Post by Pukkina on Apr 2, 2007 17:24:14 GMT -5
Authors Note: I decided to do a rewrite of Do Those Things You Do. Not because I’m not totally 100 swamped with my other stories and life outside of this fandom, but because I’ve been wanting to ever since I finished the thing, so many months ago. So, here’s my best shot, I hope that even those of you who read the original will still find time to read and/or review!
Chapter One
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
-Unknown
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
For some reason, Lisa had never been one to wallow. Because from her viewpoint, wallowing, whining, and pouting were one in the same. And really, she figured, where in life could that get her?
Back to preschool. Even now, as the twenty-eight year old paused from her housecleaning to reflect, she realized how much she’d hated preschool. And elementary school, and highschool. All for one reason alone, and that reason was a living, breathing person with a name attached.
Joel Eggleston. Lisa didn’t recall ever verbalizing her hatred for the kid, but it had definitely been there. He’d been what counselors today knew as a bully—but when she’d been young there hadn’t been the hand-slapping seminars and school programs to combat the disease. The kid had tormented her every day of every week for fourteen years before she’d done something about it.
That something had been lengthy in planning. The first phase of her master plan involved what children knew then as “tattling” but was now known by most as “reporting acts of misdemeanor.” The elementary kids hadn’t let her live that one down, and her parents had otherwise ignored her. Joel threw even more rocks, destroyed even more of her clay pottery from art class.
The second step in her method had been to seek her revenge upon his person. She’d conceived that idea after a night alone at home watching The Princess Bride over and over again. Lisa had been in the seventh grade, and her hero was Inigo Montoya. It would have been great to just grab a sword from a random guy standing nearby and shred dear Joel to threads but there were two hindrances in that idea: one, Lisa couldn’t stand the sight of blood and, honestly, she really didn’t want to kill anybody, and two, nobody really carried swords anymore.
So, because of that minor problem, Lisa decided to do it in a peaceful—well, not necessarily peaceful, she realized with a smirk, but nonviolent—manner. In the eighth grade, when Joel yet again tortured her with his fat jokes, she dumped a vial of bright magenta paint on his head. It had taken a month for the acrylics to come out, and Lisa had received a week’s suspension. Joel? Absolutely nothing.
The last spurt of creation came when Lisa was losing her willpower. In the ninth grade, her eye caught a weathered note on the bulletin board before physical education class. She paused and read it. Field hockey. Field hockey. She’d rolled the idea around in her brain and stood there, stock still, until her teacher came out and demanded to know why she wasn’t changed yet. Lisa had pointed to the sign. ‘Can I join?’ There were a lot of raised eyebrows and quirky questions that day. ‘Why does the fat girl want to join the field hockey team?’ ‘She’s never played field hockey in her life!’ The reasoning behind Lisa’s determination was this: Joel Eggleston. There was nothing in the world that she wanted more than to wipe that smug little grin off his face. And this was the beginning of a long road down which she would follow to achieve her goal.
The first season, she hadn’t played at all. But she was well on her way, already becoming more coordinated with the movements and exercises associated with the game. Lisa dropped ten pounds her first season, and twenty the next. Things were going good.
By her senior year, Lisa was a delicate one hundred and twenty pounds, though still mostly hated. Girls hated her because the guys loved her. The guys ended up hating her because their girlfriends caught their weak spot. Lisa Reisert.
In fact, Joel’s teasings had diminished down to nothing when she’d achieved her perfect status. She actually almost forgot her original reasoning for following through with the plan until one day, she found a note tucked into the slats on her locker. It was from Joel, asking her to the homecoming dance. Lisa had almost passed out, but the moment the shock had floated away, she marched to his locker, ripped the note up, and threw it in his face.
‘I don’t want to go out with you, Joel!’ she had screeched.
‘W-why?’ his dumbfounded, disheartened stare had sat in the back of her mind since then.
‘Because,’ she smirked. ‘You’re too fat!’ With that, her fist moved to his face and—strong from her work on the field—succeeded in breaking his nose. Her parents had not been thrilled with the hospital bill they were forced to pay. Lisa had been elated.
So now, Lisa realized, the only way to achieve a goal in life was to take action. Whining to people about her problems was not the way to go. Maybe not revenge, either, but doing something was best. After the rape, all she had wanted to do was curl up into a ball and sleep. She was safe there, wrapped from head to toe in her soft satin sheets, drifting through consciousness like the caterpillar in the cocoon she was engulfed in. She never sought retribution, too humiliated and depressed to go to the police, until one day about three months later that she was suddenly filled with pent-up rage and drove directly to the station. ‘You came too late,’ they’d told her sadly, eyes filling with mild annoyance but mostly apathy. ‘Sorry. Nothing we can do.’ Lisa chose never to pout again, no matter how juvenile or not the circumstances were.
After the red-eye flight, Lisa had been damn sure not to make the same mistake again. As soon as the police finished asking Keefe questions, she was first in line to submit her input. They had been genuinely dazed at her zeal and fervor in recounting the incident.
‘Most victims of crime and terrorism don’t want to ever speak of it again,’ one had told her, shaking his head. Lisa had smiled.
‘I’m not a victim, Detective,’ she had claimed, nodding at Jackson Rippner’s motionless body being rolled out of her foyer. ‘He is.’
The trial three months later had been, in Lisa’s opinion, anything but fair. In a way, when she had been testifying, she’d felt that she was digging herself a grave. It had actually brought to mind Joel Eggleston. As Jackson’s eyes burned the word ‘betrayal’ into her own as she spoke, each word that escaped her lips felt like it was accompanied by ‘na na na na na na.’ Many sleepless nights had been spent with a plate of untouched scrambled eggs, Lisa’s thoughts taking turns invading her brain cavity.
You tattled, some said. You tattled, and when Jackson finds you, he’ll kill you. Because you told everybody what he did and got him into trouble.
“Not much, though,” Lisa grumbled crankily as she tossed her Swiffer duster above the television and pulled a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. “Two friggin’ months and then, ladies and gentleman, Jack the Ripper is free as a bird.”
His lawyer had counterattacked with the theory of Lisa’s initial involvement in the scam. Her alleged guilt trip upon the realization that Keefe’s kids were placed in the area of concern, and her rage that had turned to violence when she stabbed Jackson upon arrival.
‘Because it totally makes sense,’ Lisa had muttered angrily to her father after court had adjourned. ‘That a selfless hotel manager with no record of previous criminal activity out of the blue decide to kill somebody.’
The jury had decided on two to twelve months for Jackson. The snake had wormed his way out in two, obviously waving the green under the bailiff’s nose, Lisa decided bitterly.
She didn’t dwell on it. What did it matter, really, if Jack was free. He’d been out for about a month now and Lisa hadn’t seen him. Maybe he’d sunk into an assassin’s retirement, sick of the day to day and slightly humiliated at the press that scathingly chirped his name daily. After all, Lisa had beaten him, hands down. There was no denying that no matter which way you swung it and Lisa also imagined that on the physical spectrum, he couldn’t be feeling so hot right now. Gun, pen, and stiletto wounds must take some time to heal.
Or maybe he really didn’t care about her. In a way, it stung her, but she pushed that feeling aside. What did she care, anyway? Sure, he was a cute face that could be charming. His blue eyes were nothing but scary to her anymore, and her initial attraction to him had been mostly replaced by repulsion.
But only mostly.
“No,” Lisa sighed, sipping her juice as she put away her cleaning supplies. “He doesn’t care. Obviously. I was just a means to an end, a nameless face with one purpose: the phone call. Obviously.”
Lisa shrugged with a slight chuckle. “On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad to have around. At least I’d stop talking to myself all the time.”
As if on cue, the phone jangled in its hook. She pressed a hand over her mouth and fought the urge to laugh, setting her juice back on the counter. Lisa grabbed up the phone and tucked it into the crook of her neck as she journeyed back to her bedroom to prepare for bed.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Leese!” She smiled warmly at the voice. Her best friend and only cousin, Tanya Mackenzie.
“Oh, hi,” Lisa unhooked a thick flannel nightgown from her closet and laid it on the bed.
“What are you doing tonight?” Tanya bubbled. Lisa grinned at her energy, even late at night. Lisa would need three lattes and a six-pack of Mountain Dew to be half that lively.
“Well, Tanya, seeing how it’s about an hour past my bedtime, going to sleep,” Lisa chuckled, checking the clock again. She yawned, rubbing her itchy eyes and staring longingly at her bed.
“Seriously, you get too much sleep. That’s why you’re so tired.” Tanya was always going on about Lisa’s abnormal sleeping patterns. A ten o’clock bedtime and a five o’clock rise were the norm, though Lisa could easily slumber past noon on weekends.
Actually, she quite liked her new work schedule. Her boss had lightened up on her hours a bit, though she hadn’t praised Lisa at all on her thwart of the assassination. Not that Lisa minded—Lord knows she’d had plenty of strangers come up and pat her on the back for a job well done—but it was unusual. She was the talk of every family gathering and yet her boss couldn’t even meekly thank her. In fact, if she had to be completely honest with herself, Lisa felt that her boss might be a little bit jealous of Lisa’s heroics, wanting the spotlight for herself.
“Why?” Lisa pressed, pulling the clip out of her hair and tossing it on her nightstand as she wandered back to the kitchen, dragging her fingers through her still-damp hair. “You’re not planning another surprise Michael Myers movie fest again, are you? You know I hate those stupid movies.”
“No,” Tanya hesitated. Lisa wondered if she’d catch the insult on her favorite series, or if she’d let it go unnoticed. Or, as had been happening quite often, Tanya’s mind would gloss it over until she would remember it a while later. She’d been known to go as long as a week before she brought up a topic that had long since been laid to rest. “I was wondering if you wanted to go see a movie with me at the Alliance.”
Lisa sighed, tapping her fingernails against the countertop restlessly. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. It’s late, and--”
“Leese, come on!” Tanya whined. Lisa smiled as she thought briefly back to her thoughts earlier. “We haven’t done anything together in like, forever, and you don’t have work tomorrow--”
“Because I need to pack,” Lisa protested mildly, gazing at her suitcase sitting lonely in the corner of her living room. “I leave for Texas in two days, and I haven’t even done my laundry yet.”
“Can you honestly tell me that if you didn’t come to the movies with me tonight, you would get work done?” Tanya clucked. “Seriously. I’ll bet you the movie and a bucket of popcorn that you’re standing in the kitchen right now, staring at your ugly granny nightgown and getting ready for bed.”
“Well, pay up, Tanya, ‘cause you have no idea,” Lisa snapped. Movie? Sure. Just to wipe the inevitable smirk off her cousin’s face.
“Okay then. Do something for me, will you?”
“Got it.” Lisa began to gather what she needed for the movie and pulled back on her heels.
“Look out the window.”
Lisa pivoted on her heel. Tanya beamed and waved at her from outside.
Ah, damn it. Shooting her friend a sarcastic simper, Lisa pointed to the door. Tanya ran around and Lisa let her in. She wasted no time in unceremoniously paddling twenty dollars into Tanya’s eager palms.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVv
So there's the beginning of my little rewrite, please let me know what you think.
Chapter One
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
-Unknown
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
For some reason, Lisa had never been one to wallow. Because from her viewpoint, wallowing, whining, and pouting were one in the same. And really, she figured, where in life could that get her?
Back to preschool. Even now, as the twenty-eight year old paused from her housecleaning to reflect, she realized how much she’d hated preschool. And elementary school, and highschool. All for one reason alone, and that reason was a living, breathing person with a name attached.
Joel Eggleston. Lisa didn’t recall ever verbalizing her hatred for the kid, but it had definitely been there. He’d been what counselors today knew as a bully—but when she’d been young there hadn’t been the hand-slapping seminars and school programs to combat the disease. The kid had tormented her every day of every week for fourteen years before she’d done something about it.
That something had been lengthy in planning. The first phase of her master plan involved what children knew then as “tattling” but was now known by most as “reporting acts of misdemeanor.” The elementary kids hadn’t let her live that one down, and her parents had otherwise ignored her. Joel threw even more rocks, destroyed even more of her clay pottery from art class.
The second step in her method had been to seek her revenge upon his person. She’d conceived that idea after a night alone at home watching The Princess Bride over and over again. Lisa had been in the seventh grade, and her hero was Inigo Montoya. It would have been great to just grab a sword from a random guy standing nearby and shred dear Joel to threads but there were two hindrances in that idea: one, Lisa couldn’t stand the sight of blood and, honestly, she really didn’t want to kill anybody, and two, nobody really carried swords anymore.
So, because of that minor problem, Lisa decided to do it in a peaceful—well, not necessarily peaceful, she realized with a smirk, but nonviolent—manner. In the eighth grade, when Joel yet again tortured her with his fat jokes, she dumped a vial of bright magenta paint on his head. It had taken a month for the acrylics to come out, and Lisa had received a week’s suspension. Joel? Absolutely nothing.
The last spurt of creation came when Lisa was losing her willpower. In the ninth grade, her eye caught a weathered note on the bulletin board before physical education class. She paused and read it. Field hockey. Field hockey. She’d rolled the idea around in her brain and stood there, stock still, until her teacher came out and demanded to know why she wasn’t changed yet. Lisa had pointed to the sign. ‘Can I join?’ There were a lot of raised eyebrows and quirky questions that day. ‘Why does the fat girl want to join the field hockey team?’ ‘She’s never played field hockey in her life!’ The reasoning behind Lisa’s determination was this: Joel Eggleston. There was nothing in the world that she wanted more than to wipe that smug little grin off his face. And this was the beginning of a long road down which she would follow to achieve her goal.
The first season, she hadn’t played at all. But she was well on her way, already becoming more coordinated with the movements and exercises associated with the game. Lisa dropped ten pounds her first season, and twenty the next. Things were going good.
By her senior year, Lisa was a delicate one hundred and twenty pounds, though still mostly hated. Girls hated her because the guys loved her. The guys ended up hating her because their girlfriends caught their weak spot. Lisa Reisert.
In fact, Joel’s teasings had diminished down to nothing when she’d achieved her perfect status. She actually almost forgot her original reasoning for following through with the plan until one day, she found a note tucked into the slats on her locker. It was from Joel, asking her to the homecoming dance. Lisa had almost passed out, but the moment the shock had floated away, she marched to his locker, ripped the note up, and threw it in his face.
‘I don’t want to go out with you, Joel!’ she had screeched.
‘W-why?’ his dumbfounded, disheartened stare had sat in the back of her mind since then.
‘Because,’ she smirked. ‘You’re too fat!’ With that, her fist moved to his face and—strong from her work on the field—succeeded in breaking his nose. Her parents had not been thrilled with the hospital bill they were forced to pay. Lisa had been elated.
So now, Lisa realized, the only way to achieve a goal in life was to take action. Whining to people about her problems was not the way to go. Maybe not revenge, either, but doing something was best. After the rape, all she had wanted to do was curl up into a ball and sleep. She was safe there, wrapped from head to toe in her soft satin sheets, drifting through consciousness like the caterpillar in the cocoon she was engulfed in. She never sought retribution, too humiliated and depressed to go to the police, until one day about three months later that she was suddenly filled with pent-up rage and drove directly to the station. ‘You came too late,’ they’d told her sadly, eyes filling with mild annoyance but mostly apathy. ‘Sorry. Nothing we can do.’ Lisa chose never to pout again, no matter how juvenile or not the circumstances were.
After the red-eye flight, Lisa had been damn sure not to make the same mistake again. As soon as the police finished asking Keefe questions, she was first in line to submit her input. They had been genuinely dazed at her zeal and fervor in recounting the incident.
‘Most victims of crime and terrorism don’t want to ever speak of it again,’ one had told her, shaking his head. Lisa had smiled.
‘I’m not a victim, Detective,’ she had claimed, nodding at Jackson Rippner’s motionless body being rolled out of her foyer. ‘He is.’
The trial three months later had been, in Lisa’s opinion, anything but fair. In a way, when she had been testifying, she’d felt that she was digging herself a grave. It had actually brought to mind Joel Eggleston. As Jackson’s eyes burned the word ‘betrayal’ into her own as she spoke, each word that escaped her lips felt like it was accompanied by ‘na na na na na na.’ Many sleepless nights had been spent with a plate of untouched scrambled eggs, Lisa’s thoughts taking turns invading her brain cavity.
You tattled, some said. You tattled, and when Jackson finds you, he’ll kill you. Because you told everybody what he did and got him into trouble.
“Not much, though,” Lisa grumbled crankily as she tossed her Swiffer duster above the television and pulled a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. “Two friggin’ months and then, ladies and gentleman, Jack the Ripper is free as a bird.”
His lawyer had counterattacked with the theory of Lisa’s initial involvement in the scam. Her alleged guilt trip upon the realization that Keefe’s kids were placed in the area of concern, and her rage that had turned to violence when she stabbed Jackson upon arrival.
‘Because it totally makes sense,’ Lisa had muttered angrily to her father after court had adjourned. ‘That a selfless hotel manager with no record of previous criminal activity out of the blue decide to kill somebody.’
The jury had decided on two to twelve months for Jackson. The snake had wormed his way out in two, obviously waving the green under the bailiff’s nose, Lisa decided bitterly.
She didn’t dwell on it. What did it matter, really, if Jack was free. He’d been out for about a month now and Lisa hadn’t seen him. Maybe he’d sunk into an assassin’s retirement, sick of the day to day and slightly humiliated at the press that scathingly chirped his name daily. After all, Lisa had beaten him, hands down. There was no denying that no matter which way you swung it and Lisa also imagined that on the physical spectrum, he couldn’t be feeling so hot right now. Gun, pen, and stiletto wounds must take some time to heal.
Or maybe he really didn’t care about her. In a way, it stung her, but she pushed that feeling aside. What did she care, anyway? Sure, he was a cute face that could be charming. His blue eyes were nothing but scary to her anymore, and her initial attraction to him had been mostly replaced by repulsion.
But only mostly.
“No,” Lisa sighed, sipping her juice as she put away her cleaning supplies. “He doesn’t care. Obviously. I was just a means to an end, a nameless face with one purpose: the phone call. Obviously.”
Lisa shrugged with a slight chuckle. “On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad to have around. At least I’d stop talking to myself all the time.”
As if on cue, the phone jangled in its hook. She pressed a hand over her mouth and fought the urge to laugh, setting her juice back on the counter. Lisa grabbed up the phone and tucked it into the crook of her neck as she journeyed back to her bedroom to prepare for bed.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Leese!” She smiled warmly at the voice. Her best friend and only cousin, Tanya Mackenzie.
“Oh, hi,” Lisa unhooked a thick flannel nightgown from her closet and laid it on the bed.
“What are you doing tonight?” Tanya bubbled. Lisa grinned at her energy, even late at night. Lisa would need three lattes and a six-pack of Mountain Dew to be half that lively.
“Well, Tanya, seeing how it’s about an hour past my bedtime, going to sleep,” Lisa chuckled, checking the clock again. She yawned, rubbing her itchy eyes and staring longingly at her bed.
“Seriously, you get too much sleep. That’s why you’re so tired.” Tanya was always going on about Lisa’s abnormal sleeping patterns. A ten o’clock bedtime and a five o’clock rise were the norm, though Lisa could easily slumber past noon on weekends.
Actually, she quite liked her new work schedule. Her boss had lightened up on her hours a bit, though she hadn’t praised Lisa at all on her thwart of the assassination. Not that Lisa minded—Lord knows she’d had plenty of strangers come up and pat her on the back for a job well done—but it was unusual. She was the talk of every family gathering and yet her boss couldn’t even meekly thank her. In fact, if she had to be completely honest with herself, Lisa felt that her boss might be a little bit jealous of Lisa’s heroics, wanting the spotlight for herself.
“Why?” Lisa pressed, pulling the clip out of her hair and tossing it on her nightstand as she wandered back to the kitchen, dragging her fingers through her still-damp hair. “You’re not planning another surprise Michael Myers movie fest again, are you? You know I hate those stupid movies.”
“No,” Tanya hesitated. Lisa wondered if she’d catch the insult on her favorite series, or if she’d let it go unnoticed. Or, as had been happening quite often, Tanya’s mind would gloss it over until she would remember it a while later. She’d been known to go as long as a week before she brought up a topic that had long since been laid to rest. “I was wondering if you wanted to go see a movie with me at the Alliance.”
Lisa sighed, tapping her fingernails against the countertop restlessly. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. It’s late, and--”
“Leese, come on!” Tanya whined. Lisa smiled as she thought briefly back to her thoughts earlier. “We haven’t done anything together in like, forever, and you don’t have work tomorrow--”
“Because I need to pack,” Lisa protested mildly, gazing at her suitcase sitting lonely in the corner of her living room. “I leave for Texas in two days, and I haven’t even done my laundry yet.”
“Can you honestly tell me that if you didn’t come to the movies with me tonight, you would get work done?” Tanya clucked. “Seriously. I’ll bet you the movie and a bucket of popcorn that you’re standing in the kitchen right now, staring at your ugly granny nightgown and getting ready for bed.”
“Well, pay up, Tanya, ‘cause you have no idea,” Lisa snapped. Movie? Sure. Just to wipe the inevitable smirk off her cousin’s face.
“Okay then. Do something for me, will you?”
“Got it.” Lisa began to gather what she needed for the movie and pulled back on her heels.
“Look out the window.”
Lisa pivoted on her heel. Tanya beamed and waved at her from outside.
Ah, damn it. Shooting her friend a sarcastic simper, Lisa pointed to the door. Tanya ran around and Lisa let her in. She wasted no time in unceremoniously paddling twenty dollars into Tanya’s eager palms.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVv
So there's the beginning of my little rewrite, please let me know what you think.
