i have had these girls for over a year at this point and wanted to tighten up their designs now that i know them better!!! plus now if i wanna make little informational blurbs i have icons i can use. big win.
decided i wanted to write about marigold meeting lenora for the first time because my writing break is going great i am great at taking breaks. no knowledge of anything needed to read this, this is oc city all the way…
Lenora’s mother would have liked her. Lenora was incredibly certain of this fact. Lenora’s mother had been a necromancer, or a warlock, or something else grim enough that no one wanted to talk about her, because whenever Lenora was being difficult, her father would make eye contact with her stepmother and say, almost apologetically, “She is Lin’s daughter.” And since Lenora’s version of being difficult very frequently involved things like covering herself in blood and standing in the halls at midnight, or trying to use the power of a lightning strike to call ghosts into the house, or stealing all the books on black magic from the Merriweather library just to scare the maids, Lenora imagined that Lin Chou must have been a formidable force indeed.
Lenora’s stepmother, Prisilla Merriweather, was blonde and sweet and always dressed a bit like a confection. She was the sort of person who tittered instead of laughing, she wore pretty white gloves trimmed with lace, and she didn’t look anything like Lenora, but she didn’t let that stop her from introducing herself as Lenora’s mother.
It infuriated Lenora. Her mother was Lin Chou. Her stepmother had swept in during the funeral, when Lenora was too much of a baby to stop it, and wooed her father within the span of about a month. Lenora hardly wanted to be the daughter of a person who would do a thing like that. But Lenora’s father had never really liked Lenora’s mother, or, for that matter, Lenora, and acquiesced with easy delight to the wishes of a woman who conducted herself with spun-sugar idiocy—even if those wishes involved dressing Lenora like a cupcake and insisting she be trained out of her appalling obstinance.
Lenora was always too angry to ever comply, which led to situations like this one: a grown-up party down below, and her forbidden from attending. Lenora hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, but the fact that she’d been forbidden somehow still stung. Prisilla had delivered the news with the smug satisfaction of having finally found a punishment for Lenora’s transgressions. No one in this house knew her at all.
The doorknob rattled.
Lenora stared bitterly at the door and didn’t bother getting up to open it. Presumably it was either Prisilla or one of the maids, and neither option appealed to Lenora at all.
The doorknob rattled again, a little more insistently this time.
That was moderately interesting. The maids would probably have said something by now. Prisilla would definitely have said something by now. Lenora tiptoed over to the door and placed her eye to the keyhole.
A small figure, lit only by the moon streaming in through the big hall windows, stood awkwardly outside the door. She was wearing too many skirts and a large flower in her hair—petticoated and beribboned in a style that had gone out of season two seasons ago. She didn’t say anything, just plucked at her lace sleeves and shifted in her lovely little slippers.
Lenora wrenched the door open, hoping—but no. Disappointingly, as soon as the light from Lenora’s candle hit the girl, it became clear that this was not some spectral horror here to end Lenora’s days, it was just a little half-elf wearing a dress that wasn’t in style.
“You’re not a ghost,” said Lenora accusingly.
The girl blinked a few times very fast. She appeared to be taking in Lenora’s outfit—grim white nightgown artfully splattered with chicken blood—and then Lenora’s long, dark hair and pallid complexion. Prisilla called it vampiric.
“Are you a ghost?” the girl asked. She didn’t sound particularly frightened by the notion, just genuinely curious.
“Yes,” said Lenora immediately.
The girl crossed her arms, eyes narrowing. “You’re in on it, aren’t you?”
“In on what?” said Lenora, realized that she was ceding ground, and said quickly, “Yes. What?”
“Those two other girls downstairs in the—dresses—” the girl waved her hands awkwardly around, miming the shape of a dress that did look a bit less terrible than her own, “they said someone was asking for me up here, and I did think they were making fun of me a bit, but I didn’t really want to be down there anyway. I’m not supposed to be here.”
This was not at all remotely interesting to Lenora. “Fine,” she said, moving to shut the door.
The girl’s slippered foot shot out and wedged in the door, refusing to let it close. “I just think you should know that you are not very nice,” she said vindictively. “Just because I don’t know anyone here and I don’t know all the rules and I don’t dress the way everyone else is dressing, that doesn’t mean it’s all right to try and trick me into thinking there’s a ghost upstairs. That’s very unkind.”
“I’m very unkind,” said Lenora immediately. “Go away.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“I am a ghost,” said Lenora stubbornly. “I’m the ghost of Lin Chou.”
“You aren’t funny,” snapped the girl, and turned away, storming down the stairs in a flurry of skirts.
Well, fine. Now Lenora could go back to what she did best: sitting in the dark and being miserable. She shut the door very firmly and snuffed out the candle.
+
Lenora actually did have to go to the Midwinter Fete. No one thought that she would behave, but at the Midwinter Fete, that was all right, because plenty of people did worse things when Father brought out the good drinks. Prisilla was upsettingly smug about this plan of hers until Lenora said, casually, that she supposed even a broken clock was right twice a day, which got Lenora banned from talking to anyone at the party unless they weren’t someone important.
The half-elf girl was there again. Lenora would have gone up and said something horrible to her, but a few of the other girls from patriar families had clustered together to whisper and giggle about her dress—which was, if possible, even worse than the one she’d worn to the autumn ball. The girl’s chin jutted firmly out as she continued to serve herself food.
Narisa Eomane broke off from the rest of the group, wearing a dangerously friendly smile that Lenora didn’t trust an inch.
“Marigold,” she said. “Isn’t it? Marigold Sashenstar?”
The half-elf’s shoulders went up. Warily, she said, “Yes.”
“Oh, don’t still be mad about that ghost thing,” said Narisa airily. “That was months ago! And you took it very nicely, really, so we can all be proper friends now.”
Marigold’s expression thawed infinitesimally. Her fingers were nervously tight around the plate.
“I was just wondering.” Narisa’s smile was sharpening to a point. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Did you really almost get stabbed to death?”
Marigold went white. The plate slipped out of her hands and shattered on the floor.
As the food flew in every direction, Narisa darted back with a little shriek. “My dress! Gods, were you raised in a barn? I was only asking a question, that’s what you do at parties—”
Marigold turned on her heel and collided directly with Lenora, knocking them both into the table and knocking quite a lot of food over along with them. Lenora, who had had a much more elaborate plan than this to cause trouble, fell back into a pile of eclairs with the distinct sense of unearned success.
“LENORA PRISILLA MERRIWEATHER!”
Marigold had fallen sideways into a cake and wasn’t getting up. Lenora sat up in her chocolate-covered skirts and surveyed Prisilla, who was stalking towards them with fire in her eyes.
“The one time I go against my better judgment,” Prisilla hissed, hauling Lenora to her feet. “And at the Midwinter Fete! Honestly, Lenora, you cannot go one minute without harassing some poor soul—do you know what that child has been through? Are you even remotely aware of anything outside yourself?”
“Are you?” said Lenora.
Prisilla pulled Lenora out of the ballroom, up the stairs, and back up into her room, tossing her in before throwing up her hands and saying, “I cannot be expected to deal with this in perpetuity! I am not your enemy, Lenora! I want what’s best for you!”
Lenora shut the door in her face.
+
It didn’t really matter whether Prisilla wanted what was best for Lenora or what was worst for Lenora or what was best for Prisilla. Prisilla had taken down every single picture of Lin Chou in the house. Stuck her name onto Lenora’s like she could just stick herself into Lenora’s life by force of will alone, never mind what Lenora had to say about it.
Lenora lay back in her chocolate skirts and tried to imagine what Lin Chou would say about this. Her mother. Daring. Disappointing. Dead.
The doorknob rattled.
“Go away,” said Lenora.
The doorknob twisted in a way that doorknobs couldn’t twist without magic, and Marigold stepped through, honey and icing all down her side. Quietly, she shut the door behind her, then sat down slowly on the floor.
“Go away,” said Lenora thickly. She didn’t know why she felt like crying.
Marigold didn’t move.
“Go away!”
“You’re not the ghost of Lin Chou,” said Marigold slowly. “You’re—Lenora.”
Something inside Lenora broke all the way open. She slid off the bed and sat across from Marigold, sliding her feet across the short distance between the closed door and the bed. Marigold’s honeyed slippers met Lenora’s chocolate-covered shoes and they stared intently at each other.
“Narisa Eomane is a bitch,” said Lenora emphatically, “and she did that very much on purpose. You don’t know anyone here, but I do, and that’s why I stay upstairs. These parties are awful and these girls are very stupid.”
Marigold said awkwardly, “I don’t think we’re supposed to dismiss other girls offhand or immediately. Majra says I need to try to make friends at least a little.”
“Make friends with me and give up on the stupid people,” said Lenora before she could stop herself.
you people don't even know lenora yet but im going a little crazy rn because i wrote the first draft and she was like. background at best. and now i have figured out how to make her presence work in a way that is not only devastating but immensely important, and i have to just sit here and think about her through november. she's a lesbian who has the weirdest comphet crushes in the entire world. she does not forget and she does not forgive. she stands next to marigold sometimes to make herself look like the cool terrifying one but if you remove marigold from her company she turns into a wet noodle. she keeps flying off the handle and doing bludgeoning damage. she is entirely rizzless except by accident. she and marigold have weird little bitchy sidebar conversations at the back of every party about how they hate everyone. she is professionally annoying but in a really holier than thou teenage girl way where she makes it seem like she's the one being morally superior even though she's just being terrible for no reason. and she's a paladin
wrote some original fiction look at that!!! have been thinking very loosely about writing the bakery ladies in a modern setting, and a love interest for marigold keeps insisting i give her some attention, so i gave her some today. :)
amazing news for all: this DOES read completely fine without any context! it's a standalone. soooo if u wanna meet my girls but have found the new fandom confusing: meet them now!
~~~
Marigold hadn’t actually been expecting to find anyone else under the table. She’d sort of been hoping for the opposite: a people-free location, somewhere that no one was looking at, where she wouldn’t be surrounded by a thousand incredibly thin people wearing as little as possible because they didn’t have any reason to feel like an overstuffed sausage when they wore a glorified bra to a social engagement. And she wasn’t one of those thin-girls-who-thought-they-were-fat-but-were-really-just-charmingly-curvy, either–she had cellulite, she couldn’t ever find anything in a Target, and stretch marks covered her hips and breasts and upper arms in such a way that low-rise jeans and corset tops wouldn’t have looked half as charming on her, at least in her estimation.
Not that the size of the people here was what had Marigold under the table–no, that was just what she’d been thinking bitterly about for the first fifteen minutes of the party, as soon as effortlessly beautiful Evie had shown up with equally effortlessly beautiful Amara, both of them looking practically emaciated, both of them wearing the sorts of things that Marigold had sort of thought people only wore for Instagram photos. And absolutely everyone at the party was beautiful, too, of course, with Marigold easily the biggest girl there, never mind that she didn’t know anyone there, because she still didn’t know a single meaningful thing about Evie.
Evie had swanned off immediately once it was clear that Marigold was “settled in,” or at least “settled in” by her definition, which mostly seemed to mean “physically present.” Marigold suspected that she was off with Amara, or with one of the many boys bearing down on her like they could smell blood in the water. That was the sort of thing that was supposed to concern a sister, wasn’t it? Would have, if it was Marigold getting flirted with at a strange party and Roslin and Lenora lingering reprovingly in the corner–but Roslin and Lenora would never have left her alone at one of these, and Evie had, which was maybe the difference between adoptive and biological sisters. Wonderful to find that out now.
So Marigold had stayed standing there, awkwardly, and made excruciating conversation with people she hadn’t wanted to talk to, because she’d come here to talk to Evie, to spend time with Evie, to learn more about a sister who she’d lost and somehow found again, only to find that the feeling wasn’t mutual and Evie really just wanted to go be social with another party-goer in the host’s bathroom. And she wouldn’t have ducked under the table if not for the fact that one of the party-goers had asked, “Wait, you’re Evie’s sister? That chick she’s always talking about who got, like, murdered or some shit?” at which point Marigold had found herself so blazingly angry at Evie that she’d known she couldn’t talk to anyone at the party anymore.
Hence: table! Not the world’s most normal hiding place, but most of the party-goers were drunk enough that no one was looking very hard for Marigold. She’d seen a flutter of movement under the tablecloth, remembered that one of the hosts had mentioned a cat, decided that mortification was better than fielding even one more question about a story no stranger had any right to (and no sister had any right to tell). So she had ducked under the table, and she had found her eyes locked with eyes so green they seemed to glow in the dark.
Marigold said the only thing she could think of. “Is this seat taken?”
The eyes blinked. The face they belonged to was pale and sallow, possibly East Asian–though of course, Marigold, being something of a mix of things herself, had never been very good at ascertaining where anyone else hailed from, which made guessing probably not a good idea. The girl had long, dark hair, blacker than even the dim light around them, and she was wearing thick-framed black glasses that only added to the large luminescence of her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just tucked her feet in so that Marigold could shift all the way under the table.
Marigold never did well with silences, and she wasn’t really sure how to fill this one. What did the standard social contract have to say about dinner table conversation when one or both party members found themselves under it? “Do you, um.” She smiled awkwardly. “Come here often?”
The small smile that danced across the girl’s face immediately settled Marigold’s nerves. Anyone who smiled at an awful joke like that would probably be a very permissive conversationalist, which Marigold always needed in a conversation partner; her mouth ran on and she wasn’t very good at stopping it when it started.
“I’m Marigold,” Marigold offered.
The girl raised a hand and waved. She was wearing quite a lot of rings and none of them matched. More than a few were the cheap plastic sort one might get as an arcade prize. She said something, barely a whisper, but the music was loud enough that even a whisper would have been impossible to hear.
“Sorry?”
The girl bit her lip. She leaned forward. At normal volume, she said, “Beetle.”
“...Beetle?” repeated a bemused Marigold.
The girl jerked her thumb towards her chest.
“Oh, you’re Beetle?”
The girl smiled again. She was wearing lipstick, Marigold noted, blood-red, but with a blackish undertone that made her look positively gothic. There were really quite a lot of things to look at when it came to this girl; it felt like Marigold could spend more than just a few centuries looking at her, and still have places she wanted to keep looking. Mostly the eyes. Her lashes were sharp and thin, like spider legs.
“I’m Marigold,” said Marigold, winced, and said, “I think I said that already.”
Beetle moved forward a bit more. Stared at Marigold, unblinking. Marigold felt pleasantly unmoored and incredibly aware of how pretty this girl was. Was this the sort of party where people kissed each other? Marigold was a bit too sober for drunken kissing, but maybe Beetle was drunk and wanted to kiss her. She didn’t smell like alcohol. She smelled…sort of like hand sanitizer. A lot of hand sanitizer.
Beetle moved back again, still staring, still smiling. Clearly this interaction appeared to be going successfully, at least from her perspective, which was a baffling relief. Marigold was fairly certain all she’d done was say her own name and usurp Beetle’s solitary hiding place.
There was a crash from the living room, followed by raised voices. Marigold flinched involuntarily.
Beetle’s hand rested on her shoulder, feather-light, as if waiting for permission to close her fingers and hold Marigold all the way. It was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one; Marigold liked very much when people touched her, though she wasn’t always sure how much touching was allowed between people who barely knew each other. She shrugged her shoulder up a bit so that it connected more firmly with Beetle’s hand, which made Beetle smile again, reassuringly, and tighten her grip just enough to make it less of a hovering question.
“It’s a bit loud,” Marigold confessed.
Beetle nodded emphatically.
“Do you think anyone will notice if we, I don’t know,” Marigold glanced furtively at the moving feet around them, “leave the table and go somewhere else?”
Beetle said, “Oh, I don’t care. I don’t know these people.”
Her voice, while warm, was somehow a lot lower than Marigold had expected–a warm alto voice. This, too, Marigold liked immensely. She let Beetle steer her out from under the table, made brave by Beetle’s hand on her upper arm. A few people by the table stepped back, alarmed and bemused, and Beetle fixed them with a hard look that held nothing of the still, sweet curiosity she’d shown Marigold under the table, which made Marigold like her even more.
Evie was kissing Amara on the sofa. Marigold turned her eyes away, towards Beetle, as they stepped quietly outside.
The street was silent save for the muffled sounds from the party indoors. It was chilly, but pleasantly so; Marigold hadn’t brought a jacket, and didn’t half regret it. She liked the cold.
Beetle said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”
“So you don’t know these people, but you’ve been here enough times to know I’m new to this?”
“I live upstairs,” said Beetle. “They mostly just invite me to be nice. I came today because it’s November and I have a shit-ton of discount Halloween candy that I didn’t know what to do with, so I was just like, hey, why not give it to a bunch of drunk people and keep it from cluttering up my room forever?”
“Where did you get the discount Halloween candy?”
Beetle smiled. “At the grocery store.”
“Too much to just eat yourself?”
“I have little siblings,” said Beetle. “I was putting together a care package to send to them in California, but I guess I sort of overestimated how much Halloween candy was gonna be in those bags. You know how usually they fill potato chip bags only halfway? Kinda thought the Halloween candy bags would be like that. Or maybe I wasn’t really paying attention. I don’t know.”
Marigold asked, shyly, “Do you still have candy left over, or would we have to go back into the party to get it?”
“I got like seven bags,” said Beetle. “I think I brought four down. I left three upstairs because I felt like I might need them for something.” She shrugged, then smiled. “I guess it’s this?”
“You’re awfully nice, you know,” said Marigold.
“Not a lot of people tell me that,” said Beetle.
“Well, you are! I wouldn’t give my candy away to a stranger, if I had any–”
“Oh, please. You’re not a stranger. We’re under-the-table buddies. That’s basically like the antisocial shut-in version of brothers-in-arms.”
Marigold was opening her mouth to say something else when a car across the street honked its horn, once, twice, three times, with particular urgency. She recognized the sound immediately. Turning slowly, she exhaled through her teeth with exasperated frustration. “Oh, hold on,” she said, and crossed the street.
“No no no don’t come over here!” shrieked Roslin from the front seat. “We’re not here! We’re–Mom, why would you do that?!”
Thea said, “Bunny, did Evie leave you at that party by yourself? I keep saying–”
“Did you follow me here?!” Marigold demanded.
“We came along to try to stop her,” said Lenora, who was sitting in the backseat with Sofie in her lap. She added, somewhat redundantly, “Didn’t work.”
Sofie babbled. Marigold said, “You brought Sofie?! It’s well past her bedtime! And you know I’ve been trying to get her on that regular sleep schedule–”
“Couldn’t find a babysitter,” said Thea.
“One of you could have stayed home! I told you,” Marigold continued indignantly, “I said it was fine, and it is, and I don’t need some sort of police escort if I want to go and spend some time with my sister–”
“I don’t like the look of some of the people that girl trusts,” said Thea ominously.
“You don’t like the look of anyone, Mommy,” said Marigold, even though she did actually agree. “Butt out.”
“Will you need a ride home?” said Thea. “Don’t see Evie round.”
Marigold had, in fact, come to the party with Evie, and her phone was still the old flip phone that Thea had gotten all of them because Thea didn’t believe in smartphones, so calling an Uber wasn’t really an option for her in the same way that it would have been were her mother, oh, remotely fucking normal about anything. But the thing about Thea was that because Marigold couldn’t call an Uber, Thea would also do things like this, which, annoyingly, pretty much balanced things out.
She said, “You came to give me a ride home?”
“Case you needed one,” said Thea. “Parties run late for girls your age. And you don’t go to these things often.”
Marigold said awkwardly, “Well, I’m–sort of going to go get Halloween candy from this girl’s apartment?”
Lenora sat up straighter, staring incredulously. Roslin said, “Bunny, how are you even a real person. Oh my god. She’s literally going to kidnap you.”
“I am twenty years old,” said Marigold.
“They’re going to–” Roslin was starting to laugh. “They’re going to have to put your face on the fucking milk cartons. You’re going to be the first ever college student to get kidnapped the same way they get kindergarteners. You would literally get into an unmarked van for candy. This is why we’ve gotta drive out with the baby at butt o’clock in the morning and make sure you’re not getting yourself roofied or something!”
Thea stiffened. Marigold said, “Rosie, do not say roofied in front of Mom?”
“You’re the one saying I’m going to get Halloween candy from this girl’s apartment in front of Mom!”
Marigold glanced over her shoulder. Beetle was standing across the street. The March family was pretty historically good at being really loud for no reason, which meant that there was a less-than-zero chance she’d heard all of that, even with the distance. “Look, just–wait in the car, I’ll call you,” she said.
“Not even slightly,” said Thea. “You’ll get the candy and you’ll come home.”
“I am twenty years old! Mom–”
“You’ve got class in the morning and you’re not taking the train before it’s light out, which you’ll have to do to get to campus on time. We’ll wait out here to drive you home.”
“God,” said Marigold, “fine,” even though she wasn’t really all that mad and they all knew it. Having a family who drove across town just to make sure you got home safe wasn’t always a guarantee. She leaned in through the open window and pressed a firm kiss to Thea’s cheek. “I love you, mommy.”
“My bunny,” said Thea. Her hand passed gently over Marigold’s hair. “Evie been good to you?”
Marigold didn’t really want to answer that question. She squeezed Thea’s hand and hoped that this would count as a response.
Lenora said, “If she turns out to be a total bitch, we’ll stab her.”
“Do not talk about stabbing in front of the baby,” said Marigold immediately. She turned back towards the lit-up house and the too-loud music, picking up the pace.
Beetle was still standing there, waiting. She said, “Cute family!” in a tone of voice that was decisively amused without being mocking, which Marigold liked.
“They brought the baby out at whatever the fuck time it is,” said Marigold tiredly, “just to make sure I was fine, which I am. You’re not going to, like, take me up to your apartment and murder me with your Halloween candy, right?”
“I’m thinking of calling it Death By Chocolate,” said Beetle, straight-faced. Marigold snorted. “Bummer you’ve gotta go, though. Kinda felt like we should get to know each other.”
“Really?” said Marigold. Her heart flipped over.
Beetle smiled, that eerie, lovely smile, and said, “You ever just feel like maybe you’re supposed to know someone?”
Yes. No. Sort of. Marigold had felt that way about Thea, Roslin, Lenora, very much Sofie, but it hadn’t felt like this. “You could be wrong,” she said, carefully.
“Okay, yeah, I could be,” Beetle gamely agreed, turning on her heel to head back towards the house. Marigold followed. “Tell me about yourself.”
They walked through the front garden, everything halfway wet the way it always was on that kind of a cold November night. Beetle didn’t take the front door in, instead weaving carefully towards the side of the house and a rickety set of stairs leading up to an upstairs apartment. Plants, Marigold noticed: she had a whole bunch of plants in pots on the landing outside the apartment, which felt a lot like their home and all the plants Ros was always fussing over. Maybe that was one of those supposed-to-know-her feelings right there.
“Well, I’m Marigold,” she said. “Marigold Baker. I mean, technically Marigold Riverborn, but that’s way too long a story to tell this early in the relationship, probably, so let’s just say Marigold Baker for now. I’m in culinary school—”
“Marigold Baker in culinary school?” said Beetle—again, laughing, but without any malice to it. “I’m kind of obsessed with you already. Keep going.”
Marigold grinned at her shoes, darting her eyes back up as they climbed the stairs. Beetle’s miniskirt rode up a little and showed off a rip in her fishnets, higher up her thigh. “I’m in culinary school,” she continued, “because I want to be a pastry chef, like, licensed and everything. My mom Thea runs a body shop and I think it would be super great if I could figure out a way to make it a body shop that also serves cupcakes. We kind of have to look into all the different business things we’d have to do for that? And Thea’s money’s still tied up in the divorce, which is—so not something I’m supposed to be talking about. Do not tell her I said anything.”
“Sure,” said Beetle, mouth twitching. “I kind of haven’t met your mom, so I feel like that might not be too hard?”
“Well, if we’re supposed to know each other and you’re obsessed with me, it stands to reason that you will meet my family,” Marigold pointed out, “them being my beating heart and all.”
“Oh,” said Beetle, “you’re one of those family-is-everything girls! Kinda dig it.”
What a complicated sentence. “I’m…adopted,” said Marigold carefully; it was not the whole story, but it was as much as she gave out. “As are my sisters. So, yes, they all mean a lot to me. We sort of chose each other.”
Beetle tilted her head thoughtfully. “Neato,” she finally said.
“What about you?” Marigold asked. “Is family everything?”
Beetle’s easy smile flickered. She said, “I’ve got a brother and a sister and I send them a shit-ton of candy whenever I can, like I said.”
Marigold knew the cadence of a half-truth. She didn’t press—just watched Beetle unlock the door.
The apartment was wallpapered, and poorly, in an intricate black-and-emerald pattern that made the space feel even darker than it probably was. Beetle turned on the lights to reveal that the walls were covered in photo frames. “Bugs,” she said cheerfully.
Marigold scanned the walls, a fascinated smile stealing across her face. Every framed photo was of a different insect—some of them drawings, some photographs, some scientific diagrams, all with a small identifying label attached to the frame. “Beetle!” she said, delighted.
“Yeah, it’s actually Beatrice, but Beetle feels like a better opening statement,” Beetle supplied. “Makes people go oh, okay, all the bugs make total sense, rather than whoa, that chick’s got so many bugs in her house! Is Marigold your name, or is it just ‘cause, you know, the hair?”
Marigold twined a red curl cheerfully around her finger. “Marigold is really my name!” she assured Beetle.
“Does anyone ever call you anything else?”
“Mari, usually.”
“How do you feel about Goldie?” Marigold’s nose crinkled. Beetle threw up her hands and said, “Mari it is. Or, I don’t know, what about Riri?”
Marigold felt a slimy shudder run through her. Face perfectly composed, she said, “My sister’s boyfriend calls her Riri. So.”
“Oh, which sister?” said Beetle with interest.
“...The one who invited me to this party,” said Marigold.
Beetle waited. When Marigold did not supply any further information, she said, with a note of friendly and deliberate finality, “Sounds complicated,” and moved further into the apartment. “Do you have, I don’t know, an Instagram or something? I kinda want to send you this artist I follow. I feel like you might really like her work.”
“...No,” said Marigold awkwardly. “My mom’s sort of got a whole Luddite thing going on. Like, right down to all the machinery-smashing.”
Beetle said, “You know the Luddites were just trying to go for job security, right? Not the worst thing to have happening.”
Marigold grinned a bit. “My mom is big on job security,” she agreed. “And also fucking up computers.”
“You should get an Instagram.”
“I use my sister’s. I’ll give you hers.”
“Your party sister?”
“No,” Marigold giggled, mostly because she wasn’t sure what else to do, “the sister in the car. Um, one of them. Roslin.”
Beetle was rummaging in a cabinet. She pulled out a large orange bag, handing it to Marigold, and said, “Take it. No razor blades, swear to God.”
Marigold opened the bag and laughed out loud. There wasn’t a trace of any name-brand candy—rather, the bag was full of themed chocolate, milk and dark and white chocolate insects in a variety of shapes and sizes. “You’ve got a really consistent aesthetic!” she observed. “So you just send a whole bunch of chocolate bugs to your siblings, usually?”
“Nah, they get the name-brand stuff,” said Beetle. “This candy’s what I bring out for the cute girls.”
Marigold blinked, nervously, and kept her smile on her face, not entirely certain what to say next. An affirmation, possibly? It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been considering it, only that as soon as it was on the table, it felt objectively terrifying. She wondered if her reticence would be read the wrong way and the candy would be put back in the cabinet. She hoped it wouldn’t.
Beetle’s smile softened a little and she ducked her head. “But if you want the name-brand candy,” she started.
“Probably it would be a bit easier to transport,” said Marigold awkwardly. “This is a full bag of unwrapped chocolate, and I really don’t want to take all of your good bugs home.”
“A good bug going with a good bug,” said Beetle, solemnly.
“I have no idea what that means.”
Beetle took the orange bag away and handed Marigold a fun-sized bag of Snickers bars. She said, “It’s seriously fucked up that I don’t have a party mix bag on me; this thing is depressingly uniform. Oh, fuck, are you allergic to nuts?”
Marigold shook her head.
“God. Good. Should have asked about food allergies before I just started handing you shit.” Beetle smiled again, self-deprecatingly. “Snickers okay? I might have some other stuff if you wanna see.”
Marigold didn’t care one way or the other. She liked this beautiful, strange liminal space she’d stepped into, where she was suddenly an almost-grown-up holding a bag of Halloween candy with a new friend who thought she was pretty. She wanted to stay in it a bit longer.
“What do you have?” she asked.
Beetle turned back towards the cabinet. “Uh, Three Musketeers, Butterfingers, and this one’s kinda polarizing, but a whole bunch of York peppermint pies.”
“What’s polarizing about peppermint?”
“I knew this guy who said it was like eating a bunch of toothpaste. Almost put me off it for a year or two before I forgot I totally love eating toothpaste.” Beetle shifted the bag down. “Is that a yes to the peppermint?”
“Norie loves peppermint,” said Marigold.
“Okay, but they’re for you. Do you like peppermint?”
Marigold blushed, and smiled again. “...Yes to the peppermint.”
“And because I’m kinda thinking maybe you end up giving all of them to Norie,” said Beetle, “because you’ve got that kinda sparkly-sweet thing going on, I’m going to give you the Three Musketeers too and say those are for your mom and your sisters, and the peppermint’s literally just for you.” She considered. “Two are for Norie, who I’m guessing is…your other sister?”
“My other sister!” Marigold brightly confirmed.
“So which one brought you to the party?”
Marigold thought about Evie, almost certainly throwing herself at someone who wasn’t her insufferably slimy boyfriend, and her jaw clenched.
Beetle didn’t ask again. “That enough candy for you?”
“Almost too much!” said Marigold.
“No such thing as too much candy,” said Beetle firmly. “At least not if you’re starting from zero. I’m starting from seven bags; I’ve gotta offload some of this shit.” She took a handful from the orange bag, pressing a collection of half-melted bugs into Marigold’s hand. “Take at least a few. Y’know, as, like, a token of my affection, or whatever.”
She was blushing a little, which showed up really easily on her pale face. Marigold felt a sense of profound satisfaction that her own golden-brown skin didn’t redden half as visibly. “Thanks for the beetles, Beetle,” she said, which made them both smile. “Can you actually hold onto them for a second, though? I’m going to give you—”
“Your sister’s Instagram?”
Smooth and sweet, Marigold said, “My number.”
“Oh, shit, okay!” said Beetle. Her blush deepened and she smiled in a way that was much more silly and excited. “Sure! But I do want your sister’s Insta too, because that thing in your pocket is super obviously a flip phone, and I’m one of those long texters.”
“I’ll just make an Instagram and text you,” said Marigold. “The handle is—”
“—no, man, you gotta check to see if it’s available before you—”
“Marigold underscore Baker underscore Tasty underscore Pastry underscore Nature apostrophe S no space Masterpiece.”
Beetle bit her lip, clearly trying not to laugh, and said, “Dude, that is not gonna work with the character limit. Just give me your sister’s for now so we don’t have to call each other like old people.”
Marigold pressed the melting chocolate into Beetle’s hands. It felt sort of like a kiss, somehow—wet and sticky and silly. Full of warm honesty. There was a magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, a schedule written out in neat handwriting. “Is it okay if I—”
“Go ahead, man!”
Marigold wrote her phone number, and Roslin’s Instagram underneath, then added, in parentheses, Marigold Baker the Party Girl, with a little heart next to it. She liked the thought of existing as Marigold Baker the Party Girl on someone’s fridge. She wondered if Beetle would do what she’d do were their positions reversed, and just never erase it, letting the erasable marker dry into that permanent foreverness that was the worst thing ever to clean.
Beetle said, “Okay, cool. Tell your sister I’m gonna text her and it’s gonna be about you.”
“Ominous,” said Marigold. “I hope you say nice things.”
“No, dude, I’m gonna text her to talk to you. We’re not starting a group chat about you when there’s still so much stuff I don’t know about Mystery Marigold. Like, okay, what’s your favorite color?”
“Green,” said Marigold.
“Don’t tell me now!” said Beetle. She handed Marigold the chocolate back. “You go have a nice class tomorrow, okay? Get down there before your family thinks I killed you.”
“I don’t think I’d mind if you did,” said Marigold. “Bug girl.”
“Flower girl,” Beetle said, like they’d said goodbye like this forever. Maybe they really were supposed to get to know each other.
~~~
Thea had put on “Baby Shark” to try and get Sofie to go to sleep, which wasn’t working, because whenever Sofie saw Marigold, she’d stay stubbornly awake until Marigold came back to rock her to sleep. Under most normal circumstances, because Sofie was the kind of baby whose idiosyncrasies seemed perfectly designed to psychologically torment her caregivers, “Baby Shark” would put Sofie perfectly to sleep so long as it was played exactly fifteen times in a row, but they’d hit seventeen and Sofie was still babbling half-coherent nonsense to an exhausted-looking Lenora, who kept trying to hand her off to Roslin.
Marigold hurried over to the car. Sofie said, “Mama!”
“We’re not doing that, she’s twenty,” said Thea, but Sofie was already making grabby hands towards Marigold, who scooped her up in a flurry of kisses.
Roslin said, “Are you trying to reason with the baby?”
“The baby is a little terrorist who cannot be reasoned with,” said Lenora. “We need to get home so I can play first-person shooters and not listen to Baby Shark, ever again.”
Thea said, “Get in the back, bunny. How was the party?”
Marigold wasn’t sure how to tell them all about Beetle. She didn’t know if she wanted to. She sort of had to tell them about some of it, though, so she said instead, “Rosie, it’s okay that I gave someone your Insta, right? She wanted mine—”
“Dude, make your own,” said Roslin. “How many times is this gonna have to happen?”
“No one needs to be on social media,” said Thea immediately.
“Okay, well, Mommy, I am twenty-five, you don’t get to take away my phone,” said Roslin. “This would not be a problem if you just got, like, a MacBook or something. Whatever you have in your office is legitimately evil.”
“I bought a computer,” said Thea stubbornly. “I have a computer. I don’t see the problem.”
“That thing has to be from, like, the Revolutionary War!”
Marigold settled into the backseat with Sofie, resting her cheek against Lenora’s shoulder. She said, “Actually, there weren’t computers in the Revolutionary War—”
“Do not start this at like one in the morning.”
“You started it at like one in the morning.” Marigold buckled Sofie back into her car seat.
“Defending you! Do you want Mom to start burning laptops in the backyard again?”
“That was out of context,” said Thea immediately. “And mostly an accident, anyway. Didn’t realize lithium did that.” She started the car. “We turning off Baby Shark now?”
“No, Sofie likes it,” said Marigold.
“YES,” said Lenora. “Sofie’s awake anyway, Mari—”
Sofie had fallen asleep.
“See, you have to leave it on now,” said Marigold, “she will wake up if you turn it off. We all know this.”
“Torment nightmare torture baby,” said Roslin affectionately. “You know sometimes it starts to make me sleepy when I listen to it? Something about the baby shark doo doo do do do do—”
“I will kill you if you start singing it, Roslin, it’s bad enough that we have it on without—”
“Doo doo do do—”
Thea said, “Quiet, I need to make this turn!”
Marigold cuddled into Lenora’s shoulder again. Lenora said, “Your baby is ruining our life.”
“Stop calling Sofie her baby,” said Thea. “Mari is too young to be raising a kid.”
“I’m twenty!” said Marigold.
“You’re a baby,” said Roslin. Her eyes lit up. “Baby Mari doo do do—”
Lenora said, “I am going to murder you, Roslin. I am going to kill you dead.”
“No murder until I’m done getting onto the highway,” said Thea, eyes on the road.
The girls quieted. Marigold cuddled into Lenora until Lenora leaned forward and towards her, letting Marigold use her as an all-the-way pillow. “Good party?” Lenora asked quietly.
Marigold didn’t answer. She wondered whether Evie would even notice she was gone.
“You’ll see her on her Monday shift,” Lenora said. “You can catch up with her then, if she wasn’t—I mean, you know, if she got. Distracted, or something.”
Marigold said, “It was a good party,” and realized that she did actually mean it. “I…met someone.”
“Oh, shit!” said Roslin from the front seat. “Goth Halloween candy chick does, like, bug taxidermy?”
“Roslin, do not stalk her Instagram!” yelped Marigold. “Just—just give me your phone! Give me your phone so I can—”
“I AM MERGING!” said Thea. “YOU ALL NEED TO FUCKING SHUT UP!”
Sofie squirmed happily and continued to sleep. Marigold was fairly certain it would be six more plays of Baby Shark before they were in the clear.
~~~
beetlenecromancer: hi marigolds sister lol
beetlenecromancer: can u send me her insta when u have it? she said she’d make one
strawbrosie33: hey man if you fuck up my sister i’m going to use norie’s poison kit to poison you
strawbrosie33: HI THIS IS MARIGOLD
strawbrosie33: SORRY
strawbrosie33: SHEHS TRYINGG TO GBRAJB THE POHNE BACKC
beetlenecromancer: lmao
beetlenecromancer: nw
strawbrosie33: I AM ROSLIN I TRIUMPH
strawbrosie33: im so serious though bro i will literally kill you she is so fucking baby. you have no idea
strawbrosie33: you’ve known her for like five minutes we’ve known her forever she is THE BABIEST
strawbrosie33: Hi this is Marigold again I am So So So Sorry
beetlenecromancer: dude you need a smartphone so bad this is so dire for you
i can talk about my ocs if i want this is a lawless land. picking songs for them to sing at karaoke night, under the cut
marigold sings pat benatar's "hit me with your best shot" because it's one of thea's favorite songs <3 and she has a lot of fun with brassy upbeat 80s vocals!! bold singin' words from a girl who CANNOT take a punch. very bouncy. tries to mime the guitar solo and forgets she's holding the mic and may have actually caused some damage to the system. thea will pay for it later it's fine
all are expecting evie to sing something weird or overtly sexual but she sings kirsty maccoll's "they don't know" very very earnestly. there is something extremely heartbreaking about how much love she sings it with, and who she's thinking of.
norie did not want to sing. is not going to sing. was pushed into singing by roslin who picked the song for her and it's kate bush's "wuthering heights," which she is really mad about because she actually does love the song, so the entire time she's just going >:( while mumble-singing into the microphone. least fun to watch UNLESS you're roslin, who thinks this is adorable.
roslin (who WOULD be a directioner in any situation where karaoke is a viable option) sings one direction's "best song ever" and then tries to transition towards performing the entire discography of one direction until norie (professional boy band hater) runs up and gets into a small fight with her trying to take the microphone away. both of them are probably pretty drunk by now so no one's winning. thea has to break it up
wrote one thing for thea but reconsidered im coming back to this one. sings bruce springsteen's "cover me" and knocks it out of the park. does not have a good singing voice but when you're a rough and tumble butch mom in your fifties you don't need one to do a lethal springsteen cover.
