Saving Arielle (2015 re-write)

Raven Girl

"Hey."

"Hey!"

"HEY YOU, RAVEN GIRL!"

I tugged my headphones off and blinked, surprised to see someone unfamiliar standing in my doorway. I had just finished unpacking about twenty minutes ago and was now curled up against my headboard with my headphones on. I hurriedly stuffed my notebook under the mattress and got up.

"Yeah?"

"Finally." The boy replied. "I've been trying to get your attention for like ten minutes."

"Sorry. I had to turn the volume way up to drown out the Zeppelin." I told him honestly, noticing for the first time that the house had gone quite.

Well, as quiet as it seemed to get around here anyway.

He nodded and held out a hand. "I'm Will, you're Jeremy's little sister right?"

I nodded, staring at his hand a minute before slowly reaching out to shake it. "Arielle."

He looked at me like I was crazy for a minute, I probably was, before shrugging. "He asked me to come up and check that you were getting settled in okay."

"I'm fine." Of course he had, that sounded exactly like something Jeremy would do.

"Look, I know you're all into your personal space and stuff so I won't stay if I'm bothering you but a couple of us are going to head to Janie's to watch the game if you want to come." He ran a hand through his shaggy brown-blonde hair before letting it flop back over his forehead and into the dark brown eyes that seemed to be sizing me up.

I shook my head. "Thanks but I'm not really a football girl."

He raised a thick blonde eyebrow in surprise and he nodded towards the old Panther's Jersey I was wearing.

"Not mine." I replied, not wanting to have to explain my whole high school experience to this stranger.

As nice as he seemed I didn't know him, and even if Jeremy trusted him enough to come check up on me didn't mean he needed to know anything about my life.

He nodded. "Ah, boyfriend's then?"

I shook my head. "Don't have one, you may not have noticed but I'm not the biggest fan of boys."

He chuckled. "For someone who lives in a house full of them, you're going to have a hard time with that around here. Well, I'll see you around then I guess. Here's my number, don't look at me like that, I'm not asking you on a date. It's for emergencies, in case anything happens."

I stared at the proffered piece of paper, it looked like he'd scrawled his number on one of those stickers your textbooks always came with. The ones that had to be carefully peeled off slowly so that they didn't tear and leave the front of your book sticky with glue for the next few weeks.

"Look, burn it, lose it, throw it out the damn window. I don't care. But I promised I'd give you an emergency contact number in case anything happened and you couldn't reach your brother so just take it and I can say I've done my job."

I took the sticker.

The floorboards squeaked. I'd discovered that if you really wanted to be quiet you had to avoid the third and seventh steps on your way down from my room. The rug on the landing was fine, it muffled the sound of any non-solid boards but the second floor was a maze. Not that I should have been worried about sneaking around. No one seemed to be home anyway.

Game days got intense, and it looked like everyone had either gone to watch or headed out to the local pub, Janie's, to catch it live on the large screens. That or they'd gone out to get drunk and have a good time. I'd heard frosh week was a little intense. Lots of parties and drinking and so not my scene type events. I'd decided to stick to the house tonight instead. I had some lyrics I wanted to work on and it would be nice to be able to play my guitar again without having to worry about bothering anyone with the sound.

I could use the practice. It had been months since I'd played and I was getting rusty. But first I could use some food. It had been hours since the rest stop by the Hoover Dam when I'd finished the last of my stash of protein bars and I was starving. Jeremy had texted me three times already to ask if I'd had dinner yet, Will must have told him I'd skipped out on the offer of Janie's and drinks, and said he had some leftover Chinese in the fridge that he'd saved for me.

I was doubtful it would still be there but after a little digging I managed to find it under a six pack, labelled quite clearly in sharpie. 'Eat this and I'll stab you with the last clean fork in the cutlery drawer'. Nice Jeremy. Very nice. But it had done the job. I chuckled, wondering how long it had taken him to make all that fit on the top of the Styrofoam container as I waited for it to heat up.

The microwave had been pretty easy to figure out and I'd found Jeremy's bowls and cutlery labelled with his initials and often with rude messages about what would happen to anyone who used them without permission scrawled on pieces of tape he'd stuck to the bottoms. I jumped at the sound of the microwave beeping at me angrily to take my food and go, snapping back out of my thoughts.

I almost carried the bowl upstairs and squirrelled away again but no one was here so I decided why bother hiding away while I had the house to myself. Might as well enjoy it right? I got through an episode of some soap opera that seemed to be the least offensive of the shows we got on the flat screen tv in the living room and set about washing the dishes when I was done.

I was just finishing up with the pile of dishes that had been left in the sink, humming along quietly to the Bon Jovi that seemed to be coming from upstairs somewhere. As long as whoever was here left me alone, I would quite happily keep to myself down here in the kitchen. I was going to head back upstairs to my room soon enough anyways. I just wanted to make sure we had dishes tomorrow because no one else was going to clean them and at least half the boys here would likely be hungover as fuck in the morning. At least no one would ever be able to say I hadn't been carrying my own weight.

I had filled out the chore chart someone had left in the kitchen earlier, volunteering myself for dish duty. There were a few other names already scribbled down for vacuuming and cleaning the fridge out but most of the tasks were still empty so I'd followed the example and filled in three nights a week. Whoever had waited clearly didn't care so I wasn't about to feel bad for whoever got stuck with taking out the trash.

"I didn't know we had a maid."

I jumped, finishing rinsing my hands off before I turned around. A lanky blonde boy was leaning against the doorway, his broad shoulders taking up most of the frame, arms crossed loosely over his chest as he smirked at me.

I shot him a glare and pushed past him into the hall. "You don't."

I heard his deep laugh echoing through the hall even as I made my way upstairs. This, this was why I had decided to keep to myself in my room. There were always a few assholes for all the nice people. And you never knew with college boys, they were nice now but was it because they were genuinely good people or because they were just trying to get into your pants.

I let his words roll off my shoulders. For all I knew blondie didn't even live here. I wasn't going to let myself get upset over every little sexist comment. They were sort of to be expected. And tonight I was too tired to bother lecturing anyone about being an asshole. So I climbed back up to my room and slipped my headphones back on. I wasn't about to let anyone ruin my night to myself. Not even if they were a tall sexist blonde asshole.

'