Why, hello. I have for you on this silver platter next two chapters, and I have a feeling you'll really like them. Lots of drama, ooh, lots of romance, yes...
scenester7002: Wow. That. Is. Awesome. I am so honored! Hey, why not? Be my guest:)
Call Me Mimzy: Can't say I blame you for hating him, I felt the same way, the screwball...
Mrs. Scott323: Thanks for the respect, it is treasured so. I mean, I try to be authentic, but I can only do so much lol. Don't worry, Alastair WILL be on the recieving end of some nasty violence, at the most fitting time possible, believe me. ;) Glad you liked the flashbacks, I put a lot of thought into them. Awww, so glad you think L&M are cute, that makes me very happy!
Ok, on with it...
A certain host-sister by the name of Faye had adopted a new persona, one that completely contradicted her previous character.
Meghan saw this more and more with every encounter she had with the blonde. Faye, who was now on complete lockdown, not being able to even set foot outside of their small, brownstone flat until the day came when she'd be allowed back through the gates of the Jasperstone Academy for Girls, had now completely resigned to her bedroom, where she did nothing but study and sleep for hours on end.
"It's simply inconceivable." Laurence had commented. "She has never pulled a stint like this before."
"It's a wonder she wasn't expelled." Emma had observed.
That was a wonder, it was true. But Meghan was focused on a bigger wonder.
There were two possible things that could've happened:
1.) Faye really HAD organized the whole plot against Clarissa, or
2.) She'd had no idea the plot was being organized in the first place, and she was simply taking the blame for it.
Meghan was sure that the truth lay within number 2. But BOTH of those things seemed impossible. This was not like Faye, at all. As squeamish as she was, as insecure as she was...
It just didn't make sense.
And Faye, who had before been one to talk out the entire dictionary in a single sentence, was now someone from whom Meghan found it hard to extract a single word. All the girl ever did now was bury her nose in books and lay in bed, moping around like a sloth. She didn't even bother to braid her hair, and hardly even bothered to get dressed.
Meghan, however, was doing everything that Faye was not. For despite their complete disdain for their daughter's behavior, Laurence and Emma felt absolutely no hostility toward Meghan whatsoever. Which Meghan saw as being quite fortunate, due to the fact that the couple could have easily blamed her for Faye's sudden rebelliousness, deeming Meghan a bad influence. Although she was quite sure that Mr. Ratfink's good word might've had something to do with it. Yes! Meghan was a hero! She'd saved the queen from the revolution! Cheers to that!
So since there was in fact no fault being found in the befuddled teenager, she was practically allowed to come and go whenever she pleased. And since her many attempts to get through to Faye were proving to be in vain, she did quite a lot of going - particularly with the dashing aristocratic rebel that was Lucas Brenshire.
They'd speed off on his motorbike like thieves with their plunder, tearing London to shreds. Blindingly fast, they would zoom along, only occasionally stopping to examine something interesting enough to be considered worthy of their curiosity. Once, they stopped at an outdoor market, and Luke said to Meghan:
"Pick something."
She had looked at him, half startled, half confused.
"Huh?"
"Pick something. Anything you want. Jewelry, clothes, eh, figurines of the Osbourne family..." he had paused, deep in thought as he turned a miniature replica of Ozzy over in his hands, "anything you see. It's yours."
"Oh no. Not even. You're not buying me anything."
"I insist."
"No."
"I insist."
"Well, I insist that you don't insist."
"I insist."
"Stop insisting!"
"I."
"Stop."
"In."
"Stop!"
"Sist."
"Dang it!"
"You know I'm going to keep saying it."
Meghan looked at him, observing the smirk on his face.
"Fine. I want that." she said, pointing in some odd direction. Luke followed the direction of her finger, his eyes all at once landing on some small, pink, marbleized objects that looked like bricks.
"You want...soap?"
"Er, yes. I want soap."
Luke looked at Meghan, then at the soap, then back again.
"Alright then, it's soap you want? Then it's soap you'll get."
The boy pointed the pink bricks out to the vendor, casually reaching into the pocket of his casual-dressy pants, pulling out a leather wallet, and extracting from this wallet a rather flashy gold credit card.
"I'm sorry, sir, we don't take credit." the burly man promptly told him in a cockney accent.
"Oh. Right then. No bother." He put the card and wallet back in their place, before reaching into the other pocket and pulling out a healthy wad of hundred-pound notes. Meghan's eyes widened in astonishment.
Luke handed the man one of the notes.
"Sorry, all I have." he said.
The man took the money in disgust, muttering to himself in the frustration of having to break into such a large bill for such a small purchase.
"Hrumph. Snotty ruffian, acting like you were Lucas Brenshire or summat."
Meghan looked at Luke questioningly. He only winked, pressing his finger to his lips with a wry smile.
When the soaps were packaged, the two started to make their way back to the bike to speed off yet again.
"That guy didn't recognize you?" Meghan questioned the ruffian, whose arm was once again draped around her shoulder.
Luke smirked again.
"He recognizes me. Everyone does. But they don't think anything of it, because no one would ever believe that someone of my 'status' would be caught dead in any public place that wasn't fraught with posh extravagance and mingling dignitaries. Therefore, they assume that it can't be me after all. Impossible."
Meghan looked up at him, her eyes radiating wonder and admiration. He smiled down at her for a second, before his attention was immediately snatched away by something else.
"My, what lovely jewelry!" he exclaimed, possibly a little too enthusiastic, possibly on purpose - pulling Meghan over to a particular display. "Are you quite sure you only want the soap?"
Meghan was silent for a moment as she fingered one of the pieces - a necklace, consisting of a blue crystal butterfly dangling from a silver chain. The sunlight reflected off of the crystal, making it glow with rainbows of iridescence. The chain was a thick, woven spiral of metal, holding the pendent firmly in place. She let go of the necklace, still hanging on its post, as she looked at Luke to answer.
"I'm sure." she told him.
Luke smiled, gently pulling her away, making notes in his mind.
And so there were many more days like this, days of Meghan being whisked off from the place of norm to lands of bliss. They made frequent visits to the manor, which of course meant that Meghan had to throw many a glance at that other infamous residence as they passed it without fail on the way each time. And every time she did, she wondered when she was ever going to be able to work up the nerve to venture inside said residence, to take part in a conversation that she was supposedly not afraid of.
Little did she know, she was acquiring just as many glances as that house, if not more. And not just from the people on the streets who wanted to take a gander at the Lucas Brenshire look-alike as he sped by on his scooter. Not just from the people who had it in for her, of which there were many. And not just from the sweet woman in her middle-sixties whom Meghan had met in a public restroom, who of course was doing a fair amount of pondering on the brown-haired teenager.
No, there was, in fact, someone else. Someone who had inherited his share of pondering skills, and who never hesitated to utilize them to their fullest on his frequent outings and escapades to the latest debate or campaign speech.
So that's the girl from New York.
I must divulge to you that at this point my feelings and overall sense of being are both getting to be very hard to decipher. I feel such a mixture of good and bad, right and wrong, entrapment and liberation that it almost seems somehow abnormal, as if I am some kind of mutant who can bear a plethora of different emotions all at the same time.
Yeah, enough of that. No need for poetics here. The point is, I just feel confused, and don't exactly hate it.
Basically, with the exception of Faye and her digruntled friends, no one really even knows about this growing relationship between myself and this character named Luke (at least not to my knowledge), including his very aloof and oblivious family: his father seems to like to drink away all of his discretions, while his mother just doesn't even consider the possibility of any sort of bond between her son and I, due of course to the fact that I am too socially low.
Man! How many haters must I be association with, and how am expected to deal with them all?!
Also, I've recently met another member of the Brenshire family: his apparent sister, Marianne, who is three years older and in college. I haven't seen much of her, but our brief encounters on my visits to the residence have in truth been far from horrible - she seems to have no malice toward me. However, due to her constant comings and goings and flustered state all through them, she too has failed to recognize any feelings in bloom between her brother and his "new exchange student friend".
I do have to suddenly backtrack at this point, and say that there is one person who knows of the relationship - that person, of course, being my cousin, Daphne. This is because I told her, in a long-awaited hour-long banter (would've been longer, if it weren't so expensive). I had been so itching to talk to her that I had divulged everything - perhaps, maybe, more than I should've. She now knows about Glynnis and Clarissa, which probably just magnified her already simmering nervousness.
Anyway, putting aside my problem of abusing the act of honesty for the time being, I'll go on. I'm scared, if you haven't noticed already. Scared that when the world does find out about Luke and I, the fortress of safety I've built is going to crash into stony rubble. Clarissa threw a fit just at that sight of Luke approaching me - but imagine how she'll scream in fury when she finds out that I've apparently stolen the affection that should've been aimed at her.
But I don't want this to stop. This sounds cliché, I know, but I can't get enough of the joyful emotional chaos that this guy is causing to broil within me. It's been about a week and a half, and now all who were banished are back in school, and now I find myself doing more and more with this person - Faye's parents don't even know that. They just know I'm going out...somewhere, and apparently, they're fine with it.
Luke recently made that chaos broil all the more by exposing the fact that he, unbeknownst to the general population, is musically gifted.
I mean, maybe I don't own a guitar pick collection, but having shared housing arrangements with Libby Reynolds for about five years, I do know a little something about the instrument of which those picks were meant for.
So it impressed me when Luke thrummed the strings of a mahogany object he'd just pulled from its true-to-shape case.
"Like it?" he asked.
"It's beautiful." I'd immediately replied.
"Figured you'd think so. You know, this is actually a real passion of mine. I mean, not a lot of people know this, but - I don't dream of inheriting my father's estate and his seat in parliament nearly as much as I dream of just sitting and playing on this contraption for a living."
"Really."
"Yes. You know, my friend Ian is a musician."
"Ian? The busboy?"
"That very one. He has a band, actually. Believe it or not, they sometimes land playing spots at some very high-profile social gatherings - including debutante balls."
"Wow."
"I met him through school, though. His grandparents are in the nobility, and they force him to go there. Only the best for their grandson. He doesn't care for it, though."
I smiled at the thought. Poor surfer guy.
"If I could, I would join his band as well - he's heard me play, and says he has a spot open for me any time I want it."
"So take it."
He kind of turned away when I said that.
"Er...I would, but it's not really that easy."
Maybe I should have asked why, or pressed him more, but I didn't. Because I knew what he was talking about.
"I understand." I said simply.
He had a strange reaction to this, looking at me incredulously.
"My." he said, sounding astonished. "You are just incredible. Something else entirely. I thought that you thought everything was easy for me."
This made me think. Nobody spoke for a second.
"No, I don't think that. I don't think anyone really has it 'easy'. Everyone has special, different circumstances that present certain problems for them."
He kept staring at me.
"Honestly, you will never cease to amaze me, Meghan Reynolds."
I wish I could. I wish I could stop amazing people. It seems like it's all I do, and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.
Nobody talked for a couple of minutes, as he just kept thrumming random notes, seemingly reluctant to play me an actual song just yet. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, so I just listened to those notes and looked out the window. I watching the fountain dribbling outside down below as different musical bits wafted through my mind.
"What about Paris Hilton?" he suddenly asked, bringing his fingers to a halt.
I abruptly turned my head.
"What?" I asked him, considerably amused and trying to keep from bursting into laughter.
"Paris Hilton. What problems does she have? I mean, she's filthy rich, and yet she doesn't ever have to worry at all about being forced into some career she doesn't want, and she doesn't have to act in some stuffy way to please other people. Maybe she has it easy."
I pondered this, still having a hard time retaining seriousness.
"No, I don't think so. I think her problem is just that - no problems. She's too rich, and never knows what to do with herself. She never has to work for anything, so nothing is worthwhile, or meaningful. Everything is superficial, and if I were her, I would be morbidly depressed, because nothing would ever really matter. Always being shoved into the spotlight with all that attention, all eyes on her, drowning in undeserved fame. She can't sing, or act, or do anything that involves REAL talent - and yet, everyone knows her name. But what difference does fame make when it has no value, when you didn't work for it? What a blank feeling."
I think Luke was astounded yet again, by the look on his face. But I didn't give him the chance to verbalize his astoundment, instead opting to interject another question, one that was obviously fitting to be asked.
"Now what on Earth made you think of Paris Hilton? I'm surprised you know who she is."
Luke laughed.
"I was just trying to think of someone who actually was without problems. I thought she might be the one, supposedly being beautiful, rich, and carefree - but again, I have been proven false."
"Yeah, well, what do I know? I'm probably the one who's off-base. Paris Hilton probably loves her life, and wouldn't do anything to change it."
Luke put down his guitar.
"Ah, forget her. Our lives are much more interesting. Mine wasn't before, but..."
I looked at him, at his piercing gaze that at that moment seemed exceedingly penetrating.
"You've made it that way."
He then did something he'd never done before. He placed his hand under my chin, moving my head and aiming it in a certain direction. And it lingered there as he leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, in one quick, fluid, fleeting motion. Before I knew it, I'd let this happen, and I watched him slowly move back to his original position as if he were on a videotape put in reverse, with his eyes averted away, unsure if he'd done the right thing.
I wasn't sure how to tell him. How to tell him that he couldn't possibly have sent a higher degree of wild thrill racing through my body. How he couldn't possibly have brought me closer to home, where I was truly loved. How he couldn't possibly have made me focus any harder on an empty space inside me I usually ignored, a space that now felt slightly filled. I'd never felt something so foreign before that I so welcomed.
So when he shyly turned his eyes on me for a second, treading a little closer to see if he would be allowed further or simply fall through the ground, I just gazed at him, and smiled ever so slightly.
"Yes. Our lives are very interesting." I said.
Relieved and seemingly elated, he reached around and drew me in, and he seemed to tell me that he was thankful. Thankful that I hadn't pushed him away, as I had before.
And as I tell you this now, I'm still scared.
Scared that my cousin's family will turn their backs.
Scared that Alastair will come in the night and bludgeon me in my sleep.
Scared that a certain trio of girls will turn their acts of revenge upon the person who went against them.
Scared that Aunt Libby will be disappointed in me.
And most of all, scared that I'll end up hurting Daphne.
But in that moment, when Luke was holding me close, all that fear was made a little less glaring, a little less imposing, a little less harsh.
And from that moment, I was gone.