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 Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:45 am
Dagmar Thorsen (known as Aggie to all but the most prickly teachers) hated English. Really, really, really hated it. It was stupid and it was completely useless and it was the reason she was currently lost in one of the many corridors of Barren Pines College with a guy she didn't even know the name of.
And it totally didn't help that it was her fault. Seriously, how on earth was she supposed to know that taking a left by the third corridor near the cafeteria would end them up here? Wherever 'here' was anyway, because it certainly wasn't anywhere Aggie recognized and she silently lamented the fact that she hadn't been able to get her hands on a map of the school - getting one of the grounds had been (curiously) hard enough, and she was still working on one for the interior.
Anyway, the directions obviously hadn't been very good either, and it didn't help that the teacher had pushed all the responsibility of finding the way onto her. What had he said again? Ah, right; "Listen Miss Thorsen, I am counting on you for this. Mr Remington, while extremely talented, is.. perhaps not the best suited for such a task, but excluding him from class duties would only start rumours of favoritism. You understand, don't you?"
She understood, all right. It was probably a plot, to make her look stupid and then laugh at her later - one of the star geographical students, getting lost in her own school. Yeah, the directions had probably been bogus, too! So it totally wasn't her fault, not really.
"Umh.." She turned away from the poor door she'd been glaring daggers at for well over a minute to turn around and poke the shoulder of the guy she'd gotten saddled with. If this was a plot, he'd probably know the way back at least.
"Do you know where we are?" Possibly, if Aggie had been a more confrontational person she might have started off by yelling, but as it was she could already feel all the fight draining out of her.
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 10:55 am
Remi loved English for more than the obvious reasons. As a writer, he could easily wing a essay or paper without too much worry and with the least amount of attention in class. More often than not, when the teacher introduced a classic work, he would turn over a page to Where the Sidewalk Ends and think “Read it” in his mind. There were only so many notable authors they bothered with in any school curriculum, even a gifted school. Not only was it the only class that Remi actually excelled in (he wasn’t joining a mathathon anytime soon), but it was one he could slack in.
Once you got a cardboard cutout of yourself to put in a Border’s Storefront, you were pretty much left alone by any teacher. As long as Mr. Graves was able to go home and tell his friends he was teaching – no, INSPRING – a well-known writer, the man would not try and push anything too hard on him. He did his work and that meant something, but being demanding meant that it would risk Grave’s power to brag. There were challenging times to be sure as any gifted program would have it’s hard work, but nothing to date was as hard as today’s assignment.
Winded, Remi held to 6 extra copies of The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. E, staring at the girl with a twisted frown that was a mix of stomach cramps and being asked where the hell they were. He was sent with this girl BECAUSE she was supposed to know the way. Didn’t geography mean you knew which way you were going?
Done with holding the books, he let them fall with a plop to the ground and breathed out. Better.
Popping his finger in his mouth, he held it up to the air and waited. He rotated at his hips and once he was satisfied the show had prove it’s point, he turned back to her. “No idea. We could wait for the stars to come out, but I’m pretty bad at astrology too.” Turning about, he sat on the pile of books. He scanned the hallway for any signs but for all the money this school had, signs seemed out of budget. A rich school for the gifted lacking on the simplest ideas. Seems pretty funny to him.
“Ever read Wayside School? I bet this stockroom we are looking for doesn’t exist. Just like the 13th floor.”
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:24 am
Aggie gawked, caught off-guard by this completely horrible guy. He was so.. so cheeky! Well, at least there was no doubt now - he was making fun of her. Her eyes were starting to well up as she alternated between staring at the Bad Guy and the fallen books. One or two had dirt smudges on their covers, but most had opened in the fall and now had their pages in a disarray.
There was no way the stockroom attendant wasn't going to notice that and then she'd ask Mr. Graves and then she would be the one blamed because apparently Mr. b***h over there was some sort of hot-shot something (they'd even discussed it in class, Mr. Graves practically bouncing on his heels but Aggie had had to go to the loo and had missed everything but "This is Mr. Remington, now, as the marvelous English students you are I'm sure you'll recognize his name--" Dagmar wasn't a good English student, and she certainly didn't recognize the name) and that exempted him from responsibility.
Maybe she should've just skivved class and stayed in bed. Nothing good ever came from English class, anyway.
"N-no. I don't read much and I really don't want to read about school. I mean, I get it enough of that here, right?" her lower lip had stopped shaking now, at the least.
"And that's a nice theory, but it actually does. I was there last week." They'd run out paper towels in dorm bathroom, so she'd had to make an emergency trip to re-supply. "I came from another way around, though! It's not like I don't know the way I just don't.. know this way."
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:42 am
Woah! He hadn’t expected her to react that way. A crying girl was the last thing he needed and no matter the onlooker, most of them blamed the guy. Well, he did start it, but it had all been a joke. Guess suggesting they try navigating their way with the sun would be out of the question now.
“Woah. Wait. Chill. Chhhiiilll. Deep breathe. Inner Zen.” He said, curling his fingers into a meditation okay with his fingers as he demonstrated some large breathes. After huffing and puffing a few times, he rose up and started to collect the books again. She seemed dead set on delivering the books, and while Remi was all for setting them on a shelf somewhere and going back to class, this girl was making it a mission to get there. It would be wrong for him to deprive this adolescent heroin from continuing her journey.
“Alright. First off, read Wayside. It’s freakin hilarious, and the school isn’t like this boring place. Fun and weird stuff happens there all the time, and the teachers are bizarre. Second, …let’s just…. Walk around until we find out where we are. If anything, we can flag someone down and ask them where we’re suppose to go. Might be a guy but I have NOOoo problem asking for directions.” He could even roll down the imaginary window when they met someone. That was always fun.
Turning, he gestured for her to lead the way. “Not like we’re getting any more lost at this point. How about we head to that dorm bathroom and find the other way.” He grinned and then slinked up next to her, making his eyes narrow and whispering into her ear. “ I’m not liking the look of this particular hallway. We must have made a wrong turn after that water fountain into the bad part of town. Here, take this.” He handed her one of the now bent books. “Let’s hope we can make it to the stockroom in time before the gas runs out.” His eyes went wide as he looked above their heads to the florecent lighting above. "Looks like it's getting dark soon."
Might as well add a bit of excitement to the whole imaginary trip. This girl looked like she could use a bit of fun.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:20 pm
She'd been nodding along obediently to everything Bad Guy had been saying right up until he started whispering her ear. This guy was so weird, but he was right.. looking around now, everything looked much more ominous than it had before (though that was probably just because of his weird little speech on 'the bad part of town'. Aggie was susceptible, okay?! It's not like she could help it!).
"R-right!" Nodding furiously, she clutched her newly gotten book to her blazer, eyes wide as saucers. "But what if we don't find anyone? What if we just keep on being lost forever?" For all her geographical skills - or perhaps because of said skills - getting lost and staying lost had always been a recurring nightmare of Aggie's.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:08 pm
He puffed out at the thought, letting air out and letting his lips sputter with a “pfft”. The idea of going on forever didn’t seem to bother him, not even in his make-believe scenario. “Forever is never forever. There is always a point where something happens. Might take a few years, but we can hope that we’ll just become ruggedly handsome through the hardships of living on the streets.” The streets in this case were the nameless hallways around them. Personally, he found wandering about more interesting right now than returning to class.
“A messenger always comes. Personally, I’m hoping it’s a talking minotaur. Seems appropriate for a maze, right? Yup, we’re going to hunt down a minotaur. He’d lead us to where we need to go.” And then thinking on it. “…or she.”
Whether minotaur or minotaura, he adjusted his grip on the books and leaned over, nudging her with his elbow to spur her on. “With the precious documents of old, the heroine and her companion set off!” He grinned at the sound of his own narrating and looked to her with sparkles of excitement in his eye. “Milady, lead the way. It’s your magical sense of direction that will lead us home.”
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 11:32 pm
He might become ruggedly handsome, but Aggie doubted she'd get anything but a serious case of bedhead hair out of the ordeal.
"A minotaur? In, like, school?" She blinked, looking more than a slight bit puzzled. Wasn't minotaurs those half-goat things they'd learnt about in History some time ago? Or was that something else? The messenger part was easier to get on, though - Aggie imagined it'd be somewhat like a guide, to point them in the right direction. Personally she was rooting for a talking bunny named Putte, like the one she'd had when she was a kid (sans the 'talking' part, of course).
"Right!" She didn't know much about magical sense of direction but it sounded nice and she wasn't risking that sharp elbow again. "Then we go.. this way!" She pointed at a random hallway, and marched off, glancing back to make sure the Bad Guy was following her. "These books look pretty new, though. Or.. well, they did. Why did you drop them on the floor, anyhow?"
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Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2009 10:06 am
On whatever track they were now on, at least the girl was back in better spirits than before. It was a quick fix by distraction, and he moved along. The last thing he needed was some girl crying the entire time, frustrated at him, and hyperventilating that they would not get to where they were going. Really, the world wasn’t on a schedule. More people needed to just RELAX! They were books. They were teenagers. No one was going to send them to jail or give them any bad marks. Being lost was hardly a sin.
Then it went to small talk, and he felt displeased that imaginary time was over. Back to serious all over again. His eyes looked at the musty books, dirtied from the floor and wrinkled on their thin covers. “They were heavy.” There wasn’t much of a reason he needed to do anything. “They’re only books after all, and not even GOOD ones at that. Who cared if a few anthologies that had been copied a thousand times over got dirty? The school can afford it, and it’s not like we’ll all learn the same people over and over again. I think it would be better if we left ALL the copies in the stock room.” Sure, he was all for understanding the past, but only looking there was just aggravating. There was a world of other authors just as good as all the greats. Give them a chance!
“Why do you care? You said you don’t read much in the first place. I wouldn’t think you’d give a damn if a bunch of books got wrinkled.” Come to think of it, that probably meant she didn’t like English class. “What do you like?”
"No! Wait. Let me guess." He took a gander over her whole body. She was thin, looked rather nimble, and had long red hair that bounced as she walked.
"Wrestling."
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 5:34 am
"Wrestling?" She wrinkled her nose, slightly disgusted by the idea. She'd watched a wrestling show once, and it had been all sweaty, horribly buffed men in tights grabbing each other. No thanks - her maps and books were certainly better than that.
But sigh, if the choice was between talking about wrestling and the school's textbooks (which he obviously felt very strongly about; no need to stir up a hornet's nest), wrestling was probably the better alternative. Personally she felt the choice was somewhat between a rock and a hard place, in this case.
"I'm not.. very f-fond of wrestling, sorry." She threw him a quick smile to ease up the statement. "Are you?" He didn't look the type, but you never knew.
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 1:59 pm
This girl really didn’t have a funny bones in her body. He was kidding, but she didn’t seem to get it. A hit and a mess on that one, and Remi was left actually having to respond to a topic he really didn’t care about. Guess he set himself up on that one. This trip was becoming less and less entertaining and more and more dry as the books he was lugging about. Why couldn’t he have been sent on a misadventure in the school’s hallways with a fun person. Preferably someone who could kid around and knew how to burp the tune of Mr. Roboto. You know, a nice girl who could bench press your weight and licked the cheese off her fingers after eating nachos.
Instead, he had Miss Direction and her confused expression. “Aside from arm wrestling and thumb wars, not really. Always wanted to flip over a car though. The Hulk makes it look fun.” He was running out of conversation topics. If he didn’t have a chance to play around, then he really had nothing to talk about. He really hoped someone would come, point them in the right direction, and be done with this. If he hadn’t seen this girl cry already, he would have handed her the books and then left her.
“Okay. I’m done.” He said, stopping as he set the books on the floor. “How about you find someone and I’ll just wait here? Going around in circles with a pile of books is exhausting and pointless. I think I’ll just sit here in the middle of the hallway until someone comes by and points us in the right direction. What do you say?” Why work hard. This was a hallway. People walked here all the time. It would just make sense to let someone come to them. “I think they say to stay put when you’re lost.” Maybe he could move the books around and nap on them.
Getting comfortable, he leaned back on the wall, closed his eyes, and lifted a hand to wave slowly. "Go on without mmeee. I'll only hold you back."
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Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 3:46 am
She'd been about the comment on the Hulk - or really, ask the Bad Guy who he was - when he put his books on the floor (luckily a lot gentler this time, but still, it was a school floor. That just couldn't be sanitary) and got comfortable.
What was she supposed to do with that? "Um.. don't you want to deliver the books for Mr. Graves?" She was doing the puppy-eyes thing again, an unconscious reaction to a perceived rejection, "Because.. if you don't... I could always take them myself."
Actually it'd be pretty hard to take them herself, but maybe it'd make Bad Guy like her more and they could be friends. Even if he was really, really weird and possibly slightly insane, he had tried for a few minutes there to make her feel better. That had to count for something, right? The least she could do was help him out in return, when he so very obviously didn't want to do this.
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Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 8:07 am
This was going nowhere fast, and worse yet, every time he tried to back out of doing this task, this girl was pulling him back in. Damn her. How could a guy resist puppy eyes after all? You couldn’t help but fill like a d**k if you ignored it. Remi didn’t have much of a reputation with the ladies, but making it worse by spreading around that he had no heart at all wouldn’t help his chances in landing a date.
“Alright. Alright.” He rose back up and looked at the books. He really just wanted to start punting them down the hallway, but that would only tire him out more quickly than holding them would. Ugh, he was just so BORED of all of this that he –
“I just had a great idea.” Better than great, he had a solution to their problems. They were lost. They were in rather empty hallways that could really carry a voice if you let it. Why didn’t he just think of this when they had first figured out they were walking in circles.
“You, I want you to scream as loud as you can.” Girls could reach pitches that broke glass and if she could manage it, he wanted windows to shatter. Why the hell were they looking for someone to help them when they could just get someone to find them instead? It all made perfect sense, and what better way to get people to come to you than screaming like a banshee?!
The idea electrified him and he went to her, his eyes as crazy as his hair. “Do it. It will be great. Just breath in deep and explode. The second someone comes here, we can ask them where the stockroom is. It would only take us minutes!”
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:27 am
Oh God, he was getting crazier. Aggie backed up a few steps, looking more doe-eyed and frightened than ever - sure they might get someone to come running and yes, they could ask that someone for directions, and then they'd no doubt get detention for disturbing behaviour during school hours. And he was even trying to pin it on her! No thanks, seriously.
"I-I think I'd prefer to just find the storeroom myself?" The higher inflection towards the end hadn't been planned, but Aggie wasn't exactly a pro at standing up for herself and Bad Guy (rapidly turning into Crazy Guy) was seriously ******** scaring her. She'd cry again, but at this point hyperventilating herself into a dead faint was more likely.
"Really, it's no problem! Please, j-just.. I'll just go, um, that way and I'll find it in no time and it'll be no trouble at all! You can go, um, do what crazy people normally do-" her eyes widened even more, to the point where it was starting to look unhealthy, "oh gosh, did I say that out loud?"
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Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:45 pm
“CRAZY?” How could he see HIM as crazy. Here he was proposing a perfectly logical if not brilliant idea on getting them to find their way very efficiently and she wanted to just wander the hallways for another hour. THAT was crazy. What he offered was a easy beeline to their destination and to just get everything done and over with. If he wasn’t more suspicious, he might have thought she enjoyed wandering around.
“I am NOT crazy. This is a great idea. Just one scream will do it. I swear.” He slapped his hands on her shoulders and looked her dead in the eye. “Crazy is wandering around with no idea where we’re going. Crazy is thinking that we’re just going to stumble on this room when we haven’t found it yet. Crazy is not accepting my idea that is clearly the better option. THAT’S CRAZY!” It didn’t help Remi’s point that he was shaking her with each statement.
He could tell she was getting worried, but was too excited from his own idea. It would a growing experience for her to just scream. Yelling was very sooting for the body. He should have stopped, and the voice in his head said that what he was doing was not helping the situation. It was just knowing something and doing somewhere were on two different planes.
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Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 3:14 am
She whimpered when he put his hands on her shoulders, half afraid than he'd try to physically hurt her. He was off his rocker, there was no doubt - if there'd ever been any, his little rant had certainly dispelled them by now.
Aggie weakly tried to draw away, curling in on herself and holding the book he'd given her earlier to her stomach. Oh god, what should she do? What could she do? She was tall, but frail, and if it came down to it her biggest advantage would probably have been speed - she could sprint, just not for very long.
But that option had been taken away as soon as Crazy Guy laid hand on her and that.. that left her with nothing. Hitting him with her book wasn't more than a fleeting option, because at heart Aggie was a people-pleaser and hitting someone just went against her nature.
Maybe she should just scream, but she couldn't stop hyperventilating long enough to get in a deep breath and little tears were starting to make their way down her face, smudging her mascara even more. He was really, really scaring.
"C-could you p-please let go?" She stopped to give way for a dry sob that'd been working it's way up her throat the last minute and a half, "P-please?"
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