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 Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 3:47 pm
Her parents were being insufferable. She thought this at least five times a day, usually before she fisted her hands in her hair and counted backwards from fifty by threes before she screamed. She had always been independent, sometimes to the degree of being foolhardy, but her parents had respected that for the most part. They set limits and gave her boundaries, and from time to time she tested those; she liked to know just how far she could get before she was grounded, and oh, she had spent a lot of time grounded. The older she got the easier it was to talk her way out of punishment, because she got a little more clever and a little better at pitting her parents against each other, but all that seemed to have evaporated with her brush with death. It was like being faced with the Great Wall of China in the form of her parents. Totally huge, totally immovable.
She was going to go insane.
Throwing herself on her bed, she tucked a pillow against her stomach and curled on her side, green eyes narrowed on the face of her cell phone. No word from Parker. To be fair, he thought she was dead, so why would he bother calling (and she told herself that he was capable of calling, because he was definitely out there somewhere; nothing had happened to him, nothing really dire or serious, because she would not handle it well if it had) but he hadn't. She'd been in a coma for weeks, but it felt like the blink of eye to her, and she was impatient to see him again. She still hadn't fully grasped the fact that people had really believed she was dead, that life wasn't going to resume exactly the same way it had left off just because she knew nothing had really changed.
Flipping through her address book she sighed, then she huffed in annoyance, cycled through the names again. Who she really wanted to talk to was Parker, but she couldn't get ahold of him, didn't even really know where to start looking. Her parents were freaking out, of course, 24/7, and didn't want her out of the house past dinnertime, so it wasn't like she could find him. She could barely do anything.
She passed by Tallulah's name for the third time, paused, went back to it. For some reason, her eyes filled; she sat up on her bed, rubbing at them with the back of one hand, a little bewildered. Why should looking at her best friend's name make her feel like crying? That didn't make any sense. Dani had no patience for crying, or being overly sentimental, or -- or anything like that.
She'd also never almost died, something in the back of her head whispered.
Before she could change her mind she connected the call, hugging the pillow to her stomach with one arm, chewing absently on her bottom lip as it rang. She hoped Tallulah was home. God, she had to talk to someone.
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Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 6:07 pm
After the battle with Uranophane and - ye gods- the bees, Tallulah was taking the opportunity to spend her evening curled up in her desk chair in her pajamas, looking at funny pictures of cats and halfheartedly trying to write an essay about the anti-colonial yet still racist message of Heart of Darkness. Presently, the cats were winning: there were four tabs open in her browser, and three of them were I Can Haz Cheeseburger. When her phone went off she reached warily for it, expecting it to be a classmate asking for help on the paper she wasn't writing, or else Jaimie or another member of the Basterds, none of whom she wanted to talk about her disastrous battle to. She checked the caller ID and frowned. DANI calling... Tallulah swallowed. That couldn't be right! Still, she couldn't just not answer. She flipped open the phone and held it to her ear. "If this is a joke," she said quietly, talking around the lump in her throat, "It's not a very funny one."
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Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 6:51 pm
It was so nice to have someone actually pick up and respond to her who wasn't related to her that Dani was silent for a moment. She squeezed the pillow tighter, closing her eyes, and then exhaled happily. "Tallulah! God, it's good to hear your voice, you have no idea."
It was ironic coming from her, because she had been the one who was assumed dead; it was probably much more shocking and amazing to hear her voice, but as usual, all Dani could really think about was her own situation. She was going stir-crazy having no one for company except her parents, and had it been up to her, she would have shimmied out her window and run straight to Tallulah's house without a second thought. Unfortunately, it was not up to her, as her father would call the police and she would be grounded until age eighteen.
After a few beats of awkward silence her brain caught up with the situation and she asked, "Didn't you see my facebook post? I was in a coma, not -- dead, people are so stupid, this reporter took a picture of me when a senshi brought me to the hospital and everyone ran wild with it."
She chewed on her lower lip, beginning to feel a little uneasy for the first time. Had anyone seen her damn post? ... had she actually posted it, or had she just thought she posted it? Whatever, the important thing was that she was here, she was alive, and she'd called her best friend, so everything would get sorted out.
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Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 7:11 pm
"Oh, my god," said Tallulah, face going slack as she processed all this. No, she'd missed the facebook post, but then she hadn't checked it at all today: social networks were off-limits while she tried to write essays (However, LOLcats apparently weren't). But that was beside the point, because Dani was alive. Dani was alive.
Then Tallulah shrieked, "oh, my god!" and leapt up from her desk chair. This left her standing in the middle of her bedroom, not entirely sure why she'd gone there, but perfectly content to walk in circles while she blabbered a mile a minute, "Dani, Dani, it is so good to hear from you I am so so so glad you're okay and have you talked to Parker because I talked to Jaimie who says he hasn't seen him all summer, and I haven't seen him either, but I was sort of in a coma for four months, too, but no one thought I was dead-"
She trailed off, trying to catch her breath and her train of thought. "Um. Yeah. When can I see you?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 7:45 pm
The onslaught of words should have inspired her to be just as bubbly, talk just as fast, as it would have in the past. At first, Dani was a little more excited -- finally, someone who was being positive and action-oriented, unlike her stupid parents who were walking on eggshells and treating her life like it was some kind of fragile thing about to be snatched away -- but then, for some reason, she found herself curling in a little bit. Tallulah had really thought she was dead, really really thought that, and... and for some reason, she wasn't filled with the thrill she'd expected to be when she talked to her friend on the phone.
For some reason, she had to cover her mouth with her hand to force a startled sob back in. She was not going to cry again, what the hell was she, some sort of stupid little girl?
She squeezed her eyes shut tight, counted to ten three times, and exhaled. She was fine. It was all right. Tallulah was still talking, so she probably hadn't even noticed, so it was fine. Why her heart was still racing, she couldn't say, and why she was suddenly so confused was beyond her, but whatever. She was getting pretty damn tired of not knowing what was going on in her own head.
Tallulah abruptly stopped talking, so she took that as her cue and tried to sound as bright and cheer as she could. "As soon as possible, please. My parents are driving my crazy. Could you come by tomorrow?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 7:50 pm
Tallulah glanced quickly at the clock on her dresser, then at the half-written essay on her computer (that she really had all weekend to write), and then at the henshin pen and senshi phone tossed carelessly on the floor by her purse and shoes. She was excited and feeling thoroughly reckless, which was more of a Europa thing to feel than a Tallulah thing, at any rate.
"Dani," she said quietly, a plan forming. As long as Dani didn't question how she could get across town so fast, it was going to go great. Tallulah picked up the pen and turned it over in her free hand.
"Dani, I can come over now. I can be there in, like, ten minutes."
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Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:19 pm
It was getting late in the evening and normally Dani would have insisted no, come over some other time -- she had to get to sleep -- but she really wanted to see Tallulah. She hesitated a second, staring at her bedroom door for the space of three full heartbeats, then said explosively, "Yes. Get over here."
She jumped up, pillow falling forgotten to the floor, and made a beeline for the door. Her phone was still cradled against her cheek as she peered out and down the hall, seeing her parents with their heads bent together on the couch. They were watching a movie, which meant they would definitely be occupied for a while, so she eased back into her bedroom.
"Everything's cool over here, my parents won't care." She definitely sounded cheerful now, and it wasn't even faked. "I've got like, eighty million pounds of homework to catch up on, but I can totally break for the night."
Being in a coma tended to make s**t pile up on you, after all.
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Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:46 pm
"Start counting," said Tallulah, and hung up the phone.
It took roughly forty-five seconds to trade her PJs for jeans and a sweatshirt, another fifteen to climb out her bedroom window. Ten seconds to transform, nine minutes to roof jump to Dani's neighborhood using the shortest route possible, fifteen seconds to crouch behind a parked car and power down, and about a minute to sprint up the street to her friend's front door.
Tallulah checked the time on her cell phone and rang the bell. So she was a little later than she'd said, but it was superhuman that she'd gotten over here so fast at all.
This might be, she thought as she waited for Dani to open the door, what Astraea would call a 'gross abuse of senshi powers.' Usually she would be opposed to this sort of frivolity, but tonight, reasoned Tallulah, was a special occasion.
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