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Growing up, Heather Chandler amused herself by unraveling mysteries — and found open endings entirely unsatisfactory. When she was not dominating her peers and charming the adults, she liked to coop up in her room with a novel and piece together all the evidence contained in its pages, marveling at the foreshadowing and built-up it possessed. It was a skill few held — to be able to predict, to forecast — but which proved to be necessary to move beyond survival, to thrive. She knew exactly what moves were required to bend everyone to her will. How to speak and what to say to make the correct sequence of events unfold. Because when you possessed the capability to know what would happen based on the circumstances and the momentum which moved the pieces — sorry, people — at any given time, you also knew what was necessary on your part to create a forward or backwards force on it, urging it on or preventing it entirely.
Needless to say, Heather was a determinist.
However, there was a catch, as there always is. When you understand the powers that move the universe, it's impossible to escape the knowledge that you are not immune from its claws and it moves you as much as you move it. If you exert force on an object it will exert an equal force back on you and so on. And with that, life becomes utterly boring. Heather let herself be carried by earth and its people's motion, reacting appropriately to any given situation to achieve the best possible results. Except, as time passed and the simplicities of childhood were left behind, her novels all hidden away in the attic, it became harder and harder to be certain of what was the best possible result, really.
At the beginning of her study on life, on people, Heather's sole purpose was to climb the social hierarchy. That was too easy though. Society was ready to accept a white, pretty, stupidly rich girl with open arms. It came with caveats, like making herself palatable to general audiences by hiding her wit, her intelligence, her humor and, though she liked to pretend that those never really existed in the first place, the little quirks that made her imperfect — and herself. But whatever, she supposed. She could make herself just a pretty face, a hot body, a sharp tongue and an intimidating presence. It's not like she could defeat all the laws of man in one sitting. The thing was, for all the power the throne built with the blood and tears of the less fortunate brought, it didn't really make her all that much happier.
The thing about goals, you see, is that if you are a particularly stubborn person, it's hard to know when they become obsolete — or never were that important in the first place. And what is there to do if you live years and years, maybe your whole life, in search of something, achieve it and find it made you none the richer? The idealists and optimists would tell you that there is no use in crying over spilled milk, that you should move forward and carve a new path, try again and again to find the elusive happiness. Heather was none of those things. It would reflect poorly on her decision making if she backed out now. Nevermind that only she could know the inner workings of her brain and that no one else even had the intellect to realize that she was not the dumb, but cunning, girl she appeared and that it all had been built on highly calculated choices. It was not even that a fall from her coveted place at the top would be humiliating, perhaps even dangerous considering the snakes she had circling her from all directions. No, she knew how to deal with that and, besides, she never would fall that far, she was unhappy, not stupid. It was more so that even if she wasn't too stubborn to change trajectories midway through, what was there even more to life besides this? The only happy people around her were stupid happy, as in, too stupid to realize how bleak life actually was. Maybe people were right after all, the smarter, the more miserable you were. And if that was the case, what use there was to make her life harder by losing her ground?
With that in the back of her mind, Heather's life flew by. Her mind never stopped truly taking in the state of the physical systems in place and, with the approppriate laws, deducing what this state will be at all later times. That coupled with no new direction were prime territory for dissociation. She knew what to do and did it perfectly to maintain something she didn't even know why she wanted anymore so there was no need for her to be truly present. Besides, she had given up her personality long ago, so it was not a huge leap to also lose her consciousness. Heather was learning to carve more and more things out of herself with time and that she was not allowed to fill it with anything else. Just like mommy taught her to deal with her weight her whole life. And then, senior year came around.
As much as it may be argued otherwise, Heather was no god. She might have been able to predict future events based on previous information, but there is only so much information she could acquire or even store. Becoming omniscient was still not in the cards. So she was surprised when she came face to face with Veronica Sawyer, a girl who she knew only as a friend of one of her favorite victims, Martha Dumptruck, with no fashion sense and who was a huge nerd. The fact that she craved a boon was not what surprised her, obviously, but what was hidden underneath that hideous scarf. She was beautiful and interesting, I mean, who else can in five seconds flat do a forgery to save the most wicked girls in the school from detention and use it as leverage for social climbing? If nothing else, that took some balls and it had been a long while since someone braved Heather Chandler. So she let her into the clique, the Heathers. She hadn't been this amused ever since she gave up her mystery novels. It brought a whole unpredictability factor that she couldn't help but like. Veronica pushed her, defied her and Heather couldn't control her the way she controlled everyone else.
It also frustrated her out of her mind — she couldn't just dissociate through life anymore, Veronica made her present, aware. For one thing, Veronica got her to second guess her treatment of the losers. Which was ridiculous, because didn't Veronica know the laws of the universe? Or the laws of man? If she didn't stomp on their dreams, if she let them be, chaos would rein earth. Then no one else would respect order because there would be no one putting them in their places. If Heather wanted to get really nerdy about it, it would be like it was before Zeus waged war against the titans, according to greek mythology. Of course, she was Zeus in this scenario, who is a god, a thing that, as previously stated, Heather was not. Jesus, she needed to listen less to class, she was beginning to sound like she needed to be stomped on. Anyway. This sudden awareness that Veronica brought could be brushed off as just her conscience coming back to her after being neglected for so long. Except, Heather was not stupid enough to believe that it was only that. Veronica was not the first person who thought she was cruel. In fact, most people did. So what was different this time? That was the million dollar question.
Heather did the only thing Heather knew how to do when she reached the limits of her knowledge, she investigated. She spent more and more time with Veronica trying to understand why every time Veronica smiled at her, she felt something crawling in her skin. Why she craved to be closer, but when she touched her, she felt her stomach turn and wanted to run. Why when Veronica looked at her with reproach, she wanted to scream. Veronica made her aware of her surroundings in a whole knew way. She was always interested in things, but never gave too much attention to space, as in, the empty space between things. Now, every time she drove Veronica to school, she was painfully aware of the distance between their hands, their shoulders. She briefly thought that maybe she hated Veronica after all, but then Veronica sayed something witty and funny, and Heather felt herself bubbling with laughter in a way she hadn't in years. So she thought, maybe that is friendship. Maybe she just never really cared for her friends the way she was supposed to and now she was finally experiencing it with Veronica. It made sense, until it didn't.
For the last week or so, Heather had been ruminating with some very irritating thoughts. She had seen Veronica glance at the distance a couple times. If it was anyone else she would not have given a shit, but it was Veronica, so she was forced to follow the path of her eyes. And there it was. Enveloped by a trench coat and emanating the dark energy of someone who had nothing to lose, there was a boy. The first time, Heather didn't really think that much about it. He maybe did warrant a double take, if only because she knew for a fact that he was shiny and new at Westerburg high. The second time could still be a coincidence, maybe Heather was following her eyes wrong or something. Third time is a pattern. One that Heather didn't like. At all.
She knew there was a strong chance she shouldn't care that Veronica was making bedroom eyes at some guy. But she did. And that was the scariest thing of all. Friends don't get gut-wrenching feelings about their friends kissing someone. So she rationalized it. There was no other option for her. She had to be intrigued by Veronica Sawyer because they were friends. Therefore, the problem was not that she hated the thought of Veronica dating a guy, it was that Veronica was infatuated with a guy that was not okay-ed by Heather, which was clearly a transgression on their friendship. It required punishment. The answer came to her when she was thinking about which outfit to wear for Ram's party later that week. She would get Veronica to humiliate her loser friend. It would show her not to mess with Heather. Particularly in that way.
Veronica got wasted at the party. Too wasted apparently. Not only did she not allow Heather to ruin Martha to her heart's content, she puked on her. But it wasn't the vomit on the her shoes that nauseated her. It was Veronica's next words.
"Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up."
The heat in Veronica eyes sparked something dormant in Heather. With sudden clarity she knew exactly why Veronica was different. She knew exactly why all she wanted was to kiss the snarl from her mouth. She wanted her. The way she didn't want any boy she had ever been with. She wanted her ardently, crudely, unmistakably. Which could only mean one thing. One thing that would risk everything she had ever built. She did the only thing she could do. She chose predictability and control.
With one parting mean comment to Veronica, she threw herself into the party and went through the motions. But not even all the alcohol in the world could save her when she got home. She curled up in bed and cried herself to sleep. She wanted Veronica there with her. She wanted to be soft and lovely and cruel and rough. She ached for her touch, for her words and for her kindness. She, for the first time in her life, resented the world for its predictability. She always had hated open endings, but if she didn't know how it would end if she followed her heart, maybe she could be brave enough to try. But she couldn't.
Then the morning came and, with it, Veronica Sawyer.
And, with Veronica Sawyer, came Jason Dean.