sweet boy straight out of the movie screen

★゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜★

★゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜★

chapter one

where the saints and sinners run free

your ice-cold heart did not suit well with the fire set by your passion. me

Meredith Jones was odd.

She had been called worse things in the seventeen years of her life, she knows, like a victim to the set of unaccomplished people that many had called bullies. A weirdo. Wacko. Nutcase, in one, very unforgettable instance, right before she punched someone in the nose for the first time.

Things only went downhill ever since her parents' divorce.

"Who does she think she is?" people had gasped around her quite loudly, watching as she fell into the middle of the Queens one unfortunate day, as a new student at Midtown High.

Her parents' divorce was rough on her. Her mom had been shitty— verbally abusive being a much more required term here. Her dad was hardly ever around but once he had enough of his wife, he packed his and Meredith's belongings up, gave over the divorce papers to her mom and moved away as far as he could.

It was wrong to call her odd, she believed. Meredith Jones was irrevocably fucked up.

"What are you wearing?" her dad had asked her when she showed up at the hospital once in her dirty, over-sized, green sweater depicting a knife-wielding pig and the word KILLER FOOD in bold letter underneath. It's a fashion statement , she insisted. He had eyed the bright pink pants and unmatched shoes warily, but didn't say anything more. 

"It's a fashion statement."

She said that about the pink hair too.

Her neighbors, the Parkers and their nephew Peter —if their mailbox was to be trusted— once found her cleaning out the driveway they shared at 3AM on a Monday, muttering about Navier-Stokes equation and cackling madly over something in the renaissance in her drunk state. Peter Parker stared. She stared right back.

"Uh," he said, potently. Then, "The driveway needs the snow cleared not um— not cleaned."

She swore in three different languages and had fled the scene, a bucket full of water and an amused—if not also confused— boy left in her wake.

Yeah. Meredith Jones was odd, and her father was absent most of the time and her mom was sick in the head. But one day it will be okay— gone, one day it will be gone, MJ.

Mira. Mary. Eddy. Remmy. MJ.

They didn't have that much of a problem with misfit.

Bloody idiots.

So, instead of thinking about the impending doom that inevitably awaited her, Meredith used to do the next best thing— the smart thing, in her humble opinion. She prepared herself for the next two years of high school.

"Isn't it just perfect?"

Meredith tried to smile even though her lips fought hard to be turned into a grimace. It was hideous. A monstrosity. A crime against nature. A very, very horrible thing. But worst of all, it was topped with chocolate sauce.

"It's—" she tried to say, her voice withering in her throat. "It's a— um dad, I'm really at a loss of words."

In front of her on the table was a pizza. Pizza. At 7 AM. And that still wasn't the worst part.

"Are those..." Meredith cleared her throat for preeminence, but her voice just got smaller and more strangled. "Are those pizzas or pancakes?"

Mr. Jones smiled wide. "Cinnamon oatmeal with veggies!"

"Huh— And there are tomatoes in there?" she asked. The man in the unnerving 'best dad' apron nodded with a painfully wide smile, his graying hair sticking to his forehead. Sweat. The man was sweating over a stove to make these abominations. What was she supposed to do— to say to that? 

"And obviously chocolate sauce mixed with tomato— can't do pancake pizzas without...that."

It was extremely hard to get the words out of her mouth without gagging.

This was only just the end of their first year here in New York but Meredith had already suffered through tweleve other 'Mexican inspired' meals for the 'first day of the month breakfast'. Banana enchiladas was not a phrase she ever wished to utter again for the rest of her life. Meredith felt like it was her Aunt Natty (often called Aunt Nutty) who was sending over these recipes to her dad.

Her dad's lawyer —her uncle, actually— had promised her that she'd like the changes New York would bring into their little family. That it will now be stable and that Queens was a great neighborhood to grow up in. She was mostly grown up already, but apparently that wasn't the point.

At least, the Parkers' next door greeted them properly the first time with normal chocolate ship cookies before they started having their reservations about them (which they probably got after seeing her drunk in the snowy driveway). Jonathan, her father, tried to invite them over for potato salad nachos but thankfully Mrs. Parker politely declined in accordance of her husband and the absentee nephew. 

"Don't forget—" The happy, just-divorced Jones literally did a weird little half-hearted drumroll on the tabletop before taking out a plastic container. He opened the lid, sprinkling out something dark and round, "Almonds!"

"Oh! The almonds. Yes, that'd really be tragic." Her voice was as flat as her breakfast. He waited there, staring expectantly, and Meredith knew inherently what it meant— cause she'd do it, just like with all the other things her dad made. This was far from her first rodeo. She hesitantly went for the mini pancake pizza— holding in her first and foremost complaint, the one in which she really didn't want to eat this.

It was fine, because it had to be fine. If everything was fine, she wouldn't screw up and make a mess of things. Enthusiastically kind and oblivious with terrible food was exponentially better than what her father had been when he wasn't around.

And hopefully, with time, she could say those things without the chance of it going wrong.

She bit into it and remembered how much she hated tomatoes. She chewed a bit too long and smiled as it slithered down her throat. "So good."

She ate the whole thing right there, as the older man in front of her went back to speaking, making comments about this sick kid in the hopsital loving these god forsaken things, and how he couldn't wait for Meredith to start this last year at school. They were an odd set, Jonathan and and his daughter Meredith.

She didn't eat any more and opted to take them to school in some tupperware, and her dad suggested maybe sharing them. As if they'd make it that far before she found a good spot to dump them. No one else should suffer through such a horror.

"I am going to school now, dad."

Jonathan smiled at his daughter, "Good luck, kid."

Soon enough, Meredith was on the subway as she hurriedly tried to make her way to school. That place was horrible enough without having a late slip every day.

She ran past the crowd on the streets just to turn to the big gate that overlooked her school.

Midtown High: where all nightmares start

Even though it was a school for smart kids, Midtwon High School did not lack in its vast fill of jocks, popular girls, bullies and weirdos. Just like every standard high school, the jocks dated the pretty and popular girls and the bullies took out thier mental frustration (and lack of self-love, obviously) on the weirdos.

Meredith would know. Somehow, wierdo had turned into her middle name instead of Lee.

The hallways were still pretty full when she reached in her oversized beige t-shirt and red striped pants.

You see, it was a fashion statement.

[Preferably, don't say that in front of Gwen if you don't wish to be in a lecture for the next half an hour. Metedith learnt this the hard way.]

The Jones girl rushed, ignoring the usual quip of "Sup' weirdo?" from Flash and the occasional "Nice pants," from Betty. Meredith would have replied to Betty if only she wanted to chat endlessly with an overbearing blonde. She already had one for that kind of shit.

She was almost in class; just almost there when she fell to the floor as another body tumbled over her.

A flash of brown curls.  Smooth skin with a sharp jaw. Brown eyes with just a flicker of green.

She knew who this was. Her nerdy neighbour that she had been ignoring from the first day of school, following the particular event in which he found her drunk in the driveway at 3AM. Left quite a scar on both of them.

"Fuck's sake," The boy swore and Meredith knew that he didn't do that often because he looked apologetic at his own words, "I am so sorry!"

Meredith laughed at the situation, momentarily forgetting that she was late for class. "It's quite alright, Peter Parker."

The boy, for some reason looked confused. "You know my name?"

"Of course, I do," she shook her head as she got up, picking up her fallen book. "We are in the same class, we are neighbours and nevermind the fact that I like to remember the people who saw me cleaning snow."

"Oh— Right!" He also got up, picking up his skateboard in the process. "Stupid question. Sorry, Meredith."

He's cute, the girl decided.

She took a step back as she remembered why exactly she was in a hurry, "Okay, I am guessing we both have to go to our classes."

She had A.P. Biology and she was sure Peter wasn't in her class.

"Yeah, I have Algebra," the boy smiled at her.

"Nice running into you, Parker," she gave him a charming smile. "Literally."

"You too, Jones."

She watched the Parker boy walk away from her, dissapearing slowly out of her sight. She turned on her heel to get to class before Gwen lost her mind in her absense.

Meredith didn't know it then, but that was something; that meeting with her eccentric boy ot a neighbour, would one day be what the world would call the beginning of their tragedy.

Oh, how beautiful.
Oh, how saddening.
Oh, such a tale was called a bittersweet tragedy.

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xoxo
anna