I tried the vodka again — just a sip this time. It went down much easier. Physically speaking. Didn't taste particularly good, though, and it set me to coughing. Lisa sat up and laughed at me again, then reached out and took a drink herself. She coughed worse than I did.
"Fuck me," she growled as I laughed. "That's awful." She took another sip. "I can't believe people drink this."
I looked at her. "Wait, you mean you haven't done this before?"
"Nope," she said. "I occasionally had some champagne or wine when my parents had guests over, but that's the extent of my experience." She took another sip, grimaced, then handed the bottle back to me. "This is as new for me as it is for you."
"Huh. So, uh..." I rolled the bottle in my hands. "This isn't going to, like, mess us up or anything, right? We'll be okay for the entrance ceremony tomorrow?"
"I assume so. I asked the cashier dude for advice. He said this'd be plenty for a pair of girls as `skinny and green' as us. His words. Didn't mention anything about hangovers. Should be fine. Ceremony isn't 'til the afternoon, anyway."
I nodded slowly, then took a drink and passed it back, setting a routine for the night.
Lisa took her own sip and grimaced again. "Provided we can even stomach this shit, of course," she said with a wry smile. I snorted. She had a point.
We settled back to watch the sun set.
"What was the twenty for?" I asked, after a few minutes of comfortable silence.
"Huh?"
"The twenty. The one you gave to the cashier, after you paid."
"Oh. Well, we are teenagers. Technically, selling to us is a crime. Had to convince him some way."
"That only took twenty bucks?"
She grinned. "And a little relationship advice."
"Ah," I said. "Of course, a little thinker-fu. Was it really necessary, though? Don't you have a fake ID?"
"Yeah, but it says I'm seventeen. Can't fake being twenty-one. Not without a lot of makeup and prep time."
"You could pay someone to do you up. Not like we're short on funds. And Panacea does owe us a favour."
Lisa laughed. "Like we'd call that one in for this. Never know what we'll need in the future. And we've got more important things to spend our money on. Like — "
"Cleaning up the docks!"
"I... was gonna say paying for our tuition, but that works too."
It was my turn to laugh. "How'd you even get into Immaculata, anyway?"
"Uh, hello?" She waved a hand in front of my face. "We own a criminal empire, remember?"
I stared at her, reasonably sure my incredulity was showing on my face. "You used Coil's contacts? To get yourself into high school?"
"Yup," she said, grinning again. "Even rigged it so we'll be in the same classes."
"What? How does that work? You're a year older than me."
"Well..." She leaned in conspiratorially. "Apparently, little miss Lisa Wilbourn was a bit of a troublemaker in middle school." She winked at me. "Missed half her classes, wound up having to repeat eighth grade. Incidentally, she also owes about four hundred bucks in library late fees."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing. That's why I said incidentally."
"Right," I chuckled, taking another sip of vodka and grimacing. The taste hadn't improved. "That won't cause any problems when you start getting straight A's, I imagine?"
"Pshaw. Being smart and being punctual are totes different things."
"Ah, yes. And you're only good at one of those."
"Hey!" She mock-scowled for a moment, then smiled, taking the bottle from me again. "I resemble the implication."
* * *
"Hey, hey, Taylor." I ignored her, even when she started poking me in the ribs. "Taylor." She leaned in close, her mouth right next to my ear. I could feel her breath against my hair. "Tayloooooooor."
"Shush," I said. "I'm trying to — hic — shit."
Lisa started giggling again. She'd been doing that a lot this past hour. "You should do that in the toilet."
"That's — hic — gross," I said, holding back giggles of my own. "I'm trying to con-concentrate."
"What're you even dooo — dooooo — " She paused, blinking. "Err, doing?"
"I — hic — dammit. I'm trying to make a statue for you. Of you? One of — hic — one of those."
"Out of bugs?" she said. I glanced over at her — she had her brow furrowed in confusion, and her head tilted a fraction to the side, golden bangs brushing her freckled face. I had a sudden overwhelming urge to hug her and tussle her hair. Adorable little minx.
I turned back to the writhing mass of bugs. "They're making a — hic — a base. O-out of — hic — out of — "
"BOO!"
I jumped and immediately lost any semblance of balance. Arms wheeling, I knocked the vodka off the AC unit, then fell off with it and landed on the roof, staring up at the stars. Glass shattered. "Ow."
Lisa poked her head out above me, eyes wide. "A-are you okay?"
I patted myself down and smiled with as much exasperation as I could muster. Probably wasn't much. "I'm fine."
Lisa's expression softened. "That's good."
"Did I break the thing?" I said.
"Yeah. But who cares. It tasted like shit anyway." She brought her hands up as fists and rested her cheeks against them, smiling slightly. "Still got the hiccups?"
We waited for a minute, just looking at each other. Then another.
"Guess not," she said, her smile widening.
I laughed, and she laughed, and I knew my face matched hers.
* * *
"I dunno, Taylor," Lisa said as I tugged her into the parlour. "I mean, I don't mind or anything, but tattoos are supposed to hurt, right?"
"I think so," I said. "But they can't be too bad. If they hurt too much, people wouldn't get them."
Lisa raised an eyebrow at me as we approached the lady behind the desk, who was reading a magazine propped on her knees. "I think you're under — under — ugh, underestimating what people will put up with."
"Oh, I know exactly what people will put up with," I said, turning and sticking my tongue out at her.
"Har har," Lisa said, smirking and taking another swig from our bottle. The lady behind the counter looked up as we stopped in front of her.
"Do you take walk ins?" I asked.
The lady nodded and explained the procedure to us while the tattooist prepped his tools. We described what we wanted and where we wanted it, and I even did some little sketches on a piece of paper the tattooist gave me. He led us into the back room and sat me down, hunched over and facing the back of the chair, then got to work while Lisa hovered around me.
The guy seemed impressed by my pain tolerance, and soon enough it was Lisa sat in the chair, holding my hand in a death grip, scowling, and alternating between biting her lip, groaning, calling me a `cheating cheater who cheats' under her breath, and cursing like an angry sailor, all while I giggled uncontrollably.
Truly a woman of many talents.
* * *
"S-should we be d-doing this?" I whisper-giggled. Damn cold, making me giddy.
"Why are you whispering?" Lisa whispered back, fiddling with the shop's sign. "There's no-one else here, and C — err, CCTV doesn't do audio. Not these ones, anyway."
"It just seems, uh, appropriate. Y-you didn't answer my q-question."
Lisa stopped fiddling with the sign and turned to look at me. Putting one hand on the wall to stop her wobbling, she said, "You're freezing to death, T."
"I'm f-f-fine. Still d-doesn't answer my q-question. We're g-gonna be heroes, r-remember? Should we really be b-breaking into c-costume shops?"
Lisa waved her other hand, something small and shiny between her fingers. "It's not breaking in when you have a key," she said with a grin, which faltered after a moment. "Err, maybe." She turned back to the door.
"M-ma-ma — Fuck's sake. Maybe?"
"Maybe." There was a click, and she pushed the door open and pulled me in. "Now c'mon, let's find somefi — err, something warm for you to wear."
"O-okay," I said, rubbing my hands up and down my arms. "But no s-stealing, okay? We're supposed to be heroes now."
"Nuh-uh. Skitter and Tattle-Tat-Tattletale are heroes now," Lisa said. "Or whatever we change our names to. Nobody cares what Taylor and Lisa do. Besides, the press release isn't 'til next month, so te-technically, we're still villains. Might as well make the most of it. For old times' sake."
"S-still. No stealing."
Lisa smiled and squeezed my shoulder. "No stealing."
* * *
"Taylor!" Lisa hissed from somewhere behind me. "Check — check this one out. It looks just like the Immaculata uniforms. But, y'know, not. And, uh, sexier."
I couldn't bring myself to respond, or even to turn around. I just stood, staring at the costume in front of me, the label helpfully proclaiming it as the `slutty teacher' outfit.
"Taylor?"
I felt like crying. Stupid. I shouldn't feel that way. It wasn't something an actual professor would wear, probably. Not unless she was about to have sex with someone. And even then! It was just a stupid outfit in the adult section of a costume shop. Absolutely nothing to cry over.
"T?" I heard Lisa move up behind me, then felt her arms slide around my shoulders. Her voice was soft. Gentle. "You okay?"
I turned in her arms and buried my head in her neck. Much as I tried, I couldn't stop my shoulders from shaking.
I felt her head move, then she slowly knelt down, guiding me down to the floor, where she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tight while I cried. Her arms rubbed up and down my back in slow, circular motions as she whispered in my ear. Things like "It's okay," and "I'm here," and "Don't worry." Little nonsense comforts that, strangely enough, actually did make me feel better.
I lay like that for a while after I'd calmed down, just... enjoying it. The proximity. The feeling of... closeness... to another person. To Lisa. She rubbed my back some more, and nuzzled my hair. It was... nice.
"Sorry," I said, sniffling a bit, my voice soft.
"For what?" Lisa's voice matched mine. She didn't stop nuzzling my hair.
"I... got your jacket messy."
She laughed. I felt it through her chest. A hand came up to stroke my hair, and when she spoke, I could hear her smile. "We're in a costume shop, silly."
I giggled, but it came out choked and ruined by my need to sniffle some more.
"Are you okay now?" she said.
I nodded.
"Do you want me to get up?"
I shook my head.
She chuckled softly, said, "Alright," and continued rubbing my back.
* * *
"Lisa?" I said, having just put the final piece of the teacher costume into my bag. I wasn't really sure why I'd taken it, but I had. And all the... accessories, too. I'd literally just grabbed everything on the rack and stuck it all in a big, without really looking at all.
Lisa glanced at me, but didn't stop packing away the outfit she'd grabbed. She hadn't told me what it was, but I knew it was also from the adult section, and it was `thematically appropriate'. "Hmm?"
"Uh, it's just... you said earlier, when you told me you were transferring to Immaculata with me, you said, uh, you know..."
She raised an eyebrow at me and smiled. "Gonna have to give me a little more to work with, Taylor."
I felt my cheeks heat up a little. "Sorry. Uh, you said I..." It was happening again: my heart was in my throat. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and it calmed down. A little. "You said I was your m-most important, uh, thing."
She finished packing her new costume away and tied the bag shut, then turned to me. "I did."
"D-did you mean that?"
She smiled. "Of course I did, Taylor. Never underestimate what you mean to me."
I tackled her, wrapping my arms around her and squeezing as hard as I could without hurting her.
She oof'd, then laughed. "What's this for?"
"Y-y-you're my most important thing, too," I said. I hated how much my voice shook. How hard that was to say. "I... I l-love you, S-Sarah."
She was quiet for a long, long moment. Then I felt her arms slide around my back as she returned the hug. "I love you, too, Taylor," she said, her voice a whisper. I thought I heard a sniff.
We stayed like that for a while.
"You know," Lisa said, her smile audible again, "this whole thing's gonna look really weird when they check the security footage tomorrow."
I laughed.
* * *
We grabbed our stuff, left a few hundreds in the till, and caught a late-night bus back to my house. Carefully avoiding the broken step, I fetched the spare key from the light fixture by the window and unlocked the door for Lisa and I. We tiptoed in, one pair of hands joined to keep us together, and the other pair held out wide to avoid bumping into anything, and made our way —
Bump.
I started giggling. Then Lisa started giggling. I swatted her shoulder and tried to hiss the word `stop,' but it came out as a garble, and she just swatted me back, leaving us with no line of defence.
A few minutes later, when the giggles had worked themselves out, we picked ourselves up off the floor and tiptoed up to my room. Dad had, thankfully, not woken up, despite our terrible stealth skills.
Lisa grinned at me the second the door was closed. I saw the moonlight from the window glinting off her teeth. "Sit down," she said, pointing at my bed.
I sat, depositing the bag with the slutty teacher outfit beside my bed. "What — "
"Shush," she said, grabbing her costume bag and holding it up. "This is going to be fun. I'm going to go in there — " she pointed at the bathroom " — and put this outfit on. And while I'm doing that, you're going to put your outfit on. Then we'll have a little fashion show, of sorts." I saw her grin widen. "Okay?"
"Uh, okay." Memories of mock fashion shows with Emma arose, but I pushed them back down. Not the time.
"Great!" she said, then entered the bathroom and shut the door behind her. Quietly.
I looked down at the bag I'd taken from the costume shop, seeing the outlines of the outfit stretching against the bag's crappy plastic. I switched my bedside lamp on, the warm glow casting long shadows about the room, and emptied the bag onto my bed.
Picking through the pile, I set aside the actual pieces of the outfit — the bra, panties, babydoll — at least, I thought it was a babydoll — jacket, skirt, stockings and... and the garterbelt, apparently. All of it in lacy black. There was a corset, too, and a small, red tie and a set of heels, but there was no way I'd be putting those on. I had no idea how to tie a tie anyway.
I set aside the frilly handcuffs and the... riding crop? Or was it a whip? Whatever it was, I put it under my bed. I'd figure out what to do with it later. I picked up another item, something long, thick, and flexile, with ridges along the sides and a bulbous — oh. Oh my. That one went as far beneath my bed as I could reach.
