Fanfiction: Bad Girl
It’s so hot in class, Faith doesn’t know why she even bothered to come today. Not as if she’s learning anything. She feels the teacher’s gaze on her and refuses to meet her eyes. She knows Mrs. Rochester is disappointed in her, she knows the teacher used to like her, before. But she just can’t do it anymore. The weight of all that disappointment has made her cave in and roll away as far from those looks as she can get, in a nice dank corner where there are lots of rats and cobwebs and she can hide from the kind hurt eyes.
Faith isn’t worth it anymore. She’s turned out to be just like her mom, like she’s always been afraid of. She’s dirty, and bad, and she might as well give in and accept it. And even if she’s always hated the smell that hung in their trailer and permeated her clothes after being washed, she’s smoking now. She’s learned how to wring pleasure out of the body that started all the trouble in the first place. Might as well enjoy it.
She goes to that place that’s all her own and where she’s someone else. Someone who doesn’t have to live with a drunken Mom-slut and her creepy boyfriends, who people don’t look at with these eyes. The girl is blond, and she’s a cheerleader, and she has a mom and a dad. Her life is easy and happy and she always smiles. She’s special, too. She’s a superhero and saves lives all the time, her friends, curly-haired children and kittens. Her clothes are pastel colored.
Today, the girl is wearing flowered pants, a tiny white top. Not a slutty top, and anyway she doesn’t have pushy slutty breasts so men don’t look at her with hungry eyes all the time. She’s in the sunlight, surrounded by friends. Her blonde hair is so shiny and bright and clean in the bright light of day.
“Call me!” the girl says happily to all of them. Of course they will. How could they resist her?
What would such a girl do after school? She wouldn’t hang in the mall, or the diner, that’s for sure. She’d go straight home, say hi to her mom, who’d be sweet and pretty and well-groomed, and only drink on Christmas. To get those straight As, she’d do homework regularly. She’d have a quiet place to do it, not a filthy kitchen table with the radio, the TV and lots of yelling going on at the same time.
Faith sighs and leans her head on her other arm. She’s stumped. What would a girl like that do then? Lie on her bed, listen to music? That’s too much like her own life. Minus the sounds of her mom and boyfriend boinking, because that mom and dad would take care to do it silently. Or not at all, maybe. Because, you know, grown-ups and sex, yuck. Grown ups that make a young girl have sex with them, more yuck.
The girl would definitely not be in her room with her hand in her own pants, bringing herself off. She wouldn’t stand in front of a tall mirror, gliding her hands over golden skin and tiny pink-nippled breasts, a neatly shaved little pussy, all soft and virginal. She wouldn’t lie in her sweaty bed thinking of how that big guy did her from behind, and how that felt. Coz, ya know, good girls don’t. They don’t shake their asses in front of a guy they’d like to ride, and especially not in front of guys they don’t want to, ‘cause it’s wrong.
Quickly she goes back to the moment in the sun. She wants to go further with it, follow the girl from school to home, but always there is this sense of doom approaching, in the shape of a shadowy form like a tall man waiting for the girl. It’s not exactly a bad kind of doom, just sort of like destiny approaching.
She abandons the fantasy for a moment (it’s hard to decide which color nail polish the girl would wear, and she still hasn’t come up with a name), and checks out the rest of the class. All the girls are so excited about the prom, chattering about who’s been asked by which football jock and what dresses they’re going to wear and how much they cost. They’re so boring. As if she cares about stuff like that. Her girl would have the perfect prom dress, white and simple and sacrificial. Poor Mrs. Rochester, today nobody is paying attention. She almost gives in to the desire to fasten her eyes on the teacher and listen to what she’s saying. Mrs. Rochester used to be her favorite teacher, and she worked hard for her. If she tried, she could maybe still give a pretty good response. No. She’s not gonna do that. This is who she is now, and there she’ll stay.
The ringing of the bell marks the end of class and she slouches out in the midst of the throng of other people. Some girls giggle and whisper about her. So she didn’t shower this morning. There was no water, okay? It’s kinda hard to be all dressed in white and smelling nice if there’s no hot water a lot of the time and no clean place to keep your clothes. Black is so much more practical.
There’s a woman in a suit standing by the gate. she’s scanning the students as they mill out. Faith feels a moment of panic. Something happen to her mom? Oh shit, she’s really coming at her! She tries to fall back and evade her, but the flow of people forces her relentlessly forward.
“Faith Winters?” she asks.
She nods dumbly. Oh fuck. What the hell is this? A foster home? Apartment house burnt down, mom arrested? Absenteeism committee or whatever?
The woman smiles at her. Her eyes are tired, but blue and kind, and she talks funny. She says something to her, like a prayer, in a kind of singsong as if it’s been said a thousand times before.
“One girl in all the world, the Chosen one, to stand against - “
She can’t be hearing it right. She, a hero? Just like she’s been dreaming? But she isn’t blond, or good, or any of those things. She steals lipsticks and does it with the wrong kind of guy.
The woman in her weird scratchy looking suit is very patient. She’s still standing here, still with that kind understanding look. She offers to buy Faith a milkshake, so they can sit down and she’ll explain more fully, because she’s going to be her Watcher. Her what?
Faith follows in a daze, a headline of ‘high school girl kidnapped and murdered’ flashing through her mind for a moment, but deep down she believes the woman already. She’s gonna be good, and save the world and stuff, just like she always wanted. It must be destiny.
End