Survival Of The Fittest

[Summer Simms continued from Eat Me]

"I made all sorts of things; buttons, cookies, you name it. They all said 'Don't be a bummer, vote Summer!'. That's cute, isn't it? I thought so, but none of it worked. I could have gone back in time and taken Hitler out and it wouldn't have changed anything. All they ever wanted was their precious Naomi, she's all they ever saw. 'Oh Naomi, what a saint. She took the poor burned boy to prom, God Bless.' It was just a load a bull, y'know. Wish I'd thought of it first. But I'm glad she's gone. I'm glad she finally knows what suffering is."

Summer rolled to her side, hip bone digging painfully into the dark lacquered wood beneath her, but she didn't mind. Anything was better than walking and this somehow seemed... apt.

She was situated in the midst of the stage, her legs pulled tightly to her chest, gun and spear on either side of her as if lovers and bag beneath her head. The lounge itself was dark, moody almost, with the only source of light funneling in through the salt-stained vaulted window overtaking an entire wall. The door leading outside to the pool area remained ajar from her entrance and allowed a soft breeze into the room every so often, carrying with it the faint crashing of waves.

Her body felt unnaturally heavy, every movement feeling like a chore. She hadn't slept long at the farmhouse, fifteen minutes at the max until awoken by the hiss of her collar. She hadn't run very fast despite the warning, likely from exhaust alone, but a sliver of trust as well. They wouldn't do that to her. She was their favorite, after all.

She hadn't realized how heavy her eyelids were until everything was dark, nor did she know how long she was out until they once again darted open. Tired as she was, she didn't want to sleep.  Fighting back the weight of her lids, she found the camera on the wall end of the stage, silently locking with it once again. She always knew where they were now, having begun taking note of them with each new area she entered.

"Will you send me a note with my weapon next time? I want something to keep forever, and I can read it when I'm not good enough. Please?"

((Mara Montalvo continued from Dude! FORTIFIED!!! Pt. 3))

The hotel. She told Finn to meet her here. She had her bag now with her things in it. Finally she had things from home. The only thing was she didn't know was where he was inside the building. She approached and there was a fancy looking door leading to what looked like a restaurant. It was showy, something he'd choose.

Mara looked around and self consciously touched the bandage on her cheek. It didn't seem like there was anyone around. That is, until she heard a familiar voice. She held the gun close and ready. She knew not to trust anyone anymore. It was a survival game.

She walked closer and saw the door was open. Carefully she stepped in and breathed in the musty smell of the lounge. The voice, it seemed, was coming from Summer Simms up on the stage. Mara's hold on the gun loosened.

"Summer?" she asked quietly.

Summer?

Summer, Summer, Summer, Summer.

She liked hearing her name on people's lips, no matter how surprised they all seemed to be to see her. It was as if none of them expected to see her alive, let alone flourishing.

Craning her head backwards, Summer's vision took a 180 as she eyed the doorway, body not moving an inch from her comfortable position. There was no need to be cautious, really, not with her friends watching after her. And truthfully, she didn't even need to check and see who was calling out to her. She already recognized the voice.

"Mara," She sing-songed, a sharp smile marring her features as she rolled to her stomach.

If Summer had a best friend, it likely would have been Mara. Well, it would have been Frances or Miles, but Frances was dead and Miles probably hated her for what she did to Naomi, but what other choice did she have? Her life would have been ruined if Naomi succeeded, living in obscurity under a rock somewhere. He'd understand one day. If not, she still had Mister Danya. And Mara, at least for a little.

"How are you? I heard about your little kerfuffle. Is that why your hand is bandaged?" Summer asked, her voice becoming grave toward the end before once more brightening as she continued, now edging her way toward the edge of the stage, "Do you want some donuts? My friends gave them to me. I was on the announcements too, y'know, you probably heard. They said I was their favorite."

She continued her slow approach further into the lounge and closer to the stage where Summer was rolling around. Her free hand skimmed along the tops of the plush, but dusty chairs seated at each table.

At the table nearest to the stage she stopped and stood up on the tip toes of her scuffed up, dirty Mary Janes to take a closer look. Summer Simms had dangerous looking weapons by her, but the fact that she hadn't gone for them and the overwhelming strangeness of the scenario stopped her from raising her own weapon.

The question of what happened to her caused her dazed eyes to clear up and some of her normal school temperament to come back.

"That was more than a kerfuffle," she said, slamming her gun down onto the table. "That was a complete disaster! I am traumatized all because meathead had more sports statistics then sense inside his thick skull. Unbelievable, these people, really. They just- ugh! They just make stupid decisions and they approach everyone without the least bit of thought! That loser cowboy with the stiffy for Jesus and murder cornered me in the lighthouse and when I was about to get out Mike tried to stop me so I stabbed him with some glass and escaped right before Hansel almost turned me to a corpse. And then some ghetto trash walked up to me, yelling and he attacked..."

Mara trailed off and went quiet. She didn't want to call attention to it. She didn't want to remember what he did and what she did and what was left over.

Mara pulled out the chair in front of the table and plopped down. Dust from the ancient chair puffed out and drifted away. Across from her was a pile of perfectly beautiful, delicious iced donuts. It was like they were in color and the rest of the world was in black and white.

"I heard about Naomi. Did she attack you? She was...sometimes ruthless" she said slowly. "Tell me what happened."

And though this was all very important and more than a little disturbing given how she was so fondly referring to the terrorists, Mara could hardly stomach the ration bars and was dizzy with hunger.

"You know, donuts will make you fat," she blurted out. She folded her hands on the table in front of her and sat up straight. "Fat, fat fat..."

A moment passed that felt like a lifetime. Mara leapt forward, grabbed a donut with each hand and started stuffing the chocolate one into her mouth.

Summer listened to Mara's story thoughtfully, having now moved to dangle her long legs off the edge. She didn't understand how Mara could talk so freely about what happened to her and what she'd done. Even thinking about the night with Brandon was enough to turn Summer's stomach. She could still smell him, feel his calluses against her legs anytime she thought about it, like it was burned into her mind. Her chin began to quiver, holding back sick as it danced dangerously close to coming up, only worsening when Mara asked about Naomi before lecturing her about the donuts.

"Shut  up," She groaned, burying her face into her hands in an effort to steady the world around her and fight back the sick, "Just shut up for a second,"

A moment passed, silent aside from the buzzing of the cameras and her labored breathing.

"Sorry," She said brightly once she emerged from her hands, hopping down from the stage and following Mara to the table. Ornate dishes and silverware still lay haphazardly strewn across many of the tables, some dotted with tipped over wine glasses, though the majority lay in shards across the floor, the crunch of which Summer savored beneath her boots. Slinking into the seat on the opposite side of Mara, she watched for a moment while the other girl enjoyed her donuts before continuing.

"Everything was so perfect for her; nobody touched her or tried to hurt her and she had this stupid idea that she could save everyone. It wasn't fair," Her voice was quiet, pensive but full of malice. She lowered her gaze to one of the plates, using a finger on her good hand to trace across the design.

"I couldn't let her have all the glory again."

Mara was finishing the chocolate iced donut she'd started on when Summer mumbled something. It took a minute for her to figure it out, but she'd told her to shut up. Mara put down the second donut and seethed. No classmate of hers was going to tell her to shut up.

She glared and tapped her chocolate-covered finger on the table.

"Apology accepted," she responded.

Summer came down from the stage and started to talk again, sitting across from Mara at the table with the pastries in the middle. Mara started looking around for a napkin. Everything looked dirty. She reached into her bag and pulled out one of Mike's shirts she'd kept and ran her fingers through it. Mara licked her lips, passed the shirt over her mouth and spread it out over her lap.

After tucking a bit of her, now slightly greasy, black hair behind her ear she looked up at Summer with a perplexed expression as she spoke.

"I see," she said curtly.

She was gone as well. Miranda, Naomi and Summer had disappeared, in one way or another. Mara wasn't like them though, no, not at all. She was still present. She killed those people because...because...they deserved it. She looked down at the remaining donut in front of her and ripped a small piece off and put it up to her mouth uncertainly. Naomi wanted to help people, as she always did, and Summer murdered her.

"Phantasmagoric," she said quietly while looking at Summer.

Summer and Naomi were her two favorite friends. She liked to think she knew them well and if someone had asked her to place bets on the two of them in a fight, she would have put her money on Naomi. Summer was sweet, but yielding. Maybe that is what lead to Naomi's downfall.

She ate the fragment of sweetness in her hand. "Naomi always did act like she knew everything, didn't she? Not this time."

Her friend was long gone.  

Tears pricked at the corners of Summer's eyes, her face twisting unpleasantly as she tried to hold them back. It'd been so long since she'd felt like someone understood her and accepted her, not since Brandon. But Mara understood. She knew what Summer had done, why Summer did it, but she didn't run screaming or try to hurt her or call her names or judge her. She just understood and accepted her.

Everything that she'd been looking for for so long.

"You don't hate me?" Summer croaked, letting the tears break a clean trail through several days worth of grime caked on her face, "We're still friends?"

Without waiting for Mara to answer, Summer's good hand darted outward, grabbing Mara roughly around the wrist in her excitement. She was no longer seated on the dusty chair, instead finding position somewhere in between sitting and standing as she leaned over the table, elbow knocking one of the few remaining wine glasses to the ground with a shatter.

"You'll stay with me then, right? You're not gonna leave?"

Whatever Mara was expecting, it certainly wasn't that. She'd said what she did about Naomi with a sort of bitter irony.

Summer lunged tearfully at Mara and grabbed her, making Mara sit up in shock. She thought for a moment Summer would try to strangle her.

Mara felt for her. She felt more for Summer at this moment than she'd probably felt for anyone else in her life, with the exception of maybe her mother. Sympathy wasn't something she often experienced. Things happened to people and it was either someone she didn't care about and therefore did not matter to her, something someone brought on themselves, or otherwise not her problem. Sometimes when her friends that she liked tremendously had an issue, she would try to help them and provide what assistance she could or just listen, but she didn't feel terribly sorry for them. After all, sympathy isn't going to help them.

There was nothing she could do for Summer. There was nothing anyone could to do help her and maybe that's why now she felt sympathy. It was simply because there was no other recourse.

"I don't hate you."

She supposed that was true. Mara expected that if anyone else killed Naomi she might hate them. It was impossible to know. Naomi was one of her best friends, but it didn't really register with her that Naomi didn't exist anymore. There was no time to feel the loss like one would in the real world. No shock of not seeing someone every day like you used to.

"We'll always be friends," she affirmed, looking at Summer and putting a hand on her shoulder.

"But I can't stay with you."

"You're too unpredictable. You've changed. I don't know what you might do. Right now you say that we're friends, but you were friends with Naomi too and if you changed your mind about her, you might change your mind about me later. I don't want to hurt you. I'm being honest. Something happened to you to make you act this way and I don't know what it was, but I'm sorry that it happened."

Mara got up and slowly pulled her hand out of Summer's and placing it on the table.

"You were like a sister to me, and I'll never forget it," she said looking Summer straight in the eye.  

The tears that had danced on the corners of her eyes finally spilled over, but not from the relief or happiness she had felt just a few seconds prior. They were bitter, tears of loss that contorted her once pretty face into a grimace as her mouth fought for words that wouldn't come. Her eyes said everything her mouth couldn't, begging Mara to take back what she had said, but Mara was immoveable, she knew that. Once Mara decided something, that was it.

There was no going back.

She was saying goodbye, telling her that they'd always have the memories, but there was no room for them to be friends, not here. Not with what Summer had become. The pain of loss struck her deeply. She'd assumed her old friends wouldn't want anything to do with her, but hearing Mara say the words that she'd feared for so long was something entirely different. It made it final. The fear of being alone no longer just a what if on the horizon, but instead a cold fact.

Summer buried her face into the palms of her hands, ignoring the pain from her still bruised fingers as she sobbed loudly, saliva escaping in sticky droplets each time she painfully exhaled.

"Don't leave me," her sobs come out muffled from behind her hands, "Please, please, please."

Her dirtied fingernails traced trails of red down the length of her face, as she lowered them back to the table, her face glossy from the mingling of tears and snot as she raised it to once more look at Mara.

"You can't leave me,"

She felt betrayed. Mara had promised her she didn't hate her and now she was just casting her off, like some piece of trash. She wanted to hate Mara, hate her for getting her hopes up and making her think there was still a chance for her, for making her feel like there was someone who cared. But she couldn't. She couldn't hate Mara, because Mara was her last shot at having a friend.

Behind her, the camera panned, it's eye zooming in audibly on the two girls.

She was Summer's last chance at having a real friend.

"Don't leave me!" Her face twisted, voice lowering to a growl as fresh tears rolled down her face. In an instant, her hand wrapped around one of the polished forks on the table, her teeth grinding together loudly as she raised and plunged it down into the back of Mara's outstretched hand.  The prongs split around the bones in her hand, blood coiling around them at the surface and the hum of the cameras drowned out by Mara's scream.

She couldn't let her leave.

They were friends.

Mara turned to leave and just as she was about to pick her hand up of the table she felt a sharp pain and a tug, rooting her to the spot. Instinctively she opened her mouth and screamed. She whipped her head back around, teeth clenched, to see what was causing the searing pain in her hand.

A silver fork was sticking straight up out of the back of her right hand. Her breathing was shaky and she looked at Summer, eyes narrowing. Mara slapped Summer's hand away from the fork as hard as she could, took hold of the utensil with her bandaged left hand and yanked it out in one quick motion which elicited another scream.

"You crazy whore!" she shouted as she chucked the fork at Summer's head.

As soon as the fork left her hand she grabbed the underside of the table and flipped it, sending the sweets rolling all over the floor. When she stood back up she had her gun in her hands, pointing it at Summer.

"Big mistake. Big fucking mistake!"

She stared at Summer down the end of the barrel. Her chest heaved and her face was a luminous bright red. She waited, still pointing it at the other girl, glaring at her. Red nail marks ran down her face with the tears. Summer was a pathetic wreck of a person.

I can't do it. She's family.

The gun shook. It was getting heavier the longer she held it up. Her eyebrows came up and for a moment her eyes were wide as Summer sobbed.

Mara lowered the gun, picked up her bag and walked backwards to the door that led to the lobby.

"Stay away from me. You're insane," she hissed.

((Amaranta Montalvo continued in A Classy Place to Meet))

The table's momentum took Summer with it, propelling both her and the chair behind her to the ground in painful unison. The table itself landed with a roar on its side next to her, the antique dishware lining it sent scattering to the dusty floor, many of the delicate pieces shattering on impact. As soon as she hit the floor, a sharp pain echoed throughout her wrist and she knew immediately she'd twisted it or worse when she landed.

Not once did her eyes leave Mara, though.

The other girl staring down the barrel of the gun at her wasn't someone she recognized, any semblance of Mara's beauty twisted and lost in her anger. Summer tried to pull herself backwards, her boots squeaking against the floor and shards of glasses embedding themselves into her palms in her attempt. Anguish rose on her face, lips curling, pleading with Mara as her sobs grew louder, more desperate.

Mara hated her.

She'd betrayed her, was going to leave her. She felt like she lost a part of herself, a deep hole where Mara had been. She was flooded with memories of their time together back at Aurora, hands moving to hide her face from the gun, her bleeding hands leaving their print on it.  

She didn't bother looking up when Mara called her insane, her departure marked with shallowing click of her heels against the floor until they were gone altogether, leaving Summer alone with her anguished sobs; lost in a world that didn't exist anymore.

Summer remained locked in her position for some time before she had the strength to get to her feet, legs still shaking from a mixture of fear and loss. The cameras followed her as she made her way back over to the stage, her guttural hiccuped sobbing still going strong as she crawled back on to it, once more leaving bloody hand-prints in her wake. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and focused her bleary gaze on the closest one.

They were all she had left now, their empty eyes providing her the only solace she'd found on the island.

Everyone else left, gave up on her.

Brandon.

Mara.

Miles and Miranda and the other girls would never take her back once they saw her, they'd leave her the same way Mara had.

She didn't want to be alone or forgotten.

She wiped her eyes, ineffectively trying to hold back her sobs before once more casting her gaze to the cameras.

She didn't want them to leave too. They were all she had now, just her and Mister Danya and everyone watching. Without them, she had nothing. Was nothing. She had to make them stay.

With a wavering exhale, she marched over to her bag, digging through it quickly to retrieve the grenade she took from Brandon from its depths, pulling the safety pin and discarding it on the stage before grabbing hold of the gun she'd been given. The bec-de-corbin lay undisturbed where she'd left it as she hopped down from the stage, savoring the soft buzz as the cameras moved to focus on her. Her teeth dug painfully into her lower lip, nearly breaking the skin as anger rattled her body the closer she got to the exit. Her breathing was ragged, coming out in short quick burst, sometimes coupled with a muffled cry, but her face no longer marked with sorrow. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, puffy and red from her tears but no longer held any hint that she was still the same Summer from Aurora High.

She had to make them proud.

Make sure they remember Summer Simms.

[Summer Simms, girl no. 21, continued in A CLASSY PLACE TO MEET]