Exploring a different medium (letter for Felipe) on Crotalus Commons

Jessica Hayles

January 21, 2020 6:55 PM

Exploring a different medium (letter for Felipe) by Jessica Hayles

Jessica had always wondered how real the fires in the Crotalus Common Room were. They flickered, grew dimmer as the night went on, and even gave off heat when she was cold, but the thing about the wizarding world was that things were not necessarily what they appeared to be.

She should, she supposed, have felt some affinity for it for that reason alone. It was a tired cliché, after all, wasn’t it? Make-up could look real, but never was. She couldn’t see it that way, though. Make-up always behaved the same way, whereas in this strange world, fire could be fire or it could be something that looked like fire, or for all she knew it could actually be a clever disguise for an anthill. Everyone with sense knew that make-up made its wearers just a little bit better than perfect, and then only at a distance – too close, and the whole thing fell apart. There was always something reassuringly ugly and real just within reach, whereas with magic, things could look like what they were not right up until the moment the trap closed....

Tired and irritated, she shook her head and tried to focus. It was past eleven o’clock already. She needed to do what she was planning to do and then go to bed.

The problem of which pen to use had been on her mind ever since she had decided to write, because certain writing tasks demanded certain papers and pens. When she drafted poetry, she used whatever paper she had to hand with the plain gel pens and sharpened yellow pencils which she used in class or to take study notes or to make notes in one of her calendars. Once she got them to a point of reasonable completion, however, they had to be copied into one of her good journals with one of her good pens. Tonight, however, she was going to write a letter, not poetry, and letters were a different issue. Normally, she wrote letters with her Faber-Castell – the pen she had won in the last writing competition she had been able to participate in before she’d had to quit school – but this was not a normal letter, and so she had spent quite a lot of time looking between that and the Pilot her father had given her for her last birthday, her first pen with a gold nib (handily, not an interchangeable nib, so there was no chance of losing it unless she lost the whole pen, and Jessica was rather good at not losing things).

Finally, she went with the gold nib. She posted the ivory and gold cap onto the burgundy resin body and settled it into her hand, and began to write on a fresh, crisp sheet of Clairefontaine.

Dear Felipe,

First of all, I hope you’re feeling better.

Second, I want to apologize for how that conversation before you got sick was going. I was unfair and unkind.

This was so stiff and unnatural. Jessica turned the pen between her fingers. She hated this. She really, really hated this. It had to be done, though, after her conversation with Leonor. If she did this and then couldn’t get anywhere anyway, then she could safely say she had tried and walk away with a clean conscience.

After the way we left things in Atlanta, I was so afraid of what you might say that I just was anxious and I got defensive and everything went wrong. I am sorry about the holly thing, and that last comment I made - especially the last comment I made.

There. She hoped the worst was past, now that she had made her confession that she had made an error. Hoped that she could actually say something of substance. Prose was so not her medium for discussing things she felt anything about.

The truth is that I wasn’t angry with you for getting upset about what happened. I think you took it too far – especially how you were with Mara – but I was never angry with you for thinking it was all wrong – I’ve always known it was all wrong anyway. Not that Mara exists, but that we can’t be a family like any other in public. I wish we could. I know it’s wrong that we don’t. But we can’t - not the way things are. It’s just the world we live in, and both of our mothers would be publicly humiliated if we tried. I can’t imagine that helping anyone.

That’s not the point, though. The point is that it wasn’t fair to you or Leonor to tell you about Mara in the first place. I expected too much from you, and it wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry. I’ve never had friends close enough that I even considered telling them about my family – that we’re like we are – before, or known anyone else who really knew what it was like to have all their family’s hopes resting on them, and you were there for me when I felt so completely alone that I was sort of losing my mind, back in first year, and I expected too much. Maybe you expected too much from me, too – because we were both so far from home and didn’t really fit in here at first, and neither of us had our sisters, so maybe we both felt like we knew each other better than we did, or could. I wanted to tell you about the situation a thousand times, but like I said – I had never even thought about telling anyone before. I’ve always made sure to phrase things with everyone so that I say I’m my mother’s only child – that's not a lie. It’s still far enough from the truth, though, that it’s hard to figure out how to backtrack, how to ever explain, and not knowing how someone might react. If you can’t imagine how that feels – well, you’re lucky and I hope you keep being lucky.

I finally heard about what happened with Jeremy. The fact Professor Skies asked me about the run-in I had with him makes me worry it had something to do with that. Egotistical of me, but for what it’s worth, that guy? He’ll have to try a lot harder to really bother me. I was disgusted because he made a racist remark about Zara, not because of his pathetic attempts to insult me – those almost made me laugh. If you beat him up because of her – well, that’s between you, but if I was involved, don’t do that again over anything involving me. Don’t lower yourself on his account, or mine.

Feel better, and take care,

Jessica

The letter was not the best piece of writing she had ever done. It was too unfocused, too personal. There wasn’t even really a coherent argument in it. Nevertheless, the next morning, she got up and posted it before classes and then tried to put it out of her mind. Whatever happened from here was out of her hands; she’d said her piece, and also managed to somewhat address Leonor’s point without dragging Leonor into it. Her part was, for the moment, done.

16 Jessica Hayles Exploring a different medium (letter for Felipe) 1442 1 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 21, 2020 10:42 PM

I don't know where to begin. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe received a letter in painfully familiar handwriting and spent a long time trying to decide whether he wanted to open it before he finally got around to doing so. He was laying in his bed, blissfully alone, and it was good that he was because the entirety of the letter was an emotional roller coaster. He wasn't even sure what some of those emotions were called. He was frustrated that Jessica was apologizing, but wasn't sure if he was frustrated with himself for making her feel like she needed to or upset with Jessica for doing those things in the first place. He was glad she did seem to recognize that she'd been rude in Herbology, which he felt a little better about because he'd been relatively nice on the whole. Not as nice as he tried to be most of the time, but not as awful as he felt either.

All the feelings of everything that had happened in Atlanta came back to him in a blur and he tried not to think about the things that had hurt so much. He'd gotten them far enough down that they stopped hurting. What good was it going to do to bring it all up again now? He did feel a little bad about the comment about Mara's and Jessica's mothers because that was not an angle he had thought of. Felipe De Matteo, the strategist, diplomat in training, hadn't thought of something so painfully obvious. Why?

He paused in his reading to think about that for a moment. Why had he been so angry? He'd felt betrayed and he felt like . . . well, like he was just the same. He felt like all the things he hated about his station manifested in the sort of twisted family dynamics and politics that kept great people from being good ones. It was all the stuff his family had worked so hard to shed and that he'd been mostly saved from in his life. Seeing Jessica then . . . it had been seeing himself as he never wanted to be. But that wasn't fair. In that regard, Jessica was right.

The point is that it wasn’t fair to you or Leonor to tell you about Mara in the first place. I expected too much from you, and it wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry.

Felipe sat upright, gripping the paper with shaking hands. Forcing himself to keep reading, he almost regretted not punching Jeremy harder when he heard about his racist remarks. The fact that Professor Skies had felt the need to further step in meant something serious, which was great, but Jeremy was making racist comments about Zara? What was his friggin' problem?

He finished the letter and then took a deep breath and reread it. His lips pressed together into a hard line and he scowled at the paper. It was fancy paper, and fancy ink. It was formal. It was important. It was a message. Pushing the covers aside, Felipe jumped to his feet. Instinctively returning the sheets to mostly normal, he tried his hardest not to stomp as he left his dorm - barefooted, wearing only plaid pajama pants and a white T-shirt - and made his way to the Common Room.

Don't do that again over anything involving me.

Jessica's words spun around in his head, both the text and the way he knew she'd sound saying them. It was almost disorienting to see her sitting calmly at a desk in one corner, studying or writing or reading or doing whatever she was doing; he didn't take the time to notice. Resisting the urge to shout - he really didn't like people who shouted and didn't want to be as reactive as he'd been recently, and there was always the risk of Professor Skies finding more things to give him detention for - Felipe crossed the Common Room to put himself in her line of sight, and held the letter out.

"Are you kidding me?" he demanded, sounding more hurt and less angry than he had expected or hoped. He dropped his arms back down to his sides. "You seriously think that everything would just be better if you'd never told us? You think that's why I was angry? You have to know better than that, Jess. . . ica." She looked like her old self, just sitting there, looking up at him. That didn't mean it was appropriate to call her the same old nicknames that had been reasonable just a year previously. Just six months previously. He waved the letter once more, huffing. "And don't tell me what to do."

OOC - Jessica sitting and such approved by her author.

22 Felipe De Matteo I don't know where to begin. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 22, 2020 12:26 PM

They say the beginning is a good place, but how does one ever figure out where it is? by Jessica Hayles

If she was to be honest, Jessica was not sure what reaction she had expected from the letter. She didn’t even know if she expected any reaction at all. If she had received that letter, after all, she knew that she would have been tempted to regard the situation as closed.

She was fairly sure, however, that she would not have stomped into the common room in her pyjamas to have a (thankfully low-volume) temper tantrum. So there was that.

Jessica looked up from her book when the letter was waved in her face, but did not react at first. She looked back at him without any expression at all as he carried on, glad that she had been safely tucked away in The Secret Garden for the second time this week: as a result, her shoulders were relaxed, her eyes slightly out of focus, so that everything came to her through a soft veil of just-having-read instead of at the blunter pace reality was wont to move at.

Finally, though, he was done, and she picked up a bookmark and put it in the place her finger had been holding since he appeared. She closed her book and put it in her lap, folding her hands deliberately on its worn cover. And she reacted.

“I do know better than that,” she said calmly, deciding to ignore the last, extraneous remark. “That’s why I didn’t say that.”

She wanted to point out that technically, everything would be much better if she hadn’t told him, because if she hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have become upset. However, that was not going to make things any better, and wasn’t the point. She had rambled enough in that letter. Plus, as Mommy always said: there were no benefits to losing one’s composure, but many benefits to maintaining it, especially when someone else was losing theirs.

“I’m sorry I apparently said something that made you think I was saying that, though,” she said. “And I’m glad to see you’re...out of the hospital wing, anyway,” she added, since saying it was nice to see him feeling better seemed a bit much when he was stomping around in his pyjamas in public. People did not wear their pyjamas in public when they were completely well.

16 Jessica Hayles They say the beginning is a good place, but how does one ever figure out where it is? 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 22, 2020 3:20 PM

I think we're well past the beginning at this point. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe was well aware that his current attire was not the best way to march about the Common Room, but he had mostly given up on caring at this point. Really, he'd given up on caring about most things. It was too much stress and he didn't want to think about it. If he wanted to be warm and comfortable on a Saturday morning, what did it matter to anybody else? Why did everyone feel like they had to look a certain way or act a certain way all the time? In any case, he didn't appreciate the eyes he felt on him. He took a seat opposite Jessica, glad to have someplace that wasn't so public to be, but also glad not to be standing over her. It felt threatening and that wasn't what he was going for. He would've been taller than she was even if she stood up, but it was less looming at that point. With her sitting, it was best if he sat too.

He bit the inside of his cheek as his head spun for a moment. Had he read the letter wrong? Was he going crazy, too? Scanning it again, he found the sentence that had set him off. He was tired and he felt deflated, as if all his anger had gone out, just to be replaced by resignation to problem solving.

"The point is that it wasn’t fair to you or Leonor to tell you about Mara in the first place. I expected too much from you, and it wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry," he read, quoting it to her as he slid the letter across the table, pointing to the condemning paragraph. A little of his anger returned when his voice cracked on the way out and he couldn't quite tell what the cause of that nonsense was. He sat back in his chair, leaving Jessica to read the sentence or not. "I let you down." It wasn't a question and that hurt to realize as the words came out. He new he had let her down. "Again and again and again."

22 Felipe De Matteo I think we're well past the beginning at this point. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 22, 2020 9:28 PM

In medias res, then? by Jessica Hayles

Jessica reread her own words, trying not to wince. She had not planned to read any of this ever again. She had just....

What had she even meant to do with this? Had she been hoping that a display of contrition – some acknowledgment of what she thought his feelings might be – something – would fix the problem? That it would be a good way to signal that she understood the friendship was over and that they should go their separate ways? Had it just been about the fight? Or about him at all?

“That’s not what I meant,” she said when Felipe suddenly changed directions again. “That you let me down, or – what you thought I meant by this, actually,” she said, indicating the letter. “It’s...maybe I didn’t word it the best,” she acknowledged. It was more likely that she had been subconsciously telling the truth, but still could not see any benefits whatsoever to bringing that up. “But that’s not what I meant. I meant that...I didn’t have any right to expect anything from you, much less to...just...throw you into a situation like I did.” She ran her fingers through the bottom of her ponytail. “Did you read the rest of it?” she asked. “What I was saying is that I was an idiot, the way I handled...things. That’s the point. It wasn’t fair to even at all expect you to understand or help or not – do what you did,” she summarized. “And it wasn’t right for me to get so – not nice in class, when I was more wrong than you were.”

16 Jessica Hayles In medias res, then? 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 22, 2020 11:01 PM

Or the median? Math makes more sense to me. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe raised an eyebrow. "Yes I read it all," he replied flatly. What did she think? That he'd just waltz out here to confront her about the first half of a letter she'd written?

She was trying to explain herself and none of it made any of it better. However, it did serve to make him wonder if it wasn't so much that Jessica was intentionally being dense, or that she was intentionally being awful even, just that she really didn't know better. Maybe - just maybe, as he wasn't yet ready to absolve her entirely - she didn't get that her family was horrible and that the world could be a better place than the corner of it she had once occupied an important position in. That should have been obvious when her world left her behind when she couldn't serve their purposes anymore, but he supposed it might not have been so obvious from inside the mess. He pushed aside a question that rose up about what that meant for him in his own situation.

Trying to hold onto this possible insight instead of anger, Felipe took a breath and let himself settle into a more "normal" posture and expression. This was just a normal conversation that neither of them wanted to be having. That was . . . sort of close to doable. The danger was that if he tried to understand and if he tried to discuss it, he would be dangerously close to forgiving. What would that mean then? Would they be friends again? Did he want to be friends again? Did she? What would Zara think? Why did he care what Zara thought?

He even managed a "normal" voice when he spoke next. "I let you down because your expectations were-- they were all wrong." His words felt sticky, like they'd rather be in his brain than in his mouth, and they weren't comfortable with the order they were in. He wasn't sure whether it was a matter of using English or using emotion, but the former had generally worked out fine for him so he had to assume it was the latter. "I didn't care that you had a sister." He was proud of himself for managing that phrase without hesitation. "Your family failed both of you and-- that wasn't the point. I was upset because-- you-- you thought the only way to talk to me about it was by throwing me into it."

Felipe ran a hand through his hair and forced himself to look away, as much for himself as for Jessica. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable and he didn't want to seem so intense. Also he didn't want to be talking about any of this, but that seemed unavoidable now. "I would've understood. Or-- I would've tried to. But you never talked to me. You never just talked to me about any of it. You could have, so many times. Did you really think so little of me?" The phrasing of that was not Felipe's favorite choice, as he regretted opening himself up for an explanation of just how little she thought of him now, but it wasn't as if he didn't already know that. "I would've told you."

22 Felipe De Matteo Or the median? Math makes more sense to me. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 23, 2020 9:27 AM

Sure, we covered that in my last math class. by Jessica Hayles

“Yeah,” said Jessica, bluntly, when Felipe said that her expectations had been all wrong. “They were.”

Saying that out loud hurt. It was embarrassing and difficult, admitting she had just unambiguously screwed up. It felt like poor strategy, especially since she really had not planned this through – the letter or what she was saying now – the way one should when ‘taking accountability’ or whatever PR called it this week. It also, though, once it was done, felt strangely...lightening. She was in no danger of giggling, none whatsoever, but she could see how the feeling was related to one that might make that happen. She felt slightly dizzy, reckless. She was breaking all the rules here.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t think much of you,” she said quietly. “It’s just – if anything, it was that I thought a lot of you that I ever told you at all.” Was that quite the right way to phrase it? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to make things worse. She didn’t know what she wanted to make things, but she knew it definitely wasn’t ‘worse.’ Worse was usually, she thought dryly, a good direction to avoid. “Like I said. I’ve never told anyone. Ever. It never even occurred to me before. I didn’t have a clue how to even consider it. It’s really hard to break a habit you’ve had for thirteen years, you know?”

That was a slight exaggeration, of course. Jessica had been a toddler when Mara was born, had not even fully understood the concept of sisters or parents. She hadn’t realized that Carmela was the help, or that some people would have linked Mel’s role to her mother, or anything like that. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly when she had started to understand these things, really – it just felt like she always had, even if she knew logically that she couldn’t have. At a certain point, nobody even had to say anything in her family – they just knew that some things were not to be recorded or discussed. It was just the way things were.

“I don’t blame you if you don’t accept that,” she said. “Just - know that you didn’t - it wasn’t because of anything you did, that I didn’t tell you. It was all me not knowing how to handle it because – well – like I said. I never really had friends outside the family. I was always busy, with clubs and extra classes and stuff, and when I did have time, if I wasn’t able to spend time with Daddy at the company – or if Mommy didn’t need me for something – then I had Mara and our staff, so really talking to other people about personal stuff – obviously I suck at it,” she concluded. Her tone was one of mild surprise – milder surprise than what she actually felt. She had realized before this that things were just sort of difficult for her in ways they didn’t seem to be for most of her classmates, but it was different to just admit she sucked at something. Admitting failure was not something her parents had ever encouraged; if anything, their stiff reactions whenever she had admitted she hadn’t done well at something - and worse, if she ever admitted she didn't think she could do something - had just encouraged her to better study the arts of superficiality and spin, to avoid making them look at her like that again. “I should probably be less surprised than I am about that.”

16 Jessica Hayles Sure, we covered that in my last math class. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 25, 2020 11:19 AM

Right.... math class . . . by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe really wasn't sure what to make of this conversation. On one hand, it was nice to hear Jessica acknowledge that she'd screwed up. He knew he ought to do the same, but if she hadn't screwed up, then he wouldn't have screwed up, and he screwed up less than she did so he would wait on that. The problem was that he wasn't sure if this conversation was making it worse or better.

On one hand, he could see that Jessica sincerely felt bad for having upset him, but she didn't see that his problem was exactly what her justification was. It was precisely the fact that she only told him when she had to that bothered him. If they couldn't break thirteen years of habits, then what were they supposed to do as the next generation of people of influence? They were meant to be better than their parents, and if two years away from hers for most of the year hadn't been enough to teach her that, then what could? Felipe had been wrestling with this since his first year, and while he knew he wasn't doing a whole lot better than he had been then, it was progress. Jessica didn't even seem to acknowledge that there was any fault to be put on her father's shoulders, or her own. It's just how it's done. It was as permeating a thought for her as it was for him, it seemed.

The other part was that Jessica was apparently making some progress if she was admitting to not having been a good friend. Felipe wanted so badly to tell her it was fine, that she hadn't been a bad friend, and to take the blame for it himself. But he couldn't just do that. He was glad she had come to the conclusion on her own, but it wasn't as if she was taking credit for it. I'm sorry but . . . Family. Tradition. Experience. Emotions. Uncertainty. He understood all those things deeply; it was why he and Jessica had clicked so well in the first place.

But Jessica was also still the same girl who had done exactly what Zara had said she'd done, and still didn't see a problem with that. It wasn't that Jessica was mean or malevolent, just sorely lacking in the self-reflection part of life. She truly didn't see what could be wrong with approaching friendships on a family business level, or what could be unhelpful about approaching apologies by blaming the status quo. She wasn't even really blaming it, per see. She was . . . explaining the situation away with it.

But she was still Jessica. She was warm and smart and soft. She had a brilliant smile that gave away the machinations working out behind her eyes. She smelled of roses and gardenias and lilies, and all the other lovely things to be found in a garden, as if maybe she was a flower too, only a flower tinged with the biting scent of a teenager's fragrance spray. She smelled like raspberries, like she might've been out picking them, or like she might've washed her hair with the latest shampoo marketed that way. She was kind and loving.

And not a very good friend.

Felipe felt like the judge, jury, and executioner if he held her accountable for the last of those when she really didn't seem to understand. But perhaps he'd been the victim instead? That seemed melodramatic, if not outright hypocritical.

Felipe leaned back in his chair, the closest to slumping that he'd ever gotten, and closed his eyes. A pained expression drew his eyebrows together and he tipped his head down as if he were trying to block out something he didn't want to hear. In a way, he was; Leonor and Zara's voices had well and truly implanted themselves in his head. Take care of yourself, they said. Don't let people treat you badly. They lov-- cared a lot about him even though he wasn't perfect. He was torn between the responsibility to pay that forward and the healer's note upstairs that said he might not be capable of that right now. When he opened his eyes, his mind was made up.

"I'm not upset with you," he said, surprising himself by really meaning it. "But I can't-- I can't be your friend until you figure that out, Jess." His hands gripped the arms of his chair a little too tightly, and his stomach churned. "I'm so so sorry."

Felipe pushed himself to his feet, nodded to Jessica Hayles with a polite nod, and crossed the Common Room back to his dorm, already planning not to leave again until academia required it of him.

22 Felipe De Matteo Right.... math class . . . 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 25, 2020 12:11 PM

I think we’ve been working in imaginary numbers. by Jessica Hayles

For a moment, at the beginning of what Felipe had to say, Jessica experienced a single flicker of hope. Then he continued, and for one moment her face tried to twist to reflect a rush of hurt before years of self-discipline kicked in and a wall slammed down behind her brown eyes. Her thin mouth set itself; she had never looked more like her mother than in that moment.

“Fine,” she said. Her tone was cool, with just the faintest sparkling edge of hurt. “Have it your way.”

She wrapped her fingers around her forearm as he walked away, squeezing hard. The pressure gave her something to focus on, a way to distance herself from her feelings.

Thoughts fluttered through anyway. She had tried. She had let her guard down. She had allowed herself to sound like some tiny pushover woman, taking all the blame on herself - had not asked, for instance, what, exactly, gave him the right to be the one who decided when she had to be comfortable enough in their relationship to tell him deeply personal things, to decide how their friendship worked, to judge her like this - because she cared about him and she had been worried about him, and he had just thrown that back in her face. He had treated her like some kind of inferior, a beggar and a sinner, someone he should show pity and kindly condescension.

Screw him. Screw him and his judgments and his contempt. She had been just fine for almost twelve years without him, and she’d be just fine without him again. At this point, after all, could she really say they had ever been friends at all? He was a judgy, self-righteous jerk who essentially practiced feudalism in the modern world and felt righteous about that too. She should have seen what he was right then, she thought, last year, when she had found that out about him and his precious family and community. Or at least later, when he had not confronted his spiteful little girlfriend for what she had said about Jessica and her family for no reason - should have seen how shallow and uncaring he really was, at the very least, between those two incidents. If she had done that, she wouldn’t want to cry right now over something that was really no loss at all.

There was only one thing she still wanted to say, but she refused to lower herself by running after him like some needy chick. She would not lower herself to asking him to - if he had ever valued whatever mutual delusion they had had - keep her secrets from spreading any further. She would just have to trust his high opinion of himself, she thought, to keep him honorable. She would have to trust someone she had, it seemed, never really known at all.

16 Jessica Hayles I think we’ve been working in imaginary numbers. 1442 0 5