The Desert Standoff

might look or act like on the outside.
Tonight, Suzi is speaking a little too loudly, living on her sugar rush a little too much, when Natalie finally grabs her by the thigh and anchors her into one place. “If you don’t stop moving I will stab you with this needle!”
The whole room falls silent. The uncomfortable glances from cast member to cast member create a very thick, tension-filled air in the room. With all of the rumors that are surrounding the girl, it’s unlikely to be a surprise to anybody if that’s something she might actually want to do. Kids are cruel and Natalie is different, which to most teenagers means that there is something wrong with her, clearly.
Not Suzi. After a stunned moment, Suzi dissolves into laughter like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life. “Stab me! With that tiny little needle?” Suzi clutches her side, so overjoyed that Natalie has finally said something to her that expresses emotion that she can’t handle it. “Oh, I’m so scared!” Suzi gasps. “Not the hemming needle! Oh, that’s rich. We should totally put that into the show!”
The tension in the room breaks, and everybody seems to be able to catch their breath.
“Okay, okay. I’ll hold still.” Suzi finally submits and Natalie is allowed to finish correcting the fit to the gown.
After the show, Suzi waits for Natalie just outside of the stage door and jumps at her loudly. “Stop moving! Stop or I stab you!” She growls in a very comically inclined monster voice. She pokes at the air as if making a very bad imitation of Natalie and her anger. It takes a long moment, but Natalie finally smiles. Just a little. Suzi pesters her a lot more often after that, frequently poking at her with her neelde-like fingers and making stabbing jokes until Natalie finally starts to trust her, just a little bit.

  6 Natalie & Suzi - Summer after Graduation
“I t’s going to be amazing!”
“It’s hot.”
“So what? That just means we need to have really cute crop tops packed in there. Listen, I know you don’t really like your stomach or whatever, but it just doesn’t matter, okay? We will wear them and we will look cute and Arizona is going to be fun!”
“I completely disagree. A hundred percent I do not want to go to Arizona!”
“Okay. But think of all the hiking and the cute boys in horrible shorts and the red dust that is going to get everywhere!” Suzi is holding a shiny gold thumbtack in her hand, hovering just slightly over a map of the United States that is taped to the wall above her headboard. It's practically framed by the pastel yellow drapes of her four poster princess bed. It is just one in a collection of many gold pins that serve to mark all of the different stops on the map of places they have decided they are going after they graduate college.
“Right. But I already know that I don’t want to live there so there’s just no point in even putting it on dream road trip map now is there?”
“Yes, of course there is a point! I was to see cute boys!” Suzi protests and then settles down when she sees the disdain for the state on Natalie’s features. “Okay, fine. Deny me. Just know that I will make this face for the next three states around it.” Suzi screws up her features into a twisted, almost grotesque mask. In as much as she is ever going to be capable of being grotesque, which is only very little. Natalie scoffs and picks up one of the lemon-shaped accent pillows and smacks her friend in the back of the knees, crippling her and stopping her from making that really terrible face for a moment longer.
“You make that ugly face again and it will get stuck like that!”
“It’s not ugly! Nothing I do is ugly!” Suzi laughs and then makes the face again, but this time it comes as a procession of a series of theatre mask faces, each one more insane than the last. Natalie hits her with the lemon pillow again.
“Well then, you’re getting really damned close, aren’t you?”
“Take it back!” Suzi howls in a mock war cry and bounces on her large bed like it’s a trampoline and she only desires to crush her best friend Natalie. The good mood is infectious. Natalie has finally put in the two weeks’ notice at her job. They have both put in their acceptance letters to their college and in two weeks’ time, they will be taking off to see their new dorm for the first time. Nobody has told Natalie’s mother any of this. For the last six months leading up to graduation, they have been collecting a stash of goodies inside of Natalie’s room. In fact, it’s so crowded with all of the items that the two girls are planning to take to college that it looks more like a disaster zone than a real bedroom. Suzi’s parents have offered to pay for whatever the two girls cannot afford, but Natalie wants to buy most of it herself. She’s been working for the last year to put away as much money as possible to go toward her tuition and housing. Suzi’s parents have already been kind enough to forge her mother's name on her student loan documents as if Natalie was one of their own children. Soon, Natalie will never have to live with that wretched hypochondriac ever again. No more will she wake up to bleach being poured on her sleeping body for being “unclean”. No more will she have to pretend to eat the burned or poisoned food that her mother has concocted. No more will she have to sleep on the floor in front of her door so that her mother doesn’t try to