Author's Notes: Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter, and especially to those who reviewed. I really appreciate the encouragement!
I didn't translate the French in this chapter because I think in-line translations look clunky, and it's annoying to go back and forth if they're included at the very end of the chapter. But it's all really elementary stuff and easy to figure out the gist of what's being said.
"Oh, good," said Margaret, studying Morticia's class schedule. "Our first three classes are the same. That will make things easier."
The hallways were quiet and empty, Morticia's need for books from the library having necessitated their tardiness to first period, which was French. Morticia could already speak it, of course - truth be told, there were very few languages native to the European continent with which she was not at least passably adept - but she'd wanted an easy year, and most of the classes she'd signed up for were ones with which she was already familiar. Her instruction thus far had been happenstance, her knowledge and skills a collection of her travels and the myriad people of myriad backgrounds to whom she had been exposed, but aside from formal mathematics (which, thankfully, she was permitted to bypass in favor of a basic bookkeeping course), she felt she had a comfortable grasp on anything the American education system might see fit to throw her way.
And so, after a quick stop back at the dormitory to drop off the texts she wouldn't need until after lunch, she found herself being led by Margaret to room 101, where Sister Lilith La Voison was holding court - or at least, so it appeared to Morticia: the woman's hair was piled high and powdered à la Marie Antoinette, and her habit had been sewn in the style of a sack-back gown.
Margaret took her seat, and Morticia was invited to take one of the free desks in the back - after she introduced herself to the class.
"En français, naturellement," Sister La Voison said with an amiable smile.
Morticia surveyed her new classmates, whose expressions ran the gamut between expectantly curious and already bored. She straightened her posture and tried to think of them as carnival-goers, and she the bally, building the tip.
"Bonjour, je m'appelle Morticia Frump. Je suis seize ans. Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai quitté l'Europe et déménagé à New York, et...maintenant, je suis ici." She shrugged. "Voilà."
Sister La Voison nodded in approval. "Merci. Classe, avez-vous des questions pour Morticia?"
An olive-skinned boy with a pencil mustache raised his hand, and Morticia felt the heat rise in her cheeks. He was extremely handsome.
"Oui?" said Sister La Voison. "Gomez?"
"La toilette?" he asked, although he appeared to be addressing his desk, posing the query without lifting his eyes.
Sister La Voison rolled hers, and waved him away. He left the classroom without so much as a glance in Morticia's direction, and she lowered her gaze to hide her disappointment.
"Quelqu'un d'autre?"
Another hand flew up. This boy could have been the other one's slightly less attractive brother - the absence of a mustache made him appear a good deal younger, and his complexion was ruddier. In fact, he looked as if he was blushing furiously.
"Si ce n'est pas indiscret..." he began, and Morticia braced herself, "...est-ce que tu as un petit ami?"
Their classmates snickered, save Margaret, who pursed her lips, unimpressed.
Intrigued, Morticia studied him coolly for a few moments before she admitted, "Non."
The impertinent boy smiled. His neighbor scuffed his shoulder with a fist, and another howled a low wolf-whistle.
Gomez breathed, deeply and slowly, and tried to get a grip on himself. He was bent double over one of the bathroom sinks, his fingers white-knuckled where he gripped the cool porcelain as the victim of a shipwreck clings to a piece of floating debris. That girl, oh, Lucifer's lungs, that girl!
Desperately, he twisted on the cold tap and vigorously splashed his face.
The effect was negligible.
What the devil was wrong with him? No female had ever had this effect on him before. Not even when entertaining two at once had his heart beat half as hard. But seeing her enter the room behind that peculiar little Margaret Womack...
Balthazar hadn't been exaggerating about her legs: they were so long that the red and gray hem of her plaid school skirt scarcely grazed the middle of her slim thighs, which were shrouded in stockings of black wool like the smoked glass stems of champagne flutes. A glossy black braid snaked down the scarlet back of her blazer like a scorpion's tail, and climbed up to a marble-white face so exquisitely chiseled, Gomez wouldn't have been surprised if an art thief had once tried to steal her. Even her name, Morticia, Morticia, Morticia, like a moan with a whisper in the middle and a gasp at the end...
He dried his face and hands and leaned back against the wall. He lit a kretek, and alternately smoked with his left hand and chewed pensively on the thumbnail of his right.
Her beauty had struck him like a physical blow, but it hadn't been until she'd opened her decadently red mouth that she'd mesmerized him utterly. That low, smoky voice. The way her tongue seemed to gently cradle every softly rhotic R, and her lips press off every M in a kiss. It had taken every ounce of his self-restraint not to leap up from his chair and press kisses of his own to her gracefully folded fingers, as a knave supplicates himself before a queen. Her every word had woven a spell that tangled around and bit into his heart like barbed wire.
Devil take him, Gomez Addams was in love: abruptly, absurdly, excruciatingly in love.
But what was he to do about it?
Suddenly, the door to the restroom swung open with a hideous shriek of neglected hinges that heralded Balthazar's appearance.
"Gomez?" he asked. "Are you all right? You've been gone nearly twenty minutes; Sister La Voison sent me to check on you."
"Yes, I'm fine," Gomez assured him. It sounded weak even to his own ears, and he cleared his throat and tossed the remnants of his kretek into one of the toilet bowls, where it fizzled out like an overtaxed nerve.
Balthazar looked understandably skeptical. "Are you sure? You don't look so well. Sort of clammy and pale."
Gomez managed a strained smirk. "Flattery will get you nowhere," he joked.
Balthazar smiled. "Perhaps not with you, but I think it might be working on Morticia."
Gomez felt as though someone had just kicked him in the stomach. "Oh?"
"Oh," Balthazar echoed. "Not that I've had the chance to really talk to her yet, but we've been passing a note back and forth the whole period. Look." He dug a square of paper out of his back pocket and unfolded it for Gomez to read.
You're gorgeous, it began, in Balthazar's flowing Spencerian script.
Thank you, returned Morticia, in a charmingly rustic Copperplate that was equal parts traditional and uncontrived. And you are...?
Balthazar Addams. How do you like America so far?
It could be worse. But one can't have everything.
I think if a fellow had you, he wouldn't need anything else.
You're very sweet.
So I've been told.
And very presumptuous. You don't even know me.
Rereading the note over Gomez's shoulder, Balthazar was nearly vibrating with excitement and anticipation.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "What should I write next?"
Gomez shook his head and passed the paper back to his cousin. "It's your funeral, old man. Write your own eulogies."
"Oh, come on! Please? You're so much better at this than I am!"
A buzzing noise began to cloud Gomez's thoughts. "Look, Baz, I don't think..."
"What?"
Little red hornets of despair and unspeakable frustration swarmed at a fever pitch between his ears. Gomez closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
"Listen, I lied, I'm really not feeling well." And indeed, the thought of playing Cyrano to Balthazar's Christian in this instance did make Gomez sick - a thorough and dizzying nausea. "Maybe something I ate at breakfast. Tell La Voison I've gone to the nurse."
Balthazar's brow furrowed in concern. "Of course," he said, and Gomez left before he could say anything more.
After French, Margaret hastened Morticia out of the classroom, claiming they had to be quick: second period Accounting was all the way on the other side of the school.
Balthazar, packing up both his things and the ill Gomez's, smiled and waved goodbye to her as she left.
"Ignore him," said Margaret, drawing her away by the elbow.
Morticia frowned, nonplussed. It wasn't in her nature to be rude without cause. "Whatever for? He's been very welcoming."
"Yes, and I'm sure he won't be the only one, but he's an Addams, and trust me, you want nothing to do with any of them."
"Why? What's wrong with them? And how many of them are there?" Now that she thought about it, the surname sounded vaguely familiar...
"Three, all cousins - Balthazar, Gomez, and Itt - and collectively they're the reason why there's always somebody crying in the girls' bathroom between classes." Margaret looked away and muttered, with grudging bitterness, "I speak from personal experience."
"Oh, you poor thing," Morticia murmured, her lips a condolent moue.
Margaret blew out a breath through her nose, and shook her head as if to shake off the hurt. "They're lotharios, all of them. It's genetic and untreatable. And besides-"
The door to the registration office opened in front of them, cutting Margaret off and causing her to startle back before injury could be added to insult.
Morticia, too, stopped short at the sight of who had nearly knocked them over. Speak of the devil...
"Excuse me, I..." Gomez Addams trailed off and seemed to pale when he met her eyes.
His own were heavy-lidded, wide and dark, so dark they were almost black. Morticia felt a strange fluttering sensation in her stomach, as though she were falling. She could even feel herself beginning to tip forward - into those eyes, into his arms - when she was suddenly snatched from her reverie by a shrill, sing-song voice.
"Gomez, my sweet chuck!"
A blur of blonde curls, daisies, and scarlet wool adhered itself to Gomez's side, rose up on its toes and pulled his head down for an ostentatiously open-mouthed kiss.
Whatever had been fluttering in Morticia's stomach was crushed to stillness by the sudden descent of her sinking heart.
Ophelia.
Of course he belonged to Ophelia.
Addams. Morticia could place the name now - a brief missive from Aunt Hester to Mama a little over a month ago, tucked with self-satisfied nonchalance somewhere between funerary and travel arrangements: It won't be formally announced until Ophelia's eighteenth birthday next June, but the Addamses have agreed to the match, and the boy himself is amenable.
Finally, they detached mouths, and Ophelia turned to Morticia, beaming.
"And I see you found my baby cousin even before I did!" she exclaimed, and Morticia froze as she was seized without warning in an overzealous embrace. "Oh, Tishie, it's been too long!" Ophelia squealed in her ear. "I was so sorry to hear about Uncle Thenardier! How's Aunt Esme? How are you?"
"Hello, Fifi." At a loss, Morticia responded in order, "It's been a long time, yes; thank you; she's...managing; and-"
"Late for class," Margaret interrupted, and Morticia shot her a grateful look.
"Hmm?" Ophelia pulled back. "Oh! Oh, yes yes yes, of course, we can't have you making a bad impression on your first day. What do you have next?"
"Accountancy."
"Oh, boo! I have Drama."
"You can say that again..." Margaret muttered under her breath.
Morticia bit down on the tip of her tongue to keep from laughing, and smiled at her cousin. "We'll catch up later, I promise."
"Absolutely! You must sit with us at lunch, at the fountain in the courtyard."
Morticia risked a glance at Gomez and felt her heart quicken, even though he himself seemed engrossed in something on the floor and to his right. "If Margaret may join us as well," she heard herself say.
Ophelia blinked owlishly, and seemed to register Margaret standing directly in front of her for the very first time. "O-oh. Sure. Of course."
"Oh, no," Margaret begged off. "Thank you, but I've got homework I need to finish up before fifth period."
"No, it's fine!" Ophelia insisted. "You're more than welcome."
"Really, I can't. Um. Maybe tomorrow."
"Okay, well." Ophelia shrugged, smiling, and began to lead her fiancé away by the arm. "Suit yourself. I'll see you later, Tishie!"
"Oui, salut," Morticia absently returned.
Gomez's head twisted around, a queer expression on his handsome face, and for a fleeting moment, Morticia thought he intended to call out to her, to wrench his arm out of Ophelia's grasp and run back to her.
He didn't, of course.
The boy himself is amenable...
"Fifi?" Margaret asked as they once again hastened to class. "Tishie?"
"Oh, be quiet. Maggie."
"Ugh, don't you dare!"
Morticia smirked.