When surviving isn't good enough, there's always Mardi Gras.

What does Rusty Quinn do when her mom loses touch with reality, her best friend's dad explodes over a kiss, her other best friend gets committed to a psych ward, and the sanest person she knows is an egotistical Finnish exchange student who swears in a language nobody understands?  She could write a soap opera, of course - or go to Mardi Gras.  In fact, she could do both!

Funny how destiny comes down to single choices, focused moments, and split-second decisions.  Can running away to Mardi Gras really change four lives forever?

Chapter 1

Wednesday Afternoon: School

It was Daniel who hatched the plot to destroy Sergeant Eason, fix my door, and run away to Mardi Gras—and that was before anyone went to prison.

Daniel, Louise, Stonn, and I were sitting in a circle on the sidewalk between Shop and C-Building, illegally eating our Wednesday lunch in the sunshine. Around us, the campus of Proctor High seemed too familiar, too big, and yet somehow too small as we tried to survive this last year of our confinement. Lately, the place had been masquerading as a juvenile lock-down facility. No amount of rules could lock down Daniel, however. Daniel was allergic to rules.

As I stared at him, he gave me a mysterious grin, then sighed too loudly. “All we need is a drill, five baby food jars, a pack of chicken, and a Corvette. It’ll be so Edge of Night.”

Daniel was a Hemingway, thrice removed from the one and only Ernest. He had sandy hair, scruffy stubble, and brooding black eyes to show for his lineage, along with a certain sick cynicism. His half-pint size he got from his mother’s side of the family, but his fascination with soap operas was a product of his own twisted mind.

And my mind was just as warped. Definitely.

Reincarnation must feel a lot like senior year, hanging out with the dead and waiting for real life to happen. Daniel agreed with me, but Louise kept calling me a heretic. Together, Daniel and I were writing a bible, which was industry-speak for a new Soap proposal that had to include characters, setting, and two years’ worth of storylines. I wrote the overall plot outlines for Northgate Bay, and Daniel did the teleplays with dialogue and stage directions. Lou helped by “editing,” which meant she spent a lot of time complaining, marking pages with a red pencil, and insisting we could not say something like that on daytime television.

Daniel and I wanted to kill Lou most days, but I had to admit we made a good team. I mean, who else but three of us could recite the bible from the Edge of Night?

Of course, Edge was our touchstone, even if it did go off in 1984. Based on Perry Mason, using lots of old Mason radio actors—twenty Emmy nominations, two Emmy awards, and God knows how many mysteries, trials, and unresolved cliffhangers—Edge was all about whodunit, not who-dun-who. It was exactly the sort of show we wanted to create. An evil plot had to have just the right mix of glitz and maniacal cleverness to make the Edge, so naturally, Daniel’s plan to complicate our already Edge-y lives got my attention.

“A drill, five baby food jars, a pack of chicken, and a Corvette.” I shook my head. “It can’t be that easy to get to Mardi Gras. What’s the twist?”

“We never know that until it’s too late, do we, Rusty?” Daniel’s grin grew more wicked by the moment. “But since my excuse for a father so graciously provided the Corvette for my birthday, we’re down to the power tools and groceries. The stage is set. Come on, Rusty. It’ll be great material when we finally get to New York. Hell, we can probably finish the bible with what we get out of this trip. Tell her, Lou. Tell her we can do it.”

Lou Poe, no relation to Edgar despite her wishes to the contrary, shook her bowl-cut brown hair. She clutched her battered copy of Rouverol’s Writing for the Soaps with long, pale fingers and muttered,"Oh, my Gawd. I can’t go to New Orleans. My parents would kill me.”

“You’re eighteen in three months,” I said. “We’re seniors. Quit living for your mom and dad. You can’t play the ingénue forever.”

“Ya, Lou.” Stonn Puhju, the Blond God, nodded.

“Rusty, she is right. Be for yourself.”

Fresh from Finland, Stonn, which rhymed with “Ron,” had been living with Lou’s family for two months thanks to the Baptist Foreign Swap. Lou’s father, an uptight minister, started the exchange. Best we could figure, he picked Stonn’s name from a list, and since Reverend Poe wore glasses even thicker than Lou’s, he mixed up the male and female symbols. And so, even though she had the most conservative father in the universe, Lou was now sharing her home with the best looking male specimen in Olive Branch. Daniel and I couldn’t have written a better plot twist.

Lou ignored Stonn and gripped her book even tighter. “No way am I gonna be a part of this. You people are headed for Hell or prison, whichever comes first.”

“Not without you, dahling.” Daniel gave her a dramatic wink. “We’d never find the way.”

The Blond God flexed a muscle and squeezed it. “Lou must loosen up.”

“Drop dead, Stonn,” Lou said. “I’m not loosening up, and I’m not doing this, and neither are you. Dad would beat us both to death.”

“I will talk to her,” Stonn offered, as if Lou weren’t sitting beside him. “See if I can switch her mind.”

“Change her mind,” I corrected and wiped my forehead. It was only the first of March, and already hot in Tennessee. I hated heat. I hated anything that forced me to stay inside, because staying inside at my house...well, bad things happened when I had to do that. My house, or more specifically my stepfather, wasn’t good for me.

Hatred of heat—that’s why I set Northgate Bay in Oregon. Daniel still wanted to use California, and Lou kept bringing up Washington. Stonn never understood what we were talking about and just grinned when we fought over it, but to me, Oregon was perfect. First, it was as far away from Tennessee as I could imagine. Second, Oregon had mountains, the ocean, and lots of big cliffs for characters to drive off, throw people from, and slip over (to be reincarnated later when we needed them, of course). Third and most importantly, though, the weather in Oregon never seemed to change. Lots of cool air, plenty of rain, and definitely no heat and humidity. That was key as far as I was concerned.

At Proctor, we all fought the sticky heat with short sleeves, except for Lou. Her father insisted on high-neck blouses with long sleeves and skirts that hung below her bony knees. She always looked like a refugee from 1950’s vintage Secret Storm.

Stonn was another story. He was totally Young and Restless, and he gleefully ignored the Reverend Poe’s oversized morality. I swear the Blond God sprayed his jeans on every morning, and I know it took a shoehorn to cram those pecs into skin-tight T-shirts with fake collars.

The fake collars looked stupid, but they were a must. School dress code.

Like the ever-changing cast of a bad half-hour show, our school policies got harder and harder to keep up with on a daily basis. Each time some new piece of news about gangs or shootings hit the news, they revised our stupid handbook and dress code. No shirts without collars. No shirts without sleeves. No logos, no stripes, no spots, no jeans, no cuffs, no hanging threads. No earrings on boys. No earrings in anything except ears. No hats on girls. No different anything on anyone for any reason. Ever. Or else.

My head started to pound just before a baritone voice interrupted our lunch with a gruff, “Hey!”

“Damn.” I scrambled to my feet faster than Daniel and Stonn. “It’s Eason.”

“He’s supposed to be sick today.” Lou stood up beside me, both hands on her cheeks like a five-year-old.

I was sure we looked like a line of prisoners from Dark Shadows, waiting for execution. All we needed to do was lean down and offer our heads. Of course, Dark Shadows was an old Goth spook opera, so we’d have to be witches or vampires, and our heads would probably glow when they got lopped off.

Daniel sniffed, and Stonn muttered words I didn’t understand as the executioner stalked toward us.

Sgt. Eason’s bald head gleamed as brightly as his tie clip, and I shaded my eyes against both. That jerk always wore a suit and tie. I figured he thought it made him look important, like his perfectly trimmed moustache and oh- so-debonair goatee.

I wasn’t impressed, however. Eason wanted to be a hero. He dressed the part. He tried to follow all the rules to the letter—but the man was a bully. And I knew all about bullies. Only too well.

Eason came to a halt in front of us. “This is not a sanctioned lunch area.”

A second ticked by as we stared at his folded arms. His square jaw. His jutting chin. My stomach clenched, and I wondered what would happen if I puked on his polished shoes.

Before I could try, Stonn snapped to attention, threw a long-arm salute, and shouted, “Da, Commandant!”

Eason’s mustache twitched, and I saw a flash of desperation in his villain eyes. We got detention until Spring Break, and Louise bought the baby food jars herself that very afternoon.

 

From the bible of Northgate Bay

Headwriter: Rochelle Quinn

Associate: Daniel Hemingway

Script Editor: Louise Poe

Outline Episode: Season 1, Episode 1

Air Date: TBA

Cast:

Rochelle Carter	Daniel Stone	Louise Bancroft
Frances Carter-Vance	Panda Stone	Rev. Stanley Bancroft
Howard Vance	Stonn Olafson	Mrs. Helen Bancroft

Sets

The ornate Carter-Vance living room

The modest Stone den

The unremarkable Bancroft kitchen

Prologue/Scene One

The Carter-Vance living room. Introducing the wealthy but troubled core Carter-Vance family. Frances Carter-Vance, the eccentric matriarch, is angry with her beautiful daughter, psychologist Rochelle Carter, for making accusations about Frances’s husband Howard. Rochelle is furious with her mother for choosing Howard’s needs over hers. Give a sense of Frances’s inability to face her own poor choices. Give a sense of Rochelle’s sarcasm and inability to forgive her mother. Then Howard enters. Show Rochelle’s disdain and Frances’s simpering obedience. Rochelle confronts Howard as her mother attempts to shove her from the room. Before Howard can respond, we cut to—

Prologue/Scene Two

The Stone den. Introducing the not-so-wealthy and equally- troubled Stone family. Daniel Stone, former college baseball star turned car salesman, is encouraging his aging mother Panda to give up her job as a lounge singer. Panda reminds Daniel that her job put him through school. Daniel’s anger flares, and he lashes out with cruel comments. Panda is devastated. Daniel instantly regrets his cruelty. He reaches for Panda, but she turns and runs from the room as we cut to—

Prologue/Scene Three

The Bancroft kitchen. Introducing the middle-class Bancroft family, who keep their troubles to themselves. Self-righteous Reverend Bancroft is demanding his dinner while his wife Helen and school-teacher daughter Louise struggle to prepare it on time. Outside the bay window by the table stands day-player Stonn, a Swedish national hiding in the Bancroft storage shed to avoid deportation, gazing longingly at Louise. Louise notices Stonn, her mouth drops open, and we go to black.

Chapter 2

Wednesday Afternoon: Rusty’s House

After Lou, Stonn, and I bought the supplies Daniel ordered, Lou dropped me off at my house. Stonn’s feet dangled from the window of her dilapidated maroon Le Baron as she drove away.

If I ran fast enough, I could have caught them before they reached the stop sign at the corner. I could have climbed back into the Poemobile and rode around for hours. Maybe even stayed at Lou’s house for a while. But then Mrs. Poe would have started worrying and asking questions.

Eventually, she would have phoned Child Protective.

Again.

And the social workers would have come and gone.

Again.

I rubbed my eyes with both hands. It’s almost over. I can hold out another few months. I have to.

Erasing all trace of expression from my face, I turned my back before Lou’s car turned the corner. My house, a two-wing monstrosity in a neighborhood of palaces, loomed like a brick whale waiting to swallow me whole. That house was the last place any sane person would want to go. Good thing I had given up on sanity long ago.

It only took me three steps to reach the kitchen door, but I managed to take about five minutes to turn the knob. Careful to make no sound, I slipped inside, pulled the door closed behind me, tiptoed around the stove at the corner— and ran straight into one of the two people I most wanted to avoid.

My mother was dressed in her silk shortie bathrobe and a pair of mismatched red and blue slippers, and the look on her face made me groan.

“Hello to you, too, Rochelle,” she said.

I nodded as Mother’s vacant eyes shifted from my backpack to my face. She fingered her salt-and-pepper hair and whispered, “I’m glad you finally got home. Where have you been? I was so worried—and I have something...something very important to tell you.”

I tried to ignore Mother’s pasty cheeks and shaking hands while I listened to the silence between her rasping breaths. The house was cool and quiet. No squeaks or groans. No television blaring. The air smelled faintly of pine cleanser and leather furniture. Crisp and fresh, with no hint of filth.

Good.

Howie-Baby, Mother’s fourth husband, was still on the road, pretending to sell life insurance. With any luck, he wouldn’t be home for days.

“I don’t want to upset you,” Mother continued, “but you have to know.”

“Know what?” I asked, as if I couldn’t guess.

Mother drew a rattling breath while I prowled through the pantry for a snack. “You left the door unlocked again, and a man came in, and he hid in the attic.” She inserted a sniff, I assumed for dramatic effect. “He raped me, Rochelle.”

I rolled my eyes.

“The police—I would have called them, but you know they never do anything. Agents of a corrupt government...they’d bug our phones.” Mother leaned forward. “Do you think our phones are bugged?”

I shrugged. “Never can tell.”

Mother looked panic-stricken.

As I nabbed a bag of chips from the pantry, she snatched the cordless phone from its charger and used a fork to pry the phone apart.

That was our fifth telephone in three weeks. I figured they kept her busy, and they were a lot safer than the light sockets.

>>>

My bedroom was larger than most, and that should have made me happy. Still, each day when I pushed the door open, I wished the room was smaller. Cozier. The kind of room that would give me a hug instead of offering me plenty of space to pace.

I had a large walk-in closet taking up a whole wall on the right, a big picture window with two cloth rockers in front, and a queen-sized brass bed—not to mention three bookcases, two dressers, a small entertainment center, and a medium-sized Doberman named Bella, who lived on my bed when she wasn’t following me around.

So, I was lucky. Privileged. Spoiled, even, according to people who didn’t have to come home to my house, my life, or my mother. Those people had no idea what went on behind our expensive oak doors.

Bella scooted forward on my bed and whined. I scratched her silky head and muttered, “It was rape again. That’s better than miscarriages, I guess. At least we don’t have to go to the hospital for rapes.”

The dog rolled over and kicked her feet like a puppy as I dropped my backpack beside the bed, flopped into a rocker, and grabbed Northgate Bay’s bible from the rocker’s dust pocket. Flipping past the endless outlines and teleplays, I turned to my tallies on the back page.

Under the word rape, I added another pencil mark. “That’s thirty-one rapes, robberies, miscarriages, or strange-men-following-me’s in three months. Those new pills aren’t working any better than the last ones did.”

Bella stretched and wiggled her nub-tail as I crammed the bible back into the dust pocket.

I sighed and rubbed the large ring on a chain around my neck. The ring had been my father’s, and I’d had to get written permission from the School Board to wear it to class because the chain was too thick according to the latest dress code revision. I wasn’t about to take that ring off, though. It was all I had of my dad. Mother had lost everything else in bits and pieces, through all the different moves, different husbands, and different cities.

My dad had died in a plane crash when I was five, willing me the ring and leaving Mother enough money to attract a string of dollar-sucking losers like Howie-Baby.

At least Dad had insurance, everyone said. When Mother took her first “little vacation” for three months, her two sisters talked a lot about insurance.

Insurance will cover thirty days, Rochelle.

Insurance will cover Electroconvulsive Therapy, Rochelle.

Those are shock treatments.

Insurance won’t pay for long-term care, Rochelle. She’ll have to come home. Call us if you need anything.

I was eight years old at the time. That was when I started watching the soaps.

Days of Our Lives saved my life. And Guiding Light, and As the World Turns. Who could freak out or die before finding out who fathered Lilly’s baby, or whether Marlena was really possessed by the devil (or just kidding so she had an excuse to sleep with John)?

Day after day, then year after year, I watched every show on every channel, flipping like mad at commercials, dogging the summaries on the internet, and buying up the weekly magazines as fast as they came out.

Network loyalty was never an issue to me. After all, loyalty wasn’t something I had learned from my family. Believe me, when Mother came back from the hospital spitting venom and spewing accusations, my aunts defected almost overnight. They didn’t come visit and they didn’t answer their telephones. In fact, they washed their hands of us, and it was less than a month later when the social workers came and went for the first time.

But that didn’t matter. In six months—less if we could pull it off—Daniel and I were taking our mothers to New York. We were going to write for the Soaps, and life would be better. And that was that.

Just then, Bella interrupted my space-out with a welltimed yawn, and I smiled at her.

“Okay, wimp-dog. You ready to work on this Jedi thing?”

Bella hopped to the floor, bobbed tail wagging like mad. At two years old, she hadn’t grown as big as I’d hoped, and she had none of the fierceness I’d prayed for when I bought her. Still, she was eager, and eager had to count for something. And Star Wars was the greatest sci-fisoap of all times. Lou, who actually got to watch movies at my house, disagreed, but all I had to do to shut her up was clutch my chest and wheeze, “Luke. I’m your fahh-therrr…”

Please. If that wasn’t Edge in space, I didn’t know what was. And Luke’s transformation from wimp to warrior was exactly what I wanted Bella to understand. Unfortunately, Bella was often understanding-impaired.

From the dust-pocket of the other rocker, I retrieved a stuffed elephant and wagged it in front of Bella’s nose.

She jumped off the bed and whined, tap-dancing against my feet.

“Sit,” I said in my calmest tone.

Bella sat.

I tossed the elephant. “Be still, be still…”

Bella fidgeted as the elephant rolled to a halt in front of the closet. She came to half-point, which was the best “be still” she could do.

“Good dog. Good Jedi dog.” I eased my hand into the tin beside my rocker and took out a strip of pet-bacon.

Bella’s mouth fell open. She started to pant.

“Good Jedi.” I took a deep breath. “Now, Force, Bella!”

The dog blinked at me but didn’t move. I pointed to the stuffed elephant. “Force! Use the Force!”

Bella sat still. I grabbed her collar and walked her to the elephant.

“Attack this,” I explained over and over again, and then I teased her with the toy until she did.

“Force,” I told her, rewarding her with bits of bacon every time she pounced. “Use the Force!”

A rattling in the hall made the dog jump, and my breath caught in my throat.

No way. Can’t be. He’s not home. He can’t be home.

But my bedroom door, lock long broken and useless, sprang open and struck the wall behind me.

I flinched and turned around, almost gagging at the smell of overdone aftershave and fresh Scotch. “Hello, Sweetcakes.” Howie-Baby’s grin split his fat face, and what little hair he had lay limp across his dull brown eyes. He must have been hiding in the spare room so Mother wouldn’t know he was home. Or maybe so I wouldn’t know and find some way to ditch him.

Bella shrank away from our training session and cowered in the corner by the closet.

Bleak nothingness hardened inside me like new ice, and I sat heavily in my rocker. My mind shifted to plotlines, reeling off scene after scene, line after line. I was Rochelle Carter. I lived in Northgate Bay. Rochelle Carter. Northgate Bay. The Bay… My fingers dropped to the dust pocket and closed on the long hilt of the bayonet from my great-grandfather’s World War II rifle.

Maybe I would use it.

Maybe this would be the episode when I finally used it.