elodie hunt (iaminfinite) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2021-01-15 15:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, amelia, amelia x elodie, elodie |
Who: Amelia & Elodie
Where: Sycamore Street
When: Noon, Saturday, June 2nd
Status: Complete
Amelia had taken to rollerskating everywhere, trying to share a car with Gavin was a pain in the ass and she didn't live that far from the police station so it was easy and a decent exercise to skate while the weather was this nice. It was also more fun to take the dogs running that way she found. She was rusty at it at first but after a few times of nearly falling on her ass she got back into the rhythm of it pretty easily.
Today would have been Jasper's graduation but like Amelia, he missed his chance (again) for pretty much the same reason. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fun and she'd been walking on eggshells around him the closer the day got. She hadn't really cared about her own graduation because it wasn't terribly high on the long list of things that she'd missed out on. She expected him to be home but his car wasn't in the parking lot - none of the cars were. Gavin was probably at work and Charlie at the graduation so that just left... Elodie.
Amelia supposed forgiving someone for being a dumb bitch should be easy when they'd been through a particular kind of hell after the fact. Jasper seemed to have completely forgiven Elodie for fucking with his relationship with Jules but the two now shared trauma and Elodie was in and out of the house like a stray cat who liked being fed but didn't like to be petted. Amelia was kind of getting used to it. It was weird, yes, but she had saved Elodie's life once and now Elodie had given Amelia's brother some comfort so it seemed only right to let go of the weird past. It still lingered in the back of her mind though, not as something unforgivable but as a reminder to not trust her. Which was admittedly a bit hard when Elodie was practically living with her family part time.
Amelia found her in the kitchen. It wasn't a given that Elodie would be there but there she was, not wrecking anything even if nobody was home so that was a good sign - Amelia supposed. "Hey," she said and a part of her wanted to leave Elodie alone and just fuck off to her room but she was hungry and she'd come home for that reason so shared space it was until Elodie had enough. "Did you eat already?" She dumped her things by the doorway for now, though normally she tried to be considerate that they now lived with Charlie who was not used to - or deserving - of their usual bullshit.
Elodie liked Ms. Harris's house a lot better when no one was there. She could shower and eat and everything without her former teacher or Jasper's dad looking at her like she was a stray dog to be fed scraps. She appreciated the hospitality, of course. Having a bed to sleep in at night and food to eat was a hell of a lot better than sleeping on the street and stealing shit, though she felt like she could survive that if she had to. Elodie still wasn't sure what she was going to do, or what she should do, but it didn't feel too pertinent to figure it out right now. What she had was working for her and it wasn't in her nature to think ahead.
With everyone gone, Elodie had let herself into the house with the intent on finding something to eat. She hadn't been there too long before Amelia came home and Elodie couldn't help but feel a stinging in her chest from where she had been attacked in the fog. It was a lingering pain and probably all in her head, considering she had been healed for a long time now. Seeing Amelia always triggered that memory though, so it was what it was. "No, I just got here," she said belatedly. Elodie began to open the cabinets, just to see what Ms. Harris had stocked. "Thought Jasper would be here but I guess he's watching graduation."
"I think so," Amelia replied, though she wasn't sure if he'd gone through with it. She hadn't been rushed by three dogs when she arrived so she had assumed Jasper had taken them out somewhere, but maybe Gavin was doing it before work and Jasper had swallowed his broken pride and gone to graduation for Jules and Ruby. That just made Amelia wonder if she should have offered to go with him. It was too late now and he hadn't asked her so she let it go, focused instead on checking the fridge. "You didn't wanna go?" she asked idly as she grabbed a fruit cup to sate the worst of her hunger while she decided on what to actually eat. She didn't much feel like cooking but maybe if Elodie was hungry they could fix something up together. It was a somewhat surreal thought but there it was.
Elodie wasn't sure what to make herself. Ms. Harris had been adamant that she could help herself to whatever she wanted, but she was at that level of hunger where everything sounded good and yet she couldn't figure out what to eat. Blinking dumbly at Amelia's question, Elodie looked over at her, staring in silence for a brief second before her brows furrowed together. "Why would I want to go? I'm not graduating. I don't really care about anyone there. Do you like spaghetti?" She tugged one of the unopened boxes out of the cabinet and studied it. "I think I can make this without burning the kitchen down. Do you want some?"
That made Amelia grin because cooking spaghetti without burning it didn't sound hard, it was however hard to get it perfect and she'd just learned about that trick of throwing a strand against the wall and seeing if it'd stick. "Sure," she murmured. "Do you want sauce with that? Pretty sure we can get our brain cells to cooperate and manage to not burn that either." She knew they had some easy packaged stuff that just needed heating up and minimum effort sounded good. "And I guess there's no point in going if you don't care about anyone there." Amelia wasn't going and she actually like some of the people who were graduating so she couldn't say much.
Elodie was pretty sure anything could burn if you fucked it up enough. But she didn't cook, so maybe it was all in her head, like most things were. Looking up from the spaghetti box, Elodie's brows furrowed together thoughtfully. "Sauce, yeah. Is there sauce in here somewhere? We always had jarred sauce at home but I don't know, maybe Ms. Harris like... fuckin' squishes tomatoes or something." She could boil water if Amelia could heat up the sauce. A joint effort meant if they made a huge mess, Elodie couldn't be blamed solely for it. She set the box down on the counter and began to search for a pot. "I care about like... Jasper. But he's not graduating either." She thought about Cam, but she hadn't seen him since she had been back. She wasn't entirely sure she cared about him enough to reach out either. "Do you think you'll try to get your GED, or whatever they call it?"
Amelia finished her little fruit box before digging around in the cupboard for some sauce. Charlie had plenty of food which included the kind of pasta sauce she'd always liked so she wasn't sure if Gavin had bought that. It was nice to hear Elodie cared about Jasper, hardly surprising after what they'd been through but still somewhat reassuring, especially given their past and Amelia smiled a little as Elodie said it. "GED, yeah," she replied as she reached past Elodie to get a pot for the sauce. "I've been working on it, it's just a lot of catching up to do. I learned some basics before but there's so much noise they want you to know about, stuff I have no fucking clue about. Like history, a whole lot of weird names and events I've never even heard of." She was trying to do it little by little, like her therapist told her to, one bite at a time, but it was hard not to feel overwhelmed when she let herself really look at the enormity of it, just how much she had missed. "Are you?" she asked, eyeing Elodie curiously. "You're at least a little closer to the finish line than me."
"You're living with a teacher now," Elodie pointed out as she carried a pot to the sink to fill it with hot water. "I bet she'd help you with all that stuff. It's summer, so... what else is she gonna do for the next two months? But yeah, I mean, I'll get it eventually. I don't know if I need it to get a job right now, or what. Probably." She was doing okay for the time being so working wasn't exactly on her mind. She stared at the water, lost in her own thoughts until the present seemed to snap her back to reality. "Seems stupid to need to know about history and stuff anyway," she mumbled. "All it's gonna take is one doorway to open and we'll all be fucked. Math doesn't care about that."
"Exactly," Amelia said firmly and they couldn't ever know just how many other worlds they were or how bad they could get. Then again they couldn't know if their own version of reality was somebody else's idea of a horrible nightmare, enough bad stuff had happened for that to make sense. "I could literally make shit up on that test and it might be true in some other dimension but they don't know that." Sometimes she wanted to tell somebody about what had happened to her, someone smart and scientific who could do something with the information but it was all too close to her. Jules would get into trouble, Jasper too, Amelia herself might become that somebody's guinea pig. It was too risky. She wondered if Elodie had that same urge and whether she had any reasons to hold back on them. "I wonder how many other things we don't know about because nobody talks about them," she muttered quietly as she grabbed a measuring cup - because apparently food tasted better when you could measure out the ingredients according to the package.
"All kinds of stuff," Elodie muttered, thinking about her mom... and Jasper's grandpa. Did Amelia know what had happened to that old man? "There should be like, a website or some kind of... letter service... where people can write down everything they saw, or did... or something weird that happened to them. It could all be anonymous. Then we could all be kept in the loop and know what to avoid, or... whatever." She blew out a breath and turned the stovetop on to get the water boiling. Ms. Harris's dog...Benny? Barker?... trotted into the kitchen and plopped down on his stomach to watch them, looking alert and oddly interested. Maybe it was just that the kitchen equaled food to animals. "How's your job though, working for the cops? Do you hear weird stuff there?"
"Hey Baxter," Amelia cooed at the dog. "I thought you boys were out." Did that mean Gavin or Jasper had returned and she just hadn't heard? She didn't let him distract her for long, turning her attention back to Elodie. "I thought I would, but not really. If anything it's been really quiet and that's weirding everyone out. One of them told me to stay clear of a few places but the only one I hadn't heard of so far was the Rogan house. Have you heard of it? I thought he meant the Zimmerman house, I heard all about that when I was a kid. You're kinda new in town though, aren't you? Maybe you haven't heard all the warnings."
"I've been here long enough to hear all the stories," Elodie said. "I don't really need any warnings now, 'cause... you know, sucked into a hell dimension and all. You get it." Amelia had disappeared too for a while. Sometimes Elodie wondered if she was actually back in Point Pleasant, or if they had all ended up another alternate universe or whatever the fuck it was. She didn't know much about science fiction stuff like that. Or science non-fiction, whatever. Elodie eyed Baxter before glancing at Amelia. "I don't think I've heard about the Rogan house though. Another haunted house attraction?"
Amelia had the exact same fear about Point Pleasant not being her home but she'd worked through it for the most part. It was close enough and while she was always prepared for it to slip through her fingers again, she was determined to enjoy being home for as long as she could, before reality tilted on its axis again. "It's haunted, I guess. Enough to spook a cop." She'd been tempted to ask Grady about it but she had a feeling talking about supernatural stuff was near painful for him, judging by that thing his eyebrows did whenever someone brought up something Weird. "If you ask me, I'd say at least half the houses in town are haunted. I saw some weird shit in Juniper."
Elodie smiled, though the gesture felt cold and foreign on her lips. "This whole town is haunted. I think people are so used to seeing the ghosts now that it doesn't even faze them anymore." The water had slowly started to boil so Elodie turned back to mess with the spaghetti box. "Don't mind me. I think toxic hell has made me more spooky. Did you feel weird when you came back?" She tore open the top of the box and tossed the tiny piece to the counter. "I mean, I'm sure it was weird, but like... did you feel weird in a different way? Like you weren't like anyone else here?"
"Well that is a deeply personal question," Amelia said with a little smirk as she started stirring the sauce, waiting for it too to start bubbling. "But yeah, I still don't feel like I belong here sometimes. Like that place pooped me out in the wrong location and it's going to catch up with me. I mean, I was gone for years and nothing had changed here when I got back." That vertigo-feeling of being in the wrong place altogether reared its ugly head again and she pushed it down. "But I wasn't infected with anything, I didn't change like you guys did. Do you ever worry it's still in you?" It was easier to ask Elodie than it was to ask Jasper, probably because she loved Jasper and didn't really care about Elodie. She was more afraid of the answer for Jasper than her own or for Elodie's sake. He seemed like himself again, as much as someone could be like themselves after months of trauma, but Amelia could only see what was on the surface.
Elodie didn't really care if it was a personal question. If she wanted to know something, she'd ask. She didn't care if people asked her shit, so it didn't occur to her that other people might not like it. Snickering when Amelia described being sent back as being "pooped out", she grabbed the shaker to pour some salt into the boiling water, the way she'd seen Ms. Harris do when she was making pasta before. "I don't feel it in me anymore, but I guess I can't know for sure," she said with a shrug. "I don't feel happy, the way I did before. No one around me is getting tired or passing out. I just feel like... I was over there for so long, breathing in that air and everything, that maybe I'm not the same anymore. It's not exactly bad. I don't know. It's hard to explain."
Amelia knew they weren't the only ones who had returned but she had no idea if any of the others had gotten properly checked out at the hospital. She just knew Jasper and Elodie hadn't and maybe that was a cause for concern. Maybe they had some horrible diseases just growing inside of them even if the supernatural sickness seemed to be gone. She felt a weird urge to go check Elodie's eyes and make her open her mouth wide while she shone a flashlight down her throat but she was no doctor and it would probably take a lot more nuanced tests than that to find out if anything was wrong. Microscopes would definitely be involved at the very least. "All we fucking do is wait for the other shoe to drop," she sighed and it was true, she was still surprised sometimes when she woke up in her own room with her own (new) things and pretty curtains. The light was different here, even in the winter when it was dark out, and the fear of slipping away again was never far from her mind.
"Yeah, but what else can we do?" Elodie didn't expect an answer to that because there wasn't anything they could do. Dumping the box of spaghetti into the boiling water, Elodie glanced at Amelia. "Seems like this can swallow you up whenever it wants to. Or people who live here can make it swallow you up. Either you stay inside and just avoid everything or take your chances. Though, with the amount of haunted houses, doesn't seem like staying inside will keep you very safe either." She knew she sounded pessimistic, but it was just realistic thinking, in Elodie's mind. Having been stuck Over There for as long as she had, she's since come to the conclusion that she was going to start doing whatever she wanted... not that she didn't before, but now she felt more free to do it. Less restricted.
Amelia knew damn well that dimension fuckery could happen anywhere at all. She'd thought she was safe in her own backyard, there had been nothing to trigger the change that she knew of though she often came up with troubling theories of what might have been. "Houses are only good for hiding from giant fog monsters," she agreed. "Anything else is up in the air. So yeah, enjoy it while it lasts." It was a terrible way to live and she kept finding herself worrying about Aaron and Mila having a baby because adding more people to the mix seemed like a terrible idea. At the same time she was happy for them so it was a fine line to balance on.
"Yeah, until the giant fog monsters learn how to get into the houses," Elodie said, her eyes wide. "I mean, they never came into the houses over there, but we could always hear them at the walls and stuff." The spaghetti was cooking now and Elodie dug around in her pocket for her cigarettes. "You wanna go to that party tonight? I figure Jasper is going, 'cause Jules and everything. But we should go." She knew there would be alcohol there which was her prime motivation.
Elodie wasn't the first to invite Amelia to the party so she knew it was not just a graduation thing but also Jules's birthday. She hadn't been very interested in it so far, knowing Jasper would probably be glued to Jules's side and Ruby to Clint's so Amelia would feel like a third wheel - a fifth wheel? - and that just didn't sound like fun. But if Elodie was going, even if they weren't exactly friends, it helped to know someone else was there by themselves. "Maybe," she replied with a little shrug. "I don't know." She definitely felt out of place with kids 'her age', like they were both so much younger than her and at the same time so much older. That was par for the course she supposed, since her timeline had gotten all screwy. "Maybe if dad lets me borrow the car so I can leave whenever I want to if it sucks."
"It'll definitely suck, but we can make it fun," Elodie pointed out. "There's going to be beer and weed. Some dumb shit people, but it's easy enough to avoid them. Besides, we should go and keep an eye on Jasper, make sure he's okay and everything." She figured if there was any way to coax Amelia into going, it was using her brother. And considering how out of place Elodie felt in Point Pleasant, she had to imagine Jasper felt the same. Being surrounded by the morons they went to school with probably wouldn't help.
Amelia tilted her head as she looked at her, pursing her lips and quirking her brows. "That was very manipulative of you," she pointed out before her resolve broke and she laughed. "But yeah, I guess someone needs to look out for my little brother." She was sure she was older than Jasper now, her new ID put her at a year older and it both amused and horrified her. "Cousin," she corrected herself, just another reminder how warped life had become. "The last time I went to any sort of a party with these people, everyone was really weird, I think they were all on drugs or something. Like, not weed. More like... a truth serum." She snorted and tried to remember if Elodie had been there.
Elodie smirked and shrugged lightly. The thought of Jasper being anyone's younger brother was an amusing one, but Amelia's situation was a complex, weird one and she didn't envy her in the least. At least Elodie had come back the same age she had been when she disappeared. "Alcohol is a natural truth serum," she pointed out. "And all the parties here are weird because this place is weird. Watching people act stupid and lose their inhibitions can be really fun. But you can always avoid drinks if you don't want to become weird like everyone else."
"Yeah I just might," Amelia replied and approaching it as a spectator did hold some appeal. She'd been operating under the assumption that she needed to blend in, but what if she didn't? What if she could just treat it like one of her books? It made going seem more appealing at least and she smiled as she stirred the sauce, still waiting for it to start bubbling. "So will you be watching? Or taking part in the show?" she asked teasingly and with Elodie it could really go both ways. She might steal the show altogether, make it into something else. Amelia was aware of that, she doubted she'd changed that much even if she'd been on good behavior lately.
"I'm always watching," Elodie said. "That doesn't mean I won't drink, but it's much more fun to watch people act like idiots than to act like one myself. If it gets too boring, then I may try to inject some excitement, but...who knows. I've gotta go and be there first, see how things are going before I decide." She realized she hadn't been stirring the spaghetti so Elodie quickly found one of Ms. Harris's wooden spoons to try and break up the pasta clump that had started to form in the boiling water. "Let's just go and have some fun. If it's super lame we can leave."
Amelia gave a slightly exasperated laugh. "If by excitement you mean drama, I'll have to smack you upside the head," she warned Elodie jokingly and maybe she really should go, if only to make sure Jasper was okay and Elodie wasn't breaking up relationships or worse. And maybe a small part of her hoped there was someone at that party that would make her feel those fluttery 'feels' she only knew about from books and other people. It'd be nice to crush on someone for real, and not just in the nine year old way of 'I guess Justin is kinda cute but he won't shut up about Spiderman'. She didn't exactly have high hopes for it but it was more likely to happen at a party with some booze on hand than... at home.
"Define drama," Elodie said with a smirk. "But nah, excitement as in... excitement. I never know what it'll be until I'm doing it." Glancing at the Amelia, Elodie raised a brow. "Is the sauce almost done? I'm fucking starving. I think the pasta might be done too? Aren't we supposed to throw it at the wall and see if it sticks?" That's what she had heard, anyway. Elodie preferred walking into a place and buying her food than having to cook it, but she would take what she could get at this point. Especially since Ms. Harris's food was free.
Amelia had the sudden mental image of Elodie tossing the whole contents of the pot at the wall and she smmothered a laugh and shrugged. "It looks like it's coming to life," she murmured which was possibly not the best way to put it but the sauce was... stirring? "Try tossing one on the wall, see if it sticks. Or I can just taste one." She had been starving too but that fruit had taken some of the edge off. As if on cue, the sauce started bubbling and Amelia stirred it slowly. "Looks like we're almost good to go."
Elodie shrugged and grabbed the spoon to work one of the noodles out of the boiling water. It took her a couple of tries, but when she managed to get a couple, she stuck one in her mouth and threw another at the wall. It stuck for a second, then fell to the floor, quickly attacked and eaten by Baxter. "I think it's done? It tastes done." It wasn't too mushy, and it didn't crack or anything. Elodie flipped off the burner. "We can save some for your dad, if you want. Stick it in a tupperware. Made with love." She grinned at Amelia. "Or for Jasper. Whatever. Or we can just stuff ourselves with spaghetti and be bloated for the rest of the night. I don't fucking care. I'm hungry."
It was quick work piling food on their plates and Amelia kind of wished she'd had some veggies to go with this meal but oh well, she was used to far worse and simple wasn't too bad. "Do you even like anyone at your old high school?" she asked when they'd sat down with their food. "You weren't really excited about going to the graduation." If she had close friends she probably would have wanted to be there for them, even if she herself wasn't graduating. Amelia was guessing she didn't, she'd been trouble long before the fog and Amelia had no idea if Elodie even had anyone else to turn to these days. She spent a lot of time here. "I mean, is anyone you like going to be at that party tonight? Jasper excluded."
Elodie looked at her sharply. There was something simmering in her chest that she didn't like, and while it wasn't Amelia's fault, Elodie didn't like being reminded just how alone she was, even if that wasn't Amelia's intent. "I already told you I don't like anyone there. That's not why I wanna go anyway. I was screwing a guy from school for a while but I haven't seen him since I got back. Don't really care either. I just want to go and have some fun for once." She didn't think there was anything wrong with that. Elodie shoved a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth. "If you're going to be there, then I like you. That's enough, isn't it?"
Amelia wasn't sure if Elodie really liked her but she still liked hearing it, which was probably naive of her. She leaned in a little closer to Elodie and gave her a conspiratory smile. "I'll be there," she told her firmly before sitting up straight again and starting to eat. She could easily imagine what it would really be like, Jasper would be glued to Jules's side, Ruby to Clint's and Elodie would end up with that guy she'd been fucking. If she was lucky, Amelia would find someone else to talk to but she wasn't feeling super optimistic that her people would really be there for her so she was already planning to borrow her dad's car and not drink - just so she had an out if she needed it.
"Good." Whether or not Amelia would want to stick around and hang out with Elodie once they were at the party was something to worry about later. Or not worry about. Amelia could do her own thing. Elodie just wanted to drink and have fun... potentially cause some trouble, if she could. Obviously, she would leave Jasper alone. She had already apologized for messing with his relationship and they were sort-of friends now. Elodie knew if she fucked that up, she wouldn't have a roof over her head anymore, so for now she was going to behave. Amelia could drive them and everything would be fine. If there was ever a night for Elodie to get wasted and try to forget the last four months... it was tonight.