User blog:Professorpineapple/Off The Clock

 Just one night wouldn’t hurt.

  Marnie was so tired of it sometimes. Miss Peabody wouldn’t let her change out of her uniform while she was on the clock. While the other girls all slipped into sweatpants and slippers, hung up their ties and let down their hair, there was Marnie. Stuffed into a blazer and an itchy wool skirt. Her feet ached in their scuffed penny-loafers. She could feel the elastic of her socks dig ruts into her skin. Maybe she did get her own room, and an extra free period, and all kinds of cushy perks - but, damn, sometimes a girl needed to just put her feet up for a bit.

  She didn’t think her fake-cough was too convincing, but Mrs. Peabody let her go anyway. She’d looked up at Marnie, eyes narrowed into slits behind her thick, round frames.

  “I suppose,” she’d said, very slowly, “Just one night...if you must …”

  Marnie pretended not to notice the disdain in the old woman’s voice. She gave a humble nod and fake-sniffled, and slunk off to her bedroom like she was ashamed. Once inside, Marnie bolted the door and yanked her hair out of its tight bun. She could hear loose strands ripping in her ears.



 The prefect freed herself from the hot, stuffy confines of her uniform. She shrugged on a pair of gym pants and a t-shirt - printed with a dolphin holding a margarita glass, from a Florida resort she’d never visited. Since she lived in the “Prefects’ Suite,” Marnie had the room to herself. Once upon a time it must have been a supply closet, she suspected - wedged awkwardly in the space under the staircase, always smelling just slightly of cleaning chemicals. Between her bed and the dresser, there was barely any room to walk to the window.

 She had her own TV set, though, propped up on top of the dresser. It was a little plastic box, at least twenty years old, with a built-in VHS player and an antenna. Marnie needed to fiddle with it to get a channel with minimal static. With some finagling, an infomercial crackled to life on the dusty little screen. Some kind of metal spinning thing that was supposed to curl and style hair. It would have to do.

 She kept her ash tray in her bedside table. A birthday present her folks mailed her back in February. Black with gold trim, from the Luxor hotel. Inside a birthday card they’d written: “A little something to remind you of home!”

 Marnie brought it to the windowsill with her, where she smoked a cigarette into the chilly autumn air. Her window was closer to the dumpster behind the dorm than she would have liked. She took a deep, deep drag to cover up the stench of it. The light from her bedroom cast a dingy yellow glow on the brick wall behind the dorm, and her shadow was a big, shapeless black lump. From open windows in the floor above, she could hear voices talking. Giggling.

 She tapped her cigarette against the ashtray. Her dad must have stolen it. He loved nicking things from hotels. Marnie’s childhood was full of teeny tiny shampoo bottles, little packaged soaps, fluffy towels with logos embroidered on them. Of course, she didn’t know where they came from back then. She just thought Dad liked little, cute things.It made her wonder if he liked her at all.

 It was getting late in Bullworth, but not in Vegas. Maybe she could call them. But Marnie was too sloppy-looking to leave her bedroom, and she was without a cell phone. Just last week, it “mysteriously” vanished from her dorm room, and “mysteriously” ended up at the bottom of the fountain.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> (“Oh no, Miss Jones, that’s too bad,” cooed Mandy. “You should really take better care of your things.” Her cheer squad giggled behind her.)

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie squeezed her eyes shut, and rubbed her temples. Her fingertips brushed between the two moles there, beside her right eyebrow. She pressed down on them, as though if she tried hard enough, she could flatten them and make them go away. It was dumb, sure, but it was an old habit, and you know what they say about those.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> <p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> From the ancient TV set, the infomercial lady chirped, “Wow! Beautiful! Call now!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The heavy plodding of footsteps on concrete caught her off-guard. She didn’t notice them until they stopped, just a little ways off, echoing faintly in the narrow alleyway. Marnie leaned out the window to see who it was, breathing out a cloud of white. She hoped it’d be enough to conceal the dorky design on her shirt.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> It was too dark to make out his face, but she knew him. Stumpy, stocky, with a big, buzzed head. Jimmy had that funny way of carrying himself, too - that little strut that he did, with his head up and his shoulders back, his legs a little too far apart. Like he thought he could trick people into thinking he was bigger or something. It was almost cute.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> He’d hesitated a moment but now he was coming closer again, with that swagger, hands in his pockets like he didn’t have a care in the world. But Marnie saw a twitch in his jaw, and the way his beady little eyes drifted toward her.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie leaned against the windowsill, crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look nonchalant. She twirled her cigarette between two fingers, took another drag. She waited until he was close before she exhaled, right into his ruddy face.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Hopkins.” she said. “Taking a walk?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Jimmy choked, batting the air with one hand. His breath hitched in his throat, but he strained to keep from coughing. “Miss Jones. Fancy meeting you here.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “I live here,” Marnie said.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “You sure do.” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck, looked away from her. She watched him, pale eyes heavy with sleep. The longer she let the silence grow, the more he seemed to squirm.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Well,” Jimmy coughed, “If you’ll excuse me…”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> He turned on his heel and pressed on, sauntering passed the golden light of Marnie’s window. He wore a hoodie - an awful one, printed with flames, like a toy racecar - but above the hood she could see his bruises. Brown and red splotches she’d left there three days ago.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> He’d really thought he could outrun her. It was cute.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “How’s the neck?” she called after him.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Jimmy stopped, turned back to her. He touched a hand to the bruises, cracked a little smile. “I’ve had worse.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie found herself smirking back, and made herself look at the cigarette between her fingers. She watched it smolder. “I’ve given worse. Count yourself lucky.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Jimmy gave a snort. “Yeah,” he said wryly, “I’ll be sure to do that.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> He turned, took a step, then stopped. Marnie pretended that the burning cherry of the cigarette was very, very interesting.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “I’m not doing anything,” he said.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Me neither,” said Marnie.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ Definitely not. I am absolutely doing nothing tonight.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie stole a glance at him. The younger boy had that stupid, cocky grin on his face, swinging his arms back and forth just a little too hard. When he spoke up again, there was the edge of a challenge in his voice, “I swear I am not planning on causing any mischief tonight.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Well, that’s good,” she said. “It’s my night off.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Maybe she was imagining it, but she thought she saw his smile falter, just a little bit. Was he really that desperate to get a rise out of her?

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Well then,” said Jimmy, “I hope you enjoy your evening, Miss Jones. It would be a real shame if anything were to happen to ruin your night.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie stuck the cigarette between her thin, chapped lips. “See you around, Hopkins.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> She craned her neck up to look at the stars above, but there weren’t any out. Just dark clouds, drifting across the light of the moon. She stayed there for a while, long after Jimmy’s footsteps faded, and it was just her and reeking dumpster, and the crackling of static on the TV.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Upstairs, a scream cut through the still, night air. Piercing, loud enough for Marnie to make out from her bedroom: “OH MY GOD! THERE’S A BOY IN HERE!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Footsteps hammered on the ceiling above, sent the bare lightbulb on Marnie’s ceiling swinging back and forth. All the running and  squealing drowned out the sound of the TV. From the crack under her door, she saw the hallway light turn on.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “WHO IS THAT!?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “WHAT’S HE DOING HERE!?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie crushed out the butt of her cigarette in the ashtray, and dumped the ashes out the window. She closed her eyes against the cool breeze that wafted in, just for a moment, before she closed the window.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The fire alarm sprang to life, shrieking through the halls. She could hear the sputtering of the overhead sprinklers.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “OH MY GOD, IS THAT JIMMY!?”

"WHO PULLED THAT ALARM!?"

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “EVERYONE PLEASE, REMAIN CALM!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie crossed over to her dresser. She caught a glimpse of her blazer, hanging in the closet, her prefects’ badge glinting gold.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “WHAT’S HAPPENING!? IS THERE A FIRE!?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “DID SOMEONE SAY FIRE!?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie twisted the dial on her TV set. When she cranked up the volume, she could kind of hear it. She flopped down on her rickety bed, grabbed a baby blue bottle of nail polish from her bedside table.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The infomercial gave way to some late-night talk show rerun from ten years ago. The byline scrolled across the bottom of the screen: “My husband married BOTH of my sisters!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Marnie tisked, shaking her head. Just outside her bedroom door, someone let out a scream. She twisted the cap off her nail polish bottle.