Hey guys. I made a trailer for my final project in one of my courses. It's on my youtube channel (link on my profile). You should check it out.
Rose Tyler prided herself on being a patient, restrained woman. She'd always been—had to be, what with Jackie bringing a myriad of men home over the years and a hair salon being run in the kitchen half the time. But she'd gained heaps of both since she joined the Doctor in the TARDIS years ago.
Of course she had! She traipsed across the universe with a madman in a blue box that was bigger on the inside, for goodness sakes. Putting up with the Doctor alone required a lot of both. In this body, at least, he was rude (and not ginger), crass, annoying sometimes, with an unstoppable gob, and a penchant for ambling off to another topic whenever they got close to anything regarding their relationship.
And that wasn't even counting the tolerance required to put up with the things that had happened during their travels. She'd been kidnapped, held hostage, cussed out in dozens of dialects, thrown in jail, set to be sacrificed, accused of witchery (many times), almost eaten (nearly as many times), and danged over multiple pits filled with multiple things that would hurt and/or kill her (with the exception of that one time she was dangled over a pit of cotton candy, but they didn't talk about that one).
She'd been forced to put up with things that were disgusting to avoid offending the aliens they were around at the time. She'd been kissed (or the species equivalent thereof), blatantly groped, flirted with more times than she cared to count, mistaken for a whore, and almost forcibly married several dozen times. Once she'd even gotten up to the altar before her Time Lord finally got around to saving her.
She'd been in horrible places that she never wished to revisit. Almost every jail/dungeon she's ever been thrown in (except for the one made of candy canes but they don't talk about that one either), all but two of the prominently swamp planets (especially the one Degobah from Star Wars was based off of), the jungles of Torro where one in every three vines was carnivorous, Ancient Japan, Krop Tor, Justica, and the colony planet where it'd been a crime to tell stories, hope, and dream. Just to name a few.
After all that, though, after all the dozens of horrible places she's been, the horrible things she's had to endure…Rose has never gotten used to walking through sewers and she doesn't think she ever will. She also had no desire to ever be in enough sewers to get used to them, thank you very much.
As she followed Solomon, the southern boy named Frank, and Martha into the sewer tunnels, Rose Tyler was using every ounce of self-control she had to not cuss and fuss. It was wet and dark and it stank and she would've rather stayed in Hooverville than come down here.
"Just got to stick together," Frank told them. "It's easy to get lost. It's like a huge rabbit warren. Could hide an army down here."
"You talk like you roam the sewers every other day." Rose said, resisting the urge to plug her nose. Her lips were curled in disgust, though.
"I've had my fair share," he admitted. Grinning, he looked at her. "And yourself?"
"More than you."
Frank laughed. "Is that so?"
"Bet you ten quid."
"Alright. How many?"
"Doctor," she called over shoulder. "About how many sewers do you think we've been in since we started out?"
His reply came a moment later, "Seventy or so—depends on your definition of sewer, really."
Frank's jaw dropped. "W-well, alright then!" he laughed after a second. "I guess you win that one. But, uh, what's a 'quid'?"
Rose blinked as the Doctor caught up to them and fell instep beside her. "Um…a dollar."
"Well, uh, I'd pay up, but I haven't even got ten cents."
She laughed at him, her tongue between her teeth. "It's alright. Didn't expect you to pay up anyway. If it makes you feel any better, he owes me about a hundred quid by now." She turned the beam of her torch towards the Doctor.
"A smart man pays off his debts," Solomon told him sagely.
"A smart man doesn't make a bet with Rose Tyler," the Doctor countered. Solomon chuckled. "She always wins. Even if she ticks off a queen in the process."
Frank's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "You've met a queen?"
"We've met a lot of people," he said smoothly. "We travel."
"So, what about you, Frank?" Martha asked. "You're not from around these parts, are you?"
He laughed. "Oh, you can talk. No, I'm Tennessee born an' bred."
"So how come you're here?"
"Oh, my daddy died. Mama…couldn't afford to feed us all. So I'm the oldest, up to me to feed myself. So I put on my coat, hitched up here on the railroads. There's a whole lot of runaways in camp younger than me. From all over; Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas… Solomon—he keeps a lookout for us. So, what about you? You're a long way from home."
Martha smiled. "I'm with them. We're travellers, like he said. I worked at a hospital back in London, and one day things went mad. These two were there, I helped them sort it, and they invited me along. We've been all over but never to New York before. I've always wanted to see it."
"Well, you stick with me, you'll be alright."
Rose wished she could catch Martha's eye right now because she'd told her—she'd told her she'd be getting all sorts of flirting in time. If she hadn't believed Rose back then, she definitely did now.
"So this Diagoras bloke, who is he then?" the Doctor asked Solomon.
Solomon sighed. "A couple of months ago, he was just another foreman. Now it seems like he's running most of Manhattan."
"How did he manage that, then?"
"These are strange times. A man can go from being King of the Hill to the lowest of the low overnight."
The Doctor noticed something on the ground in front of them and lowered the beam of his torch downwards. Rose followed it and she squinted, trying to make out what that lump on the floor was.
"It's just for some folks it works the other way 'round." Solomon finished.
It was bumpy and glowing green in the torchlight and whatever it was it wasn't human. "Whoa!" the Doctor exclaimed. Their party halted.
Martha gasped, peering down at it. "Is it radioactive or something?"
Solomon and Frank kept back while the three of them knelt down around it. A completely revolting smell wafted up from the goopy thing, smacking Rose in the face a thousand times harder than the sewer odor had. She stopped breathing, placing her gloved hand firmly over her nose and mouth and worked to stop her stomach from rebelling.
Across from her, Martha gagged. "It's gone off, whatever it is."
The Doctor pulled out his glasses and put them on then cautiously pulled the thing off the ground. The green glow died as he lifted it out of the light filtering in from above.
"And you've got to pick it up."
"Doctor," Rose lowered her hand from her mouth so he would hear her clearly. "I swear to God…if you lick that thing—"
"Oh don't worry, I'm not going to lick it. Honestly."
But he did lift it right to his nose and sniff. Martha's hand flew to her mouth again and Rose closed her eyes. The Doctor was not touching that thing. He wasn't.
Judging from the squishy sounds she heard, he was turning it over in his hands. She peeked one eye open for confirmation. Yep. There was no way he was holding her hand, even through her gloves, until he washed his several times.
"Composite organic matter," he murmured. "Martha, medical opinion?"
She lowered her hand. "It's not human. I know that."
"No, it's not. Rose?"
"No bloody idea. Not something I've seen before." And he was still running his fingers across it! She shuddered.
"Nor me. And I'll tell you something else." He said suddenly, standing up. We must be at least half a mile in. I don't see any signs of a collapse. Do you? So why did Mr. Diagoras send us down here?"
"Where are we now?" Martha asked. "What's up above?"
"Well, we're right underneath Manhattan."
"Let's keep moving," Solomon said, pulling his coat tighter around himself. He took the lead this time with Frank right on his heels with Martha.
The Doctor pocketed the thing and shook his hands off. Rose leaped out of the way with a startled sound of disgust. He grinned and held his hand out to her, fingers wiggling invitingly. She wrinkled her nose, lifted her chin airily, and stomped right past him.
"So, uh, do you see that kind of stuff often in the sewers?" Frank asked the girls.
"No," Rose said at once. "Nothing like that. Except that one time, but it turned out to be a piece of fruit."
"Hush up," Solomon ordered. "Your voice can travel for miles down here. I don't want whatever left that thing behind to find us. Let's just find that collapse and get the heck outta here."
The younger members of the group fell silent. Rose fell instep beside the Doctor as the continued on, but she still refused to hold his hand. Martha walked beside Frank, who seemed to have taken a shine to her, and Solomon led them. They continued through the tunnels, rounding corners, hopping over puddles, and keeping an eye on the ground in case they found another like the disgusting thing currently in the Doctor's pocket. Solomon sped up.
Rose was beginning to get nervous. Just how far had they come? Were they lost? What was going on down here? Could they get back? Of course they could. The Doctor with his superior brain had probably noted and logged every single turn they'd taken. He could guide them back to the entrance just as easily as she could if there were bright neon signs pointing the way. She slid her arm around his (she was not going to hold his hand, dammit) and leaned into his side. It felt colder and was it just her, or had the smell gotten worse?
I want to go back. And she would say it out loud if she were any less than the woman she was.
"We're way beyond half a mile." Solomon growled. "There's no collapse, nothing."
"That Diagoras bloke, was he lying?" Martha wondered.
"Looks like it," the Doctor said grimly.
Frank looked from tunnel to tunnel. "So why did he want people to come down here?"
"Solomon, I think it's time you took these three back. I'll be much quicker on my own."
"Oh, don't you even think about—" Rose started to say but she stopped abruptly when a squealing sound echoed through the tunnels. It seemed to come from every tunnel all at once. Their heads whipped around.
"What the hell was that?" Solomon asked no one in particular. No one answered him.
"HELLO?" Frank shouted.
"Frank!"
"Shhh!"
"Shhhhhh!"
"What if it's one of the folk gone missing?" he snapped back quietly. "You'd be scared half mad, down here on your own."
"You think they're still alive?" the Doctor asked.
"Heck, we—we ain't seen no bodies down here. Maybe they just got lost."
Another squealing echoed through the tunnels, rebounding off the walls and getting muffled in the water, magnifying and muting and making it impossible to tell where it came from.
"I ain't never heard nobody make a sound like that." Solomon said.
"That's not human," Martha whispered to Rose. She shook her head.
"Where's it comin' from?" Frank asked.
The Doctor edged down a different tunnel, shining his torch along the walls. Rose protested quietly but fell silent when the squealing started up again.
"Sounds like there's more than one of 'em."
"This way," the Doctor ordered.
"No, that way." Solomon said as the noise came again.
Neither of them were right, as it turned out, because when Martha turned the light of her torch down a tunnel she noticed something huddling at the end. It was wearing a jumpsuit—red, by the look of it—and it appeared to be a…
No, impossible.
"Doctor," she hissed.
The others turned, shinning their lights on the thing huddled at the end. Frank and Solomon didn't seem too bothered, obviously couldn't see something horribly wrong with it. Rose did, she could tell from the way her nostrils flared and her eyes widened the tiniest bit.
"Who are you?" Solomon asked. The thing slowly lifted its head.
"Are you lost?" Frank asked. "Can you understand me?" He took a cautious step forward, then another. "I've been thinkin' about folk lost down—"
"It's alright, Frank," the Doctor said, holding his hand up to stop him. "Just stay back. Let me have a look."
The Doctor took a step forward, speaking to the figure down the tunnel. "He's got a point, though, my mate Frank. I'd hate to be stuck down here all on my own." The thing squealed, almost as if in agreement, and he kept walking. "We know the way out. Daylight, if you come with us."
He knelt down in front of the creature, shining the torch directly at its face. Martha had seen right: it was a pig, a humanoid pig.
"Oh, but what are you?" the Doctor queried.
"Is that, uh…some kind of carnival mask?" Solomon asked.
"No, it's real." The Doctor looked at him gravely then turned back to the pig and murmured words that didn't quite reach their ears.
Rose stiffened when she saw the shadows moving on the wall. Then figures appeared around the corner, moving slowly towards the Doctor and the creature on the floor. More pig men. "Doctor!" she called. "Behind you!"
The Doctor turned and saw them coming. He looked once more at the pig man on the ground as he rose to his feet and backed away slowly. The horde followed, including the one that had been on the ground. The bait in a trap Mr. Diagoras had delivered them into. Now they knew why people didn't always come back up.
They continued to slowly retreat and the pig men advanced at the same pace. It was simply a matter of who would bolt first.
"Right, then. Martha, Rose, Frank, Solomon."
"What?" Martha whimpered.
"I think, um…basically…"
"Run?" Rose asked.
"RUN!" he agreed and they did just that. The pigs brayed loudly and charged.
They ran without direction, taking turns at random. Solomon and Frank, even with their longer legs, couldn't quite pace Rose and Martha though they sure as hell tried. The guys may have been used to living it rough, but this was how the girls lived. Running for their lives was as ordinary as drinking tea. Legs and arms pumping, sucking quick breaths of air in, they practically flew through the tunnel. They cast quick glances over their shoulder at the pigs that pursued them relentlessly, squealing horribly all the while.
Martha skidded to a halt in an intersection, Rose stopping just a few feet in front of her. "Where are we going?!" she cried.
"This way!" the Doctor shouted and led them down the right tunnel. Rose didn't care when he grabbed her hand—she just held tighter.
The pigs followed, snorting and squealing. Rose decided that if never saw another pig again it would be too soon and when she got back to the TARDIS she would have pork chops for dinner. Good plan, not helping, she thought furiously.
The Doctor changed direction midstride, and her momentum kept Rose moving, but he didn't let go of her hand and very nearly yanked her arm out of it's socket. He pushed off the wall with a grunt and pulled her down an adjacent tunnel. "There's a ladder! Come on!" he shouted.
He let go of her hand, sliding the torch onto his arm, and pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. He climbed up the ladder, switching the sonic on, and worked on unsealing the manhole above them. Rose's torch didn't have a loop so she discarded it and climbed after him. The manhole lid came loose and he pushed it up and out of the way. He pulled himself out then turned around and grabbed Rose's hand. She jumped down from the block and stumbled forward, hands reaching out automatically to catch herself and she hit a wall.
Okay, not outside then.
From below, she heard Solomon shout, "Frank!"
She turned around in time to catch Martha who was shaking like a leaf and close to tears. Martha was more resilient to things than she had been when she'd joined them two months ago, but everyone had their limits.
Solomon emerged from the manhole and then called down to Frank.
The squealing picked up again, louder and more vicious than before as the pigs realized their prey was escaping.
The Doctor and Solomon reached down to him, urging him to hurry. Rose couldn't see what was going on below but she heard the squealing and Frank screaming and Solomon and the Doctor shouting and Martha was crying. She hugged Martha tightly and squeezed her eyes shut.
Her eyes flew open at the Doctor's long, desperate scream of "NO!"
Solomon pulled the Doctor out of the manhole and threw him to the ground, reaching up to pull the iron lid back over the hole. Frank was still down there.
"No!" Rose echoed the Doctor's scream.
"We can't go after him!" Solomon said roughly.
"I've got to go back down!" the Doctor argued, reaching for the lid even as Solomon rotated it shut. "We can't just leave him!"
"NO!" Solomon grabbed the Doctor by the lapels of his coat and pushed him away from the manhole. Martha backed into the corner and Rose let her go. She wrapped her arms around herself, pressed one gloved hand over her mouth, and tried to calm her racing heart.
"I'm not losing anybody else! Those creatures were from hell, hell itself. If we go after him, they'll take us all! There's nothing we can do." Solomon shook his head, wiping his eye with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry," he said to the lid that had sealed Frank down there with the pigs.
A shapely young woman with short, curled blonde hair stepped around a shelf with a gun in her hand. "Alright then, put 'em up." she ordered in a thick New York accent that was even more pronounced than Solomon's.
Martha put her hands into the air immediately, still shaken, but Rose gritted her teeth and didn't move. From bums fighting over bread, to pigs with teeth, to a blonde with a gun—this day was just getting better and better.
She cocked the gun purposefully. "Hands in the air, and no funny business." Solomon, the Doctor, and Rose lifted their hands in air. Oh yeah. Better and better by the minute. "Now, tell me, you schmucks, what have you done with Laszlo?"
"Who's Laszlo?" Martha asked.
The blonde narrowed her eyes and moved her gun between all of them. She rubbed her red lips together, considering, then jerked her head towards the way she came. "Alright you four…start walking. Out the door and turn left. And no funny business!" she added.
She stepped out of the way and motioned them forward with the gun. "Come on, come on, I ain't got all night!"
Solomon and the Doctor exchanged looks then Solomon grudgingly led the party out. The Doctor looked at his two companions and nodded towards the door. Rose went first, glaring at the blonde as she passed. They'd come out in some sort of storage room, it seemed. There were costume racks and prop shelves and several dummies with wigs and masks. Though what kind of storage room had a manhole in it?
The blonde directed them down the hall then told Solomon to open up one of the doors with a star on it. She marched past them into the dressing room, flipping on the light, and plopped down in the chair in front of a vanity. Almost as an afterthought, she pointed the gun at them again. They stood in the doorway unsurely, glancing at each other, and the Doctor kept himself between the gun and his companions. The blonde picked up a cotton ball and sighed.
"So, um, who's Laszlo?" Rose asked.
"Laszlo's my boyfriend," the blonde said. "Was my boyfriend, until he disappeared two weeks ago—no letter, no goodbye, no nothing. And I'm not stupid," she added, pointing to herself with the gun. "I know some guys are just pigs, but not my Laszlo."
She gestured angrily and they all flinched as the gun was momentarily pointed at them. At this rate, one of them was accidentally going to be shot. "I mean, what kind of guy asks you to meet his mom before he vamooses?"
The Doctor lifted his hand. "It might—it might just help if you put that down."
"Huh?" she asked, open-mouthed. Her eyes flicked to the gun then rolled. "Oh, sure."
She tossed it carelessly onto the chair. Solomon cringed, the Doctor jumped a bit and Martha and Rose ducked behind him. "Oh come on!" she laughed, waving off their reactions and picked up the cotton again. "It's not real. It's just a prop. It was either that or a spear."
Rose cracked a grin. Not bad.
"What do you think happened to Laszlo?" Martha asked, stepping out from behind the Doctor.
"I wish I knew. One minute, he's there. The next, zip—vanished." She dropped the cotton onto her vanity desk.
The Doctor walked into the room. "Listen, um…what was your name?"
"Tallulah."
"Tallulah."
"Three L's and an 'H.""
"Right. Um, we can try and find Laszlo, but he's not the only one. There are people disappearing every night."
"And there are creatures," Solomon added with a nervous glance in the direction they'd come from. "Such creatures."
"What do you mean, creatures?" Tallulah drawled.
"Look, listen, just trust me. Everyone is in danger," the Doctor said, reaching into his pocket, and he pulled out the lumpy thing. "I need to find out exactly what this is. Because then I'll know exactly what we're fighting."
Tallulah leaned away in her seat and made a noise of disgust.
"And I held his hand just a few minutes ago," Rose told her.
Tallulah shuddered. "Well look, I don't know nothing about…whatever that is, but if it's gonna help you find Laszlo, you're welcome to anything you can find around here. Just don't tell nobody I said so—you got that? You get caught I had nothin' to do with this or else I lose my job. And keep outta the way 'cause we got a show in an hour."
"Thank you."
"Yeah. Hey girls," she smiled at Rose and Martha. "You can wait here with me if you want."
"Oh, that's sounds great," Martha said eagerly. After trecking through the sewers and being pursued by pigs, relaxing backstage in an actual New York revue sounded brilliant. She walked over to the couch against the wall and flopped down, leaning back against the soft, squishy cushions.
Rose, on the other hand, didn't acknowledge Tallulah's offer, and instead looked up at the Doctor. "Can I help?"
He shook his head. "No, not really. Stay here, have a seat. Watch the show."
"Fine, but one thing, mister." She pointed at him severely. "No running off without me. I mean it. I don't fancy havin' to track you down to save you."
He smiled warmly. "Now you know how I feel whenever you wander off."
"Doctor."
"Alright, I promise I won't."
She smiled, "Good."
The Doctor went off to construct something that would help him figure out what the hell that blob was, Tallulah shooed Solomon away and shut the door behind him. Rose plopped down on the couch next to Martha and shucked her gloves.
"So!" she said brightly. "I never got your names."
"Why do you need them? Don't you have your own?"
Tallulah laughed. "Oh, I like you. But come on, who are you?"
"I'm Rose and this is Martha. The tall one was the Doctor and the other was Solomon."
"Well, how do ya do?" she said and plopped back down in her chair. "You're from across the water, aint'chya?"
They nodded.
"Believe it or not, I've never been there. So what's it like in New Jersey?"
Rose and Martha glanced at each other.
"Naw I'm just kidding. Come on, I'm not that stupid. I know a London accent when I hear it. What are you doing in New York? The Depression hittin' you hard over there yet?"
"Dunno," Martha admitted. "We haven't been home in a long while. We're travellers."
"Oh," she gasped, "lucky." Tallulah glanced at the clock jumped out of her chair. She closed the door then turned to the costume rack next to her. She pulled a hanger with a silver sparkling leotard out and held it up. "Sorry, I gotta get changed real quick."
"Go ahead. We can step out."
"Don't matter." she told them. But they did politely avert their eyes when she changed out of her dress and into the costume. She rifled through the odds and ends on her vanity and drawers, muttering darkly. "Aw nuts. Either of you see a tiara with a halo anywhere?"
They shifted around on the couch, lifting cushions and the thin drapery, then searched the room with their eyes.
"Is that it?" Martha pointed.
Tallulah followed her finger. "Yes! That's it! Oh, thank you, honey." She plucked the headpiece from a shelf above one of the costume racks and sat back down in her chair.
"So, what do you play?"
"An angle, I guess." Tallulah said as she placed the crown-halo on her head. "I sing the song, too."
Rose arched her eyebrows. "Looks a bit too skimpy for an angel, no offense."
Tallulah smiled. "Well, the song's called Heaven and Hell. The other girls are all devils. And I only mean that literally about one of 'em." She giggled, Martha laughed, and Rose found herself liking Tallulah.
She put a pair of strappy silver heels on and a diamond necklace around her neck. "Lazlo used to tell me I looked like an angel even without the costume."
"He sounds like a nice guy." Rose told her. "You're lucky."
"Lucky as anyone can be these days, yeah." She agreed, putting in one of her earrings, and sighed. "Laszlo, he'd wait for me after the show, walk me home, like I was a lady. He'd leave a flower for me on my dressing table—every day, just a single rosebud."
"Haven't you reported him missing?" Martha stood up from the couch and walked over to the vanity.
"Sure, but he's just a stagehand. Who cares? The management certainly don't."
Solomon had said something similar. The police didn't care about people in Hooverville going missing and they didn't care about missing stagehands, either. They were just little people on the road to starvation. So what if they got knocked off a bit sooner? Not like they were going to make a big difference anyway. It made Rose's blood boil. The police had been like that about people from the Estate, too.
A woman named Christa Mason used to live two floors down with her son, Aaron. Rose hadn't known Aaron well since he'd been six years her senior, but one day he vanished, seemingly into thin air. No note, no goodbye, no nothing. The police were called, of course, but Christa Mason hadn't had the stubborn persistence of Jackie Tyler. Aaron was soon written off as a runaway and forgotten about. He could've been kidnapped, he could've been killed, he could've run off with a madman in a blue box and died on some alien planet—it didn't matter. He was just another Estate kid who wouldn't have amounted to anything anyway.
Rose had probably been written off as the same a few weeks after she'd disappeared with the Doctor. And look at what she'd become. She had no job, no A-levels, no home (on Earth), no family…but she had saved the universe, she had all of time and space to explore, and she was in love with the reason the Earth was still spinning.
"Can't you just kick up a fuss or something?" Martha asked.
"Okay, so then they fire me."
"Bet they'd listen to you." She leaned down to look at herself in the mirror. "You're one of the stars."
Tallulah smiled. "Oh, honey, I got one song in a backstreet revue, and that's only 'cause Heidi Chicane broke her ankle, which had nothin' to do with me, whatever anybody says. I can't afford to make a fuss."
Martha was fiddling idly with a tube of lipstick, looking doubtful.
"If I don't make this months rent, then before you know it, I'm in Hooverville."
"Okay. I get it." Martha held up her hands.
"It's not right, though," Rose said vehemently, rising to her feet. "And if it wouldn't get me arrested and you sacked I would have a word with the management myself. Several, actually."
Tallulah smiled at them. "Thank you. But it's the Depression, sweetie. Your heart might break, but the show goes on. 'Cause if it stops, you starve." She rose from her chair, her expression sad. "Every night, have to go out there, sing, dance, keep goin', hopin' he's gonna come back." Her face crumped and Rose pulled her into a hug.
"I'm sorry," Martha told her.
"Me too," Rose added.
Tallulah sniffed, patting Rose on the back. "Hey, you're lucky, though." She pulled away and wiped her eye. "You've got yourself a forward thinking guy with that hot potato in the sharp suit."
"Oh, he's not—I mean, we're not—"
"Aw, come off it, Rose." Martha grinned and elbowed her. "You're not fooling anyone."
"You're not, really." Tallulah agreed, spinning around her chair. "I've seen the way you look at him, it's obvious."
"Yeah, well, we're not a couple," she mumbled, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets.
Tallulah plucked her wings off a chair and started to slide them up her arms. "He ain't into musical theater, is he? What a waste."
Rose frowned in confusion but then it dawned on her. "Oh! Oh, no, no, he isn't. Trust me. But it's…it's really complicated."
"Well, you got to live in hope." Tallulah told her, adjusting the straps of her wings. "It's the only thing that's kept me going, 'cause…well, look." She picked a single, fresh white rosebud from her vanity and held it out for them to see. "On my dressing table, every day, still."
"Do you think it's Laszlo?" Martha asked.
"I don't know. If he's still around, why's he being all secret, like he doesn't want me to see him?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
Tallulah sniffed once and sighed, setting the rose gently back onto her table.
"Maybe he's ashamed to face you?" Rose suggested.
"But why? What could he have done that would make him think I don't wanna see him?"
There were hundreds of things she could think of, but Tallulah was already suffering. She didn't need a list of possible atrocities her boyfriend may have committed, so Rose just shook her head. Tallulah sighed again then smiled tightly at Rose.
"Well, the show must go on."
I saw Layla again this weekend. She says you have to leave a lot of reviews. Or else.