Midge Jorbyn is eleven years old, living with her evil foster dad Joffrey. Everything seems fine from the outside, but she walks to school with the lunch she packed. Nobody knows what she's holdin' back. Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday,
sh...
Groff leads me outside. "Well, these are my wheels." He gestures to his banana peel bicycle.
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We breeze off into the night with the wind in my hair and bugs in my teeth. "Groffy, this is the best date I've ever been on." My gums flap obscenely.
"Thanks," he hollers and dings the bell on the handle.
We arrive at the local brunch venue, called We Have The Brunchies™. I exhale loudly. "Oh, Groff, it's stunning."
"Not as stunning as my dead dog buried in my grandmother's wedding dress."
I nod thoughtfully. He really has a way with words.
He grabs my arm and slides me through the entrance. We get suck in the doorway. My dress is too big. Screw you, Begonia. Jonathan tries to pull me out. He is unsuccessful. But in that moment, with his hands n my hips, I can see our future. Our beautiful future.
-a short while later-
After the fire department arrived and they pulled me out of the door, I was starving. Groff had already ordered and was currently eating his eggs Benedict and sipping a mimosa. As I make my way over to the table, Groff looks up and smiles. "My, my, Miss Midge, you certainly are a vision." He uses a southern accent to say it.
My face morphs into a tomato. It's that red.
He raises his hand and waves the waiter over. His face falls when a tall bearded man with black hair comes to serve us.
"Z-Zachary?" He stutters. A tear slips from his eyes.
"Oh, Johnny baby, so good to see you." His words were sweet, but his tone had an edge.
"Who is this man?" I shout.
"No one we need to concern ourselves with." Jonathan puts a hand on my back and turns me away. He nods politely in the man's direction, but I know on the inside he is splitting, like kindling. "Mr. Quinto," He greets.
His hand my spine comforts me, until my see a familiar figure swagger through he doorway and to our table, where he plants a kiss on Zachary's cheek. I try to avert my eyes from his sweaty face. I had the absurd, fleeting belief that if I was still as Jonathan's dead dog that looked like me, he would't see me.
My father's acidic voice slices through my ear canals. "Well, if it isn't Midge Jorbyn" he says, smugly.
"Joffrey." I spit, literally, covering his face in a thin layer of saliva. "Joffrey," I say again, sinfully, this time.
Zachary looks from me to him. "You know this little brat?"
"Unfortunately," he sneered. "I gave birth to her."
Jonathan loses his cool. He lunges at my father, who gives a squeal of terror. Zachary steps back, adjusts his stance so that his feet are shoulder width apart, and slowly raises a gun. He holds it by the handle with two hands. It is pointed at me like an arrow into my putrid soul.
"Jonathan, get off of him--" he turns to Jonathan-- "Or your little friend will get hurt."
Then suddenly, as if in a dream, a streak of blue passes in front of my face. Is that-- No, it couldn't be. A memory floats through my mind, but I couldn't quite place it. That streak. My crusty eyes. Before I have time to think about that, a single shot rings through We Have The Brunchies™.
I must have closed my eyes, because when I open them again, I see a lifeless Lin lying at my feet in a lake of blood.
***
Author's Note: Sorry for the cliffhanger! Comment if this makes you feel rebellious.
