Rachel was in tears as she walked home. It was easily a two and a half mile walk, but she had little choice. It started out so great: Scott Lister asked her to the senior prom. THE Scott Lister, captain of the Arkham High School football team, asked fatty Rachel Tarunen to the prom.
She had been heavy all her life. Part of her size problems came from genetics, but her bookish nature and her love of cookies and pastries were mostly to blame. She was the type that would rather curl up with her well-worn copy of 'Fellowship of the Ring' and some Oreos instead of exercise. And she didn't necessarily think that this was a bad thing. But the ostracism had been getting worse and worse. It wasn't so bad in elementary school; she was rather well-liked and had quite a few friends. It wasn't until middle school that the teasing began, worsening through high school. She never thought it would get this bad, though.
It started out so perfectly. Scott showed up in a beautiful white limo and he looked like a movie star in his tux. She felt just like Molly Ringwald in some bad John Hughes movie. And when he held her close in the limo, she thought she would faint dead away right then. Then they arrived at the reception hall where the prom was being held, which was when he decided to abandon her. She waited patiently while he socialized with his teammates, then he just disappeared. It wasn't until she went to the ladies' room that she found him with Jessica Davis, the head cheerleader, with his head between her legs. That was bad enough.
Thankfully, neither of them noticed her, nor did they hear her as she made her way back to the main room. She took her seat and waited patiently for Scott to come back. When he finally returned, she confronted him as loudly as she could, thinking what few friends she had would stand behind her.
Instead, everyone laughed as Scott said, "Do you really think that I'd go out with a fat cow like you?"
With that, she ran, but not without tripping on her high heels and sprawling across the floor which seemed to entertain the crowd even more. The memory only served to bring the tears in even greater force. Carrying her shoes, she began walking faster. Then, as if she weren't miserable enough, it started down pouring.
"Great," she mumbled to herself, "now God is laughing at me."
She didn't even care as two vehicles, a car and a van, ran through a mud puddle and soaked her to the bone, the last of which was blaring loud, raucous music. She cursed at them and kept walking. It was then that she saw the death metal-mobile turn around. Oh goodie, she thought to herself, I guess once wasn't enough for that asshole. The van drove a little further down the road and approached her slowly.
* * * * * *
Randy drove along at a fairly good clip on his way back to the dorm at Miskatonic. He'd had a fairly successful gig in Somerville and was in good spirits. He liked college much more than his brief stint in high school. He might have stuck around for the full four years had it not been for that incident during his freshman year.
He had always been one of the geeks in school. He was extremely bright with a keen aptitude with math and computers. He was also fluent in Japanese and Korean due to the fact that his mother emigrated from Seoul with her family when she was in her teens. His grandparents didn't speak a word of English, so in order to communicate with them he learned his mother's language. His father was a successful businessman who made regular trips abroad. At first, his grandparents objected to their daughter marrying a white man, but he won them over with his knowledge and apparent respect for their culture. And at least he waited until Randy's kid sister was born to start fucking around . . . the son of a bitch. He just up and left when Randy was twelve and his sister was only four.
That was the beginning of when things got harder. He withdrew into his books and video games, although he had a few good friends, some of whom were even geekier and nerdier than him. They'd spend hours playing AD&D and watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was from those times where his friends affectionately dubbed him "Rex Dart, Eskimo Spy," or just plain Rex. The jocks were all asses to him, sure, but most of the time he was able to ignore them.
It was at the beginning of his freshman year at Arkham High that the worst of them, Scott Lister, thought it would be funny to trip a chubby girl on her way to class. She fell straight to the floor, her books strewn about. Scott and his buddies thought it was a riot. Randy helped the girl to her feet and gathered her books, and she smiled gratefully. Her smile melted his heart, which only served to enrage him further at Scott.
"C'mon man, what'd she ever do to you?" Randy yelled.
"What's the matter, Rex Dart?!" Scott laughed. "Mad 'cause I tripped your fat assed girlfriend?" That last bit amused his cronies even more.
"Don't be an asshole, Scott," Randy seethed.
"What you call me, punk? You better watch your back, you little pansy." With that, Scott stormed off, his crew in tow.
Now Randy had to admit that the girl was quite cute, especially the way her smile brought out the dimples in her chubby cheeks. Unlike a lot of the girls at school, this girl had real curves. Granted they were rather large curves, but Randy didn't think that this was a big issue. In fact, he rather liked it.
The rest of the school day went without incident, so Randy thought Scott was only bluffing as always. After school, however, he realized just how wrong he was. The entire Arkham High School football team encircled him and Scott. Scott proceeded to beat the tar out of him in front of the entire ninth grade class. If that wasn't humiliating enough, the entire team took turns teabagging Randy when he was down. He blacked out, but not before he saw the chubby girl he stood up for look on in horror, then run in tears. His friends brought him home and explained to Randy's mother why her son was bruised and bloodied. She had gone to the police, but not before pulling him out of school.
He was home schooled for the next two years. The police investigated the incident, but curiously, no one saw what happened. Randy's friends, or as he called them "Rex Dart's Eyes on the Inside," related to him that Scott threatened everyone into silence, everyone who cared that is. Which, Randy knew, wasn't really that many - just his friends and that girl. Randy wracked his brain trying to remember her name . . ., he knew it began with an 'R'. Was it Rita, Rhiannon . . .? It was at the tip of his tongue; he knew in the off chance he ever saw her again, he'd remember.
Randy was accepted into Miskatonic University on a full computer scholarship. Thanks to his grandfather, he began studying Tae Kwon Do, and through one of his fellow students, discovered heavy metal music. Randy had already been playing classical guitar since he was two, so the transition to electric guitar was an easy one for him. In college, he began hanging out with other musicians, soon growing his hair out and wearing a lot of black. It didn't take long for him to be invited into one of the death metal bands in the area. When he was only seventeen, he became the lead guitarist of a band called Bloody Solstice.
He quickly grew to love being in a band. For the first time in his life, crowds cheered for him. Girls asked him out and guys respected him, things he wasn't really used to. Through it all, he kept in touch with his old friends, inviting them to some of the band's parties and putting them on the guest list of every all-ages gig Bloody Solstice took part in. According to them, most everyone in school had forgotten about him, and to his own surprise, Randy didn't care as much as he thought he would.
A pothole snapped him out of his thoughts. "Fuck!" he exclaimed out loud.
He pulled over as soon as he could to check to see if there was any damage, noticing that it was pouring out. Satisfied that there wasn't any damage to his van, he turned around to go back to the driver's side. It was then he noticed that he had soaked a pedestrian. Helluva night for a walk, he thought to himself. He noticed that it was a woman, a somewhat familiar one, but he couldn't tell through the rain.
He got back into the van and turned it around; he must've soaked the hell out of her, so the least he could do was offer her a ride to wherever she was going. He recognized the woman as he passed her a second time. He saw that she was wearing what was once a beautiful prom dress, but the rain and mud had soaked it through and ruined it.
"God dammit, what was her name?" he screamed mentally. "Was it Renee, Rebecca, Ramona, Raquel, Rosemary . . .?"
Turning around, he approached her slowly, turning his CD player off as he did so. He opened the passenger side window and called out, "Are you all right?" feeling a little idiotic doing so. She didn't look all right; in fact, she looked like she was having the worst night of her life.
She turned to him and glared hatefully. "I'm FINE, thank you," she growled.
Randy's eyes went wide as her name came crashing into his memory.
* * * * * *
