Disclaimer: I don't own Jimmy Neutron or any related characters.
After waiting a few moments, Cindy sank to her knees onto the bathroom floor. She scratched her head with the gun. "What the hell am I doing?" she mumbled to herself while burying her head in her hands.
Bill stopped his praying when he noticed the girl whimpering. He stared at her for a moment. She looked a lot different than the picture that had been on the news last week, but it was undeniably Cynthia Vortex.
God, what am I doing? she though as she slammed her head back against the wall. Look at me. I'm holding a freaking grandpa at gunpoint and running from the cops. Whatever happened to the good old days when it was just aliens?
"What are you thinking about?" Bill whispered.
Cindy sniffled and wiped her nose across her arm. "What the heck do you care?"
Bill shrugged as best he could with his hands behind his head. "I'm bored."
Cindy sighed. "I'm thinking about how much I'm turning into my mother."
Bill was a little surprised at her answer. "Your mom does stuff like this? Holding innocent Best Buy workers at gunpoint?"
Cindy laughed a little. "I wouldn't put it past her."
Now it was Bill's turn to laugh. "I've seen her on the news, you know. She doesn't look like a hardened criminal."
Cindy's expression became serious. "She's also a good actor."
They both stood in silence for a moment. Bill took his hands down for a moment to scratch his leg. Cindy didn't even raise the gun.
"Why did you kill your dad?" he asked.
Cindy's emerald eyes narrowed. "I didn't kill my father."
"That's not what the police are saying."
Cindy didn't respond, just went back to staring at the floor. Bill studied her for a moment. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because it's the only way to end all of this."
"End all of what?"
"It's a long story," Cindy sadly told him.
"What happened? What did you two do, exactly?"
Cindy lifted her head up. "You tell me. What are they saying we did?"
Bill's back slid down the stall door. He rested his hands on his knees. He stared at Cindy. "They say you killed your father and ran away. You stole a car, met up with some friends, nearly killed the cops that tried to arrest you." He stared at Cindy's hurt face. "But you didn't?"
Cindy shook her head. She wiped away another tear that was forming. She was getting sick of those freaking tears. She had cried more in the past week than she had the other eleven years of her life. "It was her."
"Sorry?"
"It was all her," Cindy said while tightening her grip on the gun in anger. After taking a deep breath, she took her finger off of the trigger. "My mom. Everyone thinks she's so goddam perfect. The mom with the perfect daughter. The mom with the perfect house. The mom with the great life. There's good old Mrs. Vortex. God, if they only knew."
"What happened?" he asked again.
"She had an affair," Cindy said, fighting back tears. She coughed a little, trying not to cry. "Good old mom, goddam good old mom. Cheated on dear old dad. I should have known. I should have figured it out earlier. Nobody gets that many parking tickets."
"What?" Bill questioned.
Cindy sighed, stared at the tiles on the floor. Tried to count how many there were. Nine in a square, twenty squares in the room. One hundred and eighty tiles. She was good with stuff like that. "That was her excuse. She was dating a cop. A captain."
"Smith? Captain Smith?" Bill interrupted.
Cindy nodded. "Went down to the station every weekend. Said she was a reckless driver, had to pay off some speeding tickets. God, I hate how she laughed about it. 'Gotta go, Cindy. Another fifty dollars worth of speeding I've got to pay off. You know how I am', she would say. Yeah, mom. I know how you are."
"Then what?" Bill asked, studying her face. He couldn't tell if she was telling the truth or not.
"Big surprise. Her lies didn't fool my dad long. She's so stupid. She didn't care if he knew. Didn't care if I knew. Yeah, she was a damn good parent," she seethed. She laughed, but a few tears trickled down her cheeks.
"Dad was never one to fight. Didn't inherit that from him, that's for sure. He tried to work it out, but mom didn't care. She didn't love him anymore. Do you have any idea how much she hurt me? Yelling that she didn't love my father? I heard her every damn night!" she shouted, pounding the floor.
"So they finally tell me. And big surprise, it wasn't the party of the year. She flips out. I think she was drinking. She was never much of a drinker, surprisingly. I remember once she came home when I was six, a little tipsy. I thought it was funny. Thought she was playing a game. Everything was a game then," she sadly said.
Bill was entranced by her story, the look on her face as she recounted every detail. Maybe the cops were wrong.
"And she flips out. Shoots daddy dearest. Says she wants a fresh start. And of course she's going to get away with it, she's dating a cop. A captain. She's got connections. I...I tried to stop her. She was stronger than I thought."
"And then she turned the gun on me. I got away. I don't even remember how. I ran to Jimmy's. Guess that says a lot, doesn't it? That in my darkest hour, without even thinking, I ran straight to Jimmy's. I'll have to analyze that later," she said with a slight smile. Bill watched as another tear trickled down her cheek.
"So he takes me away. And mom lies. Smithy lies. They think we've been kidnapped or something. I don't know. I heard it on the radio that first morning."
Cindy sat in silence for a moment, almost long enough for Bill to speak. But as he opened his mouth she began to talk again.
"That first morning. A week ago, ten days tops. We were so different then," she said as her voice trailed off.
She smiled a little as she remembered that crazy morning. She and Jimmy could barely get through the morning without fighting, and now they were, apparently, going out. Jimmy had been reluctant to steal some donuts for breakfast. Now he was the one who had the idea to hold this man at gunpoint. What was happening to them?
"Anyway," she finished, "you pretty much know what happens from there."
Bill stared at her for a moment, and Cindy stared back. He didn't know what to make of this girl. "How old are you?" he finally asked.
"Eleven," Cindy answered. "But I feel like I'm eighty," she muttered a moment later.
"I believe you," he whispered.
Cindy looked up from the floor. "What?"
"I believe you," he said again, this time louder.
Cindy eye's welled up once again, and a small chuckle passed her lips. "You're just saying that to get out of this alive. You don't believe me," she angrily muttered, but her voice carried a faint trace of hope.
"Yes I do," Bill kindly told her.
"Why?" Cindy asked, her voice cracking.
Bill smiled. "I am sixty years old, Cynthia. I've raised kids, and now they're raising kids. I've seen a lot in my life, but I've never seen anyone lie like that. You're telling the truth," he simply stated.
Cindy laughed once again. "You do?"
He nodded. "I do."
Cindy's bottom lip was trembling. She bit it to make it stop. All the tears that she had been holding back finally rushed over her face, down her cheeks.
"Come here," Bill said while crawling over to her. Cindy dropped the gun. She didn't care if he used it or not. She let him wrap his wrinkled hands around her waist and hug her to his chest. "I believe you," he whispered again.
Cindy shuddered as she let out another tiny life. She felt like she was melting, collapsing into his scrawny arms. She felt a different kind of relief, a kind that Jimmy couldn't give her. It felt like...it felt like she was home.
"Thank you," she whispered between sobs. "Thank you so much."
Bill stroked her long red hair as she continued shaking in his arms. Oh god, help this poor girl. "It will be alright," he promised.
Cindy finally began to stop crying and looked up at him. "How do you know?"
Bill smiled. "I knew you were telling the truth, didn't I?"
Cindy laughed once again. She wiped the loose strands of hair away from her eyes and hugged him once again. "Thank you," she repeated. Just then Jimmy began his knocking on the door.