Miranda's walking the track after practice – she's supposed to be running, but her fitness regimen is the last thing on her mind right now. Jack's been gone since lunch, when she got into a fistfight with one of her teammates on the track team. The fight itself was inevitable, and honestly the heiress is surprised it's taken this long to happen. Jack's not known for her impulse-control or people skills, which is the main reason she chooses the most solitary sports on campus.
She tries, though. The other girl, Alice something, has been insufferable ever since Jack was voted team captain. The tattooed girl turned it down of course, but who wants to achieve a goal by forfeit? Miranda can't say she'd have been any less impossible in the same situation…at least, not before she met Jack. The runner has clearly been pushing the punk's buttons for weeks now.
Still, a physical altercation is a quite serious issue at a prep school where nasty words are the weapons of choice. Rumours have been flying around ever since the fight, each more outrageous than the last. Jack's been expelled, they say, she's been taken to juvie for parole violations – the whole school still thinks she's a criminal of some stripe – or she's just run away. Miranda, for her part, tries not to think about it too hard. She doesn't know anything and wondering will just distract her.
But then a car, a nondescript white thing, is pulling up in front of the dorms just as the sun begins to dip precipitously towards the horizon. A person climbs out. It's impossible to tell for certain from this distance, but nevertheless Miranda's positive that it must be Jack. It's the middle of the week and nearly dinnertime; boarding students will still be on campus, day students will have long since gone home.
The figure disappears into the dorm building that Jack lives in, and Miranda finally begins to run the track, needing the rhythm of her feet to match the joyful pounding of her heart. Jack is back, she seems safe and sound, and although Miranda chooses not to question why that makes her feel so light on her feet, it does.
She doesn't expect to see Jack again, at least not soon. So a few minutes later, when the skinny girl trudges across the grass – against the rules, of course – to the track, Miranda is taken aback. She slows to a jog, then comes to a stop at one end, waiting for the other girl to join her. Suddenly self-conscious, she finds herself running nervous fingers through her hair, adjusting the t-shirt she wears tucked into her running shorts to keep the lycra from chafing, wondering if the shorts make her look fat. She doesn't need Jack's approval, not really, but she can't deny that she wants it, wants to know that the other girl finds her attractive. Somehow it's nice, to have someone look at her with something other than calculation in their eyes…especially if that someone is Jack and that something is desire.
Now she's worried that she's being too blatant. She's not trying to come on to the punk girl, but…well, maybe she is. A little.
She needn't have worried; Jack's attention is clearly elsewhere, and she doesn't even seem to notice Miranda until she's almost within arm's reach. Then she jumps, as if startled, and looks away.
"Um, hey," the tattooed girl mumbles, stuffing her hands in her pockets – not before Miranda catches a glimpse of thin bandages wrapped around her knuckles, though.
"Hey," the heiress responds, feeling weirdly awkward in the face of the usually infallibly confident Jack's apparent discomfort. "So, um…"
"Walk with me?" The offer is made in a voice more like the punk's usual one, but her eyes are still cast to the side and she looks as if she's awaiting rejection.
"Yeah, sure," Miranda chirps quickly, relieved. They begin to walk, and for a while the only noise is the soft rubbery sound of Miranda's sneakers playing counterpoint to the dull thumping of Jack's hard-soled boots.
"So, um…" The tattooed girl finally breaks the silence. "How was your week?"
"Oh, um. Good. Fine, nothing interesting really." She doesn't add 'until today'. The legacy – not daughter – of as important and influential a man as Henry Lawson is, of course, already a pro at reading people. She knows better than to push the envelope right now; if and when Jack wants to talk about the fight, she will.
Silence falls again, so long that Miranda's beginning to wonder if she should just leave the other girl alone. It's not until they've walked nearly a full circuit – one kilometer – that Jack finally opens her mouth again.
"I was never in jail, you know." Her tone makes it sound like an aside, but the heiress refuses to be fooled. The tense set of her body hints at something both important and unhappy.
"I figured as much," she breezes as casually as she can manage. She won't admit that she had half-believed the rumours as recently as their first conversation a few weeks before. "I don't think they'd have let you go to school here if you had. Actually," she glances sidelong at her companion. Jack's eyes dart to hers, then back away as if she'd embarrassed at so much as having looked. "I'm kind of surprised they let you go here with all the ink and stuff. Isn't it against the rules?"
She hopes that steering the conversation in another direction will help ease the tense air creeping up around them, and it seems to work…for the moment. Jack chuckles dryly.
"Yeah well…they already made a bunch of exceptions for me, what's one more? Only thing I can't dodge is the uniform…at least during classes."
"I hate to inform you," Miranda returns with a small smile, "that I'm not sure I would call what you do 'wearing' the uniform, Jack. I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be worn under a leather jacket and with combat boots."
"Pfft, shows what you know!"
Jack runs forward for a few steps before turning and walking backwards, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets despite the warm weather and her eyes on Miranda for the first time.
The blue-eyed girl just raises her eyebrows questioningly, then waits patiently for her companion to string a sentence together.
"I…look, I've got a pretty fucked-up childhood, and I ended up here...not because I earned it. I just-" she growls in frustration and tosses her head back, nearly tipping herself over backwards while Miranda tries to neither laugh nor judge. Jack regains her balance and tries again.
"I'm not where I am because I did something great to earn it or whatever. Like…" She turns to walk forwards again, and the words seem to flow more easily when she's not looking at Miranda. "My whole life is there in front of me, and I've got goals and…and a future, and shit like that. This school, money, clothes, food. Safety. I didn't earn any of that. To be honest, I should be dead by now."
Miranda's feet still mid-stride, and she almost falls over herself. She barely has the presence of mind to clap one hand over her mouth as she gapes at her tattooed friend.
"I'm not like sick or dying or whatever!" Jack tries to reassure her quickly, "I just…like…you know, the statistics say that kids like me, who come from the kinda shit I come from, don't usually live this long. Me, I'm good. I'm fucking…I'm fucking golden." She turns her gaze to the sky, where the sun has begun its nightly affair with the horizon and it staining the world red. Behind them, the first few stars are coming out. "Fucking golden," she murmurs again.
The reassuring words do their job, but before the heiress can reply, she's struck dumb by the sight of Jack, silhouetted against the brilliantly red sky. Hands in her pockets, delicate features and full lips in profile against the flaring light, she looks like a religious experience and Miranda desperately wants to kiss her. Belatedly, the cheerleader wonders if she should be questioning her sexuality right now.
Then the light fades a bit, and everything is returned to its regularly-scheduled earthly appearance.
Miranda finally manages to close her mouth and lower her hand, edging closer and fighting the urge to reach out and touch Jack for reassurance – whose, she's not sure. She has to clear her throat several times before she can manage to speak. She knows she sounds a bit off, but she's afraid if they lapse into silence again it might not be breakable.
"I don't suppose you're planning to give any more details than that?"
"Not really, no." The answer is curt, but not angry – a simple statement of fact. Miranda gives up on that for the moment, another envelope she won't push today.
"Alright then. So what did you want to talk about then?"
"Honestly? I wanted to tell somebody that I feel like a giant asshole and not have them tell me why I shouldn't. Hey, tell me I'm a giant asshole."
"Why?"
"Because that's what I feel like, and I want somebody to validate my fucking feelings for once!" Miranda flinches away momentarily from the rising anger in Jack's voice, then stiffens her spine and gives it right back.
"Then yes, you are a giant asshole…for snapping at me when I all I did was ask you a question!"
Miranda tries not to fume while she waits for a response – telling herself not to be angry is only so effective, considering the emotional rollercoaster she's been riding this evening. But then Jack speaks again, all the anger and some of the exhaustion gone from her voice, and the heiress can't help but relax as well. She's still a little irritated, but not enough to start a fight.
"Thanks," the tattooed girl says softly, "I needed that. Some days I feel like I'm just this stupid little asshole kid who stepped out of a shithole and into a palace. Nobody kicked me out, but one of these days I'm gonna fuck up for real and then it's right back to the hole. I'm so busy worrying about fucking up that I'm not thinking about how damn lucky I am, and then I feel like a giant asshole for not being grateful for shit that lots of people would happily stab me in the back for." She flashes a mocking smile in the other girl's direction, and juts out her chin as she continues. "I'd ask if you get me, but being born with a silver stick up your ass doesn't make it seem likely."
Miranda has learned – well, is learning – not to take too much offense at Jack's crude words, and to give what she gets. If anything, the insult is cause for celebration; the fact that she's even throwing venom out means that she's well on the way to being herself again.
The heiress draws even with the leather-clad girl and slips one hand into the closest pocket to her, gently threading her fingers between the hot, thin, slightly sweaty ones inside. Her thumb brushes over the bandages, and her voice is soft, overlaying the harsh words with the kind of tenderness neither girl is ready to put a name to.
"Better a stick up my ass than shit between my toes."
Giving a small squeeze to the hand in hers, Jack responds in a similar voice, quiet and gentle and filled with the deepening emotion that lies between them.
"What the fuck ever. Fucking cheerleader."