fic: the stars will follow me
the stars will follow me
Author: triptohere
Artist: aphroditemine
Link to art: pretty is pretty
Word count: ~3500
Warnings: Language.
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.
Summary: Set inbetween S3 and S4. Mini is far too young to be in a club, especially seeing as she can't find Liv or Grace. She ends up encountering Katie, girls kissing, and ~feelings.
Notes: Thanks to prunesquallormd, who soldiered on through the betaing despite there being no incest, aphroditemine, who created a glorious fan mix and introduced me to Selena Gomez (and let me steal her title), and em_sh, who read through and told me it didn't suck. This is nearly a week late due to LJ drama and house moving commitments, sorry!
She’s pretty far gone, she realises. So gone she doesn’t remember much, barring where she is, (some club), and who she’s with (her girls).
Except, now she thinks about it, she doesn’t know where the other two have gone, and the layout of this club keeps surprising her, the corridors turning in unexpected directions, and the doors she swears used to lead to the toilets turn out to be locked.
It’s spinning, the floor and the thump of the bass conspiring to disorientate her, so she pauses for a moment, and puts a hand to the wall. Regroup.
She’s Mini McGuinness. She bloody well owns this town. Or, she will, at least. She’s flawless, clearly. She’s been getting into clubs without ID since she was fourteen, she’s the queen of her school, and this current lack of friends (allies) is not the norm.
Right. Well, this lack of direction can fuck right off, for a start. Mini clenches her fist once, and picks another set of doors, strides through.
Dance floor. Okay. (She doesn’t like dance floors, usually, and certainly not alone. Can’t imagine putting herself on show in front of that many people and enjoying the experience.)
Mini pauses again, trying to take stock, but the room is impossible to scan for a friendly face because everyone is jumping, or twisting, and besides, their faces are blurred anyway. She feels young, momentarily, too young for this place, and wants to be home in her bed, away from all this noise.
Uncertainty curls in her gut, a second later, and she fumbles for her bag, fingers gripping for a smooth surface. Liv had smuggled the bottle in at the door, but Mini’s the only one with a big enough bag to keep it safe. The taste is foul, but she gulps twice anyway, anxious to achieve a slightly more adult perspective on the situation.
As Mini is putting it away her skin is crawling, and she searches the room for who could be watching, hoping against hope she’s not attracted the eyes of a bouncer.
There’s a girl about five feet away from her, leaning on a wall. Mini would guess from her height that they’re about the same age, but has to quickly reassess when the girl smiles knowingly at the bottle, before smirking slightly at Mini, and mouthing ‘illegal’.
Mini doesn’t really know what to do with that, so just glares a little for no good reason, and adjusts her hair.
She wants to walk off, but then the problem of ‘where too?’ raises its inevitable head. Mini looks out over the dance floor again, but Liv is nowhere to be seen, and her legs feel a bit peculiar, all of a sudden.
Just a minute, then, or maybe five. Just until she is herself again.
--
She loses track of time, and can’t tell if this song is the same one she had initially paused to, or a different one that sounds exactly the same. She’s propped herself up against the wall, and is waiting to feel normal again.
(She doesn’t enjoy alcohol, though she’d never tell Liv. Doesn’t understand how losing control of her words, moves or thoughts could ever be a pleasant experience.)
The girl is still next to her, a few feet over. Mini glances at her again, trying to figure out where she knows her from. Because she feels familiar, somehow. Maybe from earlier on in the evening, maybe she did something that had caught Mini’s attention.
She’s drunker than she is comfortable with, and wonders abstractly where the hell Liv and Grace have gotten to, and why they haven’t come to find her yet.
Though, she doesn’t feel alone. The girl hasn’t done anything to invite her company, beyond not distance herself when Mini had settled on the wall nearby, but the silence feels friendly, in a way. Not unfriendly, certainly.
Mini glances at the girl again, under the pretence of looking past her towards the bar. There’s a confidence in the way the girl has dressed herself that doesn’t match how she’s standing. When Mini looks closer her eye catches a darker patch near the girl’s temple, a healing wound, Mini realises, heavily covered with make-up.
The girl seems to notice that she’s being watched, and Mini has to flick her gaze away quickly to avoid being caught. The smaller girl frowns briefly, and inspects her nails in a move that Mini recognises, because it is exactly what she does, whenever she feels uncertain about the situation.
Mini is caught off balance, then, with a swell of good will towards the girl that threatens to overwhelm her. She wants to be friends with her. This girl would get her, she knows, would understand what it means to be insecure and have to pretend, in a way that Liv and Grace never would. Maybe Mini would be able to talk to her about how fucking difficult it could be, to be surrounded by boys and have to feign interest all the time.
She’s at a loss, though, as to how to start this brand new friendship, especially now that the girl seems to have cooled towards her, since she caught Mini staring. Mini looks away, frustrated.
There’s a movement, that catches her eye, and Mini struggles to find it again, thinking she must have subconsciously found either Liv or Grace, in the press of bodies.
It’s not though. Mini frowns, and then blinks carefully, double checking she’s not misunderstood.
There are two girls, moving with each other near the edge of the dance floor. And it isn’t the type of dancing her and Liv partake in, which is all pre-practised moves and vaguely ironic enthusiasm. These two are dancing for each other, like it is a game that they’ve only just started but is already leading to the inevitable. The taller one, with blond hair, has her hands on the other girl’s hips, and Mini can tell by the way they are bunched in the material of the girl’s top that there’s a request there, and a need so blatant Mini blushes to see it. The smaller girl just laughs though, before glancing around briefly and reaching up to the back of the blonde’s neck, and pulling her down until they’re kissing.
Mini doesn’t understand why nobody else is paying them any attention, because they’re perfect. They look perfect. She’s holding her breath, and her heart is doing something quite bizarre, but there’s no point dwelling on this because they’re still kissing, and Mini can’t take her fucking eyes off it, for some reason.
The smaller girl seems to laugh into the kiss, just as Mini’s trying to commit the image to memory, and the two girls part. The blonde looks vaguely annoyed, but the other girl just smiles, and moves a hand through her hair, before backing towards her girlfriend (because they must be, surely? Nothing else could explain how easy it looks). The blonde girl stays motionless for a moment, until the swell of the music hits her again, and they dance together. Perfectly in synch.
Flawless, Mini finds herself thinking. And another thought, way underneath it, of who and how and if they can then...
They’re still dancing, and the lights must catch the smaller girl’s profile in a new way, because she is startlingly familiar, all of a sudden, and Mini has to drag herself back to the here and now, and hopes she hasn’t been noticed.
It’s too much to ask for. The other girl (the word twin drifts hopelessly across her mind, far too late) is glaring at her, and takes a step closer to yell flatly at her, over the music.
‘Stop, fucking, staring at them.’
Mini scrambles vaguely for an excuse, but the alcohol’s numbed her thoughts, and instead she produces an explanation.
‘But, um, it’s just lovely, you know?’
Instantly, Mini knows she’s said the wrong thing, as the girl’s face changes from anger to contempt. She sneers up at Mini, and slows her words even more, as if she is speaking to a moron.
‘No, babes, it is fucking disgusting. Get it?’
Mini doesn’t, but tries to look as though she does. She’s fooling no-one though, because the other girl just laughs shortly at her, and storms off.
Uncertain, Mini tries to find the two dancing girls in the crowd again, but they’ve disappeared. She stares vaguely at the spot where she saw them last, and closes her eyes, headache suddenly pounding hard.
Fucking disgusting, she repeats, worried she might forget. Fucking disgusting.
Then, when the idea of keeping any of this turns unpleasant, she reaches again for the bottle, determined to remember none of this, in the morning.
--
She doesn’t.
(She remembers the colours, and the worry of being alone, and the feeling she’d done something wrong.)
Liv burps once, from the floor next to Mini’s bed, and turns over in her sleep. Mini winces, and then squints at the end of the bed, where Grace is curled up, apparently comfortable.
There’s nothing too amiss. Mini checks her phone, once, and the time and the date are what she expects. So nothing’s gone wrong. Nothing’s wrong. She can stop worrying, now.
--
In school, the following day, Grace waggles a hand briefly in Mini’s face.
‘Mins! We should do it again, yes? Go for a bop? I’ve told Liv it has to be after our history exam though.’
Mini blinks, and ignores the clench of fear the word exam produces, just under her heart. It’s only a module, for Christ’s sake. Ten percent of the end grade.
‘Um, sure Gracie. We had fun, didn’t we?’
Grace nods very seriously at Mini, and then reaches for her palm, squeezes once.
‘We did. Although this time, we might put you in reins, stop you from disappearing again!’
Mini tries to laugh along, and then waves, heading for her textiles class.
She’s uneasy, and has a fragment of song, winding around her head. She can’t remember the words at all, but the rhythm has her skin crawling.
--
They dance again, in the same club, and Mini stays close.
Its fear, she realises, that’s making the drink taste sour and stopping her from smiling without rehearsing the expression once before.
She’s checking the room, but she doesn’t know what for. It’s dark, anyway, noisy and confusing. The disorientation is familiar but nothing else. Liv and Grace are dancing, and bumping against her in increasingly obvious ways. It’s an invitation, particularly from Liv, her unspoken code for chill the fuck out and enjoy yourself, you uptight moron.
Mini resists for a song longer, and is looking at faces over their heads, checking and checking until her eyes are watering and she’s feeling sick, nausea high in her throat.
Eventually, Liv swears at her, and throws both hands up around her neck, fingers clasped just where it tickles. She leans, and presses her mouth close to Mini’s ear, trying to be heard.
‘Mini. Fucking dance with us, yeah? You’ll look like a complete tit if you don’t move something.’
It’s not meant to be mean, but Mini hates Liv at that moment, hates the fact that she’s still rocking gently to the beat and Mini’s hands are suddenly very close to her hips, far too close, and this probably looks like something it most certainly is not, and what if someone sees?
‘Liv, get the fuck off me, okay? I’m...fuck, I’m going home. I’m ill. Head's funny. Woozy. Don’t...just stay. I’m fine. I’m fine. Bit tired.’
Fuckfuckfuck.
--
She remembers, this time. Remembers acting like a complete knob to her friends. Remembers a flicker in her mind, like a mirror cracking and reflecting something new. Remembers glancing at Liv’s lips, once, when she was standing far too close.
What the fuck, though?
--
She spends a week ignoring the pair of them, because it isn’t that she is confused about anything, it’s that they’re bloody annoying and Liv is wildly inappropriate while hammered. Also, summer exams, duh. Not the time to be thinking about anything other than school work.
Mini has no space in her head for any of this, right now.
--
On the second Tuesday, Mini’s phone vibrates on her desk, startling her.
Oi, dickhead. Me and G been chatting, have decided that ur fucking weird, but we gonna ignore that. Wer goin to cinema, okay? Be ready at 8. dont moan. X
Mini sighs and puts the phone down carefully. She checks her reflection, and touches the corner of her mouth with one finger tip.
She’s fine. She doesn’t even know what’s wrong with her. Or if anything is wrong. She’s Mini McGuinness. She has friends. She has dignity. Everything’s fine.
The half finished essay on her desk stares back up at her. Some pathetically inadequate crap about symbolism in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Due for tomorrow. Mini notices she’s repeated a word unintentionally, and picks up her pen to cross it out.
Something sticks from Liv’s message. Fucking weird. And underneath all this, another phrase. Fucking disgusting.
Mini bites her bottom lip really hard, and suddenly the pen jolts, scratching across the lined paper.
And then it’s like she can’t stop. The muscles in her arm tighten up, but there’s a sense of purpose here at least, the way the anger flows and scrawls across the page, destroying her efforts in ten mad seconds.
Afterwards she hisses once, and screws up the ruined page, throws it in the bin. She bites the inside of her cheek this time, reminds herself she’s fine.
She’s got forty five minutes to get ready. Must rush.
--
This film is atrocious. Mini can tell that after the first ten minutes. She sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. Liv elbows her, causing her to yelp noisily, and be shushed from every angle.
‘Stop grumbling Mini, will you? The first Transformers was good, so this’ll be the same. Plus, if neither of you can make a decision about what to see, you forfeit the rights to moan about what I pick.’
Mini rolls her eyes in the darkness, and leans closer to Liv.
‘Olivia. This is a boy movie.’
Liv snorts. ‘Well done, Mini. So guess who we’re surrounded by?’
Mini sighs, and readjusts on her seat, and tries to act exasperated by Liv’s one track mind, rather than fully disgusted.
Grace pets her arm once, soothingly, and Mini tries to relax and reconcile herself to the next two hours of her life.
--
There’s a girl in the film with a really nice smile.
She must be a really good actress, because Mini’s watching her, watching the girl whenever she’s on screen, watching the way her eyes flicker when she’s annoyed, the way her shoulders look in a tank top, the way her lips move as she shapes words, the way her chest moves when she’s scared, or excited, and...
Mini’s too hot. She’s too hot, and she’s squashed in from both sides, with the noise and the warmth numbing her mind. That’s the only possible explanation.
She closes her eyes.
After five minutes the girl on the screen makes a noise that sounds a lot like a moan, and it does something to Mini, whose eyes snap open in panic.
Out, out. Got to get out.
She mumbles about the bathroom in Grace’s ear, and is clambering over knees, ignoring the complaints from their owners, until she’s out in the foyer, and then the car park, and it’s still not far enough.
--
She ends up on the swings again, in the park that’s five minutes around the corner from her house. She and Liv used to come here when they were very young, and see who could swing the highest. And more recently, when they weren’t so young, they sat here to share their first bottle of cider, which had been dreadful.
It’s getting dark. Mini sits on the swing and wraps her arms around herself, and concentrates on the boys in her form, ranking them from most attractive to least attractive.
It only takes a couple of minutes for her to start crying, big, inexplicable tears that look like they should belong to someone else, certainly not a girl who is considering the innate hotness of boys in general.
They keep coming though, on and on, and Mini sits there and lets it happen, watching the clouds turn from pink to purple above the setting sun. She thinks vaguely about her English teacher, with her beads and disastrous cardigans, who would harp on about the importance of expressing emotion, rather than bottling everything up.
‘Hey.’
Shit! Mini nearly falls off the swing, and smears two hands over her face, wiping away most of the evidence. There’s a girl standing just over her left shoulder, when Mini turns. She’s shorter than Mini, by a lot, but has heels to compensate. And she’s familiar, dangerously so, because Mini doesn’t know where from but does know that it was nearly dark the last time they met as well.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Umm...’ Mini’s blushing, because this is not a cool thing to do, really, sit on a swing and cry. ‘I’m sitting on a swing.’
The girl rolls her eyes and huffs at her a bit, before sitting on the free swing.
‘Thanks for the news flash. I meant, what are you waiting for, then? You meeting someone? Or going somewhere?’
Mini shakes her head once, before subtly trying to press the heel of her palm underneath her eye, saving her mascara.
‘Just heading home, you know. Had a great night!’
It rings false in her ears, and Mini’s being eyed suspiciously, by a girl who Mini’s worried is reading her like a book. Which is why her mouth opens of its own accord, and she’s off.
‘I got taken on a date, you see. By a boy. Obviously. He’s really nice and um, tall. Paid for my food, called me beautiful, then we went for a walk and he bought me flowers and you know. Icecream.’
The girl just stares at her for a bit, and Mini panics suddenly, because she doesn’t have any flowers with her, so now needs to decide whether she should explain their absence or just pray their absence will go unnoticed.
Before she can choose, the girl sniffs once and looks away.
‘I’m Katie, by the way.’
‘Right.’ Mini probably needs to reply in turn, but also needs to stay anonymous. ‘Uhh... Daisy.’
Katie presses a hand to her temple, and Mini finds herself looking closely at the spot, expecting to see something that isn’t there.
‘Right you are. Daisy. Whatever. Fuck knows why I’m even bothering with this...’
Mini looks at her hands, not sure what is happening but worried things will get worse if she just leaves.
‘Look, ‘Daisy’. I was a bit of a dick to you, that night. It’s... you’re not fucking disgusting, okay?’
That phrase again, and this time doubly familiar. Mini eyes her cautiously. Katie sighs, and scuffs at a pebble with the toe of her shoe.
‘It’s like... my sister, and her girlfriend, they’re fucking disgusting, because Emily’s a loser and Naomi’s a freak, and the kissing in public is fucking disgusting and embarrassing, mainly, especially when it attracts an audience. But, the concept itself? Not fucking disgusting. I’m sorry I said it, I guess. If it freaked you out.’
Freaked out sums up about a tenth of what Mini is feeling right now, and she’s aware of the anger entering her voice, as she replies.
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
Katie frowns at her, and then shrugs.
‘Okay, don’t stab me or anything. Just saying, and excuse me for jumping to lots of conclusions, it isn’t disgusting to be gay, okay? Or bisexual, or whatever. Practically normal. So don’t have a nervous fucking breakdown. Not classy.’
Mini stands up quickly.
‘I’m not gay, you psychopath.’ Katie raises both eyebrows at her, and then flaps a hand, dismissive.
‘Right? Okay, Daisy, or whatever the fuck your name is. Be whatever you want to be. This was just me clearing my conscience. Go strop off, then.’
Mini thinks about staying for a moment, just to underline that she can’t be told what to do, but then Katie rolls her eyes and looks away from Mini, and her profile reminds her of something that she’s seen, something wonderful and amazing and simple looking, and it’s way too much to maintain the act whilst her memories assault her mind.
As she leaves she can hear Katie’s phone ring, and the way Katie greets the caller sounds far too normal, like Katie hasn’t just turned Mini’s life upside down and left her wondering how to get out.
--
That night, in bed, Mini fumbles and then strokes, quicker and quicker, determined to think about absolutely nothing.
It doesn’t work.
Afterwards, she makes a resolution.
A boyfriend. She’ll get a boyfriend. Then everything will be fine.
Definitely.
Author: triptohere
Artist: aphroditemine
Link to art: pretty is pretty
Word count: ~3500
Warnings: Language.
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.
Summary: Set inbetween S3 and S4. Mini is far too young to be in a club, especially seeing as she can't find Liv or Grace. She ends up encountering Katie, girls kissing, and ~feelings.
Notes: Thanks to prunesquallormd, who soldiered on through the betaing despite there being no incest, aphroditemine, who created a glorious fan mix and introduced me to Selena Gomez (and let me steal her title), and em_sh, who read through and told me it didn't suck. This is nearly a week late due to LJ drama and house moving commitments, sorry!
She’s pretty far gone, she realises. So gone she doesn’t remember much, barring where she is, (some club), and who she’s with (her girls).
Except, now she thinks about it, she doesn’t know where the other two have gone, and the layout of this club keeps surprising her, the corridors turning in unexpected directions, and the doors she swears used to lead to the toilets turn out to be locked.
It’s spinning, the floor and the thump of the bass conspiring to disorientate her, so she pauses for a moment, and puts a hand to the wall. Regroup.
She’s Mini McGuinness. She bloody well owns this town. Or, she will, at least. She’s flawless, clearly. She’s been getting into clubs without ID since she was fourteen, she’s the queen of her school, and this current lack of friends (allies) is not the norm.
Right. Well, this lack of direction can fuck right off, for a start. Mini clenches her fist once, and picks another set of doors, strides through.
Dance floor. Okay. (She doesn’t like dance floors, usually, and certainly not alone. Can’t imagine putting herself on show in front of that many people and enjoying the experience.)
Mini pauses again, trying to take stock, but the room is impossible to scan for a friendly face because everyone is jumping, or twisting, and besides, their faces are blurred anyway. She feels young, momentarily, too young for this place, and wants to be home in her bed, away from all this noise.
Uncertainty curls in her gut, a second later, and she fumbles for her bag, fingers gripping for a smooth surface. Liv had smuggled the bottle in at the door, but Mini’s the only one with a big enough bag to keep it safe. The taste is foul, but she gulps twice anyway, anxious to achieve a slightly more adult perspective on the situation.
As Mini is putting it away her skin is crawling, and she searches the room for who could be watching, hoping against hope she’s not attracted the eyes of a bouncer.
There’s a girl about five feet away from her, leaning on a wall. Mini would guess from her height that they’re about the same age, but has to quickly reassess when the girl smiles knowingly at the bottle, before smirking slightly at Mini, and mouthing ‘illegal’.
Mini doesn’t really know what to do with that, so just glares a little for no good reason, and adjusts her hair.
She wants to walk off, but then the problem of ‘where too?’ raises its inevitable head. Mini looks out over the dance floor again, but Liv is nowhere to be seen, and her legs feel a bit peculiar, all of a sudden.
Just a minute, then, or maybe five. Just until she is herself again.
--
She loses track of time, and can’t tell if this song is the same one she had initially paused to, or a different one that sounds exactly the same. She’s propped herself up against the wall, and is waiting to feel normal again.
(She doesn’t enjoy alcohol, though she’d never tell Liv. Doesn’t understand how losing control of her words, moves or thoughts could ever be a pleasant experience.)
The girl is still next to her, a few feet over. Mini glances at her again, trying to figure out where she knows her from. Because she feels familiar, somehow. Maybe from earlier on in the evening, maybe she did something that had caught Mini’s attention.
She’s drunker than she is comfortable with, and wonders abstractly where the hell Liv and Grace have gotten to, and why they haven’t come to find her yet.
Though, she doesn’t feel alone. The girl hasn’t done anything to invite her company, beyond not distance herself when Mini had settled on the wall nearby, but the silence feels friendly, in a way. Not unfriendly, certainly.
Mini glances at the girl again, under the pretence of looking past her towards the bar. There’s a confidence in the way the girl has dressed herself that doesn’t match how she’s standing. When Mini looks closer her eye catches a darker patch near the girl’s temple, a healing wound, Mini realises, heavily covered with make-up.
The girl seems to notice that she’s being watched, and Mini has to flick her gaze away quickly to avoid being caught. The smaller girl frowns briefly, and inspects her nails in a move that Mini recognises, because it is exactly what she does, whenever she feels uncertain about the situation.
Mini is caught off balance, then, with a swell of good will towards the girl that threatens to overwhelm her. She wants to be friends with her. This girl would get her, she knows, would understand what it means to be insecure and have to pretend, in a way that Liv and Grace never would. Maybe Mini would be able to talk to her about how fucking difficult it could be, to be surrounded by boys and have to feign interest all the time.
She’s at a loss, though, as to how to start this brand new friendship, especially now that the girl seems to have cooled towards her, since she caught Mini staring. Mini looks away, frustrated.
There’s a movement, that catches her eye, and Mini struggles to find it again, thinking she must have subconsciously found either Liv or Grace, in the press of bodies.
It’s not though. Mini frowns, and then blinks carefully, double checking she’s not misunderstood.
There are two girls, moving with each other near the edge of the dance floor. And it isn’t the type of dancing her and Liv partake in, which is all pre-practised moves and vaguely ironic enthusiasm. These two are dancing for each other, like it is a game that they’ve only just started but is already leading to the inevitable. The taller one, with blond hair, has her hands on the other girl’s hips, and Mini can tell by the way they are bunched in the material of the girl’s top that there’s a request there, and a need so blatant Mini blushes to see it. The smaller girl just laughs though, before glancing around briefly and reaching up to the back of the blonde’s neck, and pulling her down until they’re kissing.
Mini doesn’t understand why nobody else is paying them any attention, because they’re perfect. They look perfect. She’s holding her breath, and her heart is doing something quite bizarre, but there’s no point dwelling on this because they’re still kissing, and Mini can’t take her fucking eyes off it, for some reason.
The smaller girl seems to laugh into the kiss, just as Mini’s trying to commit the image to memory, and the two girls part. The blonde looks vaguely annoyed, but the other girl just smiles, and moves a hand through her hair, before backing towards her girlfriend (because they must be, surely? Nothing else could explain how easy it looks). The blonde girl stays motionless for a moment, until the swell of the music hits her again, and they dance together. Perfectly in synch.
Flawless, Mini finds herself thinking. And another thought, way underneath it, of who and how and if they can then...
They’re still dancing, and the lights must catch the smaller girl’s profile in a new way, because she is startlingly familiar, all of a sudden, and Mini has to drag herself back to the here and now, and hopes she hasn’t been noticed.
It’s too much to ask for. The other girl (the word twin drifts hopelessly across her mind, far too late) is glaring at her, and takes a step closer to yell flatly at her, over the music.
‘Stop, fucking, staring at them.’
Mini scrambles vaguely for an excuse, but the alcohol’s numbed her thoughts, and instead she produces an explanation.
‘But, um, it’s just lovely, you know?’
Instantly, Mini knows she’s said the wrong thing, as the girl’s face changes from anger to contempt. She sneers up at Mini, and slows her words even more, as if she is speaking to a moron.
‘No, babes, it is fucking disgusting. Get it?’
Mini doesn’t, but tries to look as though she does. She’s fooling no-one though, because the other girl just laughs shortly at her, and storms off.
Uncertain, Mini tries to find the two dancing girls in the crowd again, but they’ve disappeared. She stares vaguely at the spot where she saw them last, and closes her eyes, headache suddenly pounding hard.
Fucking disgusting, she repeats, worried she might forget. Fucking disgusting.
Then, when the idea of keeping any of this turns unpleasant, she reaches again for the bottle, determined to remember none of this, in the morning.
--
She doesn’t.
(She remembers the colours, and the worry of being alone, and the feeling she’d done something wrong.)
Liv burps once, from the floor next to Mini’s bed, and turns over in her sleep. Mini winces, and then squints at the end of the bed, where Grace is curled up, apparently comfortable.
There’s nothing too amiss. Mini checks her phone, once, and the time and the date are what she expects. So nothing’s gone wrong. Nothing’s wrong. She can stop worrying, now.
--
In school, the following day, Grace waggles a hand briefly in Mini’s face.
‘Mins! We should do it again, yes? Go for a bop? I’ve told Liv it has to be after our history exam though.’
Mini blinks, and ignores the clench of fear the word exam produces, just under her heart. It’s only a module, for Christ’s sake. Ten percent of the end grade.
‘Um, sure Gracie. We had fun, didn’t we?’
Grace nods very seriously at Mini, and then reaches for her palm, squeezes once.
‘We did. Although this time, we might put you in reins, stop you from disappearing again!’
Mini tries to laugh along, and then waves, heading for her textiles class.
She’s uneasy, and has a fragment of song, winding around her head. She can’t remember the words at all, but the rhythm has her skin crawling.
--
They dance again, in the same club, and Mini stays close.
Its fear, she realises, that’s making the drink taste sour and stopping her from smiling without rehearsing the expression once before.
She’s checking the room, but she doesn’t know what for. It’s dark, anyway, noisy and confusing. The disorientation is familiar but nothing else. Liv and Grace are dancing, and bumping against her in increasingly obvious ways. It’s an invitation, particularly from Liv, her unspoken code for chill the fuck out and enjoy yourself, you uptight moron.
Mini resists for a song longer, and is looking at faces over their heads, checking and checking until her eyes are watering and she’s feeling sick, nausea high in her throat.
Eventually, Liv swears at her, and throws both hands up around her neck, fingers clasped just where it tickles. She leans, and presses her mouth close to Mini’s ear, trying to be heard.
‘Mini. Fucking dance with us, yeah? You’ll look like a complete tit if you don’t move something.’
It’s not meant to be mean, but Mini hates Liv at that moment, hates the fact that she’s still rocking gently to the beat and Mini’s hands are suddenly very close to her hips, far too close, and this probably looks like something it most certainly is not, and what if someone sees?
‘Liv, get the fuck off me, okay? I’m...fuck, I’m going home. I’m ill. Head's funny. Woozy. Don’t...just stay. I’m fine. I’m fine. Bit tired.’
Fuckfuckfuck.
--
She remembers, this time. Remembers acting like a complete knob to her friends. Remembers a flicker in her mind, like a mirror cracking and reflecting something new. Remembers glancing at Liv’s lips, once, when she was standing far too close.
What the fuck, though?
--
She spends a week ignoring the pair of them, because it isn’t that she is confused about anything, it’s that they’re bloody annoying and Liv is wildly inappropriate while hammered. Also, summer exams, duh. Not the time to be thinking about anything other than school work.
Mini has no space in her head for any of this, right now.
--
On the second Tuesday, Mini’s phone vibrates on her desk, startling her.
Oi, dickhead. Me and G been chatting, have decided that ur fucking weird, but we gonna ignore that. Wer goin to cinema, okay? Be ready at 8. dont moan. X
Mini sighs and puts the phone down carefully. She checks her reflection, and touches the corner of her mouth with one finger tip.
She’s fine. She doesn’t even know what’s wrong with her. Or if anything is wrong. She’s Mini McGuinness. She has friends. She has dignity. Everything’s fine.
The half finished essay on her desk stares back up at her. Some pathetically inadequate crap about symbolism in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Due for tomorrow. Mini notices she’s repeated a word unintentionally, and picks up her pen to cross it out.
Something sticks from Liv’s message. Fucking weird. And underneath all this, another phrase. Fucking disgusting.
Mini bites her bottom lip really hard, and suddenly the pen jolts, scratching across the lined paper.
And then it’s like she can’t stop. The muscles in her arm tighten up, but there’s a sense of purpose here at least, the way the anger flows and scrawls across the page, destroying her efforts in ten mad seconds.
Afterwards she hisses once, and screws up the ruined page, throws it in the bin. She bites the inside of her cheek this time, reminds herself she’s fine.
She’s got forty five minutes to get ready. Must rush.
--
This film is atrocious. Mini can tell that after the first ten minutes. She sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. Liv elbows her, causing her to yelp noisily, and be shushed from every angle.
‘Stop grumbling Mini, will you? The first Transformers was good, so this’ll be the same. Plus, if neither of you can make a decision about what to see, you forfeit the rights to moan about what I pick.’
Mini rolls her eyes in the darkness, and leans closer to Liv.
‘Olivia. This is a boy movie.’
Liv snorts. ‘Well done, Mini. So guess who we’re surrounded by?’
Mini sighs, and readjusts on her seat, and tries to act exasperated by Liv’s one track mind, rather than fully disgusted.
Grace pets her arm once, soothingly, and Mini tries to relax and reconcile herself to the next two hours of her life.
--
There’s a girl in the film with a really nice smile.
She must be a really good actress, because Mini’s watching her, watching the girl whenever she’s on screen, watching the way her eyes flicker when she’s annoyed, the way her shoulders look in a tank top, the way her lips move as she shapes words, the way her chest moves when she’s scared, or excited, and...
Mini’s too hot. She’s too hot, and she’s squashed in from both sides, with the noise and the warmth numbing her mind. That’s the only possible explanation.
She closes her eyes.
After five minutes the girl on the screen makes a noise that sounds a lot like a moan, and it does something to Mini, whose eyes snap open in panic.
Out, out. Got to get out.
She mumbles about the bathroom in Grace’s ear, and is clambering over knees, ignoring the complaints from their owners, until she’s out in the foyer, and then the car park, and it’s still not far enough.
--
She ends up on the swings again, in the park that’s five minutes around the corner from her house. She and Liv used to come here when they were very young, and see who could swing the highest. And more recently, when they weren’t so young, they sat here to share their first bottle of cider, which had been dreadful.
It’s getting dark. Mini sits on the swing and wraps her arms around herself, and concentrates on the boys in her form, ranking them from most attractive to least attractive.
It only takes a couple of minutes for her to start crying, big, inexplicable tears that look like they should belong to someone else, certainly not a girl who is considering the innate hotness of boys in general.
They keep coming though, on and on, and Mini sits there and lets it happen, watching the clouds turn from pink to purple above the setting sun. She thinks vaguely about her English teacher, with her beads and disastrous cardigans, who would harp on about the importance of expressing emotion, rather than bottling everything up.
‘Hey.’
Shit! Mini nearly falls off the swing, and smears two hands over her face, wiping away most of the evidence. There’s a girl standing just over her left shoulder, when Mini turns. She’s shorter than Mini, by a lot, but has heels to compensate. And she’s familiar, dangerously so, because Mini doesn’t know where from but does know that it was nearly dark the last time they met as well.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Umm...’ Mini’s blushing, because this is not a cool thing to do, really, sit on a swing and cry. ‘I’m sitting on a swing.’
The girl rolls her eyes and huffs at her a bit, before sitting on the free swing.
‘Thanks for the news flash. I meant, what are you waiting for, then? You meeting someone? Or going somewhere?’
Mini shakes her head once, before subtly trying to press the heel of her palm underneath her eye, saving her mascara.
‘Just heading home, you know. Had a great night!’
It rings false in her ears, and Mini’s being eyed suspiciously, by a girl who Mini’s worried is reading her like a book. Which is why her mouth opens of its own accord, and she’s off.
‘I got taken on a date, you see. By a boy. Obviously. He’s really nice and um, tall. Paid for my food, called me beautiful, then we went for a walk and he bought me flowers and you know. Icecream.’
The girl just stares at her for a bit, and Mini panics suddenly, because she doesn’t have any flowers with her, so now needs to decide whether she should explain their absence or just pray their absence will go unnoticed.
Before she can choose, the girl sniffs once and looks away.
‘I’m Katie, by the way.’
‘Right.’ Mini probably needs to reply in turn, but also needs to stay anonymous. ‘Uhh... Daisy.’
Katie presses a hand to her temple, and Mini finds herself looking closely at the spot, expecting to see something that isn’t there.
‘Right you are. Daisy. Whatever. Fuck knows why I’m even bothering with this...’
Mini looks at her hands, not sure what is happening but worried things will get worse if she just leaves.
‘Look, ‘Daisy’. I was a bit of a dick to you, that night. It’s... you’re not fucking disgusting, okay?’
That phrase again, and this time doubly familiar. Mini eyes her cautiously. Katie sighs, and scuffs at a pebble with the toe of her shoe.
‘It’s like... my sister, and her girlfriend, they’re fucking disgusting, because Emily’s a loser and Naomi’s a freak, and the kissing in public is fucking disgusting and embarrassing, mainly, especially when it attracts an audience. But, the concept itself? Not fucking disgusting. I’m sorry I said it, I guess. If it freaked you out.’
Freaked out sums up about a tenth of what Mini is feeling right now, and she’s aware of the anger entering her voice, as she replies.
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
Katie frowns at her, and then shrugs.
‘Okay, don’t stab me or anything. Just saying, and excuse me for jumping to lots of conclusions, it isn’t disgusting to be gay, okay? Or bisexual, or whatever. Practically normal. So don’t have a nervous fucking breakdown. Not classy.’
Mini stands up quickly.
‘I’m not gay, you psychopath.’ Katie raises both eyebrows at her, and then flaps a hand, dismissive.
‘Right? Okay, Daisy, or whatever the fuck your name is. Be whatever you want to be. This was just me clearing my conscience. Go strop off, then.’
Mini thinks about staying for a moment, just to underline that she can’t be told what to do, but then Katie rolls her eyes and looks away from Mini, and her profile reminds her of something that she’s seen, something wonderful and amazing and simple looking, and it’s way too much to maintain the act whilst her memories assault her mind.
As she leaves she can hear Katie’s phone ring, and the way Katie greets the caller sounds far too normal, like Katie hasn’t just turned Mini’s life upside down and left her wondering how to get out.
--
That night, in bed, Mini fumbles and then strokes, quicker and quicker, determined to think about absolutely nothing.
It doesn’t work.
Afterwards, she makes a resolution.
A boyfriend. She’ll get a boyfriend. Then everything will be fine.
Definitely.