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The new semester meant new classes, new projects, and in a move that was either an incredible blessing or a terrible curse, new project partners. Over a class, you got pretty attached to certain research partners--learned what everyone was good at, knew their "style" per say. Getting a new partner was nerve-wracking, but usually a good thing. It shook you up, gave you new social avenues to pursue.

Well, at least, if you liked working in groups. Tate felt it was a safe bet that while she detested partnered projects as much as the next girl, her new partner for AP British Literature was just as unenthused to be paired with her, Tate, as Tate was to be paired with her. Like... she hadn't heard of Janice Fitzpatrick, per say, which was weird because she had usually at least heard of anyone in her classes. But, you know, you get someone who allegedly escaped an organ ring and they look like... well, death, and you kind of... expect... more.

Janice Fitzpatrick was interesting, but to Tate it was the sort of interesting that she accorded watching a car crash into a tree.

Like, right now, Janice was playing three different board games--one was chess, the other two she didn't really recognize. Against herself. While they were working. And, seriously, it was hard enough for Tate to get her motivation up and running already. It did not help that her partner (who honestly looked like she was about to fall asleep, in Tate's opinion) was not paying attention. Like, at all.

"Did you hear a word I just said about Victorian moralities and their effect on the writings of Edgar Allen Poe," asked Tate, watching Janice make some move or other on the chess board.

Tate let her forehead drop with a thump onto the massive book she had been reading out of. It was somewhat louder than it had to be, and the motion shook the nearest of Janice's game boards. I will not yell at Janice Fitzpatrick, she thought, determined. She would not poke or pry. This she swore to herself, because she still remembered embarrassing poor Howl Wickham by guessing his school. Oh, she didn't imagine she'd get anything near as embarrassing on Janice--even if it was obvious that she was either having terrible prophetic dreams or else just had terrible insomnia--but the temptation was still there.

Maybe Janice had a night job as... Tate didn't know, some kind of transvestite maybe. She dressed like it.

"It's the Bronte sisters, who were heavily influenced by the gothic genre, which is idealized by Edgar Allen Poe, so maybe it's a tangent but it is relevant," explained Tate, picking up her head. "Charlotte Bronte is said to have added the entire 'madwoman in the attic' trope to horror novels."

She looked at the game boards again. "Do you have to do that?"

"What- what are you doing. You are going to die. If you drink that, you're going to die."

With horrified fascination, she watched Janice pour a radioactive blue liquid into her tea. Into her tea. Tate worked at a Teasvatta; she worked with tea more often than most people thought the word 'tea'. Not only was this probably some kind of suicidal caffeine overdose that would leave Janice dead or comatose on the floor, it was also like dissolving a pearl in vinegar. It was a waste of perfectly good tea.

Did Janice use teabags? She looked like the kind to use bagged tea, since it would be faster. Tate narrowed her eyes to tiny slits. "I realize you totally just escaped Barren Pines, but if you're sleeping that poorly you probably should see a doctor."

Tate had never had surgery in her life, unless you counted the time when she was four and her mother had made her have plastic surgery to fix her ears. Not really remembering it or caring, Tate did not count it; and so, she had no idea who the Drs. Fitzpatrick were.

"What kind of tea was that," asked the brunette in sepulchral tones that suggested she'd just watched Janice stab her idol to death in front of her.

What was the big deal? The big deal was that... God, when people did that in manga or anime they exploded or maybe henshined--shapeshifted--transformed into a hero, villain, or monster, it was really just a grab bag of terrible fates. Tate was not going to dignify that expression with a response, no matter what Janice threw at her. "No, they're not, but the fact that it's going to mess with my grade is my business."

Pause. "Just so you know," Tate added, in tones of retreat.

She did relax at the assurance that it wasn't any good tea, which made her more than a little annoyed. It wasn't that she had some kind of hard-on for tea or anything, it was just... the principle of the thing, or something. Still, Tate did pull out her cell phone and slap it down on the table next to her, just in case her project partner collapsed. She did not need anyone getting that strain of flu that got you comatose.

(Although... honestly, she thought that it might have more to do with the terrorists than any kind of flu. Both phenomena started at the same time, after all. It was logical, wasn't it?... no, it was just manga senses tingling.)

Janice was insane. If the playing of three games against herself wasn't evidence enough for that, the casual consumption of more caffeine in half an hour than most people consumed in a week was it. Tate quirked an eyebrow, then looked back into the book with a sigh. Maybe she'd find something in here that could give more direction than the teacher and his whole "your semester-long project is on the bronte sisters, have it ready to present by May" spiel.

It was just incredibly hard to concentrate. Tate was still waiting for Janice to explode, or for terrorists to kick down the door. This seemed like the right kind of weird situation for that to happen.

She put aside thoughts of Janice Fitzpatrick being a secret government experiment, possibly escaped from Area 51, and said, "So all of the Bronte sisters wrote books. Do we want to talk about their differing views of Regency-era romance, or would you rather address their biographies?"

Tate had a soft spot for Emily Bronte; she had a halfhearted respect for the other two sisters, mostly because Giselle had full respect for them and a total crush on Mr. Rochester. Of course, she, Tate, fully pretended to be unaware of this crush, but there was a reason that she'd given her friend the biography of Charlotte Bronte with a copy of Jane Eyre in the back. "Romances it is, then," said Tate.

She flipped through the textbook. "Maybe we could pick one book from each sister, read it, and summarize it? I'd say Sparknotes, but Sparknotes never gets all the... details across." What details she was talking about, Tate didn't know. Probably just the overtone of emotion over the scenes or something. She knew that reading a manga was different from reading the summary...

"Or perhaps compare the specific love interests. Mr. Rochester versus Weston versus Heathcliff?"

At least Janice was making notes, too. The edges of her pages were covered in dense notations in tall, artistic script. Tate added flourishes without thinking; it was something beaten into her at a young age by her mother. Thank you notes, you know.

Of course Tate turned a little red at that, embarrassed; it was a legitimate approach, one she'd used once or twice before. Sure, the teacher would be bored, but she was pretty sure that that was part of the job description of an AP English teacher. It came with old literature, she felt this quite strongly.

Tate Konstantin: Chronic underachiever since the day she was scolded for an A minus in Algebra.

"Sounds good," said Tate, writing that down in the empty page beneath one chapter. Compare and contrast love interests + role of love. She was still watching Janice warily, muddy green eyes narrowed slightly. Would chanting 'don't keel over' in her mind do anything for it? Because she was convinced that any second now, Janice would collapse.

Or have kidney failure.

"Powerpoint or essay, which do you want to do," asked Tate after a minute.

"All right," said Tate, doubtful eyes finally moving from the cup of tea and Megaquench. Twining her fingers through her pigtail, she shut her book. At least it seemed like her partner was pretty stable and at peace with her own suicidal impulses.

Maybe Janice was an alien.

That was a thought process for another time. More importantly, she had to make a list of things they would need to do the project. First on the list... "I don't have my laptop or flash," she noted. She didn't feel comfortable working without her own backups, ever. "Maybe it'd be better to reconvene at a later date."