In the offhand chance that you don't find the setting clear on the issue, all characters are eighteen and legal. This is also a madly different story genre than I'm used to writing, so be kind.
. . .. ... .....
She hated her.
Hated
... though strong and dramatic, it was the only word that summed up their relationship.
Nobody would have guessed it, but it's the truth. Secretly, deep down, and without reservation, Gina Morris held a deep down and powerful hatred of Sissy Thompasani. Seeing her flit and flutter her pretty blonde hair and toned, slender body here and there throughout high school was like a slow torture of Gina's self-esteem. Hearing the boys talk about her--even her closest friends--used to drive her absolutely mad. Being privy to their thoughts and hormones, even though here
*waves hand*
... right fucking
here
... there's a
woman
right here! Only to be treated like one of the guys, to be pooh-poohed if she didn't drum up some kind of casual-feaux-lust for the bitch or acknowledge her superior attractiveness.
Hate.
And Sissy didn't make it any easier. During gym or field practice (Sissy shaking it to lame 80's pop with the cheerleaders while Gina rigidly followed patterns in the Band), it would be the little blonde tramp who led the other little blonde tramps in snide comments about the few girls that Gina had made lasting friendships with during those awkward years.
Oh, things like
Carla needs to get on a diet
or
better hurry up, girls, or the good prom dates'll get taken
or
two words, dear, make...up
. Like they were all that was good and sexy in the world, just because they starved themselves at an early age and grew boobs first. Horrid bitch. There was, sure, a jealousy--who didn't want to be them? Who didn't want to be confidant and pretty and make the boys coo with smiles and big doe eyes? But puberty was hard enough without having it rubbed in your face that some girls escape it mentally, socially, and physically unscathed.
Gina was not quick to develop as a teenager, and what developed was often difficult to manage. When breasts finally started showing up, at fourteen, she was terrified--the left one was larger than the right and they weren't all that large. Boys seemed to like "large". But, hips did show up, and with that a wider-than-supermodel butt that made her jeans fit just plain badly and precluded cuter outfits.
Her brown hair was uninteresting, and attempts to dye it turned into disasters to be gawked at during class. The red, particularly, was a bad idea--she looked desperate and awkward. Her first attempts at a skirt were met with jeers, moreso from the girls than the guys, who might have liked it... she'd never know, she didn't have the courage to flirt.
No. One would not mistake Gina, at sixteen, for a girl comfortable in her own skin. She had two boyfriends, back then. A bumbling friend that she dated out of pity, moreso than attraction. It was a strange relationship where she gave him kisses and attention, and he didn't know what to do with either. Danny would have been great, in a few years--after the allure of video games and his lack of experience wore off. Steven was hardly better, a braggart and a blowhard--more interested in taking her to lame backwoods parties where he'd get drunk and fumble at her than talking to her.
If it wasn't for the one friend of hers, Maureen, who tried feeling her up during a sleepover--and the general discomfort and genuine awkwardness afterward, Gina would have thought about giving girls a go. But, no, she wasn't a lesbian--despite jokes from her guy friends--and she wasn't successful at being hetero. She was a girl--and a normal one... positively, the hardest kind to be.
Predictably, Gina was a good student. She did well in class, she liked learning, and her teachers regarded her well--which wasn't too surprising, given that most teachers regard bookish girls and boys well. Before leaving for college, she had a few weeks to get control over herself. Her older sister, Pamela, had gone a few years ago (though she ended up dropping out). All she had ever heard of the University was that it was a new life.
Pamela told her often, "Babe, it's a different world. All of this high school shit you
think
is important? It's not. You just don't know it, yet, but none of this matters. Hang in there."
So,
hang in there
she did. And on a ripe and moist day in August, Gina Morris started her first day of college. She was nervous, but excited. No parents. No pressure. Just her, tons of new people, and a whole summer before it where she felt like she'd grown up and matured a bit. It wasn't that Gina was shy, just that she never developed a good sense of timing or social grace. She wasn't afraid of talking to people, she just never knew what to say. She wasn't scared of doing things, just bad at doing them—usually.
Oh, it was going to be a fresh
whole life
. She wasn't necessarily interested in
being
a different person, but here she could be everything she wanted to be. She didn't have to look at classmates and think "they remember that bad dye job" or "did they hear about the Maureen thing?" She was Gina. Hell, she could be Virginia--her full first name.
She could be anything.
Two thousand miles away from home and surrounded by people that liked books and watched the news and had interesting opinions. People she could study at coffee shops with and go to concerts on
maybe
double-dates with!
Her mind raced from discussions to clubs to book-signings to concerts to movies to picnics to this and to that as she flew out to go to college. She thought about new friends and new stores and new hangouts and new things to try and new this and new that as she made her way to the campus. She continued daydreaming about boys and guys and lads and chaps and this fellow and that fellow as she moved in to the residence hall. Days and days of imagining and expectation and she finally made it—half a world away.
Walking up the steps to the dorm. Pillow and comforter in hand, past the gaggles of families and girls and crowded halls of boxes and baskets and chatter. Through the maze of elevators and stairs and payphones...
...her world crashed.
Her room, 810. A dichotomy.
On the right side of the room was a bed and desk, same as all the others she passed on the way up here. The left side was brightly pink and softly purple. The teddy-bears were on the bed, and there--stretched out like a cat, reading
Seventeen
, was Sissy Thompasani. Blondely staring at her from under the magazine, half-shocked and half-disappointed.
Gina Morris turned around--wordlessly--and went to the bathroom down the hall to cry.
. . .. ... .....
Sobbing.
Not something she liked doing, but something that felt good afterwards--Gina sobbed quietly to herself in the bathroom stall furthest from the door of the massive communal bathroom and shower. She cried for the years she'd felt small and ugly and wrong, and she cried harder for the years she felt were wasted--living not only in the shadow of girls like Sissy, but living with her as well. She saw the parties of girls like Sissy crowding the tiny dorm room. She saw make-up and boys and giggles and being ostracized in her own room.
She saw feeling small and ugly and wrong for years to come. Because she hated Sissy, and Sissy hated her--and everyone would like her better and the boys she'd meet and invite to her room and fool around with were now boys that would gawk at the pretty blonde, boys that would want to be "friends", boys that would ask her questions about her roommate and pooh-pooh her for not deferring to the girl's greater sexiness.
She saw a world that was going to hurt her again. And she cried. Because she was going to be extraordinary, and saw herself being mediocre again.
And Gina was only going to be Gina. Never "Virginia", because Sissy would mock that. And if she requested a room change, then it'd be an outright admission of defeat. And if she tried to act boldly, she would lose the popularity contest that would ensue. And Gina Morris would likely have stayed in that stall, alone and sobbing, had it not been for the hand under the stall next to her handing her a tissue.
A hand with a scrap of toilet paper--something she already had in her own hands in her own stall. The ridiculousness of seeing a scrapped ball of fresh TP being waved at her underneath the worn wooden wall, with a small voice whispering "Well, go on... I can't pee with you falling apart, so either you can help me develop kidney stones or you can dry up and we'll talk about it after I get this done over here."
Between sobs, Gina laughed.
Because even unfunny things are worth laughing about, even bad jokes are humorous; when you're so emotional you can't keep your eyes dry. Whoever this hand belonged to was a friend... and the least you can do for a friend is let them pee in peace.
That's when Gina met Tina. And everything in the whole damn world changed to the sound of a perfect stranger peeing and giggling along with her about it.
. . .. ... .....
Tina and Gina talked in the echo-ey bathroom for about an hour. At first, Gina felt a little uncomfortable with the public-feeling space. Girls and whatnot coming in and out constantly. But after the first few came and went, with Tina boisterously going on and on with the conversation--Gina felt a lot less self-conscious. Yes, there she was in a bathroom stall having a normal conversation with some girl in the next--she'd whispered to friends before in bathrooms, nothing strange there.
But all shyness melted away after the Girl-with-the-rough-voice who just came in said "Hey, how about you two shut it for a few minutes or take it somewhere else?" and Tina replied "Shut your cunt, women are talking here, girl." Girl-with-the-rough-voice murmured something about "stupid bitches", but then the door opened and she quite obviously left.
