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Usually, assemblies were supposed to be fun, or so Serena Collins heard. They were supposed to lift spirits and help classmates to bond.
But Serena found it hard to appreciate loud cheering when there was a throbbing in her head like a sledgehammer against her skull. To say the least, it was painful. To say the most, it was an agonizing kind of suffering that hurt like a bitch and made Serena regret ever being born into such a cruel existence. Maybe she was being dramatic… just a bit. Either way, it was uncomfortable to sit in such a loud gymnasium, so Serena nimbly clambered out from where she was sitting wedged between other freshmen, and hopped down to the floor, and scurried away to the nearest bathroom to get some peace and quiet, because Serena didn’t carry ibuprofen and silence was the best medicine she could afford at the moment.
But this peace and quiet came with the heavy scent of paint and hushed chattering of two troublesome twins. When Serena entered and saw Alice Meyer standing at the wall, she almost shrunk down to the ground, but it was too late; Alice saw her.
“Hey. Bookworm,” Alice called out firmly, but with low volume in her voice. “What are you doing here? Isn’t there an assembly?”
Serena awkwardly shrugged. “I’ve got a really bad headache… I needed someplace quiet; the screaming of an entire school in a gymnasium with so much space for echoes just- it- I don’t find the loudness to be very, err, helpful.” Then, Serena saw what they were doing to the wall, and she had to do a double take to make sure she saw correctly.
In all her cliche dark romance protagonist glory stood Bella Swan on the wall of the girl’s bathroom, dark hair all askew as she gazed forward with hardened eyes, and beside her was Edward Cullen. He looked just as somber as his partner, though Serena noticed that his skin seemed to almost sparkle. There was a half-finished Jacob Black, hunched in a defensive stance not too far from Bella, and Cassie looked like she was starting to work on painting Edward’s fellow vampires. Each character was painted quite realistically, with accurate proportions and colors, and hell, even the shading and lighting was godly! Serena was dumbfounded by their art skills until she remembered that their parents, Lavender and Cora, were artists, too, and had more than likely taught the twins everything they knew about painting. Regardless of whether or not they were mentored, though, it was awe-inspiring how the twins had recreated so many characters from a saga that was… less than awe-inspiring. Serena, her jaw agape in awestruck surprise, uttered, “How long have you guys been working on this..? How- How are you getting away with this?”
Cassie laughed from deep down in her throat and responded, “It’s bold of you to assume we could ever possibly get away with this, as pleasant as that would be… To answer your first question, we snuck in here and started between first and second period. Turns out teachers don’t care to check bathrooms for people hiding during assemblies.” With a twirl of her hand, she started on painting Rosalie, and added, “We don’t mind if you want to stay here as long as you don’t snitch.”
Serena blinked a few times at Cassie. “Huh?”
“We don’t care if you want to stay in here for the rest of the assembly, but you gotta promise not to tell on us. We want people to discover it for themselves.” A grimly mischievous grin crept onto Cassie’s thin black lips, and her coffee eyes, veiled by dark eyeshadow, glinted excitedly. “Do we have a deal, bookworm?”
It was definitely something that Serena never expected to hear from the feared Meyer twins. She stumbled and stammered over her words for a moment, but only for a moment, then she yelped, “Sure.”
Alice nodded slightly, dipping her head in what seemed to be a gesture of respect, and murmured, “Good. I’d hate for the word to get out… prematurely.” She glanced back at the unfinished mural, then at Serena. “Anyway. You can go sit somewhere. We’ll be painting.”
Cassie added, “There’s ibuprofen in our bag if you need some… Hopefully you can find a water fountain.” The Gothic freshman waved her hand towards a messenger bag next to Alice’s feet, painted black (clearly courtesy of the twins) and the fabric was embellished with safety pins, chains, and other accessories that felt more punk than Goth… Then, when Serena approached the bag and checked inside, she saw the copies of Dracula , Frankenstein , and other books that seemed to make sense for their macabre tastes. Suddenly Cassie’s constant ramblings about stories like Paradise Lost made perfect sense. As she retrieved a small pill from the ibuprofen bottle, Serena observed, “You’re reading Frankenstein .”
“Oh,” laughed Alice, “we’ve read that a million times by now… We just like to scan over it again sometimes. How else can we catch the little things that Mrs. Shelley slips into her perfect novel, hmm? You can’t fully appreciate a good book if you read it once. That’s why we go through a few times and annotate what we like.” Alice almost looked less threatening for a moment as she sighed, “It’s really calming. You should try it.”
Serena smiled a little awkwardly. “Actually, uh, I do. Lately I’ve been really into Hunger Games; I just think that it’s so crazy how inhumanity and horror can give birth to a whole fiction genre. Not to mention it’s just a good story.” She wore a grin that was almost sheepish and she added, “I’m gonna stop while I’m ahead, though; I know literary analyses can be a little, you know, boring.”
“Try me.” Cassie glanced over her shoulder toward Serena with a lax smile. “We’ve got nothing but time. Tell me more about Hunger Games.”
Serena blinked a few times at Cassie. “Really?”
Cassie nodded.
“Oh, well… Hunger Games is mostly a dystopian kind of horror. In dystopian realities, the human race is forced to face itself, and behold its ugliest parts. Humans are imperfect, dangerously so, and I think that most dystopian novels like to highlight that. Generally the genre was inspired by… terrorist events.” Serena grew sheepish. “Events like nine-eleven instilled a sense of dread in the hearts of so many people, and these sort of apocalyptic universes were born from that dread.”
When Serena glanced over and saw Cassie listening intently, her heart seemed to lift a bit… Someone was listening. Willingly. Without ridiculing her.
So, her heart soaring, Serena enlightened Cassie on her favorite books.