This choice: Gloria? What is she doing here? • Go Back... ...Gloria Vanapolous, standing a fair distance away from Bill's house on the sidewalk. She made a beckoning motion with her left hand, as she was a southpaw, that indicated that she really needed to talk to him. “Great”, Bill thought bitterly to himself “Just what I need”. He grabbed his backpack , slung it over his shoulder, and practically schlepped his body down the front steps towards the next bit of drama in his life. He just hoped that whatever it is she wanted, she left before Tom showed up, otherwise he'd have to listen to their bickering for the next hour.
“What do you want?” Bill asked with a neutral voice, hiding his dislike for Gloria, although the look of raw annoyance in his eyes gave it away.
“Listen” said Gloria somewhat insistently, as if she had big news to tell Bill. “I can't be seen talking to you, you understand that, right?”
“Yeah” sighed Bill impatiently. “I'm not popular, you don't need to rub it in.”
“You know I like you, Bill. You're a sweet guy.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Bill's mind briefly imagined Gloria's little clique. Despite being an only child with a really strict mom, Gloria was pretty enough and cunning enough(Bill used to refer to her as Littlefinger behind her back in middle school) to have earned a spot among the popular crowd of jocks and cheerleaders. It was almost a cliché, the popular kids all being beautiful and athletic and largely well off, but that was the truth. The popular kids ran the school, and everyone else were their footstools. The only caveat that allowed kids like Bill some degree of room to breathe is that despite all of their privileges, the cool kids seemed like they were a surprisingly miserable bunch. Gloria's friends maintained a very regimented caste system with very little wiggle room for social mobility or the ability to resist peer pressure. There were weird and capricious rules which dictated acceptable social behavior, and there was constant paranoia among them that if you did something out of turn or were the victim of malicious gossip, you could be ostracized at any moment like Tom had been. Despite being by some definitions a loser, Bill felt that he had more personal freedom than Gloria did.
“You've ignored all of my texts and private messages, I even tried to call you, so you had to know that this was coming. I really need to tell you something, and I could only tell you. I...”
Gloria stopped for a moment before composing herself again.
“...I think that I'm ready to forgive him.”
Bill briefly closed his eyes to prevent his eyes for bulging out of their sockets.
“You're...ready to forgive Tom?” said Bill, enunciating his words slowly, every last one dripping with sarcasm and disdain.
“Yes” announced Gloria proudly. “We've had our differences in the past, and we've always bounced back from them. No matter what was said, who threatened who, who called who what, I think that Tom and I can make it work again. The problem is, I can't tell Tom directly that I'm ready to start fresh. I want to ease him into it. You know how he gets. How he flies off the handle when he thinks he's being lied to. How oversensitive he gets. I swear he's bipolar.”
“I wouldn't be surprised” said Bill quietly, ready to fly off the handle himself. While she prattled on, giving herself a pat on the back for having the compassion to forgive Tom's previous transgressions, Bill was thinking angrily to himself “How DARE Gloria try and paint herself as the victim here?”. You see, Tom and Gloria had possessed a toxic relationship for the entire length of time that Bill had known the both of them, ever since Kindergarten, and Gloria gave as good as she took. She was just as much of a drama queen as Tom was, just as capable as creating absolutely vicious insults that would embarrass the rudest sailor, and Bill was getting really sick of being caught in the middle of their inane soap opera. If Bill wasn't so distracted, he'd give Gloria a piece of...
“Hey, what's that?” pointed Gloria towards Bill's hand.
“What's what?” he asked.
“There's something glowing in your hand.”
Bill opened his hand, revealing the mysterious Ahn'Ger Stone.
“This? I don't know, just something I found laying on my porch. I forgot I had it.”
“Why is it glowing?”
“I don't know. Maybe it's kryptonite?”.
Bill laughed. Gloria didn't. She was transfixed, almost in a trance, somehow preternaturally aware that it was something special. Something forbidden and all powerful.
“Can I see it?” she asked with a touch of awe in her voice. “It's beautiful”.
“OK, just give it back. I found it first, and I'm planning to find somebody to appraise it. It looks expensive".
Gloria turned over the Ahn'Ger stone in her hand three times over, examining its teardrop shape and the smaller gold gemstone embedded inside.
"This looks priceless."
"I'm hoping so. Then I can move out of here and do something exciting with my life" said Bill wistfully.
“So” she said, changing the subject back to Tom, gradually losing interest in the artifact “can you let Tom know that I'm open to seeing him again? If he behaves, that is?”.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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