"Don't help, will you," she gritted.
The book was laid aside, revealing two blue-gray eyes watching her in amusement. "I'm not the one who packed nail polish."
Jen grinned suddenly. "Oh yeah?"
Making her way over to the other's suitcase, she rummaged inside the bathroom bag. Alert and panicky, Tessa tried to stop her.
Easily holding her cousin off, Jennifer felt about, suspicion, malice, and laughter blended into her features. The other's eyebrows snapped together, as, snarling, she heaved against the girl's intruding weight, pushing her onto her back.
"Oh, you want to wrestle, do you," the older one growled, climbing to her feet.
Smirking, the other held her chin high in their traditional "Winner" pose. A fist rammed her in the stomach. Doubling over as if to couch the pain, Tessa brought her chin down into her attacker's forehead.
Jennie immediately turned herself and rolled, forcing the other backward as her knees bent painfully. Yelping, her cousin braced herself against the bed and heaved, sending the other slightly forward. She snarled and raked visible flesh with bitten nails, inflicting scores of red.
Nursing her rent arm, Tessa clawed at the other's face. The teenage girls rose onto their knees, battling, until fingers slammed together and locked.
Muscles straining, backs arching, both cousins strove to budge the other. Tense moments passed. Tessa had the advantage of the bed behind her; she used its iron weight to heave against the stronger girl.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Leah entered again just as her daughter began to force the younger cousin into the bed. "Jennifer Lyn!"
Jennie let go, smiling innocently. "Yeah?"
"Work!"
As soon as her mom had left, the girl looked back at her cousin, beaming in triumph. "I won. You know what to do."
Grumbling to herself, Tessa went and got a rag to help her cousin scour the stained suitcase. ((A/N: whew!)) Smirking, Jennie gave herself a metaphorical pat on the back and took up the sponge.
They worked together for about twenty minutes, scraping off loosened red chips with their nails occasionally. As Tessa scratched the final spot from the sides, she gave her cousin a broad grin. Purposefully, she walked back to her own suitcase, reached inside her bathroom bag, took out a container, and - with complete innocence - began to paint her own nails a silvery blue.
"I knew it!" the other shrieked. "You did have nail polish in your bag!" In a leap towards her cousin, Jennie's foot caught on the Tolkien Encyclodpedia.
It was as though time had slowed to a crawl. Almost in slow motion, the teenager hung in a frozen jump, teetering on the edge of a fall.
Then the ground - or rather, Tessa's lap - came rushing upwards.
"Eep!"
The small cry was jolted from her cousin as Jennie crashed into her, sending the blue nail polish spinning out of her grasp. Both girls watched with bated breath as it whirled neatly into her suitcase, spilling silvery fluid everywhere.
Irony was sometimes a kind name for the vilest of fate.
Jennie managed a small, halfhearted smile before Tessa gave a roar and attacked her.
*
At the airport, that night:
Leah marched behind the sorry-looking girls. Both, for a reason unknown to the passerby, were wearing gloves despite the boiling weather. The only hint as to why were flecks of silver-blue up their arms.
Dragging their suitcases behind them (one was flecked with red, the other silver) the girls entered the airport, walking to the front desk with their parents and Jennie's older sister Alison.
"Isn't Lindsey coming?" Tessa hissed at the other, referring to Jen's oldest sister, who had her own house in Arizona.
"She's busy this summer," her cousin whispered.
Leah stood a little ways off and took her fourth aspirin.
Kristin ignored everyone and marched up to the desk. As she opened her mouth to speak, the clerk crooned, "And how is everyone tonight?"
There was a very tense silence. The cousins attempted to look innocent.
"Well, then," said the clerk, unnerved. "Where are you flying, Mrs., uh-"
"Chillumka."
"Oh?" the clerk mumbled, typing away. C, H, I, L -
"Ah yes," she nodded, "you have a flight to Washington in five minutes."
Kristin looked briefly flummoxed, before she shook her head. "No, I don't! I'm Mrs. Chillumka. That's Chill, U, M, K, A."
"Oh! Yes, you have a flight to West Virginia's central airport in half an hour."
Mollified, Kristin nodded. Behind her, her daughter whispered. "We're not going to Ireland?"
"We're going to Ireland from West Virginia."
"Okay!"
Jennie began to lift her nail-polish-speckled suitcase. The clerk noticed her trying to hoist the splitting luggage up and immediately came out from behind the desk. "Let me help you with that, little girl."
Tessa saw her cousin's fists clench. "I can manage," the girl said distinctly. "I am fifteen."
"Yes - what a big girl you are!"
Had the clerk known how near sudden pain she was, she might not have been as cocky. Jennie's eyes flashed, and as the clerk lifted the bag, the owner subtly loosened the strap fastener and down went the suitcase, right on a toe.
Going white, the clerk managed a whimper.
"Oh, very good," Leah said sourly, fishing for her aspirins, "very good indeed, Jennifer."
Her daughter allowed herself the barest smirk before putting on an innocent face. "I didn't do anything! The strap came undone."
"By itself?" her mother probed.
"Yes," the girl lied smoothly. "What, did you think I did that?" She gestured at the pasty clerk.
"I saw you!"
"Oh."
As Leah frog-marched her daughter away from the counter for a good telling- off, Tessa watched them, feeling that it would be a very long vacation indeed.