trashy tabloid roundup
Mary wished she knew when she was getting it right. Some small, childish part of her brain craved the confirmation. In a perfect world, a little angel would fly down from the heavens every time she was about to make a decision and tell her exactly how it would affect those around her. Because as much as Mary liked to act like she didn’t care, deep down she worried all the time. She worried about how Sirius was coping with the reunion with his brother. She worried about whether he was asking for the help he probably needed, she worried about whether the person he was asking was equipped to deal with it. But mostly, she worried about Marlene.
It wasn’t technically a relapse. Although, to be honest, Mary didn’t really know. They were rockstars, so it’s not like she had ever stopped drinking. Still, something had definitely changed since the show at the Whiskey. Mary knew it would happen. She could see the way Marlene’s hands were shaking before she went on stage. She knew the other girl had thrown up multiple times in the days running up to the concert. She’d even started to get physically paler. Mary had gone to Frank and Mcgonogall, begging them to cancel the concert, but they told her that the tour manager - an external guy - had already booked it, and that pulling out now would be in breach of contract. Apparently, suggesting to break the contract anyways and deal with the consequences was not the sensible idea she had thought it was, because she got ushered out the room immediately after.
In the days leading up to the gig Marlene had been silent, and that worried her. When she was silent, you knew something was wrong. Mass murder probably wouldn’t be enough to scare Marlene Mckinnon into silence. But the concert had come and gone and the other girl had held it together. Well, that was a loose term. Rather, she seemed to have fixated on some sort of hero-crusade against Dorcas Meadowes on Sirius’ behalf. Why Meadowes in particular, Mary didn’t really know, but who was her to question it. She was just glad Marlene was distracted.
She grabbed the mugs of coffee from the kitchen counter and slowly made her way up the wooden stairs. The house’s cosy 70s architecture and seclusion was what had first drawn both of them to it - as soon as they had pulled into the driveway for the house viewing, they had known it was the one. Marlene had rambled on to anyone who would hear about its conversation pit. Mary had to admit that the whole design was really cool. Modern, but also timeless in a way. Their bedrooms were both on the same floor, so Mary ambled towards the right-hand side where Marlene’s was.
She’d been doing this more and more often recently, bringing the other girl a coffee in the morning to make sure she was awake and not asleep in her own sick. Mary had to push the vivid image to the side - she’d dealt with her enough times in the aftermath of Emmeline’s death to know exactly what it would look like. Luckily, she hadn’t seen her quite so badly in the last few weeks, but that didn’t really do anything to remove the nervous ball in her stomach.
It was a small comfort that Marlene’s addiction of choice had been alcohol - at least Mary could access articles that contained detailed research about how to approach the matter and what to do in dangerous circumstances. After Emmeline’s death, the other girl hadn’t really known how to manage all of her grief. She was careful not to rely too much on drugs and Mary was careful to monitor it, but she hadn’t noticed the increasing amounts of alcohol had been consuming instead. At first, she had just used it to get to sleep, until she started using it to get through the day. It was strange, because Marlene could handle herself perfectly on drugs. She generally knew exactly how to look after herself, when to stop when it was getting too much. Mary never ever worried about that. It was only because Mary knew the other girl so well that she could say for certain that it wasn’t about the alcohol itself, but a desperate need for something to distract or dull her mind. The fact of the matter was that alcohol was one of the easiest ways to do that. It was so easy to get a hold of - she could even get it delivered to her doorstep.
Pushing the heavy door open, Mary walked into the bedroom. The other girl was laying face-down, head buried in between two pillows so her dark curls fanned out across them. The room was dark and slightly stuffy.
“Morning, sunshine!” Mary broadcasted in a cheery voice. No response. In a much harsher voice, Mary went on, “You look like shit. Go take a shower.”
Marlene remained motionless except for the one hand she raised to flip the other girl off. Mary made a great show of tutting at her disappointedly before walking over to the windows and flicking open the curtains. From the bed a painful hiss could be heard, sort of like a pissed off Victorian vampire.
“Fuck you” Marlene mumbled, slowly lifting her head up, squinting in the new bright light.
The sight made Mary laugh, “You look like you’ve just come out of the womb.”
This made the other girl pout, “Lily was much nicer when she came.”
“That’s because she only comes here when I have a meeting or something. She doesn’t have to deal with you every morning - after a while it sort of takes away all that spark and cheer.”
“Well you don’t have to wake me up.” Marlene stifled a yawn, slowly clambering out of bed and making her way towards the bathroom.
Mary just rolled her eyes because yes, she did have to. She knew her friend was struggling after the Whiskey gig, and this was the only way she could make sure things were okay. She picked up a book from Marlene’s nightstand - The Waste Land by TS Eliot - and flicked through it idly, lying on the bed, paying more attention to her annotations than the poetry itself.
“Read this. I finished it yesterday.” Marlene came out of the bathroom in a towel and picked up a folded sheet of paper from her bedside drawer, passing it to Mary.
Years of being handed Marlene’s first drafts had given her superpowers in being able to decipher the mess of scribbles, crossed out words, and arrows leading to rewrites. The scrawled handwriting at the top read ‘Take Me Out’. It was good, although Mary had no melody to go off of. It was messy and contradicting and painfully self-aware, like Marlene’s best writing always was. When she finished reading it, she hadn’t even realised the smile that had crept onto her face.
“Do you think I should wear the light blue bikini top or the white lacey bra thing with the dungarees?” Marlene called out from the other side of the room where Mary vaguely registered her flicking through her closet.
“The bikini top.” Mary replied without looking up. She knew what it looked like anyway. “When you say ‘take me out’ do you mean it as in ‘take me out on a date’ or like ‘knock me unconscious’?”
“Both.” She looked up to see the other girl grinning at her, gleam in her eye.
Mary snorted a laugh, “Fair enough.”
The other girl laughed, but didn’t say much more. Mary was curious, but decided to let it go for now. It was not like mysteriousness and secrecy were built into Marlene’s DNA. She’d probably find out who the song was about by the end of the week.
She looked up at Marlene now while she busied herself with putting on makeup, getting distracted by small things like clearing up her desk and small post-it notes that she had written to herself which she then read aloud (“I shit you not this one is just a quote from a Burger King advert I saw the other day.”).It was moments like these that let Mary know that it wasn’t properly bad. She knew what Marlene was like when things were bad. She felt every emotion with every atom in her body, and grief was no different. After Emmeline died, she hadn’t gotten out of bed for months. She still couldn’t go further than the couch downstairs every year when the anniversary came around; they spent the whole day surrounded by blankets and mountains of candy, watching nature documentaries - the only thing that didn’t remind her of Emmeline.
But she knew that it wasn’t all good. Her lapses into grief only seemed to make her feel like she hadn’t made any progress.
‘I wish you’d known me before she died. I wish you’d known me when it didn’t take all my strength to act like myself.’ she had once said, and Mary had never forgotten it.
She’d never forgotten it because she never understood how Marlene could think that her personality had been dimmed by what happened. She didn’t doubt that she struggled to seem as lively and entertaining as she was before, but Marlene was so much more than how she entertained others. She was an explosion captured in slow-motion, so that you could see all the separate little atoms, all the separate little things that made her so beautiful. She was a shared smile in the middle of a conversation. A shared look of ‘can you believe they just said that? We’re totally going to talk about this later’. She was the type who bought you a gift for no reason, other than the fact that she saw something and thought of you. She was the type to come into your room at all hours of the day, excited to share a new song she’d heard or an epiphany she’d just had. She was the type to sit on the counter next to you whilst you cooked, filling you in on her day in detail and asking you to do the same. She was the type to laugh until she cried. She was the type to find humour out of doing the same bit for hours, beating the dead horse until it was basically pulverised, giggling in the dark as you both pretend to be Shakespearian lovers on a Tuesday evening. Best of all, she was the type to feel everything with every fibre in her being, to embrace every emotion, and to never feel ashamed about it. She went into everything with the best intentions, so she rarely had anything to be ashamed about to begin with.
Mary could almost imagine the small string, as soft and thin as a spider’s web, connecting the two of them. Sometimes she could feel it in her chest, like their souls were bonded. She knew some people didn’t really like Marlene, found her difficult, but Mary would never want to be associated with those people anyway. She couldn’t put into words exactly what the other girl meant to her. All she could say was that she always looked for Marlene in a crowded room and felt like a piece of her heart had slotted into place every time she was around.
The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted her thoughts. Marlene picked it up. Mary continued reading the annotations on the other girl’s book.
“Oh, hey Lils!” that got Mary’s attention, “Yep, she’s here… uh-huh… sure… you know, sometimes I wonder whether befriending me was all some master ploy to get to Mary.”
She laughed at that.
“... well I don’t know! Maybe you can see into the future or something…” Marlene handed the phone over with an exaggerated sigh. “Your gentleman caller wants to speak to you.”
Mary gave her a playful kick behind the knee as she walked away.
“What’s up?” Mary asked.
On the other side of the bed, Marlene lay down and closed her eyes. After a few nudges from Mary, she let out a frustrated “Yeah! I get it! It’s just a small nap! James and his cult of the power nap have indoctrinated me!” and turned on her side.
“You know how I was supposed to come have breakfast with you this morning?” Lily’s voice filtered through the phone. Mary hummed in response, “Well, I had also promised Remus that I would have breakfast with him today also and I just assumed he could tag along but I completely forgot about the whole Marls thing… is everything, like, presentable this morning? Or should I make up an excuse and ask him not to come? I really don’t mind doing it.”
Mary scanned the girl next to her. Her hair was a bit messy - but when was it not - and her face looked a bit pale and tired. Other than that she looked fine.
“Don’t worry, everything’s good.” she smiled, twisting the phone cord around her fingers in order to have something to do.
She had thought it was best not to tell anyone other than Lily about Marlene’s recent lapse. She’d had her doubts, but Lily had agreed and that had given her more conviction. The others barely knew about her addiction the first time, all of them too distracted with their own grief. Their immediate response would be to fuss over her, obviously with the best intentions, which she knew would just make Marlene more anxious. But Mary didn’t want to let it go too far. She was always ready to tell the others the moment it got a bit worse. Right now, the best thing would be to carry on as normal, otherwise Marlene would probably sink.
Often Mary wondered whether she was doing the right thing. She still wished it all came with some sort of manual.
“We’ll be ready downstairs. See you soon.”
“See ya.” Mary could almost picture the smile with which Lily said it, which almost brought an unconscious smile to her own face. She hung up the phone, ready to turn her attention to Marlene.
When she looked beside her, she found a pair of eyes already smiling at her knowingly. Mary rolled her own eyes, refusing to engage.
“Okay Sleeping Beauty, time to get up one last time and go downstairs.” Mary jumped off the bed.
Marlene raised an eyebrow as the corner of her mouth lifted up in a smirk, “If I’m Sleeping Beauty does that make you my Prince Charming?”
“Depending on the size of the dowry I receive after waking you up.” Mary supplied helpfully.
“What, so simply owning my heart is not valuable enough for you?”
“The moment your heart starts paying the bills, we can talk.”
“Women these days… nothing but gold-diggers.” Marlene muttered as she got out of bed. She carried on as they made their way down the stairs, swinging around the corners with a hand on the bannister, muttering about ‘back in my day’ as Mary chimed in every few seconds.
They were in the kitchen now, both barefoot as they padded their way across the cool wooden floor. They had a mutual agreement that, in exchange for Marlene never actually touching a cooking utensil (for fear of burning down the kitchen) she would water the plants, something which Mary never seemed to get right. Honestly, it was simply unnatural the way plants died the minute they touched her hands. It’s like they were out to ruin her reputation. She literally underwatered a Cactus. Those things survived in the desert but a few months in Mary Macdonald’s care and they were begging for the watery utopia of the Sahara. She didn’t understand it.
Marlene, on the other hand, kept her plants properly watered through ‘vibes’ alone - her words. As opposed to Lily, who had a detailed schedule written up on her fridge wall, Marlene just watered each plant whenever she sensed that it needed to be watered. To her credit, since their pact none of the plants in the house had died - of natural causes, she should probably add. James kicking a soccer ball into their Basil plant didn’t count.
She was filling up the watering can now whilst Mary pulled out the eggs and potato waffles from the fridge - Marlene and Lily hated sweet breakfasts. Whilst she fried the eggs, Mary listened happily to Marlene's rambles about this compilation of obscure and unreleased singles from Birdsnest Records she had found on vinyl with Remus a few days ago.
“... and we looked into it and it turned out it was this record company that had been launched by the owner of a chain of pubs in England. It was only active from the years 1975 to 1979 but the music’s so cool. It’s like this industrial vibe that -”
A ring at the door interrupted her monologue. It had only been around fifteen minutes since Lily had hung up the call, but they all lived five minutes away from each other so it wasn’t much of her surprise that it took her very little time to get ready, pick up Remus, and arrive at their house. Marlene stifled a yawn as she made her way towards the door to let the others in. Mary heard the chorus of greetings at the front door, but was too busy with the cooking to lift her head up as the others came in.
“...guess what I brought!” Lily’s excited voice filtered through the room. Mary looked up to see the other girl making her way towards her, holding up a spread of glossy magazines with a mischievous glimmer in her eye.
She was met with a chorus of cheers from Mary and Marlene. They hadn’t flicked through trashy tabloids in a while. It used to be a weekly ritual where they would round up all the gossip about them that they could find and sit around the table, reading them out.
“Did you get some for Remus?” half of Marlene’s words were muffled by the sound of her stuffing a potato waffle into her mouth.
“Of course.” scoffed, almost offended that anyone would ask. One side of her mouth quirked upwards and Mary had to force her eyes to look away, instead meeting Lily’s gaze as she smiled back at her. A hand came up between them, snatching the magazines out of Lily’s hands.
“Okay, I’m going to hand them out.” Marlene declared as she began sorting the magazines into four piles for each of them to read and report back on. Lily used the fact that Marlene was currently distracted chatting to Remus to shift a little bit closer to Mary.
“How was it this morning? Was it a bad night?” Lily lowered her voice, her worried green eyes betraying the way the rest of her face was trying to appear calm and unconcerned.
Mary responded in a gentle voice, “It wasn’t bad, actually. There weren’t too many bottles around, which meant she had to have gone to sleep sober enough to remember to throw them in the bin, so…”
Lily nodded, a bit lost in thought.
“Get over here, we’re ready!” Marlene’s loud voice interrupted the conversation.
“Coming!” Mary grabbed the pot of coffee and brought it to the conversation pit (what they used as a table when they knew there was going to be a lot of talking involved), filling up the mugs whilst everyone else started flicking through the magazines.
“Apparently Sirius and I got married in secret in a ‘private and intimate ceremony, an insider source confirms’” Remus commented.
“One of these days I’m going to call them up and tell them that you guys are having a baby.” Mary remarked, sitting down on the cushioned floor to start filtering through the magazines in her pile.
“You wouldn’t.” the other boy looked up.
“I’ll give you fifty dollars if you do.” Lily smiled, taking a sip from her mug.
“I’ll add twenty to that if you tell them you’re the surrogate.” Marlene added, looking expectantly at Mary as she took more bites out of her potato waffle.
“Deal.” Mary grinned.
“You’re full of evil, Macdonald.”
“Should’ve invited me to the wedding…” she shrugged noncommittally, looking back down at her magazine as the rest of them laughed.
“This one’s just a picture of us at Dave’s last Sunday.” Marlene turned around her magazine to show a picture of Lily, heels in hand, grinning at the camera as the other two girls attempted to drag her into the limo.
“Wow, I look fucking hot in that.” Lily remarked. She wasn’t wrong. “Can you rip out the page for me?”
“For sure.” Marlene proceeded to tear it out. As she was about to give it to Lily, her attention was caught by the back of the page “Aw… you guys, apparently Gryffindor Tower is breaking up.”
“Well we had a long run, it was bound to happen anyways. Sucks that the news is being broken to us by ‘Teen Weekly’ though.” Remus replied nonchalantly.
“Well, Mcgonogall’s a busy woman. You can’t expect her to do everything.” Lily chimed in.
They continued to sift through their magazines. Marlene made a sound of disgust as she pulled up the cover of Cosmo in front of her. It showed a stunning Dorcas Meadowes walking into a club with the title ‘HOLLYWOOD’S NEW IT GIRL?’
“Fucking sellout.” she grumbled.
“Haven’t you been ‘Hollywood’s IT girl’ multiple times.” Remus pointed out.
“Yeah but I did it in a cool rockstar way. She’s doing it in a… uncool un-rockstar way. It’s different.” Marlene clarified, attempting to remain dignified.
Lily began, “I just don’t get why you don’t like her. I genuinely think you guys would get along if you just-”
“Just let me be spiteful in peace! It keeps me young and pretty.” Marlene interrupted, “Let’s not ruin this hallowed space with her name.”
They continued to shout out absurd pieces of gossip as they ate their breakfast. Mary turned the page of her magazine to see a picture of Marlene making out with some brunette outside a bar, hands in her hair and on her waist. Next to it was the caption: ‘Mckinnon’s new mystery girl - just one more new conquest in a trail of broken hearts?’ The picture was blurry, but Mary could still make out exactly who it was, partly because Marlene spent a whole hour describing the interaction to her during their morning debrief the next day.
“They got a picture of you with Leah Talkott?” she burst out, turning the picture for all of them to see.
“Let me see that…” Marlene grabbed the magazine, putting it in between her and Remus so they could both lean their heads in to look. “God, the caption is awful.”
Remus and Mary hummed in agreement.
“You calling her back?” Lily asked. Marlene shook her head.
Something clicked in Mary’s mind, “Is this who the song is about?”
She ignored the chorus of “Song?” “What song?” that came from the other two.
Marlene gave her a look that clearly implied she thought she was crazy, “What? No.”
Mary opened her mouth to speak, but Lily beat her to it, “What’s this new song?”
“Wait a sec, let me get it from upstairs.”
Mary just sat back for the rest of the breakfast, watching the other three as they worked out possible melodies and harmonies, going as far as calling James and Pete on the phone and making them listen in on the conversation, before simply giving up and asking them to come to the house. Sirius unsurprisingly came with them, and they both spent the morning huddled up next to each other, sipping on their coffee and commenting on the madness in front of them as the day trudged on.