I Am (Not) All Girl

So, there was weirdness going on outside. Again. Luckily, Jill had an Action Plan! It was pretty much her usual plan for when there was weirdness. Repress Deny Avoid hadn't worked out so well, but Avoid still worked fine, as far as she could tell. She'd given brief though to duct taping around the windows, but ultimately decided that might be overkill. Now, she had food and downloaded episodes of Be Good Johnny Weir, aka 'Jill's new favorite show,' and teen movies for when watching a figure skater basically have sex with his foot massager got old (which she figured would be about never), and figured she was good for the duration.

((Open door, open post!))

Jill was bored. There was nothing on TV. Why was there never anything good on TV when she was bor--ooh, was that the Rock? She flipped back a few channels.

It was the Rock. And Karl Urban! Score!

Within about ten minutes, Jill had realized two, no, three things. One, this movie was not her taste at all. Jack probably would have liked it, though. Two, she thought it might be actually kind of terrible. Three, every time she decided she'd had enough and was changing the channel, the Rock or Karl Urban was going to come onscreen and destroy her resolve, so she was stuck with it.

Well, she figured it was this or Chef vs. City on Food Network, and this had way cuter guys. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon.

((Door and post open!))

Latish Friday night, Jack stumbled back to Jill's room and managed to get his jar of peanut butter and anything else that overtly said 'Jack's been outside!' either hidden or thrown away. He hid his new shoes and jacket in 'his' drawer, where Jill wouldn't look on a dare, under a couple of Hustlers. Then he fell asleep, pretty much fully clothed.

The next morning, Jill woke up with one bitching hangover. But she couldn't think about why her skull felt like it was being split open, just yet. She had to do Plan B. It went something like this:

Step one. Sit up and stare at the mirror over the dresser. Fix the image of her female face in her mind's eye.

Step two. Lie down, close her eyes, and begin the mantra: I am all girl, in time with her breathing. In, I am, out, all girl. Envision a black dot in the center of her forehead, expanding until it engulfs her entire head.

Step three. Project every detail of Jack's four days onto the blackness, fast, as if it is a movie, being sure not to absorb any of the details. Let it fade to black, to nothing.

Step four. Paste the image of her own female face onto the blackness, focusing until it is crystal clear and the only thing she sees.

And that was it. That was Plan B. Jack erased as if he'd never been.

Jill laid there for a few minutes before she got up to find a tampon, because of course she'd woken up with her period, as always, some painkillers, and some French toast. Nothing looked too out of place on her first scan around the room, although it didn't look like Jack had left her a note. Weird. He usually did, even if it was just to ask for more porn or remind her he liked stupid smooth peanut butter. Maybe he'd been kept somewhere else for the four days. That was fine by her. She had a life to get back to in this loony bin.

((Establishy. Some text modified from Cycler.))

Jill had finally unpacked enough of her stuff to have found the 2009 wall calendar she'd gotten for Christmas, and was smacking herself for not putting it on top of the suitcase where it would be easy to get to, as it was pretty much the most important thing she owned. Now she was busily preparing it for the year ahead: X-ing off the first five days of January with her favorite apple-green marker, sticking little blue dots on Jack's days, as calculated based on the usual 28.76 day cycle she'd figured out, and little red ones on the three days after so she'd remember to have tampons stocked before Jack came to visit, and marking important dates like birthdays, and then spring break and the last day of school from the calendar in her orientation packet. If it looked completely anal-retentive, that's because it was, but she liked to have everything organized, okay? There was just one thing bothering her, and she'd been through her orientation packet three times to make sure she hadn't missed it: she didn't know when prom was.

Clearly, she needed to start planning for the prom now if she was going to (make sure she wasn't going to be a freaking boy) get a decent date and find a dress, especially now that she couldn't get Raimie to help her. How could she possibly plan for prom if she didn't know when it was?

This was totally mal.

((Open! Jill's a little...obsessed with the prom.))