things happen in threes?

I have good news and bad news. The good news: I've been working on a sequel to The Eleventh Annual Hide or Die Summer Challenge. The bad news: I don't like how it started, so I'm scratching it. In fact, I'm still pretty uncertain about the story as a whole right now. I think that's mostly because I started out with a plan, and then started writing from Charlie's POV and realized that what I had in the first place just wasn't going to work. It wasn't Charlie to me. At the very least, it wasn't the story he wanted to tell. So I've started over. But I thought I'd post the scrapped bit here, just for fun. So that's like good news #2.

Good news #3 is that I've decided to do a series of stories concerning the extended Harris family, tentatively titled The Harris Family Tree. I've already got some ideas as to who's story I'll do next, and while I know that some of the characters from TEAHODSC are more popular than others, I should warn you ahead of time that I don't know if all the Harris children will have one. Mostly because I don't want to force a story on them - if they want to tell one, they'll let me know (bash me over the head with it, more like), but until that happens I'm just gonna write whoever's talkin'.

I would, however, love to hear your ideas, so if you really want to see a specific character's story or think it would be hysterical if [insert shinnanigans here] happened to one of the Harris kindred, kindly let me know. Who knows, it might inspire me. ;]

Now, without further ado, enjoy the scrap:
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Scrapped Hide or Die Sequel Start
[Rated-T for Charlie's dirty mind]

Hello. My name is Charlie Harris, I’m twenty-two, and I’ve had a crush on Adelaide Clark since the tenth grade.

It sounds more serious than it really is. I didn’t go to school with Addles – not until college, at least. But she and my cousins were friends for the longest time, so I’ve known her practically all my life. In the beginning I only saw her during the summer, and sometimes during holidays, whenever my parents took us to see the Harris cousins. She wasn’t much of anything to me then. I went to my own school, grew up in my own neighborhood, and did my own thing. I had the same crappy experience in Middle School that everybody else has. And then high school rolled around, and things changed a little. More specifically, girls changed. You girls blame puberty for this crap; I blame you. You didn’t have to wear that damn skirt to school. You didn’t have to wear the red shirt that practically molded itself to your breasts. No, that was all you.

About the same time, I stop trying to avoid being caught under the mistletoe at my Aunt and Uncle’s Christmas Extravaganza (we capitalize all important events in the Harris family), and started hunting for the perfect moment to catch Addles under it. I’m not sure why I picked Addles, beyond the fact that she was practically one of the only people at the party I wasn’t related to. That, and she looks ridiculously good in green.

She looks good in anything and nothing, actually, but don’t tell her I said that.

It figures that once I started actually trying to get her under the mistletoe, we never meet under one again. After two years of plotting I realized it probably wasn’t ever going to happen, and did the obvious guy thing and decided that little ol’ Addles is the hottest thing since sliced bread. I couldn’t have her, so obviously to make up for that I’d crush on her even more, leer when she wasn’t looking, and think about her when I masturbated. I’m positive that she never even so much as looked my way twice in those days. I was a Harris cousin, and lord knows there’s about a jillion of us running around.

And then one glorious Christmas, all of that changed. Since I couldn’t accidentally stick my tongue down her throat via a coincidental rendezvous under the red and green, I resigned myself to pretending she didn’t make me hotter than hell and made myself be sarcastic and antagonizing while meanwhile memorizing exactly what she looked like so I could go home later and make the most of my vivid imagination. It figures that the one time I’m not trying to corner her at all is the one time we actually get caught under one together. Thank god for Greg and his evil ways, otherwise the blessed opportunity might have passed us by completely.

I remember locating Greg again sometime later as the party was dwindling and thanking him. I might have been a little drunk at that point, but I could still taste her tongue in my mouth – in mine! – and I needed to let the eldest cousin know how much I appreciated the moment.

He laughed at me.

But to be fair, I was probably far more vulgar than I’m letting on. Alcohol turns me into a complete lecher.

Adelaide knows this well.

Maybe before the kiss I would have started to ween myself off of her. I would have started to notice other girls the same I way I noticed her, and I would have looked forward to specific classes or some dumb after school activity the same way I looked forward to going over to see the cousins. Maybe before the kiss I could have filed her away as a “what if” kind of scenario, locked that drawer, and moved on.

But once I kissed her that was it – I knew this was something I would have to do far more often. I knew I wanted to do far more than kiss her, that was for damn sure.