I, Penelope
by
Amanda R. Hamlin
Chapter 4
The "Hot' Thing
Part 2
The first shirt I see reads, “kisses for a dollar.”
“Oh my god,” I yell. “This is unacceptable. You guys, come look at this. They're promoting prostitution.”
“What? Kendra looks up reluctantly from the stupid t-shirt and I wave the offending piece of clothing at her. “So?”
“What d'you mean so? It's encouraging girls to give sexual favors for money. That's prostitution.”
“Whatever, Penelope.” Totally enraged, both by the shirt itself and by their response to it, I realize I need to do something to distract myself in a hurry—before I destroy the shirt, and all the ones like it—so I quickly pick up the next item of clothing in the row. This one is a clingy baby doll top that reads, “Why should I be satisfied with just one guy?”
“Argh! Now they're endorsing cheating,” I shriek in fury. This time, they don't even look up. Probably, they're hoping anyone within earshot will think they don't know me. Or, maybe, they're just so utterly enraptured by “a hard man is good to find” that they're honestly oblivious. It's at this moment that it occurs to me that there is yet a third explanation for the way I'm different from those around me. Maybe my lack of desire is a superior mutation, like the long neck of a giraffe, that renders me immune to the stupidity and self-destructive impulses that plague other girls. I think one guy is way too many if he's dumb or boring or sees me as a piece of ass. For one thing, any guy who would condone these shirts—or the male equivalent of the one Kendra and Julia are looking at—would definitely be beneath me. If there's any truth in natural selection, I'll rule the world. I'm certainly better than anyone who would pay money for stuff that's insulting them.
I feel good and toss the shirt back onto the rack without bothering to hang it up neatly. Let's see what other trash they have that I can pat myself on the back for not buying. I reach for the next shirt eagerly. It says, “why would I want a brain when I have these?” The last word is in huge block letters printed exactly at chest height—chest height for a normal girl that is. Without even fully realizing it, I instinctively hunch my shoulders and put one arm across my body. Since none of the length of the fabric would be used up horizontally, the words wouldn't be at chest height if I wore the top. They'd be sagging somewhere down near the bottom of my ribs.
Yes, evolution did compensate me by giving me a brain but I no longer feel confident that I got the better end of the deal and this fact alone makes me even angrier. The brain should be better. I should be the successful one because that's what I got. But I'm worried that, because the rest of the world has other values—obviously, since people are able to sell this shirt—I'll wind up getting shafted in the end. Yes, that would make the rest of the world evil but doesn't change the fact that I could still get shafted. Wait, who do I think I'm fooling? Robert has passed over me—the only girl in the entire school who could possibly give his brain power a run for its money—in favor of Oochie, Poochie, and Hoochie who are dumb as logs. Damn right I'm getting shafted.
After several weeks of arduous travel (due to their lack of sufficient horses Robert points out bitterly at every opportunity), the party has finally reached the home of the wizard who owns the giant ruby but he really doesn’t want to see them so he simply makes himself invisible. Sven, naturally, does not have a spell to counter this.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s invisible. He’s still there,” says Jeff. “We can still catch him.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” asks Mike.
“We can link arms and then he can’t walk around us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” objects Robert. “He could just walk under our arms.”
“Fine, we’ll just move our arms up and down as well so he can’t do that.”
“That’s an even dumber idea.” Robert starts flapping his arms up and down, doing a bad imitation of a bird flying to mock him. Jeff looks very put out.
“Why are we bothering about the wizard?” asks Sven. “We don’t need him. We just want the ruby.”
“Amazingly, you actually make a very good point,” says Robert. “We must search the house. Each of us will take one floor, with two on the ground floor because it’s the biggest. That’ll be Sven and Mike I’ll search the cellar. Jeff can search the attic, along with the upstairs and…”
“But what if we miss something?” objects Jeff.
“Since we have a map of the house, we can refer to it carefully to make sure we don’t.”
“Why would you have a map of the house?” I ask severely.
“Well, if we don’t have one, it would be easy to make one.”
“Robert, in order to make an accurate map, you would have to have already been in every room in the house so the map would be redundant.”
“Let’s just search the study,” suggests Mike. “That’s the most likely place it would be anyway.”
“All right. You walk into the study. The walls are of dark wood and so is the furniture. There is a desk against the opposite wall and a small fireplace in one corner.”
“Can we see any boxes, chests, closest, secret compartments?” asks Robert eagerly.
“Yes, Robert, you can see lots of secret compartments,” I reply sarcastically. But, in spite of this lack of secret compartment knowledge, they do manage to track down the ruby. After all, It was in a huge, magically trapped chest so it wasn't exactly hard to spot. Now, all they need is to perform a special ritual to bind the eye into the idol. Unfortunately, the main item needed for the ritual is a werewolf pelt. The party is very concerned because they're not sure they’ll be able to kill a werewolf. Now Robert makes his insolence come down on his own head. He keeps his copy of the Monstrous Manuel with him at all times and looks up whatever they're fighting, which is technically cheating. Now, he looks up werewolves and finds out that they change back into their human form when killed (which makes them virtually impossible to skin). Now, I did not know anything about this. If I had, I would never have assigned them that particular item. I thought they could just kill the thing and then skin it. When I reveal this fact, with much malicious glee, they are not happy at all, especially Robert.
He immediately begins trying to make another elaborate plan to solve the problem by skinning it while it's still alive and, amazingly, one of Sven’s potion purchases looks like it might be useful after all.
“But you can’t just put it to sleep and then try to skin it,” objects Mike. “As soon as we try to do it, it'll wake up.”
“We’ll just have to tie it up then,” says Robert.
“But do we have rope strong enough to hold it?” Sven, who, obviously, hasn’t been paying attention to what happened earlier, points out that it will clearly be able to break the ropes because werewolves automatically have super-strength. Everyone else yells loudly for him to shut up and I chuckle evilly. “Anyway, how are we going to give it the potion in the first place?” Mike goes on quickly. “It needs to be in wolf form and, in that case, it's probably not going to want to drink a potion out of a bottle.”
“Couldn’t we just distract it?” asks Jeff weakly.
“Yea, that would work real well,” says Robert mockingly. “We can just say ‘Look over there’ and then start skinning it. I’m sure it won’t notice.” As usual, Robert manages to brow beat everyone else into going along with his plan so they set out to look for the werewolf. But, when they find it, it’s asleep in human form in a local graveyard. So they hold another long debate and eventually decide that Robert should hide behind it while Jeff throws rocks at it so that it will wake up and get angry. When it changes form, Robert will jump on it and force its mouth open so they can feed it the sleeping potion.
The plan works fairly well but, the second they've skinned it, it turns back into human form. And, shortly after, a group of high level priests arrive at the graveyard to perform a ritual for the dead. Upon seeing the skinned human corpse, they assume the worst and become hostile. The party stupidly decides to retaliate instead of trying to explain and end up getting their asses kicked.
“So we'll start next session with you guys in prison,” I say severely. “Serves you right.”
“By the way, I have an important announcement to make,” Robert declares as people are packing up their books and dice.
“What? That you're the god of awesomeness?” asks Mike sarcastically.
He exchanges glances with Sven, who replies, “Why would he need to announce that? Everyone already knows he thinks it.” They snicker and roll their eyes.
“Shut up you two.” I wave my hand in their general direction, while remaining focused on Robert. If he's going to announce something, I don't want anything to interfere since it must be extremely important and intelligent. Of course, I think that every time Robert opens his mouth.
“I applied to attend the junior summer law camp at South Eastern University,” says Robert, “and I just got my letter of acceptance today.”
“That's wonderful,” I gush.
“Which means I'm going to be ridiculously busy for the next month and won't be able to make it for D&D.” I gasp, as if I've been punched in the stomach, then quickly exert all efforts to conceal my distress, though it's probably already too late. It was probably too late long ago. I'm fully convinced now that he knows what I think of him and is disgusted by it. After all, I look nothing at all like Oochie, Poochie, Hoochie, and Smoochie. He's probably making up the whole law camp thing (not that he isn't totally smart enough to get in to it if it did exist) and, even if he's not, he's doubtless delighted by the convenient excuse it provides to get away from me. I spend the rest of the day feeling wretched and try to avoid talking to Kendra when she calls the next day. After all, Robert doesn't want to avoid her.
************ end of Part 2 of 3
Copyright: Amanda Hamlin
Not to be used by A.I. without permission of the author.
Cover art by Eric Hamlin
To view his portfolio, go to: https://www.instagram.com/hamlin.eric/
Not to be used by A.I. without permission of the artist.
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Also read:
“Deliverance from the Eye” a short story by Amanda Hamlin, free at https://amandahamlin.stck.me
“Ravenlord,” a short story from the point of view of a woman should be read by all men, is also available at https://amandahamlin.stck.me and on TAPAS
Also, go to: All That is Gold at URL: http://allthatisgoldwriting.blogspot.com/p/httpsdrive.html
For non-fiction by this author go to URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Hamlin
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