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“Are you going to pull the super-chug with that?”
Veronica looked up in surprise, knowing she recognized that voice, but definitely not the uniform the boy was now wearing. The dorky convenience store apron and hat did him no favors, but it explained why she hadn't seen him when she first came in, dismissing him as just the same old dropout that was always behind the counter and not the guy she'd been eying across the cafeteria earlier today.
He'd been all dark hair and clothes and brooding, just the sort of dark horse she could make into a great fantasy but would never talk to, even if she was as popular as a Heather.
“No, but if you're nice, I'll let you buy me a slushie,” she said, and he snorted, looking at her coin purse and back at her.
“You came to my store, princess. I think you're doing the paying.”
“No chivalry for you?”
He leaned across the counter. “If I bought slushies for every girl who walked in the door, this job wouldn't be worth the shitty wage or the awful uniform.”
“Yeah, it's not exactly your color,” she said, and then frowned. “Wait, I'm just like every other girl who comes in here?”
He shrugged. “Sure. You ignore me when you walk in, not so much as a hello. You continue to deny my existence while you shop, and only when I actually talk to you do you acknowledge that there's a living, breathing human being in front of you. Oh, and then you think just because you're pretty I'll buy the slushie for you. I'm not that desperate. Or that much of a perv.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “And you didn't say hello when I walked in, no 'can I help you,' no greeting when I come up to the counter, and why would I want a perv to buy my slushie?”
“I don't know. You were making some serious eye contact earlier.”
She flushed. “I was not.”
“You're cute when you blush,” he said. “And you owe two-fifty.”
“What?”
“Slushie, corn nuts, and a moment to rethink your life choices.”
“And what life choice is it you think I'm making such a mistake in making?”
“Bribing a bitch to be kind to you at lunch? You could do so much better.”
“Says the boy who is working at a Snappy Snack Shack.”
“Don't knock the endless access to slushies,” he said. “Besides, there are worse after school jobs, trust me.”
“Yeah? Name one.”
“School janitor. Ten times more humiliating... and disgusting,” he said, and she had to give him that because cleaning the boys' locker room had to be revolting. Just thinking about what guys like Ram and Kurt might do in there when they weren't busy trying to grope every pretty girl in school made her sick.
That, and they were sweaty teenage boys who thought toilet humor was better done in 3-D.
And being at the same school as the one you cleaned?
“Your life sounds fun.”
“Everyone's life has got static,” he said. “Could be worse. Could still be being dragged around the country by my egomaniac of a father. What, is your life perfect?”
She shook her head. Not by any means. Unpopular as she was, she ranked second highest on Heather Chandler's shit list, right behind Martha Dunnstock, who was an easy target because she was fat, though it was hardly fair because Martha was a much better person than most at Westerburg.
“I rest my case.”
She shook her head. “I am not paying your ridiculous price. What do I really owe?”
He pretended to think about that. “What do you want to owe?”
“I thought you didn't buy every girl a slushie.”
“No, but you're a free thinking woman of the '80s. A feminist in formation if not in practice, and I can't help thinking you might just be the type to buy me a slushie so we can continue this conversation on my very conveniently timed break.”
“Oh, really,” she said, and he just smirked at her.
Two minutes later, they're outside, sharing one of his cigarettes.
He'd left behind the uniform, leaning against the wall and blowing out smoke into the night air. She watched it for a minute, trying to understand why she'd gone along with any of this. She wasn't so desperate for a boyfriend that she jumped at every chance she had, eye candy or not.
He would make a good character in a story, that was all. She wasn't interested in more than that.
“So... why Sherwood?”
“For the scenery.”
She elbowed him, and he gave her a look. She wondered at her boldness, since most of the time she tried to keep her head down so Heather or the other bullies wouldn't notice her. She'd gotten a reputation for being too smart for her own good, and when she didn't want to help the popular kids cheat, she may as well have signed her own death warrant.
“It's where my grandparents live,” he admitted, and she looked at him. He blew the smoke her face this time. “I didn't say that so you'd pity me.”
“Yeah, but there's not many good reasons you'd be with your grandparents. Best case scenario, your parents had to move home after a financial reversal. More likely... they're either unfit parents who abused you or something or dead,” she said, and his jaw tightened at the end. “So... dead?”
“In one case. The other just managed to get his dumb ass arrested for blowing up a tree.”
Veronica frowned. “You're joking.”
“Nope. Was some sacred monument or something, and they were really pissed off about it.” He dropped his cigarette, putting it out with his foot. “What about you? What dark secret lurks in your particular closet?”
“Why would I tell you that?”
“Outcasts may as well stick together. And you never know. Maybe I can help you with that problem of yours.”
Veronica eyed him with suspicion. “What problem? Because if you're about to say something about me being a vir—”
“With the popular bitch who's making your life miserable,” he said. “The extreme tends to make an impression.”
“I am not going to fight her.”
“Hmm. You've just destroyed a few fantasies. No matter. I was talking more in the sense of if you make sure you're the type they don't fuck with, then you they won't.”
“Yeah, sure. The 'ignore them and they'll go away' routine. My parents gave me that advice a long time ago.”
He shook his head. “I was thinking something more like scaring them into submission.”
“Yeah, right. You know that would just get you in a fight with Ram and Kurt or something. They obey her orders.”
“For all the bullshit parents tell you, there is some truth to the idea that they can only scare you if you let them,” he said. “Think about it, princess. I even have a few ways that you could do it.”
“Why do I get the sudden feeling you're talking about something as dangerous as a gun or poison or something really crazy?”
He smiled, pushing away from the building. “Told you. The extreme makes an impression.”
Veronica watched him go back inside and shook her head, preparing herself to walk home. It wasn't until she was halfway there that she remembered she'd left her notebook on the counter when she went to pay.
She was not a coward, but she wasn't going back for it, either.
Not while he was working, at least.
The next morning, there was a folded up paper on top of her books in her locker.
She unfolded it to find the start of her latest story, recopied in a more masculine hand—or was she just assuming it because he wrote messy and almost angry—with additions all through the first page, giving her minor dark horse character a whole scene and hinting at an epic if perhaps tragic life before his appearance as a mysterious peddler.
She frowned, looking around the halls for him, but she didn't manage to spot him before class, and since they somehow didn't share any, she didn't see him until lunch.
She marched her way right over to him, putting the paper in front of him. “What do you think you were doing?”
“I see someone can't take constructive criticism.”
“That's not constructive criticism. That's changing the whole damned story.”
“You have the guy all wrong,” he said. “You think man in dark robes, he's some evil force out to trick her, but he's actually there to help.”
She shook her head. “He—you—are not helping. Give me my notebook back.”
“Can't. Left it at work. Guess you'll have to come by and get it.”
“Fine. I'll go now.”
“And they'll believe it's your notebook and not mine? You didn't put your name on it, after all.” He stood to face her. “I did check. That was why I opened the notebook in the first place, to see if there was a name or an address in it. Turns out there wasn't.”
She frowned. “Why do I get the feeling there is one now?”
He shrugged. “You are a bit of a genius.”
“And you're a bit of an ass.”
“I knew you were looking.”
She flushed. “I was not. You—I want that notebook back. And you had better not have written anything else in it.”
“Relax, princess. This is so not from your precious book,” he said, touching the page. He slid it back toward her. “Now if you will excuse me, I have a date.”
“What?”
“Jealous?” he asked, taking a cigarette out of his pocket. “Guess I'll see you later. I might even buy the slushies this time.”
She glared at him as he left, grabbing the paper, wadding it up and throwing it at his back.
“Give me that.”
“No,” he said, not looking up from his hasty scribbling. She bit her lip, not sure why her eyes were so drawn to his hand, though maybe it was because he was left-handed and she only knew a handful of kids at Westerburg that were. Or it was his dumb looking watch.
“Come on. It's my notebook.”
“No, this is my notebook. Yours seems to have gone missing. I guess I left mine here last night and took yours home by mistake. Oops.” He passed it over the counter so she could see it.
She snatched it up and flipped through it, finding most of the pages blank, others with a few very crude drawings—he was not an artist—and the others filled with the same jagged script as the page from her locker.
“You asshole.”
“You're welcome to take that home with you if you like. I think I've fleshed out your character's motivations enough to where they make sense.”
“They made sense before,” she said, skimming the page. “You're making this story all about him, and it's not. He's a footnote.”
“Even footnotes should have personality, and that's where you're wrong. He's not a footnote. He's a catalyst.”
“Don't flatter yourself.”
“Myself? Are you saying that this guy is supposed to be me?” He made a tsk-tsk noise. “You really do have him all wrong.”
“I didn't say this was about you,” she said, aware of how her face was flaming. “It's not. I didn't even know you when I started it. Just... Give me back the notebook, or I swear, I will—”
“What? You cower at the feet of Heather Chandler. I'm not afraid of you. Keep the notebook if you want. My shift's over for the night.”
“What?”
“I'm not the closer. You should have come a bit earlier if you wanted to debate all night over slushies and cigarettes. As it is, I have somewhere to be.”
She shook her head, still frustrated, but he just smiled at her as he walked out the door. She went to it, watching him get into a car that had seen better days twenty years ago. He had the nerve to wave at him, and she swore she really would hurt him next time.
Every morning for the next week, there was a paper in her locker.
Every lunch for that same week, he wasn't in the cafeteria.
Every night when she went by the store, he wasn't working.
She'd found his initials in his notebook, though it took a bit more to find out his name actually was Jason Dean and from that to get the name of his grandparents, who were not Deans, which delayed her from finding him for another three days.
She was almost hoping he'd show up at her house, she was that desperate to make contact with him—to get the notebook back, no other reason—but he never did.
So she was at his.
The yard was trimmed down, but the paint was peeling and the car in the driveway, same as the one he'd gotten into the other night, was now listing to one side as the tire was completely flat on the driver's side.
Was that why he wasn't in school?
She rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. She knocked then, and after a few minutes, she could hear someone pounding up to the door.
He yanked it open. “I told you. It's fine. Go the fuck away.”
“What?”
He flinched. “Oh. You.”
“That's a fine hello.”
“I prefer 'greetings and salutations,' but we've never really had that kind of a relationship.”
She shook her head. Unbelievable. “Who did you think I was when you opened the door?”
“No one.”
She didn't buy that for a second. “You haven't been at school in more than a week, other than these notes you keep leaving for me. You're not working. Something's going on.”
“Oh, did you miss me? I'm so flattered.”
“I don't—”
“James?” a frail voice asked, walking out into the room. “James, where is your father? I can't find him anywhere in the house.”
“Grandma, we talked about this. Grandpa's in the home now because you can't take care of him anymore.” He went towards his grandmother, catching her as she stumbled, and leading her out of the room again.
Veronica bit her lip, feeling a lot like she was intruding. She almost left without saying another word, but cowardice was what had gotten her into this mess, and she was never going to be that again. Never. She was going to face him again and end this.
He came back out, frowning when he saw her. “You're still here.”
“I wasn't just going to leave,” Veronica said. “Your grandma... she's why you're not in school? How long has she been like this?”
“It's fine. Go away.”
“It's not fine. She doesn't even know who you are.”
He sighed. “Actually, no, she does. Before you start on her calling me another name and how I must have an uncle, I don't. The whole Jason Dean thing... it becomes James Dean to her all the time. She really liked him back in the day.”
“Right, sure.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“I wanted my notebook. And... I was going to say something about the stuff you keep leaving me, but I won't.”
“I don't want your fucking pity, okay? You can take it and shove it—”
“You're all wrong about her motivation. She's not out to rule the world. She just wants to make a small part of it a better place.”
“She picked a dumb way of doing it. Allying with evil? Yeah, like that wouldn't come back and bite her in the ass.”
“The witch wasn't evil. She was just—”
“A bad caricature of Heather Chandler?”
Veronica flushed. “No.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” he said, shaking his head at her, but she saw him smiling as he did. He went over to the couch and reached behind it, picking up her notebook. “Here. You may as well have it. I'm done with it now.”
“Just like that?”
“Count yourself lucky,” he said. “They're putting her in with Grandpa first chance they get, and if I'm lucky, Big Bud Dean will be out of prison by then, but I've never been particularly lucky.”
“Wait, you're moving?”
“That's such a kind way to say I'm due to be dragged off to a group home, but yeah, I get to go back to child protective services and all the fun that is as soon as they can prove that my grandma can't take care of herself, so... yeah. I'm moving. And there's the door. Feel free to use it at any time.”
Veronica wrapped her arms around her notebook and turned to go. She stopped at the door and looked back at him, finding his eyes on her in a way that felt like a kick to the gut. He saw too much, had read her story when she hadn't even let Betty do that, and he'd pissed her off with his changes and amused her with some of his commentary.
She didn't understand this at all, because she shouldn't care about him having to leave—pity, maybe, but nothing more. Just pity.
She knew he didn't want that, so she left.
“Veronica? Are you all right?”
“No,” she whispered, because his ending to her story was the most messed up, awful thing she'd ever read. It was fitting, given the plot, but horrible all the same, and she wanted to shake some sense into both of the characters and make them see how they were making all these mistakes and stop them. She had to rewrite the whole thing.
“Honey, what is it?” her mom asked, coming toward her and sitting down next to her on the bed.
She reached for a tissue. “It was a tragedy.”
“I don't understand.”
“I wrote a damned tragedy. It all went so fucking wrong. It was supposed to be about making things better, but there was death and... death. And in the end, he only kind of redeems himself by dying, but I wrote him as the bad guy. Why did I do that? He's not the bad guy. He's the guy that needs help before it all goes too far. Like a padded room, maybe, but he could have been stopped before he had to die.”
Her mother frowned. “I'm not so sure you should write stories anymore if they're going to upset you so badly.”
Veronica winced, knowing her mom had completely missed the point. She'd read the whole thing to Betty, too, and her best friend had cried and begged for a happy ending.
Just change one thing, Veronica. Just one little piece. So it's not this bad. This painful.
Veronica didn't know what that one thing was with the story, but she knew what she had to do herself. Right now.
Well, as soon as she could convince her mom she wasn't insane and didn't need to be locked up her own self.
She knocked on the door, loudly, and it was yanked open with the same force as the other day.
“What the hell are you doing here? I just got her to sleep, and you shouldn't even be here. It's the middle of the night, and you got your damned notebook back.”
“I did,” she said, “but I refuse to accept it. That can't be the end.”
“What? Of course it is.”
She shook her head. “No. We are rewriting this thing. Somehow, we are going to find a way where they don't die at the end. Where it's not a tragedy. Because they both deserved better, and you were right about me not understanding him. And it has to change.”
“You've cracked. It's kind of amusing, or it would be if I hadn't had a really lousy day without a slushie—”
“Like this?” She held up one, and he stared at her. “They were shutting down and I don't know how good it will be, but I went there first. I thought I might need one to persuade you to help me.”
“And this bribe is going to work... how, exactly?”
“Look, we basically wrote it together, didn't we? I wrote part, and you wrote part, and we can do that again, but this time, we do it differently,” she said, looking up at him. “She agrees to accept his help... if he accepts hers.”
“What?”
“They work together, not like before, not where they lied or weren't clear about what they wanted, but they really work together. Help each other. She gets the help she needs to make things better, and he gets the help he needs to save himself.”
“That's a lousy story. People won't believe it.”
“I don't care,” she said. “I want to believe in it. I want to believe in...”
“What, in us?”
“Um...” Veronica swallowed. “I... Yes? No, yes. I do. I think that... that we could have more than this, than a few notes and a story and sometimes we even get a long and it's good and the story is good even though I want to change it. It's just... I want them to have more.”
“Us to have more.”
She nodded. “That, too.”
“You know it'll never work. I'll have to go as soon as they find out about my grandma, and my dad doesn't stay in one place except when he's in prison. He's not going to stay here.”
“So that's the first thing we fix. Together. We find a way where you don't have to leave. Another foster home or a specialist for your grandmother. Something. Promise me we'll at least try.”
“I don't even know why you want this. I was a jerk, remember?”
“A jerk who understood me more than most people do. Even Betty doesn't know me that well because she doesn't see that potential for darkness in me. She thinks I'm good, and I'm not.”
He cupped her cheek. “I think you're plenty good.”
“So... you'll rewrite it with me? Change the ending? Make it so we are never those people?”
He snorted. “I can't fix you any more than you can fix me.”
“No, but we can support each other as we both try and fix ourselves. And I swear, if you keep touching me like that and don't kiss me—”
“You'll what?”
She dropped the cup, yanked him close by the shirt and kissed him. She caught a bit of ash from his cigarettes and something else, something that was just him and she wanted more of it. She barely knew him, not outside the stuff he'd filled in for her story, but somehow this felt right.
He pulled back, catching his breath and leaning his head against hers. “You know, it's still a tragedy.”
“What?”
“You dropped the slushie.”
She laughed.