Bold and Simful

Xavier glared at his sister over the chess board. He had just learned that she had allowed Lydia to be given up for adoption.

“What was I supposed to do?” Elizabeth hissed at him, “bring her here?” Thankfully the radio was on, so it covered most of their conversation but Elizabeth still wasn’t pleased to be talking about this, especially in the dorm.

“No, but you gave her away. How is she going to deal with that? Will her new parents even tell her? Who are her new parents anyway?” For someone who had never even seen his niece, Xavier was full of questions.

“I’m not allowed to know where she went or who her parents…” Elizabeth choked on the last word, the thought of Lydia having new parents was still hard for her to deal with.

“You don’t even know who…for God’s sake, Elizabeth!” Xavier shoved his chair back and stormed away.

“Not right now, ok Jodie?”

Poor Jodie had just come home from class and found Elizabeth at the chess table as usual. He thought she was preparing for their nightly game, but obviously that was not the case.

“Is something wrong?” he could tell by her reddened eyes that the answer was yes, but he asked anyway.

“I said not right now,” Elizabeth cleared the pieces with one swipe of her arm and fled to her room, leaving Jodie staring after her.

Monica had already finished breakfast when Kitty came in from soccer practice. “So how’s the team looking?” Monica asked.

“I think we got the game against SSU this Friday,” Kitty answered, “it’s awesome playing on an all girl team. I had to play on the boys team in high school, not enough girls were interested to start our own team.”

“Ouch, that must have been violent,” Monica laughed.

“Yeah, it was but you know who helped me out a lot? Xavier. He taught me how to clip a shin without the ref seeing…” Kitty laughed at the memory, “that’s how we met and started dating.”

“Xavier played soccer?” Monica was surprised, Xavier didn’t seem like the sporto type. She chose to ignore the long ago romance.

“He used to, ” Kitty sounded far away for a moment, then came back to herself, “but that was ages ago.” she waved away the memory, “So anyway, I think we might be going to regionals…”

Veronica was…gasp…doing her own homework at the next table and overheard the whole conversation. She wasn’t surprised that Kitty was still interested in Xavier. Veronica had actually stolen Xavier away from Kitty when she first arrived in Orion Bay.

‘If I have to continue to do my own work, she can have him‘, she thought to herself.

Maleena and Jodie had started hanging out together at the end of freshman year and found that they had nothing in common, but they got along well anyway. Maleena was the only one who found Jodie’s habit of jumping on the furniture amusing and Jodie was the only guy willing to embarrass himself dancing.

“Kitty, I heard what you were saying to Monica this morning and I want to let you know that you can have Xavier back,” Veronica had just completed her sophomore term paper and was about done with Xavier.

Kitty stared straight ahead, unsure whether or not this was a trap. Veronica wasn’t usually a giver, why was she being so casual about this?

“You see, Xavier and I have grown apart,” Veronica waxed philosophical, “College has opened my eyes to a world bigger than my closet, bigger than Orion Bay. My political science teacher said that we can all change the world and that’s a big responsibility, one that I take very seriously. I’m not the same person I was Freshman year,”

Veronica stood, and looked off into the distance, as if seeing her purpose for the first time and continued, “now I see that I can transform the world one ugly person at a time, because if people are beautiful they won’t want to go messing themselves up by making wars.”

If the radio hadn’t been so loud, Jodie would have heard Maleena whispering to her sister about him.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to think Jodie is cute,” Maleena said.

“I can’t believe you’re saying it either,” Veronica laughed, “but I don’t think mom is going to like this.”

“I didn’t say I was going to marry him, maybe just date him for a while. Have some fun before I pick a guy to settle down with,” Maleena defended her attraction.

It had been a few weeks since Elizabeth had stormed away from the chess table and Jodie got the distinct impression that she was avoiding him. She had yet to answer him about going out and she hadn’t been around for their nightly chess matches lately. This morning, she had grabbed her cereal and gone over to sit with Kitty. ‘Maybe I’m being paranoid,’ he thought, ‘she waved and all, maybe she and Kitty have stuff to talk about.’

There wasn’t much time for him to worry about it now, he was already late for art class, but as he passed by the table he noticed that Elizabeth suddenly grew very interested in her snap, crackle, pop.

The end of the semester was fast approaching and the line for the computer was growing. No one wanted to repeat a semester so once you got on, you didn’t get off for any reason until the paper was complete.

“I’ve been staring at that screen all night and now my neck is killing me,” Kitty complained, rubbing her neck.

“That sucks,” Xavier didn’t take a hint well. “Are you done on the computer?”

Kitty straightened up, stretched her shoulders and stared at her old boyfriend, ‘Why do I like this guy so much?’ she wondered.

Unbeknownst to the builders, the student residents of Wingate Hall had transformed the empty room on the roof into a love nest. Xavier and Veronica had been meeting there since freshman year, but tonight would be a little different.

“Xavier, I think we should break up. It’s you not me,” Veronica blurted out.

“ok,” Xavier wasn’t surprised. He knew his girlfriend was shallow that’s what had gotten them this far, the complete lack of deep, relationship-building discussions that have other couples crying until 4 in the morning.

“So you’re not mad at me?” Veronica was a little take aback, she thought he would be a little more upset than this.

“Not in the least, sweetie,” Xavier got out of bed, kissed Veronica’s forehead and opened the door to leave.

“Don’t you even want to know why?” Veronica called after him.

“Nope,” Xavier allowed the door to close quietly behind him, leaving Veronica sitting on the edge of the bed crying quietly, though she wasn’t sure why.

Up early for finals, Kitty, Jodie and Monica listened to Xavier’s tale of getting dumped.

The girls were instantly sympathetic, but Jodie noticed that his friend didn’t seem upset in the slightest, “You’re taking it really well, man,” he observed.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we were engaged or anything,” Xavier answered, noticing that both girls had their “Awww, I’m-concerned-for-you” faces on. ‘This could be to my advantage,’ he thought, ‘eeny, meany, miney moe, which one gets me as her beau?‘

“Crap! I’m late,” Monica hopped up, nearly knocking over her unfinished omelette and ran for the door.

Xavier glanced at Kitty and a smile spread across his face.

Notes: In the middle of game play, I changed picture size to medium so I could take portraits of the new characters and apparently I forgot to change it back. Sorry ’bout that, return to big pics next post.

 

Posted on June 4th, 2008 under Wingate Hall. Tags: Bettencourt, elizabeth, jodie, kitty, maleena, Mendenhall, monica, veronica, Wingate Hall, xavier. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.