The Secret Carrie
A Time & Tied: Awareness #Fanfiction
#Wss366 #MastoPrompt 8/4 #TimeTravelAuthors @QuasiTemporal
She had never #felt so helpless before, not even when she’d realized her mother would never come back. That had been awful, but she’d known it was coming. This was different; disaster rushed at her: lost in time or at least in space, tricked by a time machine; in some god-awful wilderness; sick; and with a companion who was #intrigued by their situation instead of panicking. She hated Frank and his optimistic uselessness.
And mosquitoes! She slapped at one. There were never mosquitoes in the movies, not even in jungles. But—slap—here they were in a temperate forest. Gah, geography was the one subject she excelled at, a fat lot of good it was doing her.
Then she heard Frank softly sobbing. That threw her. Even when the shelter they had tried to make collapsed, he’d said, “We’ll just cover ourselves with ferns. That’ll be just as well.” She had wanted to punch him. How dare he not feel upset about it!
She’d pushed down the feeling of impotent anger. He was doing his best, which was more than she was: temper tantrums, running away, lashing out. The thought of how useless she was felt like a stone in her belly. She kept striking out at the one person who seemed to actually care. Why? All she had ever done was torment him at school.
Okay, he had gaped at her wet t-shirt. He was a boy; what did she expect? A fricken saint?
She resisted the temptation to swat a mosquito. Let it have its fill.
Frank would never know the favor she was doing by pretending to be asleep. But that was the way it should be. She didn’t want him to see her weakness. Caring got you hurt. Let him cry without the embarrassment of knowing she’d heard.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/65164879
Note: This is set in Chapter 11.
#MicroFiction #TootFic #NMPrompts #NMV366 #NMMP #NMTTA #TimeTravel