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Disclaimer: I do not own any brands/names/celebrities/whatever shizz mentioned in this story that actually exist in real life. The others, yep; or at least my brain does. ;) The story, plot and characters are all copyrighted. No stealing under any sort of condition (not even under the influence of hallucinogens)!
They Call it a Cliché
Chapter One
They call it a prelude
It used to be a big deal – starting the story of your life with ‘I used my superior intellect to arise from my sleep-induced haze, slamming my hand against the alarm clock. Bravo! It was successfully silenced, allowing me to drift off to Wonderland again.’
And frankly, why not? I’d prefer it any day to tell you that I, Reese Sylvia Veronica Patterson (yes, my parents had the weird sense of humour to make my initials be R.S.V.P. At least it wasn’t R.I.P or I'd have made that come true... on them), have just woken up and am rubbing the morning stars out of my beautiful gray eyes. You’d probably like to know how wonderful I look like when I wake up too, as compared to the harsh fact of reality that no one can arise from deep slumber looking like Eva Longoria slash Brad Pitt.
Sadly, however, I have to start with this.
“They actually have the word fuck in the dictionary??”
Sniggers. Pie exchanged hand from hand. Futile attempts at dirty jokes. The discussion of the darling of the table - basketball. And where can you find these wondrous elements of life?
You don’t wanna guess? Aww, no fun. I’ll tell you where, then. Nowhere except where I was sitting at, which, for your information, was the jock table of the cafeteria of Stonehill High School. Believe it or not, believe it.
So, you ask. What’s a girl stuck with the name of Reese Sylvia Veronica Patterson doing, sitting at the jock table during lunch time on a Wednesday (and the first Wednesday of the school year, for that matter)?
“Hey, Reese, pass the nachos won’t you?” A pause, then, “Oh, and you can do what the third definition of fuck is to me, I don’t mind that too.”
The answer is simple. I’ve been sitting with the guys forever. Right, maybe not forever, but certainly long enough to make an impression. I never used to, back in grade school. I was a normal little girl who thought boys had cooties and shouldn’t be touched. Well, until Ella Waters messed it all up for me.
“I hear that the fist is a very good way to make people shut up, especially ignorant sports-playing teenage boys,” I retorted back, passing the nachos and stealing one for myself.
“She hurts me so,” Wesley Fitzgerald (don’t ask. His parents apparently had the same momentary flash of insanity as mine) mock-moaned, clutching at the place where his heart was. “Where’re the peanut butter cups? Or do you prefer cups in another form?”
I rolled my eyes, used to their antics. Reese’s peanut butter cups, get it? “I didn’t know you visit the women’s department, Wes.”
“Hey, Reesy.” The esteemed older brother by 4 minutes, Jared Lewis Patterson (so he got one less middle name than me, but calling him C.S. Lewis gets a nice rise out of him), slid into the seat opposite mine. “AP Trig was terrible. Pass the nachos.”
“Get it yourself,” I huffed. “Is that why you’re so late? Or were you doing Erica Summers in the bio lab? Oh, right, I forgot, it’s Yolanda.”
“Erica was boring," he mumbled through the mouthful of nacho he'd stolen from Wes. "Got rid of her a long time ago, don't you remember?"
Yolanda Sterling – one of the prime examples of why hanging out with guys is a lot less troublesome than hanging out with girls. I probably had to be peeved that my brother dated girls who'd rather straighten their hair than leave it natural like me... and I was, but not as much as I used to be. Maybe because he makes it a habit to dump them after a week or so, to which I have to say, phew. Too much exposure to aerosol hair sprays would deplete me of my life meter sooner rather than later.
“Hey baby,” a voice crooned from above. What do you know? As if by telepathy, Yolanda and gang had decided to show up at our table, together with... Ella Waters.
Why do I hate her so? It’s simple, really. She’d destroyed my memories of childhood in just one day. One blow. Even in grade school, she’d wielded that kind of power over everyone else. I’d been her friend for jump rope, for hopscotch, for catch; it couldn’t and wouldn’t be denied, I’d been her closest friend. But somehow, in the fifth grade, she’d come home from the holidays a total bitch. The girl who’d loved mud pies was gone, replaced by a mere shadow of her previous self, a plastic version. She’d started ordering people around, gathering cronies, wearing make-up… all in all; she became the kind of person I most hated.
But what hurt me the most was that she’d ditched me for my brother.
Ella had had her eye on Jared for a long time; ever since we’d been friends, even. She’d used to call him a ‘cutie’ and a ‘total sweetie pie’ and had always come over to my house just to see him. As for me, I’d been kind of disgusted that she liked him (he was my brother, after all) but I’d just let her come over how many times she wanted, since she had been my friend. The thing was that she’d only liked him because he was good-looking. End of story. Being the naïve little girl I’d been, I’d been blind to her plots. Till that day.
“Gag me,” I muttered under my breath. Yolanda and Jared’s lips were practically suctioned together. Imagine seeing your twin brother, with whom you share a significant amount of DNA with, sucking face with a girl who looks just like those Bratz dolls, only she was real (which was really the scariest part of it all). What could I say, though? Everyone had his or her freedom to date anyone they wanted, after all. Not like I could march up to them and pull them apart, to my utmost chagrin.
“Reese.”
The sound of my name made me look up. Ah, the miracle! The blinding truth! I must be seeing things! Is that peroxide blonde hair? Like, seriously?
“Ella.” The name rolled coldly off my tongue.
She smirked. “How are you doing, Reese? Still studying hard? I’m surprised you, like, don’t have algebra permanently written on your forehead yet. It’s like, always buried in those books of yours.”
The group of girls tittered. Well, except for Yolanda, who was still taking the skin off my brother’s lips, it seemed. Ripley’s Believe It or Not Exhibition Number One: come to Stonehill High School, the United States of America, and watch two simply adorable people engage in a wild tryst of love-making with their clothes on! It’s real! And guess what: you don’t even have to pay to watch it!!
“Why, I’m surprised you don’t have make-up permanently tattooed onto your face, Ella.” I paused, pretending to be in deep contemplation. “Have you seen it lately? Let me tell you the agonizing truth – I’ll rather watch the clowns in the circus. Oh, and just to let you know, I don’t take Algebra, it's for less advanced people like you." I gave her my best fake smile.
Want to know what she’d done? Sure. One day, during recess, Jared had gone outside to borrow some money from me. But I hadn’t been there; I’d gone off to talk to some other girls. So Ella had started talking to him and soon, she and her posse had started sitting next to him and his gang during lunch time. In fifth grade, no less. Ironically, Jared’s grade school gang had been made up of the very same people I was sitting with right now.
I'd thought it’d been a phase or something, so I'd got together with some other girls for a week or so. Jared hadn't said anything about it (the Ella-sitting-with-him thing) but we had the twin vibe thingy. I knew he hadn't been happy with the arrangement but somehow, he'd never uttered a word about it. So I'd just left it at there and started hanging out with my new friends.
But things had started changing for the worse from that point. The next week, everyone started to ignore me. All the girls kept their distance whenever they’d so much as caught a glimpse of my hair. I'd been confused; why didn’t they want to go near me? Did I smell? No, I hadn’t stepped in any dog pooh… It’d been all too weird.
It reeked of something. Something called Ella Waters.
“You… you… arrgh!” Ella crossed her arms over her chest, glowering in her personalized bitchy way. The guys’ eyeballs practically popped out. Insert long-suffering sigh because, unfortunately, the basis of testosterone would never mutate in a million years. And thus, they say women were God's second mistake.
“Anything else to add?” I didn’t look up from my food.
Yolanda and Jared separated. God, finally! My virgin eyes had had enough of that, let me tell you.
“One day fifty years later, I’ll see you in a senior citizen’s house all alone with 19 cats and a goldfish swimming around a fish bowl,” Ella hissed. “Just wait and see.”
“If you live that long, sure, I’ll see you in a brothel with no business ‘cause you have such bad rheumatism you can’t even get on the bed. Oh, and I’ll be the one shutting it down. Tata, then.”
She gasped, let out a squeak of indignation, turned on her heel and huffily walked away, her posse hurrying to catch up with her. Of course, she made sure to sway her hips, which in my opinion just made her look like a dancing elephant. Not to the guys, though.
But hell, score fifteen for Patterson!
“Hot stuff. I just love hot stuff. Hot food, hot chicks, hot games… phew.” Jack Halloway fanned himself with his Bio test paper. “Hot damn!”
“You won’t feel hot anymore once I pour this carton of deliciously chilly orange juice over your head,” I said, lowering my carton down. “Hey, how much did you get for that?”
“This?” Jack looked skeptically at the red mark. “Wow, I got a 63. I didn’t know that.”
God, that was sad. “A 63? I thought you were going to work harder. You said that last week, remember?”
Jack scratched his head. “No I don’t, but heck, once I get into the NBA, no grades are gonna stand in my way, man!” He hi-fived a passing basketball player.
I sighed to myself, wondering what on earth had happened in their mother's wombs to make them so... urgh! PDA? Girlfriends every week? Bimbos throwing themselves at their highly exalted feet? Being forced to watch basketball match when they know perfectly well I sneak a copy of Stephen King's Lisey's Story in and not as much as looking at the orange ball? Listening to crazed fan girls behind me squealing about Dev/Jared/Wes/Jack/Steve?
And since we'd reached that stage... I could as well impart to you a vital piece of information concerning me, myself and I.
I have never been kissed before.
OK, so that isn’t exactly true. I got kissed before in third grade by this boy named Arnold Layser. Thinking about his surname now, it’s a tad controversial, isn’t it? Or you can think in terms of Layser and Laser… I don’t know… but that's not the point. The point is that he'd declared his love for me on the spot, given me two daisies, ‘picked from my momma’s garden fresh this morning!’ and asked me to be his girlfriend. However, Jared and his best friend Devon Saunders had somehow witnessed that kiss and proceeded to beat the hell out of him. Two days later, I heard that Arnold had moved away to Connecticut.
Maybe that was what had incited the declaration of love in the first place. Not like I’d ever bothered to find out.
“Yo, Reese, where’s Devon?”
“Do I look like I care?” I muttered. “You’re his best friend, you should know that.”
“Relax, girl. I know you miss me, but extreme measures aren’t necessary,” a smooth voice cut in from across me, just as Jared opened his mouth to retort back.
I nearly choked on my Mac and cheese, taking a swig of OJ before glancing up. “Jared asked for you, not me. Don’t blame me if he’s in love with you.” I shot yet another sugary sweet (albeit fake) smile at Devon before hastily starting on my fries. Need to take mind off perfect specimen of guy sitting beside twin brother! Dang it.
“Don’t deflect your obvious feelings for me, Reese,” Devon said amusedly. Even without looking at him, I knew he had that annoying smirk plastered on his stupid face. Dear God, would You please enlighten me as to why such an infuriating, yet perfectly presentable young man exists on Planet Earth?? Someone who loves to rag at me, loves to tease me, loves to ridicule me, loves to... well, you get my drift.
But whatever it was, I owed a lot to Devon. He had been the one who’d come up to me seven years ago, the one who’d talked to me and understood what I’d been going through, the one who’d reached out to me when my brother hadn’t been there. Sometimes, it was a mystery, though, trying to read his mind. I swear he can get mood swings as much as a PMS-ing female. Oh, and half the time, he either talks about sports, girls, food, pool, girls, practice, or girls.
He’s a jock after all…
“Reel your ego in, Saunders,” I scoffed, looking up and aiming a French fry at his eyes. He raised his hand to block it, the fry bouncing harmlessly off his palm.
“Come on,” I whined. “Can’t I hit you for once?”
His grin grew wider, his hazel eyes twinkling like he knew a joke I didn't. “Hit me exactly where?”
I resisted the urge to take my packet of sauce and open it above his head. “God, I hate you!”
“Nah, secretly, deep down in your heart, you have a burning passion for me. I know. I’m just too irresistible.” He wrinkled his perfectly aquiline nose at me (or not so perfectly - he'd gotten into a few fights before, mostly over guys who’d made a pass at me), stretching his arms out languidly and showing off a little of that supposedly drool-worthy six-pack. Dev doesn't wear tight shirts (which, in my opinion, just makes the wearer look desperate to prove his manliness or something), but he definitely knows how to work the females of the school... which I fear include teachers of the female persuasion as well, because he gets away with being late to school every time. Of course, I wouldn't put it past the school's golden boy to get away with anything...
Jared was chuckling, used to our banter. He knew about the past between Devon and me, my dislike of his overconfident attitude and playboy manner, his 4.1 GPA… why any sane girl would want to go out with him, I don't know, but it wasn’t like the girls he’d dated before were really all that sane, to tell the truth. WHY? Why am I cursed to routinely be around people who probably wouldn't amount to much in the future??
See, that's why I suffer.
“Yeah, and Italy will win the World Cup,” I shot back. “Face it, Dev; I’m not some brain-dead bimbo who’ll give anything to go out with you. I actually have taste.”
“You call Arnold Layser tasteful? He’s more like… a chipmunk. A chipmunk! Get a heck of that!” Dev proceeded to laugh his head off. What an idiot, I felt like smacking him there and then. And so I did.
“Damn! That actually hurt…” Dev rubbed his arm, scowling at me. Of course, being the perfect DNA sample of a male homosapien, he still looked good enough to eat with that messy sandy brown hair of his. Urgh, how off-putting was that?? “What was that for?”
“Your idiocy.”
Steven Jobs – OK, joking, it’s Steven Faulkner, but we call him Steve – cut in then. “Who says Italy won’t win? I think they have a really good chance this year – I mean, look at their captain! Cannavaro is definitely going to boost the entire-”
“Lalalala, I can’t hear you!” OK, I was being childish there. Give me some slack already! I was sitting with a bunch of GUYS! And fine, it might have been my choice, and I preferred it to hanging out with girls. I only have one close female friend; the others are all guys. Some might say I’m lucky, some might say I’m crazy, but it’s just me.
“You might want to use that pent-up emotion for something more worthwhile, Reese,” Dev smirked.
Asshole!! That class A piece of ‘#&!!
I didn’t fail to notice the group of juniors behind us looking at Dev’s broad back and giggling to themselves. Some were looking at Jared’s back; some were looking at the other guys’ backs. Then one of them caught my eye and sent me a death glare, making me drop my gaze and go back to my food.
How many times have I been called a bitch for sitting with the guys? A thousand times. How many times have I been praised for good grades? A hundred times. How many times have I gone to my brother’s games? Tens and thousands of times. And how many times have I clicked well with girly stuff?
Try none after 5th grade.
I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on a lot of stuff. Taylor, my only female friend who is close to me, likes the occasional going out to the mall and shopping, going for manicures, blah blah. All that just makes me cringe inside. Sure, I like shopping sometimes. I’m not a total tomboy, though Taylor likes to remind me that the lack of skirts in my wardrobe is contradictory to that. I like jeans, they’re comfortable! But whatever. Taylor and I both love reading, which was how we became friends in the first place. We’d bumped into each other at the library while reaching for the same book. She’d been amazed that I liked that author too and we’d gotten down to a serious discussion. Then she asked which school I went to and voila! A friend who wasn’t male, for once.
The first time she had come over to my house, Devon had commented on her fashion sense, saying it made her look like a constipated camel. Actually, it was because Taylor’s mom had accidentally bleached all her clothes brown and she didn’t have any choice but be brown from collar to ankle. What’s more was that she has straight brown hair and mocha brown eyes too, so paired with the brown clothing… yeah. The significant part is that in response to that comment, Taylor just smiled, thanked Devon (to his surprise), proceeded to the hallway when Dev and Jared had gone up to his room and put itching powder (she carries it around in case she gets robbed or something) into Dev’s shoes before going back up to my room as if nothing had happened.
Devon never insulted her again.
But it got a little irritating when Jared couldn't stop talking about it. I suppose he was bent over the fact that Devon got beaten by a girl. And I have to say - it WAS sweet.
Which is why Taylor’s such a cool friend; she’s not bitchy, but she definitely has her off days. You can’t run away from PMS, as the guys from the table know all too well.
Thankfully, the bell rang before I could say anything else to Devon. Or not so thankfully. Oh, just wait till I get my hands on that freak…
“Bye, Peanuts!”
“Good one. World History, I haven’t done my homework, Morton’s going to kill me before I finish senior year. Bye, Reese! Save me a slot for your schedule!” (Corny laugh)
“Ciao, Reese, don’t let the hand get to the butt, alrighties?”
“See ya at home, sis.”
Devon leaned in close to me. I could feel his minty breath (what on earth does he eat anyway??) ruffling the bangs covering my ear. “Don’t miss me, sweet thing.”
I smacked him with my history text and he jumped away, laughing. “Catch you later, Reesy! You can try getting a life too, since you look like you really need one!”
“You need a better life than I do!” I yelled after him. He just waved and sauntered out of the cafeteria to collective sighs from the surrounding girls. Now, they need to get a life – at least I wasn’t all hung up over an arrogant, self-centered pig like Devon Saunders.
Yet, he’d saved me 7 years ago…
So that’s how my typical high school lunch period is like. Jared, Devon, Wes, Jack, Steve and me. Oh, and a few other guys as well, but I’m closer to those five, idiotic as they are. We’ve been solid since freshman year and from the looks of it, that’s not going to change anytime soon. Fortunate or unfortunate, I don’t know.
First week of 12th grade, nothing out of the ordinary... Asshole-y guys still acting asshole-y, slutty cheerleaders still being slutty, me my good own self, and oh crap, I’m going to be late for World History!!
Yup, I definitely cannot wait for the weekend to come.