November/December 2010. It's the view from my room - ABN 3, 4F - at the University of Wales Trinity St. David Carmarthen campus. The empty space is from a car that had only recently left. Those who live in the UK aren't accustomed to driving in snow, whereas the New Yorker who was being a creeper and watching the mayhem as someone tried to leave their parking space and up the hill is used to it. (I told him to put his foot on the gas and not let up until he was on the flat past the hedge. He finally made it.)
This is also from the same time frame and was one of the cork boards on the wall of my room. I like to send and receive funny cards - getting mail is fun - and I pin them up after I get them so I can always have a quick chuckle if I need it. It became a tradition while I was at college that sort of died when everything went to hell my senior fall.
There's so much about this picture. It's when I discovered the timer on my camera. The stack of books by the curtain were supplemental materials for my two papers due for Living in an Old Country: The History and Heritage of Wales. Newcastle Brown Ale (my absolute favorite beer and my preference) comes in cans (it's also a domestic instead of an import). My traveling orange winter hat is there, too. That hat has been everywhere since I first bought it in Belgium in 2008 while overseas to play soccer for a week.
This was also the place where the idea for Jack and Mari was born, where I worked on Sage and made sporadic updates for Murphy and Me.
I miss it and I can't wait to go back January of 2015 for graduate school. It won't be Wales, but ARU is only an hour from London, and Carmarthen is only another four hours by train.
We're going to completely ignore that I missed Throwback Thursday yesterday on my Instagram, and roll with Flashback Friday instead.
All the way from March 2008 and somewhere in Belgium. I went over with other students from my high school athletics section to play soccer for a week. Played one of the best games of my life as a goalkeeper there, too, after we had gone from Belgium to Germany. That soccer uniform - including my white goalkeeping jersey - wound up in a plastic garbage bag in my soccer bag in the bottom of my suitcase. That week was a ton of fun, and I met a lot of great people.
(Mom really loved unearthing that bag when it got home. It was beyond gnarly.)
There is the idea that good news comes to those who wait. In a fit of brilliance last Thursday I totally forgot to check my email all day and the result was that, at roughly 9 pm that night, I had 18 new messages in my inbox.
One of them was a conditional acceptance letter to the University of Central Lancashire.
I only applied to three programs, and the one I've been conditionally accepted into is my second choice. Still, I ran through the house (as best one can with a still-healing sternum) and very excitedly told my parents because, well, I've been accepted to grad school!
It was unexpected. It's not that I have that low of an opinion of myself, it's just that my four years of undergrad were rough in places, and my GPA reflects that. I missed finishing with a 3.0 by .13, which, at the time didn't seem like a lot, but when you put it on an application along with your transcripts starts to feel like a chasm.
The other good news is that one of the other universities I applied to - University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow - wants an academic reference. I'm choosing to take this as a very good thing.
In the meantime, I will wait to hear from the other two, as well as the agent currently reading the rest of Two for the Rent. Good vibes and crossed fingers are much appreciated.
So last blog post, way back when (yeah, I'm good like that, eventually I'll know what the hell I'm doing) I hinted about something that I'd share...soon.
Classify this as soon.
There really hasn't been much available on the job front for me. Which is weird, because I have a bachelors degree in chemistry with a minor in theater. I'm still waiting to hear anything useful from Chicago - or anything at all, I'm not picky - and the other jobs that I've applied for through government agencies have been fails, too.
That being said, I applied for grad schools.
Three, so far, and all of them in the UK. I try not to think too hard about what it means for the future of American education when I can get a masters degree for between $16,000 and $25,000 in a year to fifteen months abroad where doing it in my own country would cost at least double that.
Now it's just a waiting game, and most of you know how much I love waiting. Which isn't a whole hell of a lot. So keep your fingers crossed for me, if you remember. And this will probably make me feel like I've gotten into college all over again. Because, well, technically (hopefully!) I will be in college all over again.
And sometimes second chances are the best thing for a person.
I'm not sure what exactly to write about that doesn't start with the phrase I'm on the edge and thinking too hard makes my already sinus-stuffed head feel like it's going to implode.
So I'll start this by saying I spent two and a half hours of my life with Sir Ian McKellen on the other side of the woman next to me at the play Deathtrap, which was quite good, too. The man nearly stepped on my toes when he got up for intermission. And no, I didn't ask for a photo or an autograph or anything, because the man was more or less just there to see a show with a friend, and I wasn't about to interrupt that. They have lives, too.
On that note, the others ran (almost literally) into Hugh Laurie on Monday. Apparently he lives around where our hotel is. Again, no photographs or autographs.
I'm sitting in a hotel room in central London, trying to find the words to adequately describe what exactly is going on this head of mine. Or, what feels like a swollen melon sitting on top of my shoulders, truthfully. Particularly my forehead and under my eyes. Oh well. It just needs to sit there a bit more.
There's what we want and then there's reality. Ultimately, we have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes they aren't going to match up. I'd like to be home for Christmas, but depending on the weather - something completely outside of my control - that might not happen. You have the optimist on one side, and the realist on the other, and they might not play nice. The saying is best laid plans of mice and men or something to that effect, and it's completely true. I'll recognize there's a big different being stuck in London and stuck someplace completely away from it all. Hell, I even know what it's like to be stuck in the airport for days on end, and I'll tell you, I was pretty damn ripe by the time I got to where I'm currently at on Monday.
Like I said previously, I know both sides now.
It's in no way what I want, but it's what I've got, and what I have to deal with.
A month and a half from now we'll look back at this, look at the pictures, sort through the recent Underground tickets, and we'll laugh. It'll make a great story, when it's not so raw. We'll laugh, we'll make Tom Hanks references, and we'll joke about it as best we know how. That's how, eventually, it will be seen. It's an experience. That much I can't deny. But it's not one that many people willingly choose, honestly.
I would like, very simply, to go home. That is all I ask.
I told you I had an odd sense of humor. As in the title of this post, and the fact that I've now moved from Heathrow to a hotel not far from the Bond Street Underground station in the borough of Westminster.
And believe me, it's a nicer hotel than I would have chosen had I been the one to choose originally. Namely, this one would have been classified as a little out of my price range.
The last time you heard from me, I was sitting on the fun side of security at Heathrow, waiting to get on a flight to JFK. As I'm not posting the joys of being home, it's safe to assume that I'm still in London. That assumption would be correct.
It's been an interesting few days, to say the least. If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll see some of what I've been posting [including the one from the reporter at CNN who wants me to email him, and I still need to do that, too] and the responses.
Despite all the good thoughts, karma, prayers and whatnot, if it continues to snow - and stick - there is the possibility that we won't fly out on Wednesday and we'll be spending Christmas in London has an HWS family.
An HWS family in which they're happy to have me back.
I'd been "Tom Hanks-ing" it from Friday until late this afternoon, sleeping on the second floor of Virgin Atlantic departures since then. Except for Saturday night on the floor by some exchange bureau near check-in point F or G. I woke up during the night, mostly because I was really freaking cold, and sat up, looked around, and thought why are there so many people covered in tin foil? Then figured that if I was having that thought, oddly reminding me of when my sister was sleeping in the tent with the dog at the lake and saw my aunt in her nightdress, wandering around, I needed to lay back down and go to sleep. Which I did.
It was really difficult to keep track of days, because, eventually, they blended together. It didn't so much happen that first morning, but Sunday into Monday it really started to.
Saturday was the day I fought with the airline to get my bags back. I had checked my backpack - not only was it too large, apparently, to be in the cabin, but it was too heavy, too - and there was also my suitcase, too. The suitcase wasn't an issue. The backpack was the issue because it had my meds in it. Not the Align, the important one, but the other stuff that I needed to supplement it. And the longer I go without my meds, the more things get....interesting.
It took multiple trips to Arrivals (where the baggage was supposed to be, as it was still on the plane at the time) and upon the fourth trip downstairs to try and find out when my bags were coming off the plane, only then did the Virgin Atlantic representative actually ask if there was anything she could do for me, if there was anything she could get me. I told her no, I just needed my bags (because, yeah, making my own dosages with something that wasn't even close to being the UK equivalent was not going to happen) and she actually was the first one all day to take my bag information off from my passport, and also my mobile number in hopes that when she knew when the plane was being unloaded, she would let me know. I assumed this was going to be true.
Despite having my mobile number, they didn't call me. However, the moment I hit the departures floor, she immediately remembered me, pulled aside another rep, and sent me with her to Arrivals to fetch my bag. The suitcase was on a trolley, and the backpack was on top of that. First thing I did after returning to my spot in the second floor of Departures, was to crack open my bag, ingest my meds, and then check to make sure the breakable stuff I had wrapped in clothes and in the bottom hadn't broken. It was intact, but the entire right side of the bag was wet. Like it had been dropped in snow.
Not a big deal, but, well....makes things in there not smell great.
So, now it was Sunday and after some phoning home, we decided that it would be best for me to stay at the airport and maybe hope to get on a standby list. Then the news came in that there was a rescheduled flight that we had seats on for Wednesday. I have a printed e-ticket, and a guaranteed ticket on this flight. But we wanted to see if maybe there was a way for me to get something earlier.
Which, ultimately, didn't work. So I wound up spending another night on the floor of the airport.
And, as there is a mirror above the desk, I'm looking at the circles under my eyes that somehow keep growing. Not great.
Monday turned out to be a bust, and then information trickled in from the homefront that it was best for me to find the hotel everyone had been living at while I had been living at Heathrow, and it was made that I was to find that and check myself in.
Feeling like a bag lady, I trotted down the elevator and then out into the cold, slightly snowy London air and headed for Arrivals. That would take me down to the Heathrow Express - the train that gets you to London Paddington in fifteen minutes. And they weren't charging for it because of all the snow had done to travelers. From Paddington it was down to the Underground and then, one transfer later, I was at the corner of Bond Street and Oxford Street (I think) and wondering where exactly to go next. After a bit of wandering (which is more or less what I'm famous for, really) I found the hotel.
Not too long later I was in a room with an actual bed, a shower, and thinking that it was proverbial heaven, truthfully.
It's weird. I have internet access (free, too!), a bed to sleep in tonight as opposed to the floor, and I was able to take a shower and find some different clothes to wear. Though what I'm going to wear to bed tonight is a completely different story as most of the rest of my clothes are packed in space bags with the air sucked out. And unless someone wants me to give myself a slight hernia by sucking that much air through a straw, I'm not opening them.
The most important part of this is that I've seen both sides to this story. I've seen the I don't have anywhere to go, and the airport is now home until they figure out how to get me to where I need to go and I've also seen the I have the opportunity to get out of this place for a while, get a shower, sleep in a bed, and generally wander around London until we're supposed to fly. I know which side most would prefer - it's the side I'm currently on. But I've seen both. Done both. And that's been one of those experiences most people should really have.
It's truly how the other half lives.
I'm in London until Wednesday, at the earliest. I'm back with the rest of my student cohorts, and we're planning on seeing a show tomorrow night. Something to pass the time. To keep ourselves occupied and see some of London that we haven't seen before.
And I just found something to sleep in, which just made my night, really. It's the little things right now, like being connected to the internet and being able to call back home. It's things like that right now that make a difference. A big difference, really.
I understand that I'm lucky. I'm in a hotel when I could be spending another night at Heathrow under a blanket on a foam mat on the floor in some corner with my luggage. As it is, I'm going to crawl into a bed and sleep like I'm dead, probably, and hope the bags under my eyes don't get any larger or I'm going to be giving a raccoon a run for his money.
I would love to be home right now, layin' on the couch with the dog or curled up in my own icebox of a room (backside of the house, gets a little chilly in the winter) and wondering if I'm going to be making Christmas cookies with the Smidget, but I'm not. I'm in London - Borough of Westminster, to be exact - and if things go right-side up, I'm leaving on Wednesday to actually head home. If they go pear-shaped, then we're looking at spending Christmas on this side of the Atlantic with some of the alums that we can find in this country.
Bright side of life. Make the most of what you've got when you've got it. Right now, while this might not be ideal, it's better than what it had been, and better than what some still have. That's always a good thing to keep in mind.
[I wrote this Friday night (I think) and it was the first time that I was, well, more or less aware that I was going to be living in an airport for a couple of days. Now that I have internet access, be prepared for, well, a series tentatively titled At Home in Heathrow. I have a sick sense of humor, don't I? So, this was actually written Saturday before I was supposed to get on the plane to come home. My how plans have changed.]
I know the time stamp on this sucker is going to read something different, but I’m currently sitting on the fun side of airport security waiting until I can board my flight home.
So, yes, I’ve been living at Heathrow since yesterday at about six-thirty at night. It’s been….real.
Let me back up. Yesterday morning I get a call at about nine-something (woke me up, I’ll be honest, I was sleeping in) and it’s the International Officer asking me if I’ve looked outside. Out the window there’s at least a good couple inches of snow on the ground. Not much by New York standards, but definitely more than the UK can handle. She then proceeds to tell me that because of the weather, the bus company isn’t sure if they can successfully get us there on time if we leave in the morning. So there’s going to be a bus leaving at one in the afternoon.
Cue Louise’s temporary panic because there’s nothing in my room that’s packed. There’s part of my desk done, but other than that? Nadda.
Anyway, she tells me she’s going to call back when she finds out what time the bus is leaving and then she’ll want to know if I’m going to be on it.
Holy. Shit.
This is not how I wanted to leave the country in a state of semi-panic.
So, I get up, get around and take a shower, and then start to power pack my room. She calls me back around ten and tells me the bus is going to leave at two, and if I’m going to be on it. There might not, because of the snow, be another way to get to London if I’m not on this bus.
Hence, Louise needs to be on the bus.
Do not ask me how I managed to pack an entire room in the time available, including the three bags I had with me, and they are all stuffed. It’s ridiculous.
This was, however, not how I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to be rushing around and leaving like this. I wanted to take my time packing, saying goodbye, and maybe having a snowball fight with Jess and Jen before I had to leave. It didn’t happen. I didn’t get to hug Math, or say goodbye to some of the other internationals because they weren’t available, and I was in a time crunch. It wasn’t ideal. But what can you do? They were the circumstances presented, and, quite honestly, I want to go home.
Looking at pictures on my camera of the people I’ve left behind is not the right thing to do at the moment. Though the ones we have when we found a space to claim as ours for the night in the airport? Those are priceless. And Heathrow provided blankets, too. So I have this horribly ugly brown fleece blanket with me that someone gave me at about one-something this morning, along with a bottle of water that I didn’t drink.
Luggage was an issue. Not only was my suitcase overweight (power-packing in three hours? Yeah, that’s gonna happen) and, apparently, my backpack that I took with me on the plane in the cabin was too large and too heavy. Therefore, I had to check that.
That did not make me a happy camper. Especially because I have my Newcastle Brown Ale glass from the Rose and Crown Hotel in that backpack and the stuff that Jess and Jen gave me for my birthday, all breakable. And I was going to have that with me to, well, not break it, and now it’s in with the rest of the luggage. However, I was a good person and wrapped it in clothes before putting it in there, so it should be okay.
Hopefully.
On the bright side of that, when I did self-service check-in, I changed my seat. Was supposed to be in the middle on the side, but now I’ve got a window seat. Which makes things better. Not great, but better.
I won’t tell you how much I’ve shelled out to be able to get my overweight suitcase and extra bag on that plane, but it can’t very well sit in Heathrow, can it? And I can’t really repack it because, well, where the hell am I gonna put that stuff? Exactly. At this point, I will do what I need to in order to get home.
Now I’m currently sitting outside a T.G.I. Friday’s and a Jo Malone, listening to Nate play his guitar and thinking that I might have been in this airport too damn long.
There are some truly hilarious pictures from last night, sleeping on the second floor of departures, and, honestly, I slept really well for about five hours on the floor. I will be submitting that photo to This Week in Photos on the colleges website because, well, it’s priceless. Come study abroad and get stuck in airports! Spend the night with your fellow students in a public, co-ed sleepover experience!
Bright side of life, here, people. Bright side of life.
I’m still torn. On the one hand, I want to go home because I haven’t seen my mother in weeks and my sister, father, and Smidget in months. I wanna have filter coffee in my kitchen with my sister, and I want to wake up in the morning because Mads is standing by the side of the bed just staring at me, maybe poking me to see if I’m real and I’ll move over and crawl into bed with me. I’ve missed that. I’ve missed her and her three-foot tall barely containable endless energy.
And if I have to listen to one more security announcement, I’m going to freak out and curse in languages I don’t even know.
What’s making this more bearable? The venti-sized Starbucks peppermint mocha that I’m consuming while I’m writing this and the fact that, yeah, I’ve gotten really used to running on not a lot of sleep over the past couple of weeks. That, and I’m predicting when I get on the plane, I’m going to be asleep before we’re even off the ground.
Shit. The pack of gum I bought specifically to help my ears pop? That’s in my backpack which is now a checked bag. Damn it. I’m going to need to bum some gum off someone if I’m going to make it through take-off without a ton of pain. Sometimes my ears won’t pop.
Again, bright side – I figured out my calling card last night. I couldn’t call the 800 number straight away, I had to call the international connection (for free) and then have them connect me through to AT&T, then I could use the card. Simple once you figure it out, a little complicated and a hell of a lot of frustration when you don’t know what you’re doing.
My laptop sports a Mind the Gap sticker from London on the lid. Perched at a jaunty, angle, of course, and hopefully a conversation starter if I’m in the library and someone’s wondering.
I should probably start thinking about articles to submit to the study abroad journal back home, but I think I have other things to worry about at the moment.
My teeth feel incredibly fuzzy. Brush my teeth, you suggest? The toothbrush and toothpaste are in the backpack, along with most of the pills. It’s been absolutely lovely. What can you do, though?
Yup. I’m going to get on that plane and probably be asleep before we even take off. Me and my window seat that I changed when I checked in. Still makes me smile when I think about that. I like window seats. Not only do I get to look, I get something to lean against.
Let’s talk about re-entry. As in, re-entry to America and American society. It’s going to be an issue. I’ve spent three months getting used to this system, this way of life (and driving on the left side of the road, thank you very much) and maybe it’s a good thing I’m not going to be able to drive until roughly next week because my license expired. Dad has to take me down to DMV sometime next week so I can renew it, and then I’ll be able to drive. Hopefully, I will have assimilated enough to be comfortable driving again and not feel like I’m going the wrong way.
Right. I’m almost out of battery on my laptop and I don’t feel like digging out my plug and my adapter, and…I will see you on the other side of the Atlantic.
Self-explanatory title. I'm a little....peeved, at the moment.
- Dealing with people. Specifically the ones I live with.
- Feeling like a foreigner.
- Being told it's just British humor and to get over it. [It's not - in some cases, it's incredibly offensive, you asshat]
- Hearing the phrase This isn't America, or This is my country, or Things are different here. [No shit, Sherlock, but cut me some slack, I've done damn well to adapt]
- Dishes. And people who don't do them, and expect other people to do exactly as they are told in relation to said dishes.
- The double standard that seems to have cropped up from the previous.
- Having it insinuated every time I'm shaving my legs with my electric razor I'm doing something else [Get. Over. Yourself. It wasn't funny the first time, it's still not funny three months later.]
- Painfully thin walls.
- Being the bigger, better person because that's how my parents raised me [they did it amazingly, too, because 9.8 times out of 10 I'll be the bigger person.]
- Feeling hurt that my ex got married. Really, I'm sick of feeling this way.
- This damn country. Love it, but I'm ready to go home. Now.
- Being proverbially stuck.
- Not having a car.
- Things not staying open past seven. [Seriously. WTF?]
- Trying to make nice when no one else seems to want to.
- Trying to blend in.
- Crying and itching because I'm so frustrated I could scream.
- Having nowhere to go when things get too much.
- Being left out when other people take people to the store or town.
- Feeling bad when I ask but, well, nobody asks me.
- Listening to someone have a conversation in Welsh when I only speak English.
- Being left out in general.
- Feeling this shitty because I can't win with these people.
- Having every conversation I have with a certain someone end up incredibly sarcastic two exchanges in.
- Not wanting to go into the kitchen or another communal space because I don't want to have to make nice with people because I'm still hurting or they're still pissed off.
- Missing things; home, family, etc.
- Fighting with my toilet to flush and dealing with a shower that doesn't drain, filling nearly to the door in a little under three minutes.
- Things to Know is a series that can be chalked up to disconnected moments of randomosity from the darkest recesses of my noggin.
- Or it can just be good fun, it's really your call.
- I love YouTube.
- I watched Cats last night on previously mentioned YouTube and have come to a few conclusions, first and foremost being that I'm in love with Munkustrap's thighs. The actor who plays him - quite well, I might add - spends most of his time in a crouch position instead of upright.
- Oh, those thighs.
- I'll be honest, that's probably about the depth of my shallowness, watching Cats clips repeatedly to see men in spandex.
- The costuming though? Absolutely amazing.
- All this talk of cats and Cats has probably freaked out my sister by this point, after her #DamnCats fiasco last weekend.
- I got home in fifteen days. By home, I mean New York.
- I found my plane ticket stub from when I came over here, and I started to cry.
- For as much as I want to go home, I'm going to have a difficult time leaving this place.
- I'm that (un)fortunate soul who makes home wherever she goes.
- I'm not entirely sure what I should do the packed but not sucked space bags currently occupying my bed.
- On the bright side, I can get the pillow out from one of them and sleep on that one more night.
- My flat mate, the one who has the vacuum, went home rather unexpectedly this morning out of fear of having to drive through a ridiculous amount of snow.
- They've canceled trains and such because of the weather - impending in places - and dumping snow in others.
- I'm hoping for snow.
- My hair's gotten longer, and this is fairly important as I've missed the amount of hair I used to rock my senior year of high school.
- It's a royal pain in the ass to straighten, but hey, every now and then is fine.
- This is going to sound a little odd, but, I think I've hit the point where wearing my incredibly curly, slightly afro-like hair down makes me feel....kind of pretty.
- Just found the missing plate.
- Said missing plate is sitting on my windowsill, with the empty Oreo wrapper on it.
- I can't remember the last time I shaved my legs and I really don't care.
- I might pack the shaver and send that home through the mail.
- My Twitter is a goldmine tonight. An absolute goldmine.
- Louise needs to go to bed.
- Once she figures out where to put the vacuum bags.
- I figured this out a while ago, but, I think there's a ghost that lives in my bathroom.
- No idea why he lives in my bathroom of all places. One would expect the wardrobe.
- Every night after I crawl in bed, he pokes his head around the corner, and then wanders back into the bathroom.
- No big deal; both houses in New York are haunted.
Mari is wandering through the great hall of Jack’s ice palace, all glittery and shiny with ice and snow, though she does not shiver. There is a curious statue in the corner of and a marble fountain covered in ice of a man and a woman surrounded by elves and nymphs.
Mari: That’s funny. And creepy. Much like him, just chucking me in the hall and telling me he’d be back after he saw someone he hadn’t seen in a long time. It almost sounded like he missed her, or whoever it was. Could be a her. Could be a him. Elves aren’t picky, are they? (Pauses, eyeing the statue in the corner: a woman on her knees, head bowed) Or maybe they can’t love. Because they can’t feel. But why keep a woman frozen, unless…No. This – This must be the woman who was rude to him. And I thought he’d only told that to frighten me. But – But he… (Looks around for Jack. He is sitting on the rim of the fountain, hidden from her current view) I need to go. Before I do something stupid, preferably, like offend him by accident and he decides I’ll make a nice centerpiece for his table.
Jack: Just how big do you think my table is, dear?
Mari:(Muttering) Of course he’s here. (Louder) Bigger than mine, at least.
Jack: Anything’s bigger than that pine chip in your cottage. (He comes out from behind the fountain) Oh. You found the statue.
Mari: Yeah. Who is it?
Jack: Oh, no one that you know.
Mari: I guess. I didn’t see her face.
Jack: Some things are better left unseen, dear. Trust me.
Mari: You ask me to do that a lot, you know. Trust you.
Jack:(Innocently) I’m a sprite. What’s not to trust?
Mari:(Motioning around her) Everything.
Jack: Well. I see. Have a seat on the fountain, dear, and I’ll be right back. (Strides off stage, muttering and twitching)
Mari sits on the fountain and cranes her neck to see the faces of the man and woman.
Mari: He looks familiar, now that I think about it. Like I’ve seen him before, in picture books. A man in long robes with a sweet face, cheeks red and nose always cold. And he’s sometimes with a woman. She has a crown of flowers in her hair, dressed in green and brown. Earth tones. Like summer. (She stands on the fountain basin to get a closer look) Oh. That’s Mother Earth, Mother Summer to some, and Father Winter. The elves are his to help him create the snow and ice, and the nymphs are there to help Mother Earth when spring and summer come. This is Vixen, Mother Earth’s chief herald and helper, so where’s….Where is Father Winter’s?
Jack returns with a box he places gently on the fountain basin ledge.
Jack: Amusing yourself, darling?
Mari: Why aren’t you on here?
Jack: I’m arrogant, dear, not egotistical.
Mari:(Lowering herself to sit on the bench, mindful of the box) You built this?
Jack: We pay homage to those who created us.
Mari: He’s your father?
Jack: (Snappy) I never said that. I said we pay homage to those who created us.
Mari: So you’re not related?
Jack: We do not operate as mortals. We do not have the same rules.
Mari: Obviously. We have some and you don’t.
Jack:(Annoyed) Listen with your ears, Mari. We do not have the same rules does not mean we are lawless creatures.
Mari:(Slowly) Really? Then what about her? What rule did she break? (Pointing to the statue in the corner)
Jack:(Flinging the box away as he stands) When someone offers you the chance to not freeze to death through simple kindness, you take it! You do not scorn him because he comes to you in the guise of an old man, bent and broken. Her heart was always as cold as the ice I lovingly shape.
Mari: How do you know?
Jack: Like calls to like.
Mari: What am I doing here, then? I don’t have a heart of ice and snow.
Jack:(Patiently) You, dear, are one of the piper’s children.
Mari:(Frustrated) You keep saying that and I don’t know what it means. I know my mother. I wasn’t taken as a child.
Jack: And your mother?
Mari: No! No, you’re grasping. There is nothing in me that should call to you.
Jack: Why, Mari?
Mari: Because I don’t freeze people for the hell of it! I don’t trick them into coming to palaces of ice out of misplaced manners. And I’m not a damned piper’s child!
Jack:(Flatly) Piper’s child.
Mari: Screw you, Jack Frost. I want to go home. I should have been back by now and my mother/
Jack: Knows where you are.
Mari: What?
Jack: Your mother knows where you are.
Mari: And she just let you walk back out without a fight?
Jack: She, unlike you, knows more than well what I am capable of. (Leans in close) And what I can do if truly provoked. Frost so thick you’ll be either stuck inside or out. And those poor pigs, with the ground so frozen to bury them if they die. Don’t think Iwon’t. Push me, Mari, and it might not be you I snap at.
Mari:(Backs up and turns away) Why me? (Turns) Why me, Jack? And don’t say/
Jack:(Flatly) You are one of the piper’s children. (Mari screams in frustration) And I am the icicle man. Like calls to like.
Mari: I’m human! You, you are the one that brings the frost and kills those too weak to weather the coming winter! (Stalking closer to him) You don’t feel. You don’t feel anywhere near what a human does and you probably couldn’t if you tried.
Jack: What did you say?
Mari:(Drawing herself up) You couldn’t be human if you tried.
Jack: Is that a challenge, dear?
Mari: Yes.
Jack: What do I get if I win?
Mari:(Shrug) I’ll believe I’m a piper’s child and take whatever place I’m supposed to. If I win, my mother and I don’t see you ever again.
Jack: Truly ever, dear?
Mari: Ever, Jack.
Jack: Just to play human?
Mari: Be human, Jack. With everything that includes. Every last stupid emotion and human meaning.
Jack:(Grinning fiercely) Lovely, dear. I’ll take that little challenge of yours.
Mari: Fine. (Holds out her hand)
Jack cackles, leaning forward to kiss Mari’s neck. She screams; the lights plunge to darkness)
