Disclaimer: Nope. Sorry, I'm still not Jon Larson reincarnated. It's all right to be horribly disappointed; I know I am.
Nov. 24th
"Joanne. Come here."
She grimaced at the words—no, the demand—and looked over the top of her book at Maureen. The wild-haired young woman was lying on her bed, dressed in a tank top and flannel pants, watching her with a nerve-wracking intensity. Joanne shook her head.
"I'm reading," she replied unnecessarily, shaking her book at her roommate. Maureen grinned.
"I can see that," she replied slowly, as if speaking to a four-year-old. "Come here."
Rolling her eyes, Joanne set the novel on her desk and frowned at the other girl. "I can't. I need to finish this report by Monday."
Maureen sat up, hands on her knees. "Joanne, you've been here, what? Six days? How many hours of sleep have you allowed yourself to get since then?"
The often-infuriating young woman had a point, Joanne found herself admitting grudgingly. Over the course of her short stay at Pennybrook Academy for Girls (and, good God, was that a pitiful excuse for a name; Joanne hoped she'd never be so shamed as to have to tell someone where she went to school), she had found herself more and more attached to the idea of such freedom. For the first time in her life, her mother was not peering over her shoulder, demanding constantly to know what she was reading, why she was writing, who that photograph was of. For the first time, the only people who prodded her into working were the professors, and she found she didn't mind. Work had always come easily to Joanne; she'd never been a creative child, per se, as much as a diligent one. The idea that working hard here would keep her out from under her mother's piercing gaze was an oddly appealing one.
Boarding schools really aren't as bad as I'd thought. Who knew?
"Joanne." Maureen's voice had a grating tone to it, one that somehow made Joanne feel warm inside. The concept of being soothed by such a harsh persona confused her, but she was too exhausted from a week of non-stop writing and research to fight it. Sighing loudly enough to prove to Maureen that she was not giving in quietly, she unfolded herself from the chair and padded over to her own bed, flopping down onto it. Maureen chuckled,
"You missed."
"Sorry?" Shifting slightly, Joanne peered awkwardly at her roommate from a nearly-upside-down position.
Maureen patted the mattress next to herself. "Over here, honey. If I wanted you to go to sleep, I would have said so."
Something strange did a flip in the center of Joanne's chest. She rolled over and stared again at the girl who was not-so-gently insinuating herself into Joanne's everyday existence. Maureen had barely left her alone since the previous Sunday, insisting upon sitting with her at all meals and in their classes. It seemed Joanne could barely go into the bathroom without finding Maureen there, perched on a sink, waiting for her. At first, she'd wondered why the girl bothered; was she really that interested in showing Joanne the ropes? When it became apparent that there was more to the nearly puppy-like fascination Maureen had with her—sort of a like a dog with a bone, actually, Joanne had found herself thinking uncomfortably on more than one occasion—she wondered if the other girl had any friends. This question was answered quickly enough; it seemed that Maureen was not only tolerated around the school, but extremely well-respected. This, of course led back to the initial question:
Why is she bothering?
It wasn't that Joanne thought of herself as unworthy of friendship, exactly. She had had plenty of schoolmates over the years with whom she had laughed and chatted. It was simply a matter of curiosity over Maureen's intents. While it was possible that the other girl only wanted to establish a sense of comfort with the person she'd be living with for a year, Joanne couldn't seem to shake the feeling that there was something else lurking below the surface—a deeper agenda.
Or is it just that you want there to be a deeper agenda?
She shook off the question, just as she'd been doing for three days. Something was wrong. Where Maureen had initially been frightening—terrifying, if Joanne were to be honest with herself—and off-putting, she had become intriguing and—even more scarily—attractive. It hadn't taken long for Joanne to notice the long lashes that framed warmly-caustic green eyes, or the straight white teeth behind full lips. The curves, the hair, the shockingly-infectious laughter—none of it was lost on her. The entire package that was Maureen was of an unwitting beauty.
And therein lay the problem.
Joanne had developed crushes on girls before. It wasn't anything new for her to find her thoughts dwelling a little too firmly on someone of the same sex. In fact, the shocking thing would be to find a male tramping through her mind constantly. No, the generality of the situation wasn't the issue.
The problem was that this was Maureen. She couldn't explain it, but Joanne got the image that this was the epitome of untouchable things here, if only because Maureen was the type to get as close as was humanly possible to someone else. It was difficult enough to deal with unrequited feelings when one was not forced into close proximity with the object of one's affections; the last thing Joanne needed was to cultivate strong feelings for the one person who seemed intent on fastening herself to Joanne's very waist.
Not that I'd mind…
Shit. Stop that.
"Joanne, did you hear me, or do I need to fetch the air horn?" Maureen was still watching her with her trademark see-right-through-you smile. Joanne jerked a little; she'd almost forgotten where she was.
"I heard you," she half-lied, rolling over to look at the other girl properly; she'd been getting dizzy, watching the mouth dance over the eyes as opposed to under them.
"Then why aren't you moving?" was the simplistic response. Joanne opened and closed her mouth several times and Maureen giggled. "You look like a fish when you do that," she added, eyes sparkling. "It's cute."
Cute. Ohh, don't say that.
"Why do you need me over there anyway?" Joanne asked in as annoyed a tone she could manage. "You said it yourself: I don't sleep. Wouldn't it be best for me to curl up here?"
Maureen shrugged. "Probably. But call it a favor, will you? I want to talk to you."
"And you can't do that from a separate bed?"
"Fuck, girl, are you always this stubborn?" Despite the vulgar word, Maureen sounded anything but angry. "I'm not asking you to do something illegal, I just want you to sit with me for a minute or two. Sheesh."
Making a show of rolling her eyes, Joanne rolled from her bed and dragged herself to Maureen's. Perching on the edge of the mattress, she told herself that giving in was the only option, that Maureen would never give up until she got her way. She told herself that this was the only way she'd ever get to sleep tonight, and that she wasn't sitting here, next to her mildly-obnoxious roommate—and possible friend?—simply for the minimized space between them.
"See, now, that wasn't so hard." Leave it to Maureen to keep dragging a dead horse through the dust. Part of Joanne wanted to get indignant; she was here, wasn't she? She'd given in. Why couldn't Maureen just get what she had to say over with? Did she really have to keep on with it, practically gloating and—
Oh.
This is interesting.
Maureen had reached over, captured her arm, and tugged her back into a light embrace. Wrapping an arm around the smaller girl's middle, she rested her chin on Joanne's shoulder.
"W-what are you doing?" Joanne asked, hating the tremor in her voice. She felt Maureen chin raise off her shoulder for a beat, then fall back down as she shrugged.
"Getting comfortable," she answered, forcing Joanne gently to lean back against her. "Now. We talk."
"We do?" Joanne was having trouble thinking straight. Maureen seemed to be wearing perfume of some kind—God, I hope that's perfume and not how she smells on her own. If this is Maureen-scent, I don't know how I'll ever be able to control myself.—and it was making her head feel heavier than it ever had before.
"Yep." Maureen lightly bumped her head against the side of Joanne's. An errant curl tickled her ear; Joanne resisted a shiver.
This is not a good way to start a friendship, she reminded herself, gritting her teeth. Six days, and this girl's already making me melt. She's going to kick me out in no time.
"What are we talking about?" she asked, forcing the words out between her teeth to distract herself from the thoughts bouncing through her head.
For a moment, Maureen said nothing. Slightly dumbfounded by this sudden change—Joanne couldn't remember a period of time since meeting Maureen when the young woman hadn't had words pouring from her lips; she even talked in her sleep, for God's sake—Joanne twisted to look up at her. The other girl wasn't even looking at her, she realized; both eyes were focused distractedly on the opposite wall. Nervously, Joanne pulled one of her arms free from the trap of Maureen's embrace and waved her hand.
"Hello?"
That was all it took. Maureen gave a tiny bounce on the bed and squeezed Joanne a little tighter, grinning when the other girl coughed in an attempt to let air into her squished lungs.
"What do you want to talk about?" she asked, nudging her head against Joanne's again. If she didn't cut that out, the darker girl was going to be forced to rip away, if only to salvage some self-control.
"I don't," Joanne was tempted to say. Instead, she mumbled, "I dunno. Boys?"
In truth, that was the very last thing she wanted to talk about—the very last thing she ever wanted to talk about. But Maureen struck her as the type of girl who would get a great deal of pleasure from raving about the latest "hot" boy-toy teen star. Might as well let her have her moment in all of its torturous glory.
But, to her surprise, Maureen gave a brash, cackling laugh and rocked her roughly from side to side. "Boys?" she repeated through a giggle. "Sweetheart, I know you've got some better potential topics stored in that head of yours. You're too smart to want to just gush about the male species."
Joanne lifted an eyebrow. Okay, that's another thing that has got to stop. These terms of endearment are going to flat-out kill me.
"All right," she said carefully after another beat. "How about…books?"
Maureen made a face, but Joanne could tell her roommate was pleased with this intellectual choice. It seemed the girl had placed her into a category of expectation—granted, an accurate one—and fully anticipated Joanne to do as she figured. Normally, this would have reminded Joanne of every other person she'd ever met, and she would have immediately retracted. With Maureen, however, it seemed only as if the young woman had read her perfectly.
"I don't really read much," Maureen was saying flippantly, waving a hand dangerously close to Joanne's head. "But talk away, babe. Maybe something'll peak my interest for once."
Joanne smirked, untangling herself a smidgen from the other girl's arms and stretching out. Might as well get comfortable. This could take a while.
She took a breath and launched into what most people would probably label a well-constructed babble, touching on topics ranging from Poe to Orwell to Huxley to Emerson. To her surprise, Maureen did not fall asleep, though she did not actually know any of the poems or novels Joanne mentioned. When the slight girl finally paused in her literary rant, she found Maureen had paid enough attention to actually make some comments—"If strength really did stem from ignorance, wouldn't that make me brilliant?" she joked, rolling her eyes when Joanne stammered out a protest on behalf of Maureen's own intelligence.
"Forget it," Maureen commanded finally, reaching out and placing a hand firmly over Joanne's mouth to cut off her insistence that Maureen really was quite bright and only refused to apply herself. "Lordy, woman, you need to learn to take a joke."
Frozen, Joanne could only stare over the pale hand. Her hand is on my lips, she thought frantically, resisting simultaneous urges to lunge forward and back.
Oblivious, Maureen went on. "I swear to you, girl, that by the time you've been here a month, I will have corrupted you—at least enough for you to say truthfully that you are capable of fun."
Indignant, Joanne tried to sputter, "I do too have fun!", but the syllables were mussed by the soft palm still pressed to her lips. Pulling her hand free and shaking it to relieve the tickling sensation Joanne's breath had caused, Maureen shook her head and smiled.
"You do not," she replied smugly. "It's obvious, if only from the way I had to practically handcuff and drag you over here tonight. But don't worry about it. I'm going to make you a deal."
"A deal?" Joanne repeated suspiciously, sitting on her hands so as not to brush her fingers against her own mouth. "What kind of deal?"
"The kind where I offer to read one of your precious books a month if you allow me to yank you out of the cage you've stuffed yourself into for the past seventeen years." Maureen's eyes glittered at her; she pushed a hand forward and let it hang in the air, waiting.
Joanne bit her lip. Let Maureen pull her out of her shell? Make her "fun"? Nothing could be more dangerous, she sensed. Was making her wild roommate a little more literate really worth that kind of torture?
Hell no.
But what choice do I really have?
Shaking her head uncertainly, Joanne clasped the strong white hand in her own and shook it. Maureen's grin, if possible, broadened and Joanne sighed.
"Why do I get the feeling I'm selling my soul to the devil?" she muttered.