I Imagine Me and You

by Aurette

Author's Note: This was originally written for the writing prompt at Tough and Dirty (link found in my profile), and it tied for runner up! I realized as I wrote it that James had a LOT of potential for a much longer story, and his and Beck's adventures were better served with a chaptered length work. So here it is! Edited some from the short story, but the spirit is so totally there.

I drew a lot of inspiration for the Reed family from my own. Julia is twelve years older than James, which is the same as between my sister and I (only we have two brothers in between). Like my family, their mother had Julia when she was only 18, and by a different father than James'. Although my own nephews and niece aren't as old as Beck, some of Beck's precocious tendencies are inspired by them. Also, James' college is based on the university I went to my freshman year (with the killer geese), as well as the area I live in. Write what you know, and all that. Though the Reed family dynamic is a LOT less close than my own family. And because I know someone will wonder, NO it's not a romance between James and Beck. Sheesh.

I'll shut up now.

Chapter One: A Day in the Life of a Loser

I feel as though the fire of a thousand suns are scorching my very skin, coupled with the scratches of a thousand pissed off cats. Add in some nice lemon juice on paper cuts and you have pretty much the depth of loathing I feel emanating from Jessi Lowery. Her eyes show her utter disdain for my person, and she sniffs -honest-to-god sniffs- as though I were nothing more than a pile of horse crap.

“Why,” she says, speaking very carefully as if I were some sort of idiot. Which I suppose I am. “Would I consent to go out with you? You're a theater major.”

Ouch. I put a hand over my heart, and take a step back, the daisies I picked from my neighbor's planter box hanging limp in my other hand. Those thousand suns? Add in the suckage of a thousand black holes and the wrath of a thousand deforested three-toed sloths. Those sloths are bitches. I watch Animal Planet; I know these things.

“Y'ok,” I say, and watch as she turns on those stilettos and walks off. I know she sways her hips a little extra, just to prove that she, as an aspiring dentist is too good for an aspiring actor. I mean, what the hell? I'm not ugly, at least I don't think so. Beck always says her little friends have crushes on me. So twelve-year-olds find me attractive, at least.

“BITCH!” I call after her, though she's out of hearing range. I kind of waited three minutes for her to disappear into Peck Hall, though so I think it might not have the effect I desired. I startle the geese walking along the path, and one of them gives me an affronted look. “I BROUGHT YOU FLOWERS!” I throw the pathetic bouquet at the affronted goose. The fowl glares at me (I hadn't, before this moment, known that birds could glare), and chases me down the walkway that crosses the campus.

Two girls walking to class stare as I run, my book bag slapping my leg which will form a fantastic bruise that night. The goose is honking at me, and I'm pretty sure it's calling in back up. I wonder, not for the first time, why I chose to go to college where the geese are bitches.

I'm lying on the floor of my kitchen in my apartment. Beck is sitting on one of the bar stools, sipping a lemonade and giving me that look that only pre-teens seem to pull off. Beck is my niece, and is twelve going on thirty-seven. She's also smarter than me, and is inordinately interested in my love life. She has blonde hair cut in the “style.” I, being a guy who loathes haircuts, have no idea what it's called. It's just shorter in the back and long in the front and is too old for her. What can I say? I take my uncling job seriously.

“It's not that bad, Uncle Jamesy,” she says, a pragmatic air to her tone. She's awfully good at sounding pragmatic.

“Not that bad? Not that bad, Rebecca May? It's a tragedy. A bona fide Greek tragedy. Not like, Antigone or whatever, but pretty bad.” I pick myself off the floor and open the fridge, looking for leftover Chinese. “If only you'd been there.”

“Why'd you ask Jessi Lowery out, anyway?” Beck asks, very astutely. “She's not your type.”

“And what, pray, is my type?” I pull out something that looks vaguely like chicken and start poking at it with a fork. It doesn't move on it's own, and isn't growing anything, so I stick it in my mouth. It doesn't taste like it grew anything, so I chew and swallow. Beck looks at me like I just ate a dead cockroach. Which I might have. Jury's still out. I may not have been hurting for money, but I do lack considerable culinary skill. I take what I can get.

“Well, you always go after the nerdy type, James.” Beck watches me eat with a mixture of disgust and fascination. I'm surprised she's still weirded out by my eating habits. She's only lived with me for three months and all. “The ones who have absolutely no fashion sense. Who like knitting, Enya, Renaissance Faires, read Jane Austen and who love zombie flicks and get all your theater jokes. Girls who... aren't going into dentistry. Girls who are pretty much you.”

I'm hurt. “Beck,” I exclaim. “How the hell did you find my Enya CDs?” I thought I'd hidden those well! After all, enough people think I'm gay already. Enya? Yeah. That's kind of embarrassing.

“Really, James? Really?” Beck levels me with that twelve-year-old stare and I'm suitably chastised.

“Bitch,” I say. “I give you a bed to sleep in. I can take that away from you missy, and make you sleep in the carport.”

Beck rolls her eyes. She knows it's completely an empty threat. Beck lives with me because my sister and brother-in-law decided they'd rather live in Burma or somewhere equally remote and mysterious, chatting with the natives and anthroplogizing, than be parents. As a twenty-year-old college student getting by with parental support and my part time job at the campus bookstore, I would have said no if asked. But Julia, sweet darling Julia, had dropped her off at my apartment for some uncle-niece bonding time and made a break for the airport as if the Feds were on her tail.

For all I know they are. Mom and Dad won't tell me anything. Beck probably should have been living with them since they actually, you know, raised a preteen girl once before. But Dad got early retirement and is taking full advantage of this huge ass RV they bought the second I moved into my college dorm and go to all these places that Beck would hate. And my campus apartment was only a few minutes from her school. My family is insidious.

“James, why are you so obsessed with getting a girl anyway?”

“Because I'm a junior in college and I haven't even had a serious relationship since I was fifteen? I mean, fifteen, Beck. How can you have a serious relationship when you can't even drive your date home after the dance?”

Beck snorts into her lemonade. She doesn't seem to mind our living arrangement too much. I don't make her do anything but keep her room clean, and I let her watch R rated movies and stay up past eleven whenever she wants. Sometimes she'll hang at the bookstore when I go in, or wander campus, pretending she's a genius wunderkind and that she's going to classes. She's not strictly allowed to live in my apartment, since it's for college students only, but no one's noticed yet. And my floormates don't give a crap. After all, Beck is a lot less disruptive than some people's boyfriends or girlfriends, and she doesn't trash the halls or crank her music up to eleven.

“Well, if it's any consolation, I think you'd make quite a catch. My friend Trixie thinks you're hot. Besides, you're funny, neurotic and you can be charming.” Beck scoots off the stool and puts her empty glass in the sink, and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Neurotic is not usually listed as a plus, darling.” I look in the container of chicken-cockroach and my stomach makes a noise like the dregs of ketchup being squeezed from the bottle. I wrinkle my nose and toss the container in the overflowing trash bin.

“I can hook you up with Trixie's tattoo artist sister, if you like.”

“Trixie is a whore name.”

Beck shrugs, and takes my fork and rinses it off. One of the pluses of having the girl here was she got so sick of me never doing dishes that she started doing them herself. Clean dishes are a luxury, and I take full advantage of that. “I'm sure in ten years she will be, so it's okay.”

It's weird, discussing my niece's potentially slutty friends. I mean, it was weird when she first moved here. After all, most of the time we saw each other was at family gatherings or when I had to babysit. Now it's just a normal conversation in Casa Reed. My theater friends think it's hilarious that I'm pretty much stuck raising a little girl. She always tags along to rehearsals and stuff like that, so I think she wormed her way into being a mascot of sorts. And our parties consist of watching old show DVDs and critiquing our performance and making fun of each other, so it's not like she's exposed to the Animal House life or anything. All in all, I'm a pretty pathetic excuse for a twenty year old male. Not that I particularly care, except for the whole lack of a lady thing.

I'm about to reply to Beck when there's a knock on the door. As Beck is up to her elbow in dishes, I hurry over to the door and open it. Standing there is my neighbor, Phoebe, with a schoolbag. Phoebe is about the same height as Beck, that is, very short. She definitely looks older than twelve, though, and she's pretty in that punk rawk way, with brightly dyed cherry red hair and brown eyes that could pierce a man's soul. No one really likes to mess with Fee.

“I hate my roommates!” she exclaims, and moves past me to flop on the couch. “They're having another party tonight, and I have to work on my Russian essay.”

Fee has two roommates, both hardcore partiers. I have none because I like my privacy, and because my parents refused to let me have them. Something about inappropriate social behaviors. I knew better than to ask. It works out, anyway, because of Beck and everything.

“Another party? Didn't they have one two nights ago?” I wander in to sit on the chair next to the couch. Fee is playing with the ends of her hair, twirling the strands viciously. She isn't a partier, to be honest.

“Yes.”

Beck pokes her head out of the kitchen. “Can't you tell the building supervisor?” she asks. “I mean, they're going to bother everyone on the floor and I have to be at school early tomorrow for a field trip to Springfield.”

Fee and Beck get along famously. I guess it kind of helps that they're both girls and Fee has the patience of a saint. “I could, but then they'd in turn tell him I'm keeping rats in my closet.” Fee also has pet rats. It's weird. But I don't question it. “Can I hang out here tonight? I really need to work on this paper, and transliterating my whole paper into Cyrillic is harder than even writing in French or something.”

Of course, I agree. Fee's a good neighbor, and Beck adores her. And besides, I'll be at rehearsal most of the night, and it always makes me feel better when someone's hanging out with Beck. Beck's a mature kid, and is old enough to look after herself, but on a college campus with a party happening on the same floor... I get all overprotective. Someone's gotta.

“James got rejected today!” Beck pipes up. She bounds across the room to sit next to her idol. “And got chased by a goose!”

Fee raises her eyebrows, and looks over Beck's head at me. “Jessi Lowery,” I say in way of explanation.

“Why would you want to go out with a dentistry student?”

“That's what I say!” Beck pokes Fee in the arm. “And she's so not his type, right?”

“Right. James seems like he'd date a homebody knitter who listens to Enya and reads James Austen for the sexual tension.”

I drop my head in my hands. “Is that a not so snide commentary on my level of 'getting some'?”

“Of course not,” Fee says smoothly. She pulls her laptop from her bag and switches it on. “It's just a reference to the type of chick you'd go out with.” She smiles at me and I roll my eyes. “Don't be offended. Knitters who read Austen and listen to Enya are wonderful people.”

“But reading Austen for the sexual tension? Calling someone by their first name is like, equal to fingering them!”

Beck rolls off the couch in giggles, and Fee glances at me disapprovingly. “You shouldn't talk like that in front of your niece, James.”

“Are you serious, Fee? James talked like that around me before I even lived here. I think it goes with being a sexually frustrated male.”

“I'm not sexually frustrated.” I mumble. “I'm just between relationships.”

Fee doesn't answer, just smiles that knowing smile of hers and opens her word program. I watch her for a minute as she switches her keyboard to Cyrillic. Then I let out a noise that might have been a “bah humbug,” and retreat to my room. The last thing that I needed was two women telling me I was hopeless on the dating scene. I already fully knew that, thank you very much.

Rehearsal for my show, the Sound of Music is a dismal affair. And not just because I'm still annoyed that the director wouldn't cast Beck as Louisa von Trapp because she didn't have blonde hair like all the other kids in the show. I'm dark haired, and I'm playing the Captain!

In any case, it might have because Beck can't carry a tune in a bucket, but I've always been one for hefty doses of denial. In any case, I'm hanging out on set, which is being built around me. I'm stretched out on Maria's bed, and watching as the children run around the house. I love Beck and everything, but most kids kind of freak me out. Which, as I'm told, is a normal reaction for a guy my age to have towards children.

“That's it!” I hear a voice cry. A script goes flying over my head, and I yawn. Oh great. Another throw down between Paula and Dave. “I'm not going to be in this show if you keep making these asinine decisions!” Paula always did have a flair for the dramatics. Lends itself well to the stage, you know.

“Oh my god, woman! Get your god damned habit on!”

“Wow,” Danny says, and sits on my legs. Danny is playing Max and my partner-in-crime-not-in-life as most people assume. “Is it appropriate to use god damned and habit in the same sentences?”

“As long as habit doesn't refer to a nun's habit,” I answer. I pop a few sweetarts in my mouth and watch as Paula storms out of the dressing room, half dressed. She's only wearing jeans and a sports bra. Paula's also hot.

“Damn,” Danny says, and I hand him a handful of candy.

“Indeed,” I reply.

Dave follows Paula, holding the nun's habit and shaking it after her. “I don't care if you think Maria shouldn't wear a crucifix, but it's a god damned play and you're wearing the god damned crucifix!”

“I'm Jewish!” she cries out.

“So was Christ! Now put the habit and crucifix on, woman!”

“I sure hope Jack's filming this.” I prop up higher so I can watch the two argue at each other as they prance across the stage. “Because I'm sure you aren't supposed to use 'god damned' and 'crucifix' in the same sentence unless you say 'God damned those who don't believe in the symbolism of the crucifix.' And even then you're on iffy territory.”

“Stop thinking and eat your sweetarts.”

I can't argue with Danny's logic so I do what he said.

“I'm not going to!”

“It's the fucking Sound of Music, Paula. It's not you getting down on your knees and baptizing yourself as a Catholic!”

“I might as well be!”

“Then why the frackity fracking hell did you audition?”

“Because I'd never seen the show before!”

“And you're just NOW refusing to wear the crucifix? Paula, we've been rehearsing for three weeks! And how the HELL could you not have seen the show before?!”

“I didn't know she wore a crucifix!”

I crunch on a blue sweetart and wonder how long it'll take for rehearsal to start, and if I need to call Beck to let her know I'll be late. Not that she really cares, but it's nice to pretend that she's worried about me. And it's not that I'm worried about her or anything. I'm not like, trying to be her dad or something ridiculous like that.

“SHE'S A GOD DAMNED ROMAN CATHOLIC POSTULANT, PAULA WILLISTEIN! WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY WEAR, A PENTACLE?”

I pull my cell phone from my pocket and dial Beck's number. We aren't starting any time soon.

Paula reveals to me as we're walking back to the apartments that she only freaks out about the crucifix because she knows it'll drive Dave crazy.

“Well, duh,” I say, and hitch my bag higher on my shoulder. “I mean, you're not even a practicing Jew.”

“But Dave doesn't know that.” Paula grins. Paula and I get along scary well. Not only do we both randomly do things specifically to piss people off, but we're often the only people who find the other's antics hilarious. I once asked Paula out, when she played Anita to my Bernardo in West Side Story (lacking Hispanics, dark haired actors were chosen instead. Hey, it worked for Natalie Wood). She turned me down, very politely. Which was actually kind of an improvement over the usual response, and now we just laugh at each other's stupid antics. It's all well and good, I suppose. Theater people dating each other is just sometimes a bad idea. Especially with awkward break ups. I mean, Christine and Danny still can't be in the same room after the whole Sardine incident in Noises Off. And Christine wasn't even involved with the show.

“Furthermore, you have the entirety of freshmen theater students thinking you're an insane Jew. Good job.”

We high five, like a couple of dorks. “So, you going for the summer showbiz thing next year?” she asks. “I might stay in town and audition.”

“Depends on what they're doing. Rumor is they want to do the Producers, which would be made of win, and Our Town, which would be made of suck.”

“They actually want to do Our Town?”

I nod gravely. It's a sickness, it has to be. I played Simon Stimson in Our Town in high school and I still can't listen to the song 'Blest be the Tie that Binds' without wanting to shoot myself in the head. Screw you, Thorton Wilder. Screw you.

Paula shakes her head, and we part ways once we reach the apartment paths. She lives in a different building, which is probably for the best. She doesn't have to endure Fee's roommate' incessant parties. I get up to my apartment, and unlock the door, cringing at the reek of booze in the hallways. Luckily, the music coming from the door across the hall is strangely muffled more than usual. They probably blew out the good speakers again. I walk into my apartment, and put my bag down. Beck is lying on the couch, covered with a blanket. The TV is on, but with the volume low. I recognize it as a Buffy episode. Fee is sitting at my kitchen table, writing in indecipherable characters on her laptop.

“She wanted to wait up to ask what antics Paula pulled this time, but she crashed after Willow turned gay,” Fee says, not looking up from her screen. “And it looks like my roommates aren't kicking people out any time soon.”

I smirk, and pull a tub of rocky road ice cream from the freezer and attack with a spoon. If she were awake, Beck would go into hysterics if she saw me spread my germ-infected saliva. “Thanks for sitting with her,” I say, and lick the spoon with relish.

“Well, it was either be here or in my apartment with the druggies and crappy music,” Fee remarks dryly.

“No, it's not. You have other friends you could have stayed with.” Oh, I'm astute. I'm the observational machine.

“I just kind of feel sorry for her, having to hang out on a college campus all the time with her parents off in freaking Tibet or wherever.”

“Burma,” I correct.

“Whatever. I really don't mind, James. Beck is a sweet girl, and not as obnoxious as some preteens I know. She adores you, you know.”

No, I don't know, but I don't say anything. I just steadily eat bites of ice cream. “Doesn't Tim get annoyed with you being here all the time?” I cringe to myself as I ask the question. Tim and I don't get along. Probably the whole thing where he acts condescending to me because he thinks I'm gay.

“Of course not. He's still convinced you're lusting after Cillian Murphy.”

“That was one comment taken out of context,” I mutter, and shove a sizable spoonful of ice cream into my mouth.

“Even if he was annoyed, he'd just have to deal with it. He doesn't control who my friends are.”

Yeah. Tim's Fee's fiance. I think he's a raging fucktart jackhole, but I don't tell Fee that. It might strain our friendship. Even if it is the honest-to-God truth. I finish off the ice cream and throw the tub away. I put the spoon in the sink and leave Fee to her Russian verb conjugations and gently shake Beck awake.

“I know you love the couch better than your own standard campus issue bed, but I promise, your neck will thank you in the morning,” I say to her. Beck makes some unintelligible remark, so I lift her in my arms and carry her to her room. It's a common occurrence, and neither of us mention it in the morning, but I think Beck likes it when I dote on her. She sure didn't get any of that as a younger kid. I emerge to see Fee still at the table.

“You can crash on the couch, if you like,” I say, and grab a bottle of water. “I'm going to bed. Monologue performance tomorrow morning.”

“Break a leg,” Fee calls after me absently. I go into my room, and lean against the door, and breathe out a sigh. It was a long day, and even though I laughed off my rejection from Jessi Lowery with feigned humiliation, the truth was it still hurts. I don't know what was wrong with me. Most girls who reject me claim I'm a nice guy, just not one they are interested in. Do I have to quit my theater major, get a motorcycle, leather pants and a guitar to make girls like me?

Well, maybe not the leather pants part, but still. I shake my head and take a long drink of water. No use being introspective and angsty. I wouldn't be an emo kid if it got me all the easy girls I could ever want to have.