~ACT I~

Scene 1

SUNGLOW

“Shit, I’m late!” Marmaduke cursed, throwing various coloring books into her translucent, orange plastic backpack.

“This is what you get for staying up all night,” Cray remarked.

“We only stayed up so late because you were watching Gilligan’s Island!” she retorted, pulling on a pair of purple PVC Daisy Dukes and an orange tank top.

“Yeah, but I don’t need to sleep,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, shut your flap!” she exclaimed, tossing Cray into her back pack “You sleep all the time!”

“Yeah, but I don’t need to,” he sneered as Marmaduke zipped the bag shut.

Moments later, Marmaduke was clunking down the stairs, her orange go-go boots making running increasingly more dangerous with every step. She bounded down the stairs three at a time, sprinting desperately for the door.

“Clementine!” Her mother said. “What is this letter about you failing—”

“Can’t talk, sorry!” she shouted, nothing but an orange-and-tan blur as she flew past.

Luckily, Marmaduke was able to flag her bus down and catch her breath before school began.

Later that day, Marmaduke was sitting in algebra.

While the teacher discussed the quadratic formula, Marmaduke was chewed her nails. While the class went over the test, Marmaduke colored the wide expanses of white she had left untouched when she took the test before, ignoring the big “F” and the “0%” at the top. While her classmates did in-class to work, Marmaduke daydreamed, watching the clouds roll across the sky.

As he watched her, the teacher felt there was no hope, yet he knew he had to try.

After the bell rang, the balding man called out two names.

“Crockett Johnson, Clementine Marmaduke, I’d like to speak with the two of you,”

Marmaduke deflated, an unhappy sigh puttering past her lips. She flopped lifelessly across her desk, dejectedly mimicking a beached octopus. As her classmates filed out, one boy fought against the tide of sardine students, a salmon fighting upstream against the river’s flow. One of Marmaduke’s almond eyes watched him, amused by the shock-stricken, angry expression on his face.

“Mr. Phalange, please!” the salmon said, seizing the teacher’s desk in his big, calloused, mathematician hands. “There has to be some kind of mistake! I haven’t missed a single point all year! I haven’t—”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” the teacher clarified, eyeing Marmaduke with disdain as she shuffled up, cleaning out her ear with her pinky nail.

“Let me explain,” he began. “Our school receives a certain amount of funding every year if we can get a certain amount of students to pass our courses. If we don’t reach that certain benchmark, our funding is cut completely. Unfortunately, Miss Marmaduke seems to have little interest in passing any of her courses, most especially mathematics, and unfortunately, it has come down to her passing or the school’s pockets getting painfully lighter,”

“I don’t understand,” said Crockett. “What does this have to do with me?”

“The administration has a favor to ask of you,” Mr. Phalange said. “We need a student to tutor her and bring her grade up to a passing 60%,”

Marmaduke and Crockett exchanged a look before exclaiming in unison.

“I can’t work with someone like that!”

“He’s a smug Poindexter!” she accused haughtily.

“She’s a brainless slut!” he accused in much the same manner.

“I am not a Poindexter!” he snapped.

“I am not a slut!” she snapped in much the same way. “I’m not brainless either!”

“Crockett, if you’re willing to tutor her, the administration is willing to wipe a certain tarnishing B+ from your record in exchange for an A,”Crockett recalled very painfully the memory of the B+ he received in Industrial Tech his freshman year due to breaking his thumb via an accident involving a hammer and his other hand. The tiny plaster cast left him unable to do his very best, resulting in his 89% passing grade.

“I’ll have a 4.0?” Crockett said in a hush, the words ecstasy on his lips.

“You’ll have a 4.0—if you can get her grades up by the end of the year,” the teacher said. Crockett looked at her, reconsidering the offer.

“Wait a damn second—” the uncouth raver demanded, clamming her hands down on the desk. Warily, Mr. Phalange examined her nails, searching for traces of earwax. “What do I get out of this?”

“If you can pass this class, you won’t have to take another math class the rest of your high school career.”

That really was quite the tempting deal.

“All I got to get is a D, right?” Marmaduke half-asked, half-mused, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. She was seriously considering the offer; Mr. Phalange was on the edge of being showered with relief.

“All she has to get is a D?” Crockett repeated, crossing his arms across his spectacularly witty ringer tee. He too was seriously considering the offer. “I could do that,”

“I’ll do it.” she said at last, slamming her fist like a judge’s gavel against the palm of her other hand.

“I’ll do it too,” Crockett said with a nod. “Getting a D by the end of the year should not be a problem,”

After the two had left the room, Mr. Phalange slumped in his seat and stared up at the corkboard ceiling tiles.

“There really is a god.” he said aloud.

- - -

After shutting the door behind him, Crockett turned to Marmaduke and spoke, his short brown-black hair gleaming in the hall light.

“Let’s get one thing straight—I’m only helping you for my own gain. I don’t care about you at all,” Crockett didn’t know why he felt the need to clarify. His logical mind was well aware of the fact Marmaduke had made no such claim (not the slightest hint) that she thought he was helping her, but he insulted her all the same.

“Likewise, buddy,” she scoffed, almost laughing as she brushed past him and started on her way. Crockett, for whatever reason, was flabbergasted by her reaction. No haughty huffs, no offense taken, no ‘why, I never!’s. She wasn’t even storming off; she was just sauntering along, balanced precariously on knee-high go-go boots, her long, long legs and her short-shorts not even the littlest bit bothered.

Maybe he only cared because the sight of those long legs had him the littlest bit bothered.

Crockett hesitated. He wanted to run after her, but he didn’t know why. As soon as a reason (i.e.: an excuse) came to him, his legs began to move. He ran to her, taking uncomfortably lengthy strides in order to catch up. It didn’t look like she was moving fast, but her bean-pole legs had covered a lot of ground.

“Hey—!” he cried out, causing her to stop and turn.

“What?” she asked.

“We should exchange numbers,” he blurted, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small notebook and pen. “So we can make plans to meet up later,”

She looked him over, her almond eyes studying him intently. Her probing gaze made him uneasy, her genetically narrowed eyes narrowing still. All at once, she nodded, seized the notebook in his hand and reached into her backpack, unearthing a scarlet crayon from Cray before scribbling down some numbers. She shoved the notebook back into his hand and turned on heel, continuing on her way.

“Don’t you want my number?” he asked, slightly annoyed that she hadn’t waited for him to give it to her in the first place.

“Why would I want it?” she replied with a snort. “Its not like I’m going to call you,”

- - -

.At home, Cray sat on Marmaduke’s desk, the heroine herself laying on her floor completely naked while her tanning lamp worked its magic.

“So, are you really going to let this bub tutor you?” Cray inquired, his eyebrow looking vaguely agitated above his modestly-closed eye. Of course, he (and his eyebrow) always looked vaguely agitated.

“Why not?” Marmaduke replied. “Not like it’ll hurt any. Besides, if I do pass, I don’t have to take mat h again,”

“You’ll have to be careful,” he warned. “It would be a disaster if he found out about me,”

“Pssh,” Marmaduke scoffed, sarcasm seizing in her voice. “Yeah, I’m totally going to off right now and tell him. ‘So I got this bock of crayons I talk to, and sometimes, he talks back. Well, it’s more like yelling—”

“Hah, hah,” Cray rolled his eye beneath his eyelid. “Very funny,”

“And he’ll totally believe me too, and he’ll run off, and like a village idiot, he’ll yell ‘Alert the press! Local Girl Possesses Magical Crayons!’”

“I get it,” Cray said neurotically, his eyebrow flat-lining.

“And then the feds will all come wearing snappy zoot suits and they’ll hall me to the loony bin, and then they’ll confiscate you and perform horrible, painful science experiments—”

“I get it!” Cray cried. An egg timer began to ring, and Marmaduke rose, her daily tanning time up. She reached up to turn off the lamp, but instead of hitting a switch or pulling a plug, she reached up where the bulb should have been and retrieved the crayon that had been sitting there. The tanning rays flickered out as she unscrewed the crayon and placed Sunglow back inside Cray’s mouth.

“Can you smell the acid burning your cardboard, Cray?” she whispered, leaning in close as really give him the heebie-jeebies. “Can you hear the death cries of your waxen brethren as they’re melted down?”

She patted Cray on the top of his head and smiled. By the look on his eyebrow, the answer was yes. Marmaduke couldn’t help it: she burst up laughing.

“I got to you!” she sang. “I so got to you!”

“You did not!”

“Oh, I so did!”

“Oh, you so did not!”

Hearing Cray mimic the way she spoke only caused her to laugh harder.

“Oh, put some clothes on,” Cray muttered, Marmaduke’s snickers almost too loud for him to be heard.

Commentary:

Tuh-dah! Update. This story has been updated because I've been writing it for my creative writing class. Which, by the way, is a complete bore. The story now has something in a plot (but no way of getting there) and a few various chapters planned! Isn't that exciting? Please review, and tell me what you think! Also, the opening (last chapter) has been revised, but I'm too lazy to post the revisions. *lame*

3 Skylar Alexander.

Also, not that anyone really cares, my story, Trick, has been nominated for the FictionPress Supernatural Awards. Information on my profile. *yay*