Midnight Friends
Photo Allergic
Claire Hart didn’t so much wish she were a babe as she
wished she could be somebody’s baby, but she was sure that would never happen. The
high school freshman was a plain, shy girl of medium height with a medium build
who dressed in loose-fitting clothes and wore minimal makeup. She was glad that
the raging acne and greasy hair of her early teenage years were now under
control, but what she saw in the mirror still left Claire photo-allergic.
Claire had nobody that she considered a real friend. Ruth
Andrews was nice enough, but she wasn’t someone that Claire could talk to about
her thoughts on the supernatural world. Ruth was a good Catholic girl and
thought that such matters were best left unspoken. Helvey Gray was a funny guy
who brightened Claire’s spirits with his goofy jokes, but Claire certainly
couldn’t imagine discussing the unseen world with him.
Charmaine Chaplin was so pretty that it made a hopelessly
homely young woman like Claire physically ill to look at her, but she was a
sweetheart even if Claire sometimes thought that Charmaine had let her brain
atrophy because she never had to use it. Charmaine’s cousin Dorothy Lombardo
was a big girl with sad eyes like a basset hound who may have envied
Charmaine’s beauty as much as Claire did, but who had a dogged devotion to her
effortlessly beautiful cousin whose naiveite sometimes left her in compromising
situations from which she required rescue.
Claire supposed that it would have been all right to have pleasant
companions who had no desire to look too hard at the world beyond the walls of
sleep if it hadn’t been for the unpleasant individuals with whom she was forced
to share her life. There seemed to be far more bad actors than well-behaved
students at good old St. Charles Catholic Preparatory Academy.
Valentino Valley was a stuck-up jerk in theatre group.
Claire developed a crush on him because he was initially nice to her, but when
he discovered that he was carrying a torch for him, he turned nasty. Claire
surmised that Val was probably being nice to Charmaine in hopes of getting in
her form-fitting jeans and Claire was simply a secondary recipient of his fake
friendliness.
Val’s butt buddy Guy Frank was a non-entity when he wasn’t
around Val. Guy’s given name was a perfect fit, as he was That Guy who blended
easily into a crowd. If he’d had the inclination, Guy would have been the
perfect criminal mastermind because he had such a nondescript appearance that
it would have been difficult to describe him. Helvey once said that Guy looked
like a forty-year-old car salesman.
Helvey also said that Guy looked like a frog and Val looked
like a pompous prince. Claire and Helvey giggled while drawing a cartoon
featuring Pompous Prince Pompadour of Buttland and his sidekick, Frankie the
Frog.
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Pretty is as pretty does. And in my experience those considered pretty OFTEN don't match their actions to their appearance.
ReplyDeleteAnd a big yes on the unused brain thing. I have seen that more than once.