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Jackson had never in his life had a crush like this, let alone one for a LIVING DEAD GIRL. If he was being honest with himself he was kinda ashamed by the fact that he was even attracted to her in the first place.
Frankie Stein was one of the five in a very popular group of ghouls at Monster High and Jackson was infatuated with her. But he was unsure of why that was, maybe it was the kindness she had spared him on their many fleeting occasions or the delusions in his brain that was making him feel this way.
Fankie didn't like him, did she? It's just that it was hard to believe that someone like them would be into him: In his defense he had just never seen a ghoul like her before, someone so clumsy and yet so endearing at the same time. Usually when other monsters did it they got laughed at, but not her, she was a different story.
Frankie was an enigma to him, a puzzle to be solved like another one of his rubix cubes and sometimes he finds himself wishing like some creep. If only he could be able to pick her brain, then maybe, just maybe then he'd be able to come to amends with himself, understand the sparks he feels when he's around her, but then again it could be his own sickness talking to him as well.
It's embarrassing how much he observes her, in every class they share he sits in the far back to be sure that she doesn't spot him watching her every move like a hawk. From taking notes to listening to her and her friends' conversations of family, fashion and boys. It's all so foreign to him but he wants to learn, to be able to be in the presence of someone so seemingly untouchable just for a while and pretend as if he's not the most useless normie in the world.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Jackson snaps out of his constantly bickering head, the red haired miser beside him no other than his cousin Heath being a public annoyance. "No one." He replies, closing his book, one eye still on the chattering group. Heath laughs.
"Checkin out the new ghoul huh? That's smokin." Jackson shushes him quickly to his own embarrassment, Heath was such a loud mouth. "No I'm not, shut up!" He whispers. Heath leaned further onto him, arm nudging. "She's hot."
"It's okay if that's your thing, I'm not judging." By now half the class was looking at them, Jackson covering his red face ontop the table. One arm folded over the other leaving only his furrowed eyes visible, and staring up at him no other than the ghoul of his waking nightmares. She simply smiles with a friendly wave before turning back around, Jackson releases his breath thankful. It was stupid how cute she was without trying.
He pays the interaction in class no mind proceeding to go about his day as usual when a commotion breaks out within the hall.
Running his way no other than Manny and in front of the mana-taur a little red devil. It all happens so fast, and he lands straight on his ass in a jumble of other unwilling bodies. Rubbing his head pathetically Jackson squints in search of his glasses, picking up his fallen books, when a set of hands help him off the ground.
"Thank you." Tucking in his books and lastly his glasses, green hands passing them off to him gently. He freezes when he visually recognizes the perfectly stitched legs in front of him. "Frankie?" He's startled. "Are you okay? That was a pret-ty nasty fall." Jackson cleans the dirt off the lenses and puts them on, before him in the flesh the white and black haired beauty.
"Yeah I'm uh, I'm alright..." She stands eyeing him for a moment before cocking her head to the side, It sends a chill up his spine in the most whelming way possible, body growing hot with anxiety. "You sit behind me in class right?" He scratched the back of his head unsure of where this interaction would lead. "Yea, so?" She stands straight, it's childlike in a funny way.
"Sooo, I need some help on an assignment. I'm ot really good at this science thing yet." She lied. Not that he was fast enough to catch it. A shock fires through his body and nests in his stomach. "oh, Oh! Yea sure we can.. uh, we can do that??? Um, my place or your's?" She smiles.
"Whatever feels comfortable for you." She waved walking past him. "See you then!" Jackson clutches his heart as if he's dying and proceeds to walk into a bathroom where he screams and takes care of the 'butterflies' in his stomach.
They meet up after school near an old water fountain where a huge crooked tree blocked the sun from them. Sat on a bench he waits, soon to see Frankie walking his way with a bag and no left hand to spare. Jackson gulps adjusting his collar.
"Sorry I'm late!" She squealed "I ran into some trouble and lost my hand." She explains sweetly sitting down on the bench. He tosses his hands forward. "No, no you're alright, I have nowhere else to be." A forced chuckle. She looks at him. Her two hetero-chromic eyes searching him, he gulps.
"Do you mind sewing me back up?" his heart beat hard agsinst his chest upon looking at the stump where her hand was supposed to be. He adjusts his glasses hot and bothered by her presence. "Yea sure." From her purse she pulls out a suture kit, laying it open in front of him. Inside of it a small set of medical tools and a stool of thick black thread, then pulling from her bag a stapler. He was nervous but Frankie talked him through it, the girl first threading the needle and then going over the initial stitch with him.
He shakes while doing so.
"Don't be scared, you're not gonna hurt me." He breathes in, sets the tightness in his stomach aside and stitches her up carefully. After a while it doesn't even register how odd this whole interaction is, consumed by the scientific anatomy of her. Frankie didn't bleed as far as he had known and the hand he was stitching back on still moved independently without her.
"You're good at this." She suddenly compliments, Jackson brushed it off.
"I read a lot of medical books." It registers to him how creepy that may sound out loud, and promotly corrects himself.
"My family's uhhhh kinda weird." Pulling the last thread and tightening it. "Almost done.There." Frankie pulls back her newly stitched hand and stretches it, her fingers wiggling and grasping into thin air. "Amazing! Maybe I should come to you more for this sort of thing." He laughs looking away, too shy to say anything else. When the ghoul suddenly softened her voice. "Jackson." She says. He doesn't look at her, he physically can't bring himself to, it unnerves him in ways he can't wuite yet understand. "Yes." His voice trembling and weak. "I didn't come here for an assignment but you probably knew that already." She's straight to the point about it.
"I overheard you guys in class and I would be okay with being friends." he looks at her hoping to god that this wasn't some cruel joke.
"You're serious?" He asked worriedly.
"Why wouldn't I be, here this is my number." She Pulled out her Icoffin. Their phone's cyber link and she sends him a message. A single green hand waving emoji danced across the screen, as his phone vibrated im his pocket.
"You can text me anytime you'd like." He stands up overwhelmed, shoulders high and tight, fists clenched and shaking.
"You're not pranking me right." He hoped this wasn't some kind of prank. Couldn't she see that he was upset, that It wasn't funny to do this to him? Frankie's brows meet in the middle and her mouth forms a frown, she touches his arm. Caressing the yellow sleeve covering his goose-bumped skin. "I would never make fun of you..." Sitting him back down gently. His blue eyes honined in on her pink square shaped nails grabbing his bare bitten ones. It makes him sick, skin crawling with disgust of himself.
"Call me. We can hang out, honestly." Her thumb pressing against the back skin of his hand. She grabs her bag, packs her things and leaves him there. Jackson left sitting for what feels like eternity before he takes two steps, turns around and vomits. He felt so pathetic.
Within the span of their friendship he'd come to discover that Frankie was an unusual girl. She liked black and white noir movies, going on extremely exciting adventures and finding new things. Considering she had only been alive for some months he'd expect that she was so outgoing and welcoming despite her unique experience.
He's come to know alot about her intimately which is something that not every guy can say about a girl they know or like. It's just that Frankie was different, she didn't have the qualities that the other ghouls had like violently deadly looks or wits. She was all personality and it warmed him in more ways that he could explain, more of a burning within him that she sparked. She was over watching movies with him for the night, sat upon his messy bed with junk casted all around them. He was a mess, literally and figuratively in that sense but Frankie seemed to like that about him. Unlike the monsters on his campus, she liked His ticks and twitches, his strange interests and tendencies, all of him including the other half within him. She didn't mind that he was off in more ways than one and it made him so much more comfortable to tell her certain things that he wouldn't with anybody else. Staring at the girl from his bathroom he questions.
"How do you work exactly?" His bedroom was small and janky, the lavatory right beside his ruined bunk bed. Coming over to the cluttered metal bed and sitting down by her.
"My parents made me in a lab, but my parts are grown." Unusual he thinks, sitting beside her now, he sniffed. Frankie always smelled like grave dirt. His own living skin touching her artificial ones smoothing and then tightening around her boney green fingers.
"Do you have blood in your veins?" The girl looks upwards in thought. "I don't know." An uncertain tone. Himself feeling a jolt in the pit of his stomach, he was excited. "Wanna find out?" Not even waiting for Frankie's reply, he touches the floor around his cluttered bed, around the frame stacks of books. Picking up a very aged book he flips to a page, resting in the spine inside it were several blades.Three ranging from new to old. Frankie sits waiting, looking at him, wordless and curious.
"Can I cut you?" Blade in between his mangled fingers. "Sure, it won't hurt me."
"You can't feel pain?" He asks, it was all so interesting to him, guiding her arm again to bare her forearm. A pretty girl, a girl that he liked allowing him, a normie to cut her. It was all such a trip to him, touching her gorgeous waxy green skin. The tones varying in shade jointed spaced stitching, exciting him. Biting his lip he takes the blade pressing it down against the flesh, pouring from it inky coagulated black. "Wow." He stammers almost stunned.
"I've never seen anything like this before." The girl simply laughs at him. "Jackson you're so silly!" Jackson looked at her like she was everything good in the world. Frankie not even understanding how wonderfully weird she was even in her undead glory. He smiles, shaking his head in disbelief, humored by the situation really.
"Yea, haha, I guess I am silly."