Please don’t forget that this never ever ever happened—this is merely a pleasantly odd export of my tiny little mind. Thanks! ;)

 

Thank you Girl.

 

Hours passed in the silence of fear-glutted minds and hearts; then a few seconds after the elder Miller got up the silence collapsed in shreds.

“OH, MY PAUL-EEEE!”        

Like a shrieking bespectacled redheaded angel in a floral-print nightgown Gwendolyn Marjoribanks Miller exploded through the front door to the room with an almost elemental force that knocked the front door squarely into the closet door (and, coincidentally, knocked the closet door squarely into John’s forehead, but this could only be counted as a fortunate side effect). “I’M SO SORRY”—she collapsed convincingly into a slightly bewildered Paul’s arms—“I LOVE YOU SO MUCH PAAAAAAAAUL!” She sobbed and sighed and gasped and moaned and cooed loving words in a manner that would very likely be considered over-the-top in the front row at one of their concerts, and made quite a show of loudly and wetly kissing the air about half an inch away from Paul’s face. As Paul’s brain hastened to catch up with the rest of his body—his arms, for example, had known exactly what to do, and had clasped the not unattractive young lady close almost immediately—she grabbed him by the shirt collar and growled a brusque “Let me do the talking, don’t ask questions, and just play along I know what I’m doing!” that finally dragged his attention back into the present.

Paul nearly laughed from relief. Finally, someone had a plan. He felt about six tons lighter. “Oh—I’m so sorry you’ve been dragged into all this,” he offered in a reasonable imitation of a womanizer caught in—well, before the act.

Vernon Senior gaped. He could almost have expected this of Birdy—she’d been treading moral thin ice already, listening to hoodlums like the Beach Boys—but Gwendolyn? His kitten? His little achiever? The hope of the family? Images of Gwendy as the Pixie Princess at a first grade play flooded his mind. Suddenly he had to sit back down.

Ringo gaped at what he could see of the spectacle from his vantage point between the elder Miller’s ankles. Below the noise of Gwendy’s anguished protestations of undying love Ringo muttered, “I thought that one had her eye on Harri, didn’t she? It’s what it looked like to me!”

“I think—” George squinted out the tiny crack between door and wall—“I think she has a plan.”

“Ooh, she’s got a plan. Well, that’s just f—ow!” John raised a hand to the tender lump growing on the side of his head and winced. “That’s just bloody marvelous, but what exactly is she doing?”

What is she doing? Birdy, peeking through the keyhole of the bathroom door, couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps all those books she read all day hadn’t nudged her cheese dangerously off her cracker. Okay, she’s on her knees in front of Dad, all screaming and wailing—I get it. I think—

“I think,” Althea murmured as she stared up at her insect’s eye view of the unfolding spectacle, “I think maybe she’s making her last stand.”

Several months ago Gwendolyn’s school had put on a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, to the delight of a few doting parents and the suspiciously effeminate head of the school drama department. Gwendy had auditioned for the part of the female lead. She lost, but she swore ever after to anyone who would listen that it had been an extremely close thing. (Gwendy reckoned it had to do with her rival not having to wear glasses.) In brief, the younger Miller daughter had the acting bug in her blood, and she put it to excellent use now.

“BUT—” Gwendy was on her knees now, clasping Paul’s hand to her cheek like a fleshy and slightly hairy security blanket—“I LOVE HIM! And—” theatrical sob, sniff, sob—“HE LOVES ME! He said so.” She stared longingly up at him with the soulful eyes of a puppy watching its master wave a raw steak just out of its reach. “Didn’t you, Paulie?”

Paul stared down at her as though she had just asked him to prepare a meal of fried stoat on rye bread with rubber sauce and a side of thumbtacks a la Guildford.

Gwendy nearly grinned. That was exactly the look she’d hoped to see on him. Paint him as the duplicitous womanizer (an image her father had already bought into) and her as the deluded young girl crazed with infatuation for the cutest Beatle (an image she’d apparently convinced him to believe), and the prospect of his feeling obliged to take her over to her room for a severe talking-to about the error of her ways was money in the bank. And she could fake her way through that. She was faking her way through this, wasn’t she? She only hoped, with a minor spasm of annoyance, that George would notice that she was falling on her sword for him. She was being very selfless, after all, and that deserved to be acknowledged.

For another second or so, silence tyrannized the room. Then the elder Vernon blinked, as though the hypnotist had just snapped his fingers. He grabbed his daughter’s hand. “That’s it. You’re going to your room.”

No sense in letting the side down now. Time for some protesting. “BUT DAD-DEE—” she screeched as he pulled her out of the room.

“I don’t want to hear it. And you’re staying there,” he continued as he wrestled her through the doorway, “until your mother and I have a talk with you.”

As Gwendy and her shamed parent struggled their way out the door, George risked a step out of his hiding place in the room’s closet to peek out the not-quite-closed door to Paul’s room. He was never quite sure of it, as he saw it from several feet away, but as he watched he could’ve sworn that Gwendolyn—who was still giving the performance of her life as the pair turned a corner—had grinned and winked at him.

“Well. It appears that’s over.” Paul wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “And thank God for that. Now, um…” Paul began to help Ringo and Althea out from under the bed. “Miss—um—Althea, wasn’t it?”

“Yah. I’ve been looking for my boyfriend. I have to find him—”

“Hang on. You’re looking for your boyfriend?” Ringo dusted himself off as he climbed to his feet. “It so happens I’ve got a boy with a twisted ankle over in my room who’s been looking for his girlfriend. Sounds too big a coincidence to overlook, if you ask me. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

 

***Authoress’s note: If you’d like to use this story for anything or take it someplace, please ask me first. It’s just one little email, not too much trouble, and the odds are in your favor for a yes if you ask me nicely. I just want people to recognize the story as mine, okay? ;-)