Okay very random but if I had to cast the JPITV cast girls in a different girl’s role:
Sadie Sink as Beth. Beth is so totally different to the roles that Sadie is known for, I would be so curious to see how she would take the role on.
Amalia Yoo as Beth. I think she would be fantastic, and this is such a specific thing but I think I would really believe that she *wants* to believe Shelby in Scene 13, if that makes sense.
Fina Strazza as Raelynn. She would EAT the final monologue, and I also think she would nail Raelynn’s funnier lines.
Morgan Scott as Ivy. I think she would nail the happy and bubbly Ivy in the first two scenes, and then the exhausted depressed Ivy later on, trying to reconcile her dad with the allegation made against him.
Maggie Kuntz as Shelby. I feel like she has the chops to pull off a great Shelby, definitely a different vibe to Sadie’s but would still be great.
There are 3 categories of distinctly Morgan Scott songs:
1. the drums sound fucking manic - loud, spastic, fast, if you watched a drum cover of it on youtube your head would explode because it’s fucking insane and drummers are terrifying as shit. seriously look up this could be anywhere in the world alexisonfire drum cover it’s the first video you’re welcome
2. the singer sounds fucking manic and like they’re injecting their own fucking soul into the lyrics, like their throat is being screamed raw by the emotion they put into the song
OKAY so I wanted to wait until I finished ch 29 to post anything about it but I can’t wait because I very much love where this is going. So. If you’re like me, solving Morgan’s problem might contain Therapy. @fenfaerie‘s proposed solution might involve a long nap/vacation/let’s face it, also therapy. Selena Walton thinks... Very Differently.
Tag List: @fenfaerie @arieswriting
When I regain control of myself, I explode and shove her off of me. I’d shove her out the goddamn door of the Lexus if it wasn’t moving at forty-five miles per hour in a residential zone. She rights herself with this unbelievable nonchalance and straightens out on the road so we don’t veer into an unfortunate parked car or wrap around a pole and die, but that speed stays fixed. I don’t give a shit about death right now. My bugging eyes are locked on her calm figure in a rage.
“What the FUCK?!” I repeat myself when she doesn’t say anything. My brain is running a fucking marathon because she fucking kissed me.
What the fuck?! There aren’t swears strong enough in the English language to match the angry electricity coursing through my veins right now.
“It got you to stop freaking out, didn’t it?” she snaps.
I just… Stop? And…take inventory of myself? My heart is still trying to fight its way out of my chest, but not as painfully as before. Air is reaching my lungs again with breaths that are heavy, but at least oxygen is coming in. I still feel like throwing up, but in a totally different way and for a totally different reason. The darkness at the edges of my vision has dissolved. And I’m so…fucking…confused? This is…insane? Nuts? It straight-up does not compute.
“What are you – a witch?” I demand.
She looks dead at me with an eye-rolling glare, and, frankly, I’m just tempted to remind her to keep her gaze on the fucking road! And to actually put on my seatbelt in case she finally chooses to obey the stop signs – like the one she just blew through – so I don’t hit the windshield.
I think that I can come to the conclusion that Selena neither fears death nor God. Nor me, because after I tear off my tainted lips and cauterize the wounds, I will have to murder her. I don’t care what Kelley says, I’m hitting her. Right in her obnoxious, loud, fanged, glossy mouth.
It’s hard to force myself to calm down since I’ve just been kissed and kidnapped by my worst enemy who never should have passed a driving test. If anything, my anxiety should be skyrocketing. But I just do what I can to block the poisoned Yellowcard lyrics from my head, and stabilize my breathing, and ignore what a reckless driver she is. I wipe the dampness that’s lingered on my cheeks on the back of my hand, and pull my earplugs out even though I’m so tempted to keep them in so I can pretend to ignore her again.
She’s driving with purpose, and I can tell because her eyes are locked forward, both her hands are gripping the steering wheel tight, and she’s disobeying literally every traffic law in the state of California. I don’t know what her mission is, but if she’s bringing me to be committed, I don’t fucking blame her.
“You can play music if you want,” she says in a peaceful way that is such a weird and unexpected contrast to the intensity of her posture and her beady, flaming brown eyes. She takes a second to gesture to the stereo in her pricey car. “It’s Bluetooth.”
I don’t say anything. She doesn’t like my music, and we’d just end up fighting, and there are so many songs I just can’t listen to anymore, and I’m so fucking tired of putting that safe playlist on repeat. I’d rather just stick to nothing.
“So, my favourite Paramore song is Fences–”
“Can you just not?” It doesn’t sound like a question, and I didn’t mean for it to. I don’t care about her, or about Paramore, or about her favourite Paramore song, and I don’t feel like talking right now – especially not to her.
We sit in a silence that stretches, and I don’t know what to think. My mind has turned white. Fifteen minutes later, we’re passing Calabasas, and she’s still holding her position and driving like a maniac, and there’s a twisting sensation in my gut like I’ve been stabbed with a knife and my attacker is just trying to drive it in deeper.
“What are you doing?” I ask her. And it’s not specifically about her driving – it’s just in general. Where is she bringing us, and why did she kidnap me, and why is she clearly going a billion miles over the speed limit so I can’t safely tuck-and-roll away from her?
But I don’t get a response, and she turns into the canyon.
***
The Topanga Canyon spits us out about twenty minutes later, and she follows the rest of the road and gets on the Pacific Coast Highway, which she remains on for all of ten seconds before she finds a near-vacant lot off the right side of the street and pulls into one of the spaces. The sign says it’s for a motel, and I immediately want to kill her.
“Seriously?” I literally have no idea what the hell she thinks we’re going to do here, but all I know is that I do not like it.
“Relax,” she says back, and there’s a hint of a bite in her voice. It’s nowhere near as harsh as I expected it to be though. “They shut down the one across the street at dusk. That’s why I’m parking here.”
Across the street is a beach, the ocean. It’s currently bathed in the twilight with the sun setting in the west and painting warm colours across the sky. She gets out of her car, and I find myself following since I don’t really seem to have other options.
“Go on ahead,” she tells me as she walks around her Lexus and pops the trunk. “I’ll catch up.”
She’s going to take the chance and murder me first before I murder her. At least that’s what it seems like. I also don’t know how she expects me to safely walk to the other side of the fucking highway. There’s not a pedestrian crossing in sight. I just wait around for her to pull a gun or something from her car, and debate whether I’d rather die on the sand or in a motel parking lot. I don’t think it really matters. I’d always figured one of us would end up committing a homicide, so this really isn’t a surprise.
Instead of a potential piece of evidence in her future trial, she grabs a paper bag stamped with the logo of a liquor store and slams her trunk shut. She pushes past me and commands, “Come on.”
I mean, this could still be a murder plot, but at least the cops would know who’s responsible. I follow her up to the edge of the road. She watches for a point where the traffic thins, and then signals for us to go. We stop in the empty turning lane, and do the same with the other two. Just beyond the parking lot that is preparing to shut down – as evidenced by the signs that proclaim as much – is Topanga Beach. There’s a salty breeze blowing off the water, and the waves lazily crash ashore, and I feel my throat go hollow.
Her arm gently bumps my elbow, and I blink away from that split-second trance. She’s walking down the beach, and without a better alternative, I trail her. She only goes a couple paces before she’s apparently decided that we’ve reached a good spot, and then she bluntly says, “Sit.”
So I do, with a little bit of effort, and I try not to worry that sand is probably getting into the boot on my leg, and I wait for two bullets to the back of the head.
It doesn’t come. She places her liquor store bag down in a space between us before she sits on the beach too. We’re sitting together on Topanga Beach at dusk.
“Okay,” I begin, just thoroughly at a loss. “What the fuck is going on right now?”
Look, I wasn’t really waiting to be executed, but this feels like… I don’t know. A date? I still want to vomit.
“You clearly need help.”
I pause, and I wait for her to add something before I debate whether or not I should just leave. Kelley would probably be proud of me for that – walking away instead of verbally telling her that she’s fallen off her rocker and through the floorboards into the basement of her nuthouse. She’s probably right about me needing help, but a half-hour is a long way to drive in order to propose that obvious revelation.
“So,” she begins, and the paper bag crinkles as she opens it. She produces a six pack of green, aluminum cans and plops them down on the sand. “You’re going to drink.”
That is not where I expected her to go with this. There’s a liquor store bag between us, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean this would happen. It could have contained anything, and, given our entire history of feuding, booze was the last thing I could have imagined coming out of that bag. “Live, venomous viper” or “meat cleaver for amputating fingers” were closer to the top of that list. Have I mentioned that this whole situation has me completely disoriented? Absolutely nothing in the universe makes sense right now.
