Mountains of gratitude to honeywldcat for her editing of this entire series.
*
I was working on a paper when I found her again. Well, I was wandering around at 1 a.m. to take a break from writing a paper is what I was really doing. I generally walk around at night. The world is far more peaceful, easier to look at, without humanity getting in the way.
My paper was due next week, but boredom proved to be a helpful motivator into getting homework done. Unfortunately for me, this usually leads to dissatisfaction with my current activity and forces me outside, both to think about my homework and escape from it. Fortunately for her, this was one of those nights.
I found her sitting on a bench beneath a streetlamp on campus. Very noir, if you ask me. She had her head in her hands, those streaked locks curtaining her face. I couldn't tell much else about her from the distinct bagginess of her clothing. It wasn't due to ill-fit of the garments. On the contrary, they were baggy on purpose; more for comfort than anything else.
How on earth I recognized her was beyond me. She was so different from back then, bent over like someone had destroyed any happy emotion supporting her front. This made me question my own eyes, as it seemed impossible the girl she seemed to be could express unhappiness.
That seat next to her called to me. The orange sodium illumination of the streetlight, perhaps mixed with some tint of moonlight, bid me sit next to her. What manner of twisted fool is called to sit next to someone like her, by a city streetlight, no less?
This manner of fool.
"Danielle?" I asked tentatively. Danielle . Never "Dani," Danielle. What a fitting name. She had been the 'Hot girl' of our high school class. Queen Crap of Shit Mountain. Popular, beautiful, and exuberantly happy. Everything that every girl wanted to be, and everything that the boys wanted to fuck was Danielle Carter.
"Toby?" She looked up at me. She remembered my name? Remembered, hell, how could she have even known my name? We'd never really interacted on any level. We may have spoken maybe once or twice directly to each other in the course of high school.
She looked up at me with a very odd palette of emotions indeed. Her mouth was neutral, seemingly devoid of emotion, a very distinct difference from the rest of her face. Her eyebrows were nestled somewhere between their usual happiness and uncertainty. Her cheeks were rosy, possibly from the chill from the pervasive lack of sunlight at 1 a.m., or from something else? It was her eyes, however, that were a mystery unto themselves. Each was a dazzling turquoise, but had streaks of hazel in them, as if part had died somewhere along the way.
"Yeah, it's Toby. What are you doing here all by yourself at a time like this?"
"Nothing, really." She said. The violent absence of her wistful exuberance made her sound sad, though to someone who had never heard her speak, she would have sounded merely bored.
"Mind if I join you?" I asked, indicating the rest of the bench.
"No. Some company would be nice." She sat back, folding her hands in her lap as I occupied the remainder of the seat.
"What brings you to this bench, at 1 a.m.?" I asked, smiling slightly. She gave a mirthless snort.
"I've been kicked out of my house, so I'm trying to think of who's still in town that I can crash with."
"How's that working out for you? Been here long?"
"I've been here probably for an hour or so."
"Haven't been able to come up with anyone?"
"No, unfortunately." She sighed, looking up into the sky, quickly realizing that the streetlight qualified as "bright" and returned her gaze forward.
"That shouldn't be a problem for Ms. Popularity. You were always going on about parties in high school."
"How would you know about those?"
"You mean, 'How would a loser like you know about those?' You nearly broadcasted it to the whole school. You'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to not know." She blushed, bringing a little more color to those cheeks. I found it cute.
"Well...yeah," she said, a little embarrassed. "I don't talk to many of my friends from high school any more. Or rather, they don't talk to me." Even from my sidelong angle, I could see her glazed, far-off look in her eyes. It wasn't a good look.
"Oh?" My interest piqued.
"There was a bit of a falling out after graduation after it got out that I had slept with...someone." She clearly didn't want to talk about this, so I didn't inquire further.
"So what do you plan on doing?"
"I'm still not entirely sure." She sighed. "I had hoped that I would have come up with something by now."
"Well, from one alum to another, I've got a couch you could stay on until you find a new place."
It was true. By some miracle, I had managed to secure for myself a room the size of most houses. It could honestly be described as a wing of a mansion, but it wasn't quite that. It was more along the lines of a studio apartment attached to a house. The house was owned by a pair of lesbians who needed a lodger to help with the last bit of the bills, but so far had only found homophobes or horn dogs trying to get into their pants. Because I was neither of these, and I managed to help out with little household chores, they absolutely adored me and I could get away with pretty much anything, including a mildly psychotic ex-girlfriend.
"That's very generous of you, but I wouldn't want to impose."
