bad karma

October 2083 - Chad and Riley Hathe are 34, Liza is 14, Shaun is 6. (Fiona McCullough is 16, Robbie is 13.)

Chad found this one morning, a ratty old vest he used to wear in high school. Yes, high school was fifteen years ago, but it still fits, and it helps him to relive all those long-forgotten days, before children, before marriage. He can hardly remember those days as it is. But his wife is not nearly as amused.

"Oh hell," Riley says, twisting up a scowl at him.

"What," he says. "It still fits. You remember this? I wore it all through high school. It was rad."

"It was not rad, even in high school. You look like a fool."

Behind them, Liza is laughing.

Riley sits down. "You're taking Shaun today," she says. "I have some dogs to show. And then later this week too. I promised my dad I'd drive out to see my sister this week."

"What's wrong with your sister?"

"Oh, who knows," she says, shrugging her shoulders. "And you should take that thing off."

"You used to love this in high school. You said you did."

She smirks at him. "I just said that because I was sixteen and wanted you to drive me around in your car. So you should take it off. You should burn it too."

So Chad brings his son to work sometimes. "Now this, kiddo, is what we call real work," he says.

It's not actually legal to let a minor gamble, so Shaun just sits and keeps score, making careful note of every play. But before they open, Chad pulls out the chips and lets Shaun earn double his allowance... that is, if he can beat his old man. He can, sometimes. And you'd better believe he could out-bluff any other man at this table.

"Well, don't just stand there," he says, as a newcomer approaches the table. His tone is bold in his six years of age, but still pitchy. "Ante's a hundred bucks, you in or what?"

***

After school one day, Fiona tells Liza and Robbie she wants to show them something. They follow along, not that they really had much choice. When Fiona orders something, people just tend to obey.

They pass by trees and more trees to the point they can't see or even hear the main road anymore. Then they can see it, an old cottage, deep in the woods. It's abandoned, Fiona told them, but they both check around and behind them, waiting for some owner to show up and run them off the property with a dog, or a rifle in his hand. But no one comes.

"Have you been here before?" Liza whispers.

"No," Robbie says.

Liza is wearing high heels that Fiona bought for her and they hurt her feet, the heels cutting into her skin and rubbing it raw. She feels inclined to take them off and walk barefoot, and she isn't sure which would be worse, the heels, or the tiny pebblestone path they're walking on. Fiona said she needed them though, to look more like a girl, but walking in these makes her feel even more ungirly than she already was.

Robbie sees her wincing on each step. "How are you gonna climb trees in those?"

"They come off," she says. "See?" She takes them off and carries them the rest of the way in her hands.

Fiona can't keep this stuff at home. The books and candles she bought, this large iron kettle she got at a garage sale. She doesn't have a job, but she does have a boyfriend who will do pretty much anything she says and buy her anything she wants. She also lets him feel her boobs though, which is really the point of the trick.

She looks frightened as she brings some water to a boil in the pot. "You guys stand back," Fiona says. "I exploded something once."

She brings them over when she's finished. "Eye of newt," she says.

"You killed a newt?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"Are you gonna eat it?"

"No!" Fiona says. "Gross, why would I eat it?"

Liza shrugs - it's something her mother told her, if you're going to kill and animal, if you're going to wear its fur, you'd better be eating the damn thing. By proxy, Liza can feel her humanitarian mother's skin crawling. "How many did you kill?"

"I don't know," Fiona says. "Like seven or eight."

Fiona goes to wash her hands. Robbie hands her two eggplants he's been carrying around all afternoon. He worked all summer at the Watts farm and is always showing up places with free fresh produce in hand. "Mr. Watts said they're good for you," he says. "They make you think better."

"Oh, cool," Liza says, not sure what she's supposed to do with two whole eggplants.

"I've got a real present for you!" Fiona says. "I'm trying to work on my karma, so we're gonna go out. I finally found somebody who might date you. I'll fix everything up."

"Can I come?" Robbie asks.

"No, stupid," Fiona says. "Like, a date. Twelve year-olds don't date."

"I'm thirteen," he says.

Fiona just continues. "It's about time you had a real boyfriend," she tells Liza. "We'll have to get you in something cuter, you need to look more like a girl."

"I think you look like a girl," Robbie says.

"Thanks, Robbie," she says.

"Nobody asked you," Fiona says.

***

"I'm going out later," Liza tells her mom one evening. "I don't need a ride, Fiona's driving."

"Fiona drives? Fiona drives??? When did that happen? Is she a good driver?"

"She only just got her license last month, but she's okay, I guess."

Liza puts down her controller. She's unsure. "I guess I have a date," she says.

"What? A date? With who?"

"I don't know, one of Fiona's friends."

It hits Riley like bricks. Her daughter is fifteen soon, how did she grow up so fast? She's in high school and going on dates? Riley knew she was fifteen, of course, but Liza never acted her age, and suddenly here she is in high school, riding in cars, going on dates? Riley was only three years older than that herself when she got pregnant with Liza. She's not ready for this.

"Do you even like boys yet?"

"Some of them," Liza says. "Most of them are annoying."

Riley smiles. "Well, that doesn't change. I don't know, I guess it feels like just yesterday you were out climbing trees with Robbie."

Liza nods. "Oh, I was."

"So, you know," Riley says. "We talked about these things before."

"Mom!" Liza squeals. "I know, I already told you I'm not having sex until I'm thirty!"

"Good," Riley says. "I know, but you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Just say so. Anything. Like, even if you don't want to get in a car with Fiona?"

"No worries, Mom, I'll wear my seatbelt. I'll only die if we get hit, like head on by a semi or something."

***

Liza gets ready for her date at Fiona's house that night. Fiona donated an old dress she used to wear when she was twelve, but still the thing just hangs off of Liza's bony frame. Fiona did her hair too, all curly and bouncy and scented like a fresh floral breeze.

When she stands up straight, the dress falls flat against her chest.

"You know," Fiona says. "You could borrow one of my bras if you want. We could stuff it with some tissues or something."

They'd left the door cracked slightly open, and Robbie nudges his way inside.

"God, don't you knock?" Fiona says. "We're talking girl stuff in here."

"Don't laugh," Liza says to him. "I feel weird."

"You kind of look weird," he says, grinning at her. "Why is your hair all poofy like that?"

"Shut up," Fiona says. "That's what girls look like."

Fiona leads them out of her room then and down the stairs. Robbie hangs behind at the top watching them go. "You don't have to go, if you don't want to," he says. "We have movies here too."

She's almost fifteen and she's the last girl in Bluewater High School to never be kissed. And no, that's not just speculation, Fiona actually asked around the school. And it's not that she wants to kiss anyone, or this guy, tonight, but she's just a little tired of being the weird girl. It's weird that she doesn't talk to anyone but Fiona and Robbie. It's weird that she comes to school with dog hairs on her clothes. It's weird that she's in high school now, but still sits at the eighth-grade lunch table with Robbie.

She tries to act like it doesn't bother her, but it does. Nobody wants to be the weird girl.

"I can't," she says as she starts down the stairs. "But we can hang out tomorrow."

Liza gets in the van with Fiona. In truth, as torn as she is, Robbie is just a boy. What would he know how to do on a date any more than she does?

So she gets in the car with Fiona, to drive twenty-five minutes to the theater in Lakeside Heights, on country roads in the dark, which was never the part of this night she was scared of.

They stop in the bathroom first when they get to the theater. Fiona needs to check out her makeup in the mirror, even though she'd been checking it in the rearview mirror the whole way here. "Do you think my ass looks bigger?"

"Maybe it's bad karma," Liza whispers under her breath.

"My boobs are definitely bigger," Fiona says. "Definitely."

Fiona's boyfriend is named Brady. She doesn't really like him so much as just boss him around and let him kiss her and feel her up sometimes. And Liza can't remember her own date's name, though Fiona told her, maybe once. Liza is far too nervous to ask again. So she'll just keep starting each sentence with "Hey..." He doesn't seem to mind.

And the thing is, he isn't ugly, though he smells like he might have spilled an entire bottle of his dad's cologne down his shirt. He doesn't seem nervous, but she's so bad at making conversation with strangers that she just ends up quoting, line for line, some movie that she and Robbie had just watched.

"I actually liked that movie," he says. "Maybe we should watch it together some time."

"Oh, uh," she stammers. She's never watched that movie with anyone but Robbie.

But besides a few awkward silences, the date is actually going okay.

Until the movie starts, and he tries to slip his arm around her shoulders. She jumps quickly across the seat, shielding herself with her hands.

"I wasn't going to do anything," he says. "I just wanted to put my arm around you."

"No," she says. "I don't even want to do that." She feels humiliated, for both of them, but it's the truth - she's only known him forty-five minutes and that doesn't mean she wants to be touched! When she realizes both Fiona and her boyfriend have stopped making out to look over at them, she's never been more embarrassed in her life. She gets up and starts to run.

As she ducks out of the theater, she hears Fiona's boyfriend say, "What's wrong with your friend?"

She tries to call her mom first, but there's no answer. It's not like Robbie can come get her - he can't drive. He'd probably come get her on his bike - and he would too, if she asked him. But that's just silly. And there are weird people out here in the suburbs, so close to the city. It's not like out in the country, where you can walk down the street all night and barely see a car passing by.

She finally gets her dad at the club. She pleads into the payphone. "Daddy, can you come get me?"

Chad makes the twenty-five minute drive in fifteen. He's relieved to see she looks alive, healthy, and all in one piece. "What's wrong? Do I need to beat somebody up?"

"No, I'm fine," she says. "I just don't feel like being out."

"Does mom know you still have that vest?"

"No," he says. "She doesn't."

"But what do you think?" he asks her as they head to the truck. "It makes me look rad, huh? Makes me look tough?"

Liza laughs. "Sure, Dad, okay."

*******

(footnotes: Riley's sister // Fiona's new hobby)

notes: Fiona rolled the "get fat" ROS, lol! It's supposed to be a bad thing, but you know, Sims 2 bodyshapes suck, and it only makes her boobs look bigger and her ass look curvier. I'm sure she's not going to complain.

That's got to be the first ROS of the round so far, isn't it? I'm making you guys wait for these ones!

Liza is, I think, the second-shiest Sim in my game, next to Orion who has 0 outgoing points, Liza has 1. Shyness wouldn't automatically mean they wouldn't want to date, but Liza also has that unromantic streak as well, which is really making her teen years a living hell, lol! Poor girl. Why can't she just be left to read books and climb trees instead? ;)

I did find Chad a suitable shirt to wear, finally. I swear, he and Hayden are my hardest Sims to dress - it's so easy in this game to dress them stylishly, but so hard to dress them normal, lol!