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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 11:34:42 GMT -8
noémi badourDICE Seven minutes in heaven;
Nae and her friends play it a different way - there's two six-sided dice, black with white dots. The little dice hold an insidious place in the girls' ritual. There's an overhanging seriousness that swings like a guillotine. Obviously, the dice reveal the time - up to twelve minutes in heaven.
Unspoken rule #1 is that the minutes are meaningless. The whole "seven minutes in heaven" construct is only for show, only in name. The numbers indicate severity, and the boys don't know they're playing. The boys don't know that every girl was over at Cleo's dorm ahead of time, all given their name and the severity. Cleo has Ernest and a five, Rachelle has Joel and a three, so on and so forth.
Unspoken rule #2 is that Cleo uses a hidden, loaded die for Noémi. She knows it, they all know it. With a nod of her head, she accepts Etienne and a twelve. She does this because all the other girls have some sense of morality, some sense of coyness.
Noémi is too big for her skin and feels as if she can control everything in her life. They want to control her and Nae makes them uncomfortable with how she can play into their game, how she can pull off a twelve so goddamned smoothly without ever dirtying herself.
Noémi is a treasured China cup, a beautiful white teacup that the group of girls endlessly fill and refill with tea and coffee. They try and try and try to stain her. Look at her, at her perfect almond eyes and the beautiful cleft in her cupid's bow, and the way that Mr. Beaumont can't keep his eyes off of her.
She always accepts being dragged through the dirt, but she would never allow a stain.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 11:46:10 GMT -8
FIREFLIES Its a few weeks after Frank's sixteenth birthday, a few weeks after he finds out he's doomed to be forever sleepy.
This is when Noémi realizes he can never be her prince charming; how is he supposed to kiss her awake when he's too busy being sluggish and lethargic? He's abandoned her on her deathbed, doomed, doomed, doomed. Some part of her resents him for it - she will always resent Frank for something. In her mad dash to find excuses, she lets the meaningless and petty things pile on until she hates him.
The majority of it hasn't happened yet - they're still sophomores who are sneaking onto the school's roof for only the third time. Nae found the way up there, of course. This is an alcove so close to the ground. Her true sense of rebellion, her mad and hysteric but private spiral into apathy has yet to be sparked. She's still budding and it's possible to make her blush.
Devilishly sharing a black and mild, Noémi has the balls to tell him everything will be okay. She tells him that fireflies look warm but they aren't, that looks can be deceiving and that even something so dark can be liberating.
They both know at this point that Nae is very good at lying.
But they don't know how much better she'll get.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 12:03:08 GMT -8
BLOOD Nae knows her blood is pumping but she doesn't feel it.
Instead she can feel her English teacher's pulse, hear how loud it is when he kisses her neck. He's only Frank's step brother and she still doesn't feel tarnished, stained or dirty. Actually, she feels an overwhelming numbness as the treble to Vernell's bass - lubdub, lubdub, lubdub. How many gallons of blood can be in one man that they circulate so quickly? She wonder's if he'll burst and knows that, if it happened, she'd only look down at the mess with resigned disdain. Only mad to have blood literally on her hands, not figuratively.
Figuratively, there's so much. There's so much that you can't see her skin. The only thing that wouldn't be red is her eyes, the gentle emerald of her irises and the perfect whites. Her hair would be matted and dark, her school uniform discolored beyond recognition. Blood would squelch in her shoes when she walked.
Then the door clicks open and when she recognizes that familiar flop of blonde hair, that's when it spills over. That's when she sees red, that's when her whole body slacks and becomes resigned (not that she was anything but passive to begin with).
Oops.
She can't even say sorry, just looks at Frank with dead eyes before turning her head away from the door.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 13:30:09 GMT -8
SEA What are you afraid of, Nae?
No one had ever asked, and right now still no one was asking.
She was looking out the window of the plane and thinking.
If someone asked, she'd tell them nothing. Fearless, fearlessly bold and brave and stupid.
She's afraid of three things;
No, it's not spiders or the dark. It isn't a fear of pain, car crashes, or clowns. She isn't afraid of heights or snakes. It's not that she's a germophobe, and the girl can weather any storm. It isn't dogs, or being on planes.
When Noémi looks out the window of the plane, she knows that she is afraid of three things: herself, love, and the fury of the ocean.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 13:41:11 GMT -8
GLASS Before she leaves France, Nae meets her mother and father. She is their age when they became parents - measly teenagers.
Her mother's a little teary, and her father looks at his hands. They're barely thirty, they don't know what to do. Her mother's parents raised her, and they held her at arm's length. It was no wonder she'd been at a prep school since she was eight.
They look like they're searching for words to tell her, and Nae is bored. Her father finally stammers We're not... disappointed... in you...
She looks at them under lidded lashes. There's no words to give them - they never raised her. There's no investment here, maybe a bruised ego.
Noémi is holding a glass of water, and she stands up from the table. It isn't an abrupt movement, but slow and fluid. Her parents don't realize how mature she is. Everything Noémi does is purposeful and beautiful. Everything she does is fluid and regal, including the way she presses the edge of the glass to her lips and takes a drink.
Including the way she holds the glass at chest level and then drops it, delicately, to the ground.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 14:21:50 GMT -8
BOIL One time, a few weeks before Frank caught her with his step-brother, Nae was hanging her feet out of her dorm window.
The problem with this was that the girl who lived above her was the girlfriend of a boy Noémi had made out with. This had happened about a month ago, and was forgotten to the girl as she read on the windowsill.
The spurned girl had tried to antagonize Noémi many times to no avail, and now hell hath no fury by a woman scorned or denied her vengeance.
She poured a pot of boiling water on Nae's exposed feet.
No one knows about this - Noémi did not scream or cry. She yelped, pulled herself in quickly, and just bit her lips. They were swollen, but she knew that there was nothing to do to treat burns.
She would rather die than anyone see - and no one did. She bore the pain peacefully, even if walking made her upset.
No one got the better of Noémi Badour, heartless and reining queen of the school.
When she got her first wealthy boyfriend in Nova, she bled him of his money and the first thing she spent it on was plastic surgery so she could spend the rest of it on Louboutins.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 14:28:03 GMT -8
MACHINE She snaps when one of them calls her 'Nae.'
They don't understand that she renounced all nicknames, especially that one. From the moment she left France her name was only Noémi. She wanted to hear their lips awkwardly wrap around it the first few times, and then say it begging from their knees the last. No nicknames, no shortcuts.
And definitely not because a boy with sleepy eyes used to beg Nae for mercy that she sometimes granted. For merciful kisses and embraces that only he could ask of her, that only he would get.
The man isn't even mad. Her mouth is hardset, her hand pulled back after she's slapped him.
Thank God, he says softly, holding his cheek. Up until now I'd imagined you a machine.
It's good to know that something makes you feel.
He later found out that he would never be that something - like tens before him and tens in his wake.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 14:37:43 GMT -8
FANTASY I dream about you. Not you, as a whole, but parts of you.
Nae thinks about parts of him when she watches him from the couch. She imagines what he's imagining, and she's flattered.
Always pieces, never complete, and I can't touch either. Just some trivial dream.
And isn't that the way it's always been, the way it's supposed to be? It'd hurt much more if he romanticized her less, if she wasn't just his fantasy.
I wonder what I see in you though, sometimes.
She wonders, too. There's nothing to see here, folks, move along. Don't look past the caution tape, don't see the chalk outlines and that one bloody corpse that we haven't dragged away yet. Nothing to see here, don't look at the bullet casings or the girl crying silently in the corner. Don't think about her eerie sobs.
Close your eyes and go to sleep.
There's nothing to see here, in her.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 14:43:39 GMT -8
DOG I think I'm in love with you.
Noémi laughs around her wine glass. So?
Noémi - God, that's so beautiful - God...
She looks away, her hair falls like a curtain between them.
Why are you so heartless?
Noémi knows that men are desperate, that rich men love their women beautiful and heartless because they can afford them that way. She knows that they like to be whipped, she knows how to wrap them around her finger. It's her fault that they fall for her, and she does it on purpose.
Noémi pretends she likes her men like dogs, acts like she wants them groveling and slobbering at her feet.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 14:50:57 GMT -8
LUST Love is a toxin in spoiled foods that are recalled on the national news.
Nae knows this, so why is she here? Why is her back arching against her kitchen counter, why did she lure him into this trap?
Frank kissed her first, but Nae left the trail for him to follow.
There's a sound in her throat and she wraps her hands in his shirt. She has to keep him here. Suddenly Nae is so desperate because if he breaks away then she will break apart.
If Frank denies her then her whole being will shatter. That's all there is, that's all there is that's all there is. Her head screams it on repeat. He's all there is, he's all there is. Frank, Franklin, sleepy head, teenage companion, best friend, best enemy, best kisser.
She can also only stay here by tricking herself.
There's no such thing as love,
it's a fluffy, stupid fairytale to entice dumb girls into bed, to tell dumb boys to pay her tab.
Oh, God, this isn't love she tells herself.
If she says it's anything than lust, he might as well stop kissing her.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 16:09:42 GMT -8
TITAN Some things feel too big to wrap your head around.
Gaea is the world and Uranus is the sky. Cronus was the betrayer and he was selfish. Oceanus is water and Hyperion is light. Mnemosyne is memory, and Noémi wishes it had stopped before her, at Hyperion.
But it keeps going.
Themis is justice (of which there is none) and order (of which there is too much). Coeus is intelligence, and curiosity killed the cat. Prometheus is forethought, Epimetheus is afterthought; the former a hero, the second a villain and victim of his own stupidity.
Afterthought released Pandora, and Atlas held the world on his back.
Metis was swallowed for her wisdom.
If Noémi was a titan, she'd be somewhere near the bottom. She would've held Epimetheus' hand when he opened the box, she would've played cards with Cronus in Tartarus. She needs order and not justice, she wants to swallow her memories and forget that wisdom is real. She's afraid of the water and hides from the light.
She's much too slight to be a worldly power.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 17:38:55 GMT -8
FREE There's no such thing as freedom when you're with her,
her lips are chains, I hope you can get away.
She wraps her hands around you like a collar,
her embrace is like being left on the gallows.
When you think about her big, round eyes
the remind you of the glint of a magpie when
it finds it's favorite prize.
The whole girl is poison and she kisses like sin, like sin, like sin. She's quicksand around your ankles. You're on the pyre and she's the flames that lick at you so goddamned greedily. You can't get away, never. If you did, you'd miss her. You'd come crawling back.
Her hair unfurls on the pillow like greenery, like a forest fresh after the rain, her cheeks are thin, thinner than last time you were here and she was younger - wasn't she? What's dream and what's reality?
When she smiles, you expect to see fangs.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 17:53:59 GMT -8
ELECTRIFY They have got the kind of chemistry crooners write ballads about.
He's always been her lightning rod, she's always snapped and fizzled in the air around him. She wants to shock him, make his hair stand on end.
It always comes back to kissing him because she doesn't have to speak when she kisses him. She doesn't have to explain herself, she can just part her lips and force his open, she can make him think she's weak for him.
And it's funny because, at the end of the day, the joke is still on her. Nae's weak for him but he's not weak for her.
One day she'll figure out how to electrify him awake.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 18:19:22 GMT -8
REGRET Regret is for the dead, but Nae isn't exactly living.
She goes through the motions of life with her wealthy boyfriends, her balanced meals (that are skipped every now and then), her impeccably clean and nearly uninhabited apartment.
She lives in a sterile suspension, a stopping point that started... somewhere. Somewhere she can't remember.
There isn't a speck of dust in the place. Everything matches perfectly - she has a good eye for color. Every dress flatters her figure perfectly, she has the most incredibly collection of makeup, everything... is... perfect. Her mantle is perfectly arranged and she never has a hair out of place. When you look at her face, your eyes are drawn to that perfect cleft in that perfect cupid's bow, you look at her hardset eyes and fall in love trying to figure out what they'd look like if they softened.
She's absolutely perfect, and what does a perfect girl have to regret?
Regret slinks to the side of her bed late at night, creeps onto her pillow and whispers terrible things to her when she's asleep. Regret makes her lukewarm blood go cold, but Noémi isn't smart enough to know what she regrets. There's an overwhelming sense of loss, and sometimes she wakes up sobbing. Just slightly, just enough to make her disgusted with herself.
Regret has no place in her perfectly contrived life.
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Post by birdie ♕ on Nov 4, 2013 18:33:36 GMT -8
CHILDREN Her dad calls to say her mom is expecting.
Noémi is startled when she first answers the phone - it's been a while since someone spoke to her in French (someone other than Frank).
Her tongue stumbles for a second, which is very uncharacteristic for her. Then she's speaking fluidly and perfectly. It's a little late to have a baby, she says. For some reason she pictures children for twenty-six year olds, not thirty-six year olds.
Then it dawns on her that, by her own standards, she should be settling down alarmingly soon. The conversation trips when she sputters. She tries to move forward.
Boy or girl?
Boy.
What will you name him?
Maybe Etienne.
(Her parents love very French names, and they don't know about the boy she almost went all the way with because of Cleo's stupid game. They don't know that she was manipulated as much as she manipulated, that she had him in bed and had him exhaling her name in soft and desperate bursts. With a baby named Etienne, Noémi will only think of high school and the games that stupid girls play.)
I think Amoux is nicer.
It's nice to have your input.
She suggests, he sounds genuine. Her dad has dimples, she can picture them showing up through the phone. Nae only inherited one, on the right cheek, but she knows that this baby will have two. Etienne is not a name for a baby with dimples who will no doubt be as perfect as her. That's a name for boys with thin, budding mustaches who sweat profusely when a pretty girl kisses them. Amoux will be suave and collected, shyly ask to hold a girl's hand but will never be flustered.
It's nice to see that you care.
(It's nice to see that you care, that you have a heart, that you're not a machine, that there's something in you beating.)
Can't wait to get your Christmas cards.
She hangs up.
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