Prompt #143 -- Gossip -- Emptiness -- lordvisucius -- Original

[lordvisucius.livejournal.com]

Title: Emptiness
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Gossip
Warnings: Language
Rating: R-ish for cursing
Summary: A day like any other makes Jen realize what she's been missing all along.

"Do you want eggs, dear?"

I shrugged. We'd been having eggs every day for two weeks; it didn't really matter to me.

"Fried or scrambled?" she pressed. I shrugged again, and I could hear her thoughts in my head. How fucking eloquent.

Scrambled it was, apparently, as a plate loaded with a mound of egg slid in front of me. I scooped a forkful into my mouth, and they tasted dry. I ate them anyway.

"Ready for school?"

In silent reply, although I was nowhere near done with my eggs, I dropped my fork on the table and stood up roughly. The backpack, red and blue and meticulously prepared the night before, was slung across one shoulder. I let myself into the car, parked where it always was.

We drove in silence. That is, she drove and I was silent. I caught snatches of conversation, presumably directed toward me, about dinner and family and the coming spring. What Spring?—I was utterly freezing from the cold.

The bell rang, clanging, loud and metallic. The teacher went through role call in a strict monotone. I watched the wind instead.

"Here," I called dully. The word tasted funny in my mouth. Outside, the breeze had halted, and I watched the previously airborne wisps slowly settle to the ground.

The teacher started talking. I listened half-heartedly; the window had stopped interesting me anyway. She'd already gone over the material; for the test coming up at the end of the week. I hadn't studied. I wasn't going to—I never did.

I stopped penciling in my row of numbers for a second, listening for the slight buzz that always preceded the end of period bell. When I didn't hear it, I scribbled a hasty answer and didn't bother to check the clock.

The whispers grew louder. I felt like the only one doing the work. I probably am, but then, I felt no desire to talk to my friends. Friends? They bent to my level occasionally, when it pleased them, and conversed with me if it was convenient. No, they were not my friends.

"Did you hear what happened to that bitch? Nica?" one of them asked me. I shrugged, looking up to see Rachelle sitting casually on the desk in front of me.

Of course I know, but another 'friend' filled me in anyway. "The damn slut went and got knocked up, and not even with her own boyfriend. Heard she's so damn crazy she won't get an abortion. Damn Christian values, and her too."

Gossip carried itself on effortlessly. "Her boyfriend, whatever the fuck his name is, says he'll care for it. Noble an' all, but the kid ought to just dump her ass. She doesn't deserve a second more of his time, if you know it."

Agreeing nods. I didn't react to the statement. Something niggled at me as I went on with the work, scowling as I managed to reverse some problems carelessly. They talked over me.

"Nica doesn't seem like the person who would cheat on her boyfriend though, and they've been together almost a year now—"

"And in that time, how many has she fucked? How many more has she flirted with? I wouldn't trust her a bit, and neither should any of you.

"Damnit, she's not good for anything now. What she's been doing at school these last few years: all gone down the drain. She don't amount to a damn thing anymore. If her parents still want her, well, that's not what I've heard."

A collective gasp. I knew it wasn't true, because I had seen Nica with her mother that morning, and they seemed as close as anything. I corrected my number offhandedly, and didn't say anything.

"Who got her pregnant again? I heard… someone older?"

"Her uncle," someone called, not part of the group but clearly listening in, and making my 'friends' dissolve into giggles.

The teacher's stern gaze passed over us, which I essentially ignored but made my friends cower back into their seats and look back at the assignment. A few minutes of peace, bound to pass, and quickly.

"She's dropping out of sports," the girl to my left reported dutifully. Sarah. "Shoulda expected that, after all, can't expect her to run around with a fucking baby in her belly."

"Maybe if she hadn't been smart enough to think of that, the damn thing would miscarry and save her the trouble."

A pause. Mrs. Crawford was looking our way again. I moved on to the last problem, waiting for the conversation to pick up again.

'"What do you think about all this, Jen?"

I didn't reply. They weren't expecting it, I was sure, and then it was time for them to prove me wrong.

"Jen? You alright? Come on, say something here, girl."

I shrugged, feeling that I was overusing that particular expression this morning. And I was, more than usual—normally, people just let me be.

When my silence was stretching uncomfortably, and everyone seemed to be patiently waiting for a more articulate response, I sighed. "Whatever suits her," I said, almost too quietly for them to hear. They heard.

"Damn bitch. Raising a damn baby in the middle of high school. I don't know what she's thinking, honestly…"

She trailed off, and I heard the buzz before I heard the rest of her sentence, which got drowned out by the deafening noise that followed. I lumped my books into my arms and left, not particularly drawn to the idea of hanging around with the group of girls anyway.

I opened my lunch to—surprise—more eggs. They were fried, sunny side up, and I stuck the supplied fork into them without comment. Far overdone, enough for the yolk to remain solid despite multiple holes from the fork's tines. No, my mother was not known for being a good cook.

I emptied the last half an egg into the nearest garbage can a few minutes later, deciding I wasn't hungry enough to stomach any more of the things. I took out a book, whichever one I had crammed into my backpack last night (Nineteen Eighty-four, which my cousin had read and hated and given to me last Christmas) and tried to read.

The din was pushing distracting into downright irritating, so I stopped but didn't bother to put the book away. No one would talk to me if I looked like I was reading, so I stared down at the lines of printed text and didn't see any of it.

I was proven wrong yet again.

"Hey," said a soft voice—one I didn't recognize immediately, and ruling out most of my 'friends' (I had more often heard them speak than seen them). "How is everything for you?"

I debated pretending that I was too absorbed in my book to hear her. I almost did, but my curiosity won out in the end. I looked up.

Is that Nica? I had surely seen her before, and vaguely recognized who she was. There was something about her that I remembered keenly. "Not much, how about you?"

She shrugged. "I guess not much is happening for me either. That's not what you've heard, though, right?"

Right?

"Nica?" I asked, setting my book to the side, then frowned to myself. I hadn't meant to actually say that.

"Yep." She said it with a shadow in her voice but a smile on her face. "And you. You're Jen."

I nodded, and I smiled tentatively. She didn't return it.

"Do you always hang out with those girls?" Those girls—I had to understand what she meant.

So I shrugged. "They're not really friends."

"Don't believe a word they say. I'm not pregnant, even if they decided to tell the entire school I am. I guess I'll just, oh, have an abortion sooner or later and they won't have to face a single worry about it."

"It'll probably end up as a miscarriage if anything," I found myself saying. I turned my eyes back to the cover of the book, limp in my hands.

Her eyes were as empty as my heart.

"Mom," I whispered, and flinched as she dropped the pair of eggs she was holding in her hand. She turned surprised eyes at me, and I remembered how long it had been since I had called her that. Almost three years. Three years.

"Mom," I said again, as if I was tasting it. It still sounded off to me, but then again, it was practically foreign. "Has… do you have… did dad leave you his new number?"

"No—of course n—I can call the lawyer tomo—Jen, dear, is everything alright? Do you have allergies?"

I shook my head, and she smiled warmly. "Come on, dear, we can go out to eat tonight. I bet you're just sick of eggs."

She virtually skipped to the closet to grab a coat, then grinned at me. She was bubbling with giddiness. "Don't take too long, alright? I'll be just in the car."

After the creak of the door opening had faded, I took a deep breath and whispered into the open night.

I love you, mom.