//------------------------------// // More than words // Story: Silent Love - Part One // by Sagami //------------------------------// “Shower taken, clothing chosen, bag prepared. Last one was quick. What classes do we have today again?” Vinyl grabbed her car keys, her wallet and her headphones, and knocked two times on the wall to notify her brother. Once she got a muffled “goodbye” from Volume, she entered the staircase and slammed the door behind her. “Awww fuck yeah! This hot shower really did wake me up! Unlike captain squatter over there, my body is ready to attack the day!” Vinyl suddenly stopped, a feeling of sheer panic embracing her. She rushed back up the few steps she had walked down, opened her door after dropping the keys in stress twice, got in the kitchen, and grabbed a Redbulk energy drink from the fridge. “Ok, now I’m ready.” }--oO0Oo--{ As Vinyl’s car was approaching CHS’s parking lot, the DJ noticed someone waving at her from a bench. A thin and joyful girl, cheeks turning to pink with the cold wind of September, and coming nicely along with her blue and pink hair. “Bon-Bon! Right! We need to tell her everything about yesterday!” Vinyl stopped mid-thought to analyse the situation. “Wait… Bon-Bon? And neither Lyra or Tavi are here?” She looked at her watch: 7:57 am. Then she took a look at the picture of the schedule she had taken with her cellphone. “Balls! Today’s classes start at 8:30! I’m thirty minutes early!” Well that was new. Not once in her entire lifetime had Vinyl ever been early. She was usually either arriving just before the teachers, or sneaking up as they did the attendance. Her time needed to be well-spent, and by that she meant sleeping or wubbing. She slammed her head on her steering wheel, letting the blaring sound of the car horn resonate in the parking lot. Bon-Bon giggled at the sight of her friend’s confusion, unwrapping a small blue candy and putting it under her tongue. “Hey Vinyl, you okay over there? I thought you were starting classes later than me today… Did you came early?” Vinyl blew steam on her window, before writing on the fog with her finger: “I DIDN’T MEAN TO…” The pianist smiled as her friend got out of her car, grabbed her bag and started walking along with her towards the main entrance. “Well I’m sure you’re exhausted after all what happened yesterday. I mean, I don’t know what the fuss was about yet, Lyra texted me that we’d have something to talk about at lunch. You want to walk me to my classroom?” Vinyl gave a thumb up, before engulfing a last sip of her energy drink and throwing the can in a nearby bin. “Oh God, you sure these are good for you Vinyl? I don’t doubt they give you the required energy to drive, but the side effects on your body can be…. Oh right, I forgot you and Lyra have these type of bodies that never get fat. I envy you… I can barely eat any sweets without getting scared for my waistline.” Vinyl looked down her exposed belly. Yup, she was slim. Skinny, almost. All the pizzas and burgers in the world weren’t helping. But she liked it. She didn’t care much about physical appearance, but not getting fat was a nice bonus the existence gave her. Once the two girls reached the hallway on the second floor, Bon-Bon noticed the flow of students entering her classroom, gave Vinyl a smile and a quick wave, and disappeared behind the door. “Great. Now, thirty minutes to kill. Easy.” }--oO0Oo--{ It wasn’t easy. “Of course my phone would run out of battery! Why wouldn’t it?! No music for you, you fucking dumbass!” Vinyl was angry at herself: two bad decisions on the same day, it was already too much. She was walking in circles in front of the giant horse statue decorating the park. She looked at the pedestal, and almost saw her reflection in the stone. “Weird…” She looked up to the statue watching over the school, like a stone guardian. “Why a horse anyway?” She went back inside, walked around the hall, went back outside, inside again, then looked towards the big golden clock above the door, eyes filled with hope. “C’mon! It must’ve been like, twenty-five minutes now!” It had been three minutes. “Oh for fuck sake!” Suddenly Vinyl heard the sound of tires stopping from afar. These were from Octavia’s limousine’s. She didn’t really know how she knew that, but she just knew. Perfect. Not only wasn’t she alone anymore, but she could spend the next twenty minutes with Tavi. What could be better? She slammed the front door open, and rushed to the corner of the street to welcome her friend. When she arrived, the car was already driving away, and Octavia was standing still on the side of the pavement. “She is so cute…” The DJ smiled and waved at her friend, before arriving in front of her and giving her a joyful hug. It was such a relief, she wasn’t waiting alone anymore. But the reaction she got wasn’t the one she expected. Of course, Tavi had always been a little uncomfortable with physical contact ; but this time, she completely backed off, leaving the blue-haired girl in the awkward position of a failed hug. “Wut?” Vinyl looked at her friend, an expression of amused embarrassment on her white face. “G...Good morning Vinyl…” “Oh shit, she started to stutter. That’s not good.” Vinyl didn’t take time to take out her notepad: she drew a question mark in the air with her right hand, looking at Octavia as the latter was trembling in front of her. “Vinyl, I… I don’t think we can be friends anymore…” Vinyl giggled and smiled at what was surely a joke from her friend. She was starting to use humour. Good. “No Vinyl, I mean it… We… We can no longer see each others anymore…” This time, Vinyl took out her pen and paper, and swiftly wrote a few words, a lump starting to build up in her throat. “What do you mean?” “I mean that we just can’t see each others again!” Her voice had suddenly become more serious, more firm. But her fists her closed tight, and trembling next to her hips. “We have nothing in common! We cannot even communicate together! How can we even remotely be friends? I think it would be best for the two of us if we parted ways. I am also counting on telling Lyra about my decision.” Wait, pause. That was too much information at once. What was Octavia doing? Why was she like this all of a sudden? Did she just say that they should… part ways? Vinyl feverishly scratched the paper with the tip of her pencil: “What? Why would you do that Tavi?” “I… I don’t believe I have to explain myself. This is my decision, please accept it. And also Vinyl…-” Octavia stopped mid-sentence, as to swallow her tears. “Please, don’t call me “Tavi”...” These last words broke Vinyl’s heart. What happened between yesterday and today? Dis her parents get word of what had happened with Sombra? Or with the bully? Did the principals call them after all? In any case, despite what she was saying, it was clearly not her own decision. If that was her parent’s work, it was going to be an issue. Apparently Octavia was pretty scared of them. “Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong.” }--oO0Oo--{ Vinyl had been anxious like she’d never been during the math class. After her little speech, Octavia had disappeared, asking Vinyl not to follow her. She apparently later told Lyra about her decisions concerning the three of them, and had asked her to inform Bon-Bon as well. Now Vinyl and Lyra were sitting at the back row, both their faces in their hands, contemplating the situation they were in. “What the fuck dude…” “...” “WHAT THE FUCK DUDE!” “Jeez, I heard you Lyra.” Vinyl looked at her friend and touched her ear while shaking her hand. No need to inform the whole classroom about their problem. “What the hell is wrong with her?! Does she think she’s better than us?!” “...” “Yeah I know it’s not that, just… let me make my scene!” After a few minutes of angry muffling and tapping her pen against the table, Lyra finally took a breath and turned back towards Vinyl. “Now I think we both guessed that this lil’ show was her parent’s doing. Great, we needed that. As if Sombra and Discord weren’t enough, we now have to deal with Tavi’s folks. How do you think they know about us?” That was a good question. Octavia surely didn’t tell them herself, she wasn’t this clumsy. So someone else did. Before the class, she gave the principals, as well as the nurse, a quick visit: none of them had ever called the Melody family. When asked why, Vinyl had to lie and tell them that Octavia just wanted to be sure. They couldn’t afford to get the staff’s attention on this. “So who the fuck could it be? Discord? No, he doesn’t have any interest in this, and that was kinda his thing. Sombra? No, he liked to handle things himself apparently. This Sunset Shimmer? No, Octavia’s parents wouldn’t listen to her. Plus, she didn’t have the phone number.” Vinyl’s brain was starting to melt when she heard a sound from outside the window. It was a delivery truck for the nearby mall. The sound was the one of tires. Tires screeching. “Holy fucking shit! The driver! Of course it was the fucking driver! Why would it be anybody else?!” She touched Lyra’s arm to get her attention, and mimed using a steering wheel. “What?... Oh! No fucking way! The limo driver? That motherfucker we don’t even know just snitched to Octavia’s parents?” The DJ nodded, trying to calm her raging friend with a pat on the shoulder. “That piece of shit! I know whose tires I’ll be piercing tomorrow! Who does he think he is?” Vinyl took a second to think. That was not good.This guy was bringing Octavia to school three or four times a week, and who knows if his boss asked him to stay a bit around to check on her daughter. Suddenly, Lyra’s eyes lightened up. She had an idea. A very bad idea. }--oO0Oo--{ As Cheerilee was packing her things and leaving the classroom, Vinyl came to Octavia’s desk on the front row. The few feet between the two desks had seemed like a walk through a desert to the DJ, and she still didn’t know exactly what to tell her friend yet. When she arrived face to face with the cellist, the latter turned her head towards the wall, pretending not to see her friend, her eyes filled with shame. She tried to say a word, but Vinyl just smashed the table with her hands, as to captivate the cellist’s attention. She took out a piece of paper she had prepared during math lessons, and handed it to Octavia: Hey Tavi, I’ve never good at writing long-ass letters (Weird right? Can’t talk, can’t write), but I feel like you need this. Me and Lyra aren’t stupid: we know that it’s your parent’s decision, not yours, to distance yourself from us. We also know that it’s your limo driver who told them about us. I know that we’re not the best of friends somebody could ask for and honestly, yes, we might be a bad influence on you. But if a bad influence can help you discover the world, the people, and make some new, better friends, then I say it’s worth it. We love you Tavi. Me, Lyra and Bon-Bon. No butthurt parents or limo driver can ever change that. So if you really don’t want to see us again, that’s fine, but if not, know that we will find a way to escape your folk’s surveillance, whatever it takes. They don’t want us to hang out together? Well screw them! Cause even if we don’t speak the same language, even if we barely know anything about each others, even if our ways of living are as different as they could be, I know it’s worth it. You’re worth it. As Vinyl watched her friend read the last few lines, she noticed she was trembling while holding the letter. Octavia’s eyes started to water, as she laid down the paper. And then something happened, something Vinyl wasn’t prepared for. Octavia folded her middle finger and ring finger, and clumsily moved her hand from her chest to Vinyl, and then folded her index finger, leaving only the thumb and little finger pointing at Vinyl. I love you too. }--oO0Oo--{ As Lyra searched in her list of phone numbers, she looked at her two friends from afar. Hopefully, things were going to go well for the three of them. She finally stopped scrolling down once she found the number titled “Octavia’s House”. She clicked on the dial icon, and waited as the ringing played in her ear. This was such a bad idea. “Good morning, this is the Melody Manor intendant. What is the purpose of your call?” said a loud and severe voice. Lyra took a big breath, and tried her best to do a forty-something woman voice: “Hello, this is Canterlot Police Department, we have reasons to believe that there was some kind of trouble in a street surrounding the mall this morning, and we are looking for some potential witnesses.” “Oh my” said the voice, obviously concerned “I certainly hope nobody in our house is in any sort of trouble. If that is in fact the case, we’ll have to appoint our lawyer.” “Oh, no need for that” said Lyra, as she was starting to feel a bit of panic “We just have reasons to believe that the black Hoofield limo that passed by the Canterlot High School this morning is owned by your domain. Is that correct?” “It is.” “Well, I’d like to ask a few questions to the driver of the said limo. Do not worry, he is not in any kind of trouble whatsoever. We just think he could bring some information about what he might have seen in the streets.” “Um… You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve never been part of anything like this. But we’d be glad to help the CPD.” “Glad to hear that. Now, can I talk to the limo driver, if you don’t mind?” “I’m afraid he’s not home right now, but if you are in a hurry, I can give you his cell number.” “Lyra smiled at these news. “I think it’ll do just fine.”