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 Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 12:56 am
"So we hear." Ashley said simply, crossing her legs and looking quite uptight and formal given that she was sitting in a dump.
"Oh, come on Mom!" Harper pleaded quickly, fidgeting nervously.
Ashley snorted, "I was being perfectly 'nice' Harper, no need to get your little feathers ruffled." She turned her head to the side and examined Manuela briefly, "Well at least she doesn't dress like that other one.."
"That's a good sign." Harper whispered to Manny, closing the door behind her.
Eliot had pulled himself off the couch to go find a blanket - eventually he trudged into Ashley's room to find one. Ashley, and more recently Harper had the only 'clean' rooms in the house, really.
"Here you go sweetie, now to figure out sleeping arrangements." Eliot thought out loud, walking over to hand her a simple quilted blanket that had a faint perfumed smell of Ashley's.
"I got a new bed yesterday! You can use it if you want!"
"Maybe it would be best if you slept with your mother then, Harper. She can use your room. So, what happened?" Sunny cut in, standing behind a half wall into the kitchen. Yeah, could always count on Sunny to disrupt facades of 'everything's fine' when he wanted to.
Harper motioned for her to come sit with him and his mother on the couch, making sure to sit between the two if it should come to that.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:09 am
Ashley's comment didn't really bother Manny, it simply made her take a second look at herself. She was dressed in a puffy black jacket with a brown fur trim at the collar and a pair of dark deconstructed jeans. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either. She took the blanket with a little smile and a "thank you" and took off her jacket to wrap herself in it. She was wearing a simple black tshirt underneath it, with the word Roca in dark gold glitter across it. "I can sleep on the couch, I don't want to kick you out of your room," she told Harper, but stopped when Sunny started talking. What had happened, well, that was a long story. Feeling it would be best to not be standing up like she was on stage she sat down at Harper's suggestion, and let her eyes drift down to the floor. "My mother, Mama Estelle, runs a church for practitioners of Santeria, refugees mostly," she started, "And a lot of them are older. There was one woman, she had pains in her hands, arth-ree-tis she called it, and she used to be a really beautiful piano player," she paused for a moment to catch her breath, "And I wanted to ask her what was happening that was upsetting her so much, so I went to talk to her." She stopped, adjusting the blanket on her shoulders. When she did her forearms were visible again, and evident were several large purple bruises.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:18 am
Eliot quickly shook his head, "Couch is where Sunny and Soloman sleep, silly. Ashley, me and Harper here are the only ones that have our own rooms - it's no problem if you wanna take Harper's room for tonight, him and his mother can share." He said with a nod.
Harper fidgeted a bit more, staring at her forearms with wide eyes. The other two listened. Harper looked concerned though, if a bit scared - "What happened?" He asked quietly, pointing at her arms.
"Did she do that to you?" Ashley asked, somewhat coldly, but she asked none the less. She motioned at her forearms and looked at Sunny who shook his head.
"Do you want some ice or something?" Sunny asked, looking concerned aswell. Man, if it turned out she was getting abused and they had to call someone, he was not looking forward to what anyone would have to say about Harper's living conditions.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:35 am
"Huh?" Manny asked, glancing down at her forearms. "Oh," she said, touching one spot gingerly, "No, she didn't do anything to me, and I don't know if ice would help, it hurts more like it's in my bones." She turned her arms over, frowning to see that the undersides were just as bad, if not worse. Well that would certainly explain her discomfort. "What happened was I touched her hands, with mine you know?" she continued, "And this stuff happened, it felt like my arms were on fire." Looking a little ashamed she looked back down at the floor, "I accused her of using voodoo against me. But she kept saying that she hadn't done anything. I ran home and she went and got Mama Estelle. Then they came up to talk to me, and they told me to do it again. She said that the pain in her hands was gone, that it felt like she was young again, and that she could play the piano almost better than she used to. So it was me, like, I'm the one that did it, but I don't know how. And everyone keeps crowding me and asking me how and why and if I can do it for them and they don't get it. It hurts really bad. It felt like something was shredding me from the inside out. And then stuff like this happens." She took a breath, glad to have it off her chest, "And I couldn't go back down there again. You think I'm some kind of freak don't you?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:43 am
Harper shook his head quickly, giving her a smile, "If it hurts you don't do it anymore! That old lady was already old, your just a kid, you shouldn't have to hurt for her!" he exclaimed, finding it quite an injustice.
Eliot considered the freak comment for a moment and gave a shrug while sitting on the floor across from the couch. "Well, maybe just a little." He grinned, trying to lighten the mood a little. "But you'd have to spin your head around a couple dozen times and spit up green acid to be half the freak Soloman is, and we all love him. Trust me, we have our own secrets." Eliot was, apparently, a lot better than his companions at cheering little girls up and being mature when he needed to. If only that could carry into adult conversations.
Sunny came out of the kitchen with a mug of something, setting it on the run down coffee table in front of the couch. "Hot chocolate." He explained.
Harper looked a little ticked' he didn't get some too, so he gave Sunny a look that made him turn around and go back into the kitchen to make more.
"Well, you can stay here tonight, but we definitely need to call your mother tomorrow. She could call the cops on us if we push it too much." Ashley said efficiently, a slight nod. It was funny, Ashley had 'magical' healing powers herself.. nothing remotely effective or useful, and such expectation had never been placed on her in so many ways, but in a strange way she could feel empathy for the girl.
"It's okay, Manny!" Harper suddenly decided, smiling and going to hug the other girl tight. He was also pretty useful for being a sweetheart when he needed to be.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:46 am
Manny laughed and showed a smile, glad to be somewhere where she wasn't being bombarded. "Thank you," she said quietly when Sunny brought her the mug, which she picked up to warm her hands. "I'm sorry if I get you guys in trouble," she told them, "I left her a note but I guess I didn't really tell her where I was going." Estelle might have been a little relieved to know she had gone to stay with a friend, but then again the distance at night might have bothered her.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:33 pm
"Regardless, you are calling her tomorrow so she can hear your voice. Sentimental crap aside it's proof the note wasn't forged." Ashley observed, putting her fingers to her chin.
"'Course she could of been kidnapped and we could be makin' her to talk on the phone." Eliot though out loud.
Sunny came back out of the kitchen with another mug, though there was a crack in the side so he was holding a paper towel to the side, "Shut up you guys! What are you trying to do to her?!" He yelled, giving the mug to Harper and telling him to drink it fast.
Harper did his best to drink it and avoid burning himself in the process, "It's okay Manny, we like trouble."
"So, are you hungry? Solo should be on his way home now, this is about the time we usually have lunch." Eliot asked with a grin.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 4:37 pm
Manuela shook her head, "I had some roast chicken before I left. Isn't lunch supposed to be in the middle of the day?" From the appearance of the family, it wasn't that hard to believe that they enjoyed trouble, or drama for that matter. "I brought some money if you want it," she added, feeling a little obliged to offer it.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:12 pm
Harper shook his head, "We don't need any money, Eliot still has lots from momma's earri-"
"Harper! Shut it!" Eliot quickly cut in, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Well, don't mind us eatin' then. I'll have Solo pick up somethin' really healthy on the way home... sure you don't want some fries or a milkshake or something?" Eliot asked, while picking up the phone again and punching in a cell number.
"So!" Harper began, shifting again and trying to smile and make things happy, "What do you wanna do? Wanna see my room? Wanna go through my mom's clothes?"
"Do you wanna talk more about what happened?" Sunny cut in, finally sitting down again on the floor somewhat close to Eliot.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:43 pm
"No, that's about all there is to it," she told Sunny, then contemplated a snack, "I wouldn't mind a strawberry milkshake actually, they're my favorite." Going through his mom's clothes would be fun, but from what she'd already learned about the woman she had a feeling that it wouldn't go over too well with her. "Do you have any games in your room?" she asked, showing a cheered up smile.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:52 pm
Eliot nodded at Manny, and after asking the other two adults what they wanted and telling Soloman to shut up and head to the nearest fast food joint, he asked Harper what he wanted to.
"Three cheeseburgers and a-"
"Get him like a kids meal or something."
"YOU SUCK!" Harper yelled, grumpily folding his arms.
"And two of those pink milkshake things, Harper's got company."
"Games?" Harper asked, pointing at the large HD tv that sat in the middle of their run down living room like a diamond in the middle of a mud cake, "Video games? We have tuns! But you meant like board games or darts or something, right? I have some I think!" He wasn't so sure, he got a lot of new stuff since turning to kidhood and was too busy dancing or playing video games to notice all of it. He waved for her to come and went into his room, the one closest to the bathroom and the front door.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:57 pm
"Thank you Mister Eliot," Manuela said quickly before grabbing up her bag and following Harper. Upon reaching it, she nearly laughed, "I think your room's bigger than our whole apartment." She really didn't care when it was just kids she was talking with, but adults tended to be a little meaner about stuff like that. "But where do you keep your chickens?" She added, never having been to a home that didn't keep at least one hen.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:11 pm
It was, in fact, a rather large room. It could easily be shared by two people, especially considering there were two grown men forced to make their living space out of the living room, but for as much as Sunny wanted his privacy Eliot 'needed' it more. It all worked out eventually, and nobody wanted to deal with Harper 24/7 anyway.
His room was recently painted yellow, the smell of fresh paint still lightly staining the place. The trim to the room was black, and the two windows in the room were cracked.
"Your cold, right?" He asked, moving to close the windows.
The rest of the room was filled with a general clutter; some toys, a lot of things he had since grown out of, a brand new metal bed, some posters of bands and video game characters on his walls, and a rather large stereo.
"You mean chicken to eat? We keep them in the fridge, I guess?" He asked blankly, while going in to his closet and making quite a commotion inside.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:18 pm
"Well, that too. But don't you have any chickens to lay? You know, live ones?" She prodded, dropping to a seat on his bed. In retrospect she didn't really think chickens would fit in too well here, or that Miss Ashley would like cleaning up their cages. His room was bright and energetic, pretty much what she had expected.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:33 pm
"Don't think I've ever seen one before they got turned into food." He yelled through the closet.
"Ah!" came a second later, as Harper came out of the closet with a rather large box. He glanced at the large elephant on the box and frowned, "It might be a baby game.." He said, in a sullen tone, sitting next to her and trying to peel the plastic off the box. Obviously, it was brand new. Truth be told Eliot and Solo got a lot of this stuff at a discount thanks to one of Solo's girlfriends; seemed to be how they got most of their stuff.
The game was of the sort that blew little fabric butterflies into the air, and the object was to catch as many before the other player did with toy nets.
"Eliot has batteries too, if you wanna play it? I think there might be others, if ya' don't."
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