5.09 The 'Midnight Hollow Voodoo Dollies'

Edward noticed that Cindy, Eve, Delilah and Coral were waiting on the doorstep as he pulled into the driveway. Rather than wait for the gate to open he pulled up at the fence and sidestepped the swarm of gossip bugs that where descending on Jessica. Even though the two dozen people he had spent the last week with were family, it was still far too many people in one place at one time for him.

Jessica on the other hand embraced the swarm, and couldn't wait to share her newfound knowledge of her relatives. "So, Grandma Tamara is a witch, and an inventor, and Grandpa John owns a nightclub, even though John's a Fae, his brother's and sister's are a Witch, Vampire, a Werewolf, a Mermaid, a Genie, a Plantsim, and an Alien, and I got to meet them all and some of their partners and children.", Jessica started to explain before the swarm could bombard her for details about her weekend away.    

"It's going to be so quiet around town when Delilah and Jessica leave for university, have you given any thought to it?", Kim asked Edward, technically Kim was on her lunch break, but she had known where Edward would be fishing today, so she slipped down to the location with a picnic basket.

"I have.", said Edward. "I was thinking with the kids away at school, we would have more time for things like 'Black N White' movie night.", grinned Edward. Kim smiled to her self, that was close enough to the answer she wanted to hear.

Jess and Eve sat in the school grounds awaiting the rest of the group. "Relax Evie", assured Jess, "Coral and Cindy are in a similar boat. Fill out this scholarship application form today and get it back to me at the end of the day.", Jess explained. " I'll sent them em off together, and then we'll know how much money we need to raise so we can all go.", Jess finished.

Eventually the scholarship applications where answered, in the form of three full and two partial scholarships.
The newly named "Midnight Hollow Voodoo Dollies", performed for tips regularly after school behind the main set of shops in town.

"Ladies, we all good!", Jess yelled triumphantly after counting the takings in the latest 'Send Us All To Uni' jar. The girls stopped unloading the instruments from the car long enough to do a a little victory dance.

Jess grilled her friends, she was pretty sure she already knew the answers, but now that between fund raising and scholarships and savings there was definitely enough money for the whole group to attend uni and cover course and accommodation costs, Jess wanted to confirm who was going to study what.

"Tech.", stated Delilah, "Definitely, technology, I don't exactly know what career I want, but, I mean seriously, who doesn't love new toys and gadgets?".
"I still don't know if I want to go for Business, Science, or Fine arts first, I mean, all three could help with what I want to do!", Cindy contemplated. "What exactly is it that you want to do?", Eve inquired.

"I want to own a restaurant, but I want to cook there, I want to cook things I've harvested, and I want to harvest the things I've grown, so I guess I'd be a cross between a farmer and a chef, as well as a business owner." Cindy explained. "Well Darlings, let one give you a little advice!", Evie said impersonating a local TV personality. "Hyacinth Evergreen, One might suggest that one consider fine arts, followed by science, and then if one still considers the lifestyle appropriate then and only then should one consider moving on to a business degree darling!", Eve impersonated with all the appropriate gestures, which brought laughs from the group.

"Thanks, that's some pretty solid advice, but what about you Evie? What are you going to study", Cindy asked Eve. "Please don't make any ball jokes, but being a Werewolf, its most likely a sporting degree for me.", answered Evie.

"Two balls bounce into a bar, you'd think the second one would have been smart enough to duck!", laughed Delilah. "A Werewolf goes into a bar and asks the barman if he'd seen the Werewolves balls...", followed up Jess.

Eve rolled her eyes but couldn't help but grin. "What about you Coral? What are you going to study?", Eve asked trying to redirect the groups attention somewhere else. "Definitely Sci-Med, with a focus on medicine.", offered Coral. "Wait, the girl who showed us how to kill a rabbit with a bow, skin it and cook it, as well as seven ways to kill a man with an empty teacup wants to get into medicine?", asked Delilah.

"Is healing an ally not as important as killing a foe?", Coral asked.

Kim began spending more and more of her lunch breaks with Edward, a quick picnic lunch, a spot of fishing, a small amount of chatter, then back to work, until it was almost a daily thing.

With Senior Prom just around the corner the girls pulled out their junior prom dresses and made adjustments, as well as making up one for Coral to match. "So have any of you got dates this time, or are we all going stag again?", asked Cindy. "Solo, same as last time. Unless Coral has a date?", Jess told Cindy. Coral shook her head. Evie looked at Delilah, Delilah looked at Evie. Neither said a word.

"Tomorrow is 'Leisure Day', the day after is Prom Night, the next day is my birthday, then I'm off with Dad to visit relatives for a week, so I'm thinking Leisure Day might be the last chance for another fundraiser?", Jessica suggested to her friends.

"So, I'm thinking the 'Midnight Hollow Voodoo Dollies', so that way if theirs already a band with the name with Voodoo Dolls or Dollies in it, we can still use the name because it's got our town name at the front, and nobody else will think of that. What do you all think?", Jess asked. Coral and Cindy interrupted their game long enough to agree that it was a good choice.

After Evie and Delilah trotted up in their animal forms and returned to their bipedal shapes, the newly named 'Midnight Hollow Voodoo Dollies' spent the rest of the night rehearsing all the songs they knew.

Word soon got around the girls band were playing a fund raiser behind the book store and a large selection of the towns population dropped by at one point during the day and added to the jar to send Eve and Cindy to university. 

The girls all met at Jessica's place for prom night, again, Edward had hired a Limo for the evening, and the girls all piled in looking forward to the evening's event. 

"Delilah, Evie, Hurry up!", yelled Jess. The two girls had been almost right behind her a few minutes ago, Jess was about to return to the second garage to collect them when they appeared at the gate.

The night went off without any major hitches. Evie had secretly entered Delilah and herself as a couple, and officially asked Delilah to go steady, Delilah was ecstatic. Delilah was again voted Prom Queen, and Jess spent most of the the night dancing with Raphael, who was as Coral put it, 'Queerer than a raw egg, oyster and mustard sandwich'. Raph's boyfriend refused to peek out of the closet door in public and Raph just wanted to dance, as did Jess.

With the Prom out of the way it was Jessica's party on the next night. Edwards house hosted nearly half of the town's teenage population for a wild pool party. Jess considered the sensation of aging up, it was as if your body was all warm and rubbery for a moment, there was a sparkly, glittery sensation and a sudden burst of very rapid growth.

Jess felt a little more confident around people, and looking down at her body, it was noticeably curvier and more mature than it had been, but other than those two things, it really didn't feel that much different. Jess wasn't sure if she had found this aging up a disappointment or not. It meant she was ready for university, or would be by the end of the week when her best friends aged up, so she consoled herself with the fact that that was enough from aging up to satisfy her.

"Let's go Dad, I'm especially looking forward to meeting Emily's partner Dolly!", Jess enthused. Edward and Jess began the drive to the week long stay in Bridgeport with Edwards family.

Authors Note:

Again, Cindy went against group tradition for the prom shot backdrop, she doesn't even have the rebel trait.
The game had Evie ask Delilah to go steady at the prom, and I was stoked, because I had planned on doing that with those two after prom anyway, so yay that was a win. Then they both get a 'Naughty' reputation because they apparently had romantic interests from junior prom that I had forgotten about. So a little NRAAS hacking was required to clean up the relationships for Delilah and Eve, as well as for Jess who the game tried to link to Raphael Somebody-or-other. I converted all three relationships to 'just friends'.

I also discovered the retired career for Kim which means I no longer get any or have to remove any payment for Kim.

I made a big deal out of Jess's not feeling any different because of the massive physical changes that occur in the female chest area between Teen and YA in my game, I have a bucket of extra sliders, as well as a slider multiplier and a well developed teenager turns onto a mad booby mutant that requires reduction, especially along the horizontal scale. I've also noticed some of the CC that I have can also modify a sims shape...   

Autowater Failure.
It can happen to you! My current garden has 14 auto water sprinklers, one of them glitched, I don't know if this glitch happens to non auto water upgraded sprinklers or not. You will be able to identify an auto water sprinkler failure by the fact that while is shows the 'watering' animation constantly, none of the plants in its radius will actually get watered. The easiest way to spot this failure is to notice one auto-water sprinkler continues after the others have turned themselves off.