Kanna-sama: Thanks goes to the song, “Sleeping Sickness” by City and Colour for inspiring this one-shot.

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Title: Worn on the Edges

Rating: T for some language

Genre: General/Romance

Summary: I liked everything ratty, torn a bit, and old. I didn’t like new clothes, new cars, or anything even though I had the money. I didn’t like a life where everything was perfect. I liked rips. That was just how I lived my life. One shot.

Notes/Warnings: One shot

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Worn on the Edges

When I was a kid, I hated those plastic dolls with the nice, pristine clothing and baby blue eyes that would shut when you turned the doll at a specific angle. I hated how there was a bow in its hair, tied perfectly so that nothing could mess it up. Even when I dragged a doll like that in the mud, it somehow still looked perfect and beautiful and I hated it. You could say that was what started my life, what made me consciously aware of how different I was from every other person.

I insisted on having rag dolls instead. Their clothes were usually always wrinkled and their heads flopped from side to side, their yarn hair easily tangled. Their clothes tore easily and the little stuffing inside of them fell out of any small hole. I loved to see the stitches my mother constantly had to make when I purposely widened any tiny hole. I loved how imperfect my rag dolls were and I took their example. Any new clothes I got I ruined immediately. I hated Barbies – they were even more perfect than the plastic baby dolls with their perfect bows. I hated shopping at any clothing store in the mall or Wal-Mart. As I grew older, I found a way out of this and discovered thrift stores like Goodwill and Value Village. I reveled in their imperfect beauty.

My mother disapproved of everything I did, everything I wore. At eighteen, everyone would have thought I was homeless with how I dressed. In reality, my family had a lot of money. I just didn’t feel like using it. My car was a beat up Honda with chipped paint and dents in it, ripped upholstery and a rusted bender. I loved it to death and protected it passionately from my parents, who wanted to buy me some stupid ass Kia Spectra. Why the hell would I want that dumb car when I had my baby?

My dad eventually gave up when he realized that anything that they tried to do to make me “respectable,” as they called it, simply made me run away. The cops always dragged me back, but if my parents tried to change my ways again, I was as good as gone and it took them up to a week to find me. I had a job, so if I stayed at a friend’s house, I always returned what I took with money or food. The longest I had been missing was a month and a week. That was when I went out of town to avoid them because my mom threw out my entire wardrobe and redecorated my room to what she wanted. Luckily she hadn’t thrown away my things quite yet or else there would have been real hell to pay.

In any case, it didn’t matter to me once I turned eighteen and I met Joey. It had been unintentional. I was getting a pop from a gas station, picking at its wrapper to make it seem a little less generic when I saw him. He was staring at my outfit, something everyone did. My shoes were beat up from years of wearing them, big Airwalks that were white with the sides black. My jeans were torn at the bottom from walking on them too long and faded. I was wearing a loose blue and black plaid shirt over a gray tank top that was thin from having it for two years. I had wondered, as I always did when people looked at me, if they thought I had just crawled out of the drug world or something.

After paying for my pop, I cracked it open and took a drink. He was still staring at me, which was starting to irritate me, so I stepped towards him and asked, “Didn’t your mom ever tell you it’s rude to stare?” His eyes drifted from my feet to meet my gaze and his brow furrowed at the question.

“Only at someone’s face,” he answered. He glanced back at the stand he had been perusing a moment ago. It was plastic bottles for oil. They all looked the same, nice and perfect and, well, generic. “I really like your clothes,” he said, turning back to look at me, pointing first at my pants, then my shirt. He smiled. “They’re not your average teenage girl’s outfit.”

“I’m eighteen,” I stated, “so I’m not a teenager anymore. Everything I’m wearing came from a thrift store.” It was always interesting to see what people thought when I said that. The first thing that generally came to their mind was dead people’s clothes – don’t ask me why – the second being that I was dirt poor – which, as I said, I’m not.

“You can find cool stuff there,” he said thoughtfully, staring at my pants and shoes again and then returning his gaze to my face, smiling again. It was unnerving. “I’m Joey.”

I reached up and shoved a hand through my hair, frowning, baffled. From then on, I knew I had finally found contentment. He was as eccentric as I was and he wore a combination of thrift and store clothes, but most of the store clothes he altered so they looked different from their original state. I admired that and when I once tried it, I went into a bit of a frenzy and it came out as something that a dominatrix would wear and therefore something I definitely would not wear.

At nineteen, I was out of my parent’s house. I packed up my wardrobe, my few belongings, and headed out of the town. Joey was my inspiration for this act of stupidity, but he abandoned his treasured, old Dodge Ram to come with me and with my tiny Honda packed with our things, we sped down the I-90 and literally worked our way through towns. I felt like I was living in the 60s where bands would do this all the time. Presently, I was sitting on the curb outside an apartment complex where I was currently residing with Joey.

My favorite pieces of my wardrobe were plaid shirts and jeans. Right now I was wearing a black and forest green plaid shirt with the sleeves shoved up to my elbows. I had children’s bracelets on that were pink, transparent, and plastic along with pieces of random string tied around my wrist. In my car, hanging over the rearview mirror were an assortment of things I had collected: ribbons from those Christmas spa packages and chocolate boxes, one Tide detergent label that had a string attached to it, a chain I had found on the ground, a plastic Atlantis toy that had come from a cereal box, and other random paraphernalia.

“What a sun!” Joey exclaimed from behind me. I glanced up from my comfortable position. I didn’t sit like a girl ought to, but with my legs spread apart, my elbows leaning against my thigh and hands hanging comfortably between my legs. My wavy dishwater blonde hair was hanging over my shoulders, half of it shoved up with a hair clip I had found in the bathroom at school. I only started using it after washing it thoroughly, as I did with anything that I found in such places.

“Yep,” I agreed, turning back to peer at the sunset. This town was quiet after sunset, lazy and warm in this summer. Joey settled next to me. He had blonde, curly hair that went to his chin. I always teased him that he looked like a surfer boy from California. “How long do you want to stay here?” It had been a year since we had started traveling through the states. I liked this town best of all of them that we had gone to thus far. There were so many ex-hippies that they accepted my attire and ways far better than anyone in my hometown, which Joey and I had nicknamed Snobsville.

“Dunno,” he said after a pause, appearing thoughtful, his arms extended back to brace his hands on the grass. “Let’s go to the playground down the road.” I peered at him and then turned my head slightly to look down the road. I wouldn’t mind a moment of childhood nostalgia, so long as no kids were there. I had grown to dislike children of this generation, all of whom followed the same style of clothing and basically the same type of personalities. But, if there were any children there, I would have been able to hear them.

“Yeah, okay.” I stumbled to my feet and then when he lifted a hand, I pulled him up to his feet, grunting. “Geez, have you been eating on the job?” He nudged me with his shoulder.

“Nope, you’re just getting a little chunky yourself.” I sent him a feigned outraged look and nudged him back. He laughed and I shoved my hands in my pockets, walking leisurely. The weather was too warm for my skater shoes, so I was wearing brown flip flops that had scratches in them and were too big for me. They slapped against my heel as we moved down the street and I could hear the scrape of his sandals on the road beside the sound I was making. “Hey, Kat?”

“Hmm?”

“How about we get married?”

My brows knitted together as I considered over his unromantic proposal. Marriage was new. I didn’t like new. He didn’t like anything that was considered modern, which was one of the reasons we got along so well. While he was stuck on being a nonconformist, I was hooked on keeping my own, comfortable style that no one would ever be able to understand, not even Joey. And, when Joey and I had first got together as friends, there was an understanding between us that there was something else there. In each town, girls flirted with him and guys attempted to catch my interest, but neither of us ever hooked up with anyone else, even if we weren’t in any way physically intimate with each other.

“I don’t like the idea of marriage,” I said at last.

“Neither do I,” he admitted, “but...” He rubbed his fluffy hair, looking embarrassed, something that was rare when it came to Joey. He was, like me, completely comfortable in his skin. “I don’t know, I just want...something...” He trailed off, expelling a long breath. I glanced at him as we entered the playground and moved across the swings, searching for one that I felt would be best. I found one with the most worn out seat and settled on it. Joey watched me uncertainly and I tilted my head, realizing he looked a bit like a lost puppy.

“Permanent?” I finished his sentence for him, just to show that I had been listening. He nodded. “You’re the only person that has at least tried to understand me, Joey. I’m not going anywhere.” I smiled at him and after a pause, he returned the smile and then looked at his hand thoughtfully before yanking his oldest – and my favorite – ring off his pinky, handing it to me. I took it and tried every finger before it fit on my middle finger. “Promise,” I added.

“Sounds good,” he decided and brushed a hand over my head before settling on the swing beside me.

I watched him through the corner of my eye as I swayed back and forth on my swing. No one would believe me, but there are guys that are like my clothes: worn on the edges, with tears here and there and the only one that was like that happened to be Joey. He wasn’t like the guys that seemed generic and new, smelling like a brand new shower curtain would. He was special the way my wardrobe was, the way I flattered myself to believe that I was.

I threw away a comfortable life for him. I wonder if he knew he was that special.

As if feeling me watching him, he turned and gave me a puzzled look. I smiled and jumped off my swing, spinning around in the gravel and going to him on the swing, circling my arms over his neck and resting my head against them. He put his hands on my back, tentatively.

I don’t think anyone would understand how wonderful a tattered life like mine could be.

Finis

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Kanna-sama: As you can see, this is not a complete story. It holds a plot, but it isn’t fleshed out, and I know all of this. It was just a musing one-shot that I wanted to get out of my system. I would like to make a chaptered story out of it. That is still highly debatable, though. Please leave a review, telling me how you liked it.