Lydia had never heard anything like Edward's story, and though he didn't tell it in too many words, they were numerous enough to get the basic point across. How Peg the Avon lady had come up from that prim suburb below them and taken him under her wing without taking time to consider the consequences of her seemingly benevolent actions. How he'd made lots of friends who turned out to be his enemies, in the end. Edward didn't use these exact words, but Lydia could gather from the way in which he told his tale and the pain in his eyes that the end had not been pleasant. They chased him away. They milked his talent and willingness to do favours for them for all it was worth before discarding him like a piece of useless trash. Though that's not what he said or how he said it, Lydia could surmise that that was how it had been, and she pitied him more than she ever had, anyone, though she tried not to show it. She also hated the town even more than she had. She was disgusted by its prissy pastel shell, but even more so by what was inside.
"She told me to run," he said in so few words, and she understood. He'd been in love with this girl, Kim Boggs, and would therefore do anything she asked him to, whether it be to run or to break into Jim's house and not tell the police all that he knew. Because she'd asked him to. How sweet.
Lydia shifted from her left foot to her right, causing the floor to squeak noisily beneath her. She couldn't help thinking to herself, Wow. This guy is really amazing. Impossibly sweet. How could anyone have done that to him? They were cruel. Very cruel.
And he was completely different from anyone she'd ever met before. Not entirely human. Not physically, anyway. But on the inside, behind his ghost white face and sharp blades he was the most human being she'd ever laid eyes upon.
"He never had time to finish me...He never woke up." Finish him? That implied that he'd been created, not born. That was why he had scissors for hands. But why scissors? She wasn't even sure that Edward knew the answer to this, himself, so she decided to keep quiet about it. She knew he'd just stare at her like he always did when he didn't know how to answer something, and the look in his eyes made her uncomfortable with herself. He was so innocent and naïve, completely oblivious to the things she'd done, the things she'd thought about doing, the things people she knew had done. Such charming naivete. He had no idea.
Edward wasn't much of one for chit chat, and thought he'd said no more than a handful of sentences, his story intriegued Lydia and made her thirsty for more knowledge about this mysterious man whose house her family had just purchased.
"Is Kim still around? Does she still live down there?" she asked him, trying to figure out from whom she'd get her information.
"I don't know." And he didn't. Edward had no idea how many years had passed since Kim went back down the mountain, only that it had been a long time. She may have moved to another town, or possibly even...Edward didn't want to think about the grim possibility of her being dead. Still, there wasn't a day that passed when he didn't wonder about where she was now, what she was doing...if she still thought of him...She couldn't be dead, though. Angels never die.
Lydia swore to herself to find out more about Edward. She'd be living down there where this dent in Edward's life had taken place for at least a few months while the renovations were taking place, that is assuming that her parents still intended on keeping ownership after she told them about Edward. Someone was bound to be able to tell her something.
After a long period of silence when she was sure that Edward had said all that he was going to say, she looked behind her at the staircase she'd intended to descend nearly an hour ago and sighed. Time to face her parents.
"Well...I'd better go tell them about you."
"You said you bought this house?" Edward asked, silently begging Lydia not to leave his sight.
"Yes...we own it now, legally." She'd received less pathetic looks from a puppy dog with its tail between its legs, though she now understood why he was so bent on making sure she didn't leave him alone.
"Then...it's yours. I don't mind. It's...it's very big for one person, anyway"
"You mean you want to share it?" Edward managed a small smile and nodded. That's exactly what he wanted. Someone to share the house with. It made perfect sense; they wanted the house, he wanted company. Everyone could come away from this, satisfied. Lydia only hoped her parents would agree to such a thing. If they wanted the house, they had no choice. They couldn't just kick Edward out...she prayed they'd be cooperative and as open to the idea as she was.
Lydia smiled up at Edward and just barely caught herself before offering her hand to him. "Come down with me. We have to talk to them."
Charles had never looked more perplexed in his entire life, and that was saying something. How could they have sold the house to him if it was already under ownership? he asked. Lydia explained to her father what Edward had told her upstairs.
"I didn't see him when I came to check out the house," he said.
"That's because he was hiding, dad. If you haven't noticed he's really shy." Edward was aware that he was being talked about, but he remained silent, as always, and staring blankly at the floor.
After a long pause during which Charles turned over his thoughts on the present predicament in his head, he said, "Well, Edward...I suppose this means that you're going to be living with us"
"Charles, you can't be serious," protested Delia, who had been still as the grave till now. Lydia gave her stepmother a sharp look. Edward said nothing. "Will you excuse us for a few moments?" she said to neither Edward nor Lydia in particular as she closed her red-clawed hand around her husband's arm and pulled him out the door, which slammed with a thud and a puff of dust.
The quiet pair could hear husband and wife quarrelling from behind the heavy wooden door of the study that had once belonged to Edward's creator.
"We bought this house, Charles. We don't even know if he's telling the truth, he could be lying about living here! Does he have any legal documents? Any ownership papers? He could just be hiding out, here. He has scissors for hands, Charles. Scissors! Did you see that? No wonder he's hiding out in an old dump like this, where else is a freak like that supposed to go?" Edward flinched upon hearing these sharp words being directed at him but his dark lips remained pressed together. She had called him that word. Freak. It stung him like a whiplash.
Lydia noticed this and touched his shoulder lightly. How dare that woman talk about Edward that way. He seemed so sweet and innocent, one of the nicest people she'd ever met, yet here she was screaming that he was a freak. -She- was the freak.
"Don't listen to her, Edward," she said, trying to convince him to heed her words. "She's just a stupid bitch," she added, under her breath. "I've seen a lot of freakish things in my time, and you are far from the top of the list"
Edward's placid kohl eyes shifted from the floor to the young face of his defender and smiled, though his mouth remained plastered in the same expressionless pout. She'd expressed definite disapproval of the hurtful words being thrown around behind that door, and he wanted nothing more than to show his gratitude of this. Such a gesture of kindness shouldn't go unacknowledged, he thought, but what could he do other than mutter a pitiful,"Thank you," and look into her eyes with that same innocent curiosity he had when first their eyes met.
"No problem. We can be friends, yes?" Edward's heart leapt and he almost forgot to nod his head.
"I would like that"
"Awesome. Few people can seem to relate to me, to understand my position on this God-forsaken planet, but you...you seem like the kind of guy I could get to know." And she meant it. Just look at him, she would say to anyone who might disagree. His style of dress and unkempt black hair was enough to show anyone that they were the same kind of people, kindred spirits. They were both lonely, misunderstood "freaks," rejected by the rest of the world for their differences, which, in the grand scheme of things, really made them no different from anyone else. If we cut ourselves, do we not bleed?
His style of dress and unkempt hair were...really something. I.E. bar none the most awesome things she'd ever noticed about a guy, before. No one in Conneticut would ever dream of dressing like that. Except for maybe Lydia, herself. He was like nothing she'd ever seen before. Come to think of it, she'd only seen so much leather and metal on one outfit in goth shops online, and those had all been way out of her price range. And he was so pale. It was amazing.
As Charles and Delia continued to argue in the study, Lydia tried her best to distract her near-mute companion by engaging in conversation with him, picking any topic that popped into her head. She'd deduced that, by the way their previous conversation had gone that Edward was the strong, silent type. Still, she was curious and wanted to know what interested him, and if they had anything other than the obvious in common. When their chat was finished, she'd found out that this man had spent the majority of his life in isolation. He'd never been off the grounds except for that one time that Mrs. Boggs had brought him home. He knew little to nothing of music, movies, recent novels, the internet, anything all the other guys his age would have been well aware of. But he did know about some older authors, including Edgar Alan Poe, and that earned him points in her book.
The sun had begun its descent into the western horizon and the Deetzes were preparing to call it a night. Delia was leaning toward the idea of going back down the hill and finding 1324 Cherry Blossom Court to await the arrival of the moving van. Charles had, after much pleading and stressful negotiation, finally convinced her to allow Edward to stay with them, if only to appease his teenaged daughter. He almost felt as if he owed it to her.
"But he should help pay for the expenses. Water and electricity and all that," she said, still rather huffed about the idea of sharing her new home with a perfectly strange stranger.
"With what?" Charles asked. "We don't even know if he has any money"
"Lydia, does your friend have any money?" Lydia was getting more disgusted with her stepmother by the minute.
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" she spat. "He can talk, you know." Delia looked as if she wanted to smack her firey stepdaughter right in the mouth, and Lydia was keen on doing the exact same thing to Delia.
"Fine. Edward?" He looked timidly up at Delia. What she lacked in physical size she made up for, vocally.
"Yes?" he said ever so softly.
"Do you have any money to help us pay for this place?" Edward thought for a moment. A long time ago, his father had told him about a fortune to be gained upon the old man's death. Well, the old man was dead now, so he must be in possession of some kind of fortune...but he wasn't sure exactly what. He had the house and everything within it, but maybe there was money hidden somewhere in an unknown location which the old man had neglected to disclose to Edward before his unexpected passing.
"I guess so," he replied, unsure of himself.
"You guess so?" she repeated in an intimidating manor. Lydia would not stand by and let the hateful woman bully her new friend like she did her father.
"Go easy on him, okay? He's really confused about all this. Can't you just leave him alone"
"Okay Lydia, we'll leave him alone." Edward looked positively terrified upon the mention of that word. Alone? But the girl had said she wouldn't leave him.
Lydia noticed the obvious ripple in Edward's usually expressionless face and patted his arm in an attempt to comfort him.
"Come on, Charles," Delia said, already walking toward the door. The man followed as if being pulled along by an invisible thread. Lydia ignored her parents and focused her attention on Edward.
"Don't worry, I'll come back and see you tomorrow," she reassured him. This helped a bit, and Edward's face resumed its usually calm expression...but there was something else bothering him.
"I don't think she likes me very much...your mother"
"Step-mother," Lydia corrected gently. "Like I said, don't pay any attention to her. Her opinion doesn't matter. I just have to tell them what you told me. I'm sure they'll change their minds about you. I like you," she added, grinning. Edward smiled back.
"You'll come back tomorrow?" he asked as she headed for the door.
"You bet," she said. "See ya." She was tempted to blow a kiss before shutting the door behind her but thought better of it. Now to tackle her parents. Lydia wanted nothing more than to shut herself up in whatever isolated space was available to her when they got to their temporary settlement and listen to music on her headphones, but she couldn't. Nor could she go out into the neighbourhood, ringing doorbells and asking about the man who lived in the creepy house on the hill. Judging by the subject of the inquiry and her strange and dark appearance, that wouldn't be too well-received in this quaint and quiet town. Not from what Edward had already told her. These people liked other people like them, and were afraid of the strange and unusual like Edward, like herself. She'd just have to wait on that. Now she focused on explaining Edward to her parents. This was going to be a long night.
"What do you mean you don't think he needs those things, pumpkin?" Charles asked his daughter as he took a bite of his shrimp and noodle dish. It was tradition, it seemed, to order Cantonese take-out the first few nights in whatever house they'd just moved into. It was also tradition for Delia to remind everyone how much she hated the stuff. Charles and his daughter found a secret pleasure in this small act of defiance against the iron grasp of the main woman in their life and they smiled at each other from across the table as they ate, and as Delia bitched.
"Well, dad, he's lived up there so long without them...so I'm just assuming that he can get along fine without them"
"How does he refrigerate his food? Bathe? ...relieve himself"
Delia dropped her chopsticks into the cardboard container, a look of disgust playing across her tired face. "Do we really have to discuss this at the dinner table"
"I don't see why it should bother you so much," Lydia said, shoveling another bite of noodles in her mouth. "We can't ruin what you've already ruined for yourself," she muttered, referring to her lack of appetite. Before Delia could respond, Lydia proceeded to give Charles her theory on the subject. "How often would you bathe if you had scissors for hands? And you saw that outfit. I didn't notice any zippers or snaps...personally I don't think it comes off"
"That's ridiculous honey, it must come off, somehow." Lydia shook her head.
"No, I don't think so. And even if it does, how would he get it off? Also, I don't think he has the usual every-day necessities we do"
"What makes you say that?" Delia piped up, attempting once more to choke down a bite of chicken from her carton. "Is he some sort of extraterrestrial being from outer space or something? Is he another one of your ghosts"
"Well...kind of," Lydia said hesitantly. She paused just long enough to see the looks her father and Delia were giving her. She knew that if she stayed silent for much longer.
"Well, what the hell is he?" Delia, always impatient. Always needing to know right. now.
"I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's a combination of man and machine. He said to me, 'He never had time to finish me,' which implies that he was made and not born like a normal human being. So if he's part robot, that would explain why he doesn't need to eat, bathe, or do any of those things that normal human beings need to do in order to live"
It seemed to Lydia that her parents were swallowing the bait she threw out, and that was a good thing. It made sense, after all, yet it was confusing. How could a robot, a machine have such a human soul? Lydia had seen it. It peered out at her through those sparkling ebony eyes of his that spoke volumes without his lips ever having moved. Every time she looked into those eyes, she felt so many things, one of which being the feeling of refreshment. She'd never seen or felt anything like what she did when she looked into his eyes, into the core of his very being, which was constructed of so much more than metal and gears. She almost couldn't wait to see him again, the next day. She found herself looking forward to it.
"And that's why I think he shouldn't have to pay for any of those things; he doesn't even have use for them."