Disclaimer: Hamilton ain't mine, blah blah blah. Also, before people go all "No text format fics" on me: I KNOW. I wrote the text chat to be short and it is literally seventy-four words long. This entry isn't "chat/script format based because they had a few words of texting. I have read the guidelines. Also, sorry this chapter is shorter and kind of crappy. I've been really sick for the past few weeks. The next chapter will be mostly Peggy.
Envoyé à 9:07 p.m. EST
Laf: Salut?
Laf: Péggy?
Peggy: Who is this?
Laf: Français frite
Peggy: Oh
Peggy: Hey I don't speak French, remember?
Laf: Oh mon
Peggy: And why'd you wait so long? It's 9:07.
Laf: Desole je
Laf: Attend
Laf: WAIT
Peggy: Jeez, Laf.
Laf: SORRY, MY KÉYBÔARD ÎS IN FRÉNÇH
Peggy: Lol. Should I just facetime you?
Laf: SURÉ
Peggy: Okay, hold on.
Peggy voudrait FaceTime. Accepter?
"Hello?"
I jump and almost drop my phone on my face. "Peggy?"
A pair of eyes stare back at me. "Yeah? Is this working?"
She's way too loud. "You're good. Back up a bit."
The eyes zoom out as a caramel-colored face fills the screen. "Better?"
"Much better." I smile, and she smiles back. "Why did you wait so long?"
"Catnap." I yawn and extend my arms in a joint-popping stretch. "It's been a long week. I deserved it."
"Ah."
Awkward.
"Soooooooo…" We both say it at the exact same time.
So awkward.
Peggy moans and buries her fingers in her hair, which is out of the ponytail. It falls past her shoulders in waves and looks a lot darker than I remember, possibly due to the absence of fluorescent lighting. "This is so awkward."
I laugh, a little too loudly. "I was thinking the exact same thing."
"Here, before it gets worse." She stands and picks up her phone. I notice the silver earbuds she's wearing- probably made for her deafness- before the camera freezes. "I'm showing you my room."
Wait, what?
"Oh, you don't ha-I uh, just- I mean if you don't- you have to," I stammer.
Because I'm great at socially interacting with pretty deaf girls.
Translation: We are not at the stage of me seeing her room.
Make of that what you will.
"Too late." She focuses in on a shaggy black rug. "Ta-da!"
In one swoop she pans up, and the camera blurs out. Then it clears up, and my jaw hits the floor.
The entire room, from walls to floor, is black-and-gold-and-black-and-gold-and-black-and-gold. Everything about it screams "NERD." The walls are painted flat-out black, but they're covered in posters. Not just new posters either- she zooms in on a massive wrinkled, signed, and framed Star Wars poster hanging over her nightstand, and again on a torn Monty Python poster over her desk. Hanging from the beams of her four-poster bed are playbills, some duct taped together haphazardly. A giant black bookshelf rests on the opposite side, where books, organized by spine color, are wedged in like tetris blocks. Next to the shelf, painted on the wall, is a quote that I can't make out. The view to show me her ceiling, which is littered with glow-in-the-dark stars. Her chandelier is, no joke, modeled after the Death Star.
"You like?" Peggy's voice startles me.
"Mon dieu." I nod my head vigorously before I realize she can't see me. "You really are a nerd."
"My sisters tease me for it," she says in an amused tone. "They don't appreciate my fandoms with the same…"
"Intensity?" I guess.
"Pretty much."
I snicker. It's amazing how easy she is to talk to.
Now, anyway. Lunch was a disaster.
To the point where you need a whole weekend to recover, plus shame points. You awkward, awkward turtle.
No, it's John who draws the turtles. Hey, maybe I can get him to draw me as a turtle-
"What's the…"
Come on, brain. Don't blank out on me now. "Wall… thing. Above your bed, what does that say?"
She doesn't even pause. "'It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.' Albus Dumbledore."
Wow.
"Wow. I think you need a certified license to be this level of nerd."
She makes a noise in the back of her throat. "You should see me at Disney World."
"What about Disney World?"
"Well…"
Breathe.
Turn your ocean up to tsunami.
Don't.
Screw.
This.
Up.
11:38 p.m. EST
"...and then Alex gets these wide saucer eyes and looks up and the fan starts going at full speed spewing feathers and snow," I say, laughing over my words. "And John just looks at me and runs, and Herc and I go after him. And we run. As in, we sprint. We have feathers, fake snow, and those little odd shaped things that go in boxes all over us, and we're running down the street like crazy people. All the way back here. We did. Not. Stop."
The screen goes dark and I hear muffled laughter.
At least, I think she's laughing. She could also be dying of asphyxiation.
I can hear her shrieking and clapping and trying to breathe at the same time, dissolving over and over into fits of hiccupping giggles.
When she calms down enough to talk, she picks up her phone again. "After that?"
"We came here, locked the door, and hid in my closet," I finish.
Peggy turns the camera back to me. Her face is flushed rosy pink. "Really? Let me see your room."
But then I have to get out of bed, and it's so warm...
My face probably says it all, because she smirks. She looks devilish, like a grown woman rather than a teenage girl. Sixteen? Seventeen? I think she's sixteen.
"You don't have to if you don't want to."
I shake my head again. "No, that's fine."
That's fine. You mean, it's fine.
I sit up and scan my room quickly for any… ahem, incriminating items.
Seems clean enough. I switch the views. "Voila."
My room is nice enough. It's probably the most decorated part of my apartment (Merci Martha and George, for still paying the bills for this place!). Alex, John, and Herc came over a few days after I moved in and helped me- and I use the term "help" loosely- paint the walls in red, white, and blue (for France, you patriots), and I got Eliza's… strong decisions on interior design, despite my protests.
So my bed is in the center of the wall, my desk is in the left corner, my closet has full-length red mirrors on the back, and every room has an Eiffel Tower shag rug or two, even though the apartment has wall-to-wall carpeting.
I made Eliza pay for the rugs, since a) She can afford it, and b) It was her idea to make my living space look like a single French mom's.
"Ooh la la," Peggy teases. "Very French."
"Extremely French," I agree.
"What's on the bookshelf?"
This girl and her books, I swear.
"Oh, just some textbooks and…"
"And comics?" Up in the corner, she smirks. "I promise I won't make fun of you."
And some comics I had as a kid that I still read now that you have full permission to make fun of me for because they're my old nostalgic French comics.
I swallow. "Well," I begin awkwardly. Of course, it's awkward. "When I was a kid, I had a bunch of comics."
I grab a random book from the shelf and show her.
"Ass-terr-eeks?"
I sigh. "Astérix. He's this goofy little viking man with his own French comic. He's got his own amusement park, too."
"Oh, like Mickey Mouse."
That makes me laugh for some reason. "Well, not really. Way to American-ize it, though."
She scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Look at me, so patriotic."
"But really," I continue. "It's more like… Garfield or DC or…"
"I get it." She yawns, then rubs her temple underneath the glasses. "Agh."
"Headache?"
"Yeah." She looks at the screen and grimaces at me. Well, me on camera. "There are times when I do well, and times when it gets tiring to talk. I practice speaking, but... "
"Oh, we can stop if you need it," I say quickly.
Wow, great job, Laf. That sounded sooo friendly.
"No, it's fine." Peggy hisses through her teeth. "Places like school give me migraines when I get home. I don't even know why. Am I slurring?"
"No, you sound fine. Maybe it's all the loud- never mind." I keep forgetting.
She laughs, dryly. "It's fine, I'm not bitter about it."
"Really?"
"Nope." A small smile flitters across her face. "To be honest, I kindalikit." She slurs this time, on the last few syllables.
"You're tired," I say. To be honest, so am I.
"And I thought I-hus-hah-a-hunishun-or something," she says through a yawn.
I yawn too: They're contagious. I'm pretty tired too, actually."
Peggy pulls her eyes away from her screen. "With good reason. It's almost midnight."
"Well, then.I flutter my fingers in a wave. "Bon huit, mon amie."
The corners of her eyes crinkle as she gives me a tired smile and finger-flutters back.
FaceTime fin.
11:58 p.m. EST.
Exhaustion
pretends to
hold you.
It caresses
your
eyelids
numbs your
lips
kisses your
fingers
and
toes
tiptoes along your
muscles
Until you're too subdued to fight.
Then
you
let
go.
