CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ;
" the art of ghosting "
" it's a world of laughter, a world of tears
it's a world of hope and a world of fears
it's a small world after all "
✧ IT'S A SMALL WORLD
richard m. sherman
+ robert b. sherman!
All looks like another beautiful day in the neighborhood as Scott and Laurie start to finish up Scott's last three days of house arrest.
All looks fresh.
All looks bright.
Everything's going just fine!
And so, the hours that follow are filled with yet another beautiful montage of nightmares and chaos.
With her feet on the table full of empty dirty plates, Laurie continues to munch on pickles and popcorn, eyes stuck on her self-help book of Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. Beside her, Scott remains focused on the magic trick video on Online Close-Up Magic University, quickly imitating each of their instructions.
"Snap your fingers. That gets them to look over there... Now, that is misdirection!"
Not long after, Scott and Laurie have karaoke playing on their TV, bopping and jamming out as each have microphones in their hands.
Next, Scott lays in the queen sized bed, literally sobbing at The Fault in Our Stars as Laurie hangs over the edge of the mattress, not looking up from her comic book as she hands him yet another tissue.
The eighteen year old girl slams her fist on the table at her disfigured green origami frog while Scott ever so delicately hangs his perfect paper swan from the ceiling.
With a face of extreme focus, Scott bounces a racquetball on the floor which then bounces to the wall and then to the opposite wall, onto the floor, and then finally into the Nerf basketball hoop.
Dropping and sliding on her sweat-panted knees, Laurie cheers, "And he scores!"
As Scott works on a layout for his business, Laurie sits at the dinner table, gnawing on her lip as she tries to get through her English homework.
Wearing matching blue headphones his oldest insisted they get, Scott slams his drumsticks against the tiny pads of the play drumset while Laurie jams out beside him on Guitar Hero.
And as Scott spends many many hours in the bathtub, Laurie finds that their montage has finally come to an end. So, the dork herself now chills in her makeshift bedroom, sitting on her bed and staring down at her blank black screened cellphone.
It's been a long yet slow day, and those usually are the days when temptation is greatest.
So, really, she can't help but go to her old messages, scrolling down the very short list of recent messages until she can find his. The chat that is filled mostly with blue colored messages from when he just flat out stopped responding to her.
The little emojis next to his name are gone, which she felt at the time he rightfully deserved. She was tempted to block his number, delete every message they ever sent to one another, ixnay any and all of his pictures on her phone, but she isn't petty. OKAY, so she actually is really petty, but there was always this nagging feeling, this sense of guilt that stopped her.
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STINGER ▹ lang
Fanfiction; a stingless bee. In a big world full of aliens, superheroes, and worldwide disasters, Laurie Lang is just a little person. With a brain that matches her father's but the motivation the size of a walnut, Laurie spends her days tending to her pl...
