Plastics

Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock

Jingle bells swing and jingle bells ring

Snowin' and blowin' up bushels of-

SLAM

-

Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Do school work. Go to bed.

That’s life.

-

Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock

Jingle bells swing and jingle bells ring

Snowin' and blowin' up bushels of-

-

“Thank you, and have a nice day!”

The customer grunted, and wandered off, and Courtney took a brief moment to relax before stepping away from the department store’s checkout counter to refold the pile of dressing room rejects.

Halfway through the stack, Courtney paused and glanced around. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought someone was watching her, though she was alone, the store empty at the moment. She frowned and turned her attention back to the pile. 

The feeling didn’t lessen as she continued to work. If anything, the sense that somebody was watching her only grew. It was probably Brandon, the creep, here on his day off to harass her or something.

It wasn’t until she was done folding and was on her way back to the checkout counter that Courtney paused, eyes locking onto one of the department store’s many mannequins. Its head had been turned to face the area where she’d been working.

‘Jesus, Court, paranoid much?’ she wondered to herself. As she did so she studied the mannequin. It was not one of the usual fiberglass headless displays that the store had used since she’d started here, but was rather one of the new “classic look” mannequins the store had gotten in the week before. Plastic and full bodied, with arms and legs and even a head. It was the head that had freaked Courtney out, so used was she to the normal headless bodies that had surrounded her before. She reached up to turn the display’s head, sure her boss wouldn’t mind if she just pointed it to face another way. Her fingers brushed the head-

Something thumped against her back and she jumped, spinning, still-raised hand flinging out to hit-

“Ow, what the fuck!” a male voice cried as its owner stumbled back and away, arm raised protectively in front of his face.

“Brandon?” she asked in surprise, the surprise making way for anger as realization set in. “ You’re the reason I felt like I was being watched? Are you stalking me?”

“What? No!” Brandon cried. “I just wanted to apologize about the other day.”

Oh. Miracle of miracles, did she actually get through to him?

“I should have realized you weren’t ready to date again after getting dumped, and that I should have given you more time before asking you out.”

That would be a no, then.

“I wasn’t-” Cortney began, then stopped. That wasn’t the point. “Brandon. Let me try to make this clear to you. I’m not going to date you. Ever. And if you ever ask me out again - fuck, if you ever talk to me again - I’m contacting the police and telling them I have a stalker.”

“But I’m not a stalker!”

“Out, Brandon.”

He glared at her, before turning and stomping away, mumbling all the while, “Could have just said no.”

Unbelievable.

Pest taken care of, Courtney returned to work, grabbing another stack of clothes and taking them back to be refolded. She soon discovered to her relief that with Brandon gone, the sense of being watched went with him, and with the feeling, all thoughts of the mannequin.

It wasn’t until later, as she was walking out to go home, did she happen to glance at it. Her pace slowed. The mannequin’s head had been turned, and now faced in the direction of the store’s opening.

That’s funny.

She didn’t remember actually moving it.

-

Can we talk? Please?

I’m sorry.

-

It was raining again, for the third day in a row, making the block and a half walk from her bus stop to her apartment just as wet and sodden as had been the past two evenings. 

It was as she was walking up the staircase that it happened. She had just reached her landing when her foot slipped; she began to fall back when-

-an arm caught and steadied her.

“You don’t have much luck with staircases, do you.”

Heart racing from the near-accident, Courtney turned, eyes widening in surprise as she realized it was the woman from the other day. “Hey,” she croaked, then shook her head and cleared her throat. “I mean, thanks.”

“No problem, Court. Sorry,” the woman added upon seeing Courtney’s reaction to the shortened name. “Is Court not alright?”

“Courtney, please,” she managed to get out. Court had too many… associations.

The woman nodded. “Courtney, then. Well, I’ll catch you later - hopefully not literally next time.” And with that, she turned and started back up the stairs.

She was a full three steps up before Courtney managed to put two brain cells together. “Wait!” she called, and the woman stopped. “Do I know you?”

A flicker of different emotions passed through the woman’s eyes before settling on amusement. “We went to Blackwell together,” she explained, “though we didn’t exactly keep to the same social circles.”

Courtney frowned and examined the woman more closely, eyes flicking over her before stopping to linger on her face. As before, there was something familiar looking about her, though Courtney couldn’t place it. Brown eyes rested under a head of coarse brown hair that flowed to shortly above the back of the woman’s neck. She certainly wasn’t any of the women in the dorms - Courtney would know, she had the room across from Victoria senior year - so she must have been an Arcadia Bay local, or staying in an apartment like Alyssa had. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognise you,” she admitted. It was embarrassing, to be honest.

The woman’s eyes were shining now. “Oh, is that so? Tell you what, I’ll tell you my name… next time we meet.”

“And when will that be?” Courtney blurted out, blushing when the woman paused again to look at her. “I mean, hopefully not on a wet staircase?”

The woman snorted at that, and it was all Courtney could do not help but to blush, God, was she gay. "True. I’m in 4C. Maybe you could come over tomorrow for dinner? It’s so hard to meet people sometimes-”

‘Got that right.’

“-and my girlfriend and I would like to have friends that live near us-”

‘Girlfriend’

And just like that, any excitement Courtney was feeling promptly fled.

“Yeah,” she croaked. “Just uh, let me know when to come by?”

The woman nodded and shot Courtney a salute, and then she was gone.

‘Well,’ Courtney mused, ‘shit.’