Julian Umland
November 14, 2014 11:56 AM
Initiating Project Beautification, Attempt Two (Charlie). by Julian Umland
Julian hated asking for favors. Hated it. Even if she found something to do for the other person right away, she still almost always still felt like she had asked for too much and not done enough in return and it made her want to crawl into a hole. She hated the emotions that went along with asking people to go out of their way, to do something they would have not done if she had not asked and when they might have wanted to something else. Self-sufficiency was not only smart, as it mostly just involved the one person who was sure to always be there for her, it was just plain more comfortable.Unfortunately, there were times when it just wasn’t possible. She could, she guessed, dance by herself at the Ball, but she would look kind of stupid and people would pay her even more attention for being unconventional, so she would really rather not do it. That meant obtaining a partner, and while it was usually considered weird for a girl to do the asking, Julian figured the usual restrictions didn’t apply between friends. Hoping, then, that she was right, she asked Charlie to meet her in the art room after classes, running back to the dorms just long enough to drop her schoolbooks and fill their places in her bag with a big box of paints and potions and...whatever some of the bottles and packets she hadn't yet determined the natures of were, she really had no idea how anyone without a degree in it kept track of all this stuff.
She had thought long and hard about the bag-refilling, chickening out of two previous attempts to extend this same invitation because of that factor. She and Charlie had a thing, and she was a little afraid that trying to infringe on his thing (fabulousness) might be weird, even if she was sure she would never rise as far as in the ranks of the fashionable as he did no matter what. Since she was worried about this despite five years of effort on his part to convince her to dress like someone who had not absorbed her brothers’ did-I-wear-this-already-this-week-before-laundry-day-eh-who-cares attitude toward clothing, though, she was pretty sure she was just making excuses for herself. Looking for a convenient way out of dealing with stuff. Which was, she guessed, fine – when it worked. Unfortunately, she knew that she was doing it, so it really wasn’t working that well for her.
“Hi, okay,” she said, far too fast, to her friend when she saw him, fiddling with the hem of her blouse. She thought it had started out mostly black but was heavily printed with blue flower patterns which reminded her of chrysanthemums, with a few flashes of pink here and there in the mix. It was matched with black trousers because she had not felt like the blouse looked good with her black skirt, though she had quickly also reminded herself that she had expected to end up on her feet during Defense earlier. She had tried straightening out her hair with a charm, but had smelled something burning and had quickly decided that was a bad idea, so it was neither quite flat nor quite as wavy as usual. “I need a favor. Well – two favors,” she blurted out, wanting to just get it over with. “One, are you free for at least one dance at the Ball? And the other – I need – I – “
She had started talking so fast by that point that she was pretty sure her words outpaced her brain, because she just dropped the bag with a clink of magically-reinforced glass bottles and pushed it toward Charlie with her foot. “There’s – stuff in there. I saw you’re doing beauty for the Ball, but – do you think you could – I don’t know – show me – stuff – like – everyday use?”
Unless the temperature had just been turned up extremely high, which she did not think it had, Julian suspected she was now red from the top of her head down to her collarbones. Possibly more, but her shirt concealed that. She felt better, though, now that she’d said it and that part, which had made her want to avoid her best friend for days, was over. “Totally okay if it’s no to all of the above,” she felt compelled to say. Ever since Sallie had pointed it out to her that she did that, she had begun to annoy herself with her habit of apologizing for everything. Annoyance seldom stopped her, though. “I’m sorry. Wow. I’m going to start acting normal again now, promise.”
Whatever that meant. Julian was not entirely sure she knew. People didn’t all act the same, not at all, but most of them claimed citizenship in the normal category. Even Mom seemed to think that she was the normal one and that other people were just being warped by society or something. Even accepting ‘whatever seems normal to you’ as a definition, though, didn’t help her now, because what felt right one minute felt all wrong the next, so she was just going from minute to minute, hoping everyone who said that nothing in a teenager's life was very important turned out to be right and that she'd be able to laugh at it all in ten years, however unlikely that felt right now no matter what else she thought at any given moment.
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Julian Umland
Initiating Project Beautification, Attempt Two (Charlie).
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Charlie
November 22, 2014 4:14 AM
Initiate project making up pretty girls, part two by Charlie
Charlie thought he might know what Julian wanted with him in the art room, and it certainly wasn't the usual reason fifth year students met in quiet parts of the school, unless she was exceptionally oblivious. He had noticed Julian's improved efforts in regard to fashion, caring about the season's colours and trying to look her best. Had noticed and appreciated. Still, a ball was a wholly different matter – a whole other ball game, if one would – and he suspected the level of fabulousness required might just be beyond his sartorially challenged friend. But then, what was he for if not that?He was surprised, upon entering the MARS room, to find that Julian began blushing and stammering. Given that he didn't regard it in the least bit embarrassing that she should ask him for help, he almost did wonder whether she had something else in mind. Although the idea was quickly dismissed, it had time to make the hairs on the back of his neck tingle a little with.... agitation, he supposed. It really would be rather awkward if Julian saw him in that light, after all. Wanted to kiss him... Had asked him to the art room to press him against the wall and run her fingers down his chest whilst nibbling on his neck.... He felt the tingle running from his neck all the way down his spine and tried to push such thoughts out of his head. She definitely didn't have that in mind and so there was no need to torment himself by imagining such strange scenes.
“Of course I'll take you, pretty prefect princess mine” he said, very promptly when she asked about dancing at the ball. If that's what you want, his brain prompted. If you don't want a proper date, like you deserve. Only he found the words only echoed around his mind. They wouldn't come out of his mouth. Julian had asked him, she must want to go with him, he selfishly reasoned. It was nothing to do with the fact that he didn't want anyone else to go with her. To put their arm around her waist and think of doing all those things that teenage boys thought about doing with teenage girls.... Well, other teenage boys.
“And I thought you'd never ask,” he grinned, as she pushed the make up bag toward him, which he eagerly rummaged through, “Though,” he teased, tickling her nose with a make-up brush, “You might need to let your face cool down a little first. Why so embarrassed?”
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Charlie
Initiate project making up pretty girls, part two
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Julian Umland
November 25, 2014 12:39 AM
Good luck. by Julian Umland
Julian smiled gratefully when Charlie agreed to help her out with the ball, but the expression faded again when he noticed that she really did not need blusher right now. Well, she had expected that – kind of set herself up for it, really, as this was the one thing she could not really talk to anyone in her family about. She couldn’t really claim to be misunderstood and unsupported when it came to anything important, Stephen and especially Paul understood why she had complicated, messed-up feelings about Sallie, they had already gone through much worse versions of what she was going through now there, and Mom and Dad were being very good about it too, but stuff even vaguely not some form of conventionally masculine seemed well outside Stephen, Paul, and Dad’s comfort zones, and her mom…no matter what Mom actually said if they ever did end up discussing girly things, Julian thought she would have been secretly convinced that Mom disapproved on moral grounds even if she hadn’t also had to worry about Mom feeling betrayed. Best just to leave her even further out of it than she did the boys.“Because I feel really stupid and freakish for being sixteen and having not even wanted to learn before this year,” she said. “And not just – being able to pick up a brush and get some result that at least doesn’t scare horses and Gemma. And then I feel stupid for caring that I don’t know, because I never cared before, and – and then – “
She took a deep breath and stepped off the cliff. “Honestly, once I’m done thinking about all of that stuff and I’m pretty convinced I have the IQ of a frog, then I get to think that I’m a horrible traitor person because I, um, IgotallthisstuffforChristmasfrommystupidbirthmother – “ she had to pause to inhale again and try to recapture a casual tone – “who’s kind of back in Canada now and wants us all to be one big happy family.”
She wanted to cringe, but also felt somehow lighter – a strange, unsettling combination. “She’s not really – relevant, though – I mean, yes, she’s pretty, but I don’t want someone to knock me up and then pack me off to Australia for fifteen years. Or, um, be like her any other way. It would – just be – I don’t know, nice if maybe someone at least wanted to look, you know? I mean, my mom wore nice clothes before she got married, it’s not – like I’m doing something bad, but - you're better than Mom with pretty anyway, and right now, I definitely can’t say anything about make-up or dresses or anything to Mom, because – well, she’s okay with being one big happy family, she and Sallie were apparently joined at the hip before I was born, but I don’t want her to think I like Sallie better than her or anything, or that I’m going to have to move to Australia….”
She forced a smile. “Have I told you that you’re awesome lately?” she asked. “Because you’d be awesome just for having not run out of here screaming yet if I haven’t.”
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Julian Umland
Good luck.
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