The length of my chapters will vary a lot. The last one was short, ya. But whatever.
Sorry I'm really defensive, I take way too many things as accusations.
Unfortunate that this took so long, but I really should be studying for my finals right now, who cares? I hardly ever follow the rules. Of corse, if I fail math, its my fault. HaHa, don't worry, writing will proly give me a break. Who am I kidding? I wrote a long chapter for my other story and started and entirely new one. I havnt hit the books all day. Oh well, here it is…the new chapter.
Bridget was not at all happy about the timing. Greta had made them a fine roast beef and mashed potatoes dinner, along with an apple pie for desert. After dinner, Bridget had planned to go for a run, eventually meeting Billy near the pond. She had spent her days relaxing in the sun, shopping with Greta, gardening, playing soccer, and baking cookies and swimming. She spent her nights with Billy, doing things she would be ashamed to tell Eric, usually coming home around midnight. She was enjoying the pace. Bee had fun with Billy, it was nothing serious but it was still enjoyable. And it stopped her from feeling lonely. The shame tugged at the sides of her mind, but she ignored it. Who was it harming? What Eric didn't know couldn't hurt him, right? Bridget needed a break from being faithful. Eric was only one of two guys she had slept with. All right fine, she hadn't been the most faithful person in college either. But Malcolm Donald had been a mistake. Fooling around with Billy was just a stress reliever, something to take her mind off her worries. At least that was what she reassured herself. She didn't know what would happen if it got serious, though. It won't get serious; it's only a summer fling.
Walking down the creaking stairs from her attic room, Bridget inhaled the rich scents of the feast Greta had prepared. She couldn't wait to start eating.
The phone rang in the living room. Greta had an ancient phone. It still had a cord and you had to spin a wheel to dial the numbers. Still, Bridget would have picked it up if her grandmother hadn't gotten to it first.
"Hello?" The old woman's voice cracked a little. Her age was starting to show. It was sad to think she might not always be there.
"Oh, my. Yes, all right, she's right here." She covered the receiver with her hand. "Bridget, its your friend Tibbys husband, Brian. Tibby is in labor and she's in trouble." She held out the phone to her granddaughter.
"Oh shit! It's early!" Bridget had been going to fly down to LA for the birth. She was not ready to fly down tonight. Grabbing the receiver, she talked to Brian. She told him that she would come if she could get her plane tickets transferred. If she couldn't, she told him to give Tibby all her love. Greta told her to phone the airport and that she would take care of the dinner.
"But I don't want it to get cold! I'll eat it while I'm on the phone!" She argued.
"Don't you want to see your friend in what is possibly her last hours? God Bridget! Leave the food! Exchange your ticket! Move! You don't want her to do this alone do you!" Greta's raw enthusiasm felt almost like anger. And anger was only one letter short of danger.
Retreating, she quietly agreed and phoned to exchange her tickets. She meekly switched her July ticket for one that was departing the next morning. Uncharacteristically, she softly told Greta when she was leaving. Bridget e-mailed Eric to tell him where she was going and started to pack.
The realization of Tibbys condition had finally sunken in, she was no longer hungry.
Slipping into an X-L tee shirt, Bridget turned off the attic light and slid into bed. Staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, she let her most vivid memories of Tibby wash over her. Visiting each other during their college years, getting up to trouble in LA during the summer. Seeing her after Christina had given birth, after she had accepted her feelings for Brian. Tibby at the film course, making the movie about her lost friend. During that first summer with the pants, when she had met and lost Bailey and worked at Wallmans while everyone else had left the city.
The pants. What had happened to them? Well, what hadn't happened to them? They had rotated them all through two years of college, then Carmen's roommate, Aisha, had mistaken them for useless. She had given them to charity without asking permission. The pants had gone to another thrift store, and the girls had been left hopeless and empty. They had looked everywhere, even doing a notional thrift store road trip that summer. Then they had tried to replace them, but other pants had not felt right. Neither had any hats, shirts, stuffed-animals or dirty socks (yes Carmen had even tried passing around a sock). Their sisterhood had sort of just fallen apart. Carmen had grown distant after Wins death and Tibby had been too busy to really help her mourn. Lena had been preoccupied in her own affairs, sorting out her career and Paul and Kostos and the rest of her family. Bridget had been in love. Being around Carmen had just made her feel depressed. She had stayed with Eric and avoided her friend. More guilt flooded her now. For all kinds of things. How flighty she was! She left her best fiend to her grief for a man that she was now selfishly cheating on! How could she? What kind of a monster could do that? Just take advantage of people's love! She screamed at herself inwardly and dared herself never to talk to Billy again. She could not do that though. She would say goodbye to him. She had too, she made a vow then that she would stop carelessly hurting people. She would bid farewell to Billy the next day and once again embrace Eric and her friends back into her life, that was what she would do. She would raise her children into a world were everybody loved each other, where everybody was happy. She fell asleep thinking of her bright future, never once imagining what it would be like if Tibby didn't make it through her labor. She would survive. She had to survive.
-"Its ok to kiss a fool, its ok to let a fool kiss you, but never let a kiss fool you!"- Anonymous.
Tibby went limp after a huge push. She had been struggling to bring this child into the world for hours now. She was so tired. She just wanted to sleep. She was jolted back to the situation as another contraction started.
"WHERE ARE THEY!" She screeched. "YOU PHONED THEM EIGHT HOURES AGO!" In reality it had only been four hours, but a single hour felt like a month to Tibby, it was amazing that she had hit the nail so close to the head.
"I don't know, Tib, but they'll be here soon, I promise!" Brian didn't bother correcting her. He was in quite a lot of pain as well. Tibby had a much more powerful grip on his hands then he had ever experienced in his life, not even when his father had been in one of his bad moods.
"If it doesn't come out soon, we will have to do a cesarean section, its incredibly risky, especially at this stage, but it's the only option if you don't want to die of exhaustion." The doctor wasn't kidding. It really was possible to over-exhort herself and die of lack of strength.
"Are we late for the party?" Carmen and Lena ran into the room, Carmen carried a portable CD player. Lena held a bundle of food, knowing how disgusting hospital food was from the time that she had had to have her appendix removed.
"Yes! What's with the…. Carmen?" Tibby struggled to speak as her muscles frantically pushed. She was relived that at least Carmen and Lena were there, even if Bridget wouldn't come for another five hours. This was such an awful time to be re-united with Carmen. They hadn't seen each other for almost a year.
"I have an idea, Tibberon, let's see if it helps!" Carmen quickly consulted the nurse to make sure the CD player wouldn't intervene with any equipment. Receiving the all clear, she plugged it in and a Brittany spears song came blasting from the speakers.
"What the hell are you doing, you psycho?" Tibby almost laughed at the terrible music she was being subjected to. Amazingly enough, it was helping though. She could feel her efforts working, slowly but surely, the baby was coming out.
"Nothing like a little bad music to get a kid to dance! Remember when we thought this was good?" Carmen teased her friend, happy that she was happy.
"…. Hit me baby one more time…."
Even Brian was singing by the end of the song. Tibby, for a split second, stopped feeling pain. She lay there in euphoria, feeling blanketed in love. Surrounded by people willing to sing along to bad pop music for her. Brian could feel her mood ease with the grip she had on his arm the mood was catching. The next song was by the Spice Girls and he was the first to start singing.
"This is the absolute weirdest birth I've ever been part of," The doctor commented. "And that's saying a lot, I work in San Francisco." She started to sing with them as the baby slid its slow and sticky way out of Tibby.
"I NEED FOOD! Chocolate! Water! Oranges! Steak! All of it! In a Smoothie! Now! NOW!" Tibby was so used up that she was almost at the point of using her own life force to bring the baby into the world.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. McBrian, I'm obliged to only allowed to let you eat these ice chips. I know its absurd, but you could vomit and choke on other food and die. It's happened before, and it was awful. You can eat all you want as soon as this kid is out. Come on! Just a little more! If I didn't know better, that baby really is dancing to the Backstreat Boys." The doctor winked and changed the bag feeding through the tube in Tibbys wrist.
Brian held her left hand and Lena held her right. Carmen danced around, shouting her encouragement and occasionally changing the CD. For two hours they stayed in the room, only leaving to go down the hall to the bathroom. For two hours they squeezed and screamed with Tibby as she pushed the world's most stubborn child into the world. Two hours turned into three, and just after 2:30 in the morning, Jordan McBrian, Tibby and Brian's healthy baby girl, saw the first light of day. She was brought out crying in tune to Gwen Steffani along with her mother, father and godmothers, who were bawling more than the baby herself was.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? -From Ryan to Carmen
Ryan sat at his computer, pissed off as usual. Tonight however, he was madder than usual. Carmen hadn't phoned, and when he had tried to call her, she hadn't picked up and her cell phone had been turned off. The thirteen-year-old brushed a hand through his blue hair. Bored, he slid his shoes on and grabbed his skateboard. Opening the door of his dark room he went out and shut it behind him, Ryan then clumped down the stairs to the living room.
"I'm going down to the 7eleven to buy a slurpy, I might stop at the park too. I'll be back later." He scowled. Ryan hated having to tell his parents his every move.
"That's fine, Honey. Did you hear about Tibby?" His mother had a worried look on her face when she mentioned Ryan's godmother.
"No, what about her?" He didn't really care, but if it had something to do with Tibby, it might have something to do with why Carmen was unreachable.
"She's in labor early and Carmen and Lena and Bridget flew out to help her through. I would go too, but the tickets are expensive plus it takes forever to get anywhere. We'll see it when it's born, maybe we could go for…."
Ryan had stopped listening when her mother had stopped taking about Carmen. He was less mad now, but still a little peeved that she had rushed to the side of this friend that she hadn't seen in almost a year and forgotten to even tell him about it. She just forgot, I do that all the time. He didn't want to think that Tibby might be more important to his stepsister than he was. He needed somebody to be close with, for god's sakes, since his school friends were idiots who thought he was a freak.
He didn't make friends well. It had always been a problem with him. In pre-school even, he had stayed away from the other children and played by himself. In kindergarten he had made a couple of friends, but they never stuck. All through his school life he had the same experience. Making friends and then loosing them. Finding friendship and then breaking it. Currently he was a friend with a boy named Cristo, who didn't say much but observed a lot. Cristo was going into in grade 10, a year older than Ryan should have been in if he hadn't been bumped up a grade. So there was another thing, he was the only thirteen-year-old (soon to be fourteen) in the tenth grade. He was also the only person in suburbia with blue hair.
Skating down the street after going to 7eleven, he purposely took a road that led him past the park. He didn't go to Mercy Park to sit and watch the sunset though, he went to run into Phia Wright. She was probably the only girl worthy of any attention aside from Carmen. She was oblivious to fashion, pulling on old, thrift store jeans and a comfy cotton shirt, tying her black hair into a bun everyday and ignoring everyone at lunch. She paid attention during class though, and got good enough grades. Phia sat in a special tree and read at lunch each day. Ryan had noticed her there a few months ago. Having nothing better to do, he had started checking on her every lunch, to see if she was still there, if she stayed in the same tree. She did. Then, as he was skating around one night, he noticed her writing under a tree in Mercy Park. The next night he had brought a book to the park and sat down reading not twenty-five meters away from her on the grass near the pond. Tonight he held two slupies in his hands, keeping his board under his arm awkwardly as he made his way across the clearing to the girl.
"Hi, Phia." She looked up at him, he hazel eyes questioning his own azure colored ones.
"Ryan?" She sounded surprised. He then remembered that it was July. School had gotten a month ago.
"Umm…Hi. Do you want a slurpie?" He felt really stupid. What the hell was he doing here? This was Phias space, he hardly even spoke to her when school had been in session, even though they had been in three classes with together.
To his joy, relief spread across her face. "Oh my god, I was so thirsty! Thanks Ryan! Sit down!" He handed her the slurpie with the un-chewed straw. Sitting down, he watched her throat moved as she drank the cool drink that he had brought her. He took at gulp of his own. This isn't so hard! He smiled as she stopped drinking and asked him how his summer was going.
"Its unbelievably boring, how about you?"
"Wow, that about sums mine up too. There is nothing to do! I want to get out of this dinky town and go somewhere! Its so revolutionarily boring!" She spoke his feelings exactly. He told her this and they laughed. As they continued talking, it got later outside. 9:30 turned to 10:00 and the sun went down entirely.
"Oh crap. I'd better get home. My parents are going to kill me." Ryan got up to go.
"OK. Are you busy tomorrow?" Phia got up to leave too.
"Not at all, why?" He hoped that she was going to say what he wanted her to say.
"Me neither, do you want to hang out?" She ginned as he accepted. They both walked out of the park together and he walked her home. Jumping on his board, he rode quickly home.
As he walked up the stairs to his house, his mom opened the front door for him.
"Ryan, where the hell have you been? Its 10:30 at night!" She was in her pajamas but didn't look tired.
"I was with a friend at the park, mom. I'm sorry, we lost track of time." His mother seemed to brighten up when she heard he had a friend.
"Really? Who?" It was not suspicion that drove her to ask this question, but curiosity. Who was he having a good enough time with that he had forgotten to come home?
"Just a girl from my homeroom named Ophelia Wright." He hoped she would let it go at that, he didn't want to have to explain Phia to his mom.
"You have a girlfriend? That's great! When can I meet her?" Christina's excitement made him smile. Maybe this would be easier than he had expected.
Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back. –Carmen to Ryan.