... for my extended absence. You will soon be hearing all about how crazy my life has been the last couple of weeks, but in the mean time I give you a short story I wrote today. In January I signed up to participate in a 'five lines challenge' being hosted by blogger
bibliophilefiles - "In short, five lines is a short story writing contest where every participant has the same five lines of dialogue. These five lines MUST be used, and NO OTHER DIALOGUE can be used. Stories up to 2,500 words will be crafted, posted, and celebrated during the month of February with award categories for Best Story, Most Creative Story Arc, Tear Jerker, Funny Business, Could Have Kept Reading and probably a few more I’ll make up….". The stories went up today, and voting closes March 15. I wasn't going to end up participating, since as of about three hours ago I had nothing written, but then as I went to close the word document that I'd pasted the lines into, I started writing... and an hour later had a story.
These are the lines:
1) We create ourselves; 2) The last twenty-four hours are making me seriously reconsider our friendship; 3) Whatever, whatever…it’s not happening; 4) I can’t fall in love today I didn’t do a thing with my hair- come back tomorrow; 5) It’s raining again.
The lines were randomly drawn out of those bibliophilefiles had written herself, as well as those users had submitted. While I can't remember exactly the lines I submitted (I submitted a lot) I'm relatively certain line number two was one of mine.
I spent an hour writing this story today, but I think I will have to revisit it, because I really want to know more about Nikki and Danny and their lives.
Warning: swear words, mature themes.
This is my story:
“The last twenty-four hours are making me seriously reconsider our friendship,” Nikki adjusted the handset jammed between her shoulder and ear while attempting to pull her foot close enough to her face to see what a disaster her home pedicure was turning into. At this point she was seriously regretting both thinking ‘how hard could it really be’ and that it was really too much work to try and find her glasses in the disaster that was her bedside table. When nothing but static greeted her pronouncement, she paused in her aerobatic struggles. “Danny? You there dude?”
“Yeah, yeah,” her friend’s voice emerged scratchily from the background noise, “Just got to the boss on Mario.”
“Wow. Good to know our conversation is so important to you.”
“Aw baby you know you are the most impo-SON OF A BITCH.” Nikki winced and abandoned her nails altogether in favour of putting a little distance between her ear and the speaker of the phone, which was now spewing Danny’s profanity laden rant. However, no amount of damage to her hearing was going to stop her from laughing at her friend, and Danny paused long enough in his rant against the cruel injustices of video games, Mario, and the universe in general to deliver an excessively venomous ‘fuck you’.
“Seriously dude, how long have you been trying to beat that game? Just give it up. I know for a fact that you haven’t even opened your copy of Portal 2, and I swear to God, if I have to play alone for another week I will come over there and strap you to a chair and smack you with the controller until you do.”
“… and you’re the one reconsidering this friendship? Cuz I’m thinking I should really invest in a less violent best friend.” Nikki laughed.
“Or you could just do everything I tell you when I tell you to do it.”
“True,” Danny acknowledged, “but what fun would that be?” There was a pause on the line, before Danny cleared his throat and asked, “So what is it about the last day in particular that is sending you searching for clearly inferior humans to keep you company?” Nikki sighed.
“Well for one, there is your inability to bend to my every whim… but…”
“But?”
“But… there’s also the small fact that you have somehow roped me into helping you decorate the gym for the dance.”
“What? That? We needed more people and I thought to myself, self, who would be more willing to help her friend, more kind and generous than your beloved best friend Nikki, who you know would happily do anything for you without complaining.” Nikki couldn’t help the rather inelegant snort that she let out.
“Right. Of course you did… Can I ask, in any of your deranged rambling to yourself, did you stop to consider what happened the last time you asked me to help you decorate for a dance?”
“Well dearest Nikki, that was two years ago, and I was rather hoping that you had moved beyond the stage where your anti-establishment reign of terror lead you to paint dicks on all of the posters, dicks, I might add, that only showed up once the DJ turned on the black lights.”
“I was suspended for a week!” Nikki screwed the lid back on her nail polish, giving up on the pedicure entirely in favour of defending her honour (at that point, the polish rather looked like it had been applied by a two-year-old, though, Nikki thought morosely, a two-year-old probably could have done a better job).
“Well, you did paint giant glowing penises all over the school dance. A dance, I may add, that occurred when we were fourteen. Julie Carstairs cried for two hours.”
“And Tommy Breslin’s mother wanted me expelled because she claimed that her son would require extensive therapy to get over the trauma. Which was total bullshit, because even if I bought that dear old Tommy had never so much as looked at his own dick, I know for a fact he sucked Rick Thompson off behind the bleachers six months after the dance.”
“Well clearly his homosexual tendencies can be directly linked back to his exposure to giant glowing cocks. Accept it Nikki, you are just a public menace, corrupting the innocent children of Hartel one at a time.”
“I like to think of it as re-educating the masses.” She said primely.
“You would.”
“Whatever, whatever… it’s not happening. Sorry amigo, but you are on your own for this one.”
“Awwwww.” Nikki could hear his pout over the phone, picturing his lower lip jutting out in a pathetic look he had perfected by the age of three, and which had resulted, over the years, in her giving in to everything to a clandestine trip to the city, hidden in the back of her mothers pick-up, which had resulted in a two month grounding, to the aforementioned dance decorating disaster. In fact, the fact that Danny was so good at conning other people into doing things formed a significant foundation of their friendship, and was probably the only reason she had, to date, never actually been expelled (or arrested). But that did not stop her from resenting it when he turned his evil powers on her.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, salvum me fac.”
“Excuse you?”
“I’ve been practicing my exorcisms.” Danny’s laughter echoed down the line.
“Alright, I’ll bite, what was it?”
“In the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, save me.”
“And that is supposed to…?”
“Protect me from your evil influence.”
“Is it working?” Nikki made a face.
“… no.” She couldn’t help it - it was so hard to refuse Danny when he was this determined. And she really did owe him for the frog incident in biology last week.
“There’ll be pizza.” He wheedled. She let out a heavy sigh.
“… when do I need to be there?”
“Ha!” Danny crowed in triumph, “We need to be there around four. I’ll pick you up.”
“I can just bike dude. I’m so out of your way.”
“It’s raining again.” Nikki swore under her breath and waddled over to the window, toes held awkwardly up in the air to avoid smearing any of the aggressively purple polish on the light grey carpet. Slim fingers pushed the slates of the blinds apart to reveal a pane streaked with water, beyond which sheets of water whipped across the yard.
“Motherfucker.”
“We should probably give into the inevitable and start building an ark.” Danny observed.
“Probably” Nikki agreed, peering around at the storm terrorizing her back yard. “Jesus this sucks. Isn’t it supposed to be sunny and dry at this time of year? This is such bullshit weather.”
“You should just be grateful that it’s not snowing like it did that one year.” Nikki laughed.
“True. God that was so weird. We were building snowmen in the backyard while Toronto was experiencing a record-breaking heatwave, remember that?” Danny laughed as well.
“Yeah. Well, mostly I remember that we decided to wage war on the snowmen with your mum’s antique scythe.”
“Oh god yeah. She was so not happy about that.”
“Still better than the time we decided to make cookies unsupervised.”
“There is still a burn mark on the ceiling of my kitchen,” Nikki acknowledged, “Oh, by the way I got the clothes you ordered in the mail. Should I just put them with the rest?” There was a long pause on the line before Danny replied, voice tight.
“Yeah, thanks Niks.”
“Hey” she said gently, “Anything for you Danny. Seriously.” He cleared his throat awkwardly on the other end of the line.
“Okay. Well. Yes. Thanks.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later then.”
“Yup.” Danny’s voice abruptly switched back to its previous carefree tone, “And don’t forget you have to come to the dance afterwards too.” Danny hung up quickly before she had the chance to retort, leaving Nikki looking down at the phone in annoyance.
“Son of a bitch.”
Three hours later found Nikki standing in front of the full length mirror which had been jammed in the space between her two overflowing bookshelves. She had spent the rest of her afternoon playing Portal 2 in a cloud of vague annoyance, and, ten minutes before Danny was set to arrive, had begrudgingly acknowledged that showing up to a dance in her tank top and bootie short pajama set probably wasn’t going to win her any favours with the administration.
“Well. This is probably as good as it is gonna get. Danny can just deal with it.” Her muddy brown eyes were lined with what was the amalgamation of several days of poorly-applied eyeliner, and her lipstick shone bright red against her tanned skin. The usual rings she wore through her lip had been replaced with silver studs to match the hoop piercing her septum, while silver studs marched up and over her ears. Unruly brown hair curled over her shoulders, where a large number of hair clips fought a loosing battle against her hair’s natural tendency towards untamed chaos. A bright pink shirt with black cursive that read “Orgasm Donor. Ask Me How”, worn grey jeans, and beat-up black cowboy boots completed the look, along with approximately a million silver bracelets and severely chipped green nail polish that clashed horribly with the shirt. She grabbed her worn black backpack and her neon blue raincoat before running down the stairs to wait for Danny in the front hall.
“Jesus H. Christ.” Nikki’s mother appeared from the kitchen, teacloth in hand and disapproving look firmly attached. “Are you actually incapable of walking down the stairs without making as much noise as a herd of stampeding elephants?” Getting a good look at her daughter, Maggie Rhodes arched an eyebrow in clear judgement, “And where are you headed?”
“Dance.” Nikki responded cheerily, “Promised Danny I’d help him decorate.”
“Danny must have a short memory.” Maggie responded dryly. “And you really think that they’ll let you in with that shirt?”
“What?” Nikki held her hands away from her sides, her voice full of false innocence, “It’s supporting a charity. A very important cause, I might add.” Maggie snorted at her daughter’s tone.
“Go change, if only so I don’t have to drive up the school later to give you a shirt they’ll actually let you wear.” Nikki rolled her eyes but turned to head up the stairs, laughing as her mother’s shouted “AND WALK LIKE A FUCKING HUMAN BEING” followed her up the stairs. A minute later saw her reappearing, this time in a bright blue shirt that declared “I’m not small, I’m just fun sized” to find her mum and Danny chatting in the entrance way. Her mother turned as she entered and sighed. “Well I suppose thats as good as I’m getting isn’t it?” Nikki grinned at her mother in response, to which Maggie just rolled her eyes and shoved her daughter towards the front door.
“You two have fun tonight. Try not to get expelled.” With her mother’s traditional goodbye trailing behind her Nikki pulled her coat tight around her, following Danny in the quick dash through the downpour to his pale blue truck sitting in the driveway. The truck had been a birthday gift from his father, a fact that he had no problem taunting Nikki with, who was still stuck riding her bike everywhere. Once in the truck, Danny actually took the time to take in her appearance, and, predictably, criticize it.
“That is seriously what you are wearing tonight? This could be a life-changing night, and you are choosing to present yourself to the student body as ‘fun sized’?” Nikki rolled her eyes at her friend.
“Calm down Danny. You should have seen what I was wearing before my mum made me change.” Danny nodded his head sagely.
“Maggie is a wise woman.”
“Stop conspiring with my mum about me. Besides, what is so special about tonight? Its just another shitty school dance, narry a dick in sight.” Danny narrowed his eyes at her as he started the truck with a horrible squealing noise.
“There better not be Nikki, I swear on my mama’s grave…”
“Your mama isn’t dead, dumbass. Seriously, why all the fuss?”
“You never know,” Danny said airily, his hand flinging out in an exaggerated gesture that had Nikki rolling her eyes even before he could launch into the monologue she could see coming, “Tonight could be the night that everything changes! I could become astonishingly popular and beloved by all! A talent scout may see my masterful dance moves honed through years of playing Dance Dance Revolution and sign me up to be one of Beyonce’s backup dancers! You could become something other than the school bicycle-”
“Hey!” Danny continued on, unhindered by Nikki’s outrage.
“-and finally learn how to dress without looking homeless!”
“I do not look homeless” Nikki muttered.
“You could share a magical dance with an unknown boy, like the one in A Cinderella Story-”
“You have such shitty taste in movies.”
“-and fall in love...”
“I can’t fall in love today,” Nikki said causticly, “I didn’t do a thing with my hair.”
“I can tell.” Danny reached across to tug on a curl, which resulted in Nikki scooting over right next to the window and glaring across at her friend, before continuing offhandedly,
“Come back tomorrow.” Danny laughed before turning serious.
“Seriously Niks, would it kill you to just participate for once, with none of the sarcasm or criticism? You never know, you might even find you, gasp, have fun!”
“Now who’s sarcastic?” Nikki retorted, feeling stung. Danny occasionally got on these kicks where he decided that she needed to try to become as well-adjusted as he pretended to be, and she always hated them. She turned to look out the window. “Just because you want to belong doesn’t mean I do.”
“Everyone wants to belong Nikki.”
“I don’t. And I don’t understand why you feel the need to.”
“There’s safety in numbers. Belonging is protection. You might not want to belong to any sports team, or clubs, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to belong some where Nikki.”
“I belong with you. And my mum.”
“Right. And how long is that going to last? We’re going to graduate and I’m going to move and then you are going to be left alone running the farm with your mother, utterly isolated from every single person in Hartel.”
“Jesus Danny where is this coming from?” She snapped, turning to face him, eyes flashing.
“I’m just saying Nikki. I worry about you.”
“Well don’t. And don’t project your fucking insecurities on me.” She saw Danny’s flinch as she swung back around. She could feel Danny’s eyes boring into the back of her head but she refused to turn around. She already felt guilty for her last words but wasn’t yet willing to redact them. There was along silence in which the only sound heard was the swish of the windshield wipers and the smack of rain against metal.
“So, guess what the theme of the dance is?” Nikki sighed in relief, turning away from the window. She and Danny had never been able to stay mad at each other, from the time he had melted her only barbie on the fire to when she slept with the guy he was crushing on.
“Mmmmm… Tropical Paradise?”
“Bzzzzzzzz. Try again.” She thought for a moment, staring at the ceiling of the truck for inspirations.
“Biblical Cleanses?” Danny laughed.
“It would be appropriate.”
“And then people could go as pox victims and murdered first born sons. It would be bible-licious,” she pointed out. Danny groaned.
“That was terrible. But no, sorry. One guess left.”
“Okay. Okay. Um… how about White Trash? No one would need to dress up!” Danny laughed again, but turned critical as he arched an eyebrow at her.
“Thats really the best you can do? There was a surprising minimum of dead baby and Hitler jokes in the mix. And Tropical Paradise sounds like something they actually would do. Nikki shrugged.
“I’m off my game. And by tropical paradise, I obviously meant like, Brazillian slums, with poor children being murdered.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“So what is the actual theme? Assuming, of course, that it is not dead babies and Hitler.”
“Shockingly, no. No, we’re going for a ‘Starry Night’ theme”.
“Seriously?” Danny nodded. “That has got to be the most stale, stereotypical dance theme ever.”
“No one has ever accused the student council of being creative”.
“Truth, yo.” Nikki pronounced, pointing at Danny. “What was your idea?”
“Who says I didn’t think up Starry Night?”
“Please.” Nikki rolled her eyes, “Every dance you think of an awesome theme and every dance Allison and her bitches shut you down.” Danny’s face twisted at that, and he paused, before-
“Blackout.”
“Which would involve…?”
“Lots of glow in the dark decorations - glow sticks, glow candies, necklaces, beads, blacklights… that sort of thing.”
“Thats sounds so cool! But they said no.”
“They said no.”
“Seriously, when are you gonna quit this stupid student council thing? All the other kids on it are assholes, you don’t even like any of them, and they have absolutely no originality.”
“It’ll look good on university applications.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure you can get into the uni without it. You have crazy good grades dude.”
“I don’t just want to get into the uni. I want to go to New York.”
“God dude that is so unnecessarily far away.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s nowhere far enough away.” Danny’s voice was tight and Nikki immediately sobered.
“Danny.” But her friend refused to meet her eyes. “I get why you want to go away, but Danny, this isn’t good for you. You have to know you can’t keep doing this in perpetuity. I know you think I’m lonely because I only have you and my mum, but Danny, at least I know who I am and so does everyone else. I have nothing to hide.”
“Everyone knows who I am.”
“No they don’t Danny and you know it.”
“Look, Nikki, we’ve been over this. It would be one thing to be gay, but…”
“I’m not saying you need to come out and announce it to the world but goddamn Danny, pretending your not who you are to yourself, pretending she doesn’t exist until the point where you snap and come running over to my house to dig out the clothes and…” Nikki threw her hands up in air.
“We create ourselves.” Danny’s voice was soft under the sound of the rain that continued to fall on the hood of the car.
“No Danny. We create who we are to others. You can never be anything other than who you are.” Danny’s eyes flicked to her, the sadness in them shinning in the reflection of the streetlights.
“If only it was that simple.” And there really wasn’t anything to say to that.
