TIME & TIED: AWARENESS

ARC 1.4 - Of Herself

PART 21a: SERIOUS MATTERS 1

Corry reached out a hand to knock on the bedroom door. "Laurie?" he called out. "Laurie, Chartreuse is here to see you." There was no answer.

Corry turned to the pink haired girl. “Just go in. She doesn't want to see me after what happened at Friday’s dance, and the subsequent phone call by the school didn't help matters. Seeing as we’re already into Sunday... well, hopefully there's something you can do for her.”

Chartreuse nodded, reaching out for the doorknob. "Laurie?" she ventured. "How are..." The door was unlocked, and her voice trailed off as she peeked around the frame, getting her first look inside. "Omigod. Laurie!"

Giving a curt nod to Corry, Chartreuse hurried into Laurie's bedroom, shutting the door again behind her. She bent down near to where Laurie was huddled in the corner and reached out to grab the hand of the red-haired girl.

"Laurie, honey, you look terrible. You're not still beating yourself up over what happened at the dance, are you?"

Laurie slowly lifted her green eyes, which Chartreuse saw were red rimmed from crying. "Why not?" her friend lamented softly. "I was so stupid. I'm always so stupid, stupid, stupid! Go away Chartreuse, before my stupidity rubs off on you."

"You're not stupid," Chartreuse soothed. "Besides, that whole math test thing was from, what, like, grade nine? Ages ago."

"I still let Carrie dupe me into getting Corry to sing," Laurie countered. "That happened less than two days ago."

"Well... Carrie can, you know, be sneaky sometimes. Julie has that effect on her."

Laurie's gaze fell back down to her feet. "Carrie asked me to sit next to her on the bus that day," she murmured. "Coming back from cheerleading. Golly, I felt honoured. I thought that maybe after all this time, she'd started taking a liking to me." She bit her lip. “It was all lies."

"You still look up to her, don't you," Chartreuse realized.

"Carrie does practically all the same stuff I do - and she does it so much better! I mean... wow, she has such talent. Such authority. She commands so much respect around the school too, one can't help but be impressed by her.”

"Wait, back up. You are NOT going to tell me Carrie's a better artist. There's, like, no WAY she could paint something as beautiful as that," Chartreuse said, pointing to one of the pictures on the wall of Laurie's room. "Or that one there. In fact, I bet there's no one in the school who can, you know, top you in art."

"Art. Big deal. Don't have it this semester."

"Laurie, come on," Chartreuse pleaded. "You can't let Carrie, like, get to you this way. Corry's real worried about you, as are your parents."

Laurie scrunched up a little tighter into her corner. "They're only upset that I never told them about the cheating thing earlier," she murmured.

"Nuh-uh. It only, you know, took everyone a bit by surprise. No one, like, blames you for it."

“They should. It was my fault."

"I don't believe it," Chartreuse declared. "You'll have to convince me. Tell me what really happened."

"I took test papers from Ms. Adams' desk," Laurie murmured.

"No, no, no. Tell me the whole story, in one of those cool no breath run-on sentence dialogues of yours that I like so much."

Laurie looked back up to see Chartreuse's hopeful expression and choked out a partial laugh. "Oh, please. You get as tired of my babblings as everyone else."

"Humour me anyway," Chartreuse insisted.

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Laurie stared silently at her for a long moment before uncurling slightly from her ball. "Well, like you said, it was back during that first January of us being in high school," she began. "I'd been talking to Carrie about a couple of the classes we had together, including math."

She hesitated. "Carrie challenged me to figure out where Ms. Adams might be keeping Friday's tests. She didn't think it was possible to find out, and at the time I wanted to prove I could be, well, a worthy friend, so I agreed to look into it. It wasn’t hard, I asked a few teachers and observed Ms. Adams one morning, then as to the key thing I remembered something you'd said in a conversation about how teachers mess up sometimes and I double checked to learn about the spare key thing at which point I told Carrie in...“

Her long sentence faltered. “In that conversation that... that everyone heard at the dance. I didn't know Carrie was recording it." Laurie stopped talking, digging her fingers into her palms.

"So Carrie made you steal the papers?" Chartreuse coaxed.

Laurie nodded slowly. “A smarter person would have known. I thought it was all in fun, maybe an initiation rite - until she actually wanted me to go through with the theft. I couldn't refuse once she mentioned Corry either, because he was trying so hard to establish himself as an important person back then too, so to find out his own sister was socializing with the enemy it would have been a real blow which is why I took a copy of one of the papers and gave it to Carrie..."

Laurie stopped to pound her fist into the ground. "Golly, I'm SO STUPID.”

Chartreuse reached out to take Laurie's hand again. “Stop saying that,” she countered. "You were taken advantage of, and you know, I bet you weren't the only one back then. Besides, at the dance, didn't you say you'd never looked at the test yourself?"

Laurie bit her lip. "I didn’t. But some scores were up that week. Had to be my fault.” She wiped her free arm across her eyes. "Chartreuse, why do people take advantage of other people? Carrie, Julie, even my own brother, they all do it. Why? WHY? I don't understand.”

"I know you don't, Laurie," Chartreuse said, pulling the other girl into a hug. "That's why you're one of my closest, most specialest friends. Don't ever change, okay?”

The two girls embraced silently for a minute. "Chartreuse?" Laurie finally ventured.

The pink haired girl pulled back slightly. "Yes?"

"Could you maybe stick around the rest of today? Possibly even sleep over or something? I don’t think mom will mind, and with two teenagers in the house she’s always making tons of food..."

Chartreuse smiled. "I'd love to."

***

Chartreuse slipped out of Laurie’s room. “How is she?" Corry asked, still leaning back against the opposite wall.

"She'll pull through," Chartreuse asserted. "I'm just going to, like, go home and get some of my stuff now, pal around with her for the rest of the day, maybe stay the night."

Corry let out a breath. "Thank goodness. I don't think she's ever given me that much of a scare before. What the hell was she thinking anyway, dealing with Carrie?"

Chartreuse frowned, recognizing his tone. “Look, Carrie has always been kind of a popular girl," she pointed out. "Leads the cheerleaders now too. Don’t do anything, you know, rash.”

Laurie had previously made Chartreuse swear never to tell Corry about the respect she held for Carrie. After all, Laurie had once mentioned to Corry about how much she liked Clarke. That had only served to add fuel to the Corry-Julie rivalry, once it became apparent that Clarke had chosen the brunette. Adding Carrie to the mix was simply asking for trouble.

"Carrie's popular for all the wrong reasons," Corry retorted. “In her own way, she's as bad as Julie. She'll soon regret what she's done to my sister.”

Chartreuse shifted her weight back and forth uneasily. "I'm pretty sure Laurie doesn't want revenge, you know."

"You're probably right," Corry admitted. "But she doesn't understand how the world works. If I let this affair pass without incident, it'll only happen again. People must know that NO ONE can take advantage of a Veniti and get away with it. It's a matter of family honour.”

Chartreuse peered a little closer at the red haired twin. "It's not though. Not really. And if you really care about your sister, you'll let this one go. Before the situation, like, gets out of control."

Corry set his jaw. “No way. She'll understand, in time."

Chartreuse tried to find the words. "You know, in some ways, you're more dangerous to Laurie than Carrie could ever be."

Corry’s eyes narrowed. “Stop being overly dramatic. I thank you for your assistance, and hope that you and Laurie have a wonderful afternoon meditating. However, now that she’s improving, I have more important things to attend to.”

With that, Corry spun on his heel and stalked off into his own bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Chartreuse stood quietly for a moment. "You know, I do hope I'm overreacting," she murmured to no one in particular. "I really, really do. But... I don't think I am."

***

It was after ten o'clock that night when Julie arrived at Carrie's house. Carrie let her in through the window, whispering, "Sorry about this. But once Dad's gone to bed, I can let you out through the front door."

Julie nodded. “No worries... aw, you're really looking worse for wear," she remarked. “What did Frank do to you?"

Carrie moved to sit on her bed, gesturing for Julie to join her. Instead, Julie pulled out the chair at her desk. "Frank didn't do anything, really," Carrie answered. "Aside from bringing in Luci to screw things up."

Julie froze, halfway to a seated position. "Luci?" She nodded slowly then sank into the chair. "Luci. Very well. What happened with her?”

Carrie grabbed one of her pillows, hugging it. "The infuriating little know-it-all mucked with the circuits of the time machine, dazzling Frank with her know how while frying the machine in the process. It’s broken now.”

Julie sat rigidly for a moment. "Okay," she said, managing a smile. "You can confirm the existence of a time machine then?"