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“I’m not doing that again,” said Golden Queen, barely looking up from her book. Behind her, Dreamcatcher hovered. Her lips pouted and she deliberately widened her eyes. She was trying to give her puppy-dog eyes. Trying to play up her cute side so that she’ll get her way. Dreamcatcher did have pretty wealthy parents. No doubt, this was a trick she learned from being a spoiled brat.
As a former spoiled rich girl herself, Golden Queen was immune to such tactics. “Dreamcatcher, please. I’ve had enough of your sleepovers. We are an evil gang, not an extracurricular activity for you to kill time in.” She placed her book down, and looked her in the eye. “So please, take it seriously.”
“Oh, come on, Queenie. Live a little.” Dreamcatcher floated up closer to Golden Queen. “You know you like it.”
Golden Queen raised a brow at her.
“Okay, fine. I know that the last two times we tried to throw a slumber party didn’t work out.” That was an understatement. The last time they threw a sleepover, a fire broke out. The second last time, someone mixed bleach with ammonia and ended up gassing the Doom Raiders out of the building. “But this time, I’ve got a solid plan. There’s no way any fires will start, any emergencies will occur. Nothing. It’ll just be the two of us gals doing our hair and makeup and gossiping with each other.”
Dreamcatcher smiled her sweetest grin, flashing her braces at her. Golden Queen looked at her, lips thinned and eyes narrowed. Finally, she picked her book up again, and flipped to the page which she last stopped off at. “Fine. I’ll be heading to your room at around six. Make sure no disasters happen.”
Dreamcatcher's sweet smile turned into a smirk. “Of course not. I think this time, things will be alright.”
As planned, Golden Queen got any work she had left done by six. Afterwards, she changed into something more comfortable, (a golden yellow t-shirt and some black shorts. Only Dreamcatcher has ever seen her in that outfit.) and headed down to her room. She knocked on her door three times, and within seconds Dreamcatcher drifted to the door and opened it up for her.
“Hey,” she greeted, then drifted inwards to let her enter. “I’d been setting up everything all afternoon. If it all goes according to plan, nothing bad should happen.”
Golden Queen looked around her room. Looking around, she noted that Dreamcatcher’s bed seemed to be hovering at least a foot above the ground. Dreamcatcher wasn’t exactly a neat person. But for the present, her room seemed to be fairly clean. Golden Queen could only imagine how she cleaned everything up before she got here.
Aside from the mysterious floating bed, Dreamcatcher had set up tons of tiny activities for them to do together. Hair bows, magazines, even some nail polish (for Golden Queen of course, since Dreamcatcher didn’t have hands). A small radio sat on her desk, playing soft pop music.
“So, here we go. If we want any snacks, we’ll have to go down to the kitchen and get it ourselves.”
Golden Queen sat down cross-legged in the middle of her carpet. Better to not risk going down to get snacks. She knew that the others were all prone to midnight snacking, to various degrees. “I already ate,” she lied. “So there will be no need for that.” Golden Queen’s self-control around food was usually pretty good. No need to reveal herself in anything less than royal robes to anyone else.
Dreamcatcher drifted up, and picked up a bow via levitation. “Yeah, but I might want to go down and get some popcorn or something. I already ordered a pizza.”
“You’ll need to go down and get it when it comes then,” said Golden Queen, looking down at her nails (which had suddenly become very interesting). Dreamcatcher stuck a bow onto her crown, and with that, it signaled that the fun had begun.
Dreamcatcher went crazy with the bows. She stuck them everywhere on Golden Queen. From her crown (which she refused to remove alongside her robes, thank you very much), to her arms, to her legs. And for the most part, Golden Queen let her. Previously, she talked her into doing all those crazy experimental beauty treatments she found in Evil Teen Magazine. And those obviously didn’t work out. At least now, she was doing something fairly safe and tame.
For the most part, she let her be. All while leafing through the stack of magazines she had set up.
“Why do you even read these things?” She asked her. Most of it seemed to be nonsense to her.
“It’s interesting,” if Dreamcatcher had shoulders, she would have shrugged. “I dunno. It gives me some good perspective into what’s going on in the world, in pop culture, plus they’ve got interesting things to say about stuff like love and friendship.”
It really wasn’t that interesting. At least, in Golden Queen’s opinion. All the articles on love in Evil Teen Magazine were titled things like ‘50 Ways To Impress Your Crush or ‘How Much Should You Reveal About Yourself On The First Date?’ After reading the article, she could safely say it was all terrible advice too. No one she knew who acted in the way the articles advised them to ever kept a partner worth keeping.
“It’s trash, Dreamcatcher,” she said. “Absolutely none of this advice is worth following.”
Dreamcatcher tied yet another ribbon around her arm. A striped, hot pink one. “Oh? Then what would you call good relationship advice?”
“Well, for one,” she raised a finger, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to change up your look for the sake of finding someone to date.”
“Oh, yeah. That I already know.” She grinned at her. “I mean, I already have a pretty iconic look. I’m not trading that for anything or anyone.”
Golden Queen raised a brow. “So what exactly do you find interesting about this magazine?” She was genuinely curious. Golden Queen knew that Dreamcatcher read those magazines, even if she never really bothered to find out what was in them. She had assumed that Dreamcatcher, like a lot of teen girls, probably absorbed up the information from those magazines like a sponge. But here was a hint that there was some filtration of the content she internalised. This could be interesting.
“Well, for one, it does give some insight into how people see girls like me, you know?” Another bow around the arm. Bubblegum pink, polka-dotted. “You get to see what people think girls like me want to read. And once you know how people see you, you can play on that image and turn it into something useful that benefits yourself , you know?”
That… made a lot of sense. And now she wanted to dig a little deeper into that thought process. Golden Queen finally smiled back. “I see you’re already learning the ropes of good grifting,” she said, an approving tone lacing her words.
For the rest of the night, they talked shop. They read magazine articles out loud, sarcastically. They even did a few quizzed out of them unironically. It was a girls’ night together. And not a single thing burned down that evening.