Sometimes, she just can't bring herself to believe the gall of those humans.
Their obsession with knowing everything and anything there is to know about a person is positively revolting. It makes her sick; she wants to throw up or at least projectile vomit on somebody semi-important, just to make a point, even if said point was most likely going to be misconstrued as bulimia. Oh well. Some things, you just couldn't help, and the inevitable conspiracy theorist-fangirls were quite a large factor. For the third time that day, she ripped down one of the ever-popular posters on the wall, fuming all the while, and hoping to whatever gods there happened to be listening on Olympus that someone would have the good sense to smite a bitch. No time like the present, after all.
Ruggedly handsome football hottie Christian McCallister, spotted with prima donna Charlotte Edessa!
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For starters, the article (which was really just one or two paragraphs of background, and then half a page of snooping around and speculation, and then another two-page spread of photographs and terribly-photoshopped images that seemed to be the forte of tabloid writers everywhere) didn't even constitute anything that was even remotely significant. Charlotte was, as everybody already knew, just a girl. A theatre dork, actually, with no claim to fame other than the leading female role in the play that hadn't even been put on yet. She got the sinking feeling that one of the PR people had put on such a stunt, but at the moment, she was really far too aggravated to care. Well, aggravated, really, and in the middle of navigating a veritable minefield. Half (if not all) the reason why there'd been a two page spread about Christian (and a few pictures of her, as well) was because of the fangirls.
To be completely, utterly, and brutally honest, Charlotte did not give a damn about the whole fiasco. In fact, when she goes to rehearsal later that afternoon, she ignores the wolf-whistles and the damn, girl!s with queenly grace that soon sets her admirers to shame. She's good at that, the ignoring, and the complete snow queen act, because very seldom do things actually get to her. They only annoy her, like flies on a horse's back, that get flicked away by a swishing tail, but she can't stand some things. The invasion of privacy, for instance. How the hell did some snot-nosed idiot manage to get close enough to her house to photograph her, for instance? She feels out of place, a violet in a desert, and she feels targeted.
She wants to flee, to run, and to never show her face again in this dreary little Florida town where the average age is something near sixty. She can't stand the fact that, with a couple clicks of the shutter, people have come dangerously close to finding her out for who she really is: a sensitive, sentient being with actual emotion. So instead of going up to people and demanding what the hell their problem is, she snarls, her sounds feral in the quaintly civilized town, drawing a couple of stares. She knows that they're all wondering how the hell some random theatre girl managed to hook up with a football player of Christian's caliber, he who could have any girl in the school.
There's a simple enough answer: they're not hooked up.
Duh.
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And, of course, to set the record straight, none of the pictures that they have of her are actually any that she would've actually ever posed for. Dear God, no. Hells to the freaking no. Actually, taken out of context, she thinks that none of these pictures actually mean anything, because they're scattered images. What those people are so frantically trying to dig around for, the whole, can't exist in such fragmented pieces. Which is what she tells herself, because Franz always told her to look for the whole, and not the half. So when she gets home, with one copy of the vile gossip (called The Questioneer; what sort of stupid name was that?) in her bag, she goes through it while Ranier sits in the kitchen and sings stories about how they came across the Atlantic for a kiss and a song.
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Edessa, one of the up-and-coming stars of the stage, also harbors dreams of being a model. It's been known that she practices her catwalk on the roof of her house when she suspects that nobody's looking, but the Questioneer knows better~!!
She's standing there, poised, with the moon and the far distant city lights as her background. Her head is bowed; there's a look of concentration on her face. She remembers that night, only because of what she was wearing (some sort of old sundress that was the flowy sort of garment that never goes out of style) and the fact that she was going at it with her bare feet, and not flip-flops or ballet flats on her feet.
She remembers the way that the wind came up suddenly, almost knocking her off balance, but she managed to catch herself in the nick of time. Beneath her, the house mutters mutinously as Ranier groans, caught either in physical or poetic ecstasy. She'd rather not think about it at the moment – she's walked in on far too many scenes of intimacy in her young life already.
Charlotte took a step forwards, balancing as she tottered precariously. She bites her lip, because that's what she does whenever she's concentrating, and takes a couple more steps forwards. The dress floats out behind her, surprisingly insubstantial. A section of hair falls forwards, into her face, and she tucks it behind her left ear. That's when the camerasnipe got the shot, she supposes, because the subject is far too natural, and far too engrossed to have posed. But the image isn't a stand-alone: without the rest of the memory, this one fails to have any significance. Satisfied with her deconstruction, her eyes travel to the next picture.
There's no caption for this one. Instead, it's poorly framed, purposely jagged edges complementing those opposite her, a picture of Christian in full football regalia, looking every bit the moron as his face contorts in concentration. Of course, she's no beauty herself: they were running through lines that day, and her brow is furrowed. There was something about anger, or concentration, or something else. She doesn't remember exactly what, only that the idiot running the theatre program thought that they should all incorporate facial expressions that day. She doesn't need facial expressions – for any actor worth his salt, vocal inflection should be enough. Any photographer worth his salt should also be able to produce a stunning body of work, and not resort to squashing together two poor compositions to try and make one for the mass consumer.
She proceeds in this fashion, her inner commentary becoming a litany of criticism in this ritual deconstruction. Something in her has to have this, this tearing down, because she takes comfort in this total and utter destruction. To validate the artistic qualities of this rudimentary collage is to validate the truth of the prose, and that's one thing that she absolutely refuses to do. Charlotte moves through the work quickly and efficiently, managing to effectively demolish any sort of standing that it could have had, and somewhere inside, the knot in the pit of her stomach seems to be loosening. She can breathe – she can breathe again, and after this last photograph, she'll be able to show up at that little institution they call a school, and be able to glide through the crowds with all the stateliness of a queen. She manages perfectly, until she sees the last photograph.
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Do you think, she'd asked him quietly, that night after the game and the dance, do you think that the universe conspires with or against us? She'd just been reading The Alchemist, and though it was completely useless to discuss philosophy with Christian, she thought she'd give it a go.
They were lying in the middle of the football field, all the fans gone, and the stadium eerily silent after the cacophony of before. Instead of basking in the afterglow and going to party after party, he'd chosen to stay behind, and that's when, coming up after several detentions (there was something that the administration didn't get about not having a vehicle of sorts and having a father with very little faith in the American public education system), she'd seen him standing there.
She'd tiptoed up behind him, and tilted her head up, curious to see what could possibly be more engrossing than pretty girls throwing themselves at you, and caught a look at the stars. And then it tumbled out, her question, before she could even help it, and before she even knew it, they were on the grass, lying together, and both looking up at the sky, as if they were in some sort of terrible low-budget movie. He'd shrugged in reply, not really sure of what to say. He didn't do the metaphysical, and they both knew it.
He was on his back, spread-eagled, but with his hands tucked behind his head, pillowing it from the small holes that cleats tended to make in soft ground. Right next to him, curled into a small ball, she'd stayed, the breeze ruffling her hair just the slightest and managing to go right through that one hole in her sweater. She shivered.
"Hey babe," he'd asked, not even turning her head. "You cold?"
"Not at all." For once, her response wasn't biting, scathing, or even the least bit painful. It was just a statement, just like the fact that he was a boy and she was a girl and they were both so much more than external appearances betrayed.
They were silent. "Do you think they're watching?" she asked, suddenly, head turning, neck craning to look up at the stars. "I mean, beyond? Do you even think they know what's happening?"
She needs an answer. Craves an answer. Even if a lightning bolt were to strike her dead this instant, at least it'd be an answer, and it would've been more than she'd gotten for decades, wandering aimlessly with a man who could not put down roots. But he has no answers, and even as she looks up, not even registering his presence, he's shifting, turning to face her, hand creeping ever closer to her back, as if he's ready to draw her in to the circle of warmth and keep her there, safe and sound. But he doesn't; he holds back because he knows that if he did, she'd never forgive him. And, though in those moments when all is quiet and still, they both know that she would grant him pardon, absolution, and anything he wanted a million times over, they both know that the instant matters. They breathe, tasting the air subconsciously, and somehow know that they are not alone, though this discovery does not register. They still stay there, frozen yet fluid, simultaneously trapped and liberated by instinct.
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This last photograph, she knows not where it comes from, only that it exists. But she can't bring herself to tear it down, to destroy it completely and utterly, because – well, by itself, even after an entire rampage, this photograph is enough to stop her in her tracks. She can't possibly do anything: to kill this would be to kill a butterfly. Instead of doing anything, she tiptoes quietly over to the kitchen, past the landlady's bedroom, and takes the pair of scissors lying on the counter. Then, with the utmost care, she snips around the photograph in the paper, leaving the rest of the magazine to rot in the trash bin, but folds up the bit of gold that she's gleaned and tucks it carefully into her breast pocket.