It turned out that our newest edition was a fourteen year old runaway named Claire, she too, was French like Alexander and she seemed to cling to him like a safety blanket. Which I found a little odd since he was the one who brought her here in the first place.
"So, her talent is the violin?" I asked Tripp the next afternoon as we sat in the kitchen, I was at the moment, scarfing down a big bowl of soup, I wasn't exactly sure what kind I never checked. All I knew was that it was tomatoey. I wasn't wearing my costume dress, for some odd reason it wasn't even where I had left it yesterday. I was now comfortably and happily wearing a giant neon purple sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with giant gaping holes in the knees.
"Mhm." Tripp replied, concentrating fully on his steaming hot cup of coffee, apparently vampires ate real food too.
"But, her violin busted when it hit the ground yesterday, no way will that thing still play." Now there's another thing, by now, everyone knew that I was n the park with Alex and Claire last night/ Alex had known I was there the whole time, but he pretended he didn't know just to humor me, trust me, I was not amused.
"We're getting her a new one, nicer than that old thing she had." I thought about retaliating to that, but after running into the snow and making him fix my leg last night I decided he probably had about enough arguing from me for a while, so I filled my mouth with food before it had the chance to say anything stupid. That was when Alex, followed by Claire, came into the kitchen. They were quietly speaking in French as he motioned to the fridge and cupboards. I guessed that he was trying to get her to eat something.
"Non." She kept replying, shaking her head. She was seriously in terrible shape. She had long brown hair that was so tangled and knotted and covered with leaves that she would have to cut most of it off to actually run a brush through it. She had bruised knees and elbows that probably came from living on the streets, and her once fine red dress was now an almost brown color and one sleeve was missing completely.
What she needed was a girls help.
I left my almost finished soup and bent down to her, since she was no more than five feet tall.
"Would you like to stay with me today?" I smiled, her face looked uncertain, though I couldn't see her eyes to well behind the hair curtain. She looked up at Alex for permission and he nodded at her. Claire then promptly detached from his arm and immediately attached to mine, looking down at her feet. I steered her out the door and back into the hallway towards my room, where, for once during my stay here, I actually hoped Candi would bet there.
Of course she wasn't.
Sighing, I pried Claire from my arm and sat her onto my bed. I then fished through my drawers to find her something to wear that didn't look like it had come from a dumpster.
"Here" I said, finally finding another giant sweatshirt and a pair or grey PJ pants. "That should be warmer than what you have on." Claire nodded and changed into the comfier clothes, they were way too long on her mere five foot body compared to my five feet five inches.
"Thank you." She said, smiling for the first time since I had seen her. Now to the hard part, her hair was nothing less than a catastrophe; I had my work cut out for me. I tried pulling a brush through it and it wouldn't even consider going past her chin.
"Uh, Claire?" I asked as I tried one more time to detangle her rat's nest of hair.
"Yes?"
"We're gonna have to cut this." Claire nodded slowly.
"If you think it is for the best." I smiled apologetically and started shuffling through Candi's drawers, finally finding a pair of scissors. I jumped back onto my bed and readied the scissors.
"Ready?" I asked, holding all of her hair in one hand and readying the scissors in the other.
"Ready." And then…
"WAIT!"
"What!" snip.
"Oh my god, damn it Sarah!" Candi was at the door, one hand out stretched at me and an expression of sheer horror on her overly done face.
"What!" I yelled back at her.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I finally noticed the blob of hair in my left hand and quickly hid it behind me back, about a minute to late to actually still be effective.
"Nothing'" Candi made a face at me.
"You could have fixed those knots with conditioner you idiot." She hurried over to us like a flustered hen to examine my damage to Claire's head.
"He he…oops." "Psh! Yeah oops! God." Claire's hair was now at chin level, completely ruined because I couldn't come up with a better solution then to just get rid of the problematic hair, well, think on the bright side, the knots were gone! But Claire just sat there silently, a tiny smile playing on her lips. She apparently didn't care very much that I had just chopped off most of her hair.
Candi held out her hand
"Give me the scissors" She sighed, not even looking at me, reluctantly and with a very sour expression, I handed them over.
And her hands were flying. How she could possibly cut that fast and not kill Claire in the process I will never know. But after thirty minutes of high speed scissor movements as I sat and read it was done.
"That looks great!" I cried as I ran my fingers through Claire's hair. Now it was no longer than three inches long at most, just long enough to hang in her brown eyes.
"Thank you." Claire murmured, starting to stand up. Candi pushed her back down by the shoulders.
"Hold on new girl, you are not leaving just yet." Then Candi put her through the makeup make-over, which took another thirty minutes from our lives. Then we were able to high tail it out of there.
"I feel odd." She said after we were well out of earshot.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I do not feel like me, I feel, different. l'obtenez-vous? Like I could do anything?"
"Well, I have no idea what obtene-whatever means, but that feeling is called confidence. Something that a lot of people don't have a lot of." Wow, that was philosophical.
Then I was pulled into a rib crushing bear hug.
"Sarah! How are ya kid!"
"I'm good Joe but can I breathe please!" I wheezed.
"oh, sorry." Ahhh…sweet air! Then I realized Claire was cowering against the wall, completely clueless to what was going on.
"Oh, Joe…" I pushed her forward. "This is Claire."
"Hiya Claire! You sure are a tiny thing." He then proceeded to laugh invigoroulsy…and by invigorously I mean ear-bustlingly loud. Claire cringed back against the wall and looked like she wanted to dig a hole to bury herself in.
"Joe!" I whispered cautiously, showing him he had to be a little bit quieter around Claire.
"Oh, I get it Sarah baby, now sweetie would you like a tattoo?" okay, sweetie and tattoo did not go well together in the same sentence.
"No way Joe, she's only like what…twelve?"
"Fourteen."
"Fourteen? Fourteen, Joe. I don't care about tradition." I went to push him the other way down the hall but he was a giant human rock.
"Aw come on girl, nobody can turn on tradition." He then promptly hoisted Claire onto one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Claire squeaked like a cornered kitten.
"Help me!" She pleaded at me, her little hand grasping empty air.
"Joe! Put the girl down! What did she ever do to deserve this?" I moaned. When it came to stubbornness, he was as bad as any vampire. He carried her to his and Alex's room and sat Claire gently down in his chair of death. He put is weight on the arm chairs and got really close to her very frightened face.
"So Claire, question of the day what'll it be!" I slumped in the doorway and propped my head in my hand.
"Come on Joe, she's scared shitless, leave her alone."
"I would like a dragonfly, on my collar bone please." Wait, what?
"You got it girl, now, what colors?" He pulled out a big chart of different shades of every color in the rainbow. By then I was already up next to them and I saw her pick some shades of purple and lavender and a few different turquoise blues. She pulled down her shirt collar to uncover her collarbone and I held her hand as he started up the needle gun, I was surprised by how well she took the pain. I mean, I didn't scream out loud but I definitely cringed and tried not to punch someone, but Claire's face was a straight faced mask, no emotion what so ever. I wondered if the streets had made her so tough.
It didn't take him very long to finish the design, around an hour later she was looking at eth beautiful iridescent looking dragonfly through a hand mirror.
"Claire…it's amazing." I breathed. "I didn't know you could do stuff like that Joe, did you go to art school or something?"
"No, I just always liked drawin' and this seemed like a good way to make people happy." He chuckled as he tapped a bandage over the delicate insect so it wouldn't bleed.
"Merci Joe, you are not the monster giant I thought you would be. I hope to see you again." Joe frowned then smiled at her, rustling her hair with his hand.
"I'm not sure whether that was a compliment or an insult but thanks either way sweetie."
"Well now that the love has been thoroughly spread to the point of wanting to puke, we should now head out." I grabbed Claire's hand and pulled her towards the hallway where I almost ran into Tripp standing in the doorframe.
"Oh! I was just looking for you guys." He stated, taken aback a little. "I want to show you something Claire." He beckoned with his fingers for us to follow him down the very empty hallway. We followed about three steps behind him until we reached an open bedroom door. Tara was sitting on the far bed, drawing something in a notebook with a charcoal pencil. When we reached the doorframe she physically tensed and her head whipped around to face us, a look of fear clearly visible on her face, then it quickly turned to anger when she met Tripp's gaze.
"Oh, then I'm leaving." She clapped the book shut sharply and walked briskly out the door, giving me a small smile on her way out. Maybe she wasn't as hopeless as she appeared to be. Tripp didn't show an inch of recognition towards her when he stepped through the doorframe and into the half occupied room. The other bed was unmade like mine had been when I first came to the Gothic Fusion, a light blue dress laid over a wicker chair in the corner I couldn't see the way it laid very well, but the bottom was cut at an angle the bottom at the knee. The sleeves looked gathered and they were a darker blue. Tripp pulled a black case from behind the door and laid it carefully on the bed. I could tell by the shape that it was a violin case; Claire took in a gasp of air.
"Go ahead and open it." He told her, stepping back from it. She then moved forward into his place, she unclipped the case, hands shaking slightly. I could immediately see the lavender purple velvet lining.
"Oh! Tres belle!" She exclaimed as she pulled out the beautiful violin. It was made of a light colored wood, like cedar or a white oak; a marsh scene was wood burned into the side of the instrument. I could see cattails playing in the wind and dragonflies hovering through the reeds. I glanced at Claire and I saw silent tears falling down her face, but her expression was still very solemn. She pulled the bow out and tightened the horsehair on it.
"Is it tuned?" She asked Tripp. He had a small, glowing smile on his face as he started to back up towards the door.
"Ready to play when you are." He replied, leaving the room. She plucked the strings first, then ran the bow smoothly against them, I didn't know the tune, but I knew that it was something that meant a lot to her, as she played she closed her eyes and a serene look replaced the solemn expression. I could feel the emotions flowing through the song, so I laid face up on the bed and closed my own eyes, and instead of seeing blackness, I followed the path of a bright turquoise damsel fly as it flew through cattails dancing in the wind.