All's Fair in Love and Woe: Chapter II

A Wednesday Fanfic

Wednesday shot to her feet. “What happened?”

“We–we went in the passageways,” Pugsley stammered, “and we were careful, I promise, and I was in front, and then I realized Eugene had been quiet for a while, so I turned around, and he was just gone!”

Wednesday considered the underground labyrinth and the best way to search it fully. “We’ll both go in the tunnels from opposite ends, and one of us will find him.” Pugsley nodded. She ran down the stairs, and he followed hard on her heels, then branched off towards the library.

Wednesday ran out to the garden, then found the old door covered in vines. She pushed them aside, then dragged the squealing door open.

“Eugene?” No answer came except her own echoing voice. “You better not be dead,” she muttered, then climbed through the door.

She hadn’t brought her flashlight, so she left the door open to cast a little light on the stone steps, then relied on muscle memory to navigate the old, dusty tunnels.

“Eugene? Eugene!”

“Wednesday?”

She froze, trying to locate the sound amidst her own echos. “Don’t move! I’ll come to you.” She picked her way through the trick stones on the floor, each of which would set off a rather painful or deadly trap when stepped on. She made it around the corner–

And there he was, at the end of the hallway, uninjured and with a flashlight in hand. That would certainly make things easier.

He winced when she came into view. “Sorry. I was trying to pay attention and not get lost, but . . .”

Wednesday shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve all done it.” She scanned the floor in front of his feet. “No trip wires, no false steps. You’re safe to come over here.”

He sighed and his shoulders fell. “Oh, thank goodness.” A few steps brought him to her side. “You don’t have a flashlight. Want this one?” He held his out.

Wednesday shook her head. “I don’t need it. Watch where I walk, and follow me exactly. We’re not very far from the exit.”

“Oh good.”

She spun around and stepped back into the darkness, feeling for the seams around the stones that would trigger the traps, just to be sure she didn’t make a mistake. Eugene followed so close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

“You sure came quick,” he said.

“Pugsley said you disappeared. It’s dangerous down here if you don’t know the way.”

“So you were worried about me?” She could hear the grin in his voice.

Her eyebrows drew together. “Of course.”

Her words hadn’t even finished echoing down the tunnel when she heard the almost imperceptible click.

On instinct, she whirled around and crashed into Eugene, knocking them both to the ground before a large ax slammed into the wall over their heads.

Her heart pounded in her chest, completely ignoring her brain’s assurances that they were both still in tact.

“Oops?” Eugene whispered, his breath fanning across her face and rustling her hair. His eyes squinted as he grinned apologetically–that stupid grin that made her feel all wrong–and she just–

She kissed him. Crushed her lips against his for an instant, then pushed up and clambered to her feet. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

He stayed on the floor, gaping at her, then, belatedly, nodded and got to his feet as well.

Face burning, Wednesday spun on her heel and set off again. Just one more corner, and they reached the stairs.

“Stairs are safe,” she called over her shoulder, then marched up them and headed back to the house. “I’m going back to my room. Pugsley should be out here in a minute.” She didn’t turn around, wouldn’t turn around.

“Thank you!” Eugene called. She ignored him and stormed up to her room and shut the door, then leaned her back against it and slid to the floor.

What was she thinking? Just kissing her best friend like that, with no warning, no reason? Had her last time kissing someone without thinking things through taught her nothing?

She tilted her head back. She still felt all weird and her face wouldn’t cool down. If this were . . . anything else, she would text Enid for help, because Enid usually knew what other people were thinking and how to get her out of the messes she made, but she couldn’t do that this time. Enid would make a big deal about it and ask her a bunch of questions and just make the entire situation worse.

Someone knocked on her door.

“Go away, Pugsley!”

“It’s not Pugsley.”

Perfect. Of course he followed her up.

She stood up and opened the door. “What?”

“Uh, I just wanted to say sorry, again,” Eugene explained, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “In my defense, I did ask Pugsley to go with me in the secret passageways, but I got a little distracted because you have some really cool moths that live in there and–” His mouth clicked shut. “Uh, that’s not really important. I just wanted to apologize again and also say if that was you saying you like me, which I assumed it was . . .”

He waited, as though expecting her to answer. Since she had no idea how to do so, she didn’t.

“Um, I like you too. Anyway, Pugsley wanted me to come watch Aristotle do a trick, so I’m going to go do that. See you later.” She heard Pugsley’s bedroom door shut behind Eugene before she even registered him moving.

She stood still in her doorway, clutching her doorknob until her knuckles turned white. Then she shut the door, sat at her typewriter, and resolved not to leave her room again until morning, when the world would hopefully make more sense.

When she came down the next morning for breakfast, the entire family and Eugene were already at the kitchen table. Eugene’s fork clattered on his plate when she walked in, but he stammered out a ‘good morning’, which she returned stiffly. Thankfully, everyone chose to ignore them.

“Since this is my last day here, I just wanted to say thank you all for inviting me,” Eugene announced.

“It was our pleasure,” Morticia said.

“And you’re welcome anytime,” Gomez assured him. “We enjoy having Wednesday’s friends over.”

Uncle Fester leaned over to Wednesday and whispered, “though enemies might be preferable.”

“Uncle Fester!” she hissed, and he sat back and stirred his breakfast sulkily.

Eugene didn’t know what to do. Wednesday hadn’t spoken to him since he had left her house. He hadn’t really expected a text or phone call, but when school started a week later, she avoided him there too. She stuck to Enid’s side like glue, even when surrounded by other people, so clearly something was very wrong, even though he didn’t understand it.

She had kissed him, after all, not the other way around. And what was he supposed to do, ignore it? Maybe that would have been better.

After three days of eating alone and soothing his bees (they missed her too), he had had enough. He waited for her in the courtyard and nearly scared Enid when he appeared beside them. “Wednesday! I need to talk to you!” He smiled apologetically at Enid. “Hummer business, you know. Extremely important and very secret.”

Wednesday’s eyes widened in absolute terror (not a common expression on her face), but Enid only nodded as if this were a common occurrence.

“Please?” he added. “It’ll just take a second.”

“Fine.”

He led her past the tree in the center of the courtyard so Enid couldn’t overhear, then launched into his prepared speech. “I think we should just pretend like none of that stuff happened the other day and go back to normal. You’re my best friend and I don’t want you to keep ignoring me.” She looked like she was about to interrupt, but he held up his finger to cut her off. “And don’t say you aren’t ignoring me. I know what it feels like. I think we both regret things that were said and, um, done that day, so we should completely forget about it and go back to being best friends and Hummers together.” He tentatively raised his pinky. “Deal?”

She raised an eyebrow and frowned at his hand, then wrapped her pinky around his own. “Deal.” She dropped her hand quickly and averted her eyes. “I shouldn’t have been avoiding you. I’m sorry.”

He grinned. “Apology accepted. I’m just glad we got this straightened out.”

Tha-thunk.

Wednesday glanced down at Eugene’s backpack, stuffed fuller than normal with what sounded like bricks. “Are you trying to break your back? I appreciate the creativity of the torture, but if you plan to do any more searching for bugs in the woods, I would suggest trying something else.”

He shrugged his now-free shoulders and swung his arms before prodding at the backpack with his toes. “I’m not going to have a chance to go back to my room till tonight, so I need to bring all my stuff with me. Since it’s still the first week of class, I’m trying to stay at the hives whenever I’m not in class in case any new students want to join the Hummers. It hasn’t happened yet, but I figure I should keep going just in case.”

Somehow, Wednesday hadn’t even considered the possibility of someone else joining the Hummers, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the idea. Last year, no new parents had dared send their children to Nevermore, so that hadn’t been an option, but with one (almost) danger-free year-and-a-half under the new principal, a much larger than usual influx of students had arrived, at least, according to Enid.

And, as the only other member of the Hummers, should she be there as well? He hadn’t asked her to. She could ask, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

“There’s room here. Work here.”

They both looked up to find their giant of a shop teacher looming over the table with a dark-haired new girl. She cast a glance from Eugene’s friendly smile to Wednesday’s glower and took a step back.

“Can I work somewhere else?”

“No room. You’re fine here. Get started, all three o' you.”

The girl swallowed, then reluctantly slid over to Eugene’s other side, as far from Wednesday as she could get. Eugene stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Eugene.” The girl let out a squeak that might have been a name, and Wednesday rolled her eyes before collecting some wood.

“So, about the hive,” Eugene began as he grabbed a pair of work gloves and pulled them on slowly and methodically. “I didn’t want to say anything before, but you could come out today. I mean, if you want.” He peeked up at her over his glasses, then dropped his gaze. “The bees miss you, and it would be nice to hang out.”

“I’ll think about it.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized she had spoken too quickly. As though he could see straight through her, he grinned.

She headed to the hive as soon as class was over, but Eugene still beat her there. His back was to her, but he must have heard her footsteps, because without turning around, he launched into an update of every hive as soon as she was within earshot.

It was such a familiar scene, and it hit her how ridiculous it had been to try to avoid him. He was her friend after all, and one little lapse in judgement wouldn’t change that.

“–so would you mind finishing harvesting this honey while I check on a couple of the other hives?”

Usually she didn’t like being told what to do, but this was his domain, and he knew the best way to keep it functioning smoothly, so she changed into her beekeeping suit and began harvesting while Eugene talked about the rest of his summer after he had come to visit. It was . . . nice. She hadn’t realized how much she missed him.

They finished their work, then changed out of their beekeeping suits and found places inside the shed to put the new honey to sit for a few days before going into jars.

“Well, I guess no one else wants to join the Hummers today,” Eugene said as he stacked some older jars to leave more room. “But that’s okay. We got to have fun!” He turned around and grinned at her–and something very strange happened.

Their close proximity and the dim lighting reminded her of the day in the tunnels. She tried to push the thought away, but the memory only grew stronger, and she felt the sudden, strange urge to kiss him again.

She whirled around and shoved open the shed door, needing out, needing space.

“Wednesday? Is everything–?”

She started running back to the school, ignoring him.

“Wednesday!”

She ran all the way back to the school, up to Ophelia Hall, and up the stairs to her room, threw the door open, then stopped, staring at Enid and Ajax, sitting frozen on Enid’s bed, eyes wide and arms around each other.

“What are you doing in here?”

Ajax’s eyes darted over to Enid. “Uhh . . .”

“Studying!” Enid said brightly, letting go of him and folding her hands politely in her lap. “We were studying. I thought you were going to be out for a while.”

Wednesday wrinkled her nose. “Clearly.”

Ajax smiled nervously. “We’re done, um, studying now, so I’ll just . . . go.”

The door shut behind him, and Enid cringed, as though anticipating some sort of angry response, but Wednesday ignored her.

Instead she fell face-first onto her bed, with her shoes still on, and buried her face in her pillow. She wanted to scream, or bang her head against the wall, or something. Maybe, if she stayed like this, she would suffocate and fall unconscious, and her temporary insanity would be cured by the time she woke up.

“Is everything okay?” Enid asked.

Wednesday had been avoiding giving her any hint as to the cause of her awkwardness around Eugene up to this point, but if her current madness continued much longer, she might end up ruining their friendship.

He had been very patient with her through many misunderstandings and mistakes, but everyone had a breaking point, and she tended to push everyone away somehow.

She propped herself up on her elbows and stared down at her pillow. “I made a mistake.”

“Okay . . . what kind of mistake?”

She tensed, knowing exactly where this was going. “I might have kissed . . . someone.”

Enid gasped and clapped both hands over her mouth. “You did what? Who? When? How was it? What–”

Wednesday glared at her and Enid’s mouth clicked shut for a second. “Sorry. Too much.” She paused and took a deep breath. “So . . . who did you kiss?”

Wednesday said nothing, and Enid rolled her eyes. “You’re really not going to tell me?”

“It was a mistake.”

“So? I tell you everything about me and Ajax.”

Wednesday made a face. “I know.”

“Please?”

“No.”

Enid pouted and crossed her arms, then her usual smile slowly broke through. She shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ll find out soon anyway. You can’t keep a secret from me!”

“I can if you’re dead,” Wednesday muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Enid’s eyes narrowed, then she shook her head. “Was there something else?”

Wednesday sighed and sat up and let her legs hang over the side of the bed. “He and I agreed to pretend it never happened.” Enid’s lips tightened with the effort of holding in her opinion. Wednesday had known she would regret this. “But now it’s hard to look at him or talk to him, and I don’t understand why.”

Enid sighed. “Wednesday, have you considered the fact that you might have a crush?”

“What?”

“It’s perfectly natural. There are lots of sweet, cute guys here that you see every day, so why is it so crazy to think you might possibly have a crush? Besides, why else would you have kissed him, whoever he is?” Wednesday didn’t have an answer to that.

Enid waited another minute, then walked to the door. “Well, I’ll give you time to think about that. I promised Yoko I’d meet her to go over some ideas about our literature project. And maybe we can talk about any cute guys who have been acting strange lately.” She grinned and wiggled her fingers as she left.

The door shut, giving Wednesday the silent solitude she had been so certain she preferred her first semester at Nevermore. She stayed on her bed, thinking, until she heard a knock at her door.

Next chapter coming soon!