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Dec. 23rd, 2011 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mkrobinson TITLE/PROMPT: I couldn't walk and I tried to run/Mother
AUTHOR: mkrobinson/bloodredcherries
RATING: R-deals with mentions of abortion clinics and an inappropriate encounter between a fifteen year old Sunny Winslow and an older man.
WORDS: 2208.
TABLE: http://babysitters100.livejournal.com/5
SUMMARY: (Sweet Valley University/California Diaries/BSC crossover) "Immaturely? How dare you say that, when you sleep in the same bed with my father? When you force women here to make decisions that they don’t want to?...When you let your brother be all lecherous around her and her friends and when you take your supposed impartiality and turn it into...this?" A person from Sunny's past's chance arrival at her (most unwanted) step-mother's health clinic gives her the chance to escape from Palo City.
WARNINGS: Sunny is touched inappropriately by her step-uncle; some cursing. This also contains a negative portrayal of abortion and an abortion clinic due to the fact that the story is told in the POVs of Steven, who is quite upset with how his pregnant fiancee was treated at the clinic, and by Sunny, who is a confused fifteen year old Sorry, I thought that I had made that clear when I uploaded it last night, but must have forgotten to.
NOTES: This takes certain elements from the Sweet Valley University book "Broken Promises, Shattered Dreams" (however, previous knowledge is not really needed) and is not really related to my other fan fiction series involving Sharon/Richard.
Steven Wakefield read the sign in front of the simple, nondescript, office building across the street from the bus stop that was in front of the strip mall (which contained a most unfortunate combination of a Discovery Zone, a 'massage' parlor, a bookstore, and a clothing store that looked like it was stuck in some sort of time warp) trying hard to keep his rage under control. He was going to be a father, after all, the last thing he needed was getting arrested. He knew that this was the place.
It practically reeked of hypocrisy. There was a fake, sunny, supposedly happy atmosphere, especially in the lobby. This was the place. The place where that moron, Chas, had sent his poor fiancée. He picked up a brochure, flipping through it. Her name, he'd discovered was Tracy. It sounded so-innocent.
No wonder Billie had fallen for her lies, her fabrications.
He wasn’t going to leave, hell, he’d have already been married to her were the disaster that was his near wedding to Cara not still fresh in everyone’s minds. Hell, sometimes his mother thought Billie was Cara, which had irritated him to no end and would send Jessica into utter fits about how she hated her and how rude he’d been for breaking up with her when she moved to London. Then his mother’s nervous breakdown had happened the twins’ senior year, months with her in the psych ward, trapped in a world where their house had been destroyed by an earthquake and various calamities had occurred as a result, and he certainly couldn’t have had her marry him in the middle of that, now could he? So of course he was going to ask her to marry him when he got her pregnant, wasn’t he? It was all so infuriating.
He read her name tag: Sunshine D. Winslow.
He hoped the D was short for something less embarrassing than Sunshine was. His mother’s friend had had a daughter named Sunshine. Winslow. Oh, no, it couldn’t be? She was a few years younger than him, but it really, really couldn’t be. She spoke.
It was.
“May I help you?”
"I was wondering if I could speak to Tracy Brezinski."
"About what?"
"About how she treated my fiancée."
“Your fiancée?
“Yeah. Billie Winkler.”
The look on the girl's face said all he needed to know.
He wondered if she remembered the torture the twins had put her through before her family moved away.
This was so awkward.
"I'll go get her. You can sit down."
He gave her a slight smile. It wasn't her fault.
"Thanks."
He sat back down, clutching the pamphlet in his hands. He could hear her muttering under her breath.
"Goddammit, I should have just stayed a babysitter like Dawn."
He shrugged. Soon enough, she returned with the object of his ire.
"Thank you, Sunshine."
"It's Sunny. Tracy, you've done it, again. You always do this."
Always? Steven didn’t like the sound of that.
“Do what? Stand up for women’s rights?”
“Women’s rights? Bullshit! You don’t care about what that woman wanted, or what her boyfriend wanted, or none of that! You just care about making your disgusting brother happy!”
“Chas isn’t disgusting!”
Brother? Billie had said that this was Chas’s cousin, a therapist of some sorts, not his brother. He eyed the twosome with a new look, noticing that the secretary seemed to have some sort of personal problem with Tracy, and he wondered if he ought to step in, to stop it. He’d done that during fights that the twins had over the years, but he didn’t really want to in this instance. Billie had gone mad, seemingly, with the news of her pregnancy, and he presumed a physical altercation with Ms. Brezinski would do nothing to help her mood.
His mother would also be unamused if Sunny Winslow remembered him.
He sighed.
“He tried to touch me, and you know it. When he came over for dinner.”
Wait, what?
“It was an accident!”
“He grabbed my ass and asked me to pour him some sugar! I am fifteen!”
“You get around.”
He nearly got involved, but sat back down when the younger woman railed at her.
“My mother was dying of cancer, in case you’d forgotten. I was not “getting around”, not that it’s any of your concern, you bitch! I was thirteen, almost fourteen, and I didn’t have a mother anymore! How on earth would you have reacted?!”
“You were behaving immaturely-“
Steven Wakefield couldn’t believe that a fifteen year old was so vulgar, but he supposed he might be too if his mother died and-
“Immaturely? How dare you say that, when you sleep in the same bed with my father? When you force women here to make decisions that they don’t want to? When you force a fifteen year old girl to work at your abortion farm as a punishment because she has a few piercings and a tattoo? When you let your brother be all lecherous around her and her friends and when you take your supposed impartiality and turn it into...this?”
Steven watched in a sort of vague, trancelike, horror as Sunshine D. Winslow, the little kid he remembered from their parents’ forced play dates, in which Jessica and Lila tended to torture her because she was, quite frankly, a bit odd, especially for his youngest sister and her wealthy best friend, stormed out of the health clinic in tears.
Tracy simply smiled, and he left.
He found Sunshine sitting on the bench in front of the Discovery Zone, sobbing hysterically, and he was reminded of the times he and Joe Howell would find her sobbing at the playground, as a result of the duo of his sister and his cousin, and he sat beside her.
She pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
He didn’t say a word.
Finally, she spoke.
“Do you have change for the pay phone?”
***
“Please, Sharon, I can’t stay there anymore. Please, you’ve got to let me come visit. I’ll go to SHS with Dawn and Mary Anne. I’ll join the Baby-Sitters’ Club. I’ll take out my piercings and stop dyeing my hair.”
“Sunny, I don’t understand what happened. Can you explain it to me again?”
“Dad’s engaged, Sharon, I just can’t-“
“Can’t what, honey?”
Sunny paused for breath, to recollect her thoughts, thinking back to the events of the previous day. She wanted her mom, she really wanted her mom, but Betsy Winslow had been dead for nearly two years, and certainly couldn’t come back.
”He touched you? Chas touched you?”
That had been her mother’s friend Alice’s almost daughter-in-law, who had believed her, thought that was partially because she’d been in absolute hysterics when she’d shown up at Alice’s house with Steven, interrupting a wedding dress fitting and throwing up into some woman from Texas’s purse, before Alice Wakefield had actually been useful and had given her a sleeping pill and a set of pajamas, letting her sleep in the nicer twin’s room.
She was crying, and she couldn’t stand it. She always cried when she went to Alice’s house, which was why she hadn’t been since they moved to Palo. Her mother had died, and she was at her least favorite place in the world, and she was crying, and they were preparing for a wedding, and it was entirely too embarrassing.
“Sunny? It’s Richard.”
“Mr. Spier?”
“What’s happened? Are you alright?”
“I want to come over! I can’t stay in Palo anymore, not until she’s gone and she won’t be gone ‘cause Dad’s gonna marry her and I can’t have him as a brother-in-law because he touched me on Christmas last year and please?”
“Would you feel more comfortable telling Sharon this?”
She nodded, and then realized he couldn’t see her.
“Please…”
She wanted it to be the good old days again, with Sharon and Jack still living next door to her with Dawn and Jeff and with her mother healthy again, even though she knew logically that it wouldn’t happen, and that she should just be glad she’d had a night in a house without Tracy, even though the Wakefield twins were just as obnoxious as they’d been when they were making fun of her for being a hippie when they were five and she was three, and even though her mother’s friend Alice had gotten rather bizarre in the years that had passed, and even though the news that Steven, the only one of them that hadn’t bothered to make fun of her for her name (Jessica) or insist that tie-dye was gross and messy (Elizabeth) was going to be a father depressed her, not because she thought he was too young, but because she’d never be able to give her mother a grandchild, and that wasn’t fair.
“She’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thanks, Mr. Spier.”
“Richard.”
She didn’t respond, still trying to hold back tears.
She heard the Wakefields fighting, arguing about something, and she whimpered softly.
“I told you, Billie is fine with peach, mother! She said that the bridesmaid dresses could be peach! Maroon is an atrocious color for a late summer wedding! Unless you want the wedding to be in fall, Mom? Do you want that?”
“That was the plan, wasn’t it? Then Maureen and Derek swooped in here, demanding we hold the wedding before she started to show! Honestly, does it really matter? They can elope for all I care.”
“I thought you wanted to plan the wedding?”
She would have kept eavesdropping, but Sharon came back on the other end, sounding slightly confused.
“Richie said that you told him someone touched you?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it your father?”
“No. Dad’s been dating this woman, Tracy, and she’s just awful…”
Sunny told Sharon the whole story, pausing every so often, knowing that her best friend’s mother needed a bit more time to process than most people, and by the end she was pretty sure she wouldn’t cry another tear.
“She’s making you work at a place that performs abortions?”
“Yes, Sharon, it’s so I can learn-“
“You shouldn’t be working there. You’re fifteen, Sunny, you’re a teenager. What does your father have to say?”
She knew that Sharon was dealing with the problems that offended her least, as she typically did, and despite herself, she smiled.
“Dad made me do it.”
She can hear the gasp on the other end of the line, and winces. She knows that Sharon really shouldn’t be getting upset over things, due to her rather delicate condition, which Dawn told her about in secret, but she hears her collect herself, and she sighs.
“Jack has been concerned, but I have to say that I thought he was overreacting a bit, but is all this true? You’re not lying to me?”
“No, I’m not, Sharon.”
“Where are you now?”
“Why?”
“Because if you are at home I want you to go over to Jack’s. And if you are not at home I want your address so he can come pick you up.”
“And I’ll be able to come to Stoneybrook?”
“Yes.”
Much to her relief, Jack Schafer comes as soon as he possibly could, and he brings little Gracie with him, and Jeff, who looks like he knows everything, and he probably does. He pays for the stupid purse of Texas girl’s that she accidentally ruined, tells her mother’s old friend that there are more important things to worry about than the color of the bridesmaid dresses, and soon enough they are back in the car, driving back to Palo City. Jack is talking to her about something, possibly the weather, maybe what’s going to happen once they get back home, but she isn’t really sure. All she knows is that she’s asleep on Jeff’s shoulder, and that he seems awfully...
“Sunny? We’re home. Dad said that you’re spending the night here, and that Mom an’ Richard are coming up tomorrow-”
“Really?”
He nods, and she lets him lead her into the Schafers’ house, where she eats a dinner that Carol and Mrs. Bruen made and somehow gets into a pair of Dawn’s old pajamas and crawls into bed, ignoring the Schafers’ offers to talk. She doesn’t want to talk about it.
She wakes up the next morning to find Sharon sitting on the bed beside her, stroking her hair, she sits up, accepting the hug from her best friend’s mom.
“Thanks for coming, Sharon. I know you never liked California, or Jack, or-“
“It doesn’t matter. Honestly, Sunny, we all feel so stupid. All those times we talked on the phone, all those letters you wrote to Dawnie and Mary Anne, all the things Jack and Carol overheard-“
“I told Ducky I hated it. He told me that I should want my dad to be happy. So I didn’t tell anyone else.”
She moved closer to her, smelling the familiar scent of her perfume, almost feeling like she was a little kid at Dawn’s for a sleepover, even though she wasn’t anymore.
“Richie and Jack are getting your things-Carol is supervising.”
“I can go?”
“Of course. I don’t really care what your father says about it.”
She smiles at her.
“Thanks, Sharon.”
“You’re welcome.”
For the first time, ever, in Sunshine Daydream Winslow's entire fifteen years, she was glad to run into a Wakefield.
AUTHOR: mkrobinson/bloodredcherries
RATING: R-deals with mentions of abortion clinics and an inappropriate encounter between a fifteen year old Sunny Winslow and an older man.
WORDS: 2208.
TABLE: http://babysitters100.livejournal.com/5
SUMMARY: (Sweet Valley University/California Diaries/BSC crossover) "Immaturely? How dare you say that, when you sleep in the same bed with my father? When you force women here to make decisions that they don’t want to?...When you let your brother be all lecherous around her and her friends and when you take your supposed impartiality and turn it into...this?" A person from Sunny's past's chance arrival at her (most unwanted) step-mother's health clinic gives her the chance to escape from Palo City.
WARNINGS: Sunny is touched inappropriately by her step-uncle; some cursing. This also contains a negative portrayal of abortion and an abortion clinic due to the fact that the story is told in the POVs of Steven, who is quite upset with how his pregnant fiancee was treated at the clinic, and by Sunny, who is a confused fifteen year old Sorry, I thought that I had made that clear when I uploaded it last night, but must have forgotten to.
NOTES: This takes certain elements from the Sweet Valley University book "Broken Promises, Shattered Dreams" (however, previous knowledge is not really needed) and is not really related to my other fan fiction series involving Sharon/Richard.
Steven Wakefield read the sign in front of the simple, nondescript, office building across the street from the bus stop that was in front of the strip mall (which contained a most unfortunate combination of a Discovery Zone, a 'massage' parlor, a bookstore, and a clothing store that looked like it was stuck in some sort of time warp) trying hard to keep his rage under control. He was going to be a father, after all, the last thing he needed was getting arrested. He knew that this was the place.
It practically reeked of hypocrisy. There was a fake, sunny, supposedly happy atmosphere, especially in the lobby. This was the place. The place where that moron, Chas, had sent his poor fiancée. He picked up a brochure, flipping through it. Her name, he'd discovered was Tracy. It sounded so-innocent.
No wonder Billie had fallen for her lies, her fabrications.
He wasn’t going to leave, hell, he’d have already been married to her were the disaster that was his near wedding to Cara not still fresh in everyone’s minds. Hell, sometimes his mother thought Billie was Cara, which had irritated him to no end and would send Jessica into utter fits about how she hated her and how rude he’d been for breaking up with her when she moved to London. Then his mother’s nervous breakdown had happened the twins’ senior year, months with her in the psych ward, trapped in a world where their house had been destroyed by an earthquake and various calamities had occurred as a result, and he certainly couldn’t have had her marry him in the middle of that, now could he? So of course he was going to ask her to marry him when he got her pregnant, wasn’t he? It was all so infuriating.
He read her name tag: Sunshine D. Winslow.
He hoped the D was short for something less embarrassing than Sunshine was. His mother’s friend had had a daughter named Sunshine. Winslow. Oh, no, it couldn’t be? She was a few years younger than him, but it really, really couldn’t be. She spoke.
It was.
“May I help you?”
"I was wondering if I could speak to Tracy Brezinski."
"About what?"
"About how she treated my fiancée."
“Your fiancée?
“Yeah. Billie Winkler.”
The look on the girl's face said all he needed to know.
He wondered if she remembered the torture the twins had put her through before her family moved away.
This was so awkward.
"I'll go get her. You can sit down."
He gave her a slight smile. It wasn't her fault.
"Thanks."
He sat back down, clutching the pamphlet in his hands. He could hear her muttering under her breath.
"Goddammit, I should have just stayed a babysitter like Dawn."
He shrugged. Soon enough, she returned with the object of his ire.
"Thank you, Sunshine."
"It's Sunny. Tracy, you've done it, again. You always do this."
Always? Steven didn’t like the sound of that.
“Do what? Stand up for women’s rights?”
“Women’s rights? Bullshit! You don’t care about what that woman wanted, or what her boyfriend wanted, or none of that! You just care about making your disgusting brother happy!”
“Chas isn’t disgusting!”
Brother? Billie had said that this was Chas’s cousin, a therapist of some sorts, not his brother. He eyed the twosome with a new look, noticing that the secretary seemed to have some sort of personal problem with Tracy, and he wondered if he ought to step in, to stop it. He’d done that during fights that the twins had over the years, but he didn’t really want to in this instance. Billie had gone mad, seemingly, with the news of her pregnancy, and he presumed a physical altercation with Ms. Brezinski would do nothing to help her mood.
His mother would also be unamused if Sunny Winslow remembered him.
He sighed.
“He tried to touch me, and you know it. When he came over for dinner.”
Wait, what?
“It was an accident!”
“He grabbed my ass and asked me to pour him some sugar! I am fifteen!”
“You get around.”
He nearly got involved, but sat back down when the younger woman railed at her.
“My mother was dying of cancer, in case you’d forgotten. I was not “getting around”, not that it’s any of your concern, you bitch! I was thirteen, almost fourteen, and I didn’t have a mother anymore! How on earth would you have reacted?!”
“You were behaving immaturely-“
Steven Wakefield couldn’t believe that a fifteen year old was so vulgar, but he supposed he might be too if his mother died and-
“Immaturely? How dare you say that, when you sleep in the same bed with my father? When you force women here to make decisions that they don’t want to? When you force a fifteen year old girl to work at your abortion farm as a punishment because she has a few piercings and a tattoo? When you let your brother be all lecherous around her and her friends and when you take your supposed impartiality and turn it into...this?”
Steven watched in a sort of vague, trancelike, horror as Sunshine D. Winslow, the little kid he remembered from their parents’ forced play dates, in which Jessica and Lila tended to torture her because she was, quite frankly, a bit odd, especially for his youngest sister and her wealthy best friend, stormed out of the health clinic in tears.
Tracy simply smiled, and he left.
He found Sunshine sitting on the bench in front of the Discovery Zone, sobbing hysterically, and he was reminded of the times he and Joe Howell would find her sobbing at the playground, as a result of the duo of his sister and his cousin, and he sat beside her.
She pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
He didn’t say a word.
Finally, she spoke.
“Do you have change for the pay phone?”
***
“Please, Sharon, I can’t stay there anymore. Please, you’ve got to let me come visit. I’ll go to SHS with Dawn and Mary Anne. I’ll join the Baby-Sitters’ Club. I’ll take out my piercings and stop dyeing my hair.”
“Sunny, I don’t understand what happened. Can you explain it to me again?”
“Dad’s engaged, Sharon, I just can’t-“
“Can’t what, honey?”
Sunny paused for breath, to recollect her thoughts, thinking back to the events of the previous day. She wanted her mom, she really wanted her mom, but Betsy Winslow had been dead for nearly two years, and certainly couldn’t come back.
”He touched you? Chas touched you?”
That had been her mother’s friend Alice’s almost daughter-in-law, who had believed her, thought that was partially because she’d been in absolute hysterics when she’d shown up at Alice’s house with Steven, interrupting a wedding dress fitting and throwing up into some woman from Texas’s purse, before Alice Wakefield had actually been useful and had given her a sleeping pill and a set of pajamas, letting her sleep in the nicer twin’s room.
She was crying, and she couldn’t stand it. She always cried when she went to Alice’s house, which was why she hadn’t been since they moved to Palo. Her mother had died, and she was at her least favorite place in the world, and she was crying, and they were preparing for a wedding, and it was entirely too embarrassing.
“Sunny? It’s Richard.”
“Mr. Spier?”
“What’s happened? Are you alright?”
“I want to come over! I can’t stay in Palo anymore, not until she’s gone and she won’t be gone ‘cause Dad’s gonna marry her and I can’t have him as a brother-in-law because he touched me on Christmas last year and please?”
“Would you feel more comfortable telling Sharon this?”
She nodded, and then realized he couldn’t see her.
“Please…”
She wanted it to be the good old days again, with Sharon and Jack still living next door to her with Dawn and Jeff and with her mother healthy again, even though she knew logically that it wouldn’t happen, and that she should just be glad she’d had a night in a house without Tracy, even though the Wakefield twins were just as obnoxious as they’d been when they were making fun of her for being a hippie when they were five and she was three, and even though her mother’s friend Alice had gotten rather bizarre in the years that had passed, and even though the news that Steven, the only one of them that hadn’t bothered to make fun of her for her name (Jessica) or insist that tie-dye was gross and messy (Elizabeth) was going to be a father depressed her, not because she thought he was too young, but because she’d never be able to give her mother a grandchild, and that wasn’t fair.
“She’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thanks, Mr. Spier.”
“Richard.”
She didn’t respond, still trying to hold back tears.
She heard the Wakefields fighting, arguing about something, and she whimpered softly.
“I told you, Billie is fine with peach, mother! She said that the bridesmaid dresses could be peach! Maroon is an atrocious color for a late summer wedding! Unless you want the wedding to be in fall, Mom? Do you want that?”
“That was the plan, wasn’t it? Then Maureen and Derek swooped in here, demanding we hold the wedding before she started to show! Honestly, does it really matter? They can elope for all I care.”
“I thought you wanted to plan the wedding?”
She would have kept eavesdropping, but Sharon came back on the other end, sounding slightly confused.
“Richie said that you told him someone touched you?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it your father?”
“No. Dad’s been dating this woman, Tracy, and she’s just awful…”
Sunny told Sharon the whole story, pausing every so often, knowing that her best friend’s mother needed a bit more time to process than most people, and by the end she was pretty sure she wouldn’t cry another tear.
“She’s making you work at a place that performs abortions?”
“Yes, Sharon, it’s so I can learn-“
“You shouldn’t be working there. You’re fifteen, Sunny, you’re a teenager. What does your father have to say?”
She knew that Sharon was dealing with the problems that offended her least, as she typically did, and despite herself, she smiled.
“Dad made me do it.”
She can hear the gasp on the other end of the line, and winces. She knows that Sharon really shouldn’t be getting upset over things, due to her rather delicate condition, which Dawn told her about in secret, but she hears her collect herself, and she sighs.
“Jack has been concerned, but I have to say that I thought he was overreacting a bit, but is all this true? You’re not lying to me?”
“No, I’m not, Sharon.”
“Where are you now?”
“Why?”
“Because if you are at home I want you to go over to Jack’s. And if you are not at home I want your address so he can come pick you up.”
“And I’ll be able to come to Stoneybrook?”
“Yes.”
Much to her relief, Jack Schafer comes as soon as he possibly could, and he brings little Gracie with him, and Jeff, who looks like he knows everything, and he probably does. He pays for the stupid purse of Texas girl’s that she accidentally ruined, tells her mother’s old friend that there are more important things to worry about than the color of the bridesmaid dresses, and soon enough they are back in the car, driving back to Palo City. Jack is talking to her about something, possibly the weather, maybe what’s going to happen once they get back home, but she isn’t really sure. All she knows is that she’s asleep on Jeff’s shoulder, and that he seems awfully...
“Sunny? We’re home. Dad said that you’re spending the night here, and that Mom an’ Richard are coming up tomorrow-”
“Really?”
He nods, and she lets him lead her into the Schafers’ house, where she eats a dinner that Carol and Mrs. Bruen made and somehow gets into a pair of Dawn’s old pajamas and crawls into bed, ignoring the Schafers’ offers to talk. She doesn’t want to talk about it.
She wakes up the next morning to find Sharon sitting on the bed beside her, stroking her hair, she sits up, accepting the hug from her best friend’s mom.
“Thanks for coming, Sharon. I know you never liked California, or Jack, or-“
“It doesn’t matter. Honestly, Sunny, we all feel so stupid. All those times we talked on the phone, all those letters you wrote to Dawnie and Mary Anne, all the things Jack and Carol overheard-“
“I told Ducky I hated it. He told me that I should want my dad to be happy. So I didn’t tell anyone else.”
She moved closer to her, smelling the familiar scent of her perfume, almost feeling like she was a little kid at Dawn’s for a sleepover, even though she wasn’t anymore.
“Richie and Jack are getting your things-Carol is supervising.”
“I can go?”
“Of course. I don’t really care what your father says about it.”
She smiles at her.
“Thanks, Sharon.”
“You’re welcome.”
For the first time, ever, in Sunshine Daydream Winslow's entire fifteen years, she was glad to run into a Wakefield.
