"Omg, me too!" She suddenly exclaims. Her beautiful grey eyes turn darker as she talks with excitement.
"I don't know why but I also feel totally at ease with you. I feel like I don't have to pretend with you. I can tell you anything and be my absolute creepiest, weirdest, and freakazoid self you know. I guess that's why I couldn't hold my tongue from blabbing just now.
Her choice of words makes me laugh.
Guess so too but creepiest, weirdest, and freakazoid? It's hard to picture you as the crazy kind of girl Victoria. You look like..." I pause for some seconds to give her a quick once over, while she also cocks her head aside eager to hear what I thought she looked like
"You look like a fairy princess. Uhmm... A Barbie-like fairy princess ?" I said hoping she wouldn't be offended by my description since Barbie is typically perceived as a woman lacking substance or intelligence.
She isn't offended. She just burst out laughing
"Yeah, I get that a lot. People come up to me with 'Oh, you're so pretty.' little girls ask if I'm a real princess. My mom's dream girl. She never wanted me to be a warrior. All she wanted was for me to look like a princess and act like a real lady. Left to her, I would have been a soft-spoken, delicate, and dainty woman with no mind of her own!" She says sounding appalled
"In my mother's words; a lady should know to carry herself with elegance no matter where she is. She must be very aware of her body, graceful and feminine."
I nod my head in agreement
"All these qualities I can clearly see in you. The way you talk and carry yourself speaks grace. She did a good job. She taught you well"
She scoffs,
"Yeah, right she taught me well." She says, rolling her eyes upward in amusement.
"I emulated all she wanted just for her to leave me alone can't you see? Looks can be deceiving Ash so be careful. I am what you called, what's the word... Unusual. Abnormal..."
Her descriptions of herself surprised me.
"No shit?" I questioningly chuckle, surprised to hear her describe herself as unusual and abnormal
"No!..." She replies seriously
"Oh?– okay, tell me one craziest thing you've ever done?" I can't help but ask. My curiosity about her claims got the best of me.
"I'll tell you two but first..." She raises the cup of juice that I just handed her.
"I think you should have some too since you just puked your breakfast"
"I would if I wasn't sure it would come rushing out the moment I drink it. I think I'll just make ginger tea for myself instead."
"You know, water is life. Since you're vomiting continuously, you must drink fluids, so that you can stay hydrated. But not to worry, I have a solution to that problem..."
"You do?" I eagerly ask. "Then tell me already. What is the solution?"
"Ice cubes..." She says and my face falls in disappointment.
She smiles
"I think that look on your face was the exact look I had on my face when I first saw my pregnant friend sucking on ice. When I asked her why she explained to me that pregnant women who have trouble keeping food, or even water, down can find solace in ice cubes.
Ice does not have any odor and can be digested easily, unlike other nausea-causing foods. She told me that the queasy, early morning feeling has been known to ease just by crunching on ice."
She walks to the fridge as she talks. She doesn't ask me if the idea goes well with me or not.
"You have ice, I presume?"
"Yes, of course, but..." I say sounding unsure and she stops in her tracks to look at me.
"Do you by any chance have a phone in here?" She asks smilingly
"This is a prison, why would I have a phone?"
"Well, you have a fridge, and a gas cooker– isn't having a phone nothing compared to those ones?"
We both laugh
"Yeah, I get you. And, no! I don't have a phone. What do you need a phone for anyway?"
"So we can check Google to see if it's truly safe for you to take ice." She replies
I met Victoria like thirty minutes ago and even though she's witty and all, it's logical if I think of her as a total stranger and not believe in her words, right?...
Yes, that's how it should be but strangely it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels as if I've known her my whole life.
"There's no need for that," I say and move ahead of her to open the fridge.
"I'm just going to suck on the cube, right?" I ask as I bring out the ice tray from the freezer.
"Yeah." She says and removes a bowl from the plate rack, handing it over to me.
I popped some ice into the bowl and put one in my mouth. I find it refreshing as it slowly melts to soothe my dry throat. I like it and want more so I take the second. As it's melting, I'm dreading that feeling of nausea. I expect to feel the now familiar dreadful roll in my stomach that often occurs before I vomit but nothing
"I told you, you would like it." Her face breaks into a grin when I smile after taking two cubes of ice
"Do you have more of the ice tray?" She asked
"Yeah. About five of them came with the fridge." I reply and bring them out for her.
"Great!" She excitedly replies and moves to action, bringing stuff out from the fridge. Yogurts, flavored milk... and pouring them into the ice trays, I guess to make tiny popsicles
"I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat today." She announces when all the popsicles she made have gone into the freezer.
"Mine went down the toilet bowl, so me and you, same," I reply
"I'll make us something to eat and before you protest..." She says when she saw I wanted to talk
"I promise I won't make anything with a smell you will find unpleasant, okay?"
"And how would you know the smell I will find unpleasant?" I ask in amusement and she shrugs
"Dry toast with jam for me. You can also have a small piece if you're able to or you can have crackers with cheese?" She says questioningly
"Hmmm... How do you know so much about pregnant women's diets?– Oh, I forgot that two of your friends are pregnant."
"Yeah..." She replies as she busies herself with getting the stuff she will need for our lunch
"So you're okay with just the dry toast?" I ask, feeling guilty that I'm making her eat such plain food.
"It's not just the dry toast. I'm spreading jam over it. I can have some fruits along with it if I want, so relax"
"I'm sorry for making you eat that."
"You're sorry?" She asks, chuckling in disbelief. "Have you seen what they call food that they're serving people in here? I'm grateful for this toast and jam Ash. Really." She says seriously.
"I'm also grateful for having you here," I say and she smiles
When she finishes preparing the food, I get half a toast without the jam and we sit opposite each other on our beds to eat.
While eating, I ask her enthusiastically...
"You promised to tell me the two craziest things you've ever done?"
"Yes, I didn't forget. I just want us to finish eating. But who says we can't eat and talk at the same time?"
"Yeah..."
"So when I was fifteen, I stowed away on a commercial flight on a dare..."
"You sto–wed away!?" I ask, my eyes widen in disbelief.
The first time I ever saw outside Night Howlers pack was when Martha took me to see her cousin. To think she did that when she was just fifteen pretty much surprised me. Wasn't she scared she would get lost or something?
She laughs
"Yes. The funny thing is, the airline never caught me... It was on a weekend. My parents were away doing something. So about five of us from school drove to the airport. We all bet each other who could do the craziest thing, and we put up money for it. When it came to my turn, I said I would stow away on a flight for two thousand dollars.
"Are you fucking kidding me!" I say, laughing
"No, I'm not... Anyways, they were all rich kids but I didn’t think they would take me up on the offer but they did. We pretended we were on a school excursion till we found our way and I climbed over the fence on the outskirts of the airport onto the tarmac and climbed aboard a plane.
When I got on the plane, I sneaked around till I found the galley and hid in a pantry. I thought the plane was going to New York or DC, never knew it was transatlantic.
My eyes grow wider
"Oh my goodness!"
"Yeah. Luckily for me, when I extricated myself from the pantry, the stewards were serving drinks. I found an empty seat and sat down. Amazingly, no one thought to check the manifest because that seat was empty on take-off.
I still didn’t know where the plane was going... I fell asleep– I woke up and we still hadn't landed. When the time got close to midnight I knew there would be hell to pay. What am I going to tell my parents? Long story short, we landed in Rome and I was immediately picked up by their police. My friends confessed to my parents. Long story short, I became two thousand dollars richer and grounded till my sixteenth birthday.
My mouth hangs open till she finishes her story. Who would believe that a girl who looks as innocent as Victoria can do something as crazy as that?
"Close your mouth before you catch a fly." She says, laughing.
"You're a crazy girl," I say in amazement and she laughs
"I know, right?"
"So what's the second craziest thing?" I adjusted my sitting position on the bed to make myself more comfortable for the story. "Which is the craziest, the first or the second?"
"I don't know. You can be the judge when you hear it... So I had a crush on the Alpha of our pack. To spite my mom, I pledged myself to be his concubine..."
"Holy shit!" I exclaim