coyotesuspect

Title: Second Star
Fandom: The Simpsons
Summary: Lisa goes to college. Bart doesn't. Gen.
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: ~3000
Spoilers/Warnings: General series spoilers; mildy disturbing themes.
AN: So, uh, how does three thousand words of kinda depressing gen Simpsons' fic sound? ...*crickets* *eyes muse suspiciously*

First day of college, and Lisa spreads a map of the world on her wall and places last Christmas’ family portrait on her desk. Bart’s got his tongue sticking out, his fingers poking up behind Lisa’s head to make bunny ears. Dad’s eyes are bloodshot, and Mom’s smile looks strained. Maggie’s smile is closed, and that’s truthful enough because even at ten, Maggie doesn’t talk much.

But Lisa looks happy, and she supposes that’s because she got in early decision, had received her acceptance letter and scholarship offer the day before. Her future rolled out before her like a carpet, out of Springfield and into the world. So she had a reason to be smiling.

Her roommate’s name is Taylor, and she’s from east Tennessee, deep Appalachia. Lisa closes her eyes and hears mountains in Taylor’s voice, moonshine and the night heavy with stars, poverty and coal and grandparents sitting on porches. Her own accent is flat, featureless. Anywhere, Americana, no mountains inside it, and she hails from nowhere.

“What are you thinking of majoring in?” asks Taylor, and Lisa thinks of bluegrass and the TVA.

“I don’t know,” answers Lisa honestly. “Can you major in everything?”

She laughs. It’s a new laugh, one she’s trying out. She never liked her laugh, too high, too shrill. You can reinvent yourself during college. Lisa knows that.

Taylor laughs too, and it rings out honest and true.

()()()()()()()()

College is exactly like Lisa hoped it would be. The architecture is Gothic, the buildings ivy-covered, the coursework challenging, and the professors brilliant. Her classmates are, for the most part, passionate and talented, and for the first time in her life, she feels like she fits in. She’s no longer the freak in the front row, hand-raised high, smarter than the teacher.

She has friends. She’s never really had friends before. She got along well with some people in high school, but there’s no one she was particularly close to. She comments on people’s facebooks from time to time, but she knows that twenty years from now, she won’t be talking to or caring about any of them.

It was a paralyzing thought last summer, made her think she was incapable of real human connection, that she could never root herself anywhere. Her town too fantastical, her family too sad, and herself too cold.

But now Lisa plays sax in a jazz quartet, bruises her shins in intramural broomball, argues trade policies in Model UN, aces her midterms and doesn’t feel ashamed.

She remembers the way her childhood seemed to last forever, how she never thought she’d get to this point. She feels like she’s been waiting longer than her eighteen years, and suddenly, it’s like childhood has shot past her. And it’s as if she is stuck on the other side of a glass wall, permanently removed. She will never understand what it is like to be four again, or seven or nine or thirteen. She’ll never know what it’s like to fall in love at sixteen because she never did.

Lisa realizes that she missed out on a lot of experiences growing up. Everyone does.

And then, three days after Thanksgiving, which she celebrated with her other dormmates who didn’t go home, Bart calls and tells her he’s coming for a visit.

()()()()()()()()

The day Bart comes to visit, the wind’s blowing off the lake and it’s the coldest day she’s experienced yet. She draws her scarf tighter around her neck and waits for Bart’s train to roll in. He’s not taking the train out of some newfound respect for the environment, but because his car’s been impounded. Drunk driving. Lisa worries about her brother sometimes.

The train from Springfield to Chicago is five hours, from Chicago to Springfield, it’s seventeen. Lisa never understood that, the way geography seems to ignore her town, slides and shifts around it as if Springfield sits on its very own tectonic plate.

“Millhouse sends his love,” is the first thing Bart says to her when he gets off the train. He’s dressed in shorts and a baggy orange t-shirt. Lisa can see his skin goosepimple, but he doesn’t shiver, and she doesn’t comment.

“Does he now?” says Lisa warily. Millhouse still loves her, and she likes that, though she’ll never admit it, that someone loves her who doesn’t have to, loves her unconditionally. He begged her not to leave for college, promised to wait for her when she did. She knows she’ll have to break his heart someday.

Burt nods and leers at her, then says, “So, what’s there to do around here?”

“It’s Chicago,” she says tartly. “You can do whatever you want.”

He turns his smile on, all thousand glimmering watts of it, the one that made teachers believe him, classmates follow him, and police officers let him off “with a warning.” Her brother is a directionless force, always selfish, often charismatic, and occasionally ingenious.

“Yeah?” he says. He makes a sweeping gesture. “Then lead the way.”

()()()()()()()()

“You’re Bart?” says Ryan incredulously, when she introduces her brother to some of her friends. “Lisa’s brother Bart?”

Ryan’s a reform Jew and looks the part with flyaway black curls and serious eyebrows. He reminds her of her favorite substitute teacher in elementary school, and he has a lot of teeth. He flashes them all now as he leans across the table to shake Bart’s hand enthusiastically.

“The one and only,” says Bart with a smarmy grin.

“Man, the stories Lisa has about your guys’ childhood,” says Ryan, shaking his head. “Like that one about what’s-his-face, the clown.”

“Krusty?” suggests Bart.

“No, uh.” Ryan has this thing where he snaps his fingers while he’s trying to think of something. It’s an affected habit, but Lisa can’t see any reason for it. He snaps his fingers twice, then his eyes brighten up as the name occurs to him. “Bob! Sideshow Bob, the crazy killer clown.”

Bart’s smile stiffens and he slides a glance at Lisa. She’s picking at her salad, used to how her brother sucks away all the attention in a room.

“You told them about Sideshow Bob?”

Lisa shrugs, and Taylor answers for her: “Course she did Bart! It’s a great story.”

And Bart’s smile changes again, looks natural, but Lisa knows it’s his showman smile.

“Well,” he says, twisting around his arm and pointing at the long ridge of white that runs inside it, parallel to the thick vein. “You should see my scar then.”

()()()()()()()()

“Ryan seems nice,” says Bart later as they prepare for bed. Taylor volunteered to disappear for the night, let Bart use her bed. “Hey,” Bart had said, smirking. “I don’t mind if you’re still in it when I am.”

“Eh,” says Lisa about Ryan. “He’s all right.”

“He fucking you?” asks Bart, and it’s so completely inappropriate and out of the blue that it forces the air out of Lisa’s lungs, and she’s left standing there, speechless and gaping.

“What?” she manages after a moment, voice screechy and high.

“Just a question,” says Bart with a shrug. He pulls down the covers and gets into Taylor’s bed. “You don’t have to get all blushing virgin on me.”

“I’m not!” cries Lisa, blushing. She turns the lights off and pads across the tiny room to her own bed. “And we’re not,” she says. “We’re just friends.”

There’s a pause, and then Bart says, “You should. I think he’s into you.”

“You’re incorrigible,” sighs Lisa.

“Yeah,” agrees Bart. “Incorrigible would be my middle name if either Mom or Dad were smart enough to spell it.”

Lisa snorts, unpleasant sound, the kind people used to make fun of her for making. She’s not surprised Bart’s the only one who can make her snort now. A lot of people affect you growing up, but no one as much as your older brother.

There’s a peaceful silence after that, and, listening to Bart breathe, Lisa feels kinda like a little kid again, even if the two of them never shared a room. Though, sometimes, they would leave their doors open and talk in low voices, call and response, late into the night, after their parents had stopped arguing or fucking or both.

“I’m sorry about the Sideshow Bob thing,” Lisa says, quiet voice in the darkness.

There’s the rustle of sheets as Bart shifts around on his bed.

“It’s cool,” he says. A beat of silence. “You know next week, he’s…”

“I heard,” answers Lisa neutrally. Someone wasn’t as lucky as her brother, and Sideshow Bob’s soon to be an ex-inhabitant of death row, and not because he’s getting a reprieve this time. She doesn’t support the death penalty; a life’s a life.

But sometimes Bart still has nightmares.

“If there were ever a good reason to be afraid of clowns,” says Lisa, attempting a light tone, “that would be it.”

“Nah,” says Bart. “I mean, Krusty’s cool.”

“He’s also a drunk,” argues Lisa, not sure why she’s always had the need to do that, point out the negative side of something just because she can.

“So’s Homer,” shoots back Bart.

“Exactly,” says Lisa smugly, and Bart chuckles.

The silence after that stretches long, and Lisa thinks Bart must’ve fallen asleep. She’s half-asleep herself when Bart says, quiet like he never is, like he’s afraid of waking her, “Hey Leese- you’re happy here, right?”

Lisa nods into her pillow, voice muffled and drowsy when she replies, “Yeah. I really am.”

“Good,” says Bart brightly. “I always knew you’d find freaks of your own to hang out with.”

“Oh, shut up,” says Lisa. Neither of them speak after that, and Lisa drifts off thinking about the thin, white scar on the inside of her brother’s arm.

()()()()()()()()

They watch their favorite Itchy and Scratchy cartoons on Lisa’s laptop the next morning because her first class that day doesn’t start until after noon. They laugh at the same gags they did as kids. Bart keeps pulling her hair, and she keeps jabbing him the ribs, and she feels seven again, like the world’s too big and solid and strange to ever change. Maybe it’s good that some things don’t.

They play “Remember when,” when they get bored of Itchy and Scratchy, and that happens a lot quicker than it used to.

“Remember when you spotted that meteor about to hit Springfield?”

“Christ yes, and you were such a jealous bitch about it. Speaking of times when you were a bitch, remember when you went veg and we met Paul McCartney?”

“Like you weren’t an asshole our entire childhood, Bartholomew.”-an indignant Hey! at the use of Bart’s full name- “And I do remember McCartney, on top of the Kwik-E-Mart. Speaking of, R\remember when Apu got held up?”

“Which time? Oh, but remember when we almost got him cleared of those public nudity charges?”

Call and response.

And then Lisa has to leave for her Humanities class. Bart shakes his head at her as she goes.

“Man Lisa, we had a fucked up childhood.”

“But it was kinda fun,” she grins.

She tells him about things he can do in the city while she’s at class and then her extracurriculars. She mentions the Field Museum, the cavernous public library, and the lake front, freezing this time of year but peaceful and gorgeous. She watches his eyes glaze over, purses her lips, and goes. It’s Bart. He’ll figure out a way to amuse himself.

()()()()()()()()

When they meet up again that evening, Bart has a black-eye and a ridiculous story to account for it. The story jumps crazily around the city, ends up somewhere completely different from where it started. The story includes three soccer moms, a traffic jam, Rahm Emmanuel, Michigan Avenue, and a Christmas tree lot. Lisa only half-listens to it, but her friends are rapt. It’s no different from any other story Bart ever told, only half as interesting as the things that happened to them when they were kids.

The problem is, Bart’s never really stopped being ten years old. He collects and loses injuries and tall tales same way most people do spare change. It’s all pennies on the sidewalk for him.

And then Bart wraps up his story by pulling out a paper bag with a bottle of tequila and some shot glasses with the Chicago skyline etched onto them. Lisa’s not surprised. Bart’s had a fake ID since he was fifteen.

Her friends cheer. Lisa has a morning class tomorrow and the RA could walk in at any time, but she takes a shot anyway. She’s never done shots before, and the first one makes her gag, sharp smell and taste of alcohol filling her mouth and nose. But Bart claps her on the back and the second one goes down more easily. The third one even more so, and by then she’s feeling dizzy and warm, loose-limbed.

Sometime later, Ryan puts his arm around her and tries to kiss her. She pushes him away, and when he tries to kiss her again, Bart’s at her side, laughing, showing his teeth and tongue, and gesticulating wildly. Hey Lisa, did you know Nor can belly dance? You gotta see this! And then his arm is on her elbow, and he’s pulling her away.

()()()()()()()()

Bart makes no move to leave the next day, and Taylor begins grumbling about getting her room back.

“There’s only so many guys I can sleep with before I feel like a whore,” she tells Lisa sharply, though her accent softens the effect.

“Whore?” says Lisa snidely, a little hungover and a little angry that she missed her morning class. “I thought you were calling it ‘sex-positive.’”

But she talks to Bart anyway.

“Why are you here?” she asks, bluntly because she loves her brother, but she knows he’s not the type to just drop by.

“Paranoid much?” he scoffs. “Can’t I just come visit my sister?”

“Not you,” she bites out. “So what’s going on?”

Bart fidgets uncomfortably, clears his throat, looks at his hands.

“I need five hundred dollars,” he says, and then looks up at her, eyes wide and pleading. “It’s important.”

Lisa inhales sharply, breathes out steadily. “What’s it for?”

“Homer lost his job again,” he tells her promptly. “Mom didn’t want to tell you, but we need the money bad.”

Bart’s always been a convincing liar, if not a very smart one.

“If they needed money, Mom would ask Patty and Selma,” she says evenly.

Bart winces at being caught out, and doesn’t try to think of another lie. Lisa closes her eyes and tries to run through all the reasons her brother would need five hundred dollars. The Mob. Drugs. Gambling. It’s Bart, and it’s Springfield. It could be any number or combination of things.

“Bart…” she says, and when he looks at her, his expression is serious.

“Look,” he says. “I… I knocked up this girl, and we need money for the…” He trails off.

“For the operation,” Lisa finishes for him. She taps her fingers in a quick rhythm against her thigh. “How old is the girl?” she asks.

He won’t meet her eyes again. “Fifteen,” he mumbles.

“Holy shit!” she snaps. She plays with her pearl necklace, old trick to calm herself down. “You need to get a job Bart,” she says finally.

“Can’t,” says Bart with a humorless grin. “My urine samples keep turning up positive.”

“They maybe you should stop using drugs.”

“Maybe businesses should stop caring what their employees do in their spare time," challenges Bart, and his eyes are flat and dangerous. Then he sighs and slumps forward.

“Come on Leese,” he says miserably. “You know I’d be a worse dad than Homer. Don’t put a kid through that.”

Lisa’s already moving money around in her head. Her scholarship and financial aid covered a lot of what she needed, but she still took out a couple thousand in student loans. She’s been working part time as a barista at a local coffee shop since October. If she cuts out all non-necessities for the next month and a half and picks up another shift…

“You don’t have like…” Bart waves his hand vaguely, trying to encompass a generation’s worth of conflict. “Moral issues or something?”

Lisa’s a registered Democrat and an honest to God card carrying member of the ACLU. She canvassed for Obama and co-founded the Springfield High GSA. She hates offshore drilling, DOMA, and extraordinary rendition. She’s been a vegetarian since elementary school.

She is, in other words, the kind of person that gives Bill O’Reilly seizures.

She is, obviously, if only theoretically, pro-choice.

But a life’s a life, she thinks.

Bart would make a horrible father.

“Okay,” Lisa tells him, and he smiles. He didn’t say please and he doesn’t thank you, but he does promise to pay her back.

She doesn’t really expect him to.

()()()()()()()()

They’re waiting for the train to pull in, and it’s still cold, colder even than the day Bart showed up. But he’s still in shorts and a t-shirt and makes no indication that he feels the weather at all. Lisa shudders even in her heavy winter coat, and glares up at the sky. It might snow; the clouds have that dirty-gray color.

There’s a check for five hundred dollars in Bart’s pocket.

When the train pulls up, Bart gives her a brief, tight hug, then punches her in the arm. He swings his sports bag over his shoulder.

Lisa grabs his arm.

“What?” snaps Bart. The train doors slide open. Passengers start shuffling off; others shuffle on.

Lisa digs her fingers into the inside of Bart’s arm. She can feel his scar.

“You’re right,” she says. “You’d make a horrible father.” Bart opens his mouth to say something, and she talks over him. “But you’re a pretty good big brother.”

And then she lets him go.

End.

AN: Title is ripped off from Peter Pan. As far as I know, Sideshow Bob has never succeeded in physically scarring Bart, only mentally and emotionally, so that’s just made up. And, to be honest, I stopped watching the Simpsons after the movie came out, but the show’s older than I am and I grew up on it, so a fondness still remains.

I’ve had the idea for well over a year to write a story about Lisa growing up and leaving home, and then at some point talking to Bart about the wacky hijinks they got up to as kids. But the idea never progressed beyond that and the tone I wanted to hit (which was kinda melancholy but also kinda hopeful). And then today I’m sitting in the library of my brother’s college, and boom! The paragraph about accents, and everything else followed. This is the second time a fic of mine has talked about abortion, which means I can use the topic once more and then I’m just being lazy.

So done rambling. Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading