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a-strange-sim-fic · 5 years ago

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It's All a Little Strange

Chapter One

"Your dad know you're here?"

"Hey Erwin, can I get another book? Dad trashed my last copy."

"Beck, you're not supposed to be here. If your dad finds out-"

"What? He'll ground me, again?" I rolled my eyes and slammed my money on the counter. The curio shop owner sighed and rummaged through his bins to look for my book.

A guest of wind passed by, kicking up some dust. When it cleared, I could see on of those crazy plants growing in the distance.

"I swear, if your dad finds out I sold you another copy-"

"Erwin, relax. I'll say I got it from a kid at school," I reassured him. He didn't seem convinced. "Seriously, Dad won't find this one. Promise."

I hopped on my bike to head home as Erwin shouted something about me saying that the last time. Blah, blah, blah. It was another dark, gloomy day, as always. If I tried hard enough, I could almost remember when the sky was blue. Almost.

Ever since I was little, our town was trapped under a mysterious dark cloud that barely let an ounce of sunlight through. I rode through the dusty desert, passing Jess Sigworth and a few other soldiers going into the Salty 8 Saloon.

She saluted me as I passed, glancing behind me towards Erwin and his little pop up curio shop.

Dammit.

She was sure to tell my father that I'd been down here again. She worked under my him, as one of his sergeants, but she's my mother's friend. Or at least, she was, until my mother disappeared.

I was nearly to the top of the hill, I could see the shiny gates to our community reflecting in the dull light. But, it wasn't Rusty the security guard at the gate. It was my dad.

"Beck, where have you been? You are grounded, you're not supposed to even leave the house. When I found out you weren't in your room-"

"You were in my room?" I shouted. "That is my private space, dad. You get the whole house, you promised-"

"To stay out? Yes I did," my father sighed, lifting my bike into the back of his pick up. "Don't worry, your thirteen locks on the basement door work just fine."

"Fifteen actually," I corrected.

"Beckleigh, you are the child and I am the parent, that is-"

"YOUR house, yes I know."

"You really need to stop interrupting me," he shouted. In his anger, he jerked the wheel and the truck bounced off the curb. He was furious with me, as always. Dad's been hot headed since even before my mother left. Always in a bad mood, always yelling at me about something.

We were finally home, and before he could place the truck in park, I was already jumping out and rushing to my room in the basement.

Dad had finished it off for me as a birthday gift when I turned 16. I guess it was his way of making it up to me that I had no mom, or he thought such a cool room would keep me home, instead of poking around town for clues about my mom.

"She's gone," he'd say. "Just leave it at that."

But it couldn't be so simple, could it? My mom loved me, I even thought she might have actually loved him too. She followed him here from Brindelton Bay when he was assigned a new military base, though she had nothing of her own. Well, except me.

She would spend her whole day at home with me, playing games and cooking. She taught me to walk, talk, everything. Meanwhile, Dad would spend all of his time at work. When he was actually home, he was shut up in his office or the gym he installed in the attic.

Even as a toddler I could tell my mom was lonely. It wasn't until my mom met Jess and Leslie that she ever perked up.

I went over to the far side of my room and put pressure on the loose floorboard at the foot of my bed. Everything was still accounted for.

My spore scanner sat nestled next to some of the bugs I purchased from Erwin the week before. Carefully wrapped in an old handkerchief, a photo of my mother sat on top of my secret treasures. I swapped the photo for my new book and gingerly unwrapped it.

A couple years after she left, Dad had taken down all of her photos in a rage after a long day at work, throwing them in the trash. I managed to save a few, hiding them in the bottom of my toy chest at the time.

Gently stroking the glass, I admired my mother's hair taking up more than half the photo. It was so wild and big, I never understood how she managed to fit it under her cowgirl hat. Her big blue eyes sparkled, and only her smile could outshine them. The yellow dress she wore complimented her dark skin, and she looked like the sun glowing in the early morning. I pressed a kiss to my index finger and tapped it over her face before covering the photo back up.

"Love you, Mama," I whispered, placing the floorboards back in place. I checked my watch, realizing there were only a few hours left before my curfew was invoked.

"I'm going outside, want to squeeze in a few laps," I told my father in the kitchen, as he stirred something in a pot on the stove.

"You are not to-"

"Leave the yard, yea, I know," I interrupted, waving my beach towel at him. "I'll just be in the pool. You can see me from the kitchen window."

He grunted his permission, never once looking at me. Rolling my eyes, I went out the back door and slung my towel over my old monkey bar. I eased myself into the pool and began my laps, counting each one as it was completed. Ten a day, that was the goal. I'd follow up with whatever high protein dinner Dad was making and do my sit ups downstairs before bed.

"Early to bed, early to rise," Dad would always say while leading me to my bed every night at 8pm sharp. He'd wake me the next morning for our daily jog and double check that my homework was finished while we ate breakfast.

I was expected to keep my mind and body at the highest point of health. Straight A student that could bench press a semi was Dad's ideal child. While I wouldn't be lifting semis anytime soon, I could still hold my own in my boxing class or whenever Dad insisted on sparring practice.

Working out was the only time he ever really spent with me. He was a military man, as was his father before him and his father before him. There was a long, long line of Cardenas men serving their country, and being the first girl in the family did not excuse me from that tradition.

"Beck, it's seven. Inside, now," my dad's voice shouted from the back door, snapping me out of my thoughts. I dried myself off, going back into the house. After changing my clothes, I was sat at the old mahogany dining table, my father on the complete opposite end.

"You know, I'm probably the only teenager ever to have a seven o'clock curfew," I muttered. His eyebrows raised high enough they'd have disappeared into his hairline, if he had one. "It's not fair."

"Excuse me?" He grumbled, his eyes shooting daggers. I nearly expected to feel the sensation of being stabbed. "You have a curfew to establish routine, discipline. You need to be responsible for yourself when you enlist, you can't expect others to pick up your slack."

"That's fair," I agreed. "I'm not saying I shouldn't have a curfew, just maybe one that allows me to actually spend time with my friends?"

"Oh, you mean your friends like Erwin?" Dad scoffed, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "That clown is nothing but trouble. He keeps poking his nose into business that doesnt concern him, and he's going to pay for it one day. You can't allow yourself to be involved with someone like that."

"Erwin is a nice guy, and he's smarter than people think," I countered.

"He's a paranoid conspiracy theorist, he's a total loon!"

"He's my friend!"

By now, we were both shouting, pounding our fists on the table as we stood up in defiance of each other. Dad's face was red, his eyes narrowed and I could see that he was working out if it was worth it to smack me across the mouth.

I rushed to my room, closing the basement door behind me before he could follow. I latched all fifteen locks behind me.

___

"Oh this is disgusting, Beck," I heard my grandmother call out. "Beck! Beckleigh, mija!"

"What is it, what's wrong?" I called, rushing to the bathroom after her. She opened the door and I could see the, the purple vines snaking their way out of the sink. "Oh, they're back."

"They're back?" She repeated, passing a hand over eyes. "This is a thing that just happens?"

"Yea," I shrugged, opening the sink cabinet to pull out the pruning shears we kept for these exact instances. "All the time, actually. It's really bad the further into town you get."

"So the whole town just has vines growing from their sinks?"

"Well, some people get it in their showers and toilets too. "

"That's appalling," she shuddered, eyeing the vines with disgust.

"That's Strangerville," I shrugged again. "Abuela, it's always been this way. It would be weird if I suddenly didn't have to clear out vines everytime I needed to pee."

"Tell me you're joking."

It wasn't often that my grandparents came to visit. They didnt like the desert, or the strange weather, or weird, glowing purple plants that sprouted up all over town. It was so different from their home in Willow Creek, and different is bad apparently.

Today was a special occasion though, Dad's birthday. My grandmother insisted on coming to us and preparing a meal for her only child. While he and my grandfather sat in the living room, staring at the sports center on our tiny television set, I followed my grandmother into the kitchen.

"Mija, will you take these and chop for me please?"

"Abuela, I'm not much of a cook," I tried to excuse myself and pushed the cutting board and vegetables back towards her.

"And what does that have to do with chopping? Any idiot can use a knife," she scoffed. "Just make sure you cut evenly or nothing will cook the same. And avoid hitting any of your fingers."

We worked quietly beside each other, occasionally hearing one of the Cardenas men shouting at the tv, as if the athletes could hear them. When I was done cutting the vegetables, my grandmother set me up at the sink to clean the dishes she'd already used up in dinner prep.

"Always clean as you go, mija," she stated matter of factly. "Then you can enjoy the rest of your evening without worry."

I smiled back at her, happy to have the extra company in the house for once. Dad didn't really like for me to have my friends over, even just to study. He occasionally made an exception for Christie Sigworth, if she came with her parents.

We weren't exactly friends, but we got along. Jess would bring her along for playdates when she came over to gossip with my mother and Leslie Holland about what was happening in town. After mom left, Leslie stopped coming around. The Sigworth's always stood by us though, especially in the beginning.

As if my thoughts had summoning powers, the doorbell rang and Dad called out to me to get it. I opened the door to find Jess, her husband Dylan, and Christie. Jess held out a freshly baked honey cake and made her way to the living room with Dylan.

"Hey," I said, gesturing for Christie to follow me. We left the cake in the kitchen and made our way to my old swing set.

"How are those college apps going?" Christie asked, digging her toe into the ground as she swayed in the swing. "I heard back from Foxberry, early admissions."

"That's great," I mumbled, so tired of college talk. We were less than a year from graduating, but it hardly mattered. It wasn't like I was going to get to leave anyway. Military first, school later. "Have fun in Britechester."

We sat in silence a few minutes, looking towards the crater under the big, dark cloud. The early spring air was already warm, as it was almost all year long. The faint glow of the plants scattered across the desert lit up the landscape as far as we could see.

"Have you asked your dad yet?" Christie suddenly questioned. "About Sulani? Everyone's going, and Wolfgang asked about you."

"Oh did he? And what did Wolfgang Munch want to know about me?"

"If you're coming," she cried out exasperated. "I think he likes you."

"He just likes that I'm his science partner. Easy A."

"Don't be so modest," she dismissed me with a wave of her hand. "You make him so soft, everyone can see it. You should give him a chance!"

"And give my dad a heart attack?" I laughed, thinking of how my dad would handle his daughter dating a Renegade. "Sergio's head would actually implode. And then he'd come back to life just to kill me."

"Since when do you care about your dad's rules?"

I rolled my eyes as she wiggled her eyebrows at me, giggling. Silently, I agreed with her, knowing that she was completely right about it all. Wolfgang was cool, but he was kind of an idiot. Acted sweet when we worked on our labs, but a total jerk to everyone else. It was clear that he had a thing for me, and as satisfying as it would be to stick it to Dad, I couldn't bring myself to use him like that.

"I haven't asked him about Sulani," I tried redirecting the conversation. "Ditching school to go to the beach doesn't seem like something he'd go for."

"We're not ditching! It's over the weekend, he cant be mad about that."

"Oh, so you think I should ask him to have a Saturday off when I could be studying or training? Anytime away from books is ditching school to him."

"You're dad is such a buzzkill."

"Tell me about it."

Inside, around the dinner table Dad talked to Jess and my grandfather about work, while my grandmother talked to Dylan about some new recipes he should try.

"I really want to try my hand at pork adobo," Dylan told her. "I'm planning to get a fresh pig when I take the girls to Sulani this weekend."

"Whose going to Sulani?" My father demanded, his eyes boring into my skull. "Why is this the first I'm hearing of this?"

"Because I wasn't planning on going," I explained. "Christie and some kids from school are going to the beach, I guess Mr. Sigworth is the chauffeur."

I shrugged and focused once again on my food, trying to avoid eye contact and hoping Dad would turn his attention back to work talk. But he didn't.

"You should go," he suggested softly. My fork clattered against my plate as I dropped it in shock. Pure glee took over Christie's expression, and I could tell it took all of her being to avoid squealing. "You made a good point the other night, you should be able to spend time with your friends. A day at the beach sounds fun."

I stared in disbelief, not sure what to make of his offer. A full day spent on pleasure, and not on securing my future? A day of real, actual sunlight away from StangerVille? I was hardly allowed in my own yard after seven, but suddenly I'm allowed to leave town without being under his supervision?

"Oh my gosh, Wolfgang is going to be so thrilled - ouch!" Christie rubbed her shin where I had kicked her from under the table. I glared at her, jaw clenched. How could she be so stupid?

"Wolfgang Munch? Why would that delinquent care if you're there?" Dad's demeanor changed immediately, and he sat stiff in his chair.

"He won't," I tried to assure. "We're lab partners, if anything he'll just want to make sure I finished my half of the project."

It seemed to settle him enough that he didnt take back his permission and the previous conversations resumed. Christie continued looking at me gleefully while I shook my head.

《 masterlist

#sims 4 strangerville #sims 4 #sims 4 gameplay #sims fanfic

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