NANOWRIMOOOO

Total lack of proofreading ahead. You're lucky I ran a spellcheck, even.

--

Ariel Anders was not the type of girl who ever wanted to associate her name with being a “daddy’s girl.” From the moment her father had bestowed such a name on her, a name which shared its initials with a fellowship dedicated to maintaining sobriety and its forename with an obnoxious cartoon sea siren, she had been at odds with him. Her mother had left them over a decade ago to pursue her journalism career in New York– Ariel didn’t blame her. West Virginia was sea of boredom and annoying mountains.
So naturally, when her father loaned her his car so she could pick up some meat for dinner, she instead took it down to her friend Katherine’s house.
Katherine rolled her eyes when she answered the door. “Don’t you have anyone else to bother on the weekends?” she asked. Katherine was short in appearance and in nature, making her generally difficult to get along with. But she didn’t complain when Ariel followed her into the living room and silently offered her a bowl of peppermints.
“No thanks,” said Ariel, dropping her purse onto the couch and sitting down seat to it. Katherine took a place in the armchair across from her. “How’s school?”
Katherine groaned. “Awful. I don’t know how you handled so many APs; I’m practically drowning in homework.”
Ariel stiffened. “You’ll get used to it… learn how to manage your time and stuff.”
Katherine shrugged and took a peppermint for herself. “Still, I’m a senior now. Shouldn’t I have time for fun and bullying freshmen?”
Ariel laughed. “Don’t relish being at the top so much. Next year you’ll be a lowly freshman again, and upperclassmen can smell arrogance.”
Katherine paused in unwrapping a second peppermint, the first one still in her mouth. “So you’re getting picked on by upperclassmen at Rockmont State?”
“What?” Ariel sat straight up. “What gave you that idea?”
“Well,” said Katherine slowly. “You’re pretty arrogant, right? You’re always talking about how you’re too good for community college.”
Ariel scowled. “That’s different. I don’t think I’m better just because I happened to be part of a certain class. I know I’m better because I’m smarter than everyone else.”
Katherine snorted. “Says the girl who was rejected from every college she applied to.” Ariel threw a couch pillow at her at her. Katherine jerked to the side away from it, and it knocked over the lamp. There was a thick silence as Katherine righted it, checking for damage. When she confirmed it was unharmed, she burst into laughter. After a moment Ariel joined her, not sure if she meant it or not.
After about twenty minutes of meaningless chatter about the high school and new teachers who didn’t understand the subject they taught and the boys Katherine liked, Ariel picked up her purse and stood.
“I should be going. Can I use your bathroom first?”
“Better than going in our yard,” Katherine replied dryly. Ariel shuffled out of the living room, but instead of going down the hall to the bathroom, she veered left and entered the kitchen. Quietly, she opened the freezer and took a plastic-wrapped steak from the door, hastily shoving it into her purse. Closing the freezer door, she wonder back into the hallway and into the bathroom, where she dutifully flushed the toilet and washed her hands. When she returned to the living room, Katherine barely looked at her over a magazine.
“See you, Kat.”
“Next time find someone else to bug, okay?” said Katherine as she turned a page.
“Will do,” said Ariel as she walked out the door. She wouldn’t, of course, since all her friends had left town to pursue a college degree.
When she arrive home, Ariel’s dad was pouring over papers in his office.
“I’ll put the meat in the kitchen,” she said from the doorway. “Where’s grandma?”
“She went across the street to see how Miss Gables was doing.” Miss Gables had caught an early case of the flu. Ariel’s dad marked something on his papers with a red pen, then glanced up at her. “Where’s the change from the money I gave you?”
Ariel shrugged. “There wasn’t any change.”
Mr. Anders sighed. “Ariel, please.”
Scowling, Ariel removed some money from her wallet and tossed it at his desk. “I don’t see why you care so much about a dollar sixty-two.” Turning on her heel, she stomped back to the kitchen and dropped the steak she had stolen on the table. Someone had left the jar of pickles out. She took one for herself and replaced the jar in the fridge. She then climbed onto the counter herself, dangling her feet over the linoleum floor and letting her ballet flats slide off her feet.
She still had an essay to proofread, but that wouldn’t take so long. She’d already done the calculus assignment and finished up the Spanish worksheet… she took a bite of her pickle. Sunday afternoons were quite dull when you’d already finished all your homework on Saturday.
Ariel sighed and tried to lean against the wall behind her, but the toaster made this to difficult and she settled for a pathetic slouch. It wasn’t her fault, really, that she had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon than her homework. It wasn’t her fault that Beth and Caroline were in Ohio, and Jackson and Claire and Sibyl were in Virginia, and Daniel had gone all the way to California, and Linda had gone and gotten herself into Yale, that traitor. It wasn’t her fault Harvard and Princeton and MIT didn’t want her. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t applied anywhere else, either. It would have been silly, and she was guaranteed to get into one of them as a transfer student next year anyway. Maybe she’d even apply to Brown or Stanford or Yale like Linda…
Ariel continued that sour train of thought as she finished her equally sour pickle. Her grandmother came home to find her glaring fiercely at the left sink faucet from her place on the counter.
“Hey, princess. What’s got you down?”
“Meat for dinner’s here,” Ariel answered flatly, and held out the partially thawed meat package. Her grandmother took it from her.
“Ariel, sweetheart, this is expired a week ago.”
Ariel blinked, then giggled. “Sorry. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Don’t tell dad?”
Her grandmother huffed. “I don’t see how I couldn’t. He’s expecting it.”
“Tell him you didn’t have enough time to left it thaw,” Ariel persuaded, sliding off the counter.
The older woman sighed. “I guess. We have some leftover meatballs I could heat up… and we have a box of bow-tie pasta…” She began methodically gathering cooking supplies.
“How’s Miss Gables?”
“Oh, better,” her grandmother answered vaguely. “Well enough to cook her own meals.”
Ariel drifted out of the kitchen then, up the stairs and into her room. She was turning on her laptop when her cell phone rang.
“Hey, Katherine.”
“Woman, did you take my meat?”
“Kat, why would I take your meat?”
“You took my baby corn last week; why wouldn't you take my meat?”
“I don’t even like baby corn.” Ariel opened Solitaire.
“Everyone likes baby corn,” Katherine hissed.
“Look, even if I did like baby corn, why the hell would I steal it from you? Only creepers and weirdoes do stuff like that.”
“Then where would it go, Ariel? To the magical land of Oz?”
“Look, Katherine,” Ariel whined, “I have a ton of homework due tomorrow. Can we argue about this some other time?”
“Don’t come to my house anymore,” Katherine asserted. “My mom’s seriously pissed about this whole disappearing-food thing.”
“Kat–”
“Don’t.” And she hung up.
Ariel frowned down at her ancient phone. “It was no good anyway,” she muttered to it.

Ariel was still peeved that, although she had had her license since she was sixteen, and even though she was technically an adult, her father still drove her to school. Usually the car ride was passed in sleepy silence, but on that Monday morning Mr. Anders decided to start a conversation.
“How are classes?” he asked.
“Okay,” Ariel answered.
“Still top of your class?” He briefly took his eyes off the road to smile at her. Ariel’s face remained blank and she made an ambiguous noise in the back of her throat.
“Next year,” he tried again, “I think you should apply to WVU. That way you can come home on the weekends.”
Ariel was tempted to hit her head against the dashboard. Instead, she settled for slumping lower in the car seat.
“Dad, you know I want to get as far away as possible.”
“I know, but…” He looked back at her again. “I just don’t understand why. Rock Mont’s a beautiful town, it’s got wonderful people, and–”
“And you still live with your mother.” Ariel stared back at him accusingly. He broke he gaze almost immediately. Most likely it was to continue paying attention to the road, but Ariel liked to think it was the challenge in her eyes.
They didn’t talk the rest of the way, and Ariel didn’t say goodbye when she slide out of the car, pulling her messenger bag along behind her. Her father did, though.
“Have fun at school.”
She was not enter second grade. She ignored him.
Her nine o’clock calculus class was as dull as usual and was followed by a two hour break before her Literary Analysis class. She decided to spend in the student lounge.
Rock Mont State Community College was not very big, and the lounge reflect that. There were five or six round tables scattered about with thread worn couches lining the walls. The was a TV you could watch by tuning in to the correct radio station to get sound, three vending machines, a pinball machine, and a claw machine filled with random plush toys. Ariel deposited her bag on one of the couches and wondered over to it.
The claw machine had been her mortal enemy and best friend ever since she had started school back in August. On one hand, it was the most exciting thing to do on campus. On the other, she had yet to win anything from it and had lost a large amount of quarters. But she had just tricked some spending money out of her father with the whole meat incident, so she fished some loose change out of her pockets. All she had were pennies and a single dime.
“Need a loan?” A voice asked from behind her.
It was a blonde boy she recognized as going to high school with years ago. He had been a year or two ahead of her, but beyond that she remembered nothing about him. She managed to pull her lips into a smile for him, and he grinned back, perfectly aligned teeth behind his thin lips and freckled face. She suddenly recalled that, at some point, he had had braces.
“No thanks,” she said, edging away from the claw machine. “It’s just a game.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun. It’s just a quarter.” And he brushed past her to put a coin in himself. She watched him pick up a stuffed elephant and drop it with the mechanical claw as she grumpily bit at the nail of her right pinky finger. He was taller than she remembered: she barely reached his shoulder. Of course, as she was roughly five foot three, this was not much of an accomplishment.
“Aw,” he turned back to her, pouting. “I can never win anything from these things.”
“Neither can I,” she admitted, scratching her forearm. “But they’re fun, I guess.”
“Hey…” he cocked his head and squinted at her, lazily leaning against the claw machine. “You seem familiar. Did you go to Rock Mont High?”
Ariel stopped herself from giving a snide answer about how most of the students here went to their high school. “Yeah, I graduated this year.”
“Huh, cool,” he answered, and absently began fiddling with the machine’s joystick controller. “I just moved back here… I was working in Charleston for about a year and a half, but you can make more money with a real degree, you know?”
Yes, yes she did know. “Why not go to school in Charleston?”
He shrugged. “I missed this place. A lot of my best buds are still here, you know?”
This boy expected her to know a lot of things, apparently. “All mine left,” she replied bitterly. He smiled in the way people do when they’re not quite sure what else to do.
“Huh. Um. My name’s Bryan, by the way.” He extended his hand to her. She took it.
“I’m Ariel.”
His eyes widened at that. They were hazel, she noted. “Ariel Anders?”
“Yeah.” She wrestled her hand from his grasp. She had a novel in her messenger bag, and she gazed longingly at it past Bryan’s shoulder.
“Weren’t you that super smart girl? Why are you still in Rock Mont?”
She winced. “I… only applied to three colleges. No back-ups.”
“Oh…” he looked at his feet then. “I’m sorry about that. At least you’ll do well here, right?”
“I hope so,” Ariel answered and stared down at her own feet.
“Say…” He stood up from the machine and took a step toward her. “You know McTavern’s?”
Ariel scuffed her foot along the thin carpet. “The place behind the school?” She wasn’t sure where this was going, and she took a step away from him. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah, there having, like, a party this Friday. Live bands and cheap food and free pool and stuff. Proceeds go to the children’s hospital.”
Ariel had never played pool in her life. She had also never been inside McTavern’s. She furrowed her eyebrows. “Are you asking me out?”
He laughed nervously at that. “Well, no, not exactly. But it’d be good to catch up, yeah? Plus, think of the children, Ariel, the children!” He teasingly and lightly punched her shoulder. Ariel’s mouth did a sort of twitch as she restrained herself from the scowl such behavior from a near-stranger would usually warrant from her.
“Maybe,” she muttered.
“Cool,” Bryan beamed. “Seven on Friday, okay? I’ve got a ten thirty class, but I’ll see you around.” He turned from her and half-jogged out of the student lounge. Ariel suddenly realized there were a handful of other students seated at the table and couches, and even though none of them had been paying the slightest attention to her and Bryan, she felt her face go hot.
Thursday night Ariel called Katherine to see if she wanted to hang out Friday night.
“Oh, dude, I’m going to Steve’s with Emily and Nora.”
“Oh. Can I come? I think I’ve met Emily, we get along pretty well, and–”
“Steve doesn’t like you.”
And Katherine hung up on her.
Ariel let out a frustrated gurgle that was meant to be a scream, and threw her phone against the back on the couch on which she was sitting as hard as she could. It bounced off and slide across the hard wood floor and under the coffee table, which Ariel kicked at in frustration. Her leg proved too short. She actually screamed then.
“Ariel, sweetheart.” Her grandmother poked her head into the living room. “What’s wrong now?”
“Katherine is scum,” Ariel seethed and buried her chewed-off finger nails into the arm of the couch. She could think of many more colorful words for Katherine than scum, but none of them were suitable for her grandmother’s ears.
“Oh, honey,” her grandmother waltz across the room and sat next to her, covering Ariel’s thin hands with her own wrinkled ones. “I think you’re relying too much on Katherine for companionship.”
Ariel bristled. “Well what else am I supposed to do? Everyone else left, and dad won’t lend me the car for even a weekend, and–”
“Ariel.” Her grandmother brushed a strand of her black hair from her face. “Surely you’ve got some other people to talk to? Think.” Ariel stared back at her.
“Well… I– I was invited to a party.” Her grandmother smiled and patted her hand.
“See, sweetie? You can still branch out. It’s not the end of the world.” And she got up and went back to the kitchen.
Ariel kneeled on the floor in order to retrieve her cell phone from under the coffee table. She wasn’t particularly interested in Bryan, but she’d be damned if she spent another Friday night home alone.
Friday morning did not go as planned. She received her graded literature essay back at the end of class.
“Professor Hayden.” As soon as the last, half-asleep student had left the room, she cornered the stocky man. “I don’t understand my grade.”
Professor Hayden paused in organizing his class notes, hunched over the small table at the front of the room. “I thought I made myself clear in my comments.”
Ariel could feel the ends of her eyebrows swooping down into a scowl. She fought to keep them level. “Professor Hayden, I have provided ample support for all my claims, all with several examples–”
“Miss Anders.” He straightened up then and gave her a look that was somewhere between a frown and a quizzical glance. “It’s not the amount of support, it’s the quality that I’m looking for.”
“I don’t understand.” Ariel had also considered herself to be good at analyzing text. Surely her three thousand words of claims and proof had some merit to it. Professor Hayden point at the essay grasped in her hands.
“You didn’t allow yourself nearly enough room to discuss all the material you brought up. Had it been teased out, Miss Anders, I have no doubt that you could have made it into a wonderful essay. It would, however, have been far above the word maximum. Please keep this in mind for next time.” He placed his file of papers under his arm with some finality, and faced the door of the classroom. Ariel’s’ facial control slipped and she glowered at him, taking a step to the right to prevent him from further heading toward the door.
“I fulfilled all the requirements you outlined, even if not perfectly. I should get at least a B.”
Professor Hayden pinched the bridge of his nose with his free arm.
“Miss Anders, as I have stated to the class several times, grades are non-negotiable.”
“Dan got a B. He has the grammar of a chimp!” The paper in her hands crinkled loudly as she balled her hands into fists. “I got a 5 in AP Lit– I’m not some nitwit who needs everything she writes combed over for her.”
“Miss Anders, stop.” Professor Hayden stepped around her to the door and opened it. She opened her mouth to protest, but barely got a syllable out before he cut her off. “While I have no doubt you did well in high school, I am not an AP evaluator. You grade remains unchanged.” He left, leaving Ariel alone and fuming in the middle of the empty class room. She stood like that for several movements, letting the rage radiate from her body in waves. When she left like she could talk to someone without yelling at them again, she slowly gathered her belongings and walked back tot the student lounge.
Bryan wasn’t there, but she reminded herself he was just an excuse not to stay home on the weekend. She walked to the claw machine and let her messenger bag fall to the floor beside it. She stretched, rotating her shoulders in attempt to pop her back. This failed, and she grumbled to herself about it as she fished a few quarters out of her pocket. She had thought to ask her table mate in Spanish for change earlier that day.
Seventy five cents later, she was out of quarters and had nothing to show for it. For the briefest moment she was as upset and frustration as she had been talking to Professor Hayden, but it passed quickly, leaving her feeling drained. She had been missing sleep in favor of late night television, which she had taken up in favor of calling one of her out of state friends, who were showing more and more disinterest in her as their college lives became more exciting. Dragging her bag behind her, Ariel trudged over to one of the couches and collapses onto it, telling her a short catnap would be healthy.
She awoke to the sound of squeaky wheels. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. Her neck, which had been resting at an awkward angle to the arm of the couch, decided this was a bad idea and pain shot threw her head. She groaned and peered around the room. It was darker outside, she could see through the windows. There were no students left, just a janitor pulling a noisy trashcan on wheel behind him as he gathered trash bags from the various garbage cans scattered throughout the room.
“What time is it?” she asked.
He pushed his foot into a small waste disposal bin, compressing the chip wrappers and scrap paper within into a more manageable volume. “Seven-thirty,” he answered shortly.
Ariel watched him in silence as he wrestled the bag from the bin, tied it off and chucked into the larger trash can. He had several new trash bag tied to the handle of it, and he removed one and lined the small bin with it. When he was done, he turned and looked her straight in the eye.
“Can I help you?”
It was such a cliché, common sort of thing to say, especially since she was staring, that Ariel should have expected it. She didn’t, though, and blushed. He was much younger than any of the janitors she’d seen at her high school– not much older than her, even. They probably would have overlapped in high school, but she didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t particularly tall, an inch or two shorter than Bryan maybe, and his hair was as dark and black as hers, though, she noted with a bit of envy, much more lustrous. His chin and nose were sharp, almost pointed, and his eyes were a honey brown, sharp, and still staring at her expectantly.
“No, sorry, just trying to get my bearings. I wasn’t planning on taking a four hour nap.”
He quirked a lone eyebrow at that. “Well, the last night class ends at 8:00, so if you don’t leave soon I’m supposed to escort you off the premise.”
Ariel laughed nervously and searched around her feet for her bag. “What if I was still sleep?”
“You know,” he answered, carting the his mobile trashcan back across the room toward the door, “I don’t think they mentioned that in training.”
Ariel had stopped paying attention. She was upside down on the couch, peering under it with her rear in the air. “Where is it?” she hissed.
The young janitor paused. “Did you lose something?”
Ariel clumsily righted herself on the couch and stood, pulling a few loose strands of hair behind her ears. “My bag.” Her eyebrows were down in the frown she seemed to be wearing so often recently. “I’m pretty sure I left it by my head when I fell asleep…” She trailed off, and he sauntered over to her. His walk was smooth and seemed awfully confident for a man in a blue janitor’s uniform. He got down on his knees and checked under and around the couch himself while Ariel stood to the side, biting her nails and wondering if she should try to start a conversation.
“Perhaps it was moved by accident, or you left it somewhere else,” the janitor suggested as he got back onto his feet.
“Oh, um… maybe.”
He helped her look for it, both of them crawling around the floor of the student lounge as he quizzed her on the size, color and contents of her messenger bag.
“Did you have anything valuable in it?”
“Not really,” she answered, peering behind one of the vending machines. There was no way her bag could fit behind here, she realized dumbly. She did, however, find a nickel. She pocketed it. “I usually leave my wallet at home and my cell phone’s in my pocket… I guess the graphing calculator cost a bit, though. And some textbooks?” College text books, she had realized, were quite valuable.
“It may have been stolen,” the janitor said darkly from where he was examining the underside of a table. Ariel choked back a Well, duh.
"That would suck," she said instead.
"You should come back tomorrow and inquire at Information about it," he went on, crossing the room to her with his gliding stride, making him seem completely out of place in a janitor's outfit, and no, Ariel was NOT thinking about that because she had a date tonight.
"Oh!" she gasped, and fumbled to get her cell phone out of her jacket pocket. "I was supposed to be somewhere..."
The janitor stood and watched her unblinkingly as she fiddled with it. The display told her it was 7:53 and she had missed six calls from home. She realized she was also supposed to have been picked up by her father four hours ago. Cursing under her breath, she selected 'return call' and pressed the device to her ear.
The janitor was still watching, standing not five feet from her, without even a twitch of the eyelid. Come to think of it, she had yet to seem him blink: he just stared, stared, stared at everything. Unnerved by this realization, she mumbled an excuse about needing to make a call and excused herself to the hallway, walking as briskly as possible while listening to her home phone ring.
"Hello?" He grandmother had answered.
"Hey grandma," said Ariel as she leaned against a cinder block wall. "Did dad come for me? I totally feel asleep by accident."
"Ariel!" her grandmother seemed oddly relieved; probably just the typical mother bear instincts of a grandmother. "We had no idea where you went. Katherine had no idea, and your father checked around campus--"
"I was just in the student lounge," Ariel explained, smiling bitterly. "Sorry I worried you. But, uh, I was just going to head over to a party at McTavern's."
"Oh," her grandmother seemed surprised. "So you did find new friends over there."
"Well, kind of..." Ariel completely forgot what she was saying as the janitor came out for the lounge, pulling his trash bin with him. Ariel barely heard the next thing her grandmother said as she watched him lock the door. He still wasn't blinking. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"I said I'll get your father to drop the car off over there and take the bus back. You be out late, right?"
"Yeah." The janitor stood staring at her again, perfectly motionless. She raised her eyebrows at him in curiosity.
"I don't want you walking all the way home from the bus stop late at night, and I'm sure your father won't want to be up too late tonight," her grandmother babbled on. Ariel was having a staring contest with him now. She was sure that if she watched him long enough he would have to blink, but he was just blandly gazing back at her.
"Oh, Miss NAME's at the door; I'll see you soon, honey. Be safe." Her grandmother made a kiss noise into the phone and hung up. Ariel slowly pulling her phone away from her face, eyes still locked with the janitor's. Her eyes burned, but he was just staring back with total disinterest.
Finally, she blinked. He didn’t.
“It’s 8:00,” he said flatly.
“Good to know,” she answered, frowning slightly. Out in the hallway, it was becoming clear how empty the building was. There was no sound from the surrounding classrooms, just a low electric hum (a projector someone forgot to turn off?) and her own respiration. The janitor didn’t make a noise as he strode toward her.
“I told you, you have to leave at 8:00.”
She had forgotten that.
“Sorry,” she answered, pocketing her phone and averting her eyes abashedly. Wait, no, she thought. Don’t look away from the strange man you’re alone in a secluded place with. “I don’t need you to escort me though,” she added, louder than necessary.