Heathers Requests/One Shots

My Girl in Red

Is Duke the narrator? Is it McNamara? I don't know. Listened to 'i wanna be your girlfriend' for the first time while writing this. Love it (and halfway through, this turned to angst and I'm not sure how it happened but it did). TW//minor swearing, mentioned character death, suicidal thoughts

Girl in Red was, according to Wikipedia, a singer-songwriter who sung about queer love and mental health issues. Seemed to fit her perfectly. And her name, Girl in Red, stirred something. Something of Heather Chandler.

Heather who wore red and who had a pretty great singing voice, despite her being drunk and possibly (probably) high while doing it. She never did it sober. And Hannah sounded like heather, at least a little? Heather, I want to be your girlfriend. Words she longed for but would never say herself, words that could destroy everything she had and thought she knew.

God, I'm pathetic. She took deep breaths. Everything about that song was different. Normally music curved around her, the meaning in each lyric evading her, no matter how much she wanted to grasp it. But this song somehow broke her barriers and somehow made her question everything she had ever known.

Being straight was something she had never really thought about. It was like a fact of life for her. She was a Heather. She was perfect, and untouchable, and not in love with her best friend. And so the facts of life couldn't be wrong, right? But they weren't necessarily facts of life, they were facts of her life. And along the way, she supposed, people changed.

Their facts of life, once innocent become tainted and twisted as they progress through life, trying to look forward and backwards all at once. So maybe they weren't wrong. just outdated. Not broken, just needing readjusting. Recalibrating.

So maybe she was in love with her best friend. And maybe she was jealous of her other best friend for stealing the spotlight. But this was fine. Nothing needed to show, and everything would be fine. Crushes came and they went, they rose and they fell. Soon this would disappear. It had to. Right?

Of course, the universe just loved screwing her over, didn't it? Because over the months, maybe even a year - God, had she been pining, silently, for a year now? - nothing seemed to change. It didn't go away. She was still irreversibly in love with her best friend.

Her heart still skipped two beats. The butterflies in her stomach wouldn't die like she needed them too. Everything was changing by staying the same, and it was terrifying.

Y'know how everything can be the same, and then one day, something happens and you know that no matter what you do, or how you try to fix it (even if it's something that isn't really broken, or something you aren't sure you want to fix), it'll never be the same? Veronica was what broke it, what sent ever living changes to new heights.

Three became four became love lost. Veronica was new, and Chandler had brought her for a reason. And although she loved Heather Chandler with all her heart, she could see Veronica's appeal. Smart, witty and sarcastic, all while looking- well, were there words? So what if she was in love, she could appreciate beauty.

But was Heather appreciating that beauty? Of course, she claimed she brought Veronica in because of her forgery skills. And surely that was a factor, because heather did things logically. She was many things, so many things that words could never describe everything about her, but an idiot was not one of them.

So that was part of it. But was it just her, or was everything that Chandler gave her to try on a little tight? And did the diets and exercise routines really need to be that harsh? It was like Chandler was a lioness, hunting her prey, and- no.

Heather Chandler didn't need to hunt. People did that for her, bringing themselves to her for the privilege that they might be her lunch. To truly appreciate something you needed to see their fangs and claws and venom and still love it. And people here did. They saw her bully people and they saw her be cruel, and they loved her more after every display of her power.

No, she was a queen. Her meal was being prepped and ready and prepared just for her to take a bite out of. Maybe she would take one bite then be done, throwing her right of the boat into the seas of normalcy, of being a loser, of not being one of them, a Heather.

And was it weird to wish to be where Veronica was? Because Veronica didn't want Heather's attention. She was eyeing up that creepo who wore a trench coat, the new one. She didn't care about the way Heather's eyes lingered on her, she didn't care or notice or want them there.

Heather I love you, and I wish you knew that. What did people think she was saying, her hands neatly folded over Heather's stomach with her nails bitten raw, one or two flakes of polish managing to hang in there, and little scabs from when her nails were long enough to break skin.

Can you love a dead person? Is it really rational to level your gaze at a corpse, at something that doesn't even have one last breath, last word, last heartbeat, and say I love you? Is it really rational to be able to look at a corpse where your best friend and first love used to be, her soul and fire and frenzy filling it up, rational to look at that lifeless husk and still feel your heart do a small dance?

No. She might be locked up in a psych ward if she said that, and maybe she should. If anyone, she needed the help. Had Veronica even cried? Veronica didn't care about them, none of them! The three of them were just the bitches on top, who she could pick off with her psycho boyfriend. There was no way Heather killed herself, and thing started going wrong as soon as Veronica showed up. It must be her, it had to be.

Or maybe it was her anger speaking. Maybe she should just calm down and let her façade carry her away again. But being calm had never worked out in her favor. She was always being pushed around and, and, and. Being calm was what she did when Heather was alive.

She had delayed the moment. She'll still be here in the morning. That thought had echoed through her head many time over, even on the night of her death. Maybe she wouldn't be here in the morning. Maybe she would give them a suicide note from an actual Heather, not a Veronica. 

'i wanna be your girlfriend played' through her speakers as she drove away, away from the other Heather left, away from Veronica and that J.D., and away from everyone. Maybe she would never see them again. Maybe she would write a note and maybe her heart would be still when her mom came to get her for breakfast in the morning.

But she could promise one thing to herself. That if she did decide to end it and if she did write that note, it would be honest. Even if it took pages, she would spill everything. Even heather Chandler, and how Heather was her world. How no matter if they were together in heaven or hell, they would be together. Her and Heather Chandler, her girl in red.

(1208 words)