Hey everyone! Thanks for all the love, and for trying this out even though peyton's not the easiest character to feel sympathy for. But again, you guys are great so here's another chap. For your enjoyment. Hope you like it :-}
luce
The harsh, ugly music is pounding through the walls, rattling her windows, making the little porcelain knicknacks on her desks tremble and clink.
She's dancing for the webcam, shimmying and undulating, twisting, flirting, hair floating around her in s sort of dizzy slow motion as though she were underwater. She grins, her thin lips curving sensuously, her arms flung up, her eyes burning, piercing through cyberspace.
She falls down in the chair in front of the screen, breathless, face pale and dead serious. With calm, measured, mocking movements she opens a book laying by her screen. She clears her throat.
"Reviving Ophelia," she says, pointing to the cover, smirking at the camera with a trace of a laugh in her solemn, teacherish tone. "And I quote," (here she clears her throat, brushing a damp strand of hair away from her face), "today's girl is in serious danger, her sexuality being pushed and peddled for society to use as they please."
She snaps the book shut, and her wide eyes approach the screen solemnly.
"Lest we do something about it, soon our teenage girls will become mass media property."
She pushes back in her chair, spinning around once, her laughter spilling out into the room. Lightning quick, she reaches towards the screen and it goes black.
The music stops.
The first bell rings for morning period, where hordes of sleepy eyed teens pour through the hallways and disperse mechanically until there is nothing but emptiness and all the doors click shut. This is first period. The neon lights in the dim hallway flicker.
She's running, having slept late again. She tears through the parking lot, parking next to Brooke's car in her assigned spot, pulling her books out the back, slamming the door shut when she suddenly stops in her tracks.
There is a girl in Brooke's car, head slumped over, still strapped in her seatbelt.
And, well, it doesn't take a genius to deduce that it's Brooke.
She sighs again. Something hot and painful is growing in her chest.
She flings the door open, unstrapping the seatbelt, shaking the redhead. Brooke is giggling. The tight thing in her throat explodes and she screams, "Jesus Brooke," so loud, she imagines the whole school hearing it and crowding up the windows. One quick look assures her no one gives a flying crap. She slaps Brooke, and stops, shocked at what she has done. Her hand is still on Brooke's cheek, as though forgetting to disconnect.
Brooke is staring at her blankly. Her teeth clamp onto the girl's hand in a flash, eliciting another scream.
"What the fuck, Brooke! You just bit me!"
The other girl giggles.
Peyton is suppressing tears. She shoves Brooke over to the passenger seat, revving the engine.
"I'm taking you home," she says, but no one is listening.
She succeeds in dragging Brooke up to her room, a room that's strangely clean and organized, almost to the point of indicating something abnormal. Dumping her on the bed, she sees the open bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and groans. Figures. She makes Brooke drink a glass of water and swallow a charcoal pill from the oft used packet. She takes the girl's keys and leaves her half asleep, tearing back to class, but she knows it's too late to go to first period. She sits in the parking lot in Brooke's car, and feels a strange stinging in her eyes that she brushes away with annoyance.
Whatever.
It's not like this hasn't happened before.
But no one's ever caught her before.
She looks up in surprise at the knock on her window. And he's there, Lucas the reliable, Lucas the wonder boy who she never knows how to treat. She stares ahead sullenly, wishing she was rude enough to ignore him.
Then it dawns on her, maybe she is. As a matter of fact, she knows she is.
So she says nothing and stares straight ahead, hands clenched on the steering wheel, much to his puzzlement. He walks away after hesitating, seeming somehow disturbed.
And so, Peyton feels better. "Anger displacement is what they call it," she whispers to no one in particular, resolving subconsciously to make the world suffer today. Then again, she thinks wearily, how would this be different than any other day?
She goes and gets Brooke at lunch, who is now more or less sober and silent for once. The say nothing on the way there. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her unfailingly smiling mouth is still and drawn. But when they park, she squares her shoulders, standing up straight slowly. She pulls down the mirror, and Peyton watches as she applies concealer again, carefully paints her lips in cherry red, and turns to Peyton. Automatically, her magnetic smile flashes on, a blinding million watts.
"I'm good now. Let's go!" she giggles, hopping lithely out of the car, swinging her hips as she strides toward the doors.
Peyton sighs. She wishes suddenly she had Brooke's autopilot to function on, her capability to reconstruct herself again and again out of ashes, lipstick and determination. Not everyone is so gifted at being selectively oblivious, she remembers, and follows her friend.
At lunch they sit with Lila Slater and the cheer crew as always. But this time, while everyone chatters and giggles and nibbles lettuce, she sits rather silently and watches Lucas out of the corner of her eye. He sits with the ball team now, by Nathan's invite (command?) and hangs out with that guy….what's his name…the nice one with brown hair? that stuck with him at the beginning of the season. She's watching him because she likes the way he smiles, the way he seems so content, the way he doesn't seem to resent that he's been cheated out of so much. Not like her.
For once, she thinks, it would be nice to have somebody take care of me instead. Like he did at that ass-awful party.
To have someone to protect her from people like Lila Slater who know the chinks in her armor and find ways to sink needles into them.
But then again, what would Brooke do without her? Become as hard as Lila? Drink herself into Betty Ford?
She'd hate to be responsible for that ugly event. It'd be just one more bad thing happening because of her. God knows she's got too many of those already.
She doesn't realize she's been staring, and when she sees him smile back, her cheeks go pale and she turns away.
Lila Slater chews on a carrot and eyes her nonchalantly, her tone insinuating.
"What was that all about, Peyton?"
She feels a stab of fear.
"Since when do I tell you anything, Lila?" she replies nonchalantly.
"So what, did you do him or something? Was he any good?"
Her lips are white under the peach lipstick.
"Why is everything sex to you Lila? You seem to have an unhealthy preoccupation with my love life," Peyton grins innocently, slowly biting into a Mars bar without breaking eye contact with the blonde girls. "If you must know, we have not had any kind of relations but if you'd like me to tell him you're open for business, I could do that for you."
Lila takes a little too long to retort, and someone snickers. She tosses a napkin on her salad and stands up, for the second time this week.
"Ladies, shall we?"
And three of them flounce off, while Peyton lets out a slow breath of relief, flashing a dazzling smile to anyone watching.
She's won this round, but the fear never leaves, the fear that one day they'll all turn on her like a pack of dogs for the kill. It's liable to happen to anyone. After all, this is high school. She puts down the rest of the Mars bar, feeling sick all of a sudden. She's falling behind, soon there'll be an extra inch on the stomach, then a wrong move in a cheer, then a rumor, and then it'll be all over. Her heart is pounding thickly in her chest.
But then she looks at him and sounds of the cafeteria fade out, and watching his smile, suddenly she forgets those things and nothing really seems to matter, from Brooke's tug on her arm to anything Lila might say. She smiles back again. Yes, it's time. For once, she'd suddenly like to just give in and give up.
But she knows she's halfway lying.
She sits on the ball court by the river, watching him play. It's a new habit of hers. She finds it relaxing, sitting on the warm cement in the fall sunlight, Brooke in the background jabbering with the nerds on the stands, offering to hook them up (benevolent queen behavior), watching him too. Peyton doesn't worry though. She just watches him play. It's the only thing that turns her on lately.
When he's done, long after everyone's gone, they sit together on the rickety bleachers.
"So you see, when they sold him it screwed up their defense, which means they left a gap for the competition, which means March Madness was all screwed up, which means…..you couldn't give less of a damn……."
She laughs, flipping a quarter repeatedly, watching it go up and down.
"I like watching you get all excited about something. It's like watching a kid in a candy store, analyzing the best combination, thinking of how he can squeeze in the perfect ratios of his favorites to the new experimental pieces that look good."
"Complex way of saying I like basketball."
"Nothing is as simple as it looks," she grins.
"Starting in with the time honored obvious statements, Dr. Phil? Or trying to tell me something?" he teases, snatching her quarter from midair. She snaps her gum twice, and he can almost taste the peppermint and her strawberry gloss.
"Mock me if you will. It's the perennial truth. Hey, Lila Slater's got the hots for ya," she grins, snatching the quarter back.
"Um, someone's been watching I Love the 80's. The hots?"
She shoves him lightly. She likes how she's gotten used to this easy camaraderie, being able to joke without thinking of those other things. Like sex.
"Yep. Watch out, she's dangerous to refuse. Remember that episode of American Dreams where JJ gets sent to Vietnam cause he turns down the officer's wife?"
His eyes widen in mock fear.
"That bad?"
"Yep."
"Are you recommending I sleep with her? Because you know very well I'm not capable of doing that."
She mimics a shocked little gesture.
"Well, Viagra's pretty cheap online these days. Don't feel bad. It happens to a lot of guys."
He narrows his eyes at her, snatching her quarter and holding it hostage while she laughs, unsuccessfully trying to wrestle it back.
"I assure you I'm perfectly capable of doing the dirty deed, but I'd be incapable of forgiving myself."
She stops giggling, looking down.
He feels he's said something wrong, and tries to reconcile by gently returning the quarter.
"So what, you're like this virgin saint or something?" she mocks, and instantly regrets her tone.
He realizes he's somehow offended her, and remembers her dicey past and keeps his mouth wisely shut.
She looks at him, surprised.
He shrugs.
"No way! Lucas the virgin?"
"Shut up," he answers, less playful somehow.
"A guy like you?"
His eyebrows scrunch down in a sort of offended expression.
"What do you mean, a guy like me. Am I supposed to have a lot of sex or something?"
She draws back, a little subdued.
"I just meant….it's different." She hesitates, and bites her lip. "Um, that night with me, you didn't seem…."
He shrugs again, absently this time, detached.
"Maybe I just liked you is all. Maybe that's all it takes to make something like that good. Maybe I was just waiting for someone not like Lila Slater to come along."
He stands up, and she does too quickly, afraid she's pissed him off somehow. She's had practice in keeping men happy and maybe believes it's all she's good for somewhere in the back of her head, in a secret place she doesn't know exists.
But his smile is still sweet, though somewhat more awkward. She doesn't know what to say, and for the first time since she can remember she realizes she's blushing. Her, Peyton, blushing. So this is what it's supposed to be like, whispers something in her mind, and in the dusk, she feels a little delirious.
"I have to go," he says softly. "It's late."
"Yes. Late. I mean, I'll see you later."
She departs rapidly, and he sighs, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut.