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Fighting Against Cliché
“I guess this means I’ll have to find out where you live anyway, ironic huh?” Chris smirked as he started to drive.
I sighed in annoyance, “I can drive myself home; just drop me off at the mall. My car’s parked in the car park.”
“If you think I’m going to let you drive drunk you are gravely mistaken,” Chris’s voice took a serious turn. After a short pause he added, “And taking any form of public transport will be too dangerous for you. With your looks there’s too much of a chance that I’ll end up reading about your rape and murder in tomorrows headline. How would I be able to live with that? Especially if I left you alone inebriated.”
“I’m sober!” I cried out for the umpteenth time.
“And I’m Santa,” Chris rolled his eyes, “You smell of beer, you had cans of beer littered around you, you tripped while walking to the car and you want me to believe that you’re not drunk?”
I had tried to explain that the beer had been drunk by the unnamed boy and that tripping did not equate to someone being drunk, but he thought I was just lying. Which I thought was pretty idiotic, why would I lie about not being drunk?
“Fine, drop me at the mall, I’ll call Jason to pick me up from there,” I growled.
“Because he’s always at your beck and call, isn’t he?” Chris sneered maliciously, “Ever thought he might have a life that doesn’t revolve around you? Stop being so proud and let me drop you home. I’m sure your ego will be able to handle it.”
“What are you on about? Pride has nothing to do with it!” I shook my head in disbelief, “I just don’t like giving my address to people I don’t know well enough. Especially if they seem to think I’m nothing but a stuck up, hedonistic –”
“Whatever,” Chris interrupted, “As if all those people you invite to your shenanigans every month aren’t all strangers. You don’t need to lie to me and make up excuses for me, I’m not that pathetic.”
“Firstly, those ‘shenanigans’ you’re talking about are held in our beach house, not in my home, only really private parties are held at my house,” I replied, annoyed at having to explain myself, “and secondly, I think it’s very strange that you’re so insistent on finding out where I live. What do you plan to do, send little love cards there and serenade me outside my balcony to ask me out again? You are sadly mistaken if you think I’m ever going to give you any time of the day again.”
“She just had to be an eloquent drunk,” Chris muttered to himself, “She couldn’t be a normal one like the rest of us.”
“Oh yes, because everyone wants to see a stupid drunk,” I rolled my eyes, “as if one Victoria wasn’t bad enough. You’d probably give an arm to see me make a fool of myself.”
“It’s Virginia, and yeah, I would actually,” Chris smiled, “as would many people. It’s our bad luck that you’re not a horrid drunk…but then again, you do seem the type who would be experienced with alcohol and whatnot.”
His words hadn’t offended me because, to be frank, he was too much of a nobody for me to care. If a similar comment would have been made by someone like Kara or Connor I would have actually been hurt.
“Answer me this Chris, if you think so little of me, why did you ask me out?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Chris smirked smugly but didn’t say a word.
“I’ll tell you why I agreed to go out with you if you tell me why you asked me out,” I bargained, with no intention of doing such a thing.
“Please,” he rolled his eyes, “I already know why you went out with me, to get Logan off your mind.”
“Oh please,” I snorted, “don’t you think I could have gone out with someone better and of a higher status than you if I wanted? C’mon, even you’re not that naïve to believe I went out with you just to get him off my mind.”
I already had an excuse in my head: I went out with him because I always wanted to see what the ‘other side’ was like, and he was the only one who offered.
No Logan in that.
Chris seemed conflicted – as if he really wanted to know to know my side but didn’t want to tell his side of the story.
“Damn it!” he growled, “You are meant to find out soon enough anyway, so why shouldn’t I tell you?”
Oh, so it was something of a conspiracy against me. Interesting. Now I was even more curious, how was my going out with Chris meant to affect me? As far as I had thought about it, it couldn’t do me any harm.
But maybe I hadn’t thought hard enough. Maybe my desire to bump into Logan had blinded me.
I really did need to find out then.
“And it’s not like you’re not going to find out,” Chris continued to ramble, “It’s already in effect and I’ve played my part. There’s not much you can do to stop it.
“Plus, she would never tell you herself, she’s actually feels bad about it. Too much conscience, that’s the girl’s problem. And he? He wouldn’t even take a billion bucks to see you again. So it’s obviously up to me to tell you. It was the original plan.”
“Yeah, so why don’t you tell me?” I innocently tilted my head to the side, widening my eyes to emphasize on my innocence.
“I will,” he decided, a Cheshire cat grin breaking open on his face.
“All the things you and your crazed fan girl said to me, all the snarky comments about how I’m not good enough for you and what not,” Chris started, “They’re true, I admit. But that’s the very reason I asked you out.
“You see. Through the eyes of many, I’m not even worthy of carrying your books, so the fact that you agreed to go out with me, of your own accord, just shows how desperate you really are, how completely dependent on Logan you are – he goes out with someone of a lower ‘status’ and then, so do you.
“It shows you as the real mindless sheep you are.”
I would have laughed if the last line hadn’t been said so vehemently.
“Why? What did I ever do to you?” I asked quietly, not yet wanting to let him know how ineffective his plan actually was.
“Of course you wouldn’t know,” he sneered as he angrily crossed a red light, “your head is too stuck in your own little world. No one matters to you as much as yourself. You’re all you care about. You probably even forgot how horribly you treated Jake.”
“Jake?”
“Yeah Jake. Jake Grant. I knew you’d forget about that. As I said, you’re too in love with yourself to even spare a minute to think about others.”
“I remember Jake Grant,” I whispered quietly, trying to make myself as small as possible.
He was, after all, the boy whose life I had ruined.
“That’s a surprise,” Chris responded meanly, “I thought he was too much of a ‘scum beneath the dirt’ and ‘filthy sodomite’ to be remembered by you.”
I looked away, ashamed.
“What was it you called him again Trish? The universe’s most despicable mistake? The most skanky and vile being on the face of earth? An execrable faggot? Oh, and what did you say gay stood for again? Got AIDs Yet, right? Because we all know that only gays get AIDs, us straight saints are too pure to get such a thing, aren’t we?”
My throat burned and my mind begged me to say something, anything, in retaliation but I found I had nothing to say. I deserved every thing he said to me, every cruel reminder of my mistake.
“You know, out of everything you said, the worst was probably ‘Tie the faggot to the back of the truck’, and of course, the idiots in our school cheered wildly. Do you know how completely disrespectful and wrong it was to say that? The least you could have done is let Matthew Sheppard’s soul rest in peace. He’d faced enough, don’t you think?”
“I-I didn’t mean…” I started, but then stopped, because I had meant it to sound as horrendous as possible and some people would have carried out the act had Jason not stopped them. What I had said was all inexcusable, but I could never admit that to Chris. He wouldn’t believe that I was sincere about being sorry, and I couldn’t blame him for that.
“What does this all have to do with you?” my voice was barely a whisper.
“It doesn’t even need to relate to me for me to hate you for saying such things,” Chris snorted, “any decent human being would have been offended by what you said. It was almost as bad as whatever the Phelps family spews out. Do you think all fags go to hell too Trish?”
“I-”
“God! Why am I even asking you? Of course you do! Why else would you think otherwise?”
“I don’t,” I said forcefully.
“Whatever,” Chris sighed. He remained quiet for a while, making me uncomfortable. Then, in a dry tone, he continued, “You know, what I hated most about what you said to Jake, it was how you said it so convincingly, how there was no hesitation in your voice, no fear. It was as if Jake was really in the wrong, and you were right, abso-fucking-lutely right.”
“I wasn’t,” I said, even though he didn’t need me to tell him, he already knew it.
“Yeah, yeah, you weren’t,” he smiled bitterly, “but I thought you were, and for that, I hated my parents, I hated myself. I really thought I was no better than filth. I believed in everything you said.”
“Your parents? You?” I repeated, confused, “but aren’t you straight?”
“I am,” Chris fixed his eyes on the road, “but my parent’s aren’t. I’ve got two mothers, Trish, no dads. Never had a father, only two mothers. They’ve got one of the most loving, beautiful and meaningful relationship that I’ve ever seen, but because of what you said, because of how right everyone thought you were, I hated them for it. I was disgusted with them and so ashamed; I avoided them as much as possible.”
He had parked the car in the emergency lane and was now breathing heavily.
“Do you know how heart-breaking it is to hate your parents for what they are and yet love them, simply because they’re your parents? I couldn’t stop hating myself for hating them, and they’re not even horrible people, they didn’t deserve it at all. They’re the best parents I could have ever asked for and I knew that! I fucking knew that!” He slammed his fist on the wheel, “but you, you’re so damn convincing in everything you do, everything you say!”
“Chris…” I began, not sure what to say.
He ignored me, “But I got out of that mess, thank God. I realised what an idiot I was being and I got out of it. I made it up to them, even though they had no idea of how I had felt, what I had been going through. Thank goodness for that, if they had I would have never been able to forgive myself.”
“I’m sorry Chris,” I forced myself to look straight at him, “I really am.”
He shrugged it off, “I’ve got my revenge. We’re even, really.”
He turned on the ignition and started to drive again.
“You know,” I begin, swallowing my pride, “when I said those things to Jake, I didn’t mean a word. Not one callous word. I just said it because of-”
“Pressure, I know,” Chris interrupted me calmly; “I figured it out after a while. You don’t have a thing against homosexuals; you just thought you needed to because that’s what the others made you believe. You felt cornered when Grant declared his sexuality, because everyone expected you to say something, and most of them wanted you to say something negative.
“Which you did of course, and though at the time you looked like you believed it, later on anyone observant enough could realise you hadn’t meant a word. You just did what the crowd wanted you to do. You’re nothing but a sheep, and that’s why we need to let everyone else know.”
I bit my lips, not trusting myself to speak.
I had already spoiled so much for him, I didn’t want to tell him his plan wouldn’t work – at least not on the scale he thought it would. Before I had met Logan, I had actually gone out with those below my status (mostly because they were so much easier to manipulate – but nobody knew that), so me going out with Chris after Logan and I broke up wasn’t actually strange, and it definitely wouldn’t raise many eyebrows. In fact, at the most, people would think I was going back to my old ways.
“We’re here,” Chris finally broke the silence as we reached the drop off point of the mall, “did you tell Jason to meet you here or should I drop you home?”
“I SMSed him to meet me here while you were going on about my ‘shenanigans’,” I replied, wanting nothing more than to bolt out of the car. I scanned the area and spotted a familiar white SUV, “I see him! He’s here already.”
“All right then, hold on,” Chris parked the car on the drop off point and got down to open my door, “you really weren’t lying when you said you weren’t drunk, huh?”
As soon as he opened it I jumped down, restraining myself from running to Jason.
Unfortunately, he grabbed my wrist, “Listen Trish, about what I told you. I’d say it’s nothing personal, but it sort of is. And I’m sorry we have to do this to you, but we’ve got no other choice. You need to learn your lesson and everyone else needs to realise that they don’t need to listen to everything you say. Still, I want you to know, I no longer hate you, and neither does Liz. I can’t say the same for Jake though, but that’s understandable.”
“Liz?” I echoed, “What does Liz have to do with this?”
“Ah,” he smiled, “Liz’s dad is the man who donated a sperm to one of my mothers. She’s my half-sister.”
And suddenly, it all made sense.
“Your plan,” I stared at him in shock, “it just isn’t centred on you going out with me to make me look like a follower, is it? Taking Logan away was part of it too.”
“It was the quickest way to make you suffer,” he shrugged, “and he was already on the point of leaving you, so it wasn’t too hard.”
“You used Logan to hurt me,” this time it was my voice dripping with disgust, “he won’t be pleased to hear that.”
“Coming from his desperate ex? He wouldn’t believe you if you told him,” Chris slammed the passenger door shut, “He likes Liz and Liz really likes him as well. What they have is actually genuine. Do you really need to ruin someone else Trish, just to please yourself?”
“It isn’t genuine! She was using him-”
“To get information on you! To get to know your weaknesses! She was just meant to gain his trust - falling in love with him wasn’t the plan, it just happened. So just leave them be. Take it to be part of your punishment.”
“You know,” I grabbed Chris’s face and forced him to look straight at me, “for all you’ve said, you’re just as bad as me.”
He opened his mouth to retaliate when I dropped my hand, but Jason quickly ran up to us, causing him to shut it promptly.
“Trish, what’s taking you so long?” Jason frowned as he looked at the two of us. He bent down to whisper to me, “Is he troubling you? Do you want me to do something?”
“No,” I glared at Chris, “I was just leaving.”
“So was I,” Chris smiled amiably at Jason as he got back into his car. He rolled down the passenger seat window, “It was a…interesting date Trish.”
“For the lack of a better word,” I nodded, “It was our first and last.”
“Oh yes, definitely,” Chris grinned.
Jason watched, perplexed, as Chris drove off.
“What a moron,” I heard him mutter under his breath.
“Come on,” he said gently as he placed a hand on my shoulder, “let’s get you home.”
It’s also probably the worst chapter yet. I really feel as if I’m getting worse and worse. What do you think about this chapter – is it too inconsistent? Do you think I spoiled it by telling too much at once and not ‘showing’ enough? There are actually still a few more twists in this plot, this isn’t the last one, but perhaps it’s the most pivotal.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed/reviews...you guys seriously make my day!
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RedPillow: Thanks! Updated!
