literature

Julie: Character Sketch

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"Julie!"

The brunette lying pretzel-shaped in the child-sized treehouse didn't move a muscle when her mother's voice floated out the kitchen door. Her hands remained steady as she painted the white t-shirt in front of her, the black cat in the foreground taking shape over the graffiti and posters in the background, all more or less the same things that had been hanging up around town lately. She hoped Elle would see the band poster, anyway. The rest were just to set the mood of the painting.

"Julie, I know you're up there!"

Julianne tilted her head to check that the smudges around the edges of the paintable area were even, but it looked pretty good for an afternoon's work. The brick faded out at about the right rate. One more down, just--

"JULIE!"

"What, ma?" The teen had to toss her ponytail back out of her way so her long curly hair didn't hang in the painted Christmas gift. She really should've tied it up tighter to keep strands from falling in her work, but it was far too late now.

"Dinner has been on the table for ten minutes, young lady, get in the house this instant!"

Biting her lip, Julie picked up the shirt and hung it from one of the many stolen hangers that decorated the tiny treehouse. It joined two others to dry out, hopefully in time to hang others tomorrow. But when her mother used that tone of voice she had very little room for error. Dad must've been getting irritated that she wasn't inside yet or something. The artistically-inclined teen slid head-first out the hatch in the floor, grabbing the rope ladder with her hands and easing the rest of her body out of her improvised studio until her legs fell past her and landed her neatly on her feet in the grass--the movement spoke of long practice. Julie released the ladder within a second of touching down, already running for the house. "How'm I supposed to know dinner's on the table if you don't tell me?" she asked her mom through the screen on the propped-open kitchen door.

"Julie..." her mother growled.

The teenager rolled her eyes. "Jeez, it was a joke, ma." Must've been a long day if her mother lacked even a tiny sense of humor. She made for the first-floor bathroom to wash her paint-smeared forearms. The tiny bottle of dish soap lived there for just this purpose... the moisturizing hand soap her mother loved so much did jack sh!t for real messes, not that Julie would ever have said as much. She wasn't that stupid. The white bottle neatly labeled "paint soap" just made its way into the bathroom and no comments whatsoever had been required. Julie assumed her mom noticed that it got refilled from the big refill bottle of dish soap, but so far she hadn't said anything. Things generally ran smoother that way in the Vincent household.

"Julie, your report card from first trimester came today," her father called from the kitchen.

Julie winced and accidentally splashed water down her front. Why did it have to come today, when she wasn't home to check the mail before her parents got there? "Yeah?" she called back, curious that there wasn't anger inherent already. Had she done better than she'd expected? Math couldn't have been worse than a C-plus, not with that project that went so well. Fractals were fun and if she'd had to look ahead in the math book in order to figure out the mechanics behind the artwork, so be it. In future she'd just draw the fractals and skip the math, but the details had earned her an A for that project, single-handedly rescuing her math grade for the term.

"Your biology teacher included a couple comments about you not being focused."

Ah, crud. He would have, the bastard. "Oh, that's not a big deal, dad. He just, uh..." She dried her nearly spotless hands on the hand towel she kept under the sink in case it got paint on it--her mother's good hand towels had suffered in the past and she'd been grounded for weeks. "We don't get along very well." That was politic, right? It's not like her father could hear her thoughts calling the bio teacher a miserly rat bastard or worse. "I'm too... artsy, I think. He was happy to let me paint that mural in the science hall, but once I was done he went back to this really passive-agressive bullshit."

"Julie!"

"Sorry ma." Julie sighed and headed back into the kitchen to plop herself in her usual chair between her parents. "I don't get it, really. Me being more of an artist than a biology nerd shouldn't affect my grades, it just doesn't seem like his grading system is completely fair to those of us who aren't sucking up to him all the time." She backpedaled as soon as her mother's eyebrow rose. "I'm just not a biologist. I know it, he knows it, the sooner the year is over the better." Though her mother's expression didn't look sympathetic, there were no further shrill statements. "How'd I make out in math, dad? I think my fractals project really saved my grade this term."
Quick character sketch for a character I've been thinking about. Nothing special for the moment, might get some more interesting things later on. Depends on what kind of inspiration I get.

Submitting this as part of an application to a game on rpgcrossing.com. Any man who posts a game in which garden gnomes invade is good in my book. :XD: My app is [here] if any of you actually care, by all means come toss an app in the ring.
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