Fallen

Chapter 7

Theodore rounded the corner into the math hallway at the same time as I exited the staircase. We greeted each other and walked into geometry together. We sat in the far back corner of the class, where we could usually chat quietly without getting in trouble. Today we were pretty early, so there were only a few people already in their desks. We put down our books and squinted at the front board, trying to read our teacher's chicken-scratch handwriting telling us the homework.

As I was peering at the words, trying to figure out if the textbook page was 563 or 688, I saw someone walk past in the corner of my vision and caught a blast of expensive, flowery perfume right to the face. The girl who sat in front of Theo was a popular, although none of us could tell if she was a popular jerk or not. She didn't sit with the rest of the popular jerks, but she did tend to act like them from time to time.

She swung her shiny hair over her shoulder, straighter than a pin, and the layered ends landed on Theo's desk, just barely obscuring the top of his notebook. Theo's eyes bugged out of his head a little as she turned around in her seat to look at him.

"Hi, Theo!" She beamed at him.

"Umm... Hi," was his tentative response.

"So I was just thinking," she chirped, "there's this huge party down at the Music Box tonight. You know, that club downtown? And up until today I thought I was going to go with my boyfriend Keith, but we broke up last week, and I only just remembered that I don't have a date to the party now."

"Oh, uh... Sorry, that's a shame," Theo stammered.

"So..." the girl drawled,

"So?" he parroted, clearly still amazed that she was talking to him.

"So do you want to go with me? Come on, it'll be fun."

"Oh. O-oh, um, sure!" Theo shook himself out of his daze and nodded at her, looking like a wide-eyed bobblehead.

"Cool. Meet me there at eight?"

"Yeah. Yeah, totally. See you there!"

The girl turned back around, and Theo sat back in his seat, marvelling at his good luck. He turned his head to me and mouthed, Did you see that!?

I nodded shortly and turned my gaze back to my notebook, having never found sine, cosine, and tangent quite so interesting. I stared intensely at my page and ground my teeth, irrationally furious at this girl whose name I didn't even know. There'll be so many popular jerks there, I thought, trying to work out in my head a reason that I needed to be at that party. I'll just go to look out for him. That's all.

After the bell rang to shrilly announce the end of the period, I took a detour through a different hallway and caught Claudia as she was walking away from her English class.

"I need your help."

"What's up?"

"We are going to sneak into a party."

~~~~~

"I'm not sure this is such a good idea, Claud."

"Nonsense. If I looked like you, honey, I'd dress that way every day."

"I'm practically nude."

"Stop tugging, everything's covered. And uncross your arms, it wrinkles the dress."

Claudia had insisted on my dressing up for the party. I had a single dress that I had brought to her house with me, but it was pretty out of style, and was similar to all my other clothes; simple, plain, and stiflingly modest. I believe Claudia's description of it had consisted of the terms "nun dress" and "tailored circus tent", among others. Instead, she had borrowed a dress from her older sister's closet, deserted since she was away at college. It was the shortest, tightest thing I had ever worn. I had insisted that my shoulders be covered, slightly panicked at the idea of exposing my wings for the sake of style. In compromise, the top of the dress wasn't unnecessarily fitted, but the front dipped ridiculously low and the hemline barely reached midthigh. I had always been modest to begin with, and in since my death I had stopped wearing clothes that didn't leave too much to the imagination altogether. This was just silly.

"Claudia, if I take a step this dress will either ride up to my waist or fall down to it."

"Your focus should go more towards taking those steps with these shoes."

"Oh, no..." A moan of protest spilled from my mouth as my friend held up a pair of black platform heels. She raised her eyebrows as I began to make a case against the shoes.

"Do you want to get into this party or not? I don't do anything half-assed."

"No one would ever accuse you of being half-assed, Claudia, no one," I grumbled, and took the heels from her with a pout. Once my clothes had passed inspection, Claudia plopped me in front of the vanity in her sister's room and fussed over me, curling my hair and dusting makeup on my face. She then shooed me out of the room to inspect my face in the better light of the bathroom, leaving her to get ready.

I flicked on the soft white bulbs around the bathroom mirror and stepped in front of it, eyes downcast. I didn't want to see how I looked, gotten up in style, but at the same time I was desperate to see if I looked pretty, pretty enough to make Theodore's eyes go wide the way they had when he looked at that girl. At last the temptation was too much, and I glanced up.

Almost immediately I looked down again. My cheeks flushed when I looked towards the neckline of my dress, my hair was carefully pressed and pinned, and my face looked like a masterpiece painting. I looked spectacular, but I didn't look like myself.

Resisting the urge to turn on the sink and scour the makeup from the face, I left the bathroom and went back into the bedroom. There, Claudia was putting the finishing touches on her own makeup, most of it around her eyes. I had always known she had wonderful eyes, but now they were mesmerizing. I found myself unable to even glance at her nose (too bumpy) her ears (too large) or her cheekbones (nonexistent) for want of staring at her eyes.

"Wow, Claud. You look fantastic."

She tossed her hair, freshly curled like mine, over her shoulder and stood from the cushioned stool on which she had been perched. She was wearing a dress that was even more revealing than mine, and her heels were nearly as high.

"I can look and behave like a girl when it suits me. It just usually doesn't. We need to get going."

"Is your mom even going to let us out of the house?"

"She doesn't care. Besides," Claudia held up her car keys. "You are looking at your personal chauffeur. Onward to vengeance, angelface."

A/N: Sorry for not updating in a while. Well, "a while" is a bit of an understatement, but it's been a fair amount of time and I'm very sorry. School has been absolutely nuts and I lost the papers on which I had been planning this story, so that threw a bit of a wrench in the operation. I'm hoping to start updating more regularly again soon. Thanks for being patient!