#like yeah Lisa frank sucks for doing what she did no question

[tragically-jane-doe]

So what I've gotten from this doc is that James green most definitely sucks and that Lisa frank also most definitely sucks

[let-me-write-shit]

Like We Used To: 18

A/N: **WARNING** brief smut! I put **** before and after so you can skip.

This chapter was inspired by a request from @pzb2006​. Thanks so much for the Ellen suggestion! I kinda tweaked it a little bit, but I hope you like it! 

Anything you’d like to see in upcoming chapters? Message me some suggestions. I’ll see what I can do :)

[CLICK HERE FOR PREVIOUS CHAPTERS]

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

The birds chirped louder than they had all year on tuesday morning, causing Elizabeth to wake up before Harry’s alarm got the chance to go off. The morning sun beamed down on Elizabeth’s face and she turned to see Harry, lightly snoring, next to her in the lounge on his back patio. She bit her lip, smiling as she felt slight irritation from the tattoo behind her ear. Last night’s date was perfect. 

Elizabeth traced her fingers lightly over some of Harry’s tattoos, hungry for a little more of last night’s action. *****She started to trail little kisses from his lips, to his chin, and down to his neck, causing Harry to stir in his sleep a little bit. She continued, slipping underneath the duvet, kissing his chest, and his belly button, before taking hold of his limp cock and putting it in her mouth, sucking on him. Harry shifted, realizing what was happening, and pulled the sheets off of him to see Elizabeth, bobbing her head up and down on him. 

Quickly he started to harden up, muttering a quick, “Whoa,” placing one hand on her back while the other stayed by his side. She gagged as he hit the back of her throat and continued, eyes beginning to water, taking him in deeper, massaging his balls with one hand while the other pumped the base of his cock that she couldn’t fit in her mouth. It didn’t take long before Harry grunted her name, pushing her head further onto his cock. She could feel his member pulsate as his salty, thick cum squirted at the back of her throat. She swallowed as quickly as she could, licking up any spillage before sitting up and wiping her mouth.

*****************************

“I like that wake up call,” Harry smirked at her, sitting up. 

She laughed, snuggling into Harry’s side, “Think of it as a thank you for a great date.”

“Does this mean you’ll be my girlfriend now?”

Elizabeth sighed, “Harry, don’t ruin it.”

She was fine with being more free-spirited when it came to general messing around with Harry, but her last failed relationship had made Elizabeth more shut off to the whole idea of being a girlfriend. Having three years worth of memories up in flames from her ex-boyfriend’s infidelity made it hard for her to want to be in a serious relationship again. Messing around was one thing, but once there was a label involved, especially in this case where everyone around the world will know about it, made the relationship even more serious, which would, in turn, make a break up even more difficult. She just didn’t know if she was ready for that kind of commitment yet.

Harry groaned before dropping it, “Fine. But are you still coming to my Ellen interview today?”

“Yeah, I already finished most of my work for today. I just have a quick call with a client that I can take later on.”

“Great. Sarah and Mitch will be excited to see you. We have to leave here by 9 to meet up with them. What time is it anyway?”

Just at that moment Harry’s alarm started blaring, meaning that it was 7:30 AM. He reached for his phone to turn it off while Elizabeth shot out of the lounge shouting, “I need to take a quick shower!” Running inside, still naked. She swiped her phone from the kitchen counter on her way up the stairs to Harry’s bathroom, turning the knobs on. While the water warmed up she finally looked at the screen to turn on some music and see how much battery life she had when she noticed dozens of missed calls and text messages.

“What the hell?” she whispered to herself, opening a text from her mom.

‘Hello?   /    Are you awake?   /     I’m not sure of the time difference of where you are, but I tried calling a few times.   /    Call me back when you see this. Xx’

Her eyes furrowed in confusion, mind going to the worst, thinking someone in her family had maybe gotten hurt. She opened Matt’s texts next.

‘Earth to Lizzy, you up?  /   wtf is going on?   /   Kinda feelin left in the dark right now.    /    Listen, I’m not one to believe in tabloids but is there any truth to these rumors?    /    Also if you got ur first tattoo without me imma be a little annoyed, ngl.    /    call me’

Tattoo? How did he know she got a tattoo? And what rumors? She continued onto the next texts from Daisy.

‘How could you not tell me you went to LA with Harry?! I need all the details when you get back. How big is his dick?? Don’t even try to deny you slept with him! Have fun ;)xx’

Okay, wtf is going on. She opened up Kate’s texts next.

‘Just woke up to another beautiful sunrise on my honeymoon and checked the news on my phone to see this article??? Is it official? Also offended you didn’t tell me yet, if it is! Love ya!’ with a link to a TMZ article. 

Elizabeth’s heart was beating a thousand miles a minute as she clicked on the link. ‘Harry Styles dating High School Sweetheart: They make it official with ink!’. In the article there were several pictures of them from the night before including one of them inside the ice cream parlor, one of Harry holding her hand as they entered the tattoo shop, the picture the two of them took with Frank and Derek, and the closeup pictures of their new tattoo’s along with a screenshot of an instagram post from the tattoo shop explaining their experience with Harry and her. In the article they mention her full name, her profession, her (very wrong) net worth, the neighborhood where she lives, and details of how her and Harry met.

She felt the heat rise to her face, panicking a bit, when there was a small knock on the door. Harry slowly opened the door to see her expression and stepped in, softly speaking, “So I’m assuming you saw it?”

“How the hell did they find all of this information out? Where I live? How we met? How much I make-which isn’t even right, by the way! I wish that was my net worth!” She threw her hands up, exasperated.

Harry let out a soft chuckle, wrapping his arms around her reassuringly, “I know. I don’t know how they get their information. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised it took them this long to figure out who you were. But don’t worry, we can handle it. Let’s just take a shower and get ready. Jeffrey and Lisa are going to be over soon and we’ll have a little sit down with them before we head on over to Ellen, okay?”

Elizabeth took a breath and agreed, setting her phone down and stepping under the hot water with Harry right behind her. Harry hugged her close with her head resting on his chest, letting the water cascade like waterfalls down their body for a few minutes before washing their hair and massaging body wash onto each other. 

Once out, Harry shaved his facial hair and Elizabeth quickly blow dried her hair straight and slapped on a bit of makeup before getting changed into cotton white crop top with puffy short sleeves, and a fitted pink floral mini skirt that had a small slit in it, pairing it with a pair of chunky white trainers. 

When Jeffrey and Lisa got there, they prepped her and Harry for possible questions they may be asked, verifying everyone was on the same page in that Harry and Elizabeth, as far as the world was concerned, were only friends as of now. She felt slightly more nervous than before on the way to the Ellen show, squeezing Harry’s hand in the back seat. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she would get to actually meet Ellen, but knowing how quickly the TMZ article blew up, she was almost certain that Harry would be asked about her and she didn’t know how everyone would react, regardless of Harry’s response.

They drove to a private entrance of the Ellen DeGeneres Show lot, basically entering underground, and were ushered inside, passing dozens of employees who said quick ‘hello’s to Harry on the way to his dressing room. Harry got changed into a different set of clothes while there and was going over details with Jeffrey and the producers of the show, so Elizabeth took the time to head across the hall to the band’s dressing room. 

“Elizabeth!” Sarah stood up, followed by Mitch, Adam, Ny and Charlotte. 

They each gave her a hug and Mitch put a hand on her shoulder, “You doing okay? We heard about the TMZ article.”

She sighed, stepping towards their table of food, popping a grape into her mouth, “Yeah, I’m alright. Jeffrey and Lisa came over this morning so we could all get our stories straight. I was not expecting this to happen.”

“They love to assume, those tabloids, eh?” Ny declared, earning nods of agreement from the rest of the group.

They carried on talking and joking for a bit before Elizabeth went back over to Harry’s dressing room to see how he was making out. Jeffrey and Lisa had taken the conversation with the producers outside of the dressing room so that it was just her and Harry, chatting about all the times he’s been on the Ellen show and different memories, when there was a knock on the door. 

“Come in!” Harry called as they both sat up straight. 

Elizabeth’s throat tensed up and she felt her heart drop to her stomach when the door swung open and Ellen DeGeneres popped her head in. She smiled friendly at them, stepping in the room and closing the door behind her. Harry stood up and grinned, shouting a hello to her, which made Elizabeth stand up as well, not wanting to be rude. 

“How are you doing?” Harry asked Ellen before motioning to Elizabeth, “This is my friend Elizabeth. Elizabeth, this is the lovely Ellen.”

“Hello,” Elizabeth smiled, coyly, shaking Ellen’s hand. It was softer and colder than she had expected.

“Yes, I’ve seen you all over the tabloids this week, it’s nice to meet you!” Ellen said, bluntly, still smiling at her, and motioning for them to sit back down on the sofa. She took a seat across from them on a chair and continued, “How are you both doing? I’m excited that you’re back here.”

“Yes, We’re good. Excited to be back. Love coming here,” said Harry.

“Great,” Ellen nodded between the two of them before looking at Harry, “Elizabeth, did you know you’re the first person I’ve met that knew Harry when he was just a kid.”

Harry looked at Elizabeth as Elizabeth smiled, still shyly, “No, I did not know that. I’m honored.”

“Yeah, I think he’s purposely hiding everyone from me,” Ellen joked, “Do you have any embarrassing stories of him growing up?”

“Alright, I don’t think we need to go there,” Harry put his hands up, smirking a bit, causing Ellen and Elizabeth to laugh.

“I actually do,” Elizabeth giggled, “We were probably fifteen at the time. Harry and I were walking to get food after school when he saw his mom up the street. So he snuck up on her and grabbed her from behind, spinning her around. Only to find out it wasn’t actually his mom and he had just spun a complete stranger around in the air. She screamed so loudly everyone on the street turned to look, and she hit him with her purse and ran away.”

Ellen burst into laughter as Harry buried his head in his arms in embarrassment, “See, this is exactly why I don’t let you meet anyone I grew up with,” he joked to Ellen.

They chatted for a bit more and Elizabeth started to feel a bit more comfortable before Ellen asked, “So you two really aren’t dating?”

“No,” they said at the same time, Elizabeth looking over at Harry, uncomfortably.

She looked between the two of them with a raised eyebrow, “Mhmm...you sure?”

Harry laughed, “Yes, we’re sure. What are you doing?”

“I’m just saying, you two would make a cute couple,” Ellen threw her hands up in defense. “Alright, well I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you two were doing and I’ll see you out there.”

The two of them joined the rest of his crew in their dressing room, watching bits and pieces of the show while all joking and laughing together. The atmosphere in the back was so cheery and fun, Elizabeth almost forgot that they were at a talk show set. She and Harry would steal little flirtatious looks and touches, not that they needed to hide it since everyone in the room was aware of their situation, until it was time for Harry to make his way towards the stage. Elizabeth stayed in the dressing room with Lisa and a few others while Jeffrey accompanied Harry towards the front and the band made their way towards the side of the performance stage. 

Harry would be interviewed by Ellen first before performing. Once he was announced, the audience started screaming as he walked out, waving at everyone and saying hello. He gave Ellen a hug and sat down on the white sofa, getting comfortable. She started off praising Harry for his recent performances and his upcoming final performance of his current album.

“Now, you’re doing a huge show in New York City in about four weeks as your last performance of this album. What can we expect from that show? Are there costumes involved? What’s the night going to be like?”

“Well….there will be costumes involved. You’ll have to wait and see what. And there may even be songs from the new album being performed,” Harry hinted, causing an eruption of screams and applause from the audience. “Maybe, we’ll see.”

“Oh, wow!” Ellen exclaimed, smiling. Once the audience quieted down she asked, “That’s exciting. Can you tell us what your album is kind of about? We all know that your current album is based around a break up, is there a storyline to your next one?”

“Uhm, kind of,” Harry crossed his legs and pinched his bottom lip, thinking, “You know, I don’t really like to explain my songs too much, I just feel like the lyrics kind of speak for themselves. But it’s funny because we started writing this album almost a year ago now, and it started off kind of being about one thing, but just recently it’s turned into something completely different. And it’s just weird how, you know, one or two songs can change the feeling of an entire album.”

“Wow, just recently, huh?” Ellen started, “Now, I heard in an interview recently that your album was kind of centered around old friendships. Does this sudden change in your album have anything to do with your ‘friendship’ that’s been circling all over the news outlets these last few days?” she put ‘friendship’ in finger quotations, and pictures  of Elizabeth and Harry were blown up on the screen behind them with the TMZ title plastered at the top.

Harry looked back at the screen and laughed, uncomfortably shifting in his seat, going between looking at the picture, looking at Ellen, and squeezing his temples with his middle finger and thumb. Elizabeth felt her face start to warm up in embarrassment, squeezing onto Lisa’s hand for support. She watched as the audience cheered at Harry’s nervousness and Ellen chuckled a bit before continuing, realizing Harry wasn’t going to say anything.

“Because, listen, now I just met Elizabeth backstage, you brought her here with you today,” Ellen said as the audience quieted down, “And she’s a lovely girl. Very sweet. And I mean she is just gorgeous, right?” Ellen pointed at her picture on the screen, looking at the audience which earned a few yelps.

Harry nodded awkwardly, “Thank you. I will, erm, I will be sure to tell her you said that,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows and throwing his hands up in the air as if to say ‘what the hell am I saying?’

Ellen laughed, “Yeah, and, listen, you both were pretty adamant that you two were just friends. I mean, you’ve been friends since you were, what, fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Fourteen, yeah,” Harry nodded.

“Right. A long time. Now she just told me a story about how you had confused a stranger with your mom and embarrassed yourself by swinging her around, not realizing it wasn’t your mom. She hit you with a purse!” The audience burst into laughter as Ellen continued, chuckling, “It seems like you’ve been through a good amount together. It also came out that you recently reconnected with her at a mutual friend’s wedding and spent the weekend together…” which earned another round of ooo’s from the audience.

“Yeah, there were eleven of us together that weekend,” he put an emphasis on ‘eleven’, “And, you know, most of us have been friends since we were thirteen, fourteen years old. It was a very strong sense of nostalgia being back with them again, so they all kind of played a part in the inspiration behind this next album. It was fun. We’re not done the entire album just yet, we’re still finishing up, getting everything just right, but it’s getting there and, yeah, I’m excited.”

Ellen nodded, listening, before bringing the conversation back, “Yeah, of course. I’m sure nothing happened between you two at all that weekend,” she teased before continuing, “And it’s also all over the internet that you and Elizabeth were supposedly out on a ‘non-date’, a one-on-one ‘friendly outing’ last night,” she overplayed, unconvinced, “You both wound up getting some tattoos. And she tattooed you, is that right? What did she tattoo on you?”

“Yeah, uhm, one of the tattoo artists there, he’s called Frank, told us about how his wife, Leah, was recently diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and was undergoing treatment, so my friend decided to attempt to tattoo the outline of the breast cancer logo and the letter L for his wife’s initial as a kind of homage to her.” The audience ‘awed’ as a picture of his tattoo showed on the screen.

Ellen nodded, looking at it, “Yeah, there it is. That’s pretty good, was that her first time tattooing someone?”

“Yeah it was her first time getting a tattoo, and tattooing someone, so pretty eventful night for her.”

“I’ll say,” Ellen continued, “Well that was very thoughtful of her to think to tattoo that on you. I mean, that’s there for life, so, pretty big deal. So we reached out to Frank today because of this and I’m happy to announce that the Ellen Show has decided to pay for all of Leah’s current and future medical expenses related to this diagnosis.”

The entire room cheered and Harry’s eyes widened, clapping hard and smiling, “Wow. Fantastic. That’s amazing!”

“Yeah, well, thanks to your ‘friend’ we were able to find out about Leah, so it’s really all because of her. I mean, listen, like I said, she seems like an amazing woman. I told you back stage that I think you’d make a great couple...”

“You did. You did say that,” Harry nodded awkwardly.

“Yeah, so, you know. I’m just saying. You have my blessing.”

“Great. Thanks,” Harry laughed, shifting in his seat and clearing his throat while the audience continued to laugh and cheer.

Ellen smiled, amused by his discomfort, and changed subjects, “So, the LA Fashion Week Runway Shows and Wrap Party are in three weeks, which you will be attending……”

Elizabeth looked at Lisa, speechless. What the hell just happened? She had expected maybe a question or two about her, but that was damn near the entire interview! Also, Ellen had said she was gorgeous. She was both freaking out of embarrassment, and fangirling at the same time. If people didn’t know who she was before, they definitely did now. She tried not to think too much into it. It was still too early to tell, and this particular Ellen episode wouldn’t air for two days, so she didn’t want to put too much assumption into it. Who knows how much of it would be edited out. 

While Harry had wrapped up the interview and performed with his band, Elizabeth took the time to finish up a scheduled conference over the phone with a client and return her family and friend’s calls back, reassuring them that the press had just been over exaggerating, and apologized to Matt for getting her first tattoo without him promising that they would get tattoos together soon. What a freaking day.

KEEP READING

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Nothing to Lose (1/2)

A/N: On the 9th day of Christmas, your true love broke up with you. Oh, Billy...whatever will I do with you, sir?! (This is not connected to ISY or Jigsaw.)

Word Count: 1,914 (g a s p - a short one?! ) 

Prompt from: anonymous 

“Woah there... have a little eggnog with your rum” 

“Ho-Ho-Hold on one minute there, Santa.” 

“Ho-Ho-Hold on one minute there, Santa!” Maria quipped from the living room as laughter led by her husband erupted among the last few guests to the annual Christmas Eve bash. Frank had no doubt been taking advantage of the mistletoe, the several beers he’d consumed loosening his inhibitions and getting him in the holiday spirit. How can they just… how do they act like things are normal when… Billy tipped the bottle, freely pouring a measure and a half of the amber liquid into his already spiked beverage. The clink of glass on glass as the spout knocked against the rim of his cup made him wince. He was much more drunk than he liked to be, and he was trying to act like he wasn’t as he continued to drown his latest regret. Squinting, he felt his forehead wrinkle up, deep creases of concentration cutting through his skin as he made an immense effort not to spill the Captain Morgan on Maria’s white carpet. Don’t fuck this up, too, asshole. He set the bottle back down on the folding table that had been set up as a drink station, licking his lips as he twisted the cap back on. Spinning it tight, he pinched his fingertip between the top and the strip of aluminum that was left over after the seal had been broken on the bottle. The jagged edge of the perforated piece bit into the pad of his finger just hard enough to cut him. Bringing it to his lips, he sucked the blood from the thin line that sliced through the print on his pointer finger, then rubbed it off on his dark jeans before gripping his glass with his other hand and knocking back a long swig. 

“Woah there…” A warm, honeyed  voice came from somewhere over his shoulder as the spiced rum burned all the way down his throat. “Have some eggnog with your rum there, Bill.” Maria came around from behind him, one hand on his back and a laugh lifting her voice as she smiled at him. Reaching for his glass, she wrapped her fingers around it and pulled it gently from his grasp. 

“Hey, what are you-” Billy mumbled, even as he let her take it away from him. It was the right call, and he knew it. It stopped being eggnog three rounds ago anyway.

Maria looked from his disheveled appearance- the way his eyes were struggling to find one thing to focus on, the red tint to his usually fair complexion, the few strands of hair that fell over his forehead that he hadn’t bothered to push back into place- to the contents of the glass that she’d just relieved him of. She frowned, tilting her head to the side as Frank’s booming laughter from the next room overpowered the festive music that had been playing all night. “Billy,” she set his glass down on the drink table among the empty liquor bottles and the ice bucket,containing mostly water now. “What’s goin’ on, huh?” 

Billy stared at the glass, watching as a bead of condensation dripped down the side of it, the way your tears had rolled down your cheek the last time he saw you. 

“Billy,” your voice sounded foriegn from the way that he’d hurt you, your bottom lip quivering like he knew you hated as salt streaks ran down your face. “Billy, what’s...why are you sayin’ that?” You took an uneven breath that knocked the air from his lungs.

His throat was dry, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth as his heart raged at his ribs. He ached to hold you, hating himself for what he was putting you through. It’s better this way. He looked through you, targeting the clock over your shoulder as he sucked enough saliva together to unstick his tongue. “I’m sayin’ I’m shippin’ out soon and I wanna leave this...you... here.” He swallowed again, preparing himself to look you in the eye as he continued, “I don’t wanna take you with me.” He shook his head, his coal black eyes set firmly on yours. The lights on your Christmas tree blinked on and off in the background, gifts that would remain unopened tucked beneath it. “Can’t bring any baggage with me,” he shrugged, the action actually causing him physical pain. 

You let out a burst of air that would have been a laugh had he not just broken your heart three days before Christmas and only two weeks before he was headed back overseas to one of World’s most dangerous places. “Is that what I am, Billy?” You asked, eyebrows arching high in disbelief as you tried to steady the involuntary sobs that were fighting to free themselves from your chest. “Just…” you raised one hand, letting it drop to your thigh. “Just baggage you can…” you wiped at your eye with the back of your hand, smearing your makeup off towards your temple. Billy had to stop himself from stepping closer and swiping the smudge away with his thumb as he’d done whenever he’d seen you cry before. “You want to leave me behind, Billy?” There was hardly anything left to your voice as you asked the question. 

“Billy?” Maria called his name again, placing both of her hands on his biceps and moving herself into his eyeline. He looked away from the glass to meet her concerned expression. Dropping her hands, she sighed. “Does this,” she cocked her head to the drink table, “have anything to do with the fact that you showed up alone tonight, when you told us that you’d be bringing-” 

“I had to, Maria,” he cut her off before she could say your name. She pressed her lips together, letting her shoulders fall. Billy sniffed, finally tucking the few loose strands of hair back into order. “I can’t…” he sighed, shaking his head as his eyebrows came together, clamping both hands behind his neck. “Goddamnit, Maria, how’do you...you’n Frankie, how’dyou…” How do you let each other go every time?  The door had opened and shut in the background as the last of the guests left the party. 

The music stopped mid song, and Frank appeared seconds later, one hand each on the backs of his half sleeping childrens’ heads. “Alright, I got your brother a cab because he was plastered, and-” He stopped, right hand jutting out to guide Junior away from the wall he was about to walk into. He looked over at Maria and Billy, his smile leaving his face from the eyes down. “Everything good in here, Bill?” 

Maria looked up at Billy sympathetically before reaching forward to squeeze his hand. She turned to her husband and gave him a small smile, letting go of Billy’s palm. “Why don’t I get these two sleepy heads off to bed?” She crossed the room to kiss Frank on the cheek before he turned his head to press his lips to hers, noses touching as he pulled away with a nod. “Okay,” Maria said softly, taking Lisa and Junior under each arm and leading them to their bedrooms. 

Frank walked over to his friend, grabbing an empty glass from the drink table and pouring himself a drink. He passed the glass that Maria had confiscated back to Billy, tapping his against it as soon as Billy had a firm enough grasp on it. Both men took a drink, Billy coming up a few seconds later as he drained the remainder of his glass. He coughed as Frank took another smaller sip. “You gonna talk or should I guess?” Frank finally asked as Billy contemplated the bottom of his now empty glass. Frank clicked his tongue. “Okay, I’ll guess.” He said your name, and Billy’s eyes snapped up. “Uh huh. Thought so. So,” Frank took another drink, leaning against the doorframe separating the kitchen and dining room. Billy pulled a chair out from clunky set in the middle of the room and sat, hanging his head between his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. “You broke up with her, didn’t you?” 

Billy nodded without looking up from the floor. He’d tried to keep it together for most of the night, making jokes and brushing off your absence from the party everytime one of his and Frank’s buddies asked where you were. He passed out the few gifts he’d gotten the Castle family with a forced smile on his face, knowing that he would have been lost had it not been for your help picking out the perfect presents. But as the night wore on he found it harder and harder to accept the fact that he wanted nothing more than to have you there, and that he was the only reason that you weren’t. It’s for the best...isn’t it? He tore his eyes from the grain in the hardwood and looked up at his brother. “I had to, Frankie, I…” he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know how to…”

“She loves you, Bill.” Billy sucked in a breath. Neither of you had used that word, but he’d felt it in the way you looked at him, the way you listened to him, the way you always wanted to be near him. Frank put his glass down and crossed his arms over his chest, nodding at the stunned way that Billy’s mouth had fallen open. “Yeah. Don’t ask me why or how,” he said. “It’s the same with Maria, you know?” He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “It’s just… there, yeah?” 

Yeah. But I fucking…I… “How do you...how do you know it’s enough, Frank?” He asked, finally able to put it into words. “How do you know it’s strong enough...all the shit we do...the shit we get done to us…” He winced, recalling the time he took a nasty shot to the abdomen, one of the only lucid thoughts he could remember having being a thankfulness that he wouldn’t be leaving anyone behind had he died in the desert that night. But now… Now he did have someone to leave behind, and he was trying to make the choice before it could be made for him. Better she hate me than mourn me. 

Frank tipped his chin in Billy’s direction. “‘Cause look at yourself without her, Bill.” He let out a burst of air. “You’re a goddamn mess, Russo.” 

Billy couldn’t argue there. He’d been living with a dull hum in his head since he left you crying in front of your Christmas tree two days ago. 

“Look,” Frank relaxed his stance, uncrossing his arms and changing his tone. “I know you’ve had it rough, Bill. Rougher than most.” Frank was one of the smallest groups of people on Earth- the people that Billy talked about his past with. So small, in fact, that the only other member was you. “Don’t make it even harder on yourself. When good things fall in your lap, don’t chase ‘em away.” 

“Too late,” he mumbled, blinking at the floor again. 

“I dunno,” Frank shrugged and checked his watch. “Ain’t midnight yet. Still Christmas Eve… What’dya got to lose?” 

Billy stood suddenly, the room spinning only slightly as he did. He had no idea if you were home, or if you’d open the door if you were, or if anything he could say to you would fix what he’d done. 

But he knew he had to try.

.

.

.

@something-tofightfor​ @its-my-little-dumpster-fire​ @suchatinyinfinity​ @gollyderek​ @thesumofmychoices​ @obscurilicious​ @traeumerinwitzhelden​ @jigsawlover10​ @getlostinyourparadise​ @breanime​ @nananananananananananabatman​ @lexxierave​ @songforhema​ @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes​ @lysawayne​ @ymariejp​ @belladonnarey​ @audreychaz​ @songtoyou​ @stories-you-wont-hear​ @luminex3​ @ificouldhelpyouforget​

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[man-me--a-sand]

Ghosts

Summary: Emma is pretty sure she isnt alone in her apartment

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144439

Characters: Emma Perkins, Paul Matthews, Lex Foster

TW: death, getting shot is mentioned, swearing

Notes: My contribution to the spooky season, I guess? I promise it isn’t spooky as it sounds Thanks to Ella on the saf discord for betaing this for me

And no, I haven’t seen nightmare Time ep 2, but I know theres paulkins, and I know it’s kinda weird

Smash! Emma’s head shot up when she heard the loud crash coming from the kitchen. She hurried over, and there was a pile of broken glass on the floor. The cup hadn’t been anywhere near the edge, so she wasn’t sure how it had fallen.

“Jeez, it’s like I’m being haunted.” Emma laughed. “Hey, whatever ghosts that’s breaking my shit, please stop, this isn’t cheap. I mean, it is cheap stuff, but that’s beside the point.” Emma bent over to pick up the larger shreds of glass. She put it on the counter, far back, but it somehow fell off. For a second Emma could have sworn it was floating, but nah. She believed in ghosts, but this was too far.

••

When Emma got home to see the fridge open, she started to wonder. So, considering she had nobody to talk her out of it, she headed to the Hatchetfield mall.

The short brunette shuffled through the shelves, searching for the dark purple box that would ease her mind. The strange happenings in her apartment were getting a bit too weird for her taste.

A teenager stumbled up to her, barely paying attention as she mumbled. “Hi are you getting everything alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Emma finally pulled out the box.

“A ouija board, huh?” The teen asked. “Summoning the dead?”

“Yeah.” Emma snapped.

“Jeez.” The teenager raised her hands up in defeat.

Emma stood up, clutching the box. This was stupid. There was no way she was haunted by some vengeful spirit, this was a waste of money.

“Hey, how obsessed with quality are you?”

“What?” The teenager was still standing there. She lifted her jacket to reveal a red toy zone vest. “Yeah, there’s one in the back, the box is all fucked up, but the boards useable.  Want it?”

“Why are you offering me this? Are you going to try and say I stole, cause kid, I don’t have the energy to deal with that.”

The girl scoffed. “Are you a dick? If not, I won’t. So, want it or not?”

“Sure.” Emma peered at the girls nametag. “Lex.”

“Here.” Lex shoved the box into Emma’s hands. “I took the liberty of ripping off the barcode.”

“Well, thanks-.” She was leaving. Emma rushed out before she could be accused of stealing.

••

“Alright, twelve ninety nine piece of shit, do something for me.” Emma muttered, sipping her iced tea. “Mr. Ghost? Or Ms. Ghost, or Mx, I don’t care.”

Nothing happened.

“Wonderful. I’m not being haunted, case closed.” Emma stood up, and saw something shift in the corner of her eye.

H

Shit.

I

Ok that wasn’t something that actually happened. It was just a trick of the light, or something. Right? Emma took a deep breath. She had never had to prove ghosts existed before, but now was a good enough time, right?

“Hi.”

Hi

“So you are.. a ghost.”

Yeah

“You seem pretty casual about that. So you didn’t die a horrible death and are haunting the world as revenge?”

No

“Ok, final question, what’s your name?” Emma tightened, one thought repeating in her head over and over. Don’t be Jane, don’t be Jane-

Paul

Matthews

“Well, hi, Paul. Can you stop breaking my shit?”

Sorry was trying to get ur attention

“Well, you have it. Because I’m talking to a fucking ghost, I guess.Also bro, if this is some elaborate prank, I’ll kill you.”

Ur a little late to kill me

“So , how’d you die, then?”

Cliche shooting in clivesdale

Emma winced. “Oof, you died in clivesdsle? I’m sorry, bro. Or not? He/him?”

Yes

“Ok.”

Dying in clivesdale sucked ass

“I can imagine. Jeez, Clivesdale. You know, I’d always hoped I wouldn’t die in Hatchetfield, but wow. I would hate to die in Clivesdale.”

Why not die in hatchetfield

“I hate Hatchetfield. Grew up here, spent every second trying to get out. Went to Guatemala right after I graduated, backpacked around, had a lot of sex. I had a girlfriend for a bit, a boyfriend for a bit right before I came back, it was alright.” Emma sighed.

Why did u come back

“My sister. Jane. She had this perfect life plan, followed it to the letter. Except I don’t think dying so soon was in her Lisa Frank binder.”

Oh

Im sorry

“For a second I was scared she was haunting me, trying to ruin my life. It would definitely be fair. I never came back from Guatemala, igniting weddings, baby showers, birthdays. I’m quite the piece of shit.”

It’s ok emma

She knew u cared

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. Anyways, anything I can do to help you out? Stop you from annoying me?”

Ill stop if u get me a whiteboard

“That’s all?” She had been expecting something a little more ghostish. Eh. At least it was easy. “Nothing else? No dramatically burning your gravestone so you can pass over?” Emma said sarcastically.

How do u burn stone

I want to stay

“Well, it’s all right with me as long as you stop breaking my shit, ghostie boy.” Emma stood up, waving at the empty space by the ouija board. “Well, I’m headed to bed. I’ll get you a whiteboard, Paul.”

Thanks

“Don’t watch me sleep!”

••

Emma heard quiet whispering behind her as she left the store with some groceries and a whiteboard.

“Yeah, that’s the guy who always rushes me, and that lady, I gave her a ouija board the other day. Oh, that asshole took forever counting out individual coins for a fourth dollar toy the other day!”

She turned around to see the teenager (taller than her!) who had given her the free ouija board, and probably saved her a lot of money in glasses. Honestly, she could have bought plastic cups, but Emma had never claimed to have an abundance of common sense, and she hadn’t run out yet. The teenager, Lex? waved at her awkwardly, noticing Emma looking at her. There was another taller than her teen next to Lex, but this one was actually tall, and a small girl.

Emma waved back.

“Did you find any ghosts!?” Lex shouted needlessly, considering they weren’t that far away from each other. The teen turned to tall guy. “If I was a ghost, would you still date me?”

“Of course, ghosts are sexy.”

“I have plenty of ghosts following me around now, thanks for the board.” Emma said, walking away.

“Funky.”

••

Emma dropped her bag of groceries in her doorway, waving the whiteboard around. “Ghost Paul? Did I hallucinate you, cause I got your whiteboard.” She uncapped the pen and held it out, holding the board away from her.

Shaky lettering appeared on the whiteboard.

Thank u

“No problem, ghost boy.”

You're nice

“Sure.” Emma laughed.

Can I stay here?

“I guess you can keep.. haunting me. Cause that is already happening.”

Thanks

“So, what tv do you like? Wanna watch Netflix with me?”

---

If you’re wondering, Emma’s next endeavour would be getting a ghost to pay rent. I hope you liked it! Either way, have a nice day/night!

[vocalfriespod]

What’s in a Name Transcript

Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie Gillon: I’m Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: I’m Megan Figueroa. Carrie, Arizona went viral with a running javelina.

Carrie Gillon: Which everyone keeps calling “pigs.”

Megan Figueroa: I’m like, “Have you not read the book Don’t Call Me a Pig? C’mon.”

Carrie Gillon: No, nobody knows outside of Arizona what a javelina is. It does kind of look like a pig although, when it’s running, it looks way less like a pig than normal.

Megan Figueroa: Right? Because pigs don’t run that fast, do they?

Carrie Gillon: Oh, they probably do. Well, at least the smaller ones probably do. I was shocked though when I saw that javelina boot it like that. I was like, how? How? Because I’ve only ever seen them amble at most.

Megan Figueroa: I’ve been semi-chased by a javelina. It wasn’t going that fast. Because I was taking my trash out and boy, do they love the smell of trash. [Laughter] But, yeah, no, I’ve mostly seen them with their little babies and they’re following along, just ambling along very cute-like. If you haven’t seen it, go to the Twitter account “javelina running to.” You can see the javelina running to all sorts of hilarious, perfectly matched songs. Like “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen or “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. It’s beautiful.

Carrie Gillon: My favorite is “Going the Distance” by Cake. It’s also the first one that I saw, so I’m a little biased.

Megan Figueroa: Well, for some reason, that song is so funny to me just by itself and I don’t know why.

Carrie Gillon: He sounds so unconcerned like he doesn’t give a shit while he’s singing. Yeah.

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Maybe that’s what it is. That is perfect.

Carrie Gillon: I was a nice little bit of light-heartedness. It felt like 2015 when we had both the dress and the escaped llamas. It was a wild, wild day. That javelina running was not quite the same but it felt a little bit more like, “Oh, I remember the good old times and the before times.”

Megan Figueroa: Yes.

Carrie Gillon: When the internet was not just people yelling at each other about their favorite candidate and about how every other candidate sucks.

Megan Figueroa: I know. Well, now I’m like, “Javelina 2020” – “Running javelina 2020.” [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: Frankly, couldn’t possibly do a worse job than what’s happening right now.

Megan Figueroa: It’s true. Speaking of our fucked-up government, we did a bonus episode, which you can get to by being a Patreon supporter, about this new change in social security disability benefits. They changed a language requirement.

Carrie Gillon: It’s definitely a good bonus to access.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, it’s just a rage bonus which, you know, I would say about 80% of them are rage bonuses. [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: Yeah.

Megan Figueroa: Maybe we could all stop being assholes and we wouldn’t have to rage bonus.

Carrie Gillon: Well, I mean, yes. It seems like it’s unlikely that the government’s ever gonna stop being this level of asshole, at least anytime soon.

Megan Figueroa: On a light-hearted note, I re-watched Knives Out, the movie, and I just truly the first time – because I mean, one of my favorite things is just old, haunted looking mansion houses and a Clue-type vibe. So, I was just enthralled by all of that and somehow missed some of the language stuff, but the character that Toni Collette plays, they make her very much sound like a very stereotypical valley girl. There’s no evidence to prove that she spends any time there.

Carrie Gillon: No, I mean, valley girl is not about being from the Valley anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time.

Megan Figueroa: I guess I’m still – I mean, I spend most of my time toward the west coast that I was surprised – because it’s supposed to be Massachusetts, but it’s on-brand valley girl, and I’m like, “She sounds like no one around her.”

Carrie Gillon: Well, we don’t know where she came from, right?

Megan Figueroa: That’s true. That’s true. Okay. Well, and they do make her into basically a Gwyneth Paltrow kind of a Goop brand.

Carrie Gillon: Exactly. I was gonna say she’s very Goop-y.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, that is really calling on that kinda vibe or that, at least, stereotype of the wellness – like they show her meditating in this very – yeah. She definitely has this vibe. I mean, it’s not unfair to say that LA is kind of an epicentre for that kind of stuff.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, no. It 100% is, but again, it doesn’t even really matter. She might not be from there at all. She might just be adopting that because that’s her identity, right?

Megan Figueroa: Her brand. I mean, it’s literally her brand at whatever company she has.

Carrie Gillon: She’s really good in that movie in that – that actor.

Megan Figueroa: She’s so good!

Carrie Gillon: I mean, she’s always amazing because she’s just amazing, but there’s just something really entertaining about that character like the languidity with which she speaks and the ridiculousness of most of the things that come out of her mouth.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, she embodies that character. It’s amazing. You see her in like – I mean, the last thing I saw her in was a serious role and I’m like – it was just like, the range! Speaking of range, I am enthralled by Daniel Craig’s character. I was the first time, but he does that thing where it’s kinda like – well, fuck Kevin Spacey – but the Kevin Spacey “House of Cards.”

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. He’s Frank Underwood sort of except that a detective and probably actually a better person. Yeah. He’s definitely adopting this Charleston-ish accent that no one speaks anymore. It’s a really old school variety.

Megan Figueroa: I just, I dunno if anyone ever asked the director or anyone if that was on purpose, but I feel like it had to have been. I feel like thought was put into making him seem like this old school kind of dude.

Carrie Gillon: I assume it was on purpose. I haven’t heard anyone ask Rian Johnson about that choice because I’ve heard him talk about “Knives Out.” Daniel Craig’s character putting on this accent really – just putting it on really strong because he wants people not to take him seriously because he's kind of Columbo-ing.

Megan Figueroa: Columbo-ing! Wow. [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: Right? That’s the kind of character he feels like. He feels like he’s bumbling but he’s not. He knows exactly what he’s doing the whole time. Spoiler alert.

Megan Figueroa: Right.

Carrie Gillon: I dunno. It could’ve been a choice that the character even made.

Megan Figueroa: Well, to be fair, when he kinda reveals at the end that he knew what he was doing the whole time, I was like, “You’re fucking shitting me because you seemed like you didn’t know what you were doing.” Absolutely. It’s a really fucking fun movie.

Carrie Gillon: Oh my god, it is so fun! I was just grinning watching that movie because I enjoy murder mysteries. I always have. I grew up on them. But there was just something so fun about this one because it kind of turns everything up on its head.

Megan Figueroa: All of the references were very up to date. You’re like, “This movie is obviously made in 2019.”

Carrie Gillon: Yes. Yes.

Megan Figueroa: Anyway, lots of fun language stuff. Today’s episode’s fun.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah!

Megan Figueroa: We wanna gift our listeners with things that aren’t always very, very sad.

Carrie Gillon: I mean, there’s obviously a little bit of sadness associated with names, so we do talk a little bit about the dark side of names. But, for the most part, it’s more fun stuff like why you can tell what era someone’s born by their name.

Megan Figueroa: People should let us know on Twitter or wherever about their names or their name stories. That’d be really fun.

Carrie Gillon: On Anchor, you can record a voicemail for us if you wish. Let’s maybe do it. Let’s do a show where people call in. You can talk about your name or whatever – anything you find interesting. But I think names are fun.

Megan Figueroa: Well, names – I mean, like talking about it in the episode – everyone has a story about their name – probably a million. If you wanna share that with us, that would be great. How do you get to that, Carrie?

Carrie Gillon: You can add a message at anchor.fm/the-vocal-fries

Megan Figueroa: Yes, leave us a voicemail. Enjoy this episode!

[Music]

Megan Figueroa: Today, we are joined by Dr. Laurel MacKenzie who is an assistant professor at NYU who studies the variability inherent in language. She’s interested in linguistic choices we make and how and why we make them. The goal of her research is to better understand the patterns that underlie variation and change in language. We have her here today to talk about names.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yep.

Megan Figueroa: Thank you so much for being here!

Laurel MacKenzie: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.

Megan Figueroa: I say “here” as if we’re all in the same space, but it’s really just the same virtual space.

Laurel MacKenzie: We’re in the same cyber space.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: Cyber.

Laurel MacKenzie: I know! Good word, right? Let’s bring it back.

Carrie Gillon: We wanted to talk to you about names. I believe it was Daniel Currie Hall who wanted us to talk about names.

Laurel MacKenzie: So, this was a request?

Carrie Gillon: This was a request, yeah. We didn’t know who to turn to, and I think Lisa Davidson told us to talk to you.

Laurel MacKenzie: I can tell you a little bit about why and how I’m interested in names. Well, I don’t know if there’s a reason for why I’m interested in it, but I have always sort of – well, yeah. As someone with a name that you can’t find on keychains and mugs, I guess I was always aware of names growing up. I think it might actually have been Bill Labov, who was my PhD thesis advisor, who introduced me to the academic literature on names.

Bill had grown very interested in questions about how innovations in language catch on and progress and propagate through a community. He found a line of research by the sociologist Stanley Lieberson about how innovations and fashion catch on and propagate through a community. Lieberson particularly investigated this with respect to names. The anecdote that Lieberson told was that he named his daughter “Rebecca,” thinking, “Oh, that’s a nice, interesting, unusual name.” Then, Rebecca got to kindergarten and was “Rebecca L.” because there were three other “Rebecca”s in the class.

Labov had the exact same experience, also naming his daughter “Rebecca” at around the same time as Lieberson. Labov was really struck by this and told this anecdote a few times. The question it raised for him was, what’s going on? Why do so many people pick the same name at the same time but not at other times? What is it about certain names that are trendy, temporarily, but not at other times? How do people who don’t talk to each other about “What are you naming your kid? What are you naming your kid?” nonetheless pick the same names?

Labov saw an analogue in that the way names go in and out of style, in and out of fashion, to the way sound changes in language and changes in language more generally go in and out of style and in and out of fashion.

Carrie Gillon: Brilliant.

Megan Figueroa: That is so brilliant. The way some people’s brains work is so fascinating to me.

Laurel MacKenzie: That’s Bill’s brain. Bill is like the galaxy brain on the galaxy brain meme. [Laughter] you never would’ve put that together. That clued me into the fact that there’s an academic literature on names. At around the same time, when I was in grad school – so like mid-2000s, 2006 – 2008 or so – there was this blog that came into being, “The Baby Name Wizard.” The author, Laura Wattenberg, was a social scientist – a quantitative social scientist – and she had downloaded all the social security data on names given to babies in the United States going back to the 1880s. She had put it into a searchable database with graphs, so you could search for a name like “Brian” and see the rate at which “Brian” was given to babies from 1880 up to the present day.

You could see trends go in and out of fashion. You could search for just the beginning of names. You could see all the BR names – “Brian,” “Brady,” “Brianna,” “Britney” – which are very 80s/90s era-sounding names. That was really fun. I enjoyed playing around with that. Then, it all came together my final year of my PhD program when I was on the job market. I applied for a job at the University of Manchester where I was asked to propose three new courses at each level of the undergrad curriculum. Anyone listening to this who might wanna go on the academic job market one day, be prepared that this is the kinda thing that people might ask you about.

I was like, “Oh, that’s kinda fun. It’s a little exercise in teaching creativity.” The hardest part for me was figuring out what to teach first year undergraduates because it had to be something new that was not on the course curriculum already – so it couldn’t just be Introduction to Phonetics, Introduction to Sociolinguistics – but also it had to be appropriate for students who didn’t have much background in linguistics.

I kind of mulled over this for a long time, and it came to me one day as I was brushing my teeth, “What about the linguistics of names?” I like names. You can talk about how names go in and out of fashion, but you can also talk about things like the phonology of nickname formation or the morphology of naming in cultures that have interesting morphological systems. You can talk about gender and naming. You can talk about sound symbolism and naming – the way that researchers have found that certain product names might sound more rich and creamy, or more crunchy, based on the sounds that they have in them.

The more I thought, the more I was like, “You know, you could fill a one-semester undergraduate course on the linguistics of names.” I proposed that, and I ended up getting the job. In my offer letter, they said, “Next semester, you will be teaching Linguistics of Names,” and I was like, “Oh, god!” This had to go from a 30-second “You could do this” to a genuine one-semester course in a very short amount of time. I had to really put my money where my mouth was and read all this literature on the linguistics of names. But there is a fair amount of it out there.

I taught that course for three semesters at Manchester. I was very popular among the undergrads. It was a lot of fun to teach. I put it all together in that article for the “Teaching Linguistics” section of Language on the hopes that it might help other people.

Megan Figueroa: Do you still teach it at NYU?

Laurel MacKenzie: Haven’t taught it here at NYU, no. I would like to bring it back one of these days. I think it would make a good freshman seminar. That’s the kind of level it’s appropriate for.

Megan Figueroa: The reason why it’s so good that we’re talking to you about names and the reason why this is such a successful class, I’m guessing, is because we all care so deeply about our own names. Either we really hated it growing up or whatever, we just have lots and lots of big feelings about our names. I can imagine you as a little girl going by the mugs and seeing “Lauren” and being like, “Ugh! There’s ‘Lauren,’ and there’s where ‘Laurel’ should be.”

I did the same thing where I was like – at a certain period “Megan” was being spelled with H a lot. My name, “Megan,” M-E-G-A-N, would be missing but they’d still have the H ones and I’m like, “It’s not the same thing. I can’t just buy that mug.”  

Laurel MacKenzie: Scribble it out.

Carrie Gillon: Cross out the H.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah, exactly. [Laughter]

Laurel MacKenzie: There was a viral tweet a while ago, something like, “Every name has a natural enemy” or “a natural nemesis” or something. It was by a guy named Josh, and he was like, “Mine is ‘John’” or something, “What’s yours?” It was really fun to see all the racks of responses that it accumulated.

Megan Figueroa: Carrie’s would be just “Carrie” spelled the other way, right?

Carrie Gillon: No. Mine is “Karen” because it gets misheard as “Karen” a lot. Pretty recently I went to a Starbucks, and she asked for my name, and I said, “Carrie,” and she misheard it as “Karen,” and I was like, “That’s fine because who cares,” right? She was like, “Oh, I got it wrong.” Then, she put down “Anna.” And I was like, “What?” [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: You mentioned the “Brady/Britney/Brian” sounding very 80s, is there actually literature – were you able to track that that the /bʁə/ sound was very popular at that time?

Laurel MacKenzie: You can actually go look up the Baby Name Voyager, which is –

Megan Figueroa: That was the Wizard?

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah. That’s that website I was telling you about. It’s still there. The Baby Name Wizard was, I think, the name of the website and the Voyager is the search engine, basically, where you search through all the data.

Carrie Gillon: My impression is “Brian” is at least somewhat older because I know older “Brian”s – but “Britney,” for sure, I don’t remember hearing any “Brittney’s until the 80s.

Laurel MacKenzie: So, I just typed it in, and the peak is definitely right at the 1990s. The most popular names that are showing up are “Brandon,” “Bradly,” “Britney,” “Brianna,” “Brian,” spelled a couple different ways – “Bryan” with a Y, “Brian” with an I – “Brooke” is in here, “Bruce.” There’s others but there was a big peak.

Carrie Gillon: “Bruce”? My uncle’s name is Bruce.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah, “Bruce,” to me, doesn’t seem to show. That peaked in the 50s. “Bruce”hais a slightly different trajectory.

Megan Figueroa: My mom’s name is Charlotte, which sounds so old school to me, except then the –

Carrie Gillon: It’s coming back.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah, Princess Charlotte over in –

Laurel MacKenzie: “Charlotte” came back.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, it cycles, right? That’s one of the things you looked at.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. That was something that I learned from reading Lieberson, yeah. He looks at these roller coaster type patterns where names that were really common in the 1880s/1890s/turn of the century get recycled. His theory is that those names get imbued with an old fashioned feeling when they’re the names of your parents and grandparents, but once all the old “Charlotte”s have sort of died off, they lose those connotations and they’re ripe for being revitalized in a way.

That doesn’t hold for everything. I don’t think “Ethel” is coming back, some of these –

Carrie Gillon: No. Or “Doris.”

Laurel MacKenzie: Right. But a lot of them – so “Emma,” I think, is a very similar trajectory. I’m looking at it in the Voyager right now. It shows a real trough and then a massive peak.

Carrie Gillon: That makes sense.

Laurel MacKenzie: All the FL starting names – so I just typed in “FL,” so you get “Flora,” “Florence,” “Flossy,” “Floyd” – those have all just tanked and they’re not really coming back. Although, you never know. “Florence” –

Carrie Gillon: “Florence” is a little bit nicer than “Doris.” Maybe.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah.

Carrie Gillon: You’ve already sort of answered this but maybe you can delve into one area that you think is the most interesting. What can we learn studying names?

Laurel MacKenzie: I designed my undergrad course around a single question which was whether names behaved like other elements of language or whether names are somehow linguistically special. From a lot of perspectives, names do actually seem a lot like other elements of language. Phonologically, they behave very similarly. For instance, nouns in English tend to be trochaic, they have stress on the first syllable. Most of the names in English do too, or at least the disyllabic ones.

Names follow similar processes of hypocoristic formation, so the way we make nicknames. We use very similar processes when we make nicknames or play names of non-name words. There’s a lot of phonological literature on when you make a nickname, what part of the name do you chop off, basically.

Megan Figueroa: Is this in English?

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah. In English, at least, but other Germanic languages and French as well has specific nickname formation patterns that are followed by names but also can be done to non-name words, I think. Those were similarities. I thought the sociolinguistic similarities were really interesting too because names are a lot like accents. You’re brought up with them. They’re bestowed upon you. They’re not necessarily something you choose. They can be really hard to change. They can carry hallmarks of somebody’s ethnic background, their social class background, their gender certainly, and they’re subject to taste and fashion in the same way that changing elements of language can be too.

Megan Figueroa: Also, I bet we’re seeing a spike in gender non-conforming names right now – those vague names.

Laurel MacKenzie: It’s an interesting question, yeah. There’s a fair amount of literature on the phonological correlates of names given to babies of different genders, different sexes. Researchers have found – again, in English and using data in the US, although I suspect the UK would be really similar – that names given to babies assigned female at birth tend to be longer. They tend to have more syllables. They tend to be more likely to end in a vowel, specifically schwa. Think of like, “Amanda,” “Rebecca,” those sorts of things. They tend not to have stress on the initial syllable compared to names given to babies assigned male at birth. That’s, again, like, “Amanda,” “Rebecca,” “Marie.”

One exercise that I had my students do is to look at whether names have become less likely over time to show these gender hallmarks like, “Have names given to baby boys gotten more quote-unquote ‘feminine’ in their phonology and have names given to baby girls gotten less feminine?” What we actually found is that both sets of names seem to have had more phonological correlates associated with femininity over time, at least in the US data, which is a little surprising.

Carrie Gillon: I’ve also heard that boys’ names tend to end in /n/ like, “Brandon,” and “Aiden.”

Laurel MacKenzie: That’s a huge spike. Yeah. Boys’ names used to end more in obstruents, so your hard consonants – stops and fricatives and things. Now, there’s been a big rise in N-final baby names. Part of that I noticed in digging through the data is that there’s been a big spike in a lot of rhyming names. “Aiden” became popular in the early 2000s, I think. Then, we see this massive influx of “Braden,” “Zaden,” “Jaden,” “Raden,” “Hayden,” “Kayden” spelled a couple of different ways, seemingly all on the model of “Aiden.” That’s probably beefing up the number of N-final boys names.

Megan Figueroa: I wonder if that’s like the whole “Lauren” and “Laurel” thing, if that’s just a little bit different than “Aiden.” Maybe it’ll be a little bit more unique. Then, it just so happens that since it’s similar to “Aiden” that other people were thinking the same thing. It kinda starts trending.

Laurel MacKenzie: This is exactly what Lieberson says – the sociologist Stanley Lieberson – about how innovations in taste and fashion catch on. They catch on because they’re just a tiny little bit different from what was popular before. They’re not so different that they feel threatening, but they’re different enough that they can seem a little bit innovative or interesting. He makes the analogy to skirt lengths changing over time, actually. He tracked this in, I think, ads in fashion magazines. Over the course of the 20th century, skirts got much, much, much shorter and then they worked their way longer again. But it was only by tiny little increments. It was never a massive jump.

Carrie Gillon: That’s so fascinating!

Laurel MacKenzie: I know! If you see which names are popular, you can trace “Jacen” to “Jacob,” to “Mason,” to “Aiden,” among the topmost popular boys names. They’re all phonologically similar but not identical. It’s really neat.

Carrie Gillon: That is really neat.

Laurel MacKenzie: Another thing I learned in researching names is that there are countries and cultures where naming is very government regulated. Your name has to be on a list, and those lists have assigned genders with them too. There was a big news story a few years back where parents in Iceland wanted to name – I believe it was that they wanted to name a baby girl “Blaer,” which means “breeze” or something. But “blaer” is a masculine noun in Iceland so the government wouldn’t allow it because the child was female.

Carrie Gillon: I’ve heard of this before. I hadn’t heard about this particular case those. I wonder if there’s a way to feminize it in Icelandic that would’ve made it acceptable.

Laurel MacKenzie: That I don’t know.

Carrie Gillon: Not that they should be forced to do that, I’m just curious.

Laurel MacKenzie: “Blaer,” B-L-A-E-R. It means “light breeze.” Oh, apparently the decision got overturned.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, okay. Well, that’s good.

Megan Figueroa: Since you’ve looked at this, do you notice that there’re some countries or pockets of the country where family names are more important to pass on?

Laurel MacKenzie: Oh, as first names?

Megan Figueroa: Yeah.

Laurel MacKenzie: Anecdotally, I always had that impression in the south.

Megan Figueroa: That would be my guess but, yeah.

Laurel MacKenzie: That’s just my association. I grew up in Texas and I knew kids at least whose middle names were their mother’s maiden name.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, that’s very Mexican too.

Carrie Gillon: And also very British. My family – that was a tradition.

Laurel MacKenzie: Maybe there’s just a lot of that out there.

Carrie Gillon: That was a tradition. But my parents decided not to go with that tradition anymore because they just – I dunno. They were kind of non-traditional, I guess. Yeah. It’s common, I think, in lots of different cultures to do that. I guess the United States may be – depending on which country your family originated from – you may or may not continue to do it.

Laurel MacKenzie: It occurs to me, I don’t know of any research on middle names, and that could be actually pretty interesting because I feel like middles is just a whole wild west. They don’t really get used much. You hardly ever see them except on really official documents. It’s like people could go kinda wild but I’m not sure that they do. I feel like growing up I knew a whole lot of people whose middle name was either “Marie” or “Lee” or something.

Carrie Gillon: Or “Anne.”

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah! Very small set.

Carrie Gillon: The only time we really hear about people’s middle names is if they’re a serial killer, and that’s only to distinguish them from all other people with the same name.

Megan Figueroa: That’s so funny.

Carrie Gillon: Or there’re people in Hollywood who will use their middle initial because they also have to distinguish themselves from the other Michael Fox or whatever in SAG. Middle names are interesting, and I do know people without any middle names at all. That also gets them in trouble because it’s expected in North American culture, but they’re not necessary.

Laurel MacKenzie: Harry S Truman does not have a middle name. His middle name was just “S,” right? He just made that up as a president because he felt he needed on.

Carrie Gillon: You’re not supposed to put a period afterwards because it’s not an abbreviation. It’s just S.

Laurel MacKenzie: That’s right. That’s a good point of punctuation trivia.

Carrie Gillon: I just found this out a couple weeks ago.

Laurel MacKenzie: I had this thought the other night, I wonder if anybody has ever used a middle initial of a letter that is also a roman numeral and then insisted that, no, my middle is not “V,” it’s “Five.”

Carrie Gillon: Why not? [Laughter]

Laurel MacKenzie: You might hear that on the next kid.  

Carrie Gillon: Experimentation through having children.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. But, yeah, you mentioned surnames as first names and that, from reading the blog associated with the Baby Name Wizard, was something that I think she noticed had been on the rise, definitely. I mean, to take an example at random, I definitely noticed where there were a bunch of little Makenzies starting – that started to be a thing. I hadn’t known anyone with my last name as their first name until, I think it was about high school when this started happening for me.

Megan Figueroa: I had the opposite, since my last name’s not “MacKenzie,” but I always thought that was a first name. When I see it as a last name, I’m like, “Oh? Okay.”

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. When I started seeing it as a first name, I was like, “I had it first.” [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: I think a lot of interesting things are happening with names too because people are, I dunno, coming to terms with it or deciding for themselves that you don’t have to name a child with the father’s last name too. A lot of different things are happening with that too. I feel like it’s a really interesting time for names.

I grew up with a lot of girls whose names were like, “Alexandra,” or “Samantha,” and they would by “Alex” and “Sam.” I’m seeing those just becoming names for girls now – just naming your child “Sam” or “Alex” – which I think is pretty cool.

Carrie Gillon: Well, technically, my name is a diminutive of “Carolyn” or “Caroline,” but I was named “Carrie.” That is my name.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. Nicknames can sort of take on a life of their own.

Megan Figueroa: I dunno. I think that there is still some societal expectations that a “Sam” or an “Alex” is perhaps more masculine coded too, so to see these nicknames being first names for baby girls is interesting to me.

Laurel MacKenzie: Right.

Megan Figueroa: This shift.

Laurel MacKenzie: So, the question is, does the gender shift ever go the other way? Do we ever find feminine-coded names being given to baby boys?

Carrie Gillon: Not that I’m aware of.

Laurel MacKenzie: The closest we can get is that – so names like “Noah” and “Jonah,” ending in an /ə/, which is, in many English names, a feminine ending because a lot of them come from Latin and other romance languages, I think.

Carrie Gillon: But those are Biblical names.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. They’re not feminine coded even though they sound a little bit feminine. They don’t even.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. I think it’s because they’re Biblical where they just would never shift in that way because, unless everyone stopped reading the Bible for, like, a hundred years or something, then maybe.

Laurel MacKenzie: I suspect that other Biblical names like “Rebecca” has really plummeted since the 80s and 90s. I mean, obviously “Mary” – “Mary” was the Number 1 name given to baby girls until the 1970s. In 2017, it was down to Number 126.

Carrie Gillon: Wow. Yeah. Now’s maybe the time.

Laurel MacKenzie: To bring back the Biblical names?

Carrie Gillon: To use “Mary” for a girl child that’s gonna be somewhat unique maybe.

Laurel MacKenzie: She’ll probably be the only one in her class, yeah. It’s possible. I think another reason I was always so interested in this was because my mom was an elementary school teacher for about 20 years. Every year she was coming home with “You can’t imagine the new names in my class this year.”

Carrie Gillon: When I was growing up, it was a lot of “Jennifer”s. So many “Jennifer”s.

Laurel MacKenzie: “Jennifer” was Number 1 in the 70s and 80s.

Carrie Gillon: When I was growing up, you could sort of tell – I’m from Canada, and you could tell if a boy had come from the more Ontario area or more from the British Columbia area. There were a lot of “Dave”s from Ontario and a lot of “Mike”s from British Columbia.

Laurel MacKenzie: Hah! Yeah. It’s like pinpointing where someone is from based on their accent. It’s this linguistic hallmark that you get stamped with depending on when and where and what culture you’re from.

Megan Figueroa: I think this has been of interest to a lot of people recently because of Hassan Minhaj. Am I saying his name right, Carrie?

Carrie Gillon: I think so.

Megan Figueroa: I think I said it right because I had been saying it /ˌhəˈsan/ for so long, but then he corrected Ellen so it was /ˈhəˌsən/, having that whole viral thing where he talked to Ellen about his name and he was like, “Listen, my parents named me this, so this is how you’re gonna say it,” right? I think there has been some interest, at least looking at Twitter and the Vocal Fries and what people will tag us in, that people are real interested in how we can be assholes about names, which I think is great because it’s not like suddenly it’s possible to be an asshole about names. It’s been possible the whole time. But now people really seem to care and want to know how not to be an asshole about it.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. There’s some good literature on this in education and in linguistic anthropology about teachers and students’ feelings when they’re basically – the term is – “indexically bleached” or “racial/ethnically bleached” by teachers just either butchering their name pronunciation – not trying to get the pronunciation right – or even just renaming the kid entirely. “Oh, I can’t say your name. You’re Jeff now.”

[Excerpt from Key & Peele Substitute Teacher]

Kegan Michael Key: All right, listen up, ya’ll. I’m ya’ll’s substitute teacher, Mr. Garvey. I taught school for 20 years in the inner city so don’t even think about messing with me. Ya’ll feel me? Okay. Let’s take role here. /d͡ʒɛɪkwɛlɪn/? Where’s /d͡ʒɛɪkwɛlɪn/ at?

[End excerpt]

Megan Figueroa: It’s so ridiculous to think that one population or demographic of people have “normal” names, like they’re the only ones with quote-unquote “normal” names. It’s just so absurd to think that. I think a lot of us get stuck in our little bubble – not that you’re meaning to be an asshole, it’s just so easy to get stuck in that idea that, “Well, of course, my name is normal. Why is your name so strange?”

Laurel MacKenzie: I know. That’s like accents. You don’t realize you have one, you think everybody else does.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. That’s a really good analogy.

Carrie Gillon: There’s many ways that ethnicity or race can be encoded by names, but I think black names in the United States are particularly noticeable to white people. Is there any interesting research on those? And how can we tell white people to be less of an asshole about that stuff?

Laurel MacKenzie: Let’s see. So, the research that I know of – I know Stanley Lieberson, again, the name guy, has research looking at distinctive African American names and when they came into being. He actually found that they correlated really well with the civil rights movement and the black rights movement. People started becoming more likely to actually make names up entirely or use variations on existing names. That was where black naming practices and white naming practices – we can really see them diverge quantitatively.

The flip side to names are like accents is that the fact that accent discrimination exists means that name discrimination exists. There have also been studies that have sent out identical resumes with traditionally black names and traditionally white names and found fewer call backs to the resume with the black name than the traditionally white name, just like we find with linguistic profiling – the work of John Baugh – who called up a bunch of different real estate agents speaking mainstream American English or African American English or Chicano English and got different amounts of call backs depending on the accent he was using. There’s a parallel for any sociolinguistics study about discrimination in names it seems.

Megan Figueroa: Someone once told me that I was lucky to have my last name because surely that helped me with my resume if people saw my resume. And I was like, “No, I’m sorry.” That’s very offensive to say that to someone. Like, you can think it, sure, but keep it to yourself. But also that’s not how it works, not yet.

Carrie Gillon: I mean, maybe there’s one job where that might work for you but, generally, no.

Megan Figueroa: Well, there was one time where I was told I was – I did AmeriCorps, and the man, who was Mexican-American, he’s like, “I saw your name. I looked at your statement about your story with Spanish,” and he was like, “You’re gonna be able to connect with these kids.” That’s, I think, a very good thing that that all happened but, for the most part, a name like my last name, unconsciously to a lot of people or consciously, is not gonna do as well as “Smith.” My point there is that a lot of people – well-meaning people – do not know that. They really think it’s changed.

Carrie Gillon: I know a lot of white people are living in a fantasy, maybe less so now – the last three years maybe, hopefully, woke some of them up. But I think a lot of white people are living in a fantasy of a post-racial world.

Laurel MacKenzie: It’s interesting. There’s the one line of research on this, I’ll call it, “overt” discrimination of names. There’s another interesting paper I found a while back by a researcher named Latanya Sweeney. It’s called “Discrimination and Online Ad Delivery.” What she did is she tried googling a bunch of different names – more traditionally black-coded names and white-coded names – and seeing what sort of ads Google offered her up.

She was finding, when you google a black name like “Latanya,” you were more likely to get ads for arrest records than if you google [sighs and groans] – yeah – than a more white-coded name like “Emily.” It’ll say, “Latanya. Has she been arrested? Click here to find out,” which you’re not getting when you search for “Emily” for instance.

Carrie Gillon: I should not be shocked but I actually am.

Megan Figueroa: I am too because I thought you were gonna say like maybe some black hair products or something very, very – that you could buy.

Carrie Gillon: That’s where my brain went too.

Laurel MacKenzie: That could be productive, but this is just like, “Oh, yeah. Algorithms are racist too.”

Carrie Gillon: We’ve talked about that before and, yes – yes, they are.

Megan Figueroa: Because they’re created by humans who are racist, and misogynistic, and all of this.

Carrie Gillon: Speaking of that connection there, there was also a guy who was talking about sending out resumes and his name is “Kim.” He had to change his resume to “Mr. Kim Whatever” because he wasn’t getting call backs. There’s also sexist –

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah. There’s another study that I think it was published in Science or Nature. The researchers sent out resumes for a lab manager position that were either “John” or “Jennifer” or something like that – experienced that same sort of thing.

FiveThirtyEight, the website, had an article a few years back, “How to Guess Somebody’s Age When All You Know is Their Name,” and they combined name statistics and actuarial tables to basically include like, “Okay. If your name peaked around the 1930s, you’re likely to live X number of years. If you meet a ‘John,’ they’re probably from this era,’” or so.

Carrie Gillon: I loved that. That’s one of my favorite things that they’ve done.

Laurel MacKenzie: It’s just remarkable having never – once you realize that names can be pinpointed to an era with such accuracy to then think about the next level of like, “How on earth does that happen? How do these things really go through those sort of chronological waves?”

This is something that Lieberson points out. Unlike fashion, we don’t have magazines telling us like, “Name your kid ‘Rebecca’ now! It’s the trendy 80s thing to do. Everyone else is doing it.” But somehow, we pick it up. That’s how innovations in language progress too. Nobody goes around saying, “Oh, it’s the trendy thing nowadays to say /æ̃/ instead of /æ/. Everyone else in Michigan is doing it,” but it happens.

Megan Figueroa: It’s true. I think baby name books existed back then. It’s nothing like today where it’s like, “Baby Name Generator,” or all these websites that you can look at. Still, you see these trends.

Carrie Gillon: That’s a good point. Has anything changed as a result that now that we have more information at our fingertips? Or is it still the same?

Megan Figueroa: Game of Throne names.

Carrie Gillon: That’s a change.

Laurel MacKenzie: Celebrity names – that’s always been a possibility, right? There’s a little “Shirley” peak for Shirley Temple back in the 30s or 40s. You can see presidential bumps – “Franklin” for the Roosevelt bump and I think there’s a little “Herbert” bump around Herbert Hoover that you can see in the data. Game of Thrones names for that – and they’re not that different there, I guess. But the question of like the way information is just more available to us now than it used to be, is that changing naming? I don’t know.

Carrie Gillon: What you might, maybe, expect is, “Okay. I see that this is on the rise. I don’t wanna join.” Whereas, you couldn’t really do that before because you didn’t have that much information. I dunno if that’s actually happening.

Megan Figueroa: Again, along with that access to information, I’m again reminded of people caring more about being right – “being right” – trying hard to be right about people’s names and caring that that’s a very personal part of someone. What are some of the biggest ways you would that there are to be assholes about names? What is it?

Okay. We’ve talked about perhaps this is happening unconsciously – but seeing someone’s last name and thinking maybe they’re not as qualified or they’re more likely to have been arrested. That’s one asshole thing.

Laurel MacKenzie: Yeah. Snap social judgments about somebody’s character or personality or interests or even language abilities or anything based on their name.

Megan Figueroa: Ah! That feels very personal because – I’m at Verizon. I tell the person my name. Okay Gave them my last name. He was Mexican American. He’s like, “Oh, you’re Mexican too. You speak Spanish then?” It’s like, “No.” [Groans] Yeah. Also, of course, it’s not even without a foreign language, right? Or “foreign” – or another language. With black names, people can be assholes and assume that their English isn’t as good because we have these assumptions about African American English.

Laurel MacKenzie: Just like opinions and attitudes toward people seep into attitudes toward people’s language, the same thing happens with people’s names. There’s that aspect. There’s the aspect of perception of traits based on a name. Then, there’s also the production aspect. How do you pronounce somebody’s name when they ask you to pronounce it? I know you talked about this in the episode when you had Zack Jaggers on – former colleague of mine from NYU.

Megan Figueroa: Ya’ll are doing good stuff over there.

Laurel MacKenzie: I know! It’s a great place to be. There’s actually a poster down the hall from me on which Zach was the first author and other colleagues here at NYU were co-authors. It’s called, “What it Means When You Say My Name Right: Subjective Evaluations of the Linguistic Reproduction of Names.” Zach and his collaborators did an online study where listeners heard audio clips in which a conversation participant either accurately or inaccurately reproduced the other conversation participant’s name.

One person says, “Hi, my name is Natalia.” And the other person either says, “Oh, hi, Natalia” or “Oh, hi, Natalie” or “Nataliea” or something very anglicized. Then, they asked subjects’ opinions of the person who repeated the name – “Do you think they’re working class or middle class? Do you think they’re likely to vote republican or conservative? Do you think they’re intelligent? Do you think they’re friendly?” – and so forth and had people rate them on a number of different metrics.

Accurate reproductions of a name, whether it was either Anglo or not, were rated more sociable, more friendly, more polite, more cooperative. Listeners were more likely to wanna be friends with those people who accurately reproduce names. It’s the nice thing to do. Listen to people when they tell you how they say their name and do your best to reproduce it.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. Do your best. Some are easier than others. “Natalia” is not that hard for an English speaker. There’re other names that are harder.

Laurel MacKenzie: I mean, in my experience, people are reasonable. They understand that their name has a sound in it that is hard for English speakers and they will often give you an alternative. “If you can’t say the /ɖə/ say it like a /də/, but please don’t say it like a /ɹə/.”

Carrie Gillon: Right. Exactly.

Laurel MacKenzie: I find, even from my own experience with a name that is not phonologically difficult to other people, they often just seem to listen to the first part when I say my name and tune out the rest of it, so I just say, “Hi, I’m Laurel” – “Oh, hi, Lauren,” as if they had just stopped listening after the first syllable.

Carrie Gillon: That’s what’s happening with me too! I didn’t realize that. I actually thought it was just I was pronouncing it funny or I wasn’t being clear enough. But, no, they’re not paying attention.

Laurel MacKenzie: I wonder if that’s part of it.

Megan Figueroa: I gotta say though that I get really anxious when I meet people for the first time – it’s getting better with age – that I can see tuning out on the second half of a name, or just not even getting the name the first time.

Carrie Gillon: Well, I’ve definitely said the name wrong to someone because I’ve misheard it. I mean, that happens. As long as they correct you and you go, “Oh, sorry.”

Megan Figueroa: But it’s a pattern for you both. I totally get it.

Carrie Gillon: I don’t really care. If it’s a person that I’m gonna talk to more than once in my life, I want them to get my name right. If it’s a Starbucks person, I don’t care.

Megan Figueroa: Although, some of the Starbucks people care so much. You know why though, and it makes me sad? It’s probably because they get so much shit from people.

Carrie Gillon: They do get a lot of shit. That’s why I don’t want to be an asshole by them because like, “Eh, it’s fine. ‘Karen’ is fine.”

Laurel MacKenzie: But they could also just call out order numbers. Do they really need to do names?

Carrie Gillon: This is a corporate decision, right, because they wanna humanize –

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. It’s not the barista’s fault, sure.

Megan Figueroa: I dunno if it’s true elsewhere or what the major company is for Safeway. I know that fries is Kroger, but Safeway here in Arizona, they have a company policy where they say the last name on the person’s card. And I’m like, “Ugh! That’s so stressful for me.” Every time. Especially when I’m with my dad who says it always with the Spanish pronunciation.

Then, I remember as a kid, he would say that, and they wouldn’t understand, and it was one of those awkward moments, and I just hated it. At a certain point, he had decided that he didn’t care. He was gonna do it no matter what. I’m at that point too where I can see why, when you get to that point, it’s freeing, but as a kid, I was like, “Oh, we’re having one of those moments again.”

Laurel MacKenzie: See, that policy is extra problematic because you need a title in addition to the last name, right? Then, I get, “Thanks, Miss MacKenzie,” and it’s like, “Ugh.”

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. Same. I also have a problem with my last name. So, “Gillon” is just like “Dillon” but, for some reason, everyone wants to pronounce it /gɪliən/. Again, I don’t really care if it’s someone I don’t know but, if we’re gonna know each other for more than one interaction, it – yeah.

Laurel MacKenzie: Actually, Carrie, with your last name, I have the /gɪf/d͡ʒɪf/ problem. I wasn’t sure whether you were /gɪlən/ or /d͡ʒɪlən/.

Megan Figueroa: But not /d͡ʒɪliən/, right?

Laurel MacKenzie: No. That one I could tell. There wasn’t another I in there. This just goes to show that, I mean, yes, there can be idiosyncratic pronunciations. You don’t know whether someone says their name with the French pronunciation or the English pronunciation. It’s like, just ask! Ask people how to pronounce their names.

Just two days ago, we got an email from NYU saying, “We have now made it possible for students to enter their name pronunciations into the student system.”

Carrie Gillon: Perfect. But that should’ve been earlier.

Laurel MacKenzie: It should’ve been earlier. And I won’t be entirely happy until everybody knows IPA, and then they can actually enter it in IPA because, I mean, it’s great to get pronunciations, but if they’re not in IPA, I’m not gonna be able – will I really know how to say them?

Carrie Gillon: I totally get it. I mean, especially if it’s not English. You’re like, “Hmm.”

Laurel MacKenzie: “That makes sense to you but” – yeah.

Carrie Gillon: We have the same problem. We say, “If you want us to pronounce your name correctly, can you please give us” – like, if it’s not obvious from the spelling – “Can you give us a pronunciation guide?” A lot of people don’t know the IPA, so they’re like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And I’m like, “You shouldn’t apologize, but also, I don’t know!” My best guess. I do my best guess.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I get so nervous pronouncing people’s names on this podcast, even when I ask them before. Then, we start recording and I’m like, “This is so important.” I’ve gotten better but it’s like – because interviewing gets easier, everything gets easier, but the name just feels so heavy and important still. It’s the one thing – okay. We’re gonna respect this in the most perfect pronunciation that I can possibly do.

I dunno. It’s great to talk about names. I could talk all day about names. I’m just realizing how many stories I have about my name. And I know that everyone has tons of stories about their name. Some of them happy, some of them quite discriminatory. There’s all these things.

Laurel MacKenzie: It’s this funny thing that we didn’t choose our names, and yet we’re basically stuck with them unless we wanna jump through a fair amount of hoops.

Megan Figueroa: That’s a good point too though. We should really make it easier for people to legally change their name.

Carrie Gillon: I know. It’s such a mess. Considering that for a long, long time – and women are still doing it – women were expected to change their last names. We still make it very hard for women to do that, all things considered, that that was the norm for so long. It still is, technically.

Megan Figueroa: The money involved – I remember my friend changed their name and it was like – we all had a little get together party for it because it was a big deal because not only is it legally hard but they had to get money for it and there was some fundraising involved. It shouldn’t cost emotionally and financially like it does.

Carrie Gillon: It also has implications for voting later because every time the republicans make it harder to vote, often it affects anyone who’s changed their name.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Because of the IDs they have, you mean? They won’t match?

Carrie Gillon: Mm-hmm.

Megan Figueroa: Well, universities are getting a lot better, at least. I can say that working at the University of Arizona. It’s much easier to put which name you would like to have on your ID that will show up with the professors or any of your TAs. They’ll see that name.

Carrie Gillon: That’s good. That’s very good.

Megan Figueroa: It’s a small thing to do, but it’s big because you actually realize how –

Carrie Gillon: Important it was.

Megan Figueroa: – hard it was. Yeah. How important it was – or “is.” Are there any other big ways that – well, okay, here’s the opposite question. How can we not be assholes? You said just be kind and ask people how to pronounce their name. Are there any other advice you have?

Laurel MacKenzie: Don’t make snap judgements by names. Call people what they wanna be called and how they want to be called it – how they want it pronounced. Yeah. I think that pretty much sums it up with names.

Megan Figueroa: It sounds so simple. It could be if we wanted it to, right?

Laurel MacKenzie: Right. Why is it hard?

Carrie Gillon: I mean, I think it’s mostly simple as long as people don’t wanna be assholes. It’s just we get anxious when we don’t know how to pronounce a name. That’s the only thing that makes it kind of emotionally hard, and we should recognize that, but other than that, I think, it’s very easy.

Megan Figueroa: As someone who is an anxious person, I totally get it.

Carrie Gillon: Me too!

Megan Figueroa: Yeah, yeah. Gotta be some room to forgive yourself for it because it’s harder when you make a big deal about it after, right? You don’t wanna make the person uncomfortable by being like, “I’m so sorry. I’m the worst.”

Carrie Gillon: Right. Just remember with Kirby’s episode when we talked about using the wrong pronouns, don’t go like, “Oh my god! I’m so sorry.” Just be like, “Oh, sorry.”

Megan Figueroa: Then, we move on. Make the change.

Laurel MacKenzie: I mean, name spelling is also something that is very variable. There’s “Elisabeth”s with an S, and with a Z, and that’s another thing where, make a good faith effort to get it right, but it’s not the end of the world. As a MacKenzie who has an A in the last name, I get “McKenzie” without an A a lot and – correct it and you move on.

Megan Figueroa: Except, if you spell “Meghan” with an H, I will kill you. Just kidding. [Laughter]

Laurel MacKenzie: I’m gonna send you a box full of Megan-with-an-H coffee mugs. [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: Are you gonna do it with a sharpie and take the H out? Just put an X through it?

Laurel MacKenzie: Yes. All I could find. Hope it was good enough. [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: Well, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us.

Laurel MacKenzie: This has been great. My pleasure.

Megan Figueroa: Well, shall we say, “Don’t be an asshole”?

Carrie Gillon: Don’t be an asshole!

Laurel MacKenzie: Don’t be an asshole.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: As of right now, we have two patrons to thank for this month. I’d like to thank Jamar Brown and Shelby Greenwood.

Megan Figueroa: Thank you so much.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. Thank you.

Megan Figueroa: I love all of you so much.

Carrie Gillon: heart eyes motherfucker! [Laughter] If you wanna join us on Patreon, you can, at patreon.com/vocalfriespod. We do bonus episodes for the $5.00 level. Everyone from the $3.00 level and $5.00 level gets stickers!

Carrie Gillon: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio, them music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com, and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

[lexxierave]

Au Revoir to My Heart - Billy Russo Part 2

"Let's go." You said to Maria when the flight destination changed on the board. She gave you a small nod and a smile as you moved to make your way back to the car.

The car ride back to her house was silent both of you silently reflecting on how quickly time had passed and what you both were planning on doing next.

You pulled up to her house and noticed Lisa and Jr peeking out from behind the curtains causing you to smile as you parked the car. "Seems some little buggers are awake already." You pointed out to her

"I'll get breakfast started if you can keep them busy." She replied getting out and walking around the car.

"What else do you keep me around for?" You joked stepping out of the car and walking up to the house with her.

The moment the two of you entered the house you were greeted with a set of bodies slamming into you nearly knocking you over. Maria shut and locked the door smiling fondly at the sight before her, it had been a while since she had seen her best friend and she knew the reasons for why she had to leave for so long but it still begged the question as to what Frank and she had witnessed at the airport between her and Billy. She wanted answers and now was better to ask than later.

"Why don't you two go out back and play while Aunt AJ and I work on making breakfast?" Maria suggested surprising all of you. Usually, you stayed out of the kitchen while Maria cooked because quote "You don't play well with others while you're in the kitchen." so you always hung out with the younger Castles.

"But mom-" Jr went to argue before Maria gave him a look that shut him up instantly. 

You stood there giving Maria a side-eye as you watched the kids trug off to the backyard to play before you followed her into the kitchen. Since you knew she didn't want or need your help you took a seat, hopped up on the countertop. 

"What did you really want me in here for?" You quickly asked not wanting to beat around the bush.

"What's the deal with Billy and you?" She asked as she opened the fridge to garb eggs and some milk. "And before you try some shit about playing dumb Frank and I both saw you at the airport."

You huffed out a laugh at her bluntness and ran a hand through your hair. "Well, that throws my first response out the window." At her pointed look, you rolled your eyes but decided to turn the questioning back on her. "Why'd you tell him about my place being knicked?"

She set the items down on the counter and turned to look at you, her hands resting firmly on her hips. You narrowed your eyes at her as you leaned back a bit. If she wanted to ask questions you were going to do the same.

"I didn't plan on telling him if that's what you're thinking," She finally answered with a sigh and returning back to pulling out a bowl and skillet. "Frank let it slip the other night when you got up to buy another round of drinks."

She thought back to the night before as she started to explain what happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Alright, next round is on me." AJ announced as she stood up. A small round of cheers greeted her ears as she left to get another set of drinks.

Maria watched best friend maneuver through the small group of people to get to the bar. Frank wrapped his arm over her shoulder as he picked up his beer.

"So Bill looks like you blew your chance." Frank said after he swallowed a mouthful of beer.

"And what chance was that Frankie?" Billy asked with a raised eyebrow setting his own drink down.

"The slim chance you had to woo AJ." He chuckled waving his beer in her direction.

"I'm not following." Billy replied taking another drink of beer, "Night's still young."

"Unless you wanna scar my kids you missed your chance." He teased causing Maria to smack his arm and lightly scald him.

"I thought she had her own place?" Billy questioned placing his drink down as he gave his friend a slightly confused look.

"Her place got broken into," Maria replied as her eyes again landed on her friend. She finally made it through the crowd to the bar. "But don't say anything." She quickly added pointing at both Billy and Curtis.

"I won't say anything unless she brings it up. But if she needs a place to stay, she's more than welcome to stay at my place." Curtis spoke up.

Before Billy could make a smartass remark AJ appeared back at his side with a tray of drinks in hand. 

"Did I miss anything?" She asked placing the tray down in the middle of their small table.

"Yeah, we were just talking about Bill's lack of game this time around," Curtis answered grinning when Billy shot him a glare.

"Lost your mojo, did you?" AJ teased taking her seat, as she gave Billy a quizzical look.

"Nah, just been a bit busy," Billy remarked as he placed his hand on her thigh and gave it a squeeze.

A woman approached the group and stood behind Billy, she draped her arm over his shoulder and slid her hand down to his chest.

"I couldn't help overhearing your problem." She said as she licked her lips, making sure to show that she bit her lower lip at the end.

Everyone exchanged looks and holding back laughs as Billy turned and leaned back away from her touch and gave the woman before him a once over.  

"You were saying?" He asked his friends not taking his eyes off the woman, except to spare a glance at AJ who just gave him a smirk and rolled her eyes when the woman ran her hand down his arm until it landed at his hand.

Billy grabbed her hand and stood up, "I’ll see you guys at the airport." He said as he let the woman lead him back to wherever her place was.

"Some things never change." Frank chuckled as he watched his friend leave.

"Yeah, he never stops thinking with his smaller head." AJ joked earning a chorus of laughter from her friends as she stole a glance at her phone when it lit up.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"So it was Frank's fault?" You surmised crossing your arms over your chest.

"Yes, now care to explain how we both saw Billy leave with that woman but was sucking your face off at the airport the next morning?" She pointed out tapping her finger impatiently on the counter.

"Let's just say we may have bonded over a minor side project I ran into out of town." You said as you unfolded your arms and hopped down from the counter.

"Side project?" She asked going back to fixing the food. "I thought you were going to hear the will be read?"

Before you could make a remark there was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it." You offered so Maria could continue cooking and possibly stop asking you questions.

"Don't think I'll drop this discussion." She hollered to you as you walked through the house.

"Wouldn't dream that you would." You called back smiling as you opened the door.

Your smile dropped when you noticed a familiar policeman standing on the other side.

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[billyhargrovefanfiction]

Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth |  Billy Hargrove x OFC

CHAPTER TWO

Andie gets to school when second period is just starting. She walks into the classroom and sees Rich and Sam already sitting in their usual seats. She takes a deep breath and walks up to them. ‘Hey.’ She mumbles shyly. ‘Hey Andie, where were you first period?’ Sam asks her. He doesn’t sound angry. Andie takes a seat. ‘I overslept.’ She answers cautiously. ‘Are you okay?’ Rich asks her. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, bit of a headache and some bruises and scratches from the fight,’ she points at the scratches on her face. She is wearing a scarf to hide a hideous hickey on her neck. They don’t need to know about that. She shows her hand, which is bruised and cut from the punching and the falling. ‘But I’m fine,’ She adds. ‘What happened with Billy?’ Rich asks. ‘Nothing.’ Andie answers quickly. Rich frowns. She can’t talk about Billy right now, too many confusing feelings, so she turns to Sam. ‘Is Lisa okay?’ Sam sighs. He sounds frustrated. ‘She’s certainly more beaten up than you are.’ ‘I’m so sorry, Sam. I really didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand, but she did start it.’ ‘I know. I obviously shouldn’t have put you guys in the same room. But she’s okay, really.’ Andie sighs in relieve. Not because Lisa is okay. She just really doesn’t want a fight with Sam. Andie looks at the door just as Billy enters the classroom. He has a big bruise next to his eye. She looks away. ‘Do you guys want to go to the movies after school?’ She asks. Sam looks at her sheepishly, ‘I’m hanging out with Lisa. I could bring her?’ Andie gives him a look. ‘You are the funniest man alive. how about you, Rich?’ ‘I have basketball practice.’ He says. ‘You guys are no fun.’ Rich laughs. ‘Last night was enough fun for the rest of the year, thank you very much’ He says. ‘You could hang out at basketball practice? I’m benched most of the time anyway.’ Andie sighs. ‘Why not.’ The teacher walks in and class starts.

Andie sits down on the gym’s stand. She actually quite enjoys basketball. She gives Rich a wave when he walks onto the court. He waves back but has a worried look on his face. Right behind him Billy enters the court. Of course, Andie thinks to herself. He’s wearing a tank-top and the usual basketball shorts. Their eyes meet, but he shows no emotion. ‘Okay boys, today we have Billy joining us, say hi.’ Nobody says hi. ‘Run a few laps, warm yourselves up, in ten minutes we’re starting.’ Everyone starts running. Andie decides now is a good time to try and sort out her Billy-feelings. She just doesn’t know where to start. The facts: In the video-store he acted like a dick. Last night they made-out, like, heavily. Who started it? She can’t remember. It ended weird, that’s for sure, but Andie isn’t sure exactly how they left things. Is he mad at her? Is she mad at him? Are they fine? Were they ever? She touches the bruises on her arm from him grabbing her. She feels like she should be mad at him, but she just isn’t. They were both very drunk and she did elbow him in the face. This is not helping. She sighs and leans back. She follows Billy with her eyes. He is running his laps effortlessly. She has never been much of an athlete, especially not after a night of heavy drinking, but he is obviously made for this. ‘Okay shirts with Steve, skin with Frank. Billy take your shirt off, you’re with Frank. Jim and Richard, you’re benched.’ Rich turns to Andie and throws his hands up. She laughs. Rich isn’t really a great athlete either, his dad made him join the team. He has played exactly three games in two years of being on the team. He throws his shirt back on and runs up a couple steps to sit next to Andie. She pats him on the back. ‘Good walk.’ ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Richard, I’m going to rotate players.’ The coach yells after him. Rich gives him a thumbs up and the coach rolls his eyes. ‘Alright Billy, let’s see what you’ve got.’ Billy takes off his shirt and they start the game. He’s good. He’s actually really good. Rich is staring at Andie, but she pretends not to notice. After a few minutes it gets annoying and she gives up. ‘Okay, go ahead.’ She says reluctantly. ‘What happened last night with Billy.’ Rich asks her like it’s a statement. Andie sighs. ‘He tried to calm me down, after the fight… We made-out a bit and that’s all.’ She says dryly. Rich scoffs. ‘Come on, Andie, he was heavily strung-out, and you were completely freaked when you came out of the bathroom. Something must have happened.’ ‘He was high?’ Andie mumbles. ‘Were you really that drunk? He was completely coked-up.’ She frowns. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, we had a heated make-out session and he grabbed my arm a little weirdly but it’s not a big deal.’ ‘How do you mean weirdly?’ ‘, like he was amped-up, so the coke kind of explains that.’ Andie says, more to herself than too Rich. Meanwhile Billy is scoring left and right. He plays very aggressively and it’s fun to watch. Andie discovers the odd sensation of feeling kind of bad for Steve. He’s getting crushed. ‘Andie, just…’ Rich starts, but he gets interrupted. ‘Okay, Richard, you’re in for Steve.’ The coach yells. He gets up. Andie grabs his arm ‘Really, Rich, don’t worry about me. If something else had happened I would talk to you guys about it. I promise.’ He sighs. ‘Alright, fine. I’m just worried about you, you know that right?’ He says. Andie smiles at him and nods. She lets him go and he walks down to the court. Andie sees Steve walking out with Nancy. She remembers the punch thing from last night. Poor Nancy, having to deal with that jock-douche. When they were kids Nancy and Andie were good friends, but their friendship watered down when they got into High School. They didn’t have a lot of classes together and just kind of drifted apart. Maybe I should ask her to hang out sometime. She focusses back on the team but honestly, it’s too painful to look at. Billy is single-handedly annihilating Rich’s team. She grabs the book that’s in her bag and starts reading, but she keeps peeking at Billy’s sweaty body. She can’t help herself. It’s a really nice view.

After the game, just as Andie walks out of the gym, Billy comes after her and stops her. He has his shirt and gym-bag in his hand and is clinging on to them for dear life. He looks extremely uncomfortable. It’s a weird look for someone who’s usually so confident. He hands her her terminator sunglasses. ‘You should watch your stuff.’ He mumbles. He sounds out of breath and his chest is glistening from sweat. Andie smiles inadvertently. ‘Oh, yeah, I was looking for those.’ That’s a lie, she didn’t even know she had forgotten them. ‘Thanks for hanging on to them.’ He shifts his weight. ‘Yeah, well, don’t get you panties in a twist, I thought they were mine.’ He says, also lying. There’s an awkward silence. He runs his hand through his hair. ‘Well, that’s all’ He mumbles as he turns back around. He looks irresistible. So why resist? Andie decides. She grabs his arm and he immediately turn back around. She quickly lets him go. ‘Eh… I… Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to go see a movie.’ She says in one breath. Billy frowns. He doesn’t answer. ‘I was going to go with my friends, but… they were busy I guess.’ He still doesn’t say anything. ‘And eh… Have you seen Nightmare on Elm Street? Because… eh… I haven’t’ She really doesn’t have anything else. He looks like he’s thinking. She raises her eyebrows in question. God, it’s not a difficult question. He sighs. ‘You know what, I don’t really do the whole dinner-and-a-movie date thing.’ He bites his lip. ‘So… No, I don’t think so.’ He adds. He sets his bag down and throws his shirt back on. Andie watches him, a confused look on her face. He grabs his bag, mumbles a short ‘Yeah…’ to himself and walks to the exit. That was weird. Andie shakes her head. Alright, whatever. She walks into the hall to her locker when she sees Steve trying to get his open. It’s not opening, and he proceeds to punch it in anger. This is probably about Nancy. His locker is one away from Andie’s and nobody else is in the hall. She debates whether to just ignore him or say something. ‘Open up you piece of garbage.’ He says to his locker, but it still won’t open, and he punches it again. Andie sighs and walks up to him. ‘You okay, Steve?’ She asks him reluctantly. He makes a frustrated noise and gestures toward his locker. ‘The thing wont open.’ Andie nods understandingly. ‘Maybe you should try a gentler approach.’ She suggests. ‘Here, check this out,’ She walks up to her own locker and puts a hand on it. ‘My dearest locker, please accept my offering of the following numbers and present to me your glorious realm.’ She says to it and she puts in the combination. She pulls on the lock. It doesn’t open. She frowns. ‘Well, that’s just rude.’ She mumbles. Steve laughs. ‘Thanks, dude, I see now my past mistakes.’ Andie laughs. Steve’s face drops again, and he sighs. ‘Seriously though, are you okay?’ Andie asks. ‘Yeah… I just…’ Steve starts. He sighs again. ‘I guess me and my girlfriend just broke up.’ ‘Oh, man, sorry about that. That sucks.’ Andie says. ‘Yeah, it does.’ He answers softly. They both try their lockers again and both open this time. They grab their books. ‘I just broke up with someone too actually.’ Andie says. She had almost forgotten about it with all that happened. ‘I’m not too broken up about it though. To be honest, he was a dick.’ ‘I guess that’s what Nancy is feeling too.’ Steve mumbles. Andie closes her locker and looks at him. ‘No, Steve my guy was cheating on his girlfriend with me. You’re not so bad.’ Steve closes his locker too and they start walking toward the exit together. ‘What do you know? I mean, how do you know I wasn’t cheating on Nancy too?’ Steve asks her. Andie shrugs. ‘I don’t, but you seem like a nice guy. I mean you’re a tool but more centered around shampoos and lotions and ball sports.’ He laughs. ‘Pretty accurate, I guess.’ He says, shrugging. ‘What was your name again?’ He asks as they walk out to the parking lot. Andie sees Billy leaning on the hood of his car. He sees them and gets an angry expression on his face. Andie frowns. ‘Hello?’ Steve asks. ‘Sorry, what?’ Andie says, keeping her eyes on Billy as they slowly get closer to him. ‘Your name?’ Steve repeats. ‘Andie,’ she mumbles. Billy scoffs audibly and crosses his arms. Did he just scoff at me? Steve frowns and follows her gaze to an angry Billy looking at them. ‘What’s up with him?’ He asks. Billy pushes himself off the hood. ‘You work fast, sweetheart.’ Billy yells at Andie loudly. Andie stops walking. Now it’s her turn to look angry. Steve stops too, a confused look on his face. ‘Are you really doing this right now, Billy? Did you not just reject me?’ She yells back at him. Steve raises his eyebrows. ‘You asked him out?’ He asks Andie. Billy rolls his eyes. ‘I’m just saying you’re fast.’ He yells. They’re standing about 50 feet apart, neither of them showing any intention of moving closer. ‘This is a weird interaction.’ Steve mumbles. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m just being nice. He was basically crying in the hallway.’ She yells at Billy, gesturing to Steve. Steve frowns ‘Oh, come on, I was not.’ ‘So you offered him some consolation pussy?’ Billy yells. Steve’s eyes get big. Andie scoffs. ‘How DARE you!’ She screams. ‘Not cool, man!’ Steve yells. Billy points at Steve aggressively. ‘STAY out of this, Harrington.’ ‘Why don’t YOU stay out of this Billy! Go home!’ Andie yells. ‘What is happening…’ Steve says to himself. ‘You try telling me what to do again, bitch!’ He yells at her. That’s when Andie runs up to him. ‘Oh shit…’ Steve mumbles and he runs after her. Billy leans back on his car again. Andie get’s right up in his face. ‘What did you call me?’ She whispers, her voice trembling in anger. ‘I don’t like people telling me what to do, you’d be a good girl to remember that.’ He hisses. She punches him straight in the jaw. He flinches, but then he starts laughing. ‘Ah yeah, that’s just how I like it honey. Why don’t you try that again.’ He says, still laughing. She goes to punch him in the nose, but Steve pulls her back. ‘Just leave him, Andie, he has some serious anger management issues.’ Steve says to Andie. ‘That makes two of us,’ She hisses through her teeth. But she listens to Steve and starts walking away. ‘Oh come on, honey. That’s the second time this week you’re holding out on me!’ Billy yells after her. Andie bites her lip. ‘Fuck it, she can skate home.’ Billy mumbles and he gets in his car. ‘What on earth was all that.’ Steve asks Andie as they watch Billy drive away, tires screeching. Andie sighs. ‘I don’t know, man, that guy is complicated.’ Steve chuckles. ‘Yeah, no shit, he’s insane. You should stay away from him Andie, seriously.’ He says to her, a serious look on his face. Andie chuckles. ‘I don’t like people telling me what to do, be a good girl and remember that.’ She says imitating Billy’s husky voice. Steve laughs. ‘See you around, Andie. Good luck with that situation’ He says gesturing towards where Billy took off. Andie laughs, ‘Yeah, good luck with yours.’

When Andie turns the corner to her street she sees Billy’s car sitting in the drive-way. ‘No. fucking. way.’ She says out loud. She runs up to the car. He’s not in it. She looks around, but she doesn’t see him. That’s when she sees her mom’s car is in the garage. She cautiously walks up to the door and opens it. She’s immediately greeted by a sea of laughter coming from Billy and her mom. What on earth? She walks into the kitchen. Her mother is sitting on a stool and Billy is leaning on the kitchen counter. They both look at her. Billy smirking and her mother with an annoyed look. ‘Oh, hi.’ Her mother says. ‘What the fuck are you doing here.’ Andie says to Billy, shooting lasers with her eyes. ‘Come now Andie, be nice to this lovely young man. He just came by to talk.’ Her mother says to her while staring at Billy. She’s nearly drooling. ‘Give us a minute, mother.’ Andie says to her. She doesn’t move. Andie rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t worry Lois, we just need a second to talk, I can handle her angry.’ He says in a low voice, winking at her. Andie scoffs. ‘Alright then.’ Lois says reluctantly, she walks out of the room like she’s walking a catwalk. Andie rolls her eyes and turns to Billy. ‘What…’ She starts, but he interrupts her. ‘Do you still want to go to the movies?’ He grabs a grape from the fruit bowl and throws it in his mouth. Andie blinks. ‘I… What?’ She asks stuttering. ‘The movies, you asked me to go?’ He says, like it’s common sense. Andie doesn’t even know what to say. ‘You still want to go right?’ He asks her, chewing on another grape. She scoffs. ‘No! What? How can you possibly think I still want to go after what just happened?’ She says. She’s not even angry at him right now. Just confused. Billy rolls his eyes. ‘Oh that? Come on, kid.’ ‘You called me a bitch. That’s not cool, Billy. I punched you in the face. How…’ He interrupts her again. ‘I guess that makes us even then, right? Come on Andie, you can handle some bad words and I can take a punch, we’re perfect for each other. Let’s go out.’ She walks up to the kitchen table and sits down on a chair. She’s so confused. ‘You are so confusing… half an hour ago you said you don’t go on movie dates.’ ‘Dinner-and-a-movie dates. Yeah, no, but I haven’t been on one in a while so why not.’ He says like it’s self-explanatory. Andie shakes her head in confusion. ‘And then you were yelling at me?’ He sighs and walks to the kitchen table grabbing the chair across from her. He leans on his elbows and speaks softly, like he’s telling a secret. ‘Look, I changed my mind and I was waiting for you to come out so I could tell you that, and then you came out with Steve and well… I don’t like the guy, okay, just come out with me.’ Her time to sigh again. ‘Billy, I don’t think I can handle all this.’ She gestures at him with her hands. He leans in a little closer. ‘I’m sorry okay, I’m sorry.’ He says. ‘Look, Billy, it’s okay. Okay? But…’ ‘No, no. No but, just, I like you. Come out with me. We don’t have to go see a movie let’s just get some ice-cream and I’ll take you right back home. It doesn’t even have to be today. How about Saturday?’ He says like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done. She grunts. ‘I know I’m a dick okay, just ice-cream.’ She grunts a little louder. She looks at him. He smiles at her. ‘Fine, Billy, let’s get some damned ice-cream on Saturday.’ She says finally, throwing her hands up in despair. He leans back. ‘Alright, great!’ Andie sighs. She’s not sure if it’s a great idea, but whatever. It’s just ice-cream. ‘So, you never told me what you and that girl were fighting about last night.’ ‘You never asked.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘I’m asking now.’ Jesus, mood swings much? ‘Well, me and Sam have been friends since we were little and Lisa, Sam’s girlfriend, is jealous of that.’ Andie explains. ‘Ah. Is she right to be?’ Andie frowns. ‘No. She isn’t. We’re just friends’, she states. ‘How long are those two together?’ He asks. She crosses her arms and leans back. ‘Why are you interrogating me on this?’ She asks. Billy let’s out a chuckle. ‘I’m not, I’m just showing an interest. People do that, you know. And, by the way, I did get an elbow in the face over it so I feel like I’m involved.’ He points at the bruise on his face. ‘Yeah sorry about that.’ Andie mumbles. He smiles ‘Don’t sweat it, like I said, I can take a punch. Answer my question.’ ‘Right, eh, they’ve been together for about a year or so?’ Andie says. Billy thinks for a second. ‘So why did she attack you now?’ Andie signs ‘I don’t know man, I guess -in her mind- I wasn’t really a threat before because I was seeing John.’ ‘Who’s John?’ He asks, his voice dropping an octave. Oh God. ‘Eh, he’s this guy I was kind of seeing but last week I found out he has a girlfriend, so we’re done now.’ Billy nods slowly. This suddenly feels like a therapy session. ‘And how does that make you feel?’ Yep, this is therapy. Andie chuckles. ‘Fine, I guess. I’m still kind of angry at him but I didn’t love him, or even really like him, so I’m fine really.’ He’s thinking. ‘Do you need a notepad to write this all down?’ She adds. He chuckles. ‘Alright, I get it, I’m gone.’ He gets up and starts to walk out. Andie follows him to the door and opens it for him. ‘Bye.’ He says, smirking at her. This is awkward. ‘Bye.’ Andie answers. He doesn’t move. She raises her eyebrows. His hand moves up. She swallows. He grabs her scarf and pulls it down revealing the hickey he left on her throat. He lets out another chuckle. He gives her a kiss on the corner of her mouth and walks out. She moves her hand to her lips and follows him with her eyes. Well, he’s certainly not boring, she thinks, and she closes the door.

Thursday comes around and after school Rich, Sam and Andie are sitting on the ground in an alley next to the school gym. They are passing a joint around. ‘I’m not saying it’s some big conspiracy, I just don’t understand why anyone would be stupid enough to just go into the woods, bringing nothing. It’s just too dumb. He’s not a dumb kid.’ Sam says, sounding frustrated. They are talking about Will Byers who got lost in the woods last year. ‘If the kid says that’s what happened, that’s what happened, Sam, why would he lie?’ Rich asks him. Andie sighs. They’d had this conversation a thousand times before. Sam was obsessed with it. ‘I don’t know but when he had just disappeared everyone was like, he can’t have run away because all of his things are still at home and stuff. And now everyone is like, oh yea he just went into the woods, like now it suddenly makes all the sense in the world. I’m telling you, the kid is too smart to do something like that’ Rich rolls his eyes. ‘You keep saying that, how would you even know that, you don’t know him.’ ‘He gave him piano lessons when he was younger, Rich, he told you this a million times.’ Andie says, bored out of her mind. She takes another hit and passes the joint to Sam, who does the same. The discussion continues for a few more minutes until Sam has to go home. Rich and Andie talk some more about a big test they have on Monday and then Rich takes off too. Andie stays in the alley for a little longer. Her mom’s sister is visiting today which means her mother will be pretending to care about Andie. She’s not up for that today. Maybe she should just go eat at a diner, she considers. Would she have to call home? She’s pretty sure her mother will just come up with an excuse for her. She closes her eyes. It’s nice out today, kind of cold, but Andie likes it cold. ‘Andie Mann.’ She hears an angry voice call out. Fuck. She opens her eyes seeing Miss Janet right in front of her, arms crossed. She doesn’t say anything, she just looks at Andie. It looks like she wants her to say something, but Andie doesn’t know what to say. Maybe she thinks it’s just a cigarette? Andie takes the joint out of her mouth and smiles sheepishly. Smooth. ‘What are you waiting for, Mann, get up.’ The teacher says impatiently. Andie drops the joint on the ground and gets up. ‘Let’s go.’ Miss Janet adds. Andie frowns. ‘Where are we going?’ She asks genuinely confused. ‘The principal’s office, Mann, let’s go.’ Shit. They walk into school and through the hall to the principal’s office. When they get to the principal’s secretary’s desk sitting on the bench is none other than Billy Hargrove. He doesn’t look up but keeps staring in front of him with a look on his face like he could murder someone. Andie chuckles. ‘Is this funny to you, Mann?’ Miss Janet bites at her. ‘Nope, ma’am.’ Andie says as she sits down next to Billy. The secretary isn’t there so Janet walks into the principal’s office. ‘You okay there, buddy?’ Andie asks Billy. He doesn’t respond. Andie chuckles again nervously. Miss Janet comes back out. ‘Stay here. He’ll be right with you.’ She says and she walks out. Silence. Then Billy grunts angrily. Andie frowns. He looks really pissed. ‘What happened?’ She tries again. He huffs. ‘What happened? I moved to this piece of shit garbage town. That’s what happened.’ Alright… Andie decides to just leave him alone. Except Billy keeps making angry noises and Andie is kind of giggly so she’s having a hard time not laughing at him. This keeps going for a bit until Billy gets up and starts walking around the room impatiently. ‘Why is that asshole making us wait. There’s like five people in this school, what could he possibly be doing.’ He looks so cute when he’s angry. Andie snorts loudly trying to keep from laughing at him. He finally looks at her. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ He asks. ‘You know what he’s probably doing?’ Andie asks him trying so hard not to laugh. He stops pacing and is studying her face. ‘Jacking off.’ Andie answers her own question and she bursts out laughing. He frowns. ‘Are you high?’ He asks her. Andie nods her head, and she leans forward still laughing her ass off. He chuckles, but quickly goes back to being angry. She keeps laughing. Billy rolls his eyes. ‘Okay, it wasn’t that funny Andie, calm down.’ He says. She stops laughing. ‘You calm down.’ She mumbles at him. ‘What the hell is taking so long.’ Billy repeats and he starts pacing again. ‘Relax, Billy.’ ‘Fuck you.’ He shoots back immediately. Andie raises her eyebrows. Andie decides she should probably get him to calm down or he’ll probably get into some deep shit with the principal. Billy walks up to the secretary’s desk and knocks some papers on the floor mumbling ‘Oops.’ Andie rolls her eyes. What a child. She thinks for a second but realizes quickly that she knows exactly what to do. She gets up. A stoned Andie is a no-bullshit Andie. ‘Come here, Billy.’ She says. Billy shoots her a look. Andie sighs. She walks up to him and grabs the collar of his jacket with both hands. Billy frowns. Andie kisses him. The heat they felt before is back immediately. He kisses her back. One of his arms wraps around her, stroking her back with his hand. The other hand grabs her behind the head deepening the kiss, his tongue messaging hers. It’s a very passionate kiss, just like the one they shared at the party. Billy moves his hands, grabbing her ass. She moans, and he lifts her up setting her on the secretary’s desk. Andie smiles into the kiss and grabs his waist pulling him against her. He lays his hands on her knees and moves them up to her thighs. They break their kiss for a moment to catch their breath. Billy moves back in and bites her lip softly. They continue their kiss. Suddenly a voice comes from principal’s offices. ‘God help me.’ They break their kiss, and both look towards the voice to see the principal standing in the doorway.

CHAPTER THREE PART ONE

[obscurum-passagium]

#cluecrewquestionnaire

hot damn i actually got tagged in an ask meme! cheers m8

rules: copy and paste, answer the questions, tag 10 mutuals to do the same!

1. What is your favorite Nancy Drew game and why?

It’s probably SSH tho SAW’s really been doing it for me lately. SSH feels like it has the biggest in-game world to me, it’s really realistic, the theme of “slightly sinister Maya history” is so unique and nothing in any other game really has something like it. SAW also has that great spooky atmosphere & fuckin amazing music. something about it is really soothing to me

2. Have you played all 32 games in the series? If not, which ones haven’t you played? If yes, which one did you play first?

i haven’t played all of them actually. i missed ICE, TRN, WAV and TOT, but i’ve seen walkthroughs of all of them & i don’t feel like i’m missing much

3. What is your favorite line from any character in the series?

all of Professor Hotchkiss’s dialogue from TRT pretty much, though there’s a lot of great banter in FIN too

4. If you could change the ending to any game, which one would it be (no spoilers, though)?

i’d change the culprit of CUR. great game but fucking weak ending.

5. Which game is your least favorite, and why?

LIE. i’ve talked about it before but it’s just so not my thing. in any way. it was  very unenjoyable to play

6. Which character is your favorite? Why?

professor hotchkiss for sure. she was a huge role model for me as a kid. and now i’m my own weird version of absent-minded (amateur) historian who gets fixated on certain foods and subjects (tho tbf this is probably my autism)

7. Which character is your least favorite? Why?

lisa from TRT is fucking terrible, though in a really laughable way. the entire cast of LIE kinda cheeses me off in different ways (maybe more how badly they’re written than any judgement on character, if that makes sense i guess. LIE is just written very very badly to me) i want to punch enrico from VEN right in the fucking face. i know scopa is rigged you fuck ass

8. How do you feel about the whole Nancy/Ned vs. Nancy/Frank situation? Do you ship her with someone else? Who, and why?

i don’t take shipping very seriously unless someone else takes it way too seriously and starts talking shit towards someone else. like chill out my dudes. no one needs to be nasty over these fuckin fictional slices of teenaged whitebread. that said, i have my own ideas and fondness for nancy and ned that doesn’t translate to the idea of frank and nancy. shipping is always projection, too, whether we’re aware of it or not, so to me, nancy’s also a queer pansexual person so shipping her w just one person doens’t make sense. she could date the entire cast of every game i don’t really give a shit. just don’t be nasty to other people over it.

9. Do you have any fun headcanons about any of the games or characters?

everyone is gay

10. If you could visit any of the locations of the games, which ones would they be and why?

the ryokan hiei, wickford castle, castle malloy, deception island

11. Did you read any of the original Nancy Drew books? If yes, do you like them? If no, would you consider reading one?

i read them as a kid yeah, but i can’t remember any of them for the life of me

12. What is one thing any good detective can’t live without?

a boyfriend with a big juicy ass

13. Which game had the best soundtrack?

SAW, HAU, FIN, SSH, TRT, CUR

14. What is one thing you wish HER would’ve included in any of the games (a conversation, interaction, location, feature, etc)?

dracula

I VANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD

15. Do you have any ideas for a future game? What is it?

ned gets kidnapped my dracula (see above)

16. How long does it take you to finish a game from start to finish?

i like really taking my time with them these days. wandering around, trying to get all the dialogue out of everyone. not really into speedy playing. i like savouring a game over a few days or week. no idea how that translates into hours tho

17. Did any of the games scare you? If yes, which ones? If no, why?

MHM made me cry when i was 12 (ghost in the mirror)

SSH made me cry when i was 12 (mummy ending)

CUR gave me the willies when i was around 15. dreams, hallway ghost, spOoKy red eyes!

GTH was a bit spooky but mainly jump scares (nancy gasping suddenly being the jump scare more than the ghost)

SAW was definitely unnerving too. the shoji puzzle with the ghost coming after you… yikes

18. Why did you join the Nancy Drew fandom here on tumblr?

just wanted to get in on all the sweet memes u know? but really, it was cool to find a whole bunch of people who i could talk to about the games. when i was a kid i played them with one of my best friends, but we grew apart and you know, whenever you find someone irl who’s played some ND it’s always like “oh yeah i tried one once but don’t remember it” or “yeah my cousin loves those! never played one myself!”

19. What is your favorite Nancy Drew joke (from in-game or even floating around the internet)?

that any of them are straight

20. Who is someone in the clue crew you’ve always wanted to get to know?

i’m not super social but i have gotten to know… almost everyone i’ve wanted to here? there are prob some cool kids that i could talk to more but i’m very shy

21. What are three unpopular opinions you hold about the games?

1) LIE is shit

[that specifically means “it is not a game for me” not “if you like it you are also shit” just to be clear]

2) HAU is great

3) dracula should be in  agame

(i don’t have a third)

22. Do you have any fun theories about any of the games?

everyone in them is gay

23. Who was your favorite animal character featured in the games?

gonna have to go with the phantom horse i think

24. Do other people in your life know about your love for Nancy Drew?

all like three thousand of my twitter followers know about this shit cause i talk about ND a lot lmao (i’m constantly trying to get other ppl into them). and my family knows of course, they consistently got me the games as birthday & xmas presents

25. How long have you been playing these games?

i started playing them when i was about 10 or 11 so that’s 17 or 18 years by now! 

i’m tagging uhhhh anyone who wants to do it? to be fucking honest i can’t for the life of me remember anyone’s handle here. or anywhere online. ever. my brain is made of wind. i can remember avatars but sadly those aren’t taggable. if you read this and want to do it, i tagged you.