DODGING THE BULLET
A TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND STORY
A/N: Once again, this is partly to do with the dream. If you don't like the dream don't read this chapter. More angel/devil fights I warn you. LOL. This chapter might be slightly better, slightly worst, than last. Depends on how you look at it.
Songs for today (you don't really have to listen, but search up the lyrics…):
- Things I'll Never Say, by Avril Lavigne
The words fit so perfectly to the song.
No actual dialogue this time. Sorry. But thoughts…oh, there will be thoughts. (insert cackle here)
Next chapter there will be some dialogue, still some mature dreams and thoughts. Please enjoy bunnyboo, as I read you enjoy these kinds of stories. I'm sort of weirded out with myself. Like how did I even know this much about it? Oh, yeah, the 'talk' in health class. Thanks Coach Kelly. And a little help from the author of Fortuitous. (So sorry if I got your name wrong, really! You're an awesome writer. Continue with Fortuitous! I will die if I do not get an update! Usually I post as soon as I'm done with a chapter, but I guess we're all different. And thanks for saying I have a great mind…but really, you have no idea…hehe.)
Any ideas? Please either PM me or review.
Anyway, this is the part where it starts drifting a little from the Twilight plot, but the end (okay, if you don't want to know, don't read this), where Edward takes Bella to prom, shall remain the same. I gave you that huge hint last time with the Charlatan ballroom.
CHICAGO718
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CHAPTER NINE: DISTURBIA
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Courtney lay in the dark, tortured. Her mind was running too fast to focus on any thing, but she could still sense what her thoughts were zeroed in on. She was too scared to sleep, afraid of slipping into that passion-filled dream (or nightmare, however you wanted to look at it) world. Her lids were heavy with drowsiness, as if her top and bottom eyelids were magnetic and attracting each other. But she wouldn't be weak and sink into unconsciousness. All she had to do keep herself awake was to think of the consequences that would occur if she actually fell asleep. The touching, the feeling…self explanatory. And her eyes would pop wide open, she would take deep breaths, and readjust herself for the least desirable sleep position.
Eventually, she was forced to sit straight up so as not to fall asleep. She checked her clock, the red numbers flashing in the darkness.
Red.
Color of lust, passion…
Oh, Jesus, must everything remind her of everything?
Anyway, it was eleven-thirty. Most teens would think this was early, but she was usually sleepy around ten, so this was complete torture. She took a firm grasp on top and bottom lids and held them open, resting her elbows on her knees, which were in cross-legged position.
She absolutely…couldn't do this any longer…she was so sleepy…her brain was mingled, unclear…her trains of thought were being cut off…
She leaned back into her pillow and fell into, possibly, the deepest sleep of her life. And the most disturbed one as well. If she could help it, she would have definitely have bolted upright by then.
The acute sensation of someone against her neck, bodies intertwined, sheets tangled around then, the heat of an oppressive summer day, even if the room was fairly cold…and gosh, the pleasure racking through her body was unattainable any other way…no way, he had a tongue ring…the unbearable want, need, desire…
"No!" she screamed, jolting upright abruptly. "Stop haunting my dreams!"
She looked around. Daylight was now streaming through the white curtains. She was trembling uncontrollably. She sat up on her elbows, though they were slippery with perspiration. She glanced at the clock, six thirty.
Oh my freaking…oh gosh…not twice in a row…
"Oh, shit," she groaned. "Not again."
She grumbled, standing. Surprisingly, she was shaky on her feet, like a newborn baby deer. Her feet were shaking on the carpet, her knees knocking together. Her ankles suddenly buckled, and she landed in a pile at her own feet of trembling limbs and panicky thoughts.
No, no, no…she begged herself silently, almost crying. Why me? I'm so inexperienced. I shouldn't even know about the things I'm dreaming about. Help me.
You don't need help. Let him, the devil hummed.
No way, you want one of those screwed families whose daughter's pregnant at sixteen? the angel scolded.
What does she want? Have you ever thought that the dreams are a sort of portal where all her deepest desires are sent? the devil cackled.
She's too young, the angel reminded.
If she really didn't like him then she wouldn't be having these dreams, would she, the devil finalized.
The angel was silent, for lack of a response.
She opened the window and stuck her head out. Luckily her mom's car wasn't gone yet. The air was hot, muggy, humid. She was instantly reminded of her consistent nightmare.
Here's what I do, she thought.
She yanked out a mint green button-up shirt, sealing every button up to her neck, rolling down the sleeves all the way to her wrists, tugging the tails way down her legs. She found her longest pair of jeans, which coincidentally were also the tightest. Nonetheless, she pulled them on, tugging on the waist and thigh seams until a few popped, zipping and buttoning, and pulled down the ankles till they reached mid-foot.
Her mom put down her black, steaming coffee as Courtney walked into the kitchen. "Gee honey, I understand boys in high school are run by their hormones, but do you have to go that far?"
Courtney glared and yanked the wrist of her shirt further down her arm. "Mom, I don't want to take any chances."
"Hey, that reminds me," her mother piped up. "How'd you get to school yesterday? I know I forgot to drive you."
"Um, Bridge drove me," Courtney lied hastily. "She, uh, was…passing…by?"
Her mom nodded sagely. "She really is responsible. Not one of those types. You heard on the news I'm sure, those teen celebrities getting pregnant at your age…silly girls, if you ask me. I'm glad you and your friends aren't like that."
You don't know half of it, Courtney growled inside her head.
"Mom, I'll call Bridge, you don't have to drive me. I don't want you to be late," Courtney said, taking her cell phone out of her pocket and dialing Bridgette on speed dial.
"Thanks, honey." Her mom poured the rest of the coffee into the sink, put in some cinnamon gum, kissed Courtney's forehead, and left.
Bridgette picked up on the second ring. "Court?"
"Yeah, hey Bridgette. I need a favor. Give me a ride?" Courtney asked hopefully.
Bridgette sighed. "Sure. But I need something in return."
Courtney arched an eyebrow, though she knew Bridgette couldn't see. "Dare I ask?"
She giggled. "Well, promise to go to the Charlatan with us for prom! It'll be no fun with just me and Gwen and Trent and Geoff."
"I don't dance, Bee," Courtney sighed, referring to Bridgette's kindergarten nickname that she had revealed to Courtney on the second day of school.
"Don't call me that. Besides, you don't have to dance at prom. You can…I don't know, drink punch and talk and stuff."
Courtney blew up her bangs. "Fine. Whatever. I'll go. I don't have a dress, though."
Bridgette's grin was nearly visible even through the phone lines. "I have one for you. My aunt got it for me, she's like, Goth. It should fit you, you're skinnier, and it was tight on me. Besides, Duncan would like it."
A steely dragon breathed fire in her chest, releasing pent-up longing. Courtney clutched her shirt.
"Gee, thanks, Bridgette." She worked to keep her voice steady, calm, nonchalant.
"No problem. You should come over after school, you could try it."
"Whatever. Just pick me up, we're going to be late."
"Be there in five. Gotta jet!" Bridgette said excitedly, hanging up.
So 'jet' wouldn't be cool if Courtney said it, but it still sounded very surfer when Bridgette used it. Courtney picked up her backpack and went outside a few minutes later to meet Bridgette's Prius.
School was insane, crazy, hectic, but only in her mind. Everyone else, it was an ordinary day. Courtney was going mentally off the edge. Graphic, ecstasy-filled thoughts were flooding her head without warning with the simple, ordinary word of 'Duncan', 'prom', 'sleep', 'bed', 'heat'.
"Courtney, are you okay?" Bridgette asked concernedly at the end of the day as they walked out of school to meet her blue Prius.
Of course, she wasn't okay. And if she kept having those nightmares she might never be so again. She had seen Duncan in the hallway on the way out. Even though he just waved casually, her heart thumped in her chest and a vivid image wound its way through her ears and sat itself comfy in her brain, ready to stay for the long run.
"Court!"
Courtney blinked rapidly. "Sorry. No, I'm fine."
"Good, cause we're halfway there."
With a jolt of realization, she realized she had autopiloted herself to the front seat while thinking about her night.
"I had to push you into the car!"
Or not.
"No, no, Bee, I'm fine, I'm just really sleepy." She yawned to accentuate her point.
"I never should have told you that nickname," Bridgette remarked bitterly, pulling into her house.
Her house was sea-themed, painted a very ocean blue with a white frame and white doors and windows. The plaque above the front door read 'Don't Be Crabby' with a small wooden crab frowning and snapping its claws. The garden's supposed soil was white, crystallized sand with small gray stones. The driveway was evenly paved with short green palm trees. A mural done in blue and green flowers was on both sides of the front lawn, separated by the pathway. The flowers were shaped into a circle to represent Earth. Courtney grinned slightly. It was so…Bridgette. Down to earth.
Bridgette led Courtney up to her room, which was painted the same color of the house in a lighter shade. The bottom of her walls were painted in white wave shapes, a white silhouette of a lighthouse on the left wall, and a white silhouetted sun, which was a circle in the upper left hand corner of her rightmost wall. The ceiling had a small window where some wispy white clouds and blue sky were within view. Courtney thought of an escape hatch.
As soon as Courtney's attention switched to Bridgette's various-blue striped bedspread she immediately pictured them tangled up, and the sound of panting, and moaning. She swallowed so hard that it hurt.
"Anderson!" Bridgette barked in a remarkable impression of Coach Page. Courtney jumped. "You're in some other fantasy world."
"Just show me the dress," Courtney said in a nearly-pleading voice. She needed a distraction.
Bridgette dug through her closet, emerging with a black piece of silky material that had been folded up.
It was covered in plastic like it had come back from the dry-cleaners. Bridgette slipped off the layer of plastic and unfolded the dress on the bed.
It wasn't her style, that's for sure. It was black, with a neckline that dipped slightly and hung off the shoulders in a ruffled fashion. Pieces of black crinoline crinkled beneath the skirt of the dress. The back of the garment was supposed to be laced up with black ribbon, and it already was, sealed in a neat bow. A few nearly-invisible seams separated the heart-shaped chest from the skirt. If she held it up against herself she could tell it would come a bit before the knee.
"Ah, and the shoes," Bridgette piped up, diving into her closet once more and returning with a pair of black shoes laced up to the ankle in a similar way to the back of the dress, with heels a ridiculous size.
"That's way too…ah…I don't know, revealing, for me," Courtney complained, choking on the word revealing.
"It's sexy. You need more of that. If you don't wear this, what will you wear, your prairie corduroy dress from third grade?" Bridgette said skeptically, though in a good-natured way. "Besides, it's no more revealing than mine."
She returned with a sky blue dress, same size as Courtney's, with spaghetti straps and a thick white ribbon winding around her torso.
"But you look good," Courtney said. "I'll look like some sort of…Gwen. Not that Gwen's bad, but this look would befit her. It's like the wolf wearing a sheep suit, only this is a prudish girl dressed up like some sort of Gothic girl who actually likes to show herself."
"You are what you wear, heard of that?" Bridgette reminded.
"So if I wore a chicken suit would I be a chicken?" Courtney exampled.
"So that's one exception, big deal. You'll look great." Bridgette coached her into the black dress, egging her on little by little.
Courtney stood in front of the mirror, eyes shut.
"Open your eyes. You look great."
She did cautiously. The reflection of the bed was behind her. She refused to think about it.
What she saw was a seemingly pale girl with bloodless lips, but that only matched up with the lack of color of the rest of her skin. The dress showed her curves and hid some as well, the bow in the back was revealing but not in a drastic way. The heart-shaped bodice of the dress gave her normally formless body shape. Her collarbones were apparent on the inside of her shoulders, but not anorexic in any style. In a style that showed she was thin but didn't starve herself. Her ankles looked evenly balanced and skinny; the shoes fit her and didn't hurt when she walked. She looked pretty, and Gothic, which was something she wasn't used to.
The thing was she was normally very tanned, which was good for the whole Cali lifestyle. But with the dress she would have looked ugly. But somehow that deep shade of midnight black in contrast with her normally dark skin caused her to looked radiant, glowing, and pale. How that added up she didn't know. How could this elegant, yet still appealing girl in the mirror be the same person which such dirty thoughts this morning, waking up in a pool of her own sweat, dreaming about having it? It didn't make sense.
Bridgette joined her in the mirror. She was surprised that Bridgette even looked slightly awkward in her dress compared to Courtney.
"That dress was made for you," Bridgette gushed.
"Uh…" Courtney couldn't even think of a sufficiently bitter response.
"Here, keep it, seriously. You look so much greater than me."
"Gee, thanks," Courtney managed to sputter. "Drive me home?"
Bridgette crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "Go to prom?"
Courtney bit her lip. "Fine. But only if you help me."
"Then I will drive you." Bridgette drove Courtney home and dropped her off with a cool 'See you tomorrow!". As if she had no care in the world. Why couldn't Courtney be like that?
Courtney quickly hung the plastic-wrapped dress in her closet and started running the shower. She needed one. Not because she hadn't taken one in a while, but because she needed to ease her thoughts, which were running a mile a minute.
She undressed and hopped in, staring at the shower wall as it accumulated drops of water. Steam rose from the floor to the ceiling. The even, rhythmic pattern of beads of water hitting her bare back was comforting, easing the tension away, unraveling her knotted muscles, washing stress away through the drain.
She soaped her hands up and started washing. But suddenly her hands weren't really her hands, they were Duncan's, all over her bare body. How was that for hallucinations? The so called 'hands' caressing her naked self was almost enough for Courtney to moan, but she knew, even through her dizzy thoughts, that it was only her and her awful imagination.
She let her hands drop to her sides, and with a little groan, half-pleasure, half-pain, she leaned her head against the dripping shower wall, feeling the water slide down and slip through the space between the wall and her forehead. She wanted to die. She wanted to pass out. She wanted to be far away from horrid California and move back to Jameswood where certainly no boys would take this kind of toll on her. But it was impossible. Her mother liked it here. And Jameswood was all the way in Minnesota. There was no way in hell she could move back there.
She pushed the glass knob and the water issuing from the shower head slowly trickled down to a few steady drops pattering against the tiled floor.
She pressed her entire body against the glass shower door, and it gave way, delivering her to the floor an unclothed, crumpled heap of nerves and skin.
Yanking a towel from the hook, she wrapped herself in soft fluffiness and covered her clothes-less body so that she could dress in peace, without any disturbing thought about…shit …Duncan…or anyone else, for that matter.
She couldn't fathom it. Surely there had been other good-looking boys at Jameswood, but none of them had even made her feel so alone, so adult, so mature, so disgusted.
A/N: I surprisingly really liked this chapter. And I wrote it in about twenty minutes. How's that for amazing? I wrote 2,000+ words in twenty minutes. Gosh I really love myself…
Just kidding. Thank you again (I'm going to attempt this, here) Shinjuri Koroko. Sorry if I got it wrong! I mean it! I love Fortuitous, it's a big inspiration.
Admittedly I was a bit surprised when you addressed me, and I quote, "DUDE!!" partly because you sound so sophisticated and smart in Fortuitous. But I have my writing side and social side as well.
Love you guys!