Connor Pierce
March 03, 2007 3:49 PM
Connor Pierce
March 03, 2007 4:58 PM
Blasted Enter Key...(Gwen) by Connor Pierce
In theory, there was nothing odd about getting a letter on Saturday. Sunday, in the Muggle world, was usually a whole different ball park, but there was nothing wrong with mail on Saturdays...except when the handwriting on the front of the envelope belonged to Beverly Pierce. She had sent one letter a week since Connor was a first year, and they had all, with the exception of the one telling him about Kris getting pregnant, arrived on Tuesdays. That precedent was just shy of comforting.Bev had often accused him of being a pessimist. Connor had often referred to himself as a realist. When things failed to go according to plan, the reason had a habit of being a bad thing. The best-case scenario he could come up with had Paul in another wreck, only worse than the others. The worst-case involved someone dead or Beverly relapsing. The only good reason he could think of for his sister breaking her pattern of letter-sending involved them winning the lottery, and that seemed kind of unlikely, not least because Connor couldn't remember a single incident of his mother buying a lottery ticket.
Better to know, he reasoned, than to not know. Whatever the letter said was going to stay the same whether he read it or not. Good or bad, he was going to find out about it at Christmas, anyway, and Bev would knock him upside the head if he had no clue about something she'd already explained to him. Then he'd get the information with a headache. It was better to just read it now and get it over with, since he knew he wasn't going to be able to stop thinking about it until he did. Careful not to tear the college-ruled notebook paper inside, Connor ripped open the envelope and extracted its contents.
Darlingest brother,
You might want to sit down before you read this. It's not bad-bad news, but I think I know you well enough to know that you're going to think it is. Don't do anything stupid, and yes, I do mean at home as well as at school.
First the good news. Paul got accepted to another school. Can't remember the name of it at the moment, but all those years of football practice and making us crazy finally paid off. Mom's prouder than she's ever been of him, I think - she's only stopped talking about it long enough to watch her soaps. Oh, and she's trying to stop smoking again. Peppermints, this time. Has she done that before? I can't remember.
Now what you're going to consider the bad news, though Doc Morrison says we should all be happy for Mom and try to accept her needs instead of just focusing on our own...or something like that. Brad kind of proposed, and Mom kind of said yes. She's already planning the wedding for this summer. We - by that, I mean all four of her loving children - are supposed to be in the wedding party, and Will's going to be the ringbearer.
There is a bright side: they're not moving in with us until after the wedding, to keep Sadie Belle from crossing the line between melodramatically opposed and homicidally opposed. With Paul going to college, I think we can keep Matt out of your room, so you can feel sorrier for me than you do for yourself. I'm going to be stuck sharing a room with Leslie once we become the Brady Bunch. I don't know if we're telling them about you or not, but I'll holler when/if I do.
I have no idea how to conclude this, so I'll just stop writing. Just remember that Mom loves Brad, and you love Mom, so starting trouble wit Mom's fiancé Brad when you come home for Christmas is a dumb thing to do. She's happy, and so are the Amberleys, and Kris and Paul don't care, so we're in the minority. That means heads down and mouths shut.
Your favorite sister,
Beverly
Beverly, Connor thought, was right. There was a bright side to things. His head felt like it was going to explode, but this was still better news than someone being dead or her relapsing. Other than that, though, he couldn't see the first good thing about it. It was weird enough that his fortysomething mother kept her Soap Opera Digests on the coffee table for anyone who walked in to see and still thought about men at all; it was downright sick that she was getting married again, especially to a guy in his thirties. Especially a guy in his thirties from New York with annoying kids. Leslie was already curious enough about him and his school; Connor had no idea how his mother meant to keep Strawberry Shortcake's nose out of what didn't concern her once they were, as Bev put it, the Brady Bunch.
The Brady Bunch. The girls hadn't been old man Brady's daughters, but they'd always been called Brady on the show. If Brad Amberley and his mother had any ideas like that, they could just go ahead and get rid of them. There was, as he'd spent several minutes of a memorable Muggle Studies class defending to Anne Wright, absolutely nothing wrong with the surname he already had. He liked it just like it was, and didn't really care if his mother's boyfriend - fiancé - or every rich guy in the state of New Hampshire had a problem with that.
Speaking of which...
He had noticed Gwen the minute he entered the Cascade Hall. She was kind of hard to miss, or at least she was when he was trying to avoid her. He'd been meaning to talk to her ever since talking to Betty, but had never had the nerve before. At the moment, though, his inability to kick Brad Amberley every step of the way back to Manhattan Island was translating itself into the nerve to confront the prettiest girl in the state of Arizona after almost a year of running from her.
"Hey, Gwen," he said as he faced her across her table, trying not to sound angry and failing miserably. "You got a minute?" \n\n
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Connor Pierce
Blasted Enter Key...(Gwen)
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Connor Pierce
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Gwen Carey
March 11, 2007 4:46 PM
I've never had any problems with it. by Gwen Carey
Gwen had spent much longer than usual in the bathroom that morning, ignoring any comments or complaints her roommates might have made by first pretending not to hear them, then forgetting about hearing them once they shut up. Catherine spent so much of her time in front of a mirror that it was a wonder her face didn't turn into a pane of silvery glass some morning, and the others weren't much better. Gwen had earned, in her opinion, the right to ruin a morning or two a month for the snots if she was so inclined. She had used up a pretty portion of Saturday morning fixing her hair, a pointless, if amusing, gesture.She had the disadvantage of being someone whose moods were reflected by her looks with uncanny accuracy. When she was angry or upset, she looked, in her opinion, like a banshee with a better color scheme. In her usual states - off-the-beat or apathetic - she found absolutely nothing appealing about the way she looked and avoided mirrors as far as she could. On good days, like today, she actually felt pretty, or at least prettier than the girls in her dorm. She liked that idea almost as much as she liked winning, and winning had been what gave her the idea to take an interest in her looks again in the first place.
Every single member of her family was out for her head for one reason or another, a group she strongly suspected that she knew members of suspected her and every other girl who played Quidditch of being unnatural, her Defense grade had fallen two points in the past week, and Crotalus had won a Quidditch game. Thanks to Lily, they had beaten Aladren in the first match of the year. She had been careful to avoid Anne ever since, aware that she was most likely one of the last people her cousin really wanted to see while the loss was so fresh on her mind, but knowing that Anne was mad at her hardly dimmed the satisfaction she got from having won at last. Her whole year had taken on a better character.
She took care to smile normally as she entered the Cascade Hall. For once, looking crazy wasn't on the agenda. Normal was a nice word, and she wanted to pretend she could still use it in regards to herself. She might be legally dead by New Year's, but for now, she felt better than she had, the best as she could recall, since the end of the happy first months of her first year. She felt...summery. A pity there were no flowers. Her mother had, when she was well enough, worn flowers in her hair through the spring and summer. It had irritated her father, though she couldn't recall why.
Oranges were one of the foods she'd developed a taste for at Sonora, where a fair few of the staples of her diet at Bellevue were missing. If she ever did return to her home island, unlikely as that seemed, now, it would be hard to get used to again, she thought. Like going away from home all over again. There was something odd about that. A bit of a frown appeared as she tried to work out what it was. The oranges were good.
Her nice moment was ended abruptly by one of the top five people at Sonora she least wanted to see. Meeting her ex-friend's eyes as steadily as she could, Gwen shrugged and faked an intense interest in her fingernails. It was hard to believe that they belonged to her, sometimes. At least the good days had inspired her to round them off. In what was the new normal, they were uneven as often as not, and her hands were still in rough shape from handling her bat for Quidditch. They weren't the hands of a Savannah Carey with the best prospects of all the Savannah Carey girls - all three of them.
She didn't look at Connor as she spoke. "I'm not planning on dying just now," she drawled, doing a very good, or so she thought, imitation of boredom. "I don't have a reason to think I'm going to die now anyway, so I supposed I do. I'd rather not spend it listening to you tell me that I'm evil or whatnot for trying to have a life, though, if you don't mind." The words grew sharper and more sarcastic at the end, and Gwen realized in short order that she didn't care.
That fight still hurt, when she let herself remember that it had happened in the first place. She'd thought that he understood why she sometimes had to do and say things she didn't particularly want to do or say just to survive the family and its associates. Just more proof, she supposed, that all men were idiots and that women had to be able to take care of themselves. Women who couldn't wound up like her mother, in places like Juliere and Rose Hills and the tenth floor of the tristate hospital in Charleston. If he was there to start another fight, which was the idea Gwen had gotten, then she'd hold her ground this time and come out the winner. If Connor was, for whatever reason, ready to apologize, she wasn't going to make it easy for him. \n\n
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Gwen Carey
I've never had any problems with it.
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Gwen Carey
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Connor
March 13, 2007 8:36 PM
Probably because you pay attention to what you're doing. by Connor
Blue eyes met gray, and Connor knew that this was going to be one of the bad times. Gwen had enough facets to fill up at least a month of Dr. Phil shows without a member of the audience getting bored with her, and today she was in full antagonist mode. In the back of his mind, he realized that it was a good thing, too; if Gwen had been all tearful and apologetic, or smiling the way she sometimes did on a good day, things might have gone right back to the way they had been. Connor had done more than his fair share of enduring her thousand complexes, and putting up with them again was just a little bit short of appealing.Or so he'd been trying to tell himself since, oh, December or something. The truth was, it was hard to go back to the normal life after three years of living a soap opera. That was the only term Connor had ever found that came close to showing what life as Gwen's social reclamation project had been. But it was over, now, and he was an idiot for having this conversation.
Oh, great, she was taking some kind of twisted-up stand on the moral highground. If Gwen could figure out some way to bottle guilt, she'd be able to make a fortune whatever her family did to her. Every pretty girl in America would have to have some for whenever she didn't get her way. "I never said - " Reacting was bad. It was one of the psychological things his sister liked to babble about that Connor agreed with, to an extent. "Whatever. I'm not going to argue with you. I just wanted to ask you something."
She was even prettier than usual today. He wasn't supposed to be noticing things like that, but then, it was hardly a state secret that Gwen was beautiful. Connor doubted there was a male in the school who had needed yearbook awards to realize that. Some of them might have even caught on about her being crazy; Connor didn't know. He was pretty sure no one else knew just how nutty she could be, and the 'no one else' bit included her relatives, except maybe her sister. One of the advantages of having cut ties with the elder of the pair was being able to call himself one of those lucky people Morgaine Carey pretended didn't exist. "Do you know any Yankees called the New Hampshire Pierces?" \n\n
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Connor
Probably because you pay attention to what you're doing.
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Connor
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Gwen
March 18, 2007 12:38 AM
That does tend to help. by Gwen
It took a minute for Gwen to react to the question that had been asked. For the space of that minute, she appeared deaf to it. Then her eyes widened and she giggled once, covering her mouth with her hand as soon as she figured out that the sound had come out of it. Then she started to laugh the way she did when she was scared, and that was the end of it. It had never occurred to her that Connor might actually engage anyone other than Gwen herself long enough to hear that bit of information. He was pretty bad about the mumbling if she forgot to remind him to talk right, and she was pretty much the only person he talked to, anyway.Except...
She was going to - well, not kill, but at the very least do something violent to Anne Wright. Gwen couldn't imagine how Anne would know who the Pierces were - to call the girl out of the loop was to make a massive understatement - but Gwen couldn't think of anyone else who Connor would have mumbled his last name to who would have a clue who the Pierces were and who would feel compelled to share that information. Her ex-friend tended to avoid purebloods. He had the charmingly stupid idea that they were all completely insane.
"Not personally, no," she said. "The furthest north I've ever been is Virginia, and most of the parties my father let us go to were family affairs, anyway. Everyone hears about everyone, though, so I know them by reputation."
She sounded entirely casual, she noted with pride. As if she had always intended to discuss pureblood families at breakfast with a Muggleborn bearing one's surname. "This must be the part where you start yelling and getting all upset and trashing my character," she said calmly, even, though she could hardly credit it, pleasantly. "We could just skip it and you could tell me why you were mad when you came over here. I promise I wouldn't mind at all." \n\n
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Gwen
That does tend to help.
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Gwen
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Connor
March 18, 2007 5:54 PM
Yeah, yeah, let's move on. by Connor
For about a minute, it looked like Gwen was going to do her little I-went-deaf-for-a-minute-and-didn't-hear-a-word-you-said-dahlin' routine. She was carrying on as if nothing had happened. If the girl had no other talents, she had a knack for only hearing what she wanted to and to hell with all of the other stuff. Then, just when he was about to ask again, she started to laugh, that weird laugh she had when nothing was funny. Still crazy as a betsy bug, then. It was good to see that some things never changed.Then, of course, Gwen just had to stop laughing and start talking as though she'd never laughed at all. He hated it when she did that - there was something unnatural about a person being able to pull herself together that fast. She had been able to do it for as long as Connor could recall knowing her, though she might have kept some of the weird stuff kind of hidden at the very first. The calm way that she went about explaining how she knew of the Pierces was enough to make him mad all over again. The last piece let him know that if he lost his temper, she was going to see to it he looked like a plain fool in front of everyone in the Cascade Hall.
She was too unpredictable. Connor had the idea that, if he could ever accurately predict what she was going to do, he could at the very least face her on equal ground. He had a lot of trouble seeing that happening any where in the near future.
"It's none of your business," he said shortly. "How do you know this wasn't what I was mad about, anyway?" \n\n
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Connor
Yeah, yeah, let's move on.
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Connor
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Saul Pierce
March 18, 2007 9:07 PM
Jumping in and holding up the line by Saul Pierce
Saul had been walking through Cascade Hall like he did any other day. He'd spotted the EEs over with Meredith and was beelining straight for them. Normally, he wouldn't have heard any of the conversations he passed along the way, and he still hadn't, not really. He'd just caught a word. Three of them, actually, and they had him stopping dead in his tracks.He turned toward the direction they'd come from. He didn't know who'd said it and, to be honest, he'd heard the words, not the voice. He couldn't even say for sure if it had been a girl or a guy who'd spoken them, never mind who.
His gaze swept the people nearby. A couple of fourth years (he was pretty sure they were fourth years since they shared some of his classes but not all of them) seemed like the most likely culprits when the girl laughed and started talking about family parties up north.
Saul stepped closer, clearing his throat as they tried to move onto the topic of why the guy was mad. He wasn't sure he wanted to get involved if the New Hampshire Pierces had anything to do with it, but he'd gone three years without being unduly reminded of their existence and he hoped whatever brought them up now wasn't going to persist. He really hoped they weren't involved in that WAIL stuff with all the owls at the last Quidditch game.
"Um, sorry to barge in," he interrupted them, "but, um, I just heard you guys talking about the Pierces. The New Hampshire ones," he added quickly, because it was best not to confuse them with the two other groups of Pierces that did have a presence at Sonora. And now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure the guy here was 'Connor Pierce' - whose attendence made Saul jump every time a teacher called on him using his full name. Regina swore there wasn't a 'Connor' in either of the eastern branches.
"I'll go away if I'm bothering you, I promise," he continued, "I just heard the name, and I wanted to check that they're not up to something." He grimaced and winced outwardly when he realized that made them sound like they were likely to be up to something, but he didn't know how to fix it without making it worse because they were kinda likely to be up to something. Hence why he was asking.
Maybe introducing himself and thus explaining why he was interested? He stuck out his right hand, "Saul Pierce, from California." He did not claim relation to the New Hampshire ones. In the off chance they didn't already know, he didn't want to be associated with his Eastern cousins. Of course, the girl sounded like she had associates in common with that branch. He probably shouldn't have offered his hand. He was kind of iffy about where exactly his branch stood among pureblood circles - were they ranked above or below primordial ooze?\n\n
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Saul Pierce
Jumping in and holding up the line
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Saul Pierce
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Gwen
March 24, 2007 4:03 AM
It's way too early in morning to think of a title. by Gwen
And they thought she was crazy. Gwen shook her head almost pityingly. "Dahlin'," she said patiently, "if you're gonna come over here and start hollering at me about it, it's my business, whatever it is. The scapegoat ought to at least know what she's being blamed for, right?" She didn't let him answer that. Human beings were naturally contrary; it was all but a given that he'd disagree just to argue a point. "And as for how - "She cut off in midsentence when a boy - a Pecari, Gwen was almost sure; one of the third years - approached them. One of the poor children doomed to sharing every last class in company with her sister, and that was even before a common common room was brought into the equation. It was suddenly seeming like a good thing that she and Morgaine had so few features in common; her little sister had never been among her year's most popular, as far as Gwen could tell.
"Considering how tired I was getting of this conversation," she said when he finished his inquiry, "you're no bother at all." She shook his hand shortly, then tucked her hair back from habit. Saul Pierce...wasn't that the guy she'd knocked out of the air once? Good thing games had gotten so violent in the interval between that situation and this present one that it was no longer worthy of noticing. "Gwen Carey, from Georgia. I don't know anything about any of the Pierces, so you'll have to forgive me, dahlin'."
She turned then to Connor, deciding that while it was kind of mean of her, he had it coming. Dealing with disapproval had never been one of Gwen's stronger talents. "What about you?" she said. "Did whatever conversation with whoever it was who told you about them fill you in on all the gossip? I'm sure there is some - they're purebloods." She had come to the conclusion that one of the constant features of any modern American pureblood family was gossip. Even she, out of the loop for three years, heard enough from living with Cate and listening to random conversations to know that.\n\n
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Gwen
It's way too early in morning to think of a title.
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Gwen
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Connor
March 25, 2007 12:06 AM
I'm only an aspiring night owl. by Connor
Connor had every intention of contradicting Gwen, starting with the fact that he had not been hollering, but a guy he didn't immediately recognize interrupted first. Not like it would have been worth the time of day, anyway; the yearbook hadn't offered a 'Most Actressy' award, but there was no doubt in Connor's mind that it would've been Gwen's if there had been one. It had to have been Gwen's fault he had thought there was something familiar about Sadie Belle during her unannounced visit over the summer. The two were scarily similar, if the Broadway-wannabe aspect of the old woman was taken out of the picture.Comparing anyone to Sadie Belle Pierce wasn't exactly what Connor would call a compliment, but when the other Pecari - now that he thought about it, Connor was sure he'd seen him around, jumped a few times when there were two Pierces in a classroom - introduced himself formally and Gwen fell right in with it, he couldn't say he objected to Gwen and Sadie's mutual instinct for the stage. Meeting people who could say they were members of a family that sounded sort of like the ones Gwen had talked about wasn't his idea of a great close to the afternoon.
Then, of course, Gwen went and turned on him. Connor had, one way and another, figured out that he'd done something she saw as an insult, though he wasn't quite sure what it was. The way he saw it, she'd been the one to insult him, but girls were all weird, and Gwen was weirder than most. It didn't matter, because whether she was right or wrong, she was getting a shot in at him. There wasn't much to do but go with it. He wasn't clever enough to turn any of it back on her, but keeping the boat up would work, too.
"Nope," he said. "Sorry. She just told me her grandma would croak if she ever heard my last name." No need to broadcast that his source of information was her cousin; from what he knew about them both, they probably had enough issues right now without him adding to the heap. Anne scared the living daylights out of him, sometimes, but she could be all right when she felt like it. So could Gwen; she just hadn't done so recently. Then, because he had nothing better to do than potentially get himself in a sticky situation, "I'm Connor Pierce, from Texas," he introduced himself, imitating the style Saul and Gwen had used. "Muggleborn, so I'm pretty sure we're not related. They don't make them much more normal than my folks." \n\n
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Connor
I'm only an aspiring night owl.
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Connor
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5