Meanwhile, Back In Seattle (NFB)
Once upon a time, there was a George. Once upon a time, there had also been a space station called Mir, one that had broken up over Seattle. It was a toilet seat that had hit George. That had been it. They found one of George's shoes.
Reggie had wanted to keep the shoe, and her mom had yelled at her for being morbid.
Mom thought anything about George was morbid. That was why she packed up all of George's things and acted like George had never existed at all.
So instead Reggie had started stealing toilet seats, from neighbors and from the school. She put them up in a big tree. It was a shrine. It was George's tree.
When her mom had found it, she had sent Reggie to therapy. If that was supposed to be a punishment, that was a huge backfire. Therapy was awesome. She got to talk about what a head case her mom was, and sometimes George, and how she missed her, and how most of everything sucked.
Sometimes she found messages in her tree. Not ... notes exactly. Little clippings and cut-outs. Like a picture of a drum set. Or a marching band. Or an ad that said "GO FOR IT" in big letters.
She knew they were from George. It was George's tree, so they had to be.
One day, there was a dog collar, hanging from a branch, and that dog collar had a key on it. The tag on the key was kind of cryptic, and it had taken her a few days to figure out what the key was supposed to be, unless it was all symbolic or whatever. But it was a key to one of those mail places.
Reggie had her own mailbox there. That was kind of cool. And now, those same weird litte messages showed up there. Unsigned, and without a return address; just big smudges where there should have been one. Nothing came to the tree any more.
Apparently dead people sometimes used the mail.
She tried not to check the mailbox very often. First of all, because Mom would notice if she went there too often. Secondly, because the messages weren't all that frequent, and if she went TOO often and her box was empty, she'd feel kind of sad. It was better to wait and see something sitting there.
She hadn't been back in a couple of weeks. But Dad was being stupid about his booooooooyfriend and Mom was whining about ... something -- Reggie didn't really listen -- so she cut school and went to the mailbox place. If nothing was there, she'd go to school after and claim she was late and make up a good excuse. She lied really well.
But there was a letter. And it had a return address. And it even had her name on it. Most things just had the address on there and not her name, but this said Reggie Lass typed on it.
Holy shit this was awesome. So Reggie grabbed the letter and ran to George's tree. She had to read it there.
The letter was a form letter. It was inviting her to a Parents' Weekend, for ... for parents (or siblings or friends or other loved ones) of students attending ... a high school in Maryland. What?
She read the letter over, trying to see if she had missed something. She didn't know anyone in Maryland. It wasn't a letter from George at all.
Unless ...
"Do dead people go to Maryland?" she asked nobody in particular.
Maybe George wasn't really dead. Not dead-dead. Maybe she was only sort of dead and she was in Maryland.
Maybe this was some kind of scam and they were trying to lure her into going to Maryland so they could sell her into sex slavery and hold her for ransom.
Maybe the letter had gone to the wrong person at the wrong address.
But this was the address from George's tree. Her special mailbox. It had to be from George. It had to.
The event was this weekend. She couldn't just write back and find out. It'd be over by then. And she was too smart to be kidnapped into sex slavery. Probably. She'd buy some mace and spray it at anyone who looked creepy.
Okay, so Reggie had some work to do.
First of all, she needed to come up with a plausible excuse not to be home all weekend. It'd help if she had friends, but she didn't, so fuck that. Maybe she'd bribe someone into pretending to be holding a party all weekend?
Maybe she'd tell Dad she was with Mom, and Mom she was with Dad. Maybe she'd ask to go spend time with Grandma? Grandma might even cover if she knew it was for an adventure, but that would mean trusting Grandma and letting her in on this, and she couldn't risk it.
Secondly, she'd need money. She knew where her mom's credit card was, so that was fine. She'd try to get a good deal on a flight -- maybe she could call the airlines and cry a lot? Dad's dying across the country, Mom's angry and won't let me fly to go see him? That could have some mileage.
None of this would hold up very long. She was going to be in deep shit when she got home on Sunday. But ... so what? They'd ground her. Big deal, she didn't go out anyway. They'd yell. They yelled a lot already.
She might actually see George. If they knew before, they could stop her from going. One they found out after, nothing they did could take it away from her.
... Fuck. This meant she should probably go back to school, then. This really wasn't the time to get in trouble for cutting, if she needed to sneak her way onto a plane tomorrow night.
(NFI/NFB-distance, but OOC is love. No, George didn't send it; blame the vagaries of Fandom. Yes, I'm spoiling my guest, but I felt like the groundwork backstory required explanation, zomg. (Also, obvs, since guests haven't been confirmed yet officially that I saw, if she gets turned down for whatever reason, then Reggie got caught somehow and didn't make it here.))