"Sarah, do I have anything in my teeth? What about my hair? Is my hair okay? My butt...I don't have any string on it or anything, do I?" Molly smoothed her blonde pixie cut, polished pink nails catching on baby blue fibers as she shifted to straighten her sweater dress and adjust her pink vinyl belt. She was the perfect image of a barbie doll from valley land to match her red-headed friend.
"You look fine...what about me?" Sarah imitated Molly's grooming ritual, taking mincing steps in her pumps as she turned in a circle to get a well-formed opinion. It was more like an oval, actually, as they were still trying to navigate through the crowd without stopping.
Molly took a deep breath and smiled. "Good. You look good," she nodded, as they continued their journey down the boardwalk.
Sarah turned her head slightly before Molly poked her sharply in the ribs.
"Don't look at him! He'll think you're a floozy!" Molly hissed in her ear. They may have called him a pig in passing, when he was with the boys, but neither girl really minded the attention when they'd realized he was following them. After all, he did kind of look like Jim Morrison.
Stepping aside to avoid colliding with a tipsy tourist, Michael kept his eyes trained on them both. He was starving.
Idly, to keep himself from going too mad with the hunger gnawing at the pit of his stomach, he considered the parallels between this night and one long past. Of course, he was no longer a love-struck idiot trailing after a pretty, but mysterious face. But he was just as determined to catch these two, for...slightly different reasons.
The sickly sweet smell of cheap perfume and Diet Pepsi leaking from their pores assaulted his senses, but beneath it was a much more satisfying fragrance. Coppery, salty, warm, and delicious. Of course, it would probably be laced with hints of the 'low calorie' soda they apparently drank so liberally.
"Ohmygosh, those eyes..." Molly chanced a look back at him when they rounded a corner and huddled together beside a small jewelry stall.
"Molly!" Sarah gasped.
"What?" Molly winced as Sarah pinched her in the ribs.
"Who's the floozy now, huh?" Sarah asked, crossing her arms and leaning back against the stall counter. Nearby, the salesgirl hovered with a small child on a stool, piercing her right ear while an anxious mother kept her eyes trained on them both.
"Well...he was looking at my ass anyway, not yours," Molly snapped, though her snippy mood immediately melted when she heard a soft voice whisper in her ear behind her, the tickle of hair on her shoulder.
"It's a rip-off," Michael told her, pulling back with a half-smirk.
"W...What?" Molly spun about, taking a moment to regain her composure. She hadn't even seen him turn the corner. This guy was fast.
"It's a rip-off, that's what you said? Right?" Sarah put a hand on her hip and gave Michael a look of her own. A strange cross between righteous indignation that they were being bothered, and yet...also a little bit of a welcoming flirtation.
"Yeah." Michael shrugged, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. He didn't really say much, but already Molly could envision herself riding off with this mysterious bad boy...he had a totally killer Marlon Brando 'Wild Ones' vibe right now. All he needed was the hat.
"What's a rip-off?" Molly slowly smiled, backing into her friend and crossing her arms. She just knew she had him on her line, all she had to do was play the part of an aloof vixen...and she'd reel him in. Sarah had the same idea, and not one to be outdone, poked at Molly's shoulder to get her to move aside just a little.
"Ear piercings. If that's what you're here for...I can do it for you," he straightened his spine as he spoke, not directly making eye contact with either of them. Singling one of the girls out was pointless, as hungry as he was tonight. This game was already wearing thin, and it was taking way more patience than usual for him to just play his role. But he didn't want to share with the others tonight, so he had to do it.
"No thanks, we've already got piercings," Sarah tossed her hair and rolled her eyes. He couldn't tell if she was trying to be seductive, or verging on a grand mal seizure.
"I don't see any earrings," Michael squinted, looking between both girls.
"You can have piercings in other places," and now it was Sarah's turn to smirk back at him. Leave him guessing.
"Yeah, but you don't, Sarah. You just aren't wearing your earrings tonight," Molly nudged her friend, calling her out.
Sarah turned on her and gave her a very firm glare, and in turn received one. So she pinched Molly's elbow, and Molly proceeded to yank on her perm. Sarah shrieked, shoving her friend into the jewelry stall, knocking over a few bracelet displays in the process. The salesgirl quickly set her piercing gun aside and turned on the two, shouting out a line of expletives, to which the mother of the child she was piercing quickly covered her kid's ears. They were still tender, so the little girl began to wail, all the while Molly and Sarah had really begun to get into a fight on the boardwalk, while the salesgirl tried to push them away and avoid any more damage to her merchandise.
By the time all was said and done, broken bracelets were paid for, the mother was rushed away from the stall with a refund, and both girls had made up...Michael had blown the scene. He had a strict personal rule never to stick his fangs in crazy. No matter how hungry he was.
His stomach gave a weak mewl of protest, but he figured he could hang on for another hour if he had to. Last resort, he could always join the boys on whatever hunts they had planned tonight. Because they most certainly would have something planned. He gave an inward sigh of irritation. This just wasn't his week.
"Well, I think that was very...nice. Did you boys enjoy the show?" Lucy strode ahead of the group, hands firmly clasping at her clutch in front of her as she tried to find a lemonade stall in the crowd. She was parched.
"It was good, mom. Fun to get outta the house, too. It's like we're always in the house, and there's no MTV or anything fun to do, and I need to get more comics or something too, which I've been meaning to talk to you about..." Sam prepared to ramble, before Lucy gave him a sweet smile and ruffled his hair, effectively embarrassing and silencing the youngest Emerson all at once.
"Too many chicks," Alan shrugged. He could only handle so much estrogen at one time.
"On stage, or in the audience?" Sam looked at him curiously. Half of the performers had been dudes. In fact, the only women up there were solo acts.
"Just...everywhere. All over," Alan shook his head.
"Dude, that's kinda gay. Do you know how gay you sound right now? Really. Gay." Edgar shoved his brother's shoulder.
"Edgar, that's not a nice word," Lucy chided, with just a little bit of censure in her tone. He looked sheepishly down at his feet, cowed.
"Uh...sorry, Ms. Emerson..." He turned back to Alan. "That's retarded, Alan. You sound retarded."
"EDGAR!" Lucy sputtered, stopping and turning on her heels so she could give him a very stern look.
Sam snickered, covering his mouth with his hand. The Frogs had some serious foot-in-mouth disease. He had a bit of it himself, but at least he knew what words didn't fly around his mom. Multiple occasions of being greeted with an after-dinner soap aperitif had taught him a few things.
"We need to have a serious talk about appropriate and inappropriate words. Do you want to end up in prison some day? Because that's where language like that will get you. Prison. I'm trying to be patient, but I will not put up with any more gutter talk under my roof. Do you understand?" Lucy demanded, almost surprising Sam with the firmness with which she was reprimanding them. But...mom had gotten a bit tougher since Mike left.
Lucy sighed, reaching into her clutch and passing a few dollars to her son, smiling sweetly at him. "Sam, will you go find us some lemonade? I have to have a serious talk with your friends, and I think it might be best if we had it alone," she explained.
Both Edgar and Alan exchanged a look with each other, and then Sam, and then each other again. Panic was clearly written on both of their faces. Sam just shrugged, grinned, and ran off before they could plead with him to stay. After the trouble they'd caused him this week, they deserved to have a bit of mom talk.
He was snickering madly to himself all the way down the boardwalk, imagining what she could be saying to them, gleeful that for once he wasn't in trouble too. And he might have kept an evil grin plastered on his face for the rest of the night, all the way home, and possibly until the next morning...if the next thing he saw wasn't sobering enough to make him nearly piss himself.
There, at the very edge of the boardwalk, where wood met sand...five bikes and four bikers sat...and all of their eyes were trained on something not too far away from him. Sam took in a deep breath, and prepared to scream. That is, until someone came barreling into him and knocked him to the ground with the force of a bulldozer.
"Did you hear something?" Marko looked around, squinting. It sounded like a high-pitched shriek, but he couldn't tell what the source of it was.
David shrugged, pulling out a box of matches from his coat and striking one on the heel of his boot so he could light his cigarette. "Ya got me."
"Where'd Mikey go?" Paul stood up on his bike seat and craned his head, looking around.
"He was just over there a second ago," Marko pointed back at the direction they'd all been focused on.
"He'll turn up," David took a long pull of his cigarette.
"Give him five minutes, and I'll drag his ass back here if I have to," he added with a grin. Nobody doubted he would.
Author's note: For the un-initiated, 'The Wild Ones' is a 50s movie about the cleanest-cut 'bad boy' bikers in cinema history. And just to illustrate a point...no, Falcon...Michael never gets a break. -Cue evil laughter.-