[right][sub][i]6:45 A.M.[/i]
[i]Friday, October 8[/i]
[i][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SBNCYkSceU]Hand Covers Bruise[/url][/i][/sub][/right]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/vePTfZL.gif[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/OLF6TGl.png[/img]

After the man in the McDonald’s window handed her the familiar bag with the red and yellow logos, Danielle Jones sped away as quickly as a garish yellow Vespa Super Sport could allow. Inside the bag was life and life was getting too expensive for its own good. At this time of morning, when the sun had barely poked its radiant arms into the eyes of a population too bothered to lower the sun visor, everything was still. The roads were hardly ever [i]empty[/i] but there were far fewer cars on the road at this time. The ones coming home from a late night shift, the ones heading to their morning shifts, united in spirit and wearing a wardrobe of baggy eyes and exaggerated yawns. Danielle Jones turned out of the McDonald’s and onto the open road, Italian-made engine sputtering along; In the oncoming lane, a bushy headed man of middle age does a double take as the Vespa breezes past. He rubs his eyes. The Vespa is in the rearview, its driver unconcerned. 

The breeze whips a gentle lash on Dani’s face, a bagel sandwich with folded egg and sausage barely fit for a dog held between gritted teeth, careful not to take too hard a bite lest the sandwich meet the road. The open air and the lack of protection on the eyes or head give Dani the appearance of a child sticking their open mouth near a fan blowing on its highest setting. Her eyes drip water and her milk chocolate hair blows behind her like it's trying to escape. Dani’s mothers always told her and her sisters to wear protection- they had to clarify they didn’t mean a condom in this case when it came to Addie - but Dani never did. No one has ever looked good in a helmet as they zoomed down the road on a motorcar and Dani wasn’t about to try and go against centuries of documented evidence. The breeze died down as the light ahead drifted to red and for the first time since leaving the golden arches, Dani tasted life. Greasy, overcooked, delicious, beautiful life. 

At the stop light, Dani looked around. No pedestrians walking the sidewalk. No other cars around the intersection, the first ray of dawn painting the street in warm tones and she’d never known such loneliness. It brought a smile to her lips. At home, she had a zoo to deal with. Her moms - that had been less difficult to get used to than she thought - had a tendency to buy affection and her sister JJ took advantage enough to have more rodents running around the house than a New York street. Her sister PJ wasn’t a fan and her sister Addie…well, the sounds of silence cut with the percussion of her Vespa engine was much better aurally than whatever salacious sound made up her alarm. Noise was all over her house and while she contributed her fair share - at least half of the PJ rodent screams were because Dani ‘accidentally’ left Big Cheese’s cage open and the mouse crawled into PJ’s bed overnight - she still enjoyed the silence. It hadn’t always been like that. Silence used to destroy her. When she first moved into her current household, after the funeral, she couldn’t sleep without crying and she only cried because being alone in her thoughts, in the quiet of a bedroom, would only make her remember her mother. Her sisters helped. More than they knew. More than she told. 

The light turned green but Dani hadn’t even realized until it was turning yellow again and she was zooming on her way. Her breakfast sandwich was a pile of mush in her stomach that would churn into a pile of regret by lunch period. It wasn’t everyday that Dani was so early on the road, but it wasn’t every day that Dani got to be on camera. 

Dani turned into the student parking lot as the clock struck close to seven. Her ankle boots stepped onto the asphalt as she shut the engine off and took her first breath of the day. In the corner of her ear she heard the unmistakable call of a raspy [color=#e754ca]‘Fuck’ [/color]and the sound of polyurethane rolling along the ground. For someone who seemed to hate going to school, Dani couldn’t help but to wonder why that girl was here so often. She didn’t acknowledge Everly with anything other than a brief glance in her direction, which was met with a tilt of the head and a kickflip, as if the skater was trying to say ‘look what I can do’ the way a child did when they learned something that was only impressive to an undeveloped mind. Dani didn’t dislike Everly, they’d even worked together and Dani filmed Everly doing tricks, but even Spike Jonze had to move on from shooting music videos and skateboard demos. 

Her backpack, inside which was her Lumix camera, was hoisted out of the storage box under her Vespa seat. The long walk to the media wing and Morning Show studio was familiar at this point. After three, soon to be four, years of this place, everything had sort of become routine. Same hallways. Same people. Same sights. Same sounds. Same couples breaking up, fucking up, fucking, and getting back together only to repeat the process because in high school everyone thought with their bodies, not their minds. Dani was no different, other than not having a couple to do the cycle with. Maybe that’s why she turned her head away from the couple on the lawn holding hands before the bell rang. Or maybe she just didn’t want to see them try to eat each other’s faces and call it making out. 

The routine was death. She’d read stories how adults with jobs sometimes still woke up in a cold sweat thinking they had homework they forgot to do or a test they didn’t study for and she could believe it. By sophomore year, high school stops feeling like anything other than a four year Stanford prison experiment. There was no greater psychological torture than having to endure math class and being told how important the pythagorean theorem was. A Squared plus B Squared equals Fuck Off. Maybe that's why she did what she did last year. Boredom. An attempt to make every day not feel the same. The Toad Sings prank raised her social stock in school, an unfortunate side effect as she had spent so much time being the silent hero of the Morning Show. The woman behind the camera who made others look good. Directors won awards, sure, but people remembered actors more. That was her place and she was good at it. But even the best directors liked to appear in their own works from time to time.

Her booted feet carried her up the stairs but it was her own tempered excitement that had her practically taking them two at a time. That excitement lasted until she arrived on the floor and saw Jamie - or rather the back of him - rush past and then, a bit further down the hall and engaged in conversation she didn’t want to overhear, were Trixie and Ethan. As Dani continued towards the studio, not giving either the time of day, she couldn’t help but to shake her head. 


[img]https://i.imgur.com/6wj81Lz.png[/img]
[sub][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5faT66jmG4]In Motion[/url][/sub]


[i][color=#ff8189]Ethan Green is a fuckboy. I don’t say, or think, that lightly, i think that because it’s true and no one wants to admit it. All the Greens or Greenlocks or whoever are different flavors of fuck from boy to head but anyone who rolls around in a group calling themselves The Elite is in dire need of a reality check. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]In case you didn’t know who it is guys like Ethan Green represent, his aunt owns the Seattle Mariners. The baseball team. Because Hailey’s wife wanted season tickets. That’s what people like that do. They remind the world that they have enough money to spit on the little guy and throw him fifty bucks for dry cleaning and act like they’re doing the world a favor. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]I mean sure, it’s only baseball and no one watches baseball anymore other than balding, fat dudes in their twenties by way of looking like they’re forty, but it’s the principle of the matter. Kids at this school have a family member who owns a baseball team. Before you start getting it twisted, I’m not jealous. I don’t exactly come from a poor family, but the difference is I carry twenty bucks on me at any given time and people like Ethan Green think a black card gives them the authority to walk around like they’re Zeus. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]Well, I mean Ethan Green would probably fuck a swan so I guess there’s truth to that. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]I’d sooner subject myself to listening to Himani Chakrabarti for five minutes than spend two in a bathroom with Ethan Green. At least Himani is humble. [/color][/i]

Leaving the discussion between Ethan and Trixie in the rear, Dani entered the studio, said good morning to absolutely no one, and placed her bag on an empty seat at a table that had refreshments - stale danish and all - for the crew to enjoy before and after a show. Her co-hosts in crime, Rye and Sully, were having a conversation that seemed almost as heated as the one she passed by in the hall. By her watch, she had minutes to spare, more the fault hers for stopping by McDonald’s rather than eat a donut and run the risk of getting chocolate over her denim jacket. 

[i][color=#ff8189]Rye and Sully are fuckboys too but they’re different from Ethan. Sully doesn’t seem to know that most girls would find a guy like that to be as irresistible as a piece of decadent chocolate cake. A mama’s boy with a body and good with his hands? Powerful weapon in the right hands, we’re all just lucky he’d prefer those hands squeezing a joystick rather than a pair of tits. Rye is a fireman in training or something and everyone knows how people feel about firemen. Well, the ones without beer bellies or porn haircuts anyway. He probably gets around as much as Ethan but I’ve never asked and he’s had the good sense not to boast about it in the studio. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]The difference between them and Ethan Green is Rye and Sully have personality beyond whatever it takes to put their dick in something. Maybe I’m biased because Sully brings me coffee sometimes, but Rye and Sully don’t make my skin crawl. Maybe in another life I’d have gotten to know them better than I have but until last year I don’t think anyone knew me as anything other than a camera girl so the road goes both ways. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]I don’t want to impose on their conversation, but if I did, I’d probably say that I don’t care who’s having sex with who - other than me having sex with no one which sucks - but that if it ruins the chemistry at the Morning Show then I’ll personally collect their heads and make a necklace from them. [/color][/i]

[i][color=#ff8189]And I don’t mean the ones on their neck. Obviously. That’d be too big for a necklace.[/color][/i]

The call for three minutes left came just as Dani closed her compact mirror. What counted as hair and makeup was essentially ‘on your own’ and Dani had to run her hand through her hair to make it less…frizzy from the drive in. Her mothers might have had a point about protection but that didn’t mean she had to follow it. 

At the two minute mark, Dani made her way towards the desk and took her seat, immediately propping her feet up on the counter like she was at home. In a way, she was. Her eyes glanced over the copy handed to her and she parsed absolutely none of it. If they expected Dani Jones to go by the script, then they hadn’t known her at all. Half the fun of the Morning Show was trying to get the others to break. 

[color=#ff8189]“You know, three creams is a delicacy in some parts of the world.” [/color]Dani said to Sully as he handed her her cup of coffee. [color=#ff8189]“Like in….Turkmenistan. You owe an apology to the Turkmen peoples, Sully. I’ll accept it on their behalf. They take credit, debit, or cash.” [/color]

The one minute warning had sounded thirty seconds ago and the sign to outsiders that they were going live was lit up. Quiet on the set, the whole spiel. Mr. Wells pointed to Dani. Dani waved back. Mr. Wells sighed. Dani waited until there were five seconds left and they were being counted in before she took her feet off the desk.

She was, after all, a professional.[/center]