shadowtina (shadowtina) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-07-16 00:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, jen, jen x ophelia, ophelia |
Who: Jen & Phee
Where: Overlook
When: Wednesday afternoon 12/27
Status: Complete
Jen felt like she was getting better at this whole having friends thing. She hadn't had many growing up but she genuinely liked Ophelia McCarthy and hanging out with her was not hardship. Sometimes they just sat together, each with a book or their phone and it wasn't even uncomfortable. Jen was pretty sure that kind of friendship was rare because people seemed to always feel like they had to be talking, even if they had nothing to say. Phee wasn't like that and after a short time Jen really treasured her more than she thought possible. She'd been afraid that Hunter breaking up with Phee's brother would make things awkward but stubbornly refused to let it, she was her own person and Hunter made his own damn mistakes. Luckily she hadn't had to fight for that or anything, things just stayed mellow with Phee.
She'd gotten a ride from her dad to visit Phee, feeling a little bad about not wanting to go to karaoke with her the night before. It had just felt a little weird, she knew Phee's boyfriend would be with her and then there was Sebastian and a bunch of other people she didn't really know. She'd much rather visit by herself later and hang out in quiet.
The view in Overlook was amazing but today there was a thick fog over the ocean that made the world look just a little bit smaller than usual. Jen waved at her dad before he drove off and hurried to the door to knock. It was cold out, really not the sort of weather she wanted to linger in.
Ophelia didn’t know how her brother felt about her staying friends with Hunter’s twin sister, but she didn’t care either. She really liked Jen, she was offbeat and weird like Phee, only with more confidence. Phee admired her. Plus she was just cool to hang out with. So their brothers’ business wasn’t theirs, and she was beyond glad that Jen had wanted to stay friends. And that Jen wanted to come and hang out with her to make up for missing karaoke. Not that Phee was holding it against her -- if Greg and Bash hadn’t seemed to really want her to go, she might have skipped out on it herself.
She was ready and waiting when Jen arrived, hanging out in the front room where she could watch out the windows for Sheriff Barrett’s car, glancing between the outside and her book. Phee hopped up when she saw it arrive, so she opened the door only a second after Jen knocked. “Hey!” she chirped, stepping back and motioning Jen inside. The air out there was freezing against her bare toes, but the house was nice and warm.
Jen hurried inside, stomping snow off her shoes before entering the hallway. It was really warm in there, warm and comfy and it always smelled so nice in the McCarthy house, like leather polish and flowers. "Hi," she said with a little laugh as she started tugging her scarf off. "Did you have a good Christmas? I feel like I haven't seen you in forever."
There were hooks on the hall wall, ready for coats and scarves and the like, and Phee made a vague and useless gesture toward them as Jen started to peel off the layers. She laughed a bit and wrinkled her nose a bit. “Prob’ly ‘cause you haven’t, except for school and stuff,” she said. Even then, they didn’t cross paths often since Jen was a senior and Phee wasn’t. How she’d made friends with all of these older kids, she didn’t really know, but she wasn’t complaining either. “But yeah! It was a good Christmas. How was yours? Was it just ... you and your dad?”
Jen hung up her things and emptied her pockets of stuff she didn't want to leave down here. "It was good. Everyone wanted me to go to Portland for the holidays but I just didn't want to," she said and it was part endearing, part frustrating how nobody seemed to get that she wasn't lonely when she was alone. She felt far more lonely when she was forced to be around people, unable to do whatever the hell she wanted because she had to behave a certain way to appease them. "We had a nice time, I kind of wish he'd start dating again but I don't know if he even has time for that." She paused, then smirked. "And yeah I'm kinda selfishly glad I don't have to deal with getting to know some new woman."
Phee gave her a wan smile, thinking that Sheriff Barrett was probably glad that at least one of his kids was around for Christmas. She was also kind of glad that Hunter hadn’t come back for it, which was selfish and meddling of her ... but she felt like the further apart him and Bash were, the better. At least for now. Gods knew they didn’t need any getting-back-together drama in their lives. She grinned a bit at the last part and nodded her understanding. “If my parents ever broke up? I totally wouldn’t want my dad to date either,” she said, wrinkling her nose a bit. But parents were a boring subject, so she batted at Jen’s arm with enthusiasm. “C’mon, upstairs,” Phee said, ready to go up to her room now that Jen was free of her winter gear.
Jen laughed and grabbed her backpack off the floor before following Phee out of the foyer. Her house was so ridiculously big, it was easy to feel out of place there but luckily they didn't run into Phee's parents on their way up and Jen relaxed once they were in her room. That was Phee's space and it was a lot more comfortable than the rest of the house. "So tell me all about karaoke," she said as she plopped down on Phee's bed, pulling her legs up to cross them close to her body. "Did you sing?"
Phee was used to the bigness and niceness of their house, of course, but she’d had plenty of times when she’d felt out of place there too, and she wanted the privacy of her own space more often than not. Maybe every teen felt alienated from their family sometimes. But not the girl who’d pretty quickly become her best friend, and that was who Phee wanted to focus on now. She closed and locked her bedroom door, then climbed up onto the bed with Jen, propping a pillow against the wall to lean against. “It was fun!” she said, grinning brightly. “Like way more fun than I thought it would be. But yeah, I sang! By myself and then a cheesy duet with Greg.” That made her grin get even wider.
"God, you guys are so corny," Jen said with a grin but it was kind of sweet. She wondered if she'd ever feel like that about someone and it seemed so unlikely, distant and impossible. That was okay, at least she was slowly getting the hang of having friends. "What did you sing?" she prodded because cheesy duet could be any number of songs and if they'd gone all out and been super gross and in love on stage she might just have to stop talking to Phee. Not really, but... maybe, because ew.
They were really corny, and even more so that night, so maybe it was best that Jen had opted out. Phee had been a little surprised that Sebastian had stayed in a good mood, surrounded by couples and all. Even Ruby and Clint had been pretty cute together. She looked completely unashamed of the corniness though, because it had all felt so damn good. Weirdly good, but Phee wasn’t complaining. “‘I Got You Babe’ or whatever it’s called,” she answered Jen with a little giggle. “Together, at least. By myself I sang that ‘What’s Goin’ On’ song from the nineties. It was fun.”
"And I say to myself, what's going on!" Jen sang, then laughed. "That one? It was on that show." She clenched her eyes shut tight for a second as she tried to remember the name. "Seventh sense? Sense Seve-Eight! Sense Eight. So good." She could easily imagine Greg and Phee singing some corny old love song together but at least it sounded like it had been half joking so she might not have died from cringe if she'd been there.
“Yes, that one!” Phee confirmed, then giggled as Jen tried to think of the name of whatever show. “Oh! I heard about that, I think, but I didn’t watch it, should I?” She guessed so if Jen said it was ‘so good.’ Phee trusted that they had similar tastes in things, but she was more of a reader than a TV watcher most of the time. Jen seemed like she was pretty picky about her entertainment, so maybe she would give it a try. Maybe Greg would like it too and they could like, have Their Show they watched together.
Jen gave her a very animated shrug. "I honestly, I don't know, it was really, really weird." There had also been a lot of sex which tended to annoy her in most shows and maybe Phee was the same. "But that song is amazing," she said and picked up her phone to look it up and save it to her playlist for later. She wanted to remember the band's name too, pretty sure it was a one hit wonder kind of thing but she was still supposed to know it. "My phone is being slow," she sighed. "Oh, can I have the wifi password?"
Phee laughed a little and wrinkled her nose at Jen’s answer, not sure if that was good or bad. It was interesting, at least! Some things that were really, really weird were fun. “Oh sure! Uhhh ...” Phee picked up her own phone and went to the notes to find the wifi password. Her parents changed it on the regular, so it was hard to memorize. She started reading it off to Jen, then noticed that her little triangle icon at the top of her screen was grayed out. And there were no signal bars. “Huh,” she murmured, then peered over at Jen’s phone. “See if it’ll connect for you, doesn’t look like I’ve got signal.”
"What ever will we do without internet," Jen sighed. "We'll have to talk like they did in the old days." She shot Phee a teasing little smile, then looked at her phone again and shook her head. "Shit, I jinxed it. There's no connection at all." She sighed and turned off her phone, putting it aside to avoid the temptation of checking it over and over again. Funny how she could for hours without looking at it but just knowing she couldn't do it made it harder.
“That’s so weird,” Phee murmured, still poking at her own, turning the wifi off and on again a couple of times. The cable went out sometimes of course, that just happened with bad weather, but Phee almost always had a signal on her phone. She tapped out a short text to Greg -- your phone working? -- and set her phone aside, hoping it would go through eventually. “But oh well, at least it waited until you were here,” she said to Jen, smiling at her. “Being back in the stone age is always better with company! And if we get really desperate my PS4 plays Blu-Rays and stuff.” Phee didn’t need to be connected 24/7, it just felt weird not to be.
"I wholeheartedly trust you to entertain me in these trying times," Jen said solemnly. "Anyway, I came here to hang out with you and indulge in some juicy gossip." She spotted the book she'd given Phee for Christmas and shuffled over to reach for it. "I hope it's good," she said as she started leafing through it. "I figured you could learn more about plants, even if this book doesn't have any info on the magic part of them. But it does have information on the poisonous ones which I am willing to bet you think is as interesting as I do."
“Ooh, juicy gossip,” Phee said with an intrigued hum. “Like you mean karaoke, or do you have some gossip?” She looked at the big lovely book Jen was flipping through -- it had been a great Christmas present, and they’d laughed a bit over the fact that they’d both gotten each other books. Phee’s had been about plants, Jen’s had been about mortuary science. As soon as Phee had spotted it in the bookstore, she knew it was perfect, and Jen had seemed pleased. “It’s really awesome, I’ve already started flagging stuff.” She reached out to flip a couple of the little brightly-colored flags that were sticking out from the pages. “I’ve been taking it with me to Zania’s greenhouse and like, identifying stuff, it’s fun.”
Jen could have told her a lot of interesting things from the book she'd given her but she didn't think Phee was as interested in mortuary science as Jen was in plants. Of course Jen's interest stemmed mostly from what kind of things she could put in her aquariums but it was still there. "I have no juicy gossip for you," she admitted since that had been mostly a joke anyway. "You're more likely to have that, being Greg Wheeler's girlfriend." She pointed to a picture in the book. "I've seen that one in the cemetery a lot and I think it's poisonous." Her eyes went wide for a second, but it wasn't like they'd do anything about it - not for real. It was just fun to know.
Phee gave a little bark of a laugh and rolled her eyes. “You should know from having a brother that boys are terrible at conveying news,” she said. “And none of those popular girls give me the time of day, so. No gossip here.” She shrugged. It was no big deal to her -- she liked to hear a juicy bit of talk as much as the next person, but Phee didn’t really want to be involved in drama. She had enough of her own shit going on. She leaned over to peer at the plant Jen pointed out with an appropriate sound of interest. “Good to know, good to know,” she said. “I haven’t seen Zan growing those herself, but it wouldn’t surprise me, she’s got all kinds of cool plants. And dude, if you wanna try like, a million different teas, just let me know.”
"I'll let you in on a little secret," Jen said, lowering her voice as if this really was something nobody could ever overhear. "I don't really like gossip." She wrinkled her nose, then grinned. "I do like a million different teas though so yes, count me in. I should visit you at work some time too, if you think that's cool anyway. Do you think they'd mind that I know they're witches? I mean, I'll keep it to myself but you know I love all that stuff." Oh to be a fly on the wall in a witch's... studio? Workshop? Whatever the hell they called wherever the hell they did their magic. Phee was so new at all of this and she still lived with her parents so she didn't have anything like that yet.
“I don’t think they would mind,” Phee answered, but she couldn’t help but sound unsure about it, because she was. She squinched one side of her face up thoughtfully. “I mean like ... I feel like everybody in town knows they’re witches, even if they don’t know, you know what I mean? Like their family has been here since forever. But I dunno, maybe only I know that because of my dad.” It was possible the ‘normal’ folks of Point Pleasant had no idea the Castells were descended from one of the Six, even if it seemed unlikely to her. There were so many rumors in this town, somebody somewhere had to be murmuring the truth. “But I’ll ask if I can bring you sometime! In like, a subtle way.”
"I can be very discreet," Jen promised. "And you know I can keep a secret." She'd kept a few already and it wasn't like she talked to many people other than Phee. She glanced toward the window as she talked, then did a double take, frowning softly. "Okay, that is creepy," she said softly, pushing herself up to her knees and 'walking' to the edge of the bed so she could stand up and go check that her eyes were tricking her. "Wow, I can't even the street," she said, glancing back at Phee. She'd always loved the fog - until Point Pleasant. In this town it sometimes meant really bad things.
Phee had been so distracted by Jen’s company that she hadn’t noticed the way the light coming in from the window had changed. It had gotten more muted and a little darker. It got dark early in the winter, but not this early. She frowned a bit as Jen headed for the window, then got up herself to join her friend. “Oh wow,” she said softly, her eyes widening a bit as she took in all that blank whiteness. Phee leaned closer. “I like, can’t even see the ground, what the hell.” She didn’t think she’d ever seen a fog that thick, and she’d lived in Point Pleasant her whole life. “It wasn’t like that when you came in, and that was like, five minutes ago.”
Jen was tempted to open the window just to touch it. It looked like it would be solid to the touch but she knew it wouldn't really be, just damp. Still, she wanted to touch and the only reason she didn't was because she remembered the last time there had been a fog in Point Pleasant. "I hope it's not like the last time," she said quietly. Her dad was working, he'd given her a ride here so that meant he was still driving out there. She just hoped he was staying ahead of this fog and had made it safely to the station. "I saw it come in off the ocean but it was still so far away I didn't even think it would reach us so soon - or at all."
Oh right, the last time. Phee’s stomach sank a bit; she hadn’t thought of that yet. Or about Jen’s dad. “Shit,” she whispered. Her mom was home, and she thought Bash was too, and their dad was out of town, so those were good things. Phee looked a little wide-eyed as she glanced between Jen and the window. “That means it moved really fast ... do you want to try and call your dad? We’ve got a landline, I don’t know why, but mom keeps it around ...” It was a lame, mild hope, but maybe it was worth a shot. The police station had to have old phones too, right? The sheriff might not have made it there yet, if that was even where he was going, but somebody would pick up.
Jen's first reaction was that yes, she wanted to call her dad but he was probably still driving and if he wasn't at the station yet then there was no point calling. "Not yet," she decided. "He's smart and capable, if he gets caught in it he'll park the car." And he had a gun, for some reason that was reassuring too because she knew too damn well they might not be dealing with 'just fog'. "I'm so glad Hunter's in Portland right now," she added because her brother would freak the hell out if he was here. After the demon thing, everything seemed to scare him fifty times more than it should.
Parking would definitely be smarter than driving in this, from what Phee could see. Maybe the sheriff had some powerful high beam spotlight or something, but that fog looked thick as soup to her. “Yeah, me too,” Phee murmured, even if she didn’t really care that much about Hunter. He was just Jen’s Brother to her now. The mention of him did make her want to go make sure Bash was actually home, but she knew she’d heard him in his room when she went down to wait for Jen, and he hadn’t snuck out around her. Phee just stared out into the fog for another quiet moment, then stepped away from the window. None of this was settling well. “Well ... if it doesn’t clear off, I know my mom would be cool with you spending the night,” she offered.
Jen was hoping the fog hadn't rolled down the hills yet, that her dad would make it safely to the station before the blind caught up with him. She wasn't so sure though, not with how fast it had come in. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then glanced at Phee again. "I hope so, I really don't want to walk home in this," she said with a wan smile as she made her way back to the bed. There was a part of her that wanted to close the curtains, as if not seeing the fog would somehow protect them from whatever might be coming. "Shit, I've never been scared of weather before," she admitted, settling her hand on her stomach where it felt like something was trying to gnaw its way out.
Brianna would never send a teenager out to walk home even in clear weather in the winter -- unless it was Greg, of course, but he was right down the street -- much less in this kind of fog. Though Phee honestly couldn’t remember there ever being this kind of fog. Didn’t mean it didn’t happen, but something about it was making her nervous too. It all made her wish she was a more accomplished witch, that she could do a spell and figure out what was happening or make sure they were protected or something. Phee lingered at the window for a moment, then went to join Jen on the edge of the bed again. “I have a few times, but ... maybe it’ll just clear off fast. It’ll be okay. ... do you want a distraction? We could start up a movie or play a game or something ...”
Jen nodded and wondered if Phee realized how much it meant that she could actually admit to being scared with her. It was just something about Phee, Jen didn't feel like she needed to keep up a cool front with her like she did with most people. Maybe it was just that Phee herself was so genuine and warm and she never seemed interested in picking at people's weak spots. "Let's watch a movie, your choice," she said and after the movie she could try to call her dad. There was a small part of her that didn't want to call, that wanted to prolong it if it was bad news. Maybe that was normal. Two more hours of everything being Schrödinger's Okay.
Phee was bad at fronts, and she kind of expected everyone else to be bad at them too. She could play an ice queen role when she needed to, to block idiot assholes out, but when it came to fear, she wasn’t so good at pretending. Fear was a gift, someone had said so, like an early warning system. Something was definitely not right about that fog, and she couldn’t blame Jen at all for being scared. It was a little easier on Phee with her mom and brother home and her dad accounted for out of town. She nodded and gave Jen’s arm a little squeeze, then got up to go peek through her collection of Blu-Rays. Streaming anything was out since the internet was down, but she thought she could find something entertaining on disc. It would at least give them something to do, and hopefully by the time it was over the fog would be gone and everything would be okay again.