Day 8: 13,500 words. Slow and steady.

I think I am about to start having a plot. The groundwork is in place for a couple of things to happen. For one, Seth isn't back yet and Ruby's been on hir own for over a week. For another, the white belt was stolen. There's a possible love interest, and also possible teen angst as Ruby tries to hang out with the popular kids. Roux and Justin Timberlake had a sinister conversation that was only partially overheard. Maybe all of the above will lead to fruitful plot points, maybe not.

Today it took me forever to write because I was trying to do some 'serious' writing to actually give Ruby a backstory and a personality. I won't be posting any of that. Luckily, it was also hard to write because I was busy watching Cody Simpson videos. At first I hated him. Then, I started to see what a terrible actor he was and how uncomfortable all the time so he started to win me over. Then I saw him doing a solo youtube video that got him 'discovered' and saw that he has a nice voice (impossible to tell from his released songs) and is kind of sweet. Shit. I never wanted this to happen.

So, because I feel like I let him down by making fun of him and his jorts, I included a little snippet of him here. You can't even imagine how pleased I was to find out he had a song called 'summertime.' Enjoy.


The next morning, a knock at the door at 10am had roused Ruby from hir usual practice of staring at the laptop screen, inventing reasons to avoid posting to the school discussion board. Expecting Roux, ze hadn’t bothered to smooth hir rumpled hair or put on pants. Instead, Just Fiddlin’ Around stood there, looking simultaneously bored, scandalized, and superior. They quickly brushed past Ruby to settle themselves on the armchairs and settee in the sitting room, turning on the television, opening up the room’s tiny fridge and taking out all of the tiny bottles and cans they could find. Gordon went straight to the hidden cupboard containing the overly expensive nuts, chips, and cookies supplied by the hotel. He said his vampire powers allowed him to sense any food in the vicinity because it was anathema to his usual diet of human blood. He still managed to work his way through three bags of chips and a package of nuts in the next fifteen minutes, while simultaneously giving a long monologue on the scourge of mommy bloggers currently taking over the internet in a serious bid to maintain middle class, heterosexual privilege and to dismantle popular search engines so that postmodern scholars couldn’t google ‘Aerosmith cover band drunk’ and thus accomplish their vital work.

“Shut up, Gordon!” Darcy called. His atmosphere of aloof superiority was somewhat hampered by the fact that he was carrying a boombox over one shoulder. He put it down, plugged it in, and immediately began blasting the Cody Simpson hit ‘Summertime.’ Strangely, the dark and moody Darcy seemed to be working on an image change. His outfit closely resembled the one that Cody Simpson was wearing in the smash video for the song: a fitted red v-neck tee, a pair of white-on-white checked Bermuda shorts with black and white checked trim around the knee, and some black Keds. 

“Ain’t nothing like the summertime,” Harmony said, and Ruby couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. Instead of standing there gormlessly trying to figure out what was going on, Ruby decided to go get dressed. Taking a page out of Darcy’s book, ze came back dressed in something resembling one of Cody’s alternate outfits from the video. But whereas Cody had been wearing a blue and white ball cap angled ridiculously back on his head, a blue hoodie unzipped over a tee with a picture of an enormous fish, and a pair of DILF-brand by Dawon Bleery cargo shorts with white sneakers, Ruby had to make do with a floppy black tuque, some non-DILF khaki cargo shorts, and a v-neck tee that sadly, had no fish image. Ze hoped to god the others wouldn’t notice. 

Out in the other room, Cody was still singing:

Top Back, Hands Up, Radio On

With my girlfriend, just us, they playing our song and yeah

Ain't nothing like a summertime ride

Ain't nothing like the summertime

It's alright, all night, nothing feels wrong

Just hanging out, having fun, the party goes on and yeah

Ain't nothing like a summertime ride

Ain't nothing like the summertime