Disclaimer: Not mine, not at all!
Authors Notes: Well. I have been away from writing fanfic for quite a while, and this is my first fanfic for this fandom. Comments and constructive critiques are very welcome!
Passé
When Stacy turns eighteen, she gets another set of piercings in her ears. Sitting in the chair, clutching Claudia's hand, she clenches her eyes shut and wonders who she can give herself insulin but not do this.
When the needle gun clicks, it's a tiny rebellion.
"Orange is so passé," she tells Claudia, back in her element, flipping her curls over one shoulder to examine her new studs in the store window.
The other girl snorts and adjusts the hem of her sweater, layered like a sunset, splattered with gold paint. It's tight above her red cargo pants, which are similarly decorated.
"So is doing your make-up in public," Claudia says, and grabs Stacy's arm, stopping her from taking a tube of lipstick out of her purse.
"Hey!" she protests, and pulls away. She's glaring, but Claudia isn't; Claudia just looks stubborn and maybe a little resigned.
"Fine," she snaps then, and starts to walk away, shoving the lipstick back in. She only slows down when she hears Claudia hurrying to catch up with her, her heels thumping against the sidewalk.
They are not thirteen anymore, but they still have this.
For Claudia's seventeenth birthday, her parents caved in and got her a car. It's a VW Bug, used, all of the bangs and dents covered with a custom paint job.
Stacy is half-worried that the ceiling or the doors will give out on them one day, either fall in or just fly away, and the wind will catch their hair, swing it outside of the car, crazy and painfully small-town girls on a big road.
Luckily, there are no places in Stoneybrook with a speed limit higher than 45, so she doesn't mention it.
She's still willing to ride with Claudia, either way, and she barely even slumps down in her seat when they pass people that they know.
"Remember when Mary Anne got her ears pierced?" Claudia asks.
Stacy glances at her, and Claudia grins. She's waiting for an answer, waiting for Stacy to say "Yes," but the blonde girl pauses.
Honestly, she doesn't remember it that well. She remembers moments, miniature slices of time -
fifteen and high on high school, all those older boys, the captain of the football team asking her for ice cream
(so Stoneybrook, so Cloud Nine)
the embarrassment in having to reschedule because she had something to do with 'her girls'
Kristy in mascara and old jeans, holding Mary Anne's hand like Claudia just held hers
Abby giggling with Mallory and Jessi about some of the earrings
making a joke with the younger girls about 'balls' that made them giggle and blush
she rolled her eyes at Claudia and Claudia rolled hers back,
- smiling like she's smiling now.
"Yes," Stacy says, and blinks.
"We were all so sure that she was going to cry, at least a little," Claudia remembers, looking over the wheel at the road. "Kristy won ten dollars when she didn't bawl."
She laughs; she had forgotten that part. "Mary Anne was so mad about that!"
Claudia laughs with her, and Stacy remembers something else, remembers why she hasn't seen Mary Anne outside of class for a year and a half - not since Mary Anne and Claudia had fought and Stacy had taken a side.
Slowly, turning to roll down the window so that her friend can't see her face, Stacy's smile fades.
Claudia had been wearing orange that day, too, but it wasn't passé when they were sixteen.
Purple eyeliner was, though, and Stacy's never been able to get all of it out of the sweater that she had been wearing.
She's still a little bitter about that - $117.65, white, 100% silk, new that season - but the past three years of her life had been spent making exceptions for Claudia.
In hindsight, the past two years have been like that, too.
"Have you talked to Mary Anne lately?" she asks, a little stiffly, and is surprised when the other girl nods.
"Yeah," Claudia replies. "She said that she didn't want to have any hard feelings when she left for college."
Stacy looks down at her hands. Manicured hands, straight-A hands, smart pretty girl hands. Does Mary Anne have hands like this? she wonders. Claudia always has brightly-colored fingernails, the polish just on the verge of peeling, and Stacy almost chokes on nostalgia whenever she sees them.
"We made up," Claudia continues, and Stacy has to swallow hard before she's able to say,
"That's good."
They're almost in her driveway now, and Claudia pulls in and puts the car into park before she turns to her and says, a little too seriously, "Are you all right, Stace?"
Perhaps Claudia has spent the past five years making exceptions for her, as well.
"I'm fine," Stacy says, trying to reassure both of them.
When Claudia raises her eyebrows, one of them pierced and glittering, Stacy leans across the center console and presses her lips against her friend's cheek.
"Thanks for coming with me, Claud," she tells her, and unhooks her seatbelt.
Claudia blinks at her, and Stacy can't help but grin at her, a little pityingly -
Oh, Claud, we're a little too big city to be here but a little too small-town to leave.
- and add, "Say 'hi' to Mary Anne for me."
The other girl nods at her when Stacy slams her door, still looking a little dumbfounded. "I will," she says, and puts the car into reverse.
Instead of going into the house right away, Stacy stands and waves, waits for Claudia to wave back. Only then does she turn to go inside, her hand digging in her purse for her keys and coming up with lipstick instead.
Shaking her head, Stacy smiles.
Lipstick will never be passé, and neither will she.