AN
Disclaimer: If you recognise them, they're not mine.
Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
- Thomas F. Healey
I trust you all recovered well from the shipwreck that was Chapter 13. Guess it really is unlucky. I really want to know if anyone understood what I was doing, so please let me know if you got it.
Myra's POV
I didn't think she was home, but sure enough when I knocked on the door I heard her feet quickly running down the stairs and across the front hall to greet me at the front of her house. She didn't even look at me. As soon as the door was opening she turned around and ran the other way.
"I'm not quite ready yet. Just give me a minute," she cried back at me.
"Kim?" I called. I heard her feet stop. She came back to the entrance; her face a mix of disappointed, confused, and angry. She'd been expecting someone else.
I could tell she didn't really want to talk to me, no doubt eager to continue getting ready, but she still asked what I was doing there.
"I came because we need to talk. And to pass along a message."
"I don't really have time to talk, because, as you can see, I'm going somewhere." I was taken aback by her tone. That was an attitude normally used when telling the bitchy girls who make fun of us to piss off, so I'd never been on the receiving end before. I didn't have time to recover before she continued, "But what's this message about?"
There was undoubtedly uncertainty in my voice when I stated that it was from Jared. At the mention of his name her face transformed, but not the way it should've. It didn't light up, but recoiled, as if his name were death itself, and I, the grim reaper. But she smiled a crooked smile, as if she knew a way around it, and wanted to smite me with it.
"Oh that message. Well, I already got that message. Loud and clear, thank you."
I followed her to her room, and sat on her bed as she continued to get ready. "Where are you going, anyway?"
"None of your business."
I needed to find a way to get her guard down so I could figure out what was wrong. My eyes wandered to her bedside table. "You got the new Fangl Warden?" I asked, hoping to change to a subject that we had once been able to talk about for hours.
"Yeah, I finished it."
"How was it?"
"Very," she stopped to find her words, "Helpful. Informative."
Informative wasn't the word I would use to describe any of the other books in the series. They were mainly just crap literature that was really easy to obsess over.
The doorbell chimed. I thought she was going to ignore it, as we usually did when someone used the bell instead of knocking (our families' secret way of weeding out people we didn't want to talk to from close friends who knew the secret) but she turned to me, said "you're going to have to go now," and ran downstairs. I ran after her and found her with Graig Lott in the living room.
"Is she coming too?" Graig asked. While he had come a long way from wearing Wheeled Rovers shirts to school and being the most picked on kid in the class to becoming 'Hott Lott' (as the girls say), he was still kind of a geek at heart. Kim hit the back of his head with the magazine she was conveniently holding, messing up his newly styled (and washed!) chocolate-brown hair.
I pulled her aside as Hott Lott scurried of to the mirror in the front hall to check his hair. "Listen," I said, "I just wanted to tell you that I talked with Jared, and he wanted me to ask you to meet him this afternoon at The Timeless Harpy." She scowled.
"What? Too much of a coward to just tell me yourself? You have to send me all the way over there so that he can rub it in my face for you? I get it, okay? You win. Jared is yours."
"What are you talking about? I don't even want him anymore." Well, I did. Just, not as much as before. And not enough to be fighting with Kim anymore. I just had to prove that to her.
"You think I'm stupid?" she asked, and honestly, right now, I did. "I saw the kiss. I know it happened. He kissed you."
Oh. That's what this was about.
"So, you can just leave," she said to me then turned to Graig, "Where are the roses? Didn't you bring roses?"
Graig gave a shrug. Kim gave him a look then stormed off into her dining room. She came back with a bouquet of flowers, no doubt from her dining room table, and showed them into his hands. "Just hold these a minute while I go get my shoes," she commanded. I'd never seen her so driven, upfront, and...well, rude.
"Are they really necessary?" He called to her, holding the flowers away from himself as if they had some horrible contagious disease.
"The flowers or the shoes?" Kim joked.
"The flowers," Graig answered seriously. Kim got solemn again. I guess Mr. Hott does Nott Gott a Lott of Thoughtt or Whatnott up in the Spott we call a brain (now that's funny).
"Of course they are! Do you think that Joanna's going to want to go out with a guy who doesn't even give his dates flowers?" she looked back at me, "What are you still doing here?"
Her words were still sinking in. Graig was using Kim to impress Joanna? And Kim was okay with it? Did she think that this was the best that she could do? She was worth so much more than this. We would have to work to repair her self-esteem. Or maybe, she was using Graig too; a mutual usage. And this mutual usage (a term I would continue to use because it sounds super cool) was supposed to help her make Jared jealous. "But that's so stupid," I said to myself, "she could have Jared in an instant if she would only ask him. He completely infatuated with her. Wait, why am I saying this to myself? I need to tell Kim."
She was no longer there.
I ran outside and yelled after her, but I knew that she wouldn't be able to hear me from inside the Lottmobile. I couldn't do anything else today. So homeward bound I set off.