the numbers don't add up *stephen*

[Braelyn Evan Chapman]

Braelyn Evan Chapman

---

It was rare that Braelyn ever had time to sit down and think about things. She shared a flat with another girl that had run away from her parents (for a much less meaningful reason than Braelyn herself, by the way), and she worked a ridiculous amount of hours every week. The girl she co-habited was a rich kid, as most of them were in Adeline, but she was polite, kind and generous, as very few of them were. She knew a part of Braelyn's plight, and she knew how hard the young girl worked, and for so little money. She had taken it upon herself to tell Braelyn that the rent had been lowered, even though it hadn't, and she had told herself that she was going to pay the extra, and damn her parents, and she was going to make sure the housework was almost done for when Braelyn got home, because Braelyn would only stay up longer to do it if it wasn't done.

All of this didn't amount to much on a daily basis, as Braelyn's roommate didn't work anyway - she preferred to stay in the flat and find things to do that didn't involve going to places where she could be spotted by people she knew. What it did mean, though, was that by the time the rent came out of Braelyn's account and all the bills and fees that were due had been paid, she still had a decent amount of money left over, something that normally only happened if she refused to eat for a while, which never managed to upset her stomach or cause her any noticeable problems at all, probably because she was already used to going days without food or water.

This day was, as always for Braelyn, a new day. She didn't like to dwell on the past or on negative things, so when she awoke before the sun was even thinking about rising, Braelyn was smiling. She tiptoed past Abigail's, her roommate's, bed, and slipped into the shower. She didn't wait for the shower to warm up because the heating system was so old that she could have showered three times over before the water was hot enough for normal people. She barely reacted at all as the freezing water assaulted her slightly tanned but sensitive skin, and the water had only just started to heat up when she stepped out of the cubicle, turned the water off, and towelled herself dry. She had gotten into the habit of leaving her clothes for the next day in the bathroom the night before so she wasn't disturbing Abigail by rummaging through her drawers, and so she stepped into a pair of tracksuit bottoms that were meant to be tight, though they hung loosely on her hips, and a plain white tee with capped sleeves. She shrugged on a pale denim jacket with rips on the elbows as she snagged her hairbrush from the rack next to the sink and tried to pull it through her tangled curls.

Barely twenty minutes after waking, Braelyn slunk silently out of the front door, grimacing as she did every day as the contacts clicked home overly loudly in the silence of the fourth hour of the morning.

As she did every day before she went to work, relieving the waiters and waitresses that had taken the 'deadbeat' hours (midnight to five), Braelyn stopped off at the cash machine. Staring disbelievingly at the figure that it showed on the screen, Braelyn quickly ejected her card before it decided that it had made a mistake. Never in her life had she managed to end a month with more than a hundred dollars to her name. Well, not until now anyway.

Practically skipping to work, Braelyn stopped dead across the road from where she was used to reporting every day at 4:45, fifteen minutes before shift change. Her eyes widened, and she took an involuntary step backwards, her right hand raising of its own accord to cover her mouth. "What in the...." Her speech was muffled by the hand covering her plush red lips, but there was no-one around to hear her anyway. Running across the road (which, by the way, was unusually busy for half four on a Saturday morning), she was stopped by a burly fire marshall that was trying to tell her that she wasn't allowed in that area. "I work here." She smoldered, angrily. "What's going on?!"

"The way I see it, miss." The man replied, in a gruff tone that only almost hid his humour at her tone, "Is that you used to work here. Nobody works here no more. It's burned to the ground, little missy, so you should just run along home and get some sleep. You look dead on your feet if I do say so myself."

"I don't care what you do 'say so yourself'." Braelyn glowered. "My manager says to report here at five, so I report here. I'm not leaving until I see him. He's the one to tell me I can go home, not you." Clearly, she didn't realise that the fire marshall was a six foot five guy that spent half of his waking life in a gym. Or if she did, she just didn't care.

----------------------------

It was eleven in the morning, and all Braelyn had really done was wander around the streets of Adeline in a daze. She had popped into a couple of thrift stores, but nothing had really jumped out at her, apart from a small boy that had run from his mother in a moment of boredom and ambushed the first person he saw by pouncing at them from his hiding place behind a bookcase. Braelyn chuckled quietly as his mother dragged the little boy away. She didn't mind kids really. They were only trying to have fun.

Remembering, for some reason, the money in her card, Braelyn decided that she was going to treat herself. It had been months since she had been to the cinema, and she really did enjoy it in there for reasons that she just didn't know. It was a vast room, filled with darkness and strangers, all united by one common interest. What better social club could there be? You didn't even need to talk to anyone!!

This was how, at noon on a Saturday, Braelyn found herself standing in a twenty people long queue in front of the ticket booth of the local cinema, daydreaming as she shuffled forward with the hopes of getting to the front before she fell asleep.

---

status: complete
length: perhaps about 1000
tagged: rama
outfit: clicky here
music: none
mood: not festive xD
muse: so-so

[Stephen Calloway]

You're just the girl all the boys wanna dance with
And I'm just the boy who's had too many chances
I'm sleeping on your folk's porch again, dreaming
She said, she said, she said, "Why don't you just drop dead"

----- Stephen opened his eyes, their gaze floating around his bedroom that morning. Well, technically, it was nearly noon and could no longer really be considered morning, so that afternoon. But who am I to get technical... He sat up, hearing his dad in the kitchen making all kinds of noise. Probably putting away the dishes from the dish washer that Stephen had not so accidently forgotten about. Oops. He swung his long legs out of bed and stretched before standing and shuffling out of his room to see his father still in his pajamas unloading said dishwasher. Without saying a word, Stephen turned on his heel and went back into his room and changed into today's clothes.

-----He slipped past his dad and was out the door before the middle aged man could say a word. Just the way Stephen liked it. As he walked down his driveway out to his mustang, he had no idea what he was going to do with himself all day. He headed down toward the movie theater, since there was probably something decent playing there, for there normally was some cheesy comedy or something in theaters. As he pulled up there, he walked up to the building, bored and somewhat disappointed. He probably looked like a loser beyond belief, there by himself. As soon as that thought hit him, he noticed a girl in line that he recognized from school. "Hey, you're Braelyn, right?" he called out, hoping that he hadn't called the girl by the wrong name.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

( STATUS ) complete
( RESERVED ) fionn, obvi
( WORDS ) 434
( LYRICS ) Fall Out Boy
( CLOTHES ) click
( NOTES ) god that sucked really bad. xDDD

[/blockquote][/blockquote][/font]

[Braelyn Evan Chapman]

Braelyn Evan Chapman

---

OK, so it was almost noon, actually, probably past noon by now. It had been almost noon when Braelyn had joined the queue for a ticket, not that she knew what film she was going to see. She had seen billboards and signs, random posters and cutout figures, but nothing had jumped out at her. Well, not literally, because they were just cardboard, but not figuratively speaking either. Perhaps it was her tiredness, her lack of sleep, finally catching up with her because she wasn't pushing herself to be doing something every moment of the day.

In a normal day, Braelyn would work for eight hours, until one in the afternoon when the next shift came in, and then she would barrel straight down to the ice rink, no time for food unless she'd remembered to pack a sandwich or a salad (which was rare), to train for ice skating first, then she had barely fifteen minutes to stash away her 'twirl girl' gear and scrub the glitter from her face before donning her 'armor' and her helmet in order to practice with the hockey team. That practice normally went on for a good forty five minutes longer than her ice skating, which meant that it was five o'clock before she even got off the ice to get changed, at which point, she'd still be hurrying because she'd taken on an extra shift or something stupid like that.

Glancing at the clock, Braelyn wondered where her approximated geographical position would be on a normal day. Definitely not in the queue to buy a ticket to 'Quantum of Solace', at any rate. Twelve thirteen.... Probably waiting on, or serving as was apparently the politically correct term, that creepy guy in the glasses with the skullet that always sat where he could see all the waitresses and waiters going in and out of the kitchen.... If the deathtrap filled with hot oil and greasy chrome could be called a kitchen, that was. He always came in at the same time, ordered the same thing, sat in the same place, and he kicked up a mighty stink if someone else happened to sit in his seat, at which point, the shift manager (apparently the only person qualified to do so) would quietly ask the other patron to move, despite the fact that they had been there longer. Yeah, skullet guy had the makings of a serial killer written aaaaaaaaaaaaallllllll over him.

During the time it had taken her to think, Braelyn had moved forward a whole... Two places. Fantastic. If she was lucky, she'd get into the theatre and see the end credits rolling on the screen. Standing on her tiptoes briefly, Braelyn counted heads. She was still four people away from the ticket booth, but the new girl (as she evidently was, the speed at which she was serving people) had been replaced by a seasoned veteran in the art of crowd-shifting. He'd clearly been requested by the management to clear the lobby.

She was two people away from buying her ticket when she heard her name called across the lobby. It was pretty unmistakeable, no matter how much she hated it. Someone had definitely called her name. Glancing behind her, she saw a queue of ten more people, and a boy a short way away from the end of the queue that appeared to know who she was. She looked at him for a moment, trying to register who he was, and then it clicked. He went to the same school that she did. He was also in her grade, they were even in some of the same classes, if memory served. This seemed to be, however, the first time he had spoken to her.

"Stephen!! Come down here!!" She called, waving to him as if she was one of his close friends, and she had been waiting for him for hours. "Hurry, we're gonna miss the film!" She exclaimed, as if it was their plan all along to see the film together.

Mere moments later, they were stood, tickets in hand, inside the main part of the cinema - the part where people bought all of their snacks. Popcorn, nachos, hotdogs, candy, drinks, chips. You name it, they probably stocked it, unless it was some weird foreign brand. "What're you doing out and about on a Saturday afternoon? I figured you'd be sleeping off Friday night's hangover like every other normal teen." Braelyn grinned.

---

status: complete
length: 700, maybe
tagged: rama/stephen
outfit: as previous
music: none
mood: boiled
muse: whaa?