I hear words go past me backwards.

Effy’s bench was feeling a little on the crowded side today. For once, not because she was sharing it with a flock of ducks that had decided she was their best source of food. No, today it was because of the pop-up restaurant and a host of pancake related activities down by the lake. It did up the people-watching potential, that much was true. That, and pancake-getting potential. Both were no bad thing, and neither was getting out into the city.

She’d gone through a stage in the last few months where getting out of the house and away from her mum had been lower on her priorities, and lately that had backfired in a sharp increase of ‘well, sweetheart you know you can’t live with me forever’ sort of comments, and she’d gone back to taking herself off as much as a still somewhat protective parental environment would allow. Avoidance was still an issue, as much as it ever was.

The implication, she imagined, was that she should probably re-apply to all the universities she’d abandoned the thought of after... things. It was probably the right thing to do, but, she’d still been putting it off for weeks.

Tomorrow. Maybe then.

[[ NFB, for distance, but open for phonecalls/texts etc.]]

This was becoming a daily ritual, of sorts. Effy'd always come here when she was younger. With Tony to feed the ducks when she was really little, alone after school when she was older... and now. Her bench was still her bench, the ducks were probably different, but they looked similar enough for it to make no difference. The seasons went by, but it never really changed.

Bristol was exactly the same, and she was somehow already falling back into the same sorts of routines. Well. Except now her routine was ruled by squares on a whiteboard. Walking, resting, reading, therapy, Tony, Pandora, eating. All in their neat little boxes.

So far her mum hadn't prodded her too hard about doing anything more than she was. That wasn't entirely surprising, but she suspected it was only a matter of time. There was only so long that sitting on a bench in the sun for hours at a time could be considered 'healing'. Pity. She still had no fucking clue what she was going to do with herself.

[[NFB for distance, but can be open for phone calls/etc.]]

Peter was gone, and his side of the room was now bare and empty. Effy's mum, however, had landed, and supposedly was on the island. At least, there were several texts implying it and asking where she was. Effy hadn't bothered to go find her.

( Daughter of the Year award was not going to find a home here. )

[[Again, door is closed, but should anyone want to disturb her they can. The usual warnings apply. Improvement is on the horizon, I promise.]]

After last weekend, for this one it'd been nice not to have to do a thing. Two days of proper nothing. Which was a good and a bad thing. Relaxing, but way too much time to think, and that was always a problem with her.

This time last week there'd been her dad, and constant fucking questions about what she was doing next, and how she felt about him and mum, and her grades were, and university, and her graduation. All things she really didn't want to talk about right now. So in true Effy fashion she'd clammed up and left him completely frustrated.

She'd decided she liked this kind of weekend of nothing better.

Tonight she still had fuck all the way of plans, had her back to the door and was leaning half out the window with her cigarette and eying up the moon. As... well, Effy did when she was thinking on a quiet Sunday night.

[[Open door and post and stuff should anyone want to bother her.]]

With class over for the week, and spring break right there, Effy was right about thinking she'd start on her weekend. Maybe go out, find some of her own fun. It'd been a while.

It was always at moments when you made a decision like that, that life decided to screw you over in the most irritating ways. For most people in most places this came in the form of finding the clubs you wanted to go to were closed, or the buses weren't running... Maybe you got ill. In Effy's case, slightly less mundane. Trouble with this island was that is was never mundane, and finding yourself fur-covered and a fraction of the size you were used to wasn't a one-off occurrence. Unfortunately.

The end of the week, after classes, and right before a full week that could've been spent in Hawaii. Fucking typical.

If a cat could scowl and roll her eyes in frustration, that's what she'd be doing right now. There went her plans.

[[Door's cracked, if you happen to want to see a kitty. Fair warning, she likes her claws.]]

Yeah, even if class hadn't been canceled the last couple days, there was no fucking way that Effy was going out there. The last time things had gone this haywire and it'd hit her was still far too fresh in her mind, and even looking out the window at the changing island was making her feel beyond twitchy.

No. Staying in, curled up on her bed with her arms around her knees, smoking, and listening. Not to anything anyone else could hear (well unless they were the sort who could eavesdrop on internal chatter), but-- Listening.

Maybe she should be trying to block all that out, go out and help with... Whatever was going on. But at moments like this, when things were going wrong around her, it became that little bit too much effort to do anything and, well, this use of time did give her a masochistic sort of entertainment.

[[Door's closed, but the post can be open. Effy, as usual, is all messed up.]]

Sleep, still not the easiest thing to come by, and when it finally did, the timing was all off, leaving Effy crawling her way to consciousness in the early afternoon. Not that it mattered, really, since it was a weekend anyway.

There was the surfacing of the realisation she should probably get up, get dressed, go out, do something... But not really the inclination. Too many other things spinning around in her head. A brief investigation down the side of her bed revealed the bottle she kept there was empty. Well. There went that solution. Shit.

Eventually, she made the effort to slip out of bed and turn up her music loud enough to almost drown out most of the snippets of conversation in the back of her head making her twitchy, and slid down to sit on the floor, back against her bed and head dropped back against the mattress. Picking up bad, floor-sitting habits. Wonder whose fault that was.

[[Door is closed, post can be open with the warning the girl is extra messy and broken. ETA: aaand I should probably tack on an extra WARNING for delicate subject matters ahead: discussion of alcohol abuse, mental health issues, etc.]]

Effy didn't know any dead people. Not well enough to get any visitors the last couple days, anyway, and for that she was grateful. Her live and kicking relatives were more than enough for her to deal with.

Or they had been. Right now, she was hearing so little from any of them, it was... weird. Tony was on an island in South East Asia doing some kind of voluntary crap, her mum had skipped off to Italy with no return date in sight (and had already been there a week before she decided to mention this, in a voicemail no less), and when it came to her dad... Who the fuck knew. Either way, it meant a quiet few weeks. She'd claim until the end of time she didn't care but... she was here, and they all seemed to be forgetting she even existed. It was a shitty feeling.

She didn't have much to unpack, and even if she had she wouldn't be in the mood to do anything about it right now, and just being in a small cabin with eight other people with nothing to distract her wasn't really her speed tonight. Like it ever was.

So, brooding. Sulking. Smoking. Whatever. On the roof. No dead relatives or friends necessary.

[[It's a roof, so, you know... ooopen, if anyone else would clamber up there. Or wants to talk at her from down below. I'm bored.]]

I was going to be lazy and not do this since I don't have any newbies... then I remembered that there are a few important additions/warnings I should probably make since the last update. THANKS, Skins. ILU. >.>

(... Okay, so I was never going to be able to resist the excuse to babble about my kids. Shuddup, Tracy.)

( Chuck Bartowski: future nerd of Buymoria! )

( Elizabeth Stonem: the enigmatic bad girl. )

( Angela Pearly-Gates Montenegro: wild child and unrepentant flirt )

And as usual I'm just going to link back to Cindy Mackenzie and Shawn Farrell, since they're off-island.

( And me. )