Participants:
| Scene Title | Just a Little Teenage Drama |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Kaylee finds out what's bothering her youngest and a little teenage drama ensues. |
| Date | October 26, 2020 |
Petrelli Mansion
A hot shower, a change of clothes, and hours spent in her bedroom worrying is not how Jac envisioned her day going when she woke up this morning. She kept hoping for, and dreading, a call from any of her friends following her absence. But as far as she could tell from behind her closed bedroom door, no one was looking for her on the house line, and her own cell phone had been left in her book bag in her first period class.
Going back to the school to get her things had crossed her mind. But facing that again, whatever that was, seemed too awful. Especially if it happened to be one of the best orchestrated pranks in Dalton history. It's no longer funny. No, her things could stay there. In the morning she'd ask Henry to collect them for her.
Draped widthwise across her bed, with her head cradled in her arms, Jac looks at the window with its spatters and rivulets from the day's drizzle. How she was going to explain this to her mom haunts her thoughts also, and with more insistence as the day wound down.
There is a soft rap of a knuckle on the door, before it slowly opens enough for Kaylee - still clothed in her work clothes - to peek in. Seeing her youngest laying there was concerning and brought back a few memories of younger years. Something was up. A mom just knows.
Well, that and the call from school.
“Can I come in?” Kaylee asks in quiet concern. Technically, she didn’t have to knock, but she liked to give her daughters the privacy they wanted.
“Yeah,” Jac sighs in her answer as she makes a show of sitting up and folding her legs criss-cross style. No sense in delaying the inevitable. As she settles, she gathers up a rabbit that's seen better days, a floppy-eared plush creature with chipped and scratched bead eyes and faux fur that's more gray than the blue color it once was.
Still unsure of what to say about anything, she rubs her thumb against a worn spot on one of the rabbit’s ears instead. Her eyes lift to watch her mom enter, wondering how much was already known. There wasn't really much she could say on the phone, the old man was nice enough to let her call, then had to take over when the girl’s explanations devolved into a rambling stuttering mess. And he knew even less about what had happened.
There is a sheepish smile at the invitation and steps in her youngest’s room, pushing the door closed enough behind her to give them privacy, but not fully shutting out the rest of the world. Not a word is said until the woman is settled on the edge of the bed and she studies her daughter’s features.
“Tough day, huh?” Kaylee asks quietly, reaching out in an attempt to brush at a stray hair at her daughter’s temple. “Wanna tell me about it?” As much as it would kill her with curiosity not knowing, Kaylee still gives Jac a way out.
The want to talk about what happened rages like a mad dog at the end of a leash, held in check only by the fear of being laughed at or worse. Jac’s eyes focus on the toy in her hands, picking out familiar patterns worked into the faux fur over years of childhood worries. If it were as simple as a tough day; but what happened wasn't another D in algebra or being caught cutting class. Even that would be preferable to what really happened.
Resignation weaves with uncertainty. She doesn't know if the school called to notify her mom of an absence, or if she simply ceased to exist until she escaped the school building.
“Something like that.” Jac sighs as soon as she's spoken. Her brows knit and folds her arms, and the rabbit, against her chest. “It was like… like I was invisible. I was. No one could see me or hear me.”
“That-” is ridiculous. Is what Kaylee starts to say, but stops the words, even if the tone gives it away some. The look in her daughter’s eye tells her that it wasn’t some overdramatization. The girl was shook over what she thought happened.
Sighing through her nose, Kaylee tries to see it from her perspective and the little boy, who was both unfamiliar and familiar to her, pops into her mind. She hadn’t told anyone about it, cause it sounded crazy.
“So exactly what happened?” Kaylee asks after a moment of looking for the right words. “I mean ignoring you could be anything, but being invisible?” She was trying to understand. “Should I be going to the Principle about this? If this was some elaborate prank pulled by your friends….”
There would be hell to pay.
Kaylee was quite the mama bear when it came to her girls.
It sounds so far fetched, so insane, that if she hadn’t experienced it she would think it was ridiculous too. But it had happened, and now a reluctance to talk anymore about it starts creeping in as Jac watches her mom’s face. It was a bad idea to say anything at all. And it isn’t like she could avoid the problem by just skipping school or faking being sick until she figured out how to handle the problem.
Shaking her head, she turns aside from the invitation to speak more. It wasn’t a prank, it actually, literally happened. That mug didn’t just jump out of her english teacher’s hand; Jac slapped it out. “Never mind, it’s nothing.”
Damn it.
There is a frustrated sigh from her mother and Kaylee looks away to a point on the wall. Though the frustration was at herself. It was days like this that she felt like the worst parent. Even if all parents went through difficult moments like that.
“Jac… Please talk to me.” Her mother pleas quietly, looking back at the distressed teen. “I can’t understand what happened if you don’t tell me about it.”
“You wouldn't…” Jac exhales the rest of what she'd started to say and shakes her head. She doesn't even understand it herself. “Everyone just ignored me, like I wasn't even there. Mari and Derek didn't say anything, Jasmin ignored me. JP…” Her brows knit angrily, while her face crumpled with hurt feelings. New tears start to well in her eyes, but she shakes her head in annoyance. “He looked right through me and went off talking about video games with Mason.” That last one hurts the most, maybe more than being seen as ridiculous.
“Then in english.” She wants to laugh at the memory. It's insanity, even if it's turned her tone bitter. “Ms. Brady started the discussion and… and when she didn't acknowledge my point or that I said anything, I… I slapped her coffee mug out of her hands. And I yelled at her.”
Brows slowly lifts as Jac explains what happened, but then when she explains what she did to the teacher, there is a flicker of shock and anger. “Jacelyn Petrelli!” Kaylee sounds worried more than anything. Her daughter was doing so well in school. “You’re lucky you weren’t suspended.” In fact, it was surprising she hadn’t gotten a call over it.
Has she ever been called before?
Again Kaylee lets out a sigh, calming that anxiety in the pit of her stomach, though hands curl into fists at the thought of her daughter being ignored. “I’ll make an appointment to talk to the Principal about this.” Easier said than done with her schedule. “This doesn’t sound like some harmless prank.” The distress in Jac is worrisome and made it more believable. “Especially if a teacher is involved.”
Kaylee may be a bit too protective over her girls.
“What?” Jac parries the use of her full name with a defensive tone. What else should she have done? Throwing a chair out the window — which she did actually considering doing — would have been a lot worse than knocking a cup from the teacher’s hand. As she sees it, Ms. B would have been sympathetic after an explanation was given. “She didn't even look at me. No one did! No one saw me walk up to the front of the room or out the door after. Ms. Brady claimed she was clumsy when I hit her mug.” If that isn't proof enough that something strange happened, she doesn't know what is.
A new fear sinks into her stomach, one that's more unsettling than facing the next day at school. “What's telling the principal going to do?” Shaking her head, the teen abandons sitting on her bed and the beloved stuffed rabbit for standing against the wall furthest away.
“Mom. They're going to think I'm crazy. That I'm lying and… I don't know. What if they want me committed?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kaylee says with a patient sigh, folding her hands in her lap as she watches her daughter be… dramatic like all kids her age do. “They wouldn’t commit you, but it’s better to nip this all in the butt before it gets worse and others get hurt,” she reasons.
Shifting her weight to face Jac more, Kaylee considers a few options. “How about this. I won’t go to the principal, yet.” She holds up a finger just in case. No reason for the girl to interrupt until her mother has her full say. “If it happens again, film it.” She says it, like… what could it hurt? “I imagine they would stop then… if not then you have proof of it happening when we talk to the principle.”
Sounds reasonable to Kaylee.
The power of the staying finger proves effective, because Jac has arguments prepared but they stop as soon as her mom tells her to wait with just that gesture alone. They're expressed instead, with a huffed breath and a dismissive shake of her head that hides the accompanying eye roll. She might be ready to write off the whole event and just never go back, but in the moment that stretches following the idea, she can't exactly find any sound reasons to not try in any of her arguments.
“Fine.” Much to her reluctance, she has to agree that it isn't a bad idea. And worth trying.
Jac pushes away from the wall and slumps to her desk where she slouches in her chair. “Do I have to go to school tomorrow though?”
There is an easing in the tension in Kaylee’s back as Jac agrees to the idea and a bright smile finds its way to the woman’s lips. “Good,” she declares as if everything has been decided, pushing to her feet.
Relieved enough that the crisis has mostly passed, Kaylee offers Jac a smile, “I’ll give you one day. Only one. I’ll tell them you came down with a stomach bug.”
Sometimes, a mom is willing to give a little ground for the sake of peace.