Categories > Cartoons > Class of the Titans > Luck
"See that one?"
"What about him?"
"No, not that one. Look outside, the one next to the fountain."
"Seems sorta familiar."
The taller of the two girls laughs, perfectly straight teeth, the result of years of care and manipulation, flashing in the fluorescent lighting of the retreat. "And you call yourself a fashion major? Come on, five years ago you couldn't talk about anyone else, just how fast his star was rising, how he was the most famous model from New Olympia, or even this part of the country, how much you wanted to design something for him to model."
The other girl blanches, fingers twisting in waist-length, bleached blonde hair as she leans forward, as though a few centimeters will help her see someone a room's length and then some away more clearly. But it must, for she whispers, "Neil?"
"That's what they say. You'd remember what happened better than I." Slightly spiteful: She's always disapproved of Megan's fascination with the rich and the famous, as though she single-handedly keeps the gossip industry running.
Silence from the blonde; she stares out the window with eyes fixed on something incredibly far away in time, if not literal distance.
A burst of vivid blue hair next to them declares, "You're here for the orientation, right?" She fumbles through the papers in her arms and produces one. "Megan, right? I'm Paige." Of course she knows. The blonde's picture is stapled to the package.
"Yes," she replies all the same, waving a cool goodbye as her sometimes-friend, most-times rival leaves to see to her charges.
"Everything's in order for you, then. I'll just give you the tour, and--" Paige follows her gaze to the man staring into the fountain. "You knew him?"
"In a way. Never dreamt that he would be here." She probably did, Megan thinks resentfully. It would probably lose her this volunteering position, and then what would she do? She needed something to add to her university application.
"He was brilliant," Paige says sadly, sitting on the arm of a nearby couch in defiance of every rule Megan's mother has ever made and echoing what she's said so often. "I mean, even considering his luck, how he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, he became famous so quickly. And then..."
The Accident. No need to say it; every person who had ever had the slightest interest in the model's career, and many that didn't, knew what had happened four years ago. The scandal, the interviews, his agents insisting that Hera was not a name for Satan, thank you very much, but a Greek goddess. And the media's retorts: "Sure, maybe he picked up Hera from a Disney movie, but how do you explain Chiron? Or Persephone? You can't tell me that he actually read up on these things."
She shakes her blue hair briskly. "Well, you know as well as I do. Talk to him sometime--you're here to keep the residents company, after all. Just try not to talk about him modeling unless he's the one who brings it up, ok?"
Megan's fingers are entwined in her hair once more, as they so often are these days. Still, she asks, "How long has he been here?" Trying to sound like a professional, not the fangirl of a disappeared legend, but she knows she's failed.
"Three and a half years. He stayed with us for a year's sabbatical before, right after it happened, then went back to modeling. At least, his body did. Tried to keep it up for six months, but even though his luck was as good as ever, he just didn't care about it anymore. You can see it in the last shots." Paige bats Megan's fingers out of her hair with navy-blue fingernails, as though suspecting them of attempting to hang themselves. "Why don't you tell him what you're majoring in? So long as you don't suggest that he be a model, he's fair good for suggestions. Your friend got a few bits of advice from him."
She would have, Megan thinks, feeling more and more resentful. She always got everything first. "Maybe," she says, hands clasped tightly together to keep them from seeking refuge in her hair once more.
But she volunteers at Meadowcroft Retreat for the better part of a month before, frustrated by her upcoming assignment, she finally approaches him.
She steps outside, shutting the screen door behind her and making sure the resident cat hasn't slipped out once more, fingers reaching instinctively for her hair before she remembers its been pulled back. Somehow, though the blue-haired girl never says anything, Megan knows the habit annoys her, so she tries as hard as she can to avoid it. Paige's approval has come to mean much to her. It is the reason why she has finally come outside, though she pretends it is for an assignment.
Like the first day, like ever day she's visited Meadowcroft, Neil sits by the fountain, staring into the plaster basin as though the secrets of the universe are written inside it, though all that is there are dead leaves and twigs. It is an expression that would have once covered thousands of billboards, probably selling some new cologne, or maybe a cell phone. Now, though...
The face that exists in Megan's oldest scrapbooks, the one that inspired hundreds of designs, the one that still does, is gone. The high cheekbones are gaunt and hollow, dark smudges underline his vague eyes, and his hair his tangled, probably a mass of split ends. Worse yet, he doesn't even seem to care, only shifting with annoyance when she blocks the sunlight pouring into the fountain.
"Do you mind?" he asks irritably, then stretches on hand towards her hair, a stunned expression replacing the blank one. "Theresa? Why did you dye your hair? It's awful for it, just look at Archie's. No, no, I promised I wouldn't bother him about that. Is he here? What about Jay? Odie? Anyone?" But then he looks at her nametag and her face and shakes his head. "You're not Theresa." His voice is accusing, and he glares at her before returning his gaze to the fountain.
Theresa is one the names that had been listed in the newspapers and gossip columns when they mentioned that Neil was going over the deep end, Megan remembers. Theresa, Atlanta, Odie, Archie, Herry, Jay. His agents insist, even now, that he'd been involved in an RPG of some sort, based around Greek mythology, for how else would he have learned the names of some of the less well-known gods? Some still mutter, though, that it was a cult that he'd been involved in, and that it is a miracle that he escaped the building before it came crashing down around him. Neil's famous luck.
No one knows just why the RPG group broke up so quickly, not even the agents, or why it left the formerly carefree model so shattered. But it had, and a few short years later Neil, already a legend, retreated wholly from the public eye. A publicity ploy, so that when he returns, he'll be all the more famous? Megan doesn't think so anymore, can't remember if she ever did.
She sits back, intending to at least show him one or two sketches for his opinion-that is, if her mostly-rival hasn't poisoned his mind against her-and then notices a flash of gold on the rim of the fountain. His mirror, the one he'd never been seen without. Curious, and not receiving any objections from Neil, Megan flips it open and looks at the picture in the bottom quadrant.
It should be him, she knows, the Neil that survives in her oldest sketchbooks, just as all the magazines once proclaimed. How many times had her friends laughed over it, saying that he needed to know exactly what he was supposed to look like, elsewise he wouldn't be sure which way his hair went. Yet is isn't.
Seven teens--two girls, five boys--pose in front of Olympia High, Megan's own school. Not the formal picture always taken by school photographers: It seems as though they'd all simply chanced to be in front of the camera at once. They smile brightly at her, waiting patiently to resume their lives, and with one stunned stare at the Neil she remembers, she shuts it.
Neil is crying, she suddenly realizes, too-human steaks of tears marking his face and falling into the water below. "I thought I was the lucky one," he whispers, and for a second Megan thinks she sees the teens in the picture surrounding his reflection, a sprawling field replacing the plaster basin.
"I thought I was the lucky one," he says again, touching the water tentatively and shattering the illusion. "So why did you leave me behind?"
---
Inspired xanthophiliac's War Photography and written with her permission. It broke the pattern, though... guilty Hope you don't mind!
"What about him?"
"No, not that one. Look outside, the one next to the fountain."
"Seems sorta familiar."
The taller of the two girls laughs, perfectly straight teeth, the result of years of care and manipulation, flashing in the fluorescent lighting of the retreat. "And you call yourself a fashion major? Come on, five years ago you couldn't talk about anyone else, just how fast his star was rising, how he was the most famous model from New Olympia, or even this part of the country, how much you wanted to design something for him to model."
The other girl blanches, fingers twisting in waist-length, bleached blonde hair as she leans forward, as though a few centimeters will help her see someone a room's length and then some away more clearly. But it must, for she whispers, "Neil?"
"That's what they say. You'd remember what happened better than I." Slightly spiteful: She's always disapproved of Megan's fascination with the rich and the famous, as though she single-handedly keeps the gossip industry running.
Silence from the blonde; she stares out the window with eyes fixed on something incredibly far away in time, if not literal distance.
A burst of vivid blue hair next to them declares, "You're here for the orientation, right?" She fumbles through the papers in her arms and produces one. "Megan, right? I'm Paige." Of course she knows. The blonde's picture is stapled to the package.
"Yes," she replies all the same, waving a cool goodbye as her sometimes-friend, most-times rival leaves to see to her charges.
"Everything's in order for you, then. I'll just give you the tour, and--" Paige follows her gaze to the man staring into the fountain. "You knew him?"
"In a way. Never dreamt that he would be here." She probably did, Megan thinks resentfully. It would probably lose her this volunteering position, and then what would she do? She needed something to add to her university application.
"He was brilliant," Paige says sadly, sitting on the arm of a nearby couch in defiance of every rule Megan's mother has ever made and echoing what she's said so often. "I mean, even considering his luck, how he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, he became famous so quickly. And then..."
The Accident. No need to say it; every person who had ever had the slightest interest in the model's career, and many that didn't, knew what had happened four years ago. The scandal, the interviews, his agents insisting that Hera was not a name for Satan, thank you very much, but a Greek goddess. And the media's retorts: "Sure, maybe he picked up Hera from a Disney movie, but how do you explain Chiron? Or Persephone? You can't tell me that he actually read up on these things."
She shakes her blue hair briskly. "Well, you know as well as I do. Talk to him sometime--you're here to keep the residents company, after all. Just try not to talk about him modeling unless he's the one who brings it up, ok?"
Megan's fingers are entwined in her hair once more, as they so often are these days. Still, she asks, "How long has he been here?" Trying to sound like a professional, not the fangirl of a disappeared legend, but she knows she's failed.
"Three and a half years. He stayed with us for a year's sabbatical before, right after it happened, then went back to modeling. At least, his body did. Tried to keep it up for six months, but even though his luck was as good as ever, he just didn't care about it anymore. You can see it in the last shots." Paige bats Megan's fingers out of her hair with navy-blue fingernails, as though suspecting them of attempting to hang themselves. "Why don't you tell him what you're majoring in? So long as you don't suggest that he be a model, he's fair good for suggestions. Your friend got a few bits of advice from him."
She would have, Megan thinks, feeling more and more resentful. She always got everything first. "Maybe," she says, hands clasped tightly together to keep them from seeking refuge in her hair once more.
But she volunteers at Meadowcroft Retreat for the better part of a month before, frustrated by her upcoming assignment, she finally approaches him.
She steps outside, shutting the screen door behind her and making sure the resident cat hasn't slipped out once more, fingers reaching instinctively for her hair before she remembers its been pulled back. Somehow, though the blue-haired girl never says anything, Megan knows the habit annoys her, so she tries as hard as she can to avoid it. Paige's approval has come to mean much to her. It is the reason why she has finally come outside, though she pretends it is for an assignment.
Like the first day, like ever day she's visited Meadowcroft, Neil sits by the fountain, staring into the plaster basin as though the secrets of the universe are written inside it, though all that is there are dead leaves and twigs. It is an expression that would have once covered thousands of billboards, probably selling some new cologne, or maybe a cell phone. Now, though...
The face that exists in Megan's oldest scrapbooks, the one that inspired hundreds of designs, the one that still does, is gone. The high cheekbones are gaunt and hollow, dark smudges underline his vague eyes, and his hair his tangled, probably a mass of split ends. Worse yet, he doesn't even seem to care, only shifting with annoyance when she blocks the sunlight pouring into the fountain.
"Do you mind?" he asks irritably, then stretches on hand towards her hair, a stunned expression replacing the blank one. "Theresa? Why did you dye your hair? It's awful for it, just look at Archie's. No, no, I promised I wouldn't bother him about that. Is he here? What about Jay? Odie? Anyone?" But then he looks at her nametag and her face and shakes his head. "You're not Theresa." His voice is accusing, and he glares at her before returning his gaze to the fountain.
Theresa is one the names that had been listed in the newspapers and gossip columns when they mentioned that Neil was going over the deep end, Megan remembers. Theresa, Atlanta, Odie, Archie, Herry, Jay. His agents insist, even now, that he'd been involved in an RPG of some sort, based around Greek mythology, for how else would he have learned the names of some of the less well-known gods? Some still mutter, though, that it was a cult that he'd been involved in, and that it is a miracle that he escaped the building before it came crashing down around him. Neil's famous luck.
No one knows just why the RPG group broke up so quickly, not even the agents, or why it left the formerly carefree model so shattered. But it had, and a few short years later Neil, already a legend, retreated wholly from the public eye. A publicity ploy, so that when he returns, he'll be all the more famous? Megan doesn't think so anymore, can't remember if she ever did.
She sits back, intending to at least show him one or two sketches for his opinion-that is, if her mostly-rival hasn't poisoned his mind against her-and then notices a flash of gold on the rim of the fountain. His mirror, the one he'd never been seen without. Curious, and not receiving any objections from Neil, Megan flips it open and looks at the picture in the bottom quadrant.
It should be him, she knows, the Neil that survives in her oldest sketchbooks, just as all the magazines once proclaimed. How many times had her friends laughed over it, saying that he needed to know exactly what he was supposed to look like, elsewise he wouldn't be sure which way his hair went. Yet is isn't.
Seven teens--two girls, five boys--pose in front of Olympia High, Megan's own school. Not the formal picture always taken by school photographers: It seems as though they'd all simply chanced to be in front of the camera at once. They smile brightly at her, waiting patiently to resume their lives, and with one stunned stare at the Neil she remembers, she shuts it.
Neil is crying, she suddenly realizes, too-human steaks of tears marking his face and falling into the water below. "I thought I was the lucky one," he whispers, and for a second Megan thinks she sees the teens in the picture surrounding his reflection, a sprawling field replacing the plaster basin.
"I thought I was the lucky one," he says again, touching the water tentatively and shattering the illusion. "So why did you leave me behind?"
---
Inspired xanthophiliac's War Photography and written with her permission. It broke the pattern, though... guilty Hope you don't mind!
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