Lost In Purple

Chapter 51: Mini Charity

Johnny's POV

Last night was probably the hardest we've ever partied. I've never stayed up that late on a school night since I'm a responsible student that always gets a good nights sleep, and I've never had that much fun just dancing and talking to people. I usually don't care that much for interactions with people I don't care for, but I couldn't seem to help myself. What made it even better was pranking Oozma Kappa the way we did. They really should be called Cute-ma Kappa since they look nothing like Scarers and more like stuffed animals themselves.

After all the festivities were over, we decided to quickly print some merchandise with the picture of those embarrassments on them. Shirts, coffee cups, keychains, you name it. We even got a giant banner that will be going up on the clock tower soon which will be hilarious all because we sent the picture to the monsters who run the student paper. From what I know, they're headlining this next upcoming issue which should have went out this morning. I honestly hope the Oozmas will be around to see that one, because I feel very proud of it. At least we found one good thing that comes from their embarrassing presence in the Scaring Program. Maybe they'll appreciate the lengths that I went to in order to bring happiness for the people who will receive our charity.

I will say that this morning has been kind of crazy. All of us except Melanie woke up ready to go and make some money. We waited for her for a little while but she never came downstairs. I sent myself up to see if she was even awake but her door was locked and there was no answer, so we just went out on our own. Setting everything up was kind of easy, but it would have been smoother if Melanie were here to lighten the load a little bit. We used glue to smack hundreds of of the Cute-ma Kappa photo over everything around the Mini Quad, and set up a couple of advertisements on campus so that people can come spend a few bucks on some high quality merchandise. Chet ended up even bringing a couple boxes of custom made hats with their picture on them which was very insightful. As of now we've raised just under a thousand dollars, but it's still climbing since everyone's just now starting to show up and are beginning to completely sell us out. I even threw on one of the Cute-ma Kappa shirts to give people an idea of what it looks like while wearing it, and it seems like people like it so far.

"Oh my gosh this is the funniest thing, yet the sweetest thing you guys have ever done! Only you guys could put smiles on everyone's faces like this while giving all the profits away," a small winged yellow monster says to me as I give her a couple 'Cute-ma Kappa' shirts.

"Well we sure as hell would like to see you wearing this shirt, you'll light up whatever room you walk into with that on," I wink.

The monster blushes and thanks me as much as she can before trotting over to her friends and squealing with them. They end up on their tippy toes, rapidly running in place while putting on their newly acquired shirts. She's right though, only we could make the entire campus have this much fun with something so miniscule. I feel even more accomplished when I realize that we ended up having two successful events back to back that people have absolutely loved. It only makes me wonder how this campus would live without me…probably in pain no doubt.

A tall green monster with a blue hat comes over with his red and green spotted friend, asking for two shirts. I can also hear Chet talking to another high paying customer beside me, giving them a shirt as well. "Thank you very much! Okay, would you like that with two sleeves or four?"

I simply keep things moving along and give the two monsters in front of me their merchandise. "Thanks. Tell your friends," I state as friendly as possible.

The two monsters give me a nod and turn away to enjoy the rest of the Quad, presumably to observe every square inch of it that's been covered in cuteness.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" I hear the green beach ball named Mike ask angrily, stomping up to me as if he owned the place. If anything, I'm the one who basically owns the campus, so I don't understand why he even thinks he can do that if he can barely even be useful during the Scare Games.

"Raising a little money for charity," I respond while being uninterested with what he has to say.

I pass a newspaper over to one of our customers so that they can have a chance to read it…or to simply laugh at the headlining photo.

"Yeah? Well, stop it," Mike retorts.

Oh, so he hates charity now? Wow, he really isn't the kind of person we want on campus. He can't even prove himself to be scary, and he can't even fathom us trying to raise money for those in need. It's times like this where I wonder what my family would think. I know my mother would be disturbed, but my Dad and Grandfather would be furious to be talked to like that by someone so small and disrespectful.

"You want us to stop raising money for charity? That's not cool," I say with a satirical amount of surprise.

Chet seems to be bothered by this too and makes it everyone's problem when he raises his voice and waves his arm around to gather everyone's attention. "This guy hates charity!"

The crowd lets us all know that they disprove of that claim, gathering around Mike and the rest of the Oozmas as they saunter up behind him with displeased looks on their face. I would be displeased to be the laughing stocks of campus due to their skills as well.

"I want you to stop making us look like fools," Mike replies while taking a step closer to us.

I can hear the laughter coming from Chip and Javier beside me when he does that. Does he really think he's that tough, that he's as scary as he think he is. If anything he looks like a tiny household pet that unhappy because of a minor inconvenience. It baffles me how he hasn't got the message yet, that he doesn't belong here. None of them do, the only reason they're still here is because of extreme luck and the infuriating acceptance of them avoiding orthodox scaring methods. Everyone knows they would kill themselves if they stepped foot in the human world, never to be seen again, and proving that Dean Hardscrabble desecrated the legacy nod traditions we Scarers have honored for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I still have one more newspaper in my hands, and decide to lift it up into his face as my rebuttal. "Hey, you're making yourselves look like fools," I say before putting it back down and shrugging, "Let's be honest boys, your never going to be real Scarers because real Scarers look like us."

My brothers all cross their arms and look as tough as they can, taking in all the lovely attention that everyone is giving them. Chet even laughs mockingly, knowing that we'll always be better than them no matter the circumstances. It seems they all understand that the Oozmas are just temporary pests that need to be brought down a notch, that nobody can just become someone like us with only a few weeks of so called 'training.' I'm not done there though, and can tell that they're still fairly privy to the idea of becoming Scarers. I'm not the kind of person to completely knock someone down into hopelessness, so I decide to give them a suggestion. Having a family that's worked in the Scaring business for as long as I can remember, I know that there are ways that they can still be a part of the Scaring workforce. So I continue to say, "But hey, if you really want to work for a Scare company, they're always hiring in the mailroom."

I point to the ad that sits at the back of the paper and listen to everybody as they laugh once more. Man, it's great to see everyone in such high spirits today!

I lean back into a standing position and nod uninterestingly at Mike as Sullivan aggressively turns around and pushes his way through the crowd. The rest of the Oozmas follow almost instantly after, and they leave us to continue raising money for charity. They're little stunt that they pulled off only seemed to garner more attention and more demand for our products, so I guess I should thank them at some point for this. I think about giving them a little bit of the revenue, but quickly decide against that since I would rather just give it away entirely. My mother did teach me to be generous after all.

Before I completely ignore the Oozmas, I do notice that they're still hanging around, and that Sullivan is angrily speaking to Mike while gesturing over to their unhappy members. I nudge Chet and wait for him to turn look me in the eyes like he usually does. "Hey Chet, go make sure they're alright will you? We can't have them crying back right in front of our stall like that."

We all spent around an hour packing everything up. We even managed to scrape off every poster that we glued onto the sidewalks and scenery so that we don't end up damaging the environment or making the place look absolutely horrid. Chip seemed a little confused as to why we did that along with Bruiser and Chet, so I had to give them a lecture on environmental protection and sustainability. Professor Kingswould be proud to find out that I'm not a person who takes paper or plastic and just lets it sit outside so it can take the time consuming journey to breakdown. There's also the fact that there could be toxic consequences surrounding the wildlife on campus that I don't really want to be behind; We just cleaned it up.

After taking everything back to the house, we all give ourselves a couple minutes to stretch, as we were standing up for a couple hours straight, and decide that it's for the best to rest for the day. Everyone goes they're own ways. Javier and Bruiser go into the kitchen to make themselves some food, Chip goes upstairs into his room, and Chet and Boggs decide to play a some sort of nerdy card game they have a huge amount of passion for. I simply go into the library, in hopes to study for my classes since I tend to doze off in them. I'm specifically worried about one of the classes I'm coincidentally taking with Professor King at the moment which deals with the cognitive processes in humans that comes with psychological stress caused by scaring, so I'm figured it would be good to read up on that a couple times over.

That is, I planned on doing that before my phone began ringing within my sweaters inner pocket. I really should get a new sweater or something, or at least get one with outer front pockets so that I don't have to struggle every time I try to answer it. When I do finally fish it out, I realize that it's my father. The only thing I can do is respond within a millisecond so that I can minimize the amount of time I've kept him waiting.

"You really need to be quicker answering Jonathan, it's infuriating having you waste my time like this," He says with a slight growl.

"Then I guess you shouldn't have called me then. I have enough things happening right now anyways," I challenge.

I can envision him rolling his eyes in his office right now. He clearly doesn't have the energy to fight today even though he started it. I seriously wonder why he even bothers at this point since all he does is cause verbal mayhem between us.

"Whatever, I called to ask about who this mysterious ghost girl is and why she's competing with you. My Scaring Scout first said that this monster was a she, which sounds absolutely preposterous, and then proceeded to tell me that she was see through and showed promise as she dealt with a supposed cheater! Be serious with me, what in the hell happened at this event?!" Dad asks.

Oh…I completely forgot about the Scaring Scouts. They're supposed to be observing all six of us, but it seems like Melanie caught their eyes this time. As happy as I am that she's gaining attention, I can tell that this conversation about her could lead to some trouble, no matter if I tell the truth or not. Regardless, it's always better to tell the truth when talking to my father "Chet had a family emergency, so I had a friend fill in. That's all there was to it…except for the fact that one eliminated contestant is still salty for losing the first event and tried to take it out on her," I explain while wishing I could return to my studying.

"Ok, but who is this girl? My Scaring Scouts are the best in the business and would never overlook someone of that caliber. Why is it that we're only discovering her paranormal techniques now?!" He presses even further.

Since I told him that I stopped dating Melanie months ago, I know I have to keep her identity secret. He made it clear that he doesn't want me, a monster of mammalian ancestry, dating a woman of reptile ancestry. He's always on on and on about how that would screw up or royal gene pool, and he's also always talked about how it's a bad thing to marry someone who isn't wealthy because it'll make our family look bad. The only 'requirement' that Melanie even met was the fact that she was a Scarer, but he's too lazy to actually try to dig up information so that he can learn that she's more than suitable for me. I simply decide to just vaguely answer, "She's one of Bruisers friends. As for your Scaring Scouts, they haven't noticed her because she's a freshman. She still has a while to go before you would even consider hiring her anyways."

"…Ok and who's Bruiser?" Dad questions seriously and indirectly telling me that he doesn't remember me ever talking about Bruiser before.

"One of my ROR brothers... Do you even care about me and what I do?," I answer vaguely again.

"Grrr! You are so unhelpful, you know that right?! All I need is information and all I ask for is respect, yet you refuse to give any of that to me!" Dad roars.

Alright so I was wrong; So much for not having enough energy argue with me today. I really don't want to argue either, but I at least have more restraint than he does, so I just continue to feign an interested tone in hopes that he'll just hang up. "Ok. Sorry, I'll be sure to make something up that's more fun next time."

I hear my father make a loud slam on the other side of the phone that's followed by an exasperated sigh. "You know what? Just forget that I said anything. I'll call you again soon to talk to you about your performances. I had also better get some actually useful information about 'Bruiser's friend' the next time we speak."

"Can't make any promises, but sure," I reply as I finally open my book.

"Yeah, alright," Dad sighs before cutting the line and letting the phone sit in silence.

Damn he's infuriating. I don't even get a 'hello' anymore, it's just purely business related. This reminds me of the past three years where I didn't even speak to him, and the reason why I decided to not go and see him since I left for college. It's just constant conflict between us. The constant nit-picking on my character only made me more angry in high school, reinforcing the choice of going away and forgetting about my parents entirely. Not to mention the unreachable expectations that he places on me that make it seem like I won't ever be enough for him.

I don't have time to wallow in despair though. I put my phone away and think that it would be better if I were to read and study in my room today. I'm exhausted after that phone call now and wouldn't mind being left to my own thoughts. With a couple strides, I find myself at the left side staircase and climb it before arriving in the left upstairs hallway and in front of Melanie's room. I remember that she wasn't awake this morning, which only makes me feel a tad bit lonely because she always with me on normal days. I knock on her door, hearing nothing for the second time today. I feel myself worry slightly since there's always the possibility that she could be ill, or even worse, dead! I open the door and see her on the bed, breathing slowly with her eyes shut tight.

Now that I think about it, the Mixer went on until 2 or 3 in the morning. She must not have slept at all last night.