LOST COASTLINES - - - *

[Artemis Ellis]

( ARTEMIS EVELYN ELLIS )
NATE STREET'S APARTMENT, OCTOBER 22, 2007, EARLY EVENING

the monsters underneath your bed, they're all
just praying for you to let them crawl back home
. . . . . . .

she had been shopping a lot lately. and she had hardly even noticed it. until now, standing in her closet, knee deep in shopping bags from valkryie's fashionable boutiques. it had started out simply as a method of combatting boredom in the afternoons; one day she had been sitting in the front seat of the car she had borrowed from her mother in valkyrie academy's parking lot, contemplating on how she really didn't feel like going home and doing her homework, and the next thing she knew she was standing in a dressing room, examining herself in a red dress from all angles. and it had just progressed since then, gradually, until she had more clothing here in her closet still stowed in shopping bags than she did hanging from the racks in the relatively small but large in terms of closets space. perhaps the fact that she hadn't registered this change in her routine was that she had done a very great amount of shopping with the people she had been close with back in new york city and this was just a natural sort of thing for her. and she found that she rather liked the way she could just focus in on it; the selection of the clothes and coordinating things to go with it. it was one of the few things she could let absorb her and not become somewhat depressed as a result of doing so. because lately, the things in her life were once again becoming things that just succeeded in annoying her or making her sad. dj had found out about her recent aquisition of a habit involving the regualr smoking of pot and was all mad at her about it. because he was a big stupid drama queen and apparently just loved bringing up shit in their big stupid friendship.

so, as a result, she had been spending a lot more time by herself. damn. now that she thought about it, if she tried hard enough she could probably trace a lot of the irritating things in her life right back to dj hadley. good one on him. in fact, if she wound up driving her father bankrupt by spending all his money on clothes, she was going to hold dj completely responsible. because the two of them did get into some crazy stuff when they were together, but it usually didn't involve artie working her father's credit cards within inches of their litle lives. however, she probably wasn't going to get the pleasure of blaming him for that, because her father's businesses was doing ridiculously, disgustingly well. well enough that the family was able to take the hits that chanel and various other designer brands made against the finances at least.

and, as she stood there in her closet, she was rather thankful for that, because she had forgotten how much fun it was to buy pretty clothes. maybe one of these days she would actually work up the capacity of effort to be able to start taking some of this stuff out of their bags. now was definitely not the time, however, because she was feeling perfectly content standing there, amidst the colorful masses, letting them lie on the floor. oh well. if it wasn't meant to be, then it just wasn't meant to be. at the moment she actually wasn't much interested in anything in the bags at all, because she was simply looking for something comfy to slip into after putting up with the god awful annoying school uniform all day long. she had tugged her blouse off and let it fall to the carpeted floor and was now scanning the rows of clothes hanging neatly from their designated little hangers for a t shirt or something... oh wait. her eyes stopped on a sweatshirt type deal that looked promising. snatching it from its hanger, she tossed it on and it fell down around her frame, stopping an inch or two below the start of the denim shorts she had changed into immediately after arriving home an hour or so ago. this was much better. pausing only to check herself out for a moment in the mirror that hung on the back of her closet door, she meandered back out into the main area of her bedroom. where, to her extreme surprise, stood her mother, who had apparetnly just wandered in a few moments ago.

"um, hi," artie said, giving her mother a look that summed up the confusion she felt at seeing her there as she plopped down onto her bed. knock much? "hi," joyce ellis responded, humoring her a bit there. "i just wanted to tell you that mr. and mrs. warren are coming over for dinner in an hour or so." artie raised her eyebrows, sucked in one cheek and nodded slowly, though inwardly beginning to plot her escape. "awesome. best news i've heard all day. seriously. even better than how i have lethal amounts of math homework." her mother sighed and chose to ignore everything except the 'awesome' part, because after having artie as a daughter for seventeen years, she was used to it. "just be downstairs wearing something nice, okay?" she said shortly. and, with some huffy flouncing and the snappish closing of artie's bedroom door, she was gone.

well, this was just no good. she was so not in the mood to waste her perfectly good evening getting the pants bored off of her by stupid plastic mrs. warren and fat old mr. warren. crossing her arms over her chest, she cast a glance around her bedroom, and she found that her eyes stopped at her desk; the top left drawer most specifically. she had an idea now, already formulated from an impulse. standing up abruptly, she strode over to said desk and opened said top left drawer and pulled out a wad of cash from the stash she kept nestled there. she shoved it into her pocket and then stole quietly out of her bedroom, down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the front door. that route had become so routine for her that she hardly even had to think about the possibility of her parents catching her. she was going to get bitched out later. a lot. blowing off one of their dumbass fancy pants socialite dinner parties was pretty much the equivalent of a capitol offense in joyce and rawley ellis's book. oh well. it wasn't like she ever listened when they went off on her. being able to zone out at any time, any place was one of her many talents. and there was just no fucking way she was in the mood to tolerate sitting through a big stupid decieving display of some sort of happy family tonight. about a half hour or so later found her at an apartment building near the shaks, about to knock on one of the apartment doors. she had walked, because the exercise was apparently good for her and she hadn't felt like grand theft auto. she was here for none other than nathan street, the guy she got pot from every once and a while when she either couldn't find finn or didn't feel like going to him. pot wasn't exactly on her mind at the moment, however. artie wrapping sharply several times on the door before leaning up against the door frame. "naaaate," she called, just because she felt like it. "open up! it's your favorite person ever, here to bring a ray of sunshine into your bleak, bleak little life!"

hah. okay.

. . . . . . .

status , finished.
tagged , nateeeee. <3
attire , here.
credits , lyrics: cloud cult. formatting: me.
notes , yayay. :]

[Nathan Street]

( NATE JORDAN STREET )

OCTOBER 22nd, 2007. EARLY EVENING. HIS APARTMENT.

[/size]
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walk until it's light outside,
LIKE BEFORE WHEN WE WERE ON THE PHONE
WE HAVE TO LAUGH TO LOOK AT EACH OTHER
WE HABE TO LAUGH 'CAUSE WE'RE NOT ALONE
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- - - LIFE. WHAT MADE

[/b] it so damn worth it? you're born; you grow up in a broken home; you leave said broken home out of bitterness and disdain; you go to college to prove everyone wrong; you work a job you hate; you die cold and alone. sounds like a great story, doesn't it? in theory. people like to speculate about living such a life - would they do it? what about the people who do live that life? are they happy? do they really die any more cold and alone than the rest of us? well, probably. the people who live life for lack of anything better to do are miserable bats, let me tell you. there is nothing keeping you here, alive and kicking. just the next morning's starbucks coffee, and the prospect of yelling at your happier underlings for most of the day. that was ninety percent of the reason these people woke up every morning. and how, exactly, do i know this? because that was the only reason nathan jordan street bothered to open his eyes every morning. just the selfish thought of making those who were actually living life miserable, even for a few hours, was enough to keep him functioning. it was just something that happened everyday. a schedule. he lived his life as a schedule - something that he couldn't change even if he wanted to. every single damn morning, his alarm clock buzzed annoyingly at five-thirty, maybe six. he was out the door, dressed in a suit, on his way to starbucks by six-thirty. he got to scream at underpaid interns for nothing all morning. he got to watch some big, scary lawyers screaming at each other for the rest of the afternoon. then he got to go home, with more starbucks, naturally, and listen to people scream over the phone. the thought of doing it all over again the next day kept him alive and functioning.

not that it answered the question: what made life so damn worth it? well, he didn't know. he didn't even think about it. see, nate street was part of a small bit of the population who didn't live life for actual living. he lived life because he had been born, raised in a broken home, blah blah blah. he didn't go out and do the things he really wanted to do. he didn't do anything to make him smile, to make him happy. he watched the people who did that; he watched the people who knew what made life so damn worth it. "this". that was the answer he always got. apparently witnessing something amazing made life worth living? he didn't understand it. he knew he would never understand it, wouldn't even try. because, you see, that's the path he had carved for himself. he had decided, long ago, that he would live life for lack of anything better to do. his wants and desires had grown numb long ago. the only thing keeping him alive was that schedule. the infamous schedule in which he life would be destroyed otherwise. he really, honestly, didn't know what made life so worth it.

he wondered, of course. sometimes, if he had a free seven seconds from said schedule, he would pause to think about it. nearly everyone he met said he was headed down a dark, lonely road. a dark, lonely, very successful road. he would be on the top of the world in many peoples' eyes - hugely successful lawyer, polished apartment in new york city, plenty of charity work. it would be a good, happy story for the newspapers. of course, at the end of the day, the newspapers didn't see the freezer full of tv dinners, or the cat patiently waiting for him to return. they didn't see the voicemail full of work messages, or the cell phone bill higher than god. they didn't see work-filled nights substituted for holidays. they didn't see his only friends being the same overworked, young yuppie lawyers slaving away for nothing. they didn't see any of that. and that was all he saw in his future. at twenty-one, he already knew how his life was going to end. sometimes he wondered about it. wondered, but never did anything. he was wondering right now, actually. sitting on a glossy black leather coach was nate street. his converse-covered feet resting on his glass coffee table, the law student was preoccupied. his blue eyes busy staring down the end of his sparsely-furnished apartment, down to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked valkyrie's hustling downtown. this was going to be him, still in twenty years. great. tapping the end of his pencil against the note-filled paper on his lap, the drug dealer breathed a sigh. it's not like he was going to get up, burn all of his textbooks, and go out and have a good time. things didn't work like that. he was going to continue wondering for a good seven seconds before going back to work.

that's how it always was.

rolling his eyes, nate turned to look back down at the law textbook sitting beside him. he was supposed to be taking notes from the chapter covering the basics of death-penalty cases. real fun material. absentmindedly jotting down a few notes in his curly handwriting, the irish fellow glanced across the open room, to the plasma television placed on the wall. when had 'rear window' come on? 'strangers on a train' had been starting last time he looked up. that's what you get for muting the hitchcock marathon, street. running a spidery hand through his messy hair, he sighed again. this was boring. which was leading him to wondering. which never ended well. shut-up, he'd constantly tell himself. picking the book back up, he got back to half-reading, and writing down anything that looked somewhat important. killing scary jail-people with the electric chair in 1972, while facinating, wasn't exactly keeping him attention. not that it ever did. "naaaate." jumping in surprise at the sudden calling of his name, soon after a series of sharp knocks on his apartment's door, he looked over toward the end of his open-concept apartment. no one even knew where he lived, let alone cared. "open up! it's your favorite person ever, here to bring a ray of sunshine into your bleak, bleak little life!" smirking as he recognized the voice, he pushed his homework into a mess on the couch, quickly walking over to his front door. "artemis," his accented voice mildly amused, he forced the door open to look at the high school student. "not that my life is not the bleakest of the bleaks, to what do i owe the pleasure?" the smirk still on his face, nate pulled the door open further, inviting her inside.[/size][/font][/blockquote]STATUS,, complete.
TAGGED,, artie-ington !
LENGTH,, 1170 words.
CLOTHING,, -lazy- red 'vu' t-shirt, jeans, black converse.
NOTES,, woo<3
CREDITS,, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to the lemonheads - "my drug buddy."[/size]

[Artemis Ellis]

( ARTEMIS EVELYN ELLIS )
NATE STREET'S APARTMENT, OCTOBER 22, 2007, EARLY EVENING

the monsters underneath your bed, they're all
just praying for you to let them crawl back home
. . . . . . .

artie liked to think that she was relatively self reliant. she was a social little critter, but she could survive just fine on her own without a flock of friends around her to support her at all times. hell, she had been doing it for a good amount of time back in new york, in middle school, when she was still a little chubber. she had been virtually friendless and alone throughout those years, the bitter little blight on the happy image of the ellis family that everyone picked on and made fun of. on a whole, the whole being picked on thing hadn't affected her too terribly... because after a certain point, you just get used to it and, if you're lucky, realize that the people tormenting you are just stupid demon bitches who were rich and idle and from thence picked up acting like assholes as a sort of pass time. artie had been rather indifferent about being teased, but the fact that most of the popular people were thin due to a lucky role of the genetic dice and through no great feat of their own skill or character while she was stuck as the social retard simply because of her excess adipose tissue when she ate probably the same amout as some of the popular creeps... that tended to piss her off. in fact, it had helped to turn her into the bitter, viciously sarcastic, cynic she had been during that period of time. however, now, in the present, she liked to look back on it and think that she had gained something valuable from those several years: the knowledge that people were stupid and that she could in fact survive without them if she needed or wanted to, even if she was lonely. see? artie may be a sarcastic loudmouth, but you've got to admit that she's good at staying positive. not that artie really thought of it that way... it was just sort of the way her brain worked when it wasn't being dramatic about how much her life sucked. take now, for example. her best friend, dj hadley, was being a big, dumb, unsufferable drama queen, but artie figured this increased the chances of him realizing that she was always right and he hardly ever was, once he managed to pull his head out of his butt, of course.

in the meantime, she was just sort of floating around with her other random friends around valkyrie, some of whom she had been neglecting lately, both because of dj and her new and quite unfortunate campaign of putting effort into her schoolwork. and she'd been spending a lot of time alone, too. shopping, like we talked about before. it was just a little bit depressing, but she could deal. see? she was quite self reliant, thank you very much.

oddly enough however, her little ventures into the world of pot had not been a result of any loneliness or boredom. no, that had been more of a product of a bout of mini crisis brought on by her feeling lost and without direction, which had not been correlated with a fight with dj or anything like that. in a way, she was sort of proud of herself for that, because since moving to valkyrie and adopting dj hadley as her bffl, that seemed to happening less and less. but anyhow. pot had become a bit of a vice for her. she had little baggies stashed away in multiple hiding places in her room, though her encounter with her mother just a little while ago was causing her to begin to doubt the security of those little strong holds. because seeing her mother in her bedroom had reminded her that snooping was one thing she was definitely not going to put past the woman. because she liked the pot. it was a fun, interesting little experience. you got to see some cool shit without being completely tripped out, plus it mellowed you out and made the world seem like a big ball of zen. but pot was not what had brought artemis to nathan street's apartment. nope. because, while perched upon her bed in her bedroom, and impulse had formulated itself in the teenager's mind and now she was running with it. why, you ask? well, why not? she was looking for something with a little more bang than pot had to offer. not that it was getting boring on her, but... well, artie didn't really know what. she had let her mind wander a few moments ago in her room and now here she was, a wad of cash in her pocket, ready to do some illegal purchasing of some illicit substances. what could she say? she had always been the impulsive type. wasn't her fault.

nate was quick to answer the door. she hadn't even had time to let her attention wander and just sort of boredly examine the hallway she was standing in. "artemis." she wrinkled her nose slightly. why did so many people apparently insist upon calling her artemis? it was just such a mouthful. made people seem kind of pretentious whenever they said it. which was sort of a downer, seeing as your name was something you were generally stuck with and was a staple of how you defined yourself. yeah. superb, no? "not that my life is not the bleakest of the bleaks, to what do i owe the pleasure?" he opened the door wider and she strolled inside. "oh, i just got a feeling that you might need a ray of sunshine right about now. you know, like a spidey sense sort of thing. i'm practically a super hero." she paused, standing a few feet into the apartment, crossing her arms over her sweater enveloped chest. "plus i was thinking that we could do business," she added, twisting her torso around to him and flashing him a bright, charming smile. she loved saying things like that... made her feel important and... suave. she wandered into the apartment a bit further and plopped down onto the area on the couch that was not occupied by a big mess of boring looking papers. yes, maybe that was considered a little rude but... well, whatever. "i'm thinking of getting bangs, how do you think that would look?" she asked casually, leaning her head back and staring languidly up at the ceiling. small talk for the win.

. . . . . . .

status , finished.
tagged , nate-ington! xD
attire , here.
credits , lyrics: cloud cult. formatting: me.
notes , random artie muse ftw.