Fan Fiction ❯ Holiday Wishes ❯ One-Shot

[Holiday Wishes]

"What part of the words 'Get out' do you not understand?!"

Michelle stood just in front of the door, looking on at her roommate with shock as the girl, a tall redhead by the name of Anna, took her anger out on her.

"I was just trying to help..." Michelle whimpered back, her eyes to the ground. Scattered across the floor, a snowfall of papers had spread out to all corners of the room, radiating outwards from where Anna had been standing. "I don't want you to miss your party tonight..."

Anna groaned in annoyance, clenching her fists. "I don't need your help, Michelle! Frankly, I never did, and every time you did try to stick your nose in my business, you always fuck everything up!"

The short blond said nothing, just quietly nodding in reply.

"Now get the hell out of our dorm," continued Anna, her finger pointing at the door just behind Michelle. "Get out, stay out of my way, and maybe I'll let you back in here again before the next semester starts!"

She stood there quietly for a moment, letting her friend's words sink in. "Can I... go get my..."

"Yes!"

Michelle nodded again, then headed towards her closet to get a bag and a handful of her belongings, just in case Anna was serious with her threat.

~

Crossroads, Michelle thought to herself, was beautiful at Christmas.

It was almost funny really, she thought to herself, making sure her scarf was tied tightly to keep out the cold that had helped produce the white weather. Most of Crossroads was hardly a beautiful city, the dirt and dust and dreariness that pervaded through much of the city a fine film over some of the older buildings she would go past, traveling between the suburbs encircling the city and the university to visit friends.

The snow, however, covered all the city without preference, the film of dust painted over with a shell of powdery snow that crunched underneath her every footstep.

Off on the horizon, the massive towers that rose out of downtown glowed softly against the dark, almost black color of the night sky, the brightest of stars twinkling high above the city as they tried to overcome the electrical lighting that filled the city with light.

High above one of those towers, on one of their rooftops, people her age were gathering to celebrate the holidays, dancing and drinking through the darkest, coldest night of the year.

High up there, she thought to herself, Anna would be on that rooftop

celebrating along with their peers. She'd be having the time of her life, and she, Michelle Myes, would be out here, out in the snow and the cold on the university commons.

"Hey! Miss!"

Michelle jumped backwards, looking up to see a city bus grind to a stop just in front of her.

The driver slammed open his side window, sticking his head, a young face topped with a faux fur hat and ragged black hair, out into the night air. "You trying to kill yourself on Christmas?" he called down to her. "That's a terrible time to go and throw a life away... haven't you ever watched It's a Wonderful Life?"

Michelle shook her head, using her arm to shield her eyes from the intense headlights of the bus until its younger driver had the sense to kill the engine and the lights. "Never heard of it..." she said, trying to get back onto her feet despite the slick road underneath.

"You really should. Lovely movie for this time of year," he told her, kneeling down to help Michelle up. "Inspirational and all that. Guardian angels and the true meaning of Christmas."

The two made their way over to the sidewalk, taking their time so that neither of them would tumble to the ground again. "Sounds nice..." she nods, turning to look at him. "Who are you, anyway? You look a bit young to be driving a bus..."

"It's a night job for me," he answered, looking back over his shoulder towards his vehicle. "I drive it as night work since I take classes during the day and I need the money for an apartment. It pays pretty good, and you get to meet people if you handle the job right."

She blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." the young man started, leaning against the bus. "You know what, why don't we get in and I'll tell you. It's pretty frigid out here..." he said as he looked up at the snow falling from the heavens. "...and I have hot chocolate in a thermos by the drivers seat. Don't drink coffee, so..."

"You wouldn't mind?" she asked, looking through the bus door's fogged windows. "I mean... I am something of a..."

He laughed, pulled open the door and walked up onto the first step inside. Reaching out, her took her hand and helped her inside off of the icy ground. "Warm bus first," he grinned, "then talk."

She couldn't help but laugh with him, following him inside the bus as he retrieved his hot drink from a small compartment near the driver's seat. It wasn't the party Anna was going to, but it wasn't really that bad.

~

"So," he asked as she sat sideways in the bench across from her, handing Michelle a cup of hot chocolate, "you were saying something earlier?"

Michelle sighed, cradling the styrofoam cup in her hands. "Oh, it wasn't much really. I'm just... something of a ditz or whatever, I guess."

"Well, what makes you say that?" he asked, sipping at his own cup of cocoa, a small cloud of steam rising from its surface. "You hardly seem like a ditz. Maybe you wandered in front of my bus, but that happens sometimes."

Another sip at his coffee, the young man, leaning forwards towards the aisle separating each other. "Peoples' minds wander. You just gotta be careful when you go and let it wander. This is a big city, and not everyone here has my youthful reflexes, you know?"

She nodded slowly, looking down into her cup of hot chocolate. "Which begs me to ask," he continued, "what would distract your mind that much that you'd go and wander your way in front of a city bus?"

Michelle's reflection stared back up at her from inside her drink, its image as blank as her own expression. "Nothing... nothing much really..."

~

It was another dark night, another roof top; the top of the dorm building the two girls lived in this time, looking out towards the ocean a short distance away from campus. "The stars!" Michelle called out, her smile beaming almost as bright as the lights on the skyscrapers behind her. "Anna, look... I never thought I'd see them so bright in so big a city..."

"Those aren't stars..." Anna sighed, shaking her head as she leaned against the small shed containing the doors that led to the dormitory's roof. A lighter flickered into life and set the end of her cigarette on life. "Didn't you pay attention in astronomy lecture? Our whole sky is a cross-section of different universes... those aren't only stars, those are galaxies and even entire universes themselves."

Michelle ignored her friend, her eyes fixed on the heavens as the waves crashed against the cliffs marking the boundary between city and sea. "That doesn't make them any less beautiful," she said in reply.

A plume of ash-gray smoke blew out through the air, the end of Anna's cigarette pulsing orange in time to her breath. "You're such a fucking poet."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Life isn't poetry, dear." The door to the stairs groaned open. "Life isn't a pretty picture or a dream come true, and I'd really wish you would stop hoping it were so."

"Life is hurt and suffering. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be."

The door clicked shut, leaving Michelle alone on the roof. With a deep sigh she panned across the night sky, catching a falling star streaking over the spires of the inner city's citadel.

Closing her eyes, she made herself an absurd wish, then walked to the door in silence.

~

"Nothing is always something," the boy replied, looking Michelle in the eyes. "Every time someone says that nothing is on their minds, it is more often the case that something really is wrong."

"Nothing really is wrong. It's just something silly, something not worth bothering about."

He chuckled to himself, draping his arm over the back of his seat, his other hand tapping its fingers against his cup. "Then why are you out here on such a cold day, so sullen?"

"It's..." she started, then stopped and took a drink of her cocoa. Still hot, surprisingly, though the warmth in the bus probably helped that. "I keep upsetting someone. Someone that I just want to help and do nice things for."

"Did she...?"

Michelle nodded slowly. "She kicked me out. I was trying to help her finish some work her teachers threw at her over the holidays, so we could go to all the parties between now and New Years... she didn't have much more to go, and I figured if we worked together we'd have more time to enjoy everything..."

"I... I just don't understand..." she said, her voice shaking slightly, fingers closing a little tighter around her cup. "She helped me all the time when I first started here, she was the one that set it up so we'd share a dorm together so that I wouldn't have to find a room in town, I..."

A hand fell gently on her shoulder, surprising Michelle. "Sounds like you care a whole lot about her," the boy asked. "She your only friend here in Crossroads?"

The girl nodded. "She's the only one who bothered to talk back when I tried to talk to her... she... I care a whole lot about her, and..."

The driver smiled, sliding off his seat to crouch down right in front of Michelle, resting a hand on her knee. "If you ask me, it sounds like you love her. She just doesn't really notice it."

"But... why? I try so hard..."

"Maybe..." the young man thought out loud, "maybe you're doing a little too much, trying a little too hard. Maybe... instead... you should just tell her directly how you feel about her. Maybe she'll understand then."

Blinking, Michelle looked at him, surprised by the suggestion, her eyes beginning to grow as wide as they had been when the bus's headlines had caught her by surprise. "You... think so?"

He nodded. "I think so. In any case, you'll get a definite answer, right? She's gotta give you an answer one way or another, right?"

"Y... yeah..." she said, her voice beginning to brighten and warm up. "She's really blunt like that... there's no way she'd give me anything but a straight answer! I could meet her at the party she was going to!"

She started to stand, but found herself quickly back in her seat once again. "No way," the boy said, leaning back against the side of the opposite bench. "You're not walking all the way downtown in weather this cold. Where's this party at? I'll give you a ride on my bus-- it's late anyway, it's not like someone will pitch a fit if I go off my route for a little bit."

"You really don't have to, really..."

"Nonsense." The young man walked down the aisle to the driver's seat, bringing the engine back to life with a turn of his keys. The metal floor shuddered underneath their feet, the length of the bus jerking forwards as the breaks released their hold on the wheels. "Helping others get around is part of my job, isn't it? You need help getting somewhere, so I'm here to do my job."

Michelle knew that the young man's choice was more than just 'doing his job', but nodded to herself slowly anyway, smiling. "Thank you..."

"The name's Lee," he said, his bus humming as it turned the corner and headed along a turn leading out into the brightly lit city. "And you?"

"Michelle... though I think I'll call you my guardian angel, in this case, Mr. Lee."

The boy laughed out loud, shaking his head. "Well," he answered, "if you're going to insist on calling me that, you can call me Clarence."

The two plunged into the heart of the city, laughing happily as their vehicle faded into the darkness of the towers blocking out the moon and stars far above.

~

The site of the party was the top floor and roof of a skyscraper on the sea-side sector of downtown, brilliant lights transforming the tall tower almost into a lighthouse that could be picked out clearly by any passing vessels off the city coast.

Unlike most lighthouses, however, the brilliant beacon of the top of the Starlight Records building served well to draw people towards it, instead of warning them of the potential danger of drawing too close to the heart of the city.

Lee had helped her inside, wishing her the best of luck before he returned to his bus to attend to the final hour of his route while she rode the elevator stretching upwards towards the top of the building. The snow had finally let up outside, just in time: the party above was already kicking into high gear according to the woman at the desk in the tower lobby.

Waiting for her ride to reach the top of the building, Michelle paced back and forth in the elevator car, trying to sort out the thoughts in her head, spinning around like a ferris wheel that, for whatever reason, had been built sideways - a rather good symbol for how she felt as her elevator rose over the tops of the buildings at the edge of downtown, her view stretching all the way out to the dark edge of the massive city.

What would she say? I love you? She wasn't very sure of that. After all, what did she know of love anyway? She rested her hand on the glass in front of her, staring at her own reflection. She'd always been the shy one, the quiet one who had never really had a relationship with anyone, and certainly not anything that could be called romance or a crush or anything like that.

But who was Anna Castelle to her, really?

~

"What the hell are you reading?"

Michelle looked up from her book, noticing Anna looking across the table at her. Her roommate had been sorting through her schoolwork, tossing it into various piles based on how much she could afford to care on each assignment. The history assignment she held currently in her left hand made its way into the pile in her trash can.

"Shakespeare," she had replied, thick-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose as she peeked over the top of the book.

"What a dork," Anna had sighed, shaking her head. "For class, I'm guessing? That damned old man is always assigning the stupidest work for literature."

Michelle quickly shook her head. "No, not at all," she answered, her voice slightly more quiet this time. "It's an anthology of his plays and poems... I always loved how he wrote when I studied him in high school, so..."

"His work is a load of shit," Anna answered, looking back down at the stack of paper in front of her, throwing another packet into the pile of projects she might be able to ignore. "Overly-romantic nonsense pitiful teenage boys rattle off to try and impress a girl when in reality they're about as cultured and intelligent as a bag of bricks."

"That doesn't make it any less special," she answered back, setting her book down in her lap, frowning ever so slightly. "It's... it's the value of the imagery and the feeling in the work that gives it its value, not the reason people use the work..."

Anna smirked in surprise. "That's the smartest thing I've heard out of you since I met you," she said with a cool laugh, "even if you are completely wrong. Shakespeare was probably no better than those dick heads who memorize him to get cheap sex with airheads."

Michelle blinked, caught off guard. Anna had never complimented her before, for anything, even when she tried so hard to help her roommate. "You really mean that?" she asked, not sure if her mind was making things up or not.

"The bit about you, or the bit about Shakespeare?"

"The first one..." Michelle answered, trying to hide the dumb surprise on her face before she could annoy Anna again.

Anna laughed, leaning back into her chair as she shook her head. "Yeah, I guess I do. If I could dump all that stupidness out of your head..." she said, acting out the motions of pulling a plug out of the side of her own head, "...you'd be a pretty cool person to be around."

~

The doors opened, Michelle's ears assaulted instantly with the pulse of dance music shaking the lounge and everything in it into motion. Cringing as she stepped out onto the floor, she tried to pay attention to something, anything other than the music.

"Hello there miss!" called the bartender from behind a nearby oak bar. "Welcome to the Starlight Lounge! Can I do you for anything right now?"

Michelle quickly shook her head - drinking wasn't exactly something she did often or enjoyed much - and turned her attention out onto the dance floor. Somewhere out in that sea of swinging and twisting bodies, figures dancing in circles and loops around artificial trees decorated expensively with sparkling, brilliantly lit decorations, was Anna.

"Anna!" she called out, jumping down the single step into the mass of bodies. She immediately became self-conscious, wondering how strange she looked amongst all the people in their expensive clothing as she wove through the group in winter pants, a dark blue sweater, boots and a heavy coat, her skin sweating underneath it all from the body heat all around her. "Anna, where are-!"

Several people wobbled off balance as she ran straight into Anna, their heads colliding, knocking them both to the floor with a shout of pain. "Shit!" Anna yelled, looking around angrily, "who's the dumbass who..."

Michelle stared at her, her lips trembling. "Oh god..." she said with a stutter in her voice, "I'm really sorry Anna! I was so busy looking around for you that I didn't notice you..."

Frowning in disgust, Anna glared at Michelle hostilely, snarling. "What are you doing here," she demanded. "What are you doing here and why can you not pay attention to a simple, basic request to get the fuck out of my life?!"

"I understand that, but..."

"Well obviously you didn't!" Bolting back onto her feet, Anna turned her back on Michelle, working her way back into the depths of the crowd. "This isn't your sort of party anyway, dear! Go home and read your damn Shakespeare!"

"I have something I need to tell you!" Michelle called back, struggling to push her way through the dancing crowd in pursuit of her roommate. "All I want is for you to listen to what I have to say for just a moment, that's it!"

Anna jumped up a step onto the higher portion of the floor, leaning against the rail as Michelle finally caught up to her. "Fine, just a moment then. Make it quick."

Michelle took a deep breath, closing her eyes for the briefest of seconds before looking up at Anna with all the confidence she could muster. "What I want to say is..." she began, feeling as though everything behind her was slowing down as she spoke. "What I want to say is... that I think I love you, Anna."

Her friend stood dumbfounded. "What... did you say?"

"I love you," Michelle repeated, "I... I mean, I care so much about you, I admire you... maybe you're mean to me sometimes, but I know you care, you just want me to grow up..."

"That means so much to me," she said, feeling her body shaking more than just from the music playing throughout the room. "it means the whole world to me to have someone that cares about me like that, and... and what else can I say but that I love you for everything... I love you with all my heart... I'd love to be as close to you as we can be..."

She didn't know what to expect, what Anna might say. So when the older girl laughed out loud, slamming her hands against the rail between the dance floor and the bar area, Michelle simply stood there in confusion. "You what??" Anna shouted between roars of laughter, "What the hell are you, some kind of lesbo? You fucking fantasize about me at night or something?"

"I... I don't know!" Michelle answered hastily, "I... well, I've never really thought about anyone... like that... before, but I just know that I think I could live with you and care for you and..."

"Would you all get a fucking load of this?" Anna yelled across the room, wrapping her arms around herself. "This fucking geek has a crush on me! A load of fucking fucked-up puppy love! Isn't that just a riot?!"

Michelle felt herself shrivel up inside as some of the party-goers around her started to laugh at Anna's command. Perhaps, she wondered, if she smashed through the glass wall facing out from the lounge onto the city whether or not she could fly away from here. "Tell you what Michelle," Anna sneered, "you can go back home tonight!"

"So... so you understand?" she asked, the slightest glimpse of hope in her voice. "You understand how I feel?"

Anna leaned over the rail, her face hanging just a few inches in front of her Michelle's. "Of course I do. I understand that all that romanticism has rotted your brain with the idea that anyone could love a pitiful waste of space like you."

Throwing the keys at Michelle, a move that brought forth another wave of laughter from the crowd, Anna turned towards the bar to abandon her roommate. "Get your stuff out of my dorm, find yourself some hole in the ground to stay in, and never come near me ever again."

"Fine." Michelle scooped up the keys off the floor, storming her way back to the elevator she had ridden up to the party in. "I can't see what I liked in you anyway, anymore."

~

The elevator deposited Michelle back in the building lobby, the young woman walking with a confidant stride as she began to cross the room for the front door. "Miss?" called the receptionist, the woman leaning over her desk, "the party upstairs won't be over for a while... aren't you leaving a bit early?"

Michelle stopped in the middle of the lobby, turning towards the desk before she could pass it by. "Oh, it's okay," she answered back, smiling. "It's quite okay. It wasn't my sort of party anyway."

The receptionist nodded. "Well then, merry Christmas, young lady, and the best wishes of the season to you."

"Thank you, ma'am... merry Christmas to you too."

Michelle went back on her way, reaching into her purse to retrieve a small book of photos she carried around with her. Pulling out a wallet-sized portrait of Anna, she pushed it into the trash before walking out the door, stepping back into the outside world as it once again began to snow.

[fin]