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Being temporarily disabled had been pretty terrible for Parker. Not only did it make getting dressed a complete battle with himself, but it meant that the Hillworth administration could not give him their beloved physical labor punishment when they accused a student of a wrongdoing. Even when Parker tried to point out that there was no way he could have climbed a ladder and removed every single light bulb in all of the bathrooms with his arm in a full cast, they blamed him, pointing fingers and barking in his face. Unfortunately, there could be no yard duty for a boy who had a hard time bending at the waist. Instead, they decide to lend Parker's services to the more needy, signing him up for a week's worth of work at the local soup kitchen.

Parker did not look down on these people like most might, but that didn't mean he was charitable. Parker believed that every single person in the world was alone, and that people only survived by taking care of themselves. To him, each person who came to the kitchen for food was a quitter, or just too lazy to pick themselves back up. Hell, if it wasn't for Hillworth, Parker would probably be homeless, but he told himself he would never be so dependent on others to need to come to a soup kitchen for food.

When he arrived at the kitchen, the woman in charge gave him a skeptical look. The food was served buffet-style, but refills were typically given table to table, as requested. It was clear that Parker could not be trusted to hold hot soup, and so he was banished to the very end of the table where the salad and cornbread sat. The tall head woman handed him a pair of tongs and instructed him to place one square of cornbread on each tray, and nothing more. He nodded, and she walked abruptly away, moving toward a red-headed girl who was in the process of delivering soup.

"Hello, Miss Fortescue," she said. Parker could hear her clearly even though she was a couple of tables away. "Thank you for helping with the soup." She smiled at the girl, and Parker furrowed his brow. Why was she being so nice to that chick? Wasn't he helping too? She hadn't even called him by his first name, let alone his last. Parker chalked it all up to the fact that he was a Hillworth boy, and therefore assumed to be a delinquet of some kind. Typical.

Sighing, he allowed himself to be distracted by an old man with a graying beard who approached the food station. The man held his plate out and grinned, exposing a few brown teeth. As instructed, Parker lifted a single cornbread square... and promptly dropped it on the table. The homeless man reached out one hand and picked up the cornbread and put it on the plate himself. "Do I get two 'cause you dropped it? I should!" the old man said, chuckling with a wheeze. Parker shrugged and placed another cornbread square on his plate, and the old man headed for his seat.

Like a hound dog smelling a fresh kill, the woman who had been speaking to Skye appeared magically at the table. "Excuse me. I told you that they get one. Only one. We need to be careful so we have enough food for everyone." Parker nodded, but didn't say anything. The woman sighed, folding her arms across her chest. She thought for a moment and then turned back to Skye. "Miss Fortescue," she said, her tone instantly more pleasant, "do you think you could come over here to the cornbread and salad station and help out? It seems our current helper is having trouble with the counting." The woman raised an eyebrow at Parker that seemed to threaten him to question her mocking. He didn't.

The salad didn't have anyone assigned to it anyway. It just meant less work for Parker, which didn't seem so bad. He sighed quietly, adjusting his arm cast. It went from his wrist all the way up past his elbow, and Parker had to wear a heavy belt with metal rods jutting out of it to hold his arm erect and out from his body. It was his left arm, which was his dominant arm unfortunately, but the tables were lined up so that, as the last station, Parker's broken arm jutted out into empty space. It was a small mercy in an otherwise bad situation. Eying the strange girl, Parker practiced lifting the cornbread squares, attempting to perfect his accuracy to keep the tall woman from bothering him again.

Parker watched the woman in charge leave, dropping his eyes back to the table as the red-headed girl approached. When she asked his name, he answered for himself, "Parker." The chummy attitude that the tall woman had toward Skye bothered Parker immediately. In his mind, it was him versus them, and until Skye proved otherwise, he would operate on that mentality. "I don't need a babysitter," he said, flickering a cool gaze in her direction. She was pretty and seemed to be around his age. Compared to the other people in the room, she smelled nice too, which was welcome. Parker would never judge the homeless for the stink, but he didn't exactly like it either.

When the new person came up, Parker lifted a piece of cornbread carefully, placing it gently on the plate. It went off without a hitch, but Parker didn't smile. It would be stupid to celebrate his ability to lift food on to a plate -- broken arm or not. Especially with the head woman standing across the room and blatantly staring at him. She watched for a moment longer, and then spun on her heel, moving to another part of the room. Parker let out a sigh, but it was one of relief. Standing within a few inches of Skye, he probably should have started up a conversation, but he didn't. Parker was being punished here, and Skye apparently had some kind of in with the woman in charge. What would they have in common?

It took Parker much longer than the average person to lift a single square of cornbread. He was still getting used to working with just one functioning arm, and since he was a lefty who'd broken his left arm, things were all the more complicated. It made him irate, plastering an annoyed sneer on his face each time he did it. His already foul mood only got worse -- and then Skye opened her mouth.

Perfect. Great. Wonderful.

As if he needed any more confirmation that Skye was clearly aligned with the hateful woman in charge, Skye laid it out on a silver platter for him. Parker had no idea that he seemed the least bit unhappy to be here, and so he read into her words a presumptious snobbery that rubbed him in all the wrong ways. "You don't know me," he said coolly. "So what right do you have to assume that I am not here to help out?" He wasn't in his Hillworth uniform so he had no idea how she could know he came from there. Hillworth boys got sent to work here infrequently enough that it wouldn't be totally obvious that the young teenage boy was one of their students. So Skye was just assuming the intention behind his actions, and nothing annoyed Parker more.

He didn't make eye contact with her, keeping his focus on the cornbread and offering tight smiles to each homeless person that came through the line.

Parker kept his cool while the girl spoke, watching in silence as she gave a man another piece of cornbread. His eyes darted immediately to the woman in charge, but she didn't seem to notice. "Don't give extra cornbread," he said gruffly. "I'll get in trouble for it." He watched at the homeless man trailed away, eyes flickering between him at the woman in charge. Parker hadn't even gotten the woman's name. She was too busy dragging him around and scolding him for not working up to the standards she set. Was there really a finesse to serving food?

In the space between two homeless diners, Parker got around to responding to her little crack about his attitude. "Sorry if I can't summon sunshine and bubbles to shoot out of my ears at will," he said, passing another piece of cornbread on to a plate. Pessimism came as naturally to Parker as breathing, and he already felt like he needed to be on the defensive in the situation. It make the disdain in him reveal itself a bit more than usual.

Why was it that whenever Parker tried to point out how someone's actions might negatively affect him he wound up getting called rude? Some people just don't like to face reality, or to have a logical conversations. "She wouldn't dare say anything to you?" Parker said, shooting a skeptical glance her way. Great. He was dealing with someone who thought she was above the rules that applied to everyone else. Privileged. It was obvious now. "You say that like you are somehow superior to her." Parker didn't like the woman, but it was a bit strange to see some teenage volunteer making idle threats toward the person in charge. What precisely would happen if the woman was mean to her? And why was the woman being so nice to her in the first place?

A homeless woman approached, and Parker gingerly placed a square of cornbread on her plate. He waited until she had walked away to speak again. "I'm not being rude. I'm telling the truth. Maybe you are above the rules here, but I'm not. It's me who will get yelled at for your decision to dole out extra cornbread." Was he really having an argument about cornbread? It appeared so.

The conversation was stiff and uncomfortable. Of all the people Parker could have been paired up with, he got the teenage girl who was going to take offense to him. Awesome. Skye seemed to skirt the question about why the woman in charge wouldn't dare scold her. Parker took note of it. "Well, not everyone is pleasant all of the time," he said. He made a move to shrug, but it jostled his arm cast, causing the metal rods that stuck into the belt around his waist to squeak. A few people looked.

Parker dropped his eyes back to the table, conscious of how the room echoed the squeak of his sling apparatus. Great. This day kept getting better and better. "It's easy for you to be chipper if you don't have to worry about anyone daring to rebuke you," he said, voice flat. The lull in buffet traffic was welcomed by Parker. He bent his knees so that he could place the tongs on the table. The motion took much longer than necessary given the pathetic state of his broken arm.

If Parker knew the thoughts bouncing around in Skye's head, he would hate her. Servants, money, privilege -- it would bring up every vile thought in his head until he was spewing vitriol from every orifice. Thankfully, he could not read her thoughts, and so he only felt a mild annoyance toward the girl. Her prim way of speaking rankled him; she sounded like a Crystal Academy tart, or at least the caricature of a CA student that rested in his head. He imagined they all owned, or at least wanted to own, some kind of small, yappy dog too.

"You know how to play nice very well," he said, voice absent of sarcasm. She was fake -- through and through. Parker felt that that much was obvious. Skye drooled sugar in the presence of the woman in charge, and then waited until she left to announce that the woman wouldn't dare to scold or punish her. Standing beside her in the buffet line, Parker felt convinced that he was far more earnest in his work here than she possibly could be. Sure, he was sent here as punishment by Hillworth, but at least he wasn't prancing around the soup kitchen just so he could feel better about himself. He assumed that the latter had to be the reason Skye was here at all.

Adjusting his cast with his good arm, Parker straightened up a little, stretching out his back. The sling was a burden, and it gave him back pain when he stood for too long. It appeared as though he was about to hit that wall. "I am here on behalf of my school," he said -- and it was true. Sure, it had been a punishment, but it was fairly common for teenagers to volunteer here. Parker figured that, as far as Skye was concerned, he was just a volunteer. She didn't need to know the truth. Even if he told her he was wrongly punished, Parker doubted she would believe him. He didn't want to confirm any kind of negative assumption she might already be making about him.

Parker probably should have left it at that, but he couldn't help himself. "If you don't like being here, then why did you decide to slum it with the lower rung of society?" Skye said she wasn't fond of the work, and Parker knew she didn't go to Hillworth, given the fact that she was a girl. It was clear this was not punishment for her, but a choice that she made. So why make it if it displeased her so much?