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five-rivers · 5 years ago

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Exile

Prompt by @halfaqueen. My goodness, this took forever to write. I have no idea how it got so long.

Danny hadn't realized that exile was still a thing, but when he and Jazz had gotten expelled, and their parents had been banned or barred from basically all public places, and all of them had gotten restraining orders of one sort or another, and dozens of lawsuits had been filed against Fentonworks... Well... Officially, it wasn't exile, but that was what Amity Park was clearly aiming for with this harassment campaign.

He watched his city, his haunt, disappear over the horizon from the back window of the GAV. It was all he could do not to cry out aloud. Leaving like this felt like tearing part of himself away.

"Don't worry, Danno!" said Jack, leaning over the back seat. He wasn't driving, as he had lost his license early on in the city's war against them. "Just give it a few weeks! They'll be begging for us to come back, what with all the ghost that'll attack!"

This did not make Danny feel better.

"Jack," said Maddie, drawing out her husband's name. As clear as day, her tone said, Don't get their hopes up.

"You betcha! Because nobody can catch a ghost better than the Fentons, that's for sure!"

Jack Fenton hadn't ever been good at reading things as abstract as tones.

"They think they can stop the ghosts by closing the portal? Please! If it was as easy as that, we'd have closed it ages ago!"

Danny cringed, and sunk lower in his seat. No. None of that made Danny feel better.

Amity Park had hired other ghost hunters, blatantly replacing the Fentons, but Danny didn't know how good they were. He didn't know how good he should hope they were, either. On one hand, he wanted them to be bad, so that Amity Park would drop the restraining orders and he could go home. On the other, he wanted them to be good, so that Amity Park would be safe, so that everyone would be safe and no one would be hurt. But, then, if they were good, and everything was fine, that meant that Amity Park didn't need him any more, that he wasn't helpful, and, even though it was selfish, part of him wanted to be needed.

But, worse, what if they were good enough to defeat the more common ghosts, but then someone powerful come through, someone big, and they couldn't handle it? What if the new hunters worked for the GIW and would send the ghosts they caught off to be experimented on?

Danny had warned away as many ghosts as he could about what was happening before they left, but it didn't seem to be enough. And what if that warning got to someone who would see it as an invitation? As an opportunity to strike, now that he, Phantom, was gone.

He'd been so worried, stressed, and paranoid that he'd made himself sick. He was probably going to make himself sick again before the day was out.

"Where are we going, anyway?" he mumbled.

"Didn't we tell you?" asked Maddie. Danny shrugged. "We're visiting some relatives of Jack's. They have an interest in the supernatural, and they offered to let us stay with them while we look for a more permanent solution."

"Yep!" said Jack. "My favorite cousin, Cory! She's not quite a ghost hunter, but she has that Fenton blood for sure!"

"Cordelia Nightingale," said Maddie. "I don't think that her branch of the family has been Fentons since the sixteen-hundreds."

Danny swallowed. He was not a fan of the name 'Nightingale,' all things considered. It reminded him too much of pain and Sam pushed up against a wooden stake.

He decided this, on top of everything else, was a bad omen. He bet that 'cousin Cordelia' was going to turn out to be a ghost or, somehow, something worse. Like a witch. Or she had something like Freakshows staff. Or she grew blood blossoms for fun. Or she was part of a cult.

Ugh, why did that sound like something that might happen? What was his life?

Half gone, that's what.

Jazz patted him on the knee. "Maybe it'll be nice?" she said, hopefully.

"Maybe," said Danny.

He didn't have high hopes.

Sam probably would have liked the house. Danny didn't. The Gothic architecture only accentuated his fears. He frowned up at the spikes on the railing and the darkly painted boards. No. He didn't like this house at all.

He wanted to go home.

But, at his mother's prodding, he bent and picked up his suitcase. Most of his things were still at home and, if this lasted longer than a week, would then be put into a storage locker along with the rest of the family's belongings, to await a time when they once again had a house of their own to live in.

Jack bounced up the steps and pressed the doorbell with his thumb. Almost at once, a thin woman with graying brown hair opened the door. She wore a black turtleneck and a dark, straight skirt that ended at her ankles. Somehow, she made the outfit look practically Victorian.

"Cory!" exclaimed Jack, giving her a trademark Jack Fenton hug.

Both Jazz and Danny cringed slightly. That felt a bit too familiar for someone who he hadn't seen for literally their entire lives. Danny just hoped this wouldn't be Vlad all over again.

But, to his surprise, Cordelia gave Jack a thin smile and hugged him back. She extracted herself and stepped away from the door, into the house.

"Please," she said, "come in. You must all be tired. Amity Park is hours away."

One by one, the Fentons passed through the door, Danny bringing up the suspicious and paranoid rear.

"You must be Jasmine and Daniel," said Cordelia, closing the door. It wasn't quite dark inside the house, but it did feel rather dim. It smelled sweet, but dusty. Like flowers. Old, dry flowers.

"Jazz and Danny, please, Ms. Nightingale," said Jazz.

"Call me Cordelia. We're family, after all."

Was that ominous, or was Danny just paranoid? Well, it wasn't paranoia if people really were out to get you, right?

His breath went cold in his mouth, and something moved out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, trying to trace it.

He couldn't see anything. His ghost sense hadn't gone off.

"Danny?" said Maddie. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just thought I saw something."

"Probably my cat," said Cordelia, calmly. "She's a shy little thing, but curious. Don't be surprised if you don't see her again."

"Right," said Danny, doubtful, but not wanting to press the point.

"Now, I've cleaned out rooms for you upstairs," she gestured, and began to lead the way.

Danny started to follow, but another shadow moved at the edge of his sight, this one distinctly humanoid. He turned again, trying to find what cast it. There was nothing. He hurried to catch up with the others.

"Do you live here all alone?" he asked as they climbed the stairs.

"Oh, no," said Cordelia. "This place is much too large for one person. I let out rooms to some nice young ladies who work in town. None of them are here right now, of course, but I'll introduce all of you at dinner."

Well, there went that theory. He glanced back down the stairs. There was definitely a chill in this house.

"You didn't have to give us this much space," said Maddie, snapping Danny's attention back to the conversation. "We should pay you."

"Nonsense. You're family, and those rooms weren't being used anyway. Here, this one has a king mattress, so you two will want this one, even if it is a bit tight, and Daniel, Jasmine, you two take the ones on either side."

Danny and Jazz shared a look. It was a lot easier for Jazz to cover for Danny, or for Danny to sneak into her room for help, when they were next to each other. But there was nothing to be done. They shrugged.

It didn't matter who took which room. Jazz went left. Danny went right.

The room was a lot like the rest of the house. Old-fashioned and dark. It was also meticulously clean and decorated like something out of an old movie. It looked like a set piece. It really did.

Then again, Cordelia did say she had just cleaned the rooms. It wasn't anything to get nervous about, even if it did make Danny feel like he was the main character in a horror film.

He put down his suitcase.

"The bathroom is just down at the end of the hall. The schedule is posted next to it, make sure you write down when you want to shower, so you don't disrupt anyone," said Cordelia, still talking to Jack and Maddie in the hall. "The kitchen is downstairs and in the back. If you take the last of something from the refrigerator, write it down on the shopping list. Otherwise, go ahead and make yourselves at home. Freshen up, take a nap. Dinner is at six."

"Do you want any help with that?" asked Maddie. "You're cooking for an awful lot of people."

"No, no, I'm more than used to it."

"Alright. Did you catch all that, kids?"

"Yes," said Jazz.

"Yeah," said Danny. He wanted to look for whatever was giving him this chill. He didn't like the idea of something supernatural sneaking up on him or his family while he slept.

He couldn't find it, and it was driving him crazy.

There was something in this house, even if Danny couldn't see it as anything but a shadow in his peripheral vision. Jazz couldn't see it at all, but she believed him after that whole thing with Youngblood.

Even if they couldn't find the thing, however, they found lots of other... things. Creepy things. Dead-eyed porcelain dolls. Dusty portraits. Bundles of dried herbs. Weird sculpture things. Light fixtures that should have been updated before Danny was born. A stuffed cat. A closet full of brooms.

"You know what I haven't seen?" asked Danny, as it turned five o'clock.

"No," said Jazz. "What? Ghosts?"

"A litter box," said Danny.

"That doesn't really mean anything," said Jazz. "It could be in one of the bedrooms, or there's a cat door and the cat goes outside."

"Maybe," said Danny. "Let's check out the yard."

This far from the nearest town, the yard was big and cut into a forest that loomed darkly over them even in the bright sunlight. The yard itself was full of flowering plants, but...

"I think these are all poisonous," he said. "At least, a lot of them are."

"Isn't that normal for decorative plants?" asked Jazz. "They weren't bred to eat."

"Yeah, I guess," said Danny, frowning. "But would you necessarily want a cat out here with all this?"

"Cats are carnivores. They wouldn't eat the plants. Can you see the neighbors?"

"No. Too many trees."

"How far away are we, I wonder?"

"It can't be that far," said Danny. "Not if her boarders commute to town."

"That's true. We're not in the wilderness." Jazz scanned up and down the height of the trees. "Not really."

"Maybe a little bit," said Danny. He could imagine some of those trees being hundreds of years old. The ground might not have been untrod by human feet, but... "Does everything here just sort of feel... off? Or is that just me?"

"I don't know," said Jazz.

Gravel crunched in the driveway, audible even from the other side of the house. Jazz and Danny walked to the corner of the house so that they could see around the corner and watch what was happening.

A small white car was pulling into the driveway. It stopped next to the GAV. As they watched, three young women stepped out. One of them had long, dark hair and wore a red sweater and skirt, reminiscent of Cordelia's. The second had pale blond, almost white, hair and wore a deep brown shirt and skirt. The third had red hair, and wore white. All of them had wicked looking boots and matching leather purses.

"Okay," whispered Jazz, pulling Danny back around the corner. "I... Maybe they just like to match?"

"I hate this so much," said Danny. "I want to go home."

"Maybe whatever is going on here is friendly?"

"We are literally never that lucky," said Danny. "I hope it's just a ghost. I can deal with ghosts. It's probably a ghost."

"Really?"

"No. Let's go in. We're going to have to meet them eventually."

"This is Sofia," said Cordelia, indicating the dark haired woman. "This is Alison." She put her hand on the blonde's shoulder. "And this is Morgan." She nodded at the redhead. "Girls, these are my cousins, Jack, Maddie, Jazz, and Danny."

Three sets of eyes moved sequentially from Jack, to Maddie, to Jazz, to Danny. They stayed on Danny.

"It's nice to meet you," said Sofia, still looking at Danny.

He tried to hide his discomfort. Could they tell he was half-ghost? He hoped not. That was his trump card if everything turned out as badly as he feared and he had to get his family out in a hurry.

What he wouldn't give for a piece of concrete evidence right now. Without it, his parents would never listen to him. They hadn't with Vlad.

They were still looking at him. Jazz slipped in front of him.

"So!" she said, brightly. "Dinner?"

Danny pushed back in front of Jazz. "Yeah! It's six, right?"

"Well, it sounds like the kids have inherited that good old Fenton appetite! Huh, Cory?" added Jack

"Yes, yes, come along. Girls, why don't you go ahead and get the table started. No, Maddie, the girls know how I like it, I'll show you later. You just sit down and relax." Cordelia disappeared into the kitchen.

The three younger women moved smoothly around the room, pulling plates and silverware- real silver silverware- from a china cabinet. They set the long table in the middle of the room with rigorous formality. There were more kinds of forks at each place setting than Danny had seen even when having dinner at Sam's. They topped it off with two candelabras.

Cordelia emerged with a casserole dish. Whatever was in it was thick, roughly cylindrical, and covered with a thick red sauce.

"Wow! Is that a roast?" asked Jack.

"Yes," said Cordelia. "I always make this when new guests arrive. The girls have all had it."

The 'girls' nodded as one, and retreated to the opposite side of the table. They almost moved in sync with one another.

Cordelia put the roast on the table, and went back to get side dishes. This gave the three women more time to stare at Danny.

On occasion, Danny did want attention, acknowledgement, what have you, but this scrutiny would have been a bit much even when he was at the height of his 'look at me' phase. He kept a tight hold on his core to keep himself from flickering invisible.

Cordelia came back with two serving dishes full of green... things. Possibly vegetables, but Danny didn't recognize them. She then started to, with excruciating slowness, carve the roast.

The slow exposure of the meat under all that sauce was enough to make Danny vaguely ill. It was too... wet. Too vibrant and too gray all at once. He swallowed against the smell.

"Wow!" said Jack, as Cordelia dropped a slab of meat on his plate. "This looks great, Cory! What kind of meat is it?" He was already sawing away at the flesh. It was all Danny could do to keep himself from slapping it away from him.

"Beef," said Cordelia, smiling at him as she carved. "Locally grown and harvested. It's an old family recipe, from before our branches split and we were all Nightingales."

"You mean Fentons!" said Jack around a mouthful of meat.

Cordelia's smile turned brittle. "However you would like to put it, Jack." She went around the table, serving herself last.

Danny made no move to pick up his utensils. The women on the other side of the table ate while watching him, barely looking at their food. Jazz was the only one who seemed to notice, and when Danny caught her eye and shook his head, she put down the bite of meat she had picked up, turning her focus to the vegetables.

"So," Jazz said, "what do you three do?"

Sofia's eyes flicked briefly to Jazz. "Graphic design," she said.

"That must be interesting."

"It's a job."

Danny didn't eat that night.

"I have some granola bars," said Jazz, grabbing his arm before he entered his guest room. Not that he intended to sleep there. Or anywhere.

"You keep them," he said. "I'm fine. You didn't eat much, either."

"You didn't eat anything," said Jazz.

"I'll be okay." Danny flared his eyes. "I've got an extra reserve, remember?"

"If you say so," said Jazz. She was frowning. "Danny... Let's share a room tonight."

"What?"

"I don't like how those three were looking at you," she said. "I can't believe Mom and Dad didn't notice..."

"They don't notice anything," said Danny. He pulled Jazz into the dubious safety of his room. He didn't want to have this conversation out in the hallway. "Wait," he said, eyes flicking over the room. "Where's my suitcase?"

Jazz shrugged. "Kind of reminds me," she said, not quite whispering. "I was thinking about barricading the door."

Danny hissed through his teeth. "I put my thermos up here when we went to eat. It's gone, too."

"If this were a horror movie, this would be when we yelled at the screen for the characters to leave."

"Think we can convince Mom and Dad?"

"Maybe together?"

Danny shrugged. "Let's give it a try."

They left the bedroom, and knocked on their parents' door. There was no answer.

Jazz frowned. "Maybe they have their earplugs in already," she said. "Can you, you know." She made a gesture where her arms crossed each other.

"Let's see," he said, going back to the bedroom. He waited until Jazz shut the door to turn invisible and phase through the wall.

Passing through the wall felt... odd. Like walking through layers of cobwebs. He shook his head as if to clear it and surveyed the room. Jack and Maddie were already in bed. He made a face and stepped back into the other room, becoming visible and tangible for Jazz.

"They're asleep," he said, shaking his head.

"First thing tomorrow morning, then," Jazz said, wringing her hands. "Maybe- Do you think we should sleep in the GAV? Put up the ghost shield?"

"I'm not even sure that this is a ghost," said Danny. He walked around the bed, part of him still looking for his missing suitcase. "But you have a point, I just..." He glanced at the wall his room shared with his parents'. If he and Jazz slept in the GAV, Jazz would be very safe, but their parents would be vulnerable. If he stayed here, and Jazz slept in the GAV, she'd be safer than sleeping alone in the house, and his parents would be safer, but if something happened to her, he wouldn't be able to react to it, he wouldn't be able to protect her. "I don't know."

"Let's at least go down and look. Maybe you left your suitcase in there, after all?"

"I don't think so," said Danny.

"We can get the weapons locker."

Danny blinked. "I almost forgot about that. Yeah. Let's go."

They were halfway down the stairs when Jazz grabbed his shoulder. "What?" whispered Danny.

"I can't hear anything."

"Huh?"

"This house is old. These stairs creaked when we were walking on it before. Why isn't it now?"

Danny bit his lip. "Let's keep going." He put his hand on Jazz's and made them both invisible.

"I can't see my feet," said Jazz.

"Just be careful," said Danny, continuing down the stairs. "I'm going to phase us through the front door, okay?"

"Fine."

It was still twilight when they stepped outside, the first stars just beginning to show. It wasn't hard for them to navigate, slipping around the white car, but when they did, and finally got a good look at the GAV, they froze.

Jazz said something very un-Jazz-like. Danny let his invisibility fade.

"What happened?" asked Jazz, in shock.

"It looks like someone beat it with a crowbar," said Danny, almost reverently, touching the crumpled metal. "A really big, really fast crowbar."

"Danny, this glass is supposed to be bulletproof."

"And ghost-proof," agreed Danny. "Let's go barricade your room. Think it can get through a dresser?"

The thing about being under high levels of stress for long periods of time was that it was tiring. Exhausting, even. So, even though Danny didn't intend to sleep, he did.

He woke up unable to move, something heavy weighing down his chest. His eyes fluttered open. Something huge and dark, the shadow he'd only glimpsed before, loomed over him, pressed down on him. He could see Jazz's bright hair hanging off of the bed above him. He tried to call out, to warn her, to get her to run, but he couldn't speak.

He couldn't breathe-

When his eyes opened again, light was weakly streaming through the thick glass of the windows, making the dust in the room sparkle gold. He sat straight up, breathing hard. He was still in Jazz's room, the dresser pulled across the doorway. Why do that and then leave him here? It didn't make sense.

"What's wrong?" asked Jazz, voice deep and crackled with sleep. She yawned.

Danny told her.

"That sounds like sleep paralysis."

"Like what now?"

"Sleep paralysis," said Jazz. She yawned again. "Some people get it. They wake up, but they're still asleep and they can't move. And also they hallucinate."

"That sounds fake."

"You sound fake."

"You know what? That's fair. That's actually fair. This whole situation sounds fake, so why not add sleep paralysis to the whole thing? It's better than an actual literal demon." He took a deep breath. "What do we do now?"

Jazz licked her lips and ran a hand through her hair.

"We tell them that the GAV has been trashed, that those women were staring at you like they wanted to eat you all dinner, and that your clothes were stolen. And then I'll spell it out for them, if I have to."

"What, that this place is probably haunted or possessed and Dad's cousin is a witch?"

"No," said Jazz, making a face. "That'll probably only make them want to stay even more. That those three are probably pedophiles who stole your clothing and wrecked the GAV so we couldn't leave, and that neither of us felt safe sleeping alone. Sorry. Then we'll make them call a cab."

"No, no, that's fine. That's a better explanation than I could come up with. Let's do that. I would honestly rather stay at Vlad's than here."

"Yeah," Jazz dragged her hand through her hair again, and grimaced. "Let me get dressed, first. Do you see my brush over there?"

"No," said Danny.

Jazz looked around the room. "Actually... Where is my suitcase?"

"It was-" Danny stopped. "It was in that corner when we came in, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," said Jazz. "Okay, forget getting dressed. We're talking to Mom and Dad now." She swung out of bed and made her way to the door.

Danny phased through her, so he would reach the dresser first and easily pushed it out of the way. He stuck his head out the door, looking both ways for Cordelia and the borders.

The door to the room next to Jazz's, their parent's room, was open.

"Shoot," said Danny. He walked over. "They're not here."

"Downstairs? Maybe they went to get breakfast." Jazz emerged from the room crossing her arms over her chest.

"Maybe," said Danny. He had a bad feeling about this.

Cautiously, they made their way down the stairs and peered into the kitchen. No one was there.

"Hello, children," said Cordelia, directly behind them.

They jumped, both trying to get away and spin at the same time. Jazz clipped her elbow on the doorway and almost fell. Danny caught her and pulled her back up.

"If you are looking for your parents, you just missed them."

"What do you mean?" asked Jazz, a little more sharply than she usually would.

"I mean, they just left," said Cordelia mildly. "They took that vehicle of yours to town to go shopping. Something about not eating me out of my house. It was very kind of them."

"But the GAV was wrecked..." said Jazz, even as Danny gave a tug on her arm.

"Was it?" asked Cordelia, smiling. "It seemed fine when they left. You should get dressed, though, Jasmine, and, Daniel, are those the clothes you were wearing yesterday?"

"Our clothes are gone," said Jazz.

"You left them in your car? Well, no wonder you're looking for your parents. I think I might have some old clothes that will fit you. Come along, now." She turned.

Possibilities tumbled through Danny's head. A large part of him wanted to just grab Jazz and fly away to find their parents in town, but he estimated that there was a pretty good chance that they weren't in town, but trapped here somewhere. Jazz had apparently made that same calculation, because she was giving him the 'don't you dare use your powers' head shake.

Fine. Okay. Play along it was, then.

Cordelia lead them into a dusty ground floor room full of chests. She opened one, knocking free a number of cobwebs. "These are a little old fashioned, I'm afraid, Daniel, but it has been a while since a boy your age lived here." She handed him a small, neat stack of clothing. "And these are for you, Jasmine. I wore them when I was about your age. I grew a few inches, after that."

"Right," said Jazz, already backing away. "We'll just go... change... then. Right Danny?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

Jazz didn't speak to him until they were back upstairs. "What now?"

"Now," said Danny, "I go ghost and see if Mom and Dad are trapped in a dungeon under the house or something. If not, I take you and get the heck out of here. If they are, I rescue them, we get the heck out of here. We'll steal Cordelia's car or something."

"Not much of a plan."

"Don't kid yourself. We never have a plan. Do you want to get dressed, first, or...?"

"Pass."

"I'll have to bring you with me. I don't want to leave you alone up here while I'm searching," warned Danny.

"I know. I don't want to be alone here, either."

Danny took a breath and-

Did not go ghost. He doubled over, gasping for breath, transformation rings flickering to nothing around him as the shadows pressed inward, suffocating him. The huge fingers around his chest- The almost-human silhouette-

"Danny?" asked Jazz, alarmed, shaking his shoulder. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

"Not," wheezed Danny, "sleep paralysis."

The shadows crept up over his eyes and everything went dark.

When he woke up, he was wearing different clothes. Very different clothes. They were all white and loose. He wasn't sure if he should call them robes, but they had that kind of feeling. His shoes were gone. He was in his guest room, on the bed. Jazz was nowhere to be seen.

Danny should have taken his family and run as soon as he saw that not-ghost shadow. He swallowed, shaking, and clenched his fists. It was still here, watching him. He could feel it, even if he couldn't see it.

Okay. First step, get out of here.

He swung his feet off the bed. As soon as they touched the floor, something twined around his ankle and rapidly climbed up his leg. He gasped and yanked himself back, trying to free his knee from the shadow twisted around it. It held fast, firmly squeezing his thigh.

Danny growled. This wasn't the first shadow he had fought. He gathered ectoplasm in his hand and poured energy into it until it burned brighter than magnesium. The shadow retreated, and Danny scrambled to stand on the middle of the bed, ectoblast still in his fist.

"Now, now, no need for any of that."

Cordelia stood in the doorway, not the least bit surprised to see Danny wielding supernatural powers.

"Where's my family?" demanded Danny.

"Safe," said Cordelia, neutrally, "and they will continue to remain so."

Danny shifted, and the bed springs squealed. "What do you want?" he asked.

"My heritage. Come along. I will explain as we go." She turned in the doorway and looked over her shoulder. "Our shadow will not trouble you, should you follow now."

Danny clenched his jaw at the threat but gingerly climbed down from the bed and followed Cordelia across the frigid floor.

"Our last common ancestor was Elizabeth Nightingale," said Cordelia. "She was married to James Fenton. They had two children, John Fenton-Nightingale and Mary Fenton-Nightingale." She paused. "Elizabeth was knowledgeable in what would have been called witchcraft, and she was very, very good at it."

They climbed down the stairs to the first floor. All of the lights were off.

"But, as these things happen, she died. A mistake with a summoning." Cordelia turned into a long hallway Danny had missed in his earlier explorations of the house. "John and Mary were divided on how to handle her legacy. John," the name was said with anger, "decided that Elizabeth's craft, her knowledge, was evil, and decided to destroy it. He burned generations of Nightingale knowledge in a single night. When Mary tried to stop him, to salvage her mother's legacy, he tried to burn her, too. He denounced her as a witch."

"I'm sorry about that," said Danny. "I really am." After all, he knew exactly what that felt like. "But I don't see what that has to do with us. That was hundreds of years ago. A bit late for revenge, don't you think?" A sufficiently disturbed ghost wouldn't, but Cordelia was, as far as Danny could tell, human.

"This isn't about revenge," said Cordelia. "Besides, it has everything to do with you. Of the two of us, you are the one who met the man, Phantom."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's no need for you to play coy with me, young man," said Cordelia. "Why else do you think I put so much time and effort into getting you here? The magics to turn your town against your parents weren't child's play, after all." She bent and seized the corner of a rug, pulling it up and back to reveal a trap door. "Neither was calling the shadow to keep you bound." She lifted the ring handle on the trap door, pulling it open. "After you."

Danny stared down the dark hole below. There was a metal ladder, but he couldn't tell where it ended. A very faint light from somewhere to the right reflected off of some of the rungs.

"Is this where you reveal you're a cannibal?" asked Danny, unimpressed. "Is that what horror movie this is?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Hardly. Although you and Jasmine refusing to eat with us last night made everything harder than it had to be."

That definitely wasn't Danny's stomach growling at the reminder that he hadn't eaten since lunchtime yesterday. "Drugged, was it?"

They stared at each other over the trap door.

"If you refuse to cooperate, we can always use Jack. Or Jasmine."

Danny's lips twitched as he held back a snarl. "Fine," he snapped, angrily climbing down, into the hole.

It turned out that the ladder wasn't terribly long after all. It descended into a basement of normal height.

That was, however, the only normal thing about the space. Far from simply being unfinished, the floor of the basement seemed to be stone. So were what little he could see of the walls. It was like the basement had been carved from one huge piece of bedrock, but that couldn't be possible. Danny didn't know, well, anything about geology, but he was pretty sure houses usually weren't built on stuff like this.

To the right, there was a small table with a single burning candle on it and two chairs, one on each side. Beyond that, Danny could make out a circle on the ground marked with chalk.

The cold feeling that had been plaguing Danny since yesterday was a hundred times stronger in this room. His core was alert, but the relief that his ghost sense usually brought just never came.

The strain was beginning to ache.

"Sit down," said Cordelia, indicating the chair closest to the chalk circle.

Danny complied, tense, and Cordelia moved the candle to one side, taking out a book and setting it on the table. The book was old and singed, the edges of the leather cover and several of the pages burnt and curled. Cordelia stroked it, reverently.

"This is all that Mary managed to salvage from the flames," she said. "Just this one book, out of so many. All that knowledge lost. Elizabeth was the last one to have it."

Danny heard movement in the dark corners of the room and turned his head to Sofia, Alison, and Morgan emerging, all of them in robes similar to his own, but in their own colors. They came close, and grabbed the back and arms of his chair.

"You asked me what I wanted. I want Elizabeth Nightingale."

A surprised laugh, almost a scoff, forced its way between Danny's lips. "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't exactly have her in my back pocket. Do these pants even have pockets?"

"You might not have her," said Cordelia, annoyance creeping into her otherwise level tone, "but you can get her. Bring her back from beyond."

"Uh, not sure what's in your book, but, contrary to popular belief, not all dead people know each other. She might not even be a ghost. She might have moved on."

"She hasn't," said Cordelia, almost smiling. "Not with the summoning she was doing. We are going to send you to her, and you are going to bring her back." She tilted her head to one side. "We could do this with any blood relative. The original plan was to use Jack, but your condition makes you so much more open to this kind of thing. Your chances of success are much higher."

Danny crossed his arms. "And if I don't succeed, you'll make Dad and Jazz try."

"That's right."

"Why don't you do it?" asked Danny. "You're a blood relative, aren't you?"

"Sadly, the ritual requires four people."

"Yeah, that's the only reason, huh?" said Danny, because he liked to antagonize people he couldn't strike back against in other ways, and also because he was an idiot.

"As I said, we can always use one of the others if you do not cooperate."

"And you'll let us all go if I do?"

"If you bring back Elizabeth, yes."

"Fine," said Danny. "What do I need to do?"

"Very little," said Cordelia. "Give me your hand. Your right hand."

Reluctantly, Danny held out his hand. Cordelia took it and wrapped a thin, white cord around it.

"That will lead you to her."

"I thought you were sending me to her," said Danny.

"You won't be in exactly the same spot," said Cordelia.

Then she whipped a knife out from under the table and sliced deeply into Danny's hand. He pushed back, away, holding his bleeding hand close to his chest. The only reason the chair didn't tip back was because the other three witches were holding on to it.

"Go stand in the circle," ordered Cordelia.

In a fit of pique, Danny phased backwards through the three women holding the chair, not bothering to wait for them to move away to let him go. The shadow pushed uncomfortably against his shoulders, but did not otherwise protest.

The circle was simple, no runes or symbols, just a single line of white chalk on the dark stone. Danny stared at it for a long moment, before stepping over it and standing at the center, his elbow dripping blood as it ran down his arm from his hand.

"Alright, girls, you know what we need to do," said Cordelia.

Danny stood in a field of washed-out red grass. Overhead, the sky billowed with rolling, boiling gray clouds. They seemed too close. The air smelled of smoke. The horizon was blurred and warped, as if Danny were looking at it through thick, wavy glass, or as if in a dream.

This wasn't the Ghost Zone.

He took a deep breath, the smoke washing through him. Okay. He was here. Now he needed to find Elizabeth Nightingale.

He looked down at his hand. The white cord had been turned red with his blood, and it had grown longer, reaching back over his shoulder.

"Eat your hear out, Ariadne," muttered Danny. He looked over his shoulder.

A forest was on fire.

The tall, straight, slender trees burned from their tops, like candles. Their trunks were bare, entirely free of leaves, needles, or branches. Danny should have felt the heat, even at this distance. He didn't.

The bloody cord led between the trees.

"Right," muttered Danny, "because nothing can be easy."

Resigned, he started walking towards the trees and discovered that the 'grass' on the ground actually consisted of thin-walled ceramic-like tubes. Fragile ceramic tubes. The ones he stepped on shattered and cut into his bare feet. He hissed, resisting the urge to hop around and get even more shards stuck into him. The bottoms of his feet felt wet and hot. He tried to phase the shards out and couldn't.

"Is this hell?" asked Danny, aloud. "This has to be hell. Ancients."

He couldn't feel the shadow near him anymore, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Despite the 'grass,' he hesitated to try and go ghost to fly over it. He didn't want to pass out onto the tubes and break them even more. He didn't want those shards in his face or hands.

The squelching of his blood as he shifted his weight decided it for him. He couldn't walk over all of this.

He sent one last look around him for the shadow and summoned his rings. He was relieved when they flowed smoothly over him, transforming him into a ghost, into Phantom.

His normal hazmat suit did not appear, however. Instead, the white robes he had been dressed in turned black. Danny frowned at this. He was not a fan. He wanted his hazmat back.

Whatever. There were more important things to focus on. For example, both his blood and the cord had turned a lurid, ectoplasmic green. Much easier to see against the red-hued backdrop of this world.

He lifted up off the ground and flew on, occasionally pausing to pull shards out of his feet. His accelerated healing made the wounds scab over quickly. The cut on his hand, however, continued to bleed freely. This was beginning to concern him. He didn't have an infinite supply of blood. Or ectoplasm. Whatever.

As he approached the burning forest, he expected to start feeling heat, but even when he was right at the treeline, hovering midway up the impossibly tall, thin tree trunks, he couldn't feel anything. It wasn't hot. It wasn't cold. The smoke didn't smell any stronger.

Even so, he knew fire didn't have to be hot to burn. Fire was a chemical reaction, and Danny had no intention of being one of the reactants.

That was, if this place obeyed anything like normal physical laws. Since the trees hadn't actually burned down at all, the fire staying at the same height, he had to conclude that they didn't.

Still. He was going to stay away from the fire. Briefly, he considered flying over the forest, but the cord angled ever so slightly down, and he didn't know how the cord would fare trailing through the fire. Nothing the witches had said made him think it was indestructible.

He flew under the fires. It was bright underneath the trees, in a sort of inverse of a real forest. Bright, dry, and somehow brittle. Danny flew cautiously. This might nor be the Ghost Zone, but he didn't trust it not to have carnivorous landscape features, and even Earthly forests had their dangers. Lions and tigers and bears.

Oh my.

The angle on the cord began to point down more sharply. Danny was getting closer. The forest was also becoming stranger. The tree trunks bled, and glowing eight-legged flies licked at the ichor. Flowers of sickly fire bloomed from the ground in intricate geometric patterns.

Then, amid the burning brightness, Danny saw a house. A big house. A castle, even, its sides built into the burning trees, its pennants alight with flame, smaller fires moving, no, patrolling the battlements.

Danny quickly went invisible. He had a horrible suspicion that Elizabeth would be in the dungeons of that castle. The cord was going to make him hilariously easy to see, not to mention that he was still dripping blood. This was going to suck so much.

But as Danny approached, the fire creatures did not appear to have noticed the cord at all. Some of them even passed through it without slowing down.

Okay. So, as shocking as it was, Danny had actually caught a break.

Slowly, relying on the fire creatures to open the doors, Danny made his way through the castle and down. Down. Down.

The walls down here glowed, as if with heat, but it was a dull, old, tired glow. A rosy cherry color that burned Danny's eyes and made his head pound. Doors in the walls were made of wood that burned from the inside, veins of embers streaking their surface. The bars set in them glowed white-orange.

The green cord snaked across the floor and wove in between the bars of one of these doors.

Danny stopped. He was quite sure Elizabeth was behind that door. But...

Was freeing her the right thing to do? He had gotten the impression that she was dangerous. At least as dangerous as those witches. Even to save his family, should he set someone like that loose on the world?

But Danny had made this decision and all decisions like it the moment he died in the portal. That was the essence of an Obsession.

Besides. Elizabeth was family, too.

He held out his hands, letting frost form on his fingers and palms and pressed them against the door. Once again, he wondered why he couldn't feel any heat. He should. His ice should at least be registering the pressure, the power drain, of something trying to melt it. It didn't.

Ice spread over the door, extinguishing the light and making the metal creak. Feathery tendrils wound up the bars and encased the hinges. The wood began to fall into ash, as if the fire had been the only thing holding it together, and the bars clattered to the ground.

The inside of the cell was incandescent white. The only dark spot was a huddled, burnt black figure in the corner. The cord let straight to it.

Danny, very emphatically, did not want to go into that room. He hovered at the threshold.

"Elizabeth Nightingale?" he called, softly. If the falling bars hadn't alerted the fire creatures to his presence, he wasn't going to ruin that luck by speaking too loud. "Elizabeth?"

The figure abruptly lurched sideways and fell. Danny flinched. Bit by bit, the figure clawed their way towards the door, dragging itself onward.

Danny could hardly bring himself to watch. Part of him wanted to help. Part of him wanted to run far, far away and never come back.

But, at last, the ruined and horrible body made it to the threshold. It reached up with a claw-like hand and grasped Danny's ankle. He cringed at the feeling of the flaking burnt flesh, but didn't try to shake off the hand. He bent slightly, unsure if he should try to help the figure up.

"You," rasped the figure, ash falling from its jaw, "not from here."

"Um," said Danny. "No. I'm not."

The figure began to pull itself up. As it did so, it sort of began to piece itself back together. Danny had seen similar things before, with ghosts returning to their base form, healing, after an unusually devastating attack. Usually, though, it was slower and usually-

Danny abruptly pulled away. Usually ghosts who were doing that were draining his energy to do it. He glared.

"One of mine?" asked the figure, that was now decidedly feminine. It finally drew itself to its knees. Her knees. "One of my," she coughed, "grandchildren?"

"I'm a descendant of yours, I guess," said Danny, cautiously. He wasn't quite pressed up against the far wall, but he was close.

"You came for me," she said. Her voice was still too rough and dry for Danny to detect any emotion in it.

"I was sent," said Danny, flatly. "If I pick you up, are you going to start draining me again?"

She didn't respond for a long time. "No," she said, finally.

"Great," said Danny. "Let's go."

Elizabeth wasn't hard to carry. She wasn't much larger than Jazz, and he flew her around all the time. The problem was, he couldn't seem to extend his invisibility to her. Any power he sent to cover her was simply absorbed.

"Okay," he said, finally. "We'll just have to be fast, then." Mentally, he began to map out the path he would have to take, and how many doors he would have to blow down. It made for a discouraging picture.

"They can't harm you," croaked Elizabeth.

"What?"

"Pure soul. They can't harm you." She reached up to trace his chin and cheek with her still-charred fingers. "You don't feel the heat. You can't. You can't be harmed."

"Uh. Yeah. I don't think that's how it works. I stepped on some sharp stuff when I first got here, and, let me tell you, it hurt."

"The fires can't burn you. Sending you was clever." Elizabeth seemed to have exhausted herself at that; her hand fell back into her lap.

Right. Well. Whatever. The fires hadn't burnt him yet, but he had stayed well away from them. He was going to continue to do so.

He took a deep breath and flew out of the dungeons as quickly as he could. As expected, the fire creatures spotted him quickly, and they began to shout and shriek in a language Danny couldn't even begin to understand.

They also threw fireballs. And fire spears. And fire chains. Just, a lot of things made out of fire.

It was a good thing Danny had ice powers. Otherwise he would have had a hard time combating all this. A few fireballs passed far too close to his head for comfort. His ice also seemed to be unusually effective on doors.

Finally, Danny was able to get above ground, and, no longer constrained to follow the cord around his wrist, he escaped through a window. He spiraled up, almost high enough to hit the underside of the flames licking at the trees, and then dove away.

"So," he said, "what now?"

"You don't know?" Elizabeth looked a lot better now. Almost human.

"I wasn't given a whole lot of information when they coerced me into doing this. They just said to follow the cord to you, and I did that." Speaking of which, what had happened to the cord? It had just vanished, without Danny even noticing. "I was half-expecting to just get zapped back the moment I found you."

"Coerced?"

"They said they'd make my dad or my sister do this, if I didn't, and they can't fly."

"They're alive."

"Yeah."

There was something like a frown on Elizabeth's face. "They shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah. You don't have to tell me that." More shrieks were approaching from the direction of the castle. "They did this with one of your books. Please tell me you know how to get out of here."

Elizabeth licked her lips. Her tongue was pink. "We go out where you came in," she said.

Danny looked at the trees around him. He only knew where the castle was because of the noises coming from that direction. Otherwise, everything looked the same in every direction. He was pretty sure that even if he went back to the castle, he wouldn't be able to tell which direction he had approached it from, and after that...

They were screwed.

"Follow the blood," said Elizabeth.

It was better than nothing, Danny supposed. His green blood did stand out against the red, but he's been high in the air when he shed it. Following that trail was going to suck, and it still required going back to the castle and avoiding all the fire creatures.

Some of this must have shown on his face, because Elizabeth said, "Not like that, boy, look." She pointed to the small puddle of ectoplasm that had dripped from his hand while they had been talking.

Flowers and vines were growing from it. Ghostly green and blue flowers and vines. As he watched, the vines grew longer, the flowers opened wider.

"Oh," Danny said. "I guess that makes things easier."

Easier was, of course, a relative term. Was following the trail left by ghostly plants growing out of Danny's blood easier than stumbling blindly around the burning forest? Yes. Was it easy? No. No it was not. Especially not with the fire creatures hunting them through the trees and how far apart the blood spatters could be.

Still. Danny was able to follow the trail for an hour before the fire creatures caught up to him.

When they did, they seemed almost, confused. They didn't attack. It was like they were waiting for something.

Danny would have run, but he was worried that he'd lose the trail if he tried to do that, and he didn't think he'd be able to find it again. He and the fire creatures stared each other down. Every few seconds, one of them would make a noise and another would answer.

Rapidly, Danny was becoming surrounded. He would have to make his move soon. He really didn't want to lose the trail, but he didn't think he could win this fight.

Too many enemies. Too much fire. Maybe if he flew straight up, he-

The fire creatures attacked. Danny ducked, wove, and conjured shields of ice and ectoenergy, but there was a limit to what he could do against this many attackers, especially while carrying Elizabeth.

He saw a ball of fire coming that he couldn't dodge and instinctively twisted to spare Elizabeth.

It splashed against him harmlessly.

Everything stopped. The fire creatures froze, even their flames going still, as though they were videos that had been paused. One began to wail, and then they all fled, disappearing into the brightness of the forest.

"A pure soul," said Elizabeth again. She patted his shoulder. Her skin was a burnt red, now. Her eyes were as blue as his were when he was human. Her frown was deeper, more obvious. "It was clever to send you... but they shouldn't have."

"Sure," said Danny, a little surprised. He scanned the trees, trying to see if any of the fire creatures were waiting in ambush. Seeing none, he continued.

They reached the field of tubes, and Danny followed his blood trail back to where he had lacerated his feet.

"Now what," he said.

"Land," said Elizabeth.

Danny grimaced, remembering what had happened to his feet the last time he had tried to walk here. He landed carefully on what looked like the thickest part of the vine growing from his blood-

-and was abruptly back in the chalk circle in Cordelia's basement.

The shadow pounced on him. Unprepared, Danny dropped Elizabeth and fell. Pain sparkled along his limbs as the shadow pulled at his ghost form. It was too much. The lack of sleep, the hunger, the stress, the energy he had spent finding Elizabeth and bringing her back, the blood loss and pain from the wound in his hand, his inability to protect his family, and now this attack. He curled up, trying to protect his head and hand, and abandoned his ghost form.

"Stop this at once!"

"Grandmother, I-"

"Call off this shadow."

A beat. "Very well." The shadow stopped its assault, and Danny stumbled up and out of the circle, scuffing the lines beyond all recognition. Cordelia and Elizabeth were the only women standing. The boarders were all kneeling, faces hidden.

"Grandmother, many times great grandmother, I greet you. I am Cordelia, the last descendant of your daughter, Mary, and I have labored long to bring you back to this world, so that your works will not be lost."

Elizabeth, Danny noted, was standing very straight, her skin sunburn-pink in all but a few places, her arms crossed over the burnt rags of what might have once been a shirt. She did not look pleased.

"So my works won't be lost," repeated Elizabeth.

"Your son betrayed you," said Cordelia. "He burned all your books, all your magics. This is all that survived." Cordelia held up the singed book.

Elizabeth pressed her eyelids together briefly. "And so, you forced your cousin, a child, into that place after me, rather than coming on your own?"

"There was no choice-"

"There is always a choice," said Elizabeth, cutting her off with a sharp gesture. "Better that book should have burned as well, and I was imprisoned forever. You were lucky in my captors. Others would have delighted in taking a pure soul as an ornament for their court, even if they couldn't have harmed him."

"You can't mean that-"

"I do. Is it true you have imprisoned the other members of this boy's family?"

"He would never have agreed, otherwise. Please, this is all we have left of our heritage. We need you. This was all necessary. I beg of you, teach us."

Danny began to back away, to the ladder. Maybe if he got out fast enough, he could trap them in the basement and look for Jazz and his parents.

"Do you know how I wound up there? In that place?" asked Elizabeth. "I went too far, and I ignored the rules. What's your name?"

"Cordelia."

"Cordelia. Cordelia Nightingale-Fenton?"

"Just Nightingale."

"I begin to see," said Elizabeth.

Danny was almost to the ladder. Maybe he could tap into his ghost powers a little bit and float up, quietly.

"If you had come to get me yourself, if you had even asked him-" Elizabeth gestured to where Danny had been. Both women did a double-take, and then their eyes traced up to where Danny currently was.

"What are you doing?" hissed Cordelia. This was the first time Danny had seen her visibly angry.

"Stop," said Elizabeth, grabbing Cordelia's shoulder. "What is your name, boy?"

"It's Daniel Fenton," said Cordelia, when Danny didn't answer.

Elizabeth considered Danny for a moment. "Go to your family, Daniel. Whatever curses or enchantments Cordelia cast on them should be lifted. Including that hate curse." She ran her fingers down Cordelia's arm. "Why on earth did you cast that?" Her eyes flicked back up. "Expect to receive my correspondence, Daniel Fenton."

Danny found Jazz and his parents in the attic. Their luggage was there, too, and Danny and Jazz's missing clothing. Maddie's cell phone was going off. Danny ignored it. He started shaking them. Slowly, they came awake.

"Danny?" said Jazz. She scrubbed at her eyes. "Ugh, what's that sound?"

"Mom's phone is going off."

"What?" said Maddie, groggily. "My phone?" She fumbled at her pocket. "Yes, what is it? Yes, this is Doctor Fenton. What? Well," this last word was a bit snide. "It's about time. We'll be there before the end of the day." She snapped the phone closed. "Jack, sweetheart, wake up, we're going back home. All the charges against us have been dropped, and they want us to look into a ghost attack. Apparently, Phantom didn't show up. As we knew he wouldn't."

"Huh? Ghost? Where?"

"In Amity Park, Jack."

"In Amity Park! Alright!" said Jack, jumping to his feet, and grabbing most of the luggage. "I knew they wouldn't last two days without us! Let's go, kids!"

He ran down the stairs. Maddie took a moment to look around, pursing her lips. "How did we get up here?" she asked. She shook her head, dismissing the question. "Do either of you kids know where Cordelia is?"

"She went out," said Danny. "To town. She won't be back 'til later."

"We'll have to leave a note, then. You two should get dressed before we go, or you'll have to try and do it in the GAV bathroom."

"So what really happened?" asked Jazz, after Maddie went down the stairs.

"Long story," said Danny, throwing on a pair of jeans, "and we really do need to leave. Fast." He took his luggage and rushed down the stairs.

Danny watched Cordelia's house shrink in the rear-view mirror of the GAV, right up until it shimmered out of existence like a mirage. He clenched his teeth. He had seen worse.

He turned in his seat and put his hands in his pockets, intending to brood over what had happened, but his hand encountered a stiff piece of paper that had definitely, absolutely, not been there before. Well. Elizabeth had said to expect her correspondence.

He pulled a crisp white envelope out of his pocket. On the front, in spidery cursive, was his name. He turned it over. On the back flap was written the name Elizabeth NF.

She was family. Distantly. He put his thumb under the back flap, and began to open the letter.

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2020

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charliejrogers · 5 years ago

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Bad Education (Or, Breaking Bad, except Walt is the superintendent and doesn’t know chemistry)

During my senior year at the College of the Holy Cross, the administration was absolutely ecstatic. USA Today had just come out with a new ranking of Catholic colleges in the country. We were named number two. Two! No one in the world has ever been this happy to be in second place since the Pepsi execs realized how much money they would make from their product’s prominent placement in Alexander Payne’s Election which wanted to mock its second-place status.

Yet this exuberance at being almost the best lies at the heart of Cory Finley’s Bad Education. The film tells the true story of an elite Long Island public school in 2002 that has just been named the fourth best public school in the country. The community couldn’t be more ecstatic. The film opens with the disembodied voice of a school board member addressing the community as they celebrate their recent ascent in the rankings. An especially enthusiastic introduction is given for the superintendent, Dr. Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), the man felt responsible for its rise. The words of his introduction are juxtaposed against shots of an empty football stadium, empty hallways, empty classrooms. This is not your typical high school, nor your typical high school movie; our hero won’t be found on the field or in the classroom. Instead, the next shot is of Dr. Tassone preparing his appearance in the bathroom like a star doing fixing his make-up check before the big show. The camera then follows closely behind Tassone as he approaches, as if capturing a prize fighter’s approach to the ring. He is greeted with thunderous applause, but the camera pauses, noticeably on a banner behind him reading “Ranked #4,” as if to say, “What’s the big deal? You’re only number 4.”

The big deal, as often in life, is money. Being #4 is enough to bring the school and its students money and attention: success. The film, occasionally intercutting images of gorgeous Long Island mansions, makes painfully clear that the strength of a town’s public schools can make or break the town’s economic success. And for the school board members, many of whom are involved real estate, they have never seen such high property values (or profits) since Tassone took charge of things. Nor have the students matriculated into nearly as many Ivy League schools before, with a letter of recommendation from Tassone seemingly bringing assured acceptance. Add to this that Tassone with his selfless and community-oriented focus holds the rare distinction of being beloved by all teachers and staff and there is no one who could think to say a bad word about him.

And for good reason. Tassone walks the walk. He spends his nights studying teachers’ names, their classes, their hobbies like one of his students studying vocabulary terms. While at an education conference in Vegas, he’s in the front row taking notes and chatting with presenters; the teachers who came with him, meanwhile, are playing craps in the casinos.

The celebratory portrait I’ve painted so far leaves little in the way of conflict, of plot. HBO has billed the film as a dark comedy/drama, but its more accurate to describe it as a tragedy in the vein of the ancient Greeks. Like its Classical forebears, Oedipus Rex, Agamemnon, etc., this might as well have been titled Dr. Tassone, as the film devotes itself to the gradual unraveling of its protagonist’s secrets (some salacious, some nefarious) while never compromising its commitment to portraying its protagonist’s humanity. It’s a deeply sympathetic film, one which I’m sure is controversial in the Long Island community where Tassone worked.

I hesitate to say more about the plot as it is best experienced blind, though to mirror a theme from the film, what is in the public record cannot really be secret. But again, like the best of Greek tragedies, the biggest of Tassone’s secrets are unraveled unwittingly by his own agency: his urging of a young sophomore girl to dig her teeth deeper into journalism. While the exact details of this side plot differ from the real-life story, it is forgivable because the dramatic irony here is so exceedingly satisfying.

If the film falters anywhere, it is that while presenting Tassone as a good-hearted and good-intentioned human capable of deep love and whimsy even while he can intimidate along with the best of Hollywood’s toughest gangsters, the film fails to extend this approach to the rest of the cast. Allison Janey has made a career playing world-weary women who don’t seem to have a bone of compassion in their bodies (her role as Tonya’s mother in I, Tonya stands out), and here as Tassone’s right-hand woman, Pam Gluckin, she shines. But she is not given the full rounded-character treatment Tassone gets, often feeling more like a walking personification of unthinking greed. The same flatness of character goes for Gluckin’s niece (Annaleigh Ashford) and school board president Bob Spicer (a disgustingly mustachioed Ray Romano). This would have been a larger problem if Jackman weren’t so compelling in the lead, but he is.

Because where the film truly shines is in its use of a personal tragedy to outline larger societal problems. The film by no means justifies the actions that contribute to Tassone’s eventual fall, but certainly considers them worth discussing. What is it that Americans, particularly privileged, wealthy White Americans, want from their school system? Cultivation of creativity and curiosity? Social skills? Problem-solving? Help with basic arithmetic? No. The film argues, and argues compellingly, that providing a good education is secondary providing success, regardless of a student’s actual abilities and work ethic. Anything less than the best outcomes is unacceptable, yet no more than public funding should be afforded to this most important endeavor. Under such pressure, who wouldn’t crack?

***/ (Three and a half stars out of four)

Capsule Review: The age old tale of school superintendent vs. school newspaper!

#badeducation #bad education #school newspaper

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picturethisshow · 5 years ago

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#LosAngeles: Picture This!, the ONLY "Live Animated Comedy Show" is BACK to continue our 7 years and counting legacy of having the best lineup of comedians & animators in town for another one night only lineup! Next Show: SATURDAY 9/14 (this month's flier by Tyler Turett!) COMEDY BY: Janelle James, Sonia Denis, Lisa Curry, Chris Garcia, Corie Johnson & Jamie Loftus! ANIMATION BY: Pen Ward, Sapphire Sandalo, Lauren Rantala, Sean Keeton, Colin Heck, Jamie Loftus (yes jokes AND art) & Luke McGarry!

HOSTED BY: Brandie Posey! Doors at 7:30pm, Show at 8pm 21+ 🎫 Tix: $8 ONLINE at PictureThisShow.nightout.com or $10 at the door at The Virgil 4519 Santa Monica Blvd LA, CA 90029 ______________________________________________ "What is Picture This!?" PICTURE THIS! is a new show from Brandie Posey & Sam Varela: two girls who want to push the boundaries of what a comedy show can be. Picture This! is a live comedy show with stand-ups performing while they are drawn live by some of the best animators, cartoonists, and other artists in Hollywood, CA, SF, NYC and Portland. Picture This! has also debuted in Toronto, New Zealand and Australia! The comedians don't know what the animators are drawing and the animators don't know how the comedians will react. It may be weird. It may different. But it will be FUNNY! “This is a super cool show, I’m proud to be a part of it!“ - Jay Larson ”Brandie Posey & Sam Varela have something very cool going on here…the results are organic, highly entertaining and often times hilarious.” - The Interrobang “It’s a deceptively simple idea...a good exercise for the performers to keep their improv instincts sharp and it's good entertainment watching funny people goof off.” - Portland Mercury “If you like animated comedies, how about animated stand-up comedy?… It’s just like having your portrait drawn at a fair, only instead of mildly insulting caricatures, you get to see one-of-a-kind depictions of what’s going on inside funny people’s heads.” - Vulture “The amicable marriage of sight, sound and more sight…each [artist and comedian] performing their due diligence to visualize this crazy thing called funny.” - Spinning Platters “The dynamic between comedian and illustrator can be push and pull, but when it works, they’re ultimately moving in the same direction.” - The Comic’s Comic “Often, the drawings are just as funny as the standup, enhancing and occasionally stealing the show.. A comedian might have a prepared set that gets thrown totally into a tangent when the illustrator adds their own input or sketches a crude figure that takes the joke to the next level. There’s also a high potential for verbal vs. visual banter.” - LAist “An inherent irony existed in the disparity between two disciplines identified by the term “comic” - Spinning Platters “Our animators are joke-tellers, too, they just process the same bits visually versus verbally, it’s always so cool to see your bit from a different angle you hadn’t thought to explore! I always feel like I’m dealing with the most talented heckler in the room on the show – once you surrender yourself to the idea that you’ll never be as dynamic.” - Brandie Posey “The show is growing fast. Comedians perform while comedy’s best illustrators create masterpieces based on what they’re hearing on stage, live. You get to watch the process and it’s a really fun time.” - The Interrobang, Top Five Shows Out of Towners Need to See “Stand-up comedy typically hinges on performers maintaining total power and control. Yet these shows put a premium on experimentation and vulnerability, humanizing the comics in the process.” - LA Weekly

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launching-a-thousand-ships · 2 years ago

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Kurt Fashion Retrospective: s3

Thought I could have s2 and 3 in one post but again, too much to say.... (link to masterpost)

Season 3: Ooh, Kurt is feeling his best. I mean, I have some thoughts on his character this season but for fashion, Kurt is getting settled. Less layers, but still pretty covered up. And similar to s2, there are some more out there looks but they’re more outliers.

We get more Kurt in jeans, which is fun. And his go to is a buttondown, often with a vest. There are a few t-shirt sightings, but typically Kurt goes for long sleeve. There are a few shorts tho, bc Kurt happy to show off them legs lol. And again... still no actually girly looks (besides his halloween costume but that’s halloween come on).

And I like his convo with Unique, where she talks about wanting to perform as a woman bc she is a woman. Kurt is gay, and that is something different. He is a guy and sure he likes skincare and stuff, but his fashion is def more masc. Maybe for performances he’s a bit extra (god bless the lame pants) but everyday? It’s pretty standard. And no more skirts/kilts from Kurt, very sad.

I’m considering a full kurt analysis ep by ep (bc what is restraint) so I won’t go into it, but the whole student election/unicorn thing bugged me bc Kurt didn’t want the pink sparkly posters and that’s not him denying who he is bc that’s not Kurt?? Kurt’s never even worn pink, let alone sparkles etc. The Judy Garland-esque portrait? That is him. He likes the poised, elegant, type of style. He likes chic fashion, stuff you’d see in New York or Paris, and that’s different then ‘oh he’s gay so he likes girly stuff and heels’. he has a specific style. I mean, we don’t even actually see him do makeup or nail polish or... anything? This season is first time he wears a necklace (his prom look) and I mean it’s a key pendant on a chain, not that crazy. Also that whole look is just 10/10 anyway.

Also of note, this season has some of his least amount of colour. going back to that more couture style, Kurt prefers greyscale, beiges, and then the occasional pop of red. Ppl make fun of him for being over the top and I think some of his more ridiculous looks are more for the joke bc his go to style is def sophisticated. Like, in the First Time when he has that convo with Blaine he’s wearing that long cardigan with cheetah print? prob for the layers joke? But he hasn’t worn anything like that since s1??? And then the more over the top sweater in Props which, I think, is just so Cory can look more Kurt-like during the swap

So, least fav look this season....

I just... It’s a lot? And kinda nothing like he’s worn before or ever wears again?? I’ve seen some meta around, how this is his first scene after the First Time, how after he feels the need to cover up more (after this is the riding helmet and cape, another weird outlier, def more covered up) so maybe something there. but anyway... a no from me.

For my favs... oof how to pick...

The Infamous pants. I just... this is so iconic and omg no wonder Chris complains about the pants he had to wear bc. Ooh boi

I loveee this. The jeans, the chain. So good

We. Deserved. More. Tophats. Also, the unbuttoned shirt 10/10. And does he ever where necklaces again bc I don’t think so

nvm, the dogtags here lol. I just love this look. Why didn’t we get more fuckboi!Kurt? Will we ever learn the story?? Did something happen and he had to borrow Mike’s clothes????? Either way, I kinda love it

#Kurt Hummel #kurt hummel fashion #glee #Glee Season 3

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multiversemuses · 7 years ago

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☕ (Cori)

@darthvoldemaul

I’m not sure if this counts as much of a memory, really, because not a lot happens. One person stays asleep during the main bit of it so… No one’s calling it eventful, okay?

But it still means something to me.

You’ll need a lot of background information first, though, so get comfy. See, Liv had invited me to stay with her for part of the summer holiday. It took some doing, making that happen. My mother doesn’t exactly approve of her children spending time outside of school (or inside it, for that matter) with anyone who isn’t from the twenty-eight. So I cashed in on a favor from Khepri Shafiq.

Strictly speaking, what Khepri actually owed me was money from an old bet, but I offered to consider us even so long as she’d provide this one alibi. The great thing about Shafiq – besides being a bit of a reckless gambler when she’s thrown back a few too many firewhiskeys – is that my parents cannot stand her parents. And probably vice versa, honestly. My mum and dad will be respectful of them at large gatherings of the families but, as a safe general rule, they will not contact them directly if it is in any way avoidable. Dad thinks Gamal Shafiq is a prattling bore and Mum resents the fact that Shadya Shafiq always catches on to the latest trends and fashions well before she does. They can be a petty bunch, the Selwyns. Take it from one who knows. Personally, I’ve always found the Shafiqs among the more tolerable families in my own’s social circle. Fortunately for me, the feeling was mutual for Khepri (either that or she was just grateful to hang on to the bag of galleons I’d won fair and square), and she agreed to let me say I was visiting her for a while in the summer. It probably didn’t hurt that Khepri’s in Ravenclaw, like Liv. What do you know? House loyalty’s good for something outside of Hogwarts, after all. Anyway, suffice to say, my parents were more than happy to send their greetings and love through me. They trusted that I’d pass along the message to the Shafiqs and spare them the need to send any correspondence owls. Ergo, no inexplicable inquiries would find their way into Gamal’s or Shadya’s hands, nor would my parents be waiting on any letters from them detailing our holiday activities. It was the perfect solution.

I arrived at the Eldlunds’ feeling rather proud of myself, if you must know. Outsmarting my parents just heightened the excitement of what already promised to be the best part of the summer months. Liv had spent our time apart planning, I could tell, even though she kept the written itinerary out of my sight so that each new adventure could be a surprise. Truth be told, she could have left everything to happenstance and I’d still have seen so many new things. A lot of items in her house alone were complete novelties to me.

I was poking around her room on that first day and saw a funny little folded box on a shelf. It was pretty easy to open up, but I couldn’t for the life of me guess what purpose it could possibly serve. It had a dark glass circle right in the middle that made me think of those peepholes in the front doors of houses, and there was a long indented ridge at the bottom. I turned the box from side to side in my hands but my grip slipped on this little red button jutting off it. The next thing I knew, it made this godawful whirring noise and spat out a blank square. Liv came into the room just in time to hear me swear creatively and nearly drop the blasted thing on the floor. She made a quick save and caught the box before it could crash to the ground. As she returned the contraption to the shelf, Liv told me its name, and I remember thinking it sounded cold. Polarvoid. No, that doesn’t look right. I’ve added an extra letter or something. Ah, to hell with it, the point is that it was a kind of camera.

“Is that why it spits out a white picture?” I asked. “It just shows empty space near the ice caps every time?“

Liv got a chuckle out of that one. She explained that the blankness of the image was temporary. Liv pulled the square free from the camera and shook it a few times, then placed it down on her desk. I must have still looked pretty skeptical, because she urged me to watch closely and even offered a chair so I could observe with my face right over the photograph.

Shadows started forming on the square. Colors were unfolding across the white the way that flowers open in springtime. I started to recognize pieces of furniture and decorations from Liv’s room, but they were blurry in contrast to the oval dominating the center of the image. It was my face, caught in an unfortunate just-shat-myself expression. “Lovely,” I grumbled, but that didn’t stop me from staying completely still until every detail of that picture had filled into place. Liv wanted to know what I thought of it. “I’d like them better if they moved so we didn’t have that face immortalized for all eternity, but I suppose they do have the benefit of coming back to you much faster.”

That little incident must’ve given Liv an idea because, the very next morning, she took me out and bought me a gift: a disposable muggle camera. She told me I could use it to remember our visit. Which I did, and I made quite a tourist of myself. The land near her house really is beautiful – flowers, clear water, and so much green. Liv and her mother were very patient with me. Neither one ever barked for me to stop falling behind or tried to stop me from going off in my own direction as we wandered. That wasn’t their way and, although it was nice, it took me time to get used to it. There was so much freedom, not just to explore but also to express. I never felt like conversations were censored at their dinner table or like the real messages had to be hidden somewhere between the lines. They were so open. And happy. I’d never experienced a family meal with real laughter like that, not the forced polite kind at social functions where people are just trying to stay in each other’s good graces.

The Eldlunds are quite artsy as well. Liv let me try my hand at a little painting. It seemed like it could all go wrong so quickly, and I ended up starting with a single dot on the canvas. Liv had to quite literally take my hand in hers and coax my arm into that first full brushstroke. I loosened up a little more after that and got a bit carried away. Flecks of paint were in my hair and on my hands. At one point, when Liv leaned round to see how my work was coming along, I darted my brush out on impulse and touched it to the tip of her nose. Her mum said it made her look like a reindeer. That struck me as odd since I’m pretty sure reindeer have brown or white fur, not red. Maybe it’s a muggle thing. Either way, it was pretty funny to watch how Liv’s nose twitched a little until she was able to clean the paint off her skin. As for the painting itself, well… let’s call the finished product abstract and let me save face, shall we?

The one Liv painted of me about a week later was much better (no surprise). She saw me sitting at the window, snacking on a green apple, and asked if she could have me pose for a while. Since that basically required me to stay comfy and keep eating, I was more than happy to oblige. I know that I clearly am no expert at art. It’s questionable if I should ever be allowed to be near a brush or paints again but, even so, I feel like I can fairly say that Liv really knows her stuff. Watercolors seem so difficult to me. Difficult to keep from running, difficult to control the details, difficult not to make your painting one big dripping mess. But Liv does it. Over and over again. And she makes it look easy. When she really got to work on that portrait, I think she became more relaxed than I was. I started overthinking everything. Would I mess up the light and shadows if I readjusted my legs? Should I eat more slowly so she had a chance to get the apple right before I chewed too close to the core? Did I need to keep my head angled the same way? Meanwhile, from what I could see in my peripheral vision, Liv was perfectly at ease. She had checked out and was well and truly “in the zone.” I could feel the weight of her eyes on me, but it wasn’t in a judgmental or critical way, simply studying. It gave me gooseflesh, but I resisted the urge to rub my arms and clear it away. When she’d finished working, I was finally allowed to leave the window and see the end result. I could hardly form the words to tell her how well she’d done. If it weren’t for the fact that the girl in the painting was wearing my outfit and holding the same snack, I’d have argued it wasn’t me at all. Not to say that it didn’t look like me – it did, remarkably so – but she’d made me look… well, a lot of things, really. Thoughtful. Serene. Beautiful. Variations of “that’s really good” felt horribly inadequate, but I could only seem to stammer rewordings of that same sentiment while I stared at this other version of myself who seemed to have it all together much more than I did.

Liv also introduced me to her taste in music. We played so many songs during my stay there. If we were in her room during the daytime, there was music of some sort playing even if it was just softly in the background. A lot of wizard bands reference wizarding world things more than is strictly necessary (have you heard anything by the Weird Sisters?), so it was a little odd at first not to hear the artists comparing themselves to magical creatures or characters from our folklore, but I liked it. Liv wanted me to be able to take some of it with me even after I went back home. She started compiling a mix tape and gave me a device I could use to play it. I’d have to hide the player in my trunk, but it’d hardly be the first thing I’d concealed from my watchful mother.

I suppose that brings us to the specific memory I’ve been meaning to tell you this whole time. It was somewhere in the middle of my visit with the Eldlunds and, in an extremely rare occurrence, I woke up before Liv one morning. The house was quiet and still; I was pretty sure her mum wasn’t awake yet, either. So I leaned over the side of her bed and scooped up the player with the mix tape already inside. I slid the earpieces into place and pushed the button on the top. The songs Liv had put together for me were so peaceful and relaxing. They were the perfect thing to keep me company in the pale, early morning light with no one else stirring but me. I sat upright with a pillow propped behind my back and looked lazily around the room. My hand started playing with something soft and smooth beneath my fingertips, letting it run across my knuckles and slip through my grasp before picking it up again. I think I was three songs in before I realized that I’d been absentmindedly playing with Liv’s hair. I froze and sort of held my breath. I tried to make sure she was still fully asleep since I was pretty sure that’d be an odd thing to wake and find me doing. Liv didn’t show any signs of consciousness. She rolled over, and that brought her body right up against mine. If it’s possible, I think I moved even less then. I held my arms up, away from her, and just stared down at her face. No, the features were too smooth; she wasn’t faking being deep in her dreams. The sudden closeness was completely innocent and unintentional. Still, I swear on my best crystal phials that I could feel my heart beating in the back of my throat. Prickles of sweat broke out across my forehead.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

I didn’t want to let myself call it what it was, not yet, but I knew that what I was feeling for Liv went beyond the bounds of the friendship we’d established.

My arms were starting to get tired by this point. One I was safely able to lower to my side, but the other was directly above Liv. I knew I was going to have to put it down, to allow my skin to touch hers and rest behind her back. But actually doing so felt like a more pleasant version of having your limb wake up after the circulation was cut off from it. I had these tingles from shoulder to wrist. I had to keep consciously telling my lungs to inhale and exhale.

Oh, this was bad. Bad, bad, bad.

And yet I couldn’t ignore the heat from her, seeping through my pyjamas, or the way the ends of her hair tickled the crook of my elbow. My hand was shaking the whole time, but I let myself rub my thumb just once across her back, between the shoulder blades. It was a very quick gesture, but it made me choke on my own pulse again.

Later, when Liv started to stir a little and murmur drowsily, I panicked and tried to rearrange our position. I put my arm behind my head and let the other fall past the edge of the mattress, shutting my eyes and trying to look sprawled out in unconsciousness. I guess it worked. Liv made no remark or sudden movement, except to gently take off my headphones and stop the tape player, presumably so I wouldn’t get tangled in the cord. Her hand grazed my shirt as she lifted the player off my torso, and it took everything in me to keep my face completely relaxed. Then she leaned over me to place the whole thing on her nightstand. It’s a good thing she wasn’t looking down at me because the clench in my jaw must’ve been visible as I focused on keeping my breathing even. She settled back into place and tried to wake me with a soft shake of my arm. I pretended to peek out from behind my eyelids for the first time and smiled at her. The smile she gave back to me made my stomach pull a Wronski Feint.

There’s not much else to tell about that day. Everything was pretty normal after that, and I was trying to be normal as well. I can’t say I didn’t embarrass myself once or twice along the way. There were a few clumsy mishaps: tripping, running into things, dropping stuff. Thankfully, since I tended to let Liv lead the way because she knew where we were going, she didn’t see all of it.

I did do one more thing. Just for myself, just to remember. I was pretty sure I would want it later, and I was right about that. I took a picture with Liv in it while she wasn’t looking at me. I wanted one to keep of her just existing, just relaxing and being herself. I’ll admit, the reason behind it was partly for my collection of photographs from the visit but also partly because of what I was starting to feel. It ended up being a good thing that I took the picture, though. I needed it more than I knew. The following year at school, when things were falling apart, I still had that image to look at and her mix tape to listen to while we weren’t together. It probably wasn’t the healthiest way of dealing with the fact that I was too afraid to go public and she was seeing someone else, but it was all I really had.

Well, this took a sad turn at the end, didn’t it? It got better after that, I swear. Slytherins aren’t known for swallowing their pride quickly, but I did eventually get my shit together and override that built-in lean toward self-preservation. And you know what? I’d deal with all of it again – the pain, the complete nonsense from some of the people around us (my family included), the loneliness, the fear, everything – because it was worth it. Liv was infinitely worth it. If I had to survive the misery to be happy, I’m fine with calling that a fair trade.

#Ask Meme Answer #Cori Meme #theclonewriter

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years ago

Text

Halloween Gift Guide

♬ Darkness falls across the land ♩ ♪ The midnight hour is close at hand.♫ ♩Creatures crawl in search of blood ♬ To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood �� And whosoever shall be found ♬ ♬ With the cash for getting down ♩ ♬Will enjoy our Halloween Gift Guide... ...And stay alive where others died

XENI

Skull Table Runner

A handsome 14x72" graphic banner that can be used for any number of pirate parties, Halloween hoedowns, or other dark festivities.

BUY

MARK

Halloween Cat Favor Boxes

For your favorite trick-or-treaters, fill these 3.25-inch cubes with high-quality confectionery treats.

BUY

ROB

Digital Halloween Decor

At the Boing Boing store, we're proud to offer these spooky holiday decorations. They go in your window, startling passers-by. Now you too can frighten the neighbors without all the legal complications that come from standing there at the window naked in the dark.

BUY

JASON

Super creepy PVC Scooby Doo mask

This creepy Scooby Doo mask is both made of PVC and rather disturbing! Liven up your office party, or even better your spouses.

BUY

DAVID

Bag of 500 Self-Adhesive Googly Eyes

If only you could see what I’ve seen with your googly eyes.

BUY

CORY

Four anatomical models you assemble from 132 anatomically correct sub-components

The $45.28 Learning Resources Anatomy Models Bundle Set is a well-reviewed set of anatomical models: a 5" heart, a 3.75" brain, a 4.5" body and a 9.2" skeleton, all of which disassemble into anatomically correct sub-components that you assemble into the finished pieces.

BUY

JASON

Five fucking pounds of candy corn

I've heard from some folks they love candy corn when it is stale. They'll be thrilled with this 5lb bag.

BUY

XENI

Dia De Los Muertos Skull Swirlies

This 30-piece Day of the Dead decoration kit includes skulls and swirls in festive foils, and transforms any room or outdoor space within minutes of easy assembly.

BUY

JASON

Twelve cans of Barbisol shaving creme (sewing needle and lighter not included)

This halloween? Relive your youth! Prep a few cans of Barbisol for battle! Wait for those annoying parents who can't pick their kid up from a traffic circle to pass by the bush you've always thought would be a great spot for an ambush, then rain soap upon their parade!

BUY

CORY

Splorch ovipositor

For when you want to role-play stern schwa and sweet, submissive Whitley Streiber; comes in two models but the $120-130 Splorch is the clear winner.

BUY

DAVID

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Remastered Deluxe Edition)

More than a half-century since it first aired, Linus is still waiting for the Great Pumpkin to rise "out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children,” Snoopy continues his battle with the Red Baron, and Charlie Brown can’t get a break. A masterpiece of animated television that, like the Peanuts gang, never gets old.

BUY

ROB

Articulating lowpoly skull mask

Wintercroft offers this devilish DIY maskmaking kit (and more like it) for just $6 on Etsy: "Sometimes, we've just got to take life (or death) by the horns and do something a little different. The Horned Skull Mask takes our favourite symbol of warning, mortality, anarchy and independence and ups the ante with a pair of horns and a moving mandible."

BUY

JASON

Lion mane for your cat

This also looks very silly on small dogs.

BUY

XENI

Nightmare-black Nitrile Exam Gloves

Matte black nitrile gloves for cleaning up around the house, or whatever creepy stuff people do with

BUY

DAVID

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand

Brunvand, the iconic professor of urban legends, compiled some of the greatest and grisliest tales of contemporary folklore into one book and wrapped them in compelling context. It’s a wonderfully creepy collection of modern myths, except of course for the story about the teenagers in the parked car who narrowly escaped the hook-armed maniac. That totally happened to my brother’s friend’s cousin and her prom date.

BUY

JASON

Sugar Skull Ducktape

A lovely holiday variant of everyone's favorite fix-all.

BUY

MARK

Vintage Halloween Scene Bobbing Apples Pill Box Pill Case

If you've recently purchased some esoteric research chemicals over the dark web and have been at a loss as to where to store them, this is for you.

BUY

MARK

Spider Web Thigh High Stockings

These unisex stockings can complement any costume, or can be worn on their own for a costume everyone will appreciate.

BUY

DAVID

John Carpenter Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998

Carpenter didn’t just direct some of the most iconic scary movies of the latter 20th century, he also scored them. The themes from Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, and They Live make for a fantastically groovy soundtrack for your own horror house. Available on vinyl for those who dare and CD or digital download for those who don’t.

BUY

MARK

Ouija Planchette Lapel Pin

Summon Captain Howdy on-the-go with this cartoon occult ceramic pin.

BUY

ROB

White Walker Halloween costume

Described as a "sexy white walker" Halloween outfit, this also doubles as a terrifyingly realistic costume of Sir Jimmy Savile in his current state of repose. It's $150 and comes in four sizes.

BUY

ROB

Pumpkin Necklace

There's a lot of cheap tatty Halloween jewelry to be found, but ForTheCross's offers year-round quality at a reasonable price. This necklace, for example, comes in under $40.

BUY

CORY

My Favorite Thing is Monsters: a haunting diary of a young girl as a dazzling graphic novel

Emil Ferris's graphic novel debut My Favorite Thing is Monsters may just be the best graphic novel of 2017, and is certainly the best debut I've read in the genre, and it virtually defies summarizing: Karen is a young girl in a rough Chicago neighborhood is obsessed with monsters and synthesia, is outcast among her friends, is queer, is torn apart by the assassination of Martin Luther King, by her mother's terminal illness, by the murder of the upstairs neighbor, a beautiful and broken Holocaust survivor, by her love for her Vietnam-draft-eligible brother and her love of fine art. It's a tribute to -- and critique of -- the classic monster comics and magazines of the era, which Karen is obsessed with, and through whose visual styles her story is told. It's a tribute to fine art and the pieces hanging in the galleries and museums of Chicago where Karen and her mysterious, womanizing, tattooed older brother Deeze brings her. It's a complicated story about friendship among girls, about gender identity and queerness, about family.

BUY

DAVID

Liquid Ass

Invented by a high school prankster with a chemistry set, it’s described as smelling like a fine combination of "butt crack, kind of a sewer smell with a hint of dead animal.” Don’t buy this. But do know that it exists.

BUY

CORY

Animatronic, maniacally giggling spooky eyeball doorbell

When you press the button, the eyelid flips open and a green, glowing, bloodshot eyeball peers around while one of several spooky recordings welcomes your visitors. It is surprisingly well-styled and the audio is surprisingly cool for a seemingly generic crapgadget, and I'm already scheming a teardown after 31st to see if I can program it with my own little recordings.

BUY

XENI

Ancestor Paper Dolls

FROM Tim Holtz, clipped vintage portraits that can be used to make collage greetings or party decorations, or added to a Day of the Dead art-altar.

BUY

MARK

Satan Loves Me T-Shirt

A great way to remember who to thank on the most devilish of holidays.

BUY

XENI

Goth Cotton Swabs

They’re basically really good quality ‘Q-tip’ swabs, with spiral heads, and they’re all black.

BUY

ROB

Skullcap Tee Shirt

Designed by Sarina Frauenfelder, this scary scull is topped out with our classic logo and terrifies your friends with its spooky, staring eyes. $20 shipped.

BUY

CORY

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" - the pop-up book edition

Pelham and Wormell have serious pop-up/illustrated book chops. The seven pop-up effects they've prepared for this edition are extremely beautiful, and lend themselves to being "animated" by the reader -- for example, you can flap the Raven's wings in time with the "Nevermore's"or have Edgar throw wide his chamber's door at the precise moment you say, "here I opened wide the door."Poe's words are hidden on each page, nestled in fold-up/fold-down tabs that you have to open after each reveal, and as I read this to my 9-year-old daughter Poesy (it's not a coincidence that we call her "Poe"for short -- EA Poe is one of her namesakes), the double-reveal of the pop-up (not a dud among them) and the prose made for an extra bit of drama.

BUY

ROB

Bone-shaped battery charger

It's a bit of a reach, but it's the only other thing in our official store that's remotely Halloweeny. (We're all out of 99%-off lifetime subscriptions to Hell, but you can get one of those for free by voting Republican in next year's midterm elections)

https://boingboing.net/2017/10/13/halloween-gift-guide.html

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hella-free-space · 7 years ago

Note

Out of curiosity, what's the deepest water that a betta will be happy in? Do they do better in long tanks rather than taller and narrower ones?

What's the deepest water that a betta will be happy* in?

That’s a pretty good question anon :p the answer isn’t so straight forward tho~most bettas do better in shallower tanks since they like to hang out at the surface :p but shorter finned bettas will do better in deeper tanks than longer finned bettas will since short finned bettas have an easier time swimming vertically from from the bottom of the tank to the top.

as for the absolute deepest tank you could put a betta in? i’m not too sure...most standard tanks won’t be too deep...like you could probably put a plakat in a heavily planted 55 gallon community and it would probs do great. but if you put a halfmoon double tail in a 20 tall and you might have some problems/you would definitely have to have a TON of super tall plants and places to rest. i think wild betta habitats dont get deeper than a few feet, though, so tanks that are deeper than 2-3 ft (especially if they’re longer than they are tall) aren’t going to be good candidates for betta tanks.

Do they do better in long tanks rather than taller and narrower ones?

as a starting point, most fish will do better in longer tanks vs taller tanks since most fish swim side to side and not up and down :) bettas are no different!

bettas also prefer to hang out near the surface, or visit the surface often. their mouths are upturned since they hung food from the surface (just like cories have their mouthes pointed downwards, since they find food by sifting through substrate) and they also go up for air occasionally :)

some bettas are longer-finned (like halfmoons or double tails), so swimming vertically can be a tiring challenge (which is why its important to give them plenty of resting places). because of this, longer-finned bettas are better suited to shallower, longer tanks than taller, deeper tanks. short-finned bettas like plakats, kings, giants, females, and wilds will do much better in portrait style tanks than heavier-finned bettas will, but they’ll still prefer more horizontal swim space than vertical swim space!

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circlesandsoundwaves · 8 years ago

Text

Inner & Outer Portraits: Cory Castro (Free Throw)

Photos and interview by Molly Louise Hudelson.

This piece is a part of an interview series called Inner & Outer Portraits. Inner & Outer Portraits features in-depth conversations exploring personal experiences and the connections that we all feel with music, in combination with photographs of the subject. The goal? To showcase who they are from all angles, both inside and out.

When you write or create something personal, there's often a bit of hesitancy in putting it out into the world. Suddenly, you're revealing some of your deepest truths to the world. Once it's out there, it can feel freeing, but the biggest relief of all comes when you find someone who connects with what you wrote or created. Cory Castro of Free Throw (lead vocals and guitar) says he tries to write songs in a way that listeners can "take their own meaning from it" because "if they relate to it that means I'm not alone."

On May 26, Free Throw released their second full-length album, Bear Your Mind, on Triple Crown Records. From the opening track "Open Window" to the closer "Victory Road", Castro bears his mind for the world to hear, exploring topics like anxiety, family issues, body image, and loss. While Bear Your Mind dives deep, it remains completely self-aware; it’s introspective and personal while also being relatable.

Free Throw's recent headlining tour stopped at the Foundry in Philadelphia on June 24, where I met up with Castro for this piece. In our conversation, he talked about some of the bands he connected with immediately, and how powerful that immediate connection can be. If a flurry of social media posts are any clue, plenty of people have felt this immediate connection with Bear Your Mind. Our conversation got deep, but Castro seemed at ease as we talked, and when it came time to take portraits, there was a lot of laughter as we both joked around.

From why music is important to him to the meaning behind the album title Bear Your Mind, read on for the Inner & Outer Portrait of Cory Castro.

CIRCLES & SOUNDWAVES: What music have you personally connected with?

Cory Castro: There's a lot of it. Music's always been my thing since I was younger; even before I started playing music, I just loved music. I skateboarded a lot and skateboarding and music go hand in hand. When I skateboard, I've always got something in the headphones.

C&S: Which came first- a love of music, or skateboarding?

CC: Love of music, for sure. I've loved music since I was probably 4 or 5 years old- [that] was when I first realized, "oh my god, music is the coolest thing in the world"- but I didn't start skateboarding till I was about 10 or 11.

But as for bands that I've really, really connected with emotionally over the last few years, there's a band that used to be around called Grown Ups- they're from Indiana and the singer of that band is now the singer of Cloakroom- and they have an album called More Songs that is basically one of the hugest influences on what Free Throw does now.

Lately I've been really connecting with Hall & Oates for some reason. I think I'm just getting older, really- getting in to the things that my mom and dad would listen to. The first time I ever heard The Get Up Kids, that was a big one for me.

C&S: What was it like the first time you heard Grown Ups or The Get Up Kids?

CC: It's that moment of epiphany- like you just finally found something that captures inside what you were thinking of, I guess. It was a glorious thing. And some bands that doesn't happen immediately, it takes a little bit to listen to and then it happens- but Grown Ups was definitely a band that it immediately happened for me. Brand New, obviously, was a band that it immediately happened with. When I was in high school in the mid-2000s, Taking Back Sunday and Brand New and bands like that were really popular and so I immediately was like, "Oh man, everybody likes this kind of music that I like"- and a little bit off the topic, but Iron Maiden is a band that I absolutely love for some reason.

C&S: It's interesting- when I was in middle school and high school, it was Taking Back Sunday, Good Charlotte, blink-182 was a big one for me- and for a while I thought, "Well, I don't want to listen to anything else, because I listen to this and there's a stigma of liking anything else"- I don't know if stigma's the right word...

CC: Sometimes you get trapped into a certain scene of music and you find yourself only listening to that kind of music. I definitely went through phases where that was the only kind of music I listened to. Even when I was listening to Grown Ups, the only bands that I was listening to were, like, Algernon Cadwallader, or Snowing, and Grown Ups- all these bands that, outside of Philly, no one really listened to that much. Or they did but not, you know, normal everyday people.

C&S: Philly is the place right now for music.

CC: I love Philly. I love it. Every time we come here I have so much fun and I get to see so many friends- the music scene here is just wonderful.

C&S: What is your favorite song?

CC: My favorite song- like of all time?

C&S: Yeah.

CC: Oh man, I don't know- that's a hard one. I have a favorite song of right now which is probably "If This Tour Doesn't Kill You" by PUP. I love PUP, that band is an amazing band. But of all time? That's a really hard one. We'll go with something funny- the Space Jam theme song. I love that song.

C&S: As a follow-up to that, can you tell a story about a moment or a time when the PUP song really connected with you?

CC: Oh, yeah- every day of my life! [Laughs.] You know, when you're in a van with a bunch of people for a month, month and a half, two months at a time, of course little things start to get to you and you have these moments where you're just like, "Ugh"- but in a real sense, I don't have too many of those true moments where I'm like, wishing death upon someone. Our band is really a group of best friends. We hang out at home; we all- with the inclusion of Kevin over the past year and a half to two years- are just a group of best friends. You know, we get in to our spats, and then we listen to that song and everybody feels better.

C&S: Why is music important to you?

CC: It's my outlet. It's my saving grace, I guess- without it, I don't know what I would do. I don't know what I would be doing, I don't know what my career would be. I have no idea what life would be like, and it's honestly the most therapeutic thing I've ever had in my entire life.

I've struggled my entire life with mental health issues and anxiety disorder- I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder when I was I think 4 years old.

C&S: I honestly did not realize that they would diagnose someone so young.

CC: I was starting school and every time my parents wouldn't show up on time, I immediately started freaking out and I was convinced that they were dead and those kind of things. I ended up going to therapy and my therapist was pretty sure from a young age that I was suffering from anxiety disorder. And not being able to cope and handle situations the way I should- I freak out way too easily. So I've been dealing with that my entire life and have found a way to express it through music; even if it's not about that subject, playing music in general is something that takes my mind off of it.

C&S: For someone who hears Free Throw for the first time, what do you want them to get out of your band?

CC: Most people immediately establish that we're a drinking band, which is funny but I try really hard to write the songs in a way that is relatable and that people can insert themselves into the lyrics and into the situation and take their own meaning from it…. I want the band to be relatable- I want people to relate to it because if they relate to it that means I'm not alone.

C&S: So it's a circular thing, in a way.

CC: It is, it helps me just as much as it helps other people to realize that they're relating to something- to realize that they're relating to it helps me. It's very much my therapy process and my way of making it through life.

C&S: You put out a new album, Bear Your Mind, about a month ago- tell me about the album title.

CC: Oh, wow- it actually was the last thing to come about. When Kevin tried out for the band, "Weak Tables" was the first song that we wrote for the album. He flew from Boston to try out for the band and we wrote two songs and we were like, "Well, we guess we wrote these songs, so you're in the band now." Immediately after we wrote that song, I knew what I wanted to write the album about- cuz I had been struggling about what I wanted to write the next album about, because the first one was about a very bad relationship that I had.

C&S: And this record is very- what I said when I wrote about the record was that it's very introspective but without being in a way that you're stuck in your own head.

CC: Without being too specific, you know- I wanted it to be introspective and broad. When we wrote [Those Days Are Gone] it had this distinct thing behind it, this distinct event that made me want to write the whole album, and this time around I was like, "I don't want to write another break-up album"- recently I was in a serious relationship for two years but up until that point I hadn't had any kind of break up to want to write about. I'm not just gonna make up things.

I wrote "Weak Tables" about my struggles with social anxiety and sometimes not wanting to leave my house, but I wrote it in a very broad spectrum. As soon as we wrote that song I knew exactly what I wanted the record to be about. I knew that I wanted it to be about my personal struggles since that relationship, and how at first I blamed it on the relationship but then I realized that maybe it was me all along.

It's kind of a journey through my thought process, my brain- the album is basically picking my brain, and that's how the title came about. We were looking for album covers and Cody from the band Alaska had taken some photos while they were in the UK that he sent to us. That picture came up, the one with the mannequin with the TV sitting on its shoulder. Kevin and I were going back and forth trying to come up with album titles and we weren't getting anything great, and I was like, "Dude, I really like the idea of that mannequin holding the TV on its shoulder and not having a head- it's almost like it's carrying its head…. I say 'Bear in mind' a lot on 'Andy And I, Uh...'- what about the idea of if you had to carry your brain around, you had to carry your thought process around? I feel like it fits the record"- and so that's where Bear Your Mind came from.

C&S: You were talking about how "Weak Tables" dives into your struggles with social anxiety- is it hard to talk about that?

CC: It gets a lot easier. Especially after putting the record out and opening myself up to everybody- it's a little bit easier to talk about. There are a lot of songs on the record that I was worried about putting out cuz you start getting hesitant about actually putting yourself out there like that. Especially "Better Have Burn Heal"- I got really, really hesitant about putting that song out because it was such a struggle for me to admit that I was having these problems and that I was struggling with myself- I didn't even talk to my parents about this! And I knew that everybody was gonna hear it and I was gonna have to talk about it, but I think putting it out there and being able to talk about it was part of the healing process.

Now with the social anxiety thing- yeah, it's kinda hard sometimes; sometimes you wanna clam up and go inside your shell.

C&S: "How do I talk about the fact that I think everyone hates me and I'm just gonna mess up this social situation?"

CC: Mhmm! I have that same thing happening all the time. I always think that people think I'm annoying, for some reason, which is a very strange thing to think about because I don't really think that I'm that annoying of a person, but I get it in my head that everyone thinks that I'm annoying.

C&S: Right!

So you said that you were hesitant about putting "Better Have Burn Heal" on the record, but you did.

CC: Well, it also came with help from those guys. They liked the song and said, "We should put it on the record"; I was like, "I don't know if I wanna talk about really personal things on this song."

Growing up my whole life, I was a bean pole- this small, skinny, somewhat athletic person- I played basketball and I rock climbed and stuff- and then I decided to try a new medication for anxiety. I had been going on and off medication my entire life and I was going through a really bad time for my anxiety, so I tried to go on a new medication- and one of the side effects was rapid weight gain. And I didn't know that at all- the doctor hadn't told me at all.

C&S: All the side effects are like, "Well, it might be this...".

CC: Yeah. And I was also hitting my mid-twenties around this time, so as a growing adult my metabolism was starting to slow down, and then with the side effects from that medication, I gained so much weight so fast. I had also quit smoking cigarettes around the same time- a side effect of weaning yourself off tobacco is gaining weight as well.

I went from about 175 to approaching 250- so I gained well over 50 pounds in a small amount of time, and I freaked out. You get used to yourself as one way and then you have to…. I started doing all this other stuff- dieting and trying to work out and none of it was working the way I wanted it to. Then going on tour, it started to be harder because I couldn't work out or diet on tour. So I started finding little ways to try and make myself feel better about it- and I've lost weight since then but I fluctuate, it's kinda hard- and in a way I learned to accept myself for who I am, which is really nice.

I tried to write the song in a way that people who struggle with not only that but things like gender identity, or anyone who struggles with their identity in general, could insert themselves into that song and realize that it's okay to be who you are. It's cool to be who you are. And sometimes, yeah, it's hard to look at yourself in the mirror or whatever, but then you realize you're here for a reason.

C&S: Every couple of days, I see someone post "Better Have Burn Heal" on Facebook or Twitter saying, "Oh my god, this song hits me." I'm sure you have people coming up to you and telling you what either that song or any song on the record means to them; what's it like when people say, "Wow, this means a lot to me" or "I relate to this"?

CC: It means the world to me when people tell me that. Because- like I said earlier- I wrote the record because I was putting myself out there and I like when people relate to it, because it makes me feel better to… Whenever I used to hear songs that I related to, it made me feel so much better because even if it was a song about something that I hated going on in my life, I heard someone else having the same problem and it was like, "Okay, well at least I'm not alone."

C&S: Were you someone that would ever go up to your favorite band and be like, "Hey..."?

CC: Absolutely. Well, I don't know- I get shy and nervous sometimes. Actually when I first started meeting a lot of the bands that I'm friends with now, I would catch them at a time when we were just all kinda hanging out and be like, "Hey, so, uh- I hate to be a fan right now- but this song did a lot for me, thank you." You know- I still do it from time to time.

But I love it when people come up and tell me that. I know that some people don't like when people like approach them randomly, but it doesn't bother me at all. Even though I have social anxiety, I feel like doing music is kind of my purpose in life, so it kind of forgoes it sometimes, if that makes sense.

C&S: I get that- this is where you feel like you're meant to be.

CC: It's still there, but it helps to know that people are relating and it makes them feel better, too. That definitely helps.

C&S: You have a song on the record called "Dead Reckoning", which you wrote about losing your grandfather when you were 13; when you wrote the song, were you thinking of where you were in your mind then, or how you feel about it now?

CC: When I wrote the song, the music had been written for a while and I knew what I wanted to write the [lyrics] about, I just really couldn't get the words out. It was one of the last songs I finished the lyrics for. One night while we were at the studio, I was sitting there drinking whiskey and just looking at the bottom of the glass, thinking about how I wanted to write this song. I wrote it about my entire thought process from that moment; it's written in a very real-time aspect- that's why it says, "Reflections from the bottom of the glass." I spent the whole night thinking about the idea of losing someone close to you and how it affects you, and I knew that I wanted to include the loss of my grandfather in it, because it was the first loss in my entire life that I experienced that truly destroyed me.

The song is about me sitting there thinking, looking at the bottom of that glass and remembering what it was like. The memory of when my mom told me about my grandfather's passing is so vivid; I have a photographic memory. When I listen to that song, it brings me back; it's kind of hard to listen to. I was downstairs at my other grandparents' house, on my mom's side- this was my dad's father that had passed away. [He passed away] in a car accident actually, which is one of the reasons why I have vehicular anxiety so bad now. My mom had gotten off the phone and I was standing there, wondering why she was so upset, and she told me to sit down. I sat down on the stairs and that's why- even that part is in the song, "I sat there on the steps and did my best to take it in"- and I remember when that had happened I was trying to think of the last thing I said to him, the last moment that I had with him, the last time he gave me a hug, and I couldn't think of any of it and it just overwhelmed me.

I knew when I started writing music that one day I'd write a song about it, I just didn't know when and then it finally happened for this record.

C&S: This is your first official headlining tour; being on a headlining tour vs. supporting another tour, do you feel like you have a different connection with the people there?

CC: Yeah, sometimes- absolutely. When you're headlining and you're the last band there every night and you see all those people still there, you know that they're there for a reason- even if they like the bands before you that have played, the fact that they stuck around means that they're at least interested.

So yeah, I definitely feel a little bit more of a connection with the people, and especially since we're playing longer sets- doing a headlining tour, you go from playing 25 to 35 minutes to playing 45 to 55 minutes. You go to this longer experience of being in front of these people and honestly- starting this headliner the day that the record came out, it's been really, really cool to watch the progress of the crowds learn the lyrics to the newer songs. The first day, they knew the singles, and now people are singing along with songs that I never expected them to sing along with, which is really cool!

I kinda miss being a support band because it's a little bit easier- being a headlining band, you're the first band to arrive and the last band to leave, and there's a lot more to do all the time- but I definitely think the connection with the people is a lot stronger. You're no longer playing for someone else's crowd, I guess, if that makes sense.

C&S: That totally makes sense.

CC: You're playing for- hopefully- people who are there to see your band, which is really cool.

C&S: What does music mean to you?

CC: Absolutely everything. It's- like I said, it's my life. It's my therapy. It's my entire existence, really, I've 100% always been a musical person [and] I don't see that ever changing.

It means everything to me because all the connections I've made in life have mostly been through music- all the times I've had to deal with my own problems and get over them, I've done it through music. I've seen the world through music now. I've seen Europe and the UK and all of the United States and Canada- I've gotten to do everything I've ever done because of music. So- it is most definitely my everything. It comes first for me.

C&S: Is there anything else you want to say?

CC: Thank you to everybody that got us to this point, whoever has ever supported our band or listened to any of our records, our EPs- even the joke ones, even the "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" song that we did for Christmas once- thank you. From the bottom of my heart and I know from the rest of the guys' hearts, too- it means the world to us. And I hope that people can relate to the new record and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it and making it.

Bear Your Mind is available now here and streaming on Spotify here. Read Molly’s thoughts on the record here and see photos from Free Throw’s show at The Foundry in Philadelphia on June 24 here. Keep up with Free Throw on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their official website.

Stream More Songs by Grown Ups on Spotify here. Stream “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You” by PUP on Spotify here.

#free throw #molly #interview #inner and outer portraits #inner & outer portraits #bear your mind #triple crown #triple crown records #grown ups #more songs #cloakroom #pup #music #band #band interviews #music blog #anxiety #anxiety disorder #body image

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maryeemeeh · 8 years ago

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Wolves of Manhattan

Originally posted on fanfiction.net

Summary: He is the rich kid from the Upper East Side with a troubled past and a dysfunctional family. She is from Greenwich Village who is pulled into the world of the rich and famous when her parents receive promotions. When their paths cross, a spark is ignited and the tables are turned when they learn they are far more connected than they thought. AU.

CHAPTER ONE

"Luke, don't do this!"

His eyes snapped open as he clenched his bruised fist and stormed out the room, ignoring his friends' pleas to stop. He stumbled outside and watched one of the guys from their high school football team scurried to his red Ford Mustang as quickly as he was able to. With his adrenaline on high, he ran to his car and jumped inside his white BMW i8 sports car and took off chasing after him.

His mind was racing and anger flooded his veins, threatening to cloud his better judgment and making it difficult to concentrate on what he was seeing. He hadn't felt such rage in a very long time, but he was determined he would pay for this; he would make him pay.

He sped down the half empty streets, getting in and out of the freeway, passing cars left and right and inching closer to the Ford Mustang. Anxiety pooled in the pit of his stomach as he pressed his foot harder against the accelerator to make it go a bit faster.

And then suddenly his instincts kicked in at once as he noticed a dog running in the middle of his lane. He gasped in shock, immediately slamming on the brakes and making a sharp turn, avoiding the dog by a thread as he was hurtling towards the fire hydrant, which burst into a stream of water.

And then there was nothing.

No noise.

No feeling.

Only darkness as his consciousness slowly ebbed away.

He moaned as he slowly woke up and found himself squinting under the harsh lighting. His throat was dry and his eyes were thick with sleep. He recognized the smells and the sounds of an IV machine beeping in his ear. When his eyes fluttered, he realized that he wasn't in his room. Instead, he was in the last place he wanted to be.

The hospital.

"Lucas?" He heard a soft feminine voice beside him, "Can you hear me?"

He slowly turned to look at his female companion and weakly smiled, relieved to see a familiar face. "Hey, Maya." He greeted, half-wincing when he became aware of the migraine and the pain in his chest. "What happened?" His voice came out small as every breath he took hurt like hell.

"Well, you crashed into a fire hydrant and the paramedics found you unconscious."

There was a moment of brief silence as his eyes trained on the ceiling in deep thought, trying to recollect everything that happened. "So he managed to get away…again." He shook his head in disbelief. "That jerk." Maya tried not to frown under the disappointment and anger in his voice. "Are you okay though?" He asked, concern feigning in his soft emerald gaze when he looked back at her.

"Yea," she said with a reassuring smile. "I'll be fine."

"He should have not said all those nasty rumors about you." He replied, looking increasingly annoyed. "I promise you, Maya I'll make him pay."

She sighed, brushing her long blonde hair out of her eyes. "Okay, Huckleberry. This needs to stop. You can't fight our battles all the time and have these angry outbursts. It doesn't do you or any of us any good." Lucas averted from her gaze with a slight roll to his eyes. He heard it all before. He's heard it several times for the past year or two and stopped listening at some point. "You could have hurt someone and gotten yourself killed tonight."

"She's right, yah know." Came another worried voice that he recognized to be his best friend's. "You were lucky. No broken bones. Just a few minor cuts and bruises."

Lucas smiled up at him by the time he reached his bedside. "Hey, Zay."

"Hey, man." Zay managed a smile as he placed a hand on his shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

Lucas shrugged and let out a light groan, feeling the pain radiate from his back and down to his legs. "I've been better, bro."

"Well you might feel even worse." Lucas turned to another male voice in the room as he appeared next to Maya.

"Why is that, Farkle?"

"Your mom is on her way."

A heavy sigh escaped from his lips as Lucas closed his eyes, wishing he could just disappear altogether. "Great."

A few days later…

Lucas toyed anxiously with a stray thread of his uniform khaki slacks while he waited outside the Dean's office. After being summoned out of his last class for the day, he had spent ten minutes waiting in the reception with only the constant clacking of computer keys and the ticking of the wall clock to keep him company.

The door opened with a creak, causing Lucas' head to snap up. He furrowed his eyebrows in bewilderment, expecting to be approach by a plump, short middle-aged man with balding grey hair and oversized glasses. But instead he looked up to see someone he never seen before; a slender man who appeared to be in his mid-to-late thirties with short, curly dark brown hair wearing a dark blue plaid shirt underneath a dark grey suit jacket and black pants.

"Ahh, Mr. Friar. Sorry to keep you waiting." He greeted him warmly. "My name is Cory Matthews and I am the new Dean."

Lucas nodded and took the hand offered, shaking it kindly with a greeting. "Hello, Sir."

"Please come inside."

Mr. Matthews led him inside the office, which was in the middle of being refurbished. The walls were empty of portraits, certificates and personal items. The only thing present in the room was a computer and laptop that sits on the mahogany desk with three swivel chairs. By the time he closed the door, Lucas noticed his mother sitting on one of them.

"Mom?"

She looked over her shoulder and gave him a small smile. "Come sit down, sweetheart." She said, gesturing to the empty seat beside her. Lucas reluctantly sat down, his eyes curiously following the Dean as he makes his way over to the desk to sit across from them.

"So what are you doing here, Mom?" He asked, annoyance creeping on the forefront of his tone. "Don't you have a debutante ball to organize or a gala to attend to or something?"

"Don't be rude, Lucas. Mr. Matthews called me over here to discuss your punishment after the stunt you pulled last weekend." She said calmly, earning himself a glare from his mother.

"You know, Mr. Friar I've been going through your files and I'm quite impressed." He said, taking Lucas completely off guard. "You're a 3.5 student athlete, who hasn't missed or was ever late to class. And yet, a good kid like yourself has a history of getting into fights." Mr. Matthews paused, shaking his head. "You're sixteen, Lucas. You have your whole life ahead of you and you're out there getting in trouble. Can't say I'm not disappointed."

Lucas regarded him carefully with an intense stare. "So what is it going to be, sir? Are you going to suspend me?" He challenged. "Expel me? Send me to juvie?"

"Is that what you want, Mr. Friar?"

Lucas shook his head sharply, and for the first time in a long time, he felt vulnerable. Not because he was in trouble, but because he saw something in Mr. Matthews' eyes he never seen before. Instead of the usual look of disappointment and shame Lucas seem to earn from staff that held administrative positions, he saw hope and unwavering faith in his. "No," he finally answered after a long minute of silence.

Mr. Matthews studied him carefully as he leaned back against the chair, absently twirling a pen between his fingers. "I don't know how your previous Dean do things around here, son but I'm taking a rather different approach. Luckily for you the city hasn't press any charges, and I happen to know the chief of police who has agreed to the terms I will present to you for your punishment."

"Alright." Lucas drew in a nervous breath. "Let's hear it."

"Your driver's licensed has been suspended for a year."

"What?!"

"Which means your driving privileges has been temporarily withdrawn until the duration of your suspension is over. If you violate the law and rules of driving again, your license will be revoked." Lucas grumbled something incoherent as Mr. Matthews continued on. "You are banned from participating in any team sports for the rest of the school year, and instead you will be an assistant coach to a local little league baseball team after school."

"Anything else?" Lucas asked. He couldn't decide whether he should be happy or not. He's not getting suspended or going to jail but he has to watch over little kids, let alone teach them how to play.

"Yes, as part of your community service, you will be working four hours a day during the weekends at Topanga's."

Lucas groaned despondently, burying his face in his hands and resting them on his knees. "It's better than jail, sweetie." He heard his mother say as he looked at her and quietly nodded.

"When do I start, sir?"

He had been dreading this moment since he stepped out of the Dean's office yesterday. And so when the day finally arrived, Lucas couldn't believe he was enjoying his time as an assistant coach. Never mind the cold in mid-April or the fact that he was coaching boys who were barely four feet tall. He loved baseball, and there was something about teaching the fundamentals of the sport to the next generation of athletes that he found comforting and rewarding.

He spent the majority of the afternoon shadowing the head coach, observing and taking a mental note of the daily routine that goes on in every practice. At one point, Lucas volunteered to demonstrate the proper way to hold a baseball bat and pitch a baseball using different grips, earning praises and approval from the kids as well as the head couch.

"So do you play a lot?" The head coach asked, joining Lucas on the first row of the bleachers as soon as he had the kids pair up for a round of throw and catch.

"Yea, I'm on the high school baseball team over at Thomas Jefferson Prep." Lucas smiled, but then frowned slightly and looked down. "Well…I was anyway. What about you, Coach?"

"Please, call me Josh. And yes, I play for NYU."

"Nice."

"Last guy I had knew nothing about baseball. Thank God my brother sent you."

"Brother?"

He nodded, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips as he began leaving his place on the bottom bleachers to return to his kids. "Yep. I believe you know him as Mr. Cory Matthews."

Lucas raised a brow with a thoughtful look on his face. "Huh. You don't say..."

The whistle blew as all the kids surrounded Josh, most of them relieved to have practice come to an end. He talked for a minute when Lucas noticed a crowd of parents waiting behind the fence to pick up their child. "Good practice, boys. I'll see you all here same time tomorrow." He said as the team started to head out. Lucas was about to grab his things from the dugout when he felt someone tug at his blue long-sleeve shirt. He turned around and lowered his gaze at the curly, brown haired boy staring up at him.

"Thanks for the tip, Coach. I had fun."

Lucas smiled. "Anytime."

"Come on, Auggie. Let's go!"

"I'm coming!" The boy exclaimed as Lucas followed the sound of a feminine voice yelling for him. And sure enough, he saw a pretty brunette looking in their direction, waiting from outside the fence. Their eyes met briefly from a distance and he smiled, the smallest smile he could muster, just enough to make sure that she knew he noticed her.

#Rucas #rucas fandom #rucas fanfic #rucas fanfiction #riley matthews #lucas friar #riley x lucas #lucas x riley #GMW #gmw fanfiction #gmw fandom #girl meets world #girl meets world fandom

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savetopnow · 7 years ago

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2018-04-05 13 VIDEO now

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Bill Wurtz

unboxing video

maybe i could eat blades of grass

La de da de da de da de day oh

soap tips

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The Unbearable Loneliness of Being Right on the Internet - Live at Skepticon Australia 2017

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The 10 Most Personal Movies of All Time - Movie Lists

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elise-by-year · 8 years ago

Text

Written on the body: 2016 in photos.

,(This is the latest I have ever written this post, but the theme of 2016 has been “please be patient with me, I’m doing the best I can,” so it seems sort of appropriate.)

New Year’s Day

“What has been really nice about this year, I think, is that I kept a lot of it to myself. I spent time with the people that mattered to me and I didn’t feel like I needed to explain why things were important to me.”

This is how I wrapped up the end of my 2015 post. The first hour of 2016 started with a boy yelling at me outside a bar, demanding to explain why I would want to be alone when he was willing to be my boyfriend. I went back to Moira’s apartment with Mae and Katie, where we snuggled up in one bed like we had done so many times in the nineteen years behind us. Later that day, Frank came over and fulfilled my Christmas wish for girl power and a gypsy curse (Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl and a rusted sailor’s compass that spins around despite sitting still are sitting on my desk at this very moment). We had a horror movie marathon and killed a bottle of Jameson while we ate baby carrots and screeched on my couch.

So, really, the first morning of 2016 started with this thought: Don’t let people who treat you unfairly stick around. Take a self portrait and move the hell forward.

January

Photo: Juliette Sandleitner

Photo: Alyssa Roth

The rest of January was really good to me, despite some hard stuff.

I went on a secret date with a mutual friend that turned into a lot of dates. I was advised by a lot of people not to, but I’m still glad I did and hope he’s glad too. I went to a housewarming party that ended in me standing outside my ex’s house while it rained sideways and I tried to reason with myself. I don’t remember why you ran outside or what we talked about, but I remember hoping we wouldn’t have the opportunity to talk again so I wouldn’t need to keep choosing over and over. I decided that there is no real time to say good bye and that the things you love will eventually just stop showing up.

A big snowstorm hit. I spent the better part of it walking through the streets with Frank and Finley, drinking bad whiskey from the fish flask and being grumpy old men. I drove up to the Ghost Ranch the moment the roads cleared and spent the day drinking basil gimlets in a snow fort and shoveling out people’s cars.

I went to Maria’s house to have a silly afternoon of shooting and eating burgers with her, Alyssa, Juliette (who I had not seen in over two years), Annalise, and Eden. All of the snow from the week before had melted almost overnight and it was warm enough to walk around without a coat.

Other things about January: Mae and Katie and I founded B.Y.O.M. (bring your own mom), which basically just meant getting blitzed off $2 margaritas with our moms. I went to visit Max and saw the “woods behind my house” that I had been hearing about for the better half of the year and watched The Prisoner. Mae and I went to brunch a lot and got a matching pair of parking tickets. I started working at a tequila bar with Frank.

Most importantly, maybe, was the beginning of the thought that I wasn’t doing what I should be doing.

February

“Rabbit, Rabbit”

February was another big month. I housesat for my godfather and spent a week and a half with my golden retriever babe counterpart, Mollie. Mae and I got accidentally-on-purpose mimosa drunk and met Cory Booker at a Clean Ocean Action rally. Max came to visit; I cut his beard and showed him Pershing Field, where we saw the best sunset I’ve ever seen in person. I took my shoes off and broke some pieces of ice in the ocean with my bare toes.

I made a weird (but, in retrospect, funny) mistake, had a bad day, and saw a different sunset in the same spot with Frank. Mae and I got into a fight and made up. It snowed again. I made a bunch of Star Wars valentines. I went to Max’s birthday (X-Files pennant in tow) and met twenty people in one night. Meg and I hung out alone for the first time and got a little drunk at a Bond St. music video filming while making new friends and dragging egotistical boys.

I went on the worst! Date! Of all! Time! It’s my favorite anecdote now. I’m still convinced I was on a prank show somewhere.

Frank and I saw Jenny Lewis perform her Rabbit Fur Coat ten year anniversary show, which ended up being one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I watched Jenny Lewis, tiny and string and mighty, reduced a sold-out 2,900 seat house to pin-drop silence when she sang Happy without a mic.

Frank and I saw another show a week later (Mary Lattimore/Julia Holter) and ate clementines and giggled about the secacu pail tation and decided that most things in life can be sorted out in the morning (unless you sleep through work the next day, which I did).

This was also the drunken movie night couch sesh that ended with a reprimand from my mother because she was worried Frank was going to drunkenly freeze to death in the snow walking the two blocks back to his house. To this day, Frank claims my mother is the only one who has ever worried about him actually dying in a ditch.

Excessive amounts of laughing and drinking with Frank aside, I started spending a lot of time alone and celebrating that. I started a little series about documenting my life alone vs. with a partner, as this was my first year alone in almost four years.

I went to the Cold War Surf party with Brie and Dave and spent most of the night talking to their friend about PA school. I hadn’t seen Dave since the summer and I hadn’t seen Brie so happy in a long while. I went on a date with a photographer the next day and left early because I felt sick. He said leap days cause bad luck and universal unsteadiness, but I told him it was just a hangover. It was the flu.

March

Spent the first week of March melted to my couch with the flu. I shook myself out of it just in time to make a job interview and meet Vicky for her week back in America. We spent too much money on burgers in Crown Heights, but I was so happy to see her and so sad to say good bye. She played me a love song she recorded on her phone while I battled my way through Brooklyn traffic to drop her off.

My flight for Anna Kate’s wedding in Georgia was the next day. It was my first time taking a plane on my own and my first time being a bridesmaid. It feels a little cheap to write about this now, honestly- I think I felt better in four days than I’d felt all year. I finally got to see my best college friend’s town and house and family and meet her in-laws. Everyone was so kind and warm and accommodating (even the Georgia weather) and I really felt a great deal of sadness when I left.

Back at home, it snowed a little more and I showed Frank and Finley my secret beach. The tide was too high to make it to the voodoo bunker, so we stuck a pin in it. The pin’s there for now, along with other things. We started spending a lot of nights in his backyard raging with the fire pit, baby carrots, and a witch of the wood.

I spent a lot of March in a weird place and living in terms of “this time last year.” It felt like there were a million other Elises living their lives differently just out of my periphery. Still with Alex, still in school, someplace I couldn’t imagine. I knew I didn’t want any of those things, really, but I got caught up in the missing and the wanting instead of trying to change my life.

I was still seeing a person I shouldn’t have been seeing, letting myself feel guiltier and guiltier. I went to Meg’s show in West Long Branch and drank a milkshake (because I wasn’t through pretending I wasn’t lactose intolerant) and it was sick-sweet and I sat on a barstool sick and sweet and sad, a stomach to match a mood.

Brighter side: Mae and Frank and I went to see Girlpool, found a Jurassic Park themed bathroom in a pho place, and didn’t get ticketed parking in Brooklyn. My two best friends got along so well and it made me feel appreciative and lame and lucky.

I think March is when I started seeing a reporter, but I’m not sure now.

April

April was good and bad. I went on a lot of interviews for jobs I didn’t want, went on a lot of dates with a reporter I liked, and went for a lot of walks with different people. My anxiety was mean, uncontrollable, and manifested physically most days. Wilco got sick at the beginning of the month and I spent a lot of time curled up in bed with him, which was something I needed almost as much as he did. We were both tired out and needed each other.

I turned 24, and it was the first birthday I wasn’t sad about for a long time. Mae, Brie, and I celebrated two birthdays at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and had the nicest day. Mae made me a Twin Peaks necklace on the laser cutter and I don’t think I’ve ever been more careful with another piece of jewelry.

I had lunch with an ex and they asked me to come back, which I could not bear to consider.

Still, I was happy. Things were nice, and I was happy and appreciative. When things were good, I felt like if all of life were that nice, I wouldn’t appreciate anything. The bad days made the good ones, if that makes sense. If I woke up miserable and cranky, I knew I’d be better for it, because every nice thing might feel even a fraction as good as a truly good day. It’s a backwards way to live, but it was how I was living at the time.

I saw Colin Hay with Mike, the reporter, and Frankie Cosmos/Eskimeaux with Frank. The Frankie show was the first time we were one of the oldest people in the audience, and we celebrated by eating Cracker Barrel and wearing plastic sandals. We also spent a lot of time raging in the backyard, firing up Finley, and witching in the woods. One day I met all three cats, hung out with his whole family for the first time in the longest time, and we found out worms move really fast. Like, really fast, guys. Also, a tub of pretzel rods that had been moving between our houses finally met it’s bitter end.

I don’t know how I forgot about this until now, but Frank and I also saw Rihanna the day before my birthday and then followed it up with a visit to the Wonder Bar on my birthday, which was much less eventful and involved leaving Frank to talk to someone from high school while I danced. If a human look could convey that shriek R2D2 does, that would be the look Frank was giving me at that moment.

I went to visit Max again. We split a turkey sandwich, helped his mom set up a printer, and went off-roading in the pine barrens.

Erica and I tried to go biking at Sandy Hook, but I popped my tire shoving my bike into the trunk. We walked up and down the bayside of the hook, flew kites, and visited the voodoo beach before it got dark.

Went on a few brunch dates with Mike, accompanied by some of my friends and then his dog and then alone. He was a good sport when Mae and Taylor accused him of being a murderer for having two phones and his dog’s name started with an L and that is honestly and truly all I can remember about this person I knew for the better part of two months.

May

The Dead End Kids \m/

May was filled with work and friends and more work. Starting with work: I began my stint with the escape room, which proved to be a nonstop hell ride where I met a handful of really good pals, including Shayne and Laura. It’s also where I started put all of my weird feelings and doubts to bed, which was a good feeling after a long time. I also started working at Stone Dog, a female-founded scenic shop that had just moved to my hometown. It was good to be doing carpentry and design nonstop with patient and fun coworkers. At this point, I was already making plans to go back to school, so the enormous pressure I had felt at my previous creative jobs had up and vanished. I felt nervous, free, excited for my life, and happy with a secret. I was still at the tequila bar, but I was working most of my shifts with Frank and had hit a happy groove with my routine.

My mom and I got drunk at mother’s day brunch and my dad needed to pack us into the backseat to drive us home. I was still seeing Mike at this point, I think, and other Mike (my favorite bartender) asked me about him. We broke things off a week later for lack of feelings, and I wish every conversation could be as easy as that one.

Katie graduated, which left me in happy, proud tears. She came home and slept for a full day.

I went kayaking with Erica and her (at the time) new boyfriend, Timmy. It was the last time I saw her with blue hair and the first time I saw her so happy with a partner. They’re still together and, while I don’t see her as often lately, I’m happy when I think about where she is in her life.

Waj joined the Peace Corps and had a going away barbecue before he left for China. That was one of my favorite nights of the summer. Mae and I decided to bike (which was a way better decision when we were sober and not drunkenly trying to get uphill so we could go to bed at 2 am). We started a wheels gang called the Dead End Kids with Jake, Nick, Luke, and Paul. Little did we know, we’d be starting the summer’s most potent curse, but more on that later. Anyways, it was nice to reunite with people I really, really loved while saying good bye to one of our best.

I had many more backyard nights with my great aunts / wiz bang gang / goo goo dogs (Frank + Finley).

June

When you realize you matched your outfits and your ice cream cones

June started off in Annapolis, Maryland, where Stone Dog had sent me for a set install. I would go on to install an MTV set a week later and throw up in a gender-neutral bathroom between raising Hollywood flats a week and a half later.

Robbie graduated, which was one of the best days. We had a graduation party two weeks later with our whole family, which was weird and surprisingly nice. Colin and Ashley also had a barbecue to celebrate their new house and engagement.

Mae and Frank and I went to our second big concert together (well, Northside Festival). We saw Wolf Parade, ate vegan ice cream, played with tiny hands and street sharks, and laughed way too much and often. We also all matched outfits like any proper girl gang.

The biggest update of them all came in June: telling my family about my intention to go back to school and become a physician’s assistant. To save time, here’s my post from June about it:

“After a year of working perfect, career-making carpentry and set design jobs, I’m realizing the reason I’ve been miserable for five years hasn’t been because my personal strides in life and mental health haven’t been good enough. It’s because I truly hate what I do.

I love carpentry, and I love art and design. I feel the small rush of job satisfaction every once in a while, but it shouldn’t take a 24 hr Thanksgiving Day Parade shift to give me joy. This career has only made me feel small and useless, and my contempt for feeling like what I’m doing doesn’t matter has only grown over time. I’m twenty four. I shouldn’t be so consistently unhappy with what I’m doing. I should have been feeling joy when I was nineteen and going to school for set design, not utter annihilation.

I can blame my professors or that one summer or sexism in the workplace, but I can’t make excuses for all of those nights when I was eighteen and nineteen and wishing I had gone into the medical field. I can’t ignore being twenty two and twenty three and twenty four and feeling like my life was over and that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I’m so young and I have so much velocity and I will never, ever have as much energy as I do now to make a change.

I’ve had the best possible run in the art field and will continue to do so while I complete the undergraduate prerequisites required to pursue being a physician’s assistant. I know this sounds like a big announcement, but it really isn’t- I just need a small outlet (this blog) to take a baby step and feel like I have a little support while I transition into a new part of my life.

I feel good. I feel so good. While I was in college, I didn’t plan for growing up and being an adult with a career. I planned on being a girl who would die from depression before I ever needed to make longterm plans for happiness. The past few weeks of planning have been some of the happiest days of adulthood I’ve ever felt. I feel so renewed and I can’t wait for it, all of it- studying and volunteering and going into a new career humbled and vulnerable and ready to learn.

Anyways, there it is- somewhere.

It’s time to lean the hell in.”

So, there it is. I was finally moving forward, registering for prerequisite classes, and seeking out EMS shifts for my volunteer hours. I’d been planning it for months, but I knew I wouldn’t have much time to think once I started. I was keeping up my hours at escape room, working on designs for a new room, and counting on that job to carry me through classes.

Other things: Getting close and then very far away from a coworker and friend, putting all of my trust in the wrong people, a drunk girl reading my palm from the sidewalk outside the bar, and the end of a long soreness while I watched someone I cared about very much fall in love.

July

I didn’t take a single photo with my camera in July. July was a rush of plastic bag cellphone photos, cherry-stained teeth, and fourteen hour work days. Work at the escape room was both really good and really bad. I was getting closer to Shayne and Laura, managing my own schedule, and had a constant influx of weird projects and challenges. It was, however, coming at a cost: growing anxieties about being around people who both wanted and despised me, dealing with our crook of a boss, spending too many hours and too much money, and not prioritizing other things. On the bright side, I did get a perfect grade in my first responder respiratory class.

It was around this time that Frank and I started talking seriously about moving in together, which is sweet and a little dumb in retrospect. I had just agreed to take on five more years of school, so I don’t know why I thought shaking up my living arrangements could be in the cards for me. We also had an incredibly uncomfortable third of July, giggled about handwrittens, and saved the backyard witch from burning.

Mae moved home and started working on the boardwalk, so I spent a lot of time running her hoagitos and taking walks up and down the boardwalk alone until she was done closing up shop. Thoughts on Mae at this time: “Super thankful all the time for a best friend who constantly makes me feel like I deserve everything, even if I don’t feel like I deserve her when we’re apart.”

Also: Modest Mouse x Brand New at the Mann in Philly, which involved mixing Mae / Brie / Dave with Shayne. Also saw the Dolphin clan (and actually, now that I think of it, this may have been the last time I saw Max).

Frank had to drop out of our Panorama plans last-minute, so Mae and I had an unbelievably cool day on Randall’s Island. We ate popsicles, stood in lots of lines, and proved that we could find a pair of hammocks in literally any environment. We saw The Front Bottoms, Kurt Vile, and (in one of the few self-actualizing moments of my short life) LCD Soundsystem. It was a hundred degrees, but it turns out Mae’s longtime wet neck bandana trick had actually become a fashion staple in 2016, so we fit in with the best of them.

Also: Went on a few dates with the local candy factory owner’s son, was still too old for me, can never visit Old M’ Candies again.

Also also: Started the most ill-advised project with Shayne and Luke at escape room. The only positive was getting to build things (like a glow in the dark table) and a lot of gin and tonics.

Also also also: Ill-advised lifeguard stand kisses at Birthmae, starting another cycle I do not regret.

Also also also also: Wishing I had listened to A and kept someone at an arm’s length.

August

August was mostly good, partly bad. The “mostly” is the things that happened and the people I spent my time with, the “partly” is everything I let myself get caught up in.

I met a girl in a bar that told me ghosts come in intervals of three years, and I thought about that a lot in the coming weeks. Felt raw and wide open to things that were far behind me and let myself get caught in that cycle of grief.

Was still at escape room every day, fighting the good (and sometimes petty) fight. Shayne and I started taking turns throwing knives into the wall and spackling the holes back up a lot, at least. We also packed in a car to Pennsylvania to see Frank and Sarah in their play.

I went to Colorado with my family and saw landscapes I hadn’t ever seen, took too few pictures, and spent most of my time profoundly distracted by my future.

Mae and I saw a lot of movies on the roof of the Baronet, Dave and I finally saw our overdue Night Vale live show, and I made more and more ill-advised decisions I just cannot regret.

I finally drove up to visit Loretta after a year or two of phone conversations, KFC and white zinfandel in tow (her request). I was only the second visitor she had since moving into the nursing home a month and a half prior. I didn’t know how to explain her to my friends- “my dead friend’s grandmother” just didn’t seem appropriate, but “a friend almost four times my age” didn’t either.

I also had my first friend date with Laura. We split a basket of fries with a dog on the patio of Bond St. and then waited patiently after that dog fell asleep on me, went to a show at the Parlor Gallery, visited Mae on the boardwalk, and got our futures read by a group of chain-vaping psychics. My psychic said I was full of darkness and stone and that my sister’s name started with a K. Laura’s psychic said she would marry someone soon and we both cackled our way down the boardwalk.

Had my last backyard rage night with Frank in August. It feels stubborn to write it down, but. He was falling in love and that was a good thing.

We got sushi and sake drunk and he decided to go fully vegetarian, so that was Frank’s last memory of fish.

September

(One day before breaking my foot)

The very first things that happened in September: becoming the fourth victim of the Dead End Kids summer of ‘16 curse. After that polaroid was taken, Nick broke his collarbone long boarding, Jake broke his entire body long boarding, Paul broke his elbow longboarding, and I broke my foot in four places longboard jousting. (I named my longboard Lance, both for the 90′s gay undertones and the jousting). Mae and Luke made it through the rest of the year unscathed.

So the rest of the fall happened on an air cast, which was weird and embarrassing and my second time on crutches in two years.

I started Medical Terminology, my first class since my decision to go back to school. I was tired and broke and broken, but that class made me feel like my life was moving in a good direction.

Luke and Shayne and I were close to finishing up our escape room, exhausted and dead inside. This is probably the last time I’ll mention it. An entitled boy made me uncomfortable and unhappy at every opportunity. Work in September was the most negative part of my life (my year) and I don’t really care to think about it more than that.

Shayne and Laura and I continued our Monday Fundays, playing lots of shuffleboard and drinking too much gin for a weekday. In a weird way, I made more friends in a cast than I did without one. Alex started showing up, which was easy and weird and nice. We spent some time talking about a girl we both loved a whole lot and I remember feeling like it was a stroke of unbelievable, overwhelming luck for life to work out this way.

The second annual Maker’s Fest happened, in a new location and three times the size as the year before. Mae was doing henna, so I bopped (clunked) around catching up with vendors and talking to new ones.

Mae and I celebrated our twenty year anniversary living across the street from each other and being best friends. I get real sappy talking about this and I’m trying to keep this all business, so here’s some thoughts on that: “My best friend has been my best friend for 5/6 of my life and that fraction is just going to become wider and deeper as we get older. Mae is one of those people that make you marvel at the capacity of your own heart and wonder how you could ever love someone more than you do right now and I am so, so profoundly lucky to have her in my life.”

Frank and I saw Bruce Springsteen play his longest show in history, a record he broke the next day and the next. He sang every favorite, every B-side, every song we’d driven through downtown Freehold blasting at 3 am since we were 17. It was unbelievable. It was also the last significant period of time I spent with one of my best friends, so I think about that night pretty often.

Also, I spent a lot of time on the beach shivering and finding the seven sisters.

October

“Your chest is wide open and yawning and you heart fills the room it inhabits and I wonder how you aren’t eroded away to dust by now.”

October was getting to know someone new, really trying to make myself a little more open to make space for all of the new people I cared about, missing my best friends, and trying to take pictures. Despite the good stuff, I was feeling very emotionally spent.

Became closer and closer with Shayne, was happy and appreciative for life throwing me a person so good. Thought about the cyclicality of my life and relationships, how I was making another dent in another passenger seat as my space in another faded away.

We left the bar one night and kept driving and ended up on the dirt JCP+L road I had found a few summers before. We watched fog roll over the pond and parked in the middle of the woods to look at the stars. I marked “star night- shayne” on my calendar so I wouldn't forget it, but it seems cheap to try and write about it now.

Shayne and Laura and Alex and I went on a last-minute vacation to Sleepy Hollow on Halloween weekend. I don’t think Elise from a year ago would believe that, and if she did, she wouldn’t buy that I had a genuinely good time. We watched bad horror movies, had an outdoor fire, and worried about getting murdered by our preppy Airbnb host. Apparently Hillary Clinton was walking around those same woods that very same weekend, but we didn’t see her.

Dan and I went to a Devil’s game and took loads of embarrassing pictures. I stared to realize that I was slowly becoming a partner.

Mae and I went as Neve Campbell and Bruce Campbell for Halloween, the closest to a couple’s costume we had ever gotten. It was the first time I had seen her all month. Halloween was a weird night for me ultimately, but Mae was the best part.

November

“the earthly and obvious parts if me are touching your face and repeating a strumming “this is a person who loves you”

but there’s a loop, a pause, a gap in the human condition

endless separations and connections, tidal and vascular

falling out of orbit is much easier than fighting your way back in”

What can I say about November? Trump won the presidency, Dan and I spent the weekend hiking, I broke up with Dan, and I spent a lot of time alone on the beach. I got my cast off, put my bare feet in the sand, and waited for clarity.

All of my siblings were home at once. Frank and I went on a walk, I worried that Finley would not recognize me, Finley knocked me over. There’s a lot to say about fish flasks and nerves and secrets multiplied into a shared burden twice the size, but I won’t say any of it. It had been a long time and I felt sick and sad and nervous.

I took a self portrait I really, really liked. It was one of those portraits where recognized myself.

Still, November was a month of disconnect and I wondered how many hearts I would dig through before I found my own.

December

December was long and happy and lazy.

I made two knives, applied to jobs, babysat my golden retriever counterpart. My siblings and I were in the same house all at once. I got strep throat and spent four days glued to a bed. I got the highest grade in my medical terminology class and my teacher asked me to apply to the school she worked at when the time came. I missed Frank, Mae came home.

Lexi came to New York with Jesse and Carl. I took eight pictures, learned how to play pool, and talked about my hometown too much.

I wrote this, and it’s all I can bring myself to say about the rest of December/my overwhelming luck:

“sometimes I feel so pitch-black, so lacking and longing

you are so unconcerned with my surface and shortness and shortcomings and I just do not know how you are so gasping and wide open, so ready for me at any moment

and I think of the constant draft, the tiny bites on rawness that you must feel to be so vulnerable for me at all times”

What can I say about 2016? It already feels so far behind me. I guess there’s a simple logic to doing a year in review in 2016 and not nine days later. Time is pushing ahead and I am too. It’s the same belief that keeps me honest with my loved ones: “Say it all now, because you are running out of time.”

I never know what to do here. Usually I get to the end of my review and feel heavy with loss or exhaustion. Sometimes I’m angry, and I can feel smoke ribbons coming out from between my teeth and making knots in the air around me. It’s hard, digging up the evidence of your life month-by-month and trying to put words to the sum of your parts. You think you have the shape of it, that you’ve smoothed it out into something you can understand, and then a sharp edge catches your finger and you’re bleeding all over again. It’s hard to be honest, to look your past in the eyes until it blinks first, and it’s even harder to be surprised by it. I am so many different moving objects all at once, flickers and beats and wanting. My past isn’t going to stay still just because I want it to.

This year feels different. Does distance grant clarity, or does change? Was this an easy year, or was it just productive? I went into this year looking over my shoulder, waiting for the things I had pushed aside to catch up to me. I realized that the thing I feared had already happened to me and was getting further and further away as time moved on. I realized that making a mistake did not mean I needed to waste my entire life trying to adapt to it. I started to let people grow on me instead of holding them at an arm’s length. (Actually- I really, really loved the people I loved and started to love myself just as much or more.) I let myself make mistakes, indulged in tiny failures, and built a lot of furniture. I hustled, I planned, I rode my longboard. I got good grades (grades!) and got stoked about school. I feel weird and good, even if things look a little shaky and transitional written down.

Here’s how I ended my 2015 year in review:

“Anyways- 2015 was really, really good to me, and I was really, really good to myself. I don’t have expectations for 2016, and I don’t have any goals besides pushing forward. By this time next year, I want to be looking back and remembering 2016 as hard and good progress into a life I want.”

And here I am. I already know 2017 is going to be about hustle, change, and working for the things I want.

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