Didn't think it through (Sean)

[Marnie Sullivan]

This thread takes place on Monday, March 23rd, after the thread Who's that over there?

The last time Marnie had visited this office, she had been a barely contained bundle of frayed nerves. Called in to discuss the behavior of another student, she had been afraid - of being out of line, of saying the wrong thing, of interfering, of the consequences of not interfering. It had been a lot to suss out.

Today, though, she was here by her own fault, and that was so much worse.

Of course Marnie had known this was coming since the moment Dr. Neville had recognized her. Off campus after curfew? In a nightclub? How could she ever have believed she'd get away with that? For the rest of the weekend she'd locked herself in her dorm, dreading the Monday afternoon when she'd have to see him and receive her punishment. She'd scoured her student handbook for clues about what to expect. Drinking and sneaking out were, of course, covered, and on their own they were each grounding offenses. But what about doing both at once? And would it matter that she'd been with college students? Would the University of Vermont find out and change their decision to admit her in the fall? Would the police be involved? Would she be expelled? Sent to jail? For two days Marnie imagined the worst. Only when she forced herself to attend class on Monday morning did the panic ebb somewhat; if she was expelled she wouldn't be allowed back in class, right?

But when classes finished and Marnie slumped her way to the office wing, each step was heavy with dread. She actually found herself hoping that Dr. Neville wouldn't be there - or better yet, that someone could dole out her punishment in his place. A random teacher, the librarian, someone whose disappointment she wouldn't mind so much. All the same, Marnie knocked on his office door, knowing that was too much to expect.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean was always on call at Hammel, even when he wasn’t.

His family members and several non-Hammel members of his social circle (Josh included) often considered that to be the biggest drawback to his job. As a member of the administration, he did not have the luxury of turning a blind eye to events, even if that negatively impacted his personal life.

Finding Marnie at the club had negatively impacted his personal life.

The psychiatrist had gone out with Josh to belatedly celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. To drink and to relax for an hour or two after a long week at Hammel. To enjoy his partner’s company in a more open and casual atmosphere.

He had not expected to run into Anjali, there to celebrate her 21st birthday, although he had been delighted to see her. His philosophy had always been to welcome former students into age-appropriate adult situations, and that meant he would have bought her a drink to celebrate. He had not expected to see Aryana, but she was an adult and no longer under Hammel jurisdiction.

He certainly had not expected to see Marnie, who was neither an adult nor outside of Hammel jurisdiction. That had made her presence at the club – after curfew and intoxicated – his responsibility.

At least he had not had to do anything that night aside from send her back to the school and make certain that she arrived in one piece. However, her presence at the club guaranteed a disciplinary session on Monday.

After class, because Monday was busy.

By the time all of his other sessions and meetings had finished, he had moved on to afternoon coffee. With her knock, he set aside the mug. “Come in, Marnie, and sit down at my desk.”

There would be no casual use of the sofa or the armchairs for this conversation.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Maybe she was imagining it, but Marnie couldn't hear any hint of the doctor's usual warmth in his voice, try as she did to find it. Her stomach sank even further; oh, this was going to be rough.

Timidly, Marnie pushed the door open and shut it behind her as softly as possible, eyes low. Only a few more steps to take the offered seat - even in simple flats, she could have sworn it had been easier to dance in those stupid heels than it was to take these steps. When she sat, she clasped her hands in her lap so tight her knuckles went white, in an effort to keep them still.

Every layer of this disaster was mortifying. Not only the scope of the offense, although that obviously didn't help. But there was the fact that it was Dr. Neville who had witnessed it firsthand, instead of word leaking through the student body back to him. There was the reason she'd been there in the first place - on the one hand Marnie couldn't imagine that Karalie finding out she'd visited the QSA feeling this awful, but on the other she might hear about it anyway, rendering the whole escapade pointless. 

Talk about a wreck.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean had never asked to become the first tier disciplinarian. As with every other hat he wore outside of “school psychiatrist,” the tasks had fallen to him one way or another, either due to a lack of resources to bring in someone else or because it had begun has a temporary measure that had remained in place when he failed to complain about it. He far preferred to talk about behaviors and underlying causes, but he could hardly argue with the fact that he was an effective disciplinarian. Particularly since the administration had yet to complain about his “pay it forward” style of detention assignments.

Yet one of the least pleasant aspects of this duty involved seeing and hearing fear and mortification in some of the more sensitive students. Like Marnie. He had always been fond of Marnie.

Which led to his disappointment in her behavior.

He waited for her to seat herself, not wanting to begin until she was seated, lest she faint.

He kept his attention on her face, as he did not want to give off the impression that she had done something so severe that he could not look at her. Then, he said, “I don’t typically track the students so closely when I’m off the clock, but you had the bad luck of going to the same club that my partner and I wanted to visit after a long week.”

It had been coincidence, nothing more, that led him to find out about this in the first place.

“If you used a fake ID, I have to confiscate it.”

[Marnie Sullivan]

"Bad luck" was an understatement. Bad luck was getting all red lights, or the wrong order at the restaurant, or a crappy hand at poker. This was disastrous luck.

Marnie shook her head at the mention of a fake ID, her eyes glancing no higher than the edge of Dr. Neville's desk. She hadn't gotten in with an ID; she didn't even know where to get one. The girls she'd met at the LGBT center, the ones who'd invited her, hadn't known that she was a minor, although they'd known that she was too young to drink. With their help, she hadn't needed an ID to sneak in. Not that that really sounded much better.

"I don't have one," Marnie replied in a small voice. At least Dr. Neville would know it was the truth. She couldn't lie to him if she wanted to, and right now she didn't expect to be trusted.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In fairness, this was worse luck for her than having a pop quiz in a subject she had neglected to study. However, Sean’s point remained that this was coincidence and bad luck, as opposed to him deliberately staking out local businesses on the weekends and after work, in hopes of catching a student breaking the rules. If she and her friends had opted for a different club or had come at a different time, or if he and Josh had gone out to their preferred haunt in Burlington (which they had decided against as the psychiatrist had wanted to drink and not worry about getting home safely), then he never would have run into her.

He accepted her admission at face value. Despite his disappointment in Marnie’s behavior, he didn’t expect her to lie to him, and he knew that not every club was as diligent about carding as they should be. Mentally, he crossed that club off his list to visit, as he didn’t want to encourage illegal business practices, which included failing to card properly.

“Then I don’t have to confiscate an I.D. Did anyone ask you for I.D. at all while you were there?” He wanted to start with the basics, before veering into asking her what she had been thinking.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie grimaced as she recalled the trick she'd used to get inside. It was a simple one, but saying it out loud would make her sound like a scheming delinquent, she just knew it.

"Nobody asked me, but... I don't think they saw me on in," she explained quietly. "I said I'd forgotten my ID, so one of the other girls distracted the guy at the front, and I just kind of... went around." The girl with the blue hair, the one who'd invited Marnie along in the first place, had pretended that she couldn't find her own ID. With the bouncer so focused on her, probably expecting to turn her away, it had been easy for Marnie to get inside with the others.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean listened carefully to her explanation, not surprised. That was one of the more time-tested ways of sneaking into a club. He had never done that; he had never had reason to sneak into a club. When he had been a student at Hammel, he had had no interest in drinking or in dancing. His parents’ insistence on lessons had destroyed any interest he might have in that social exchange, something that stuck with him to this day, four decades later.

For better or worse, the drinking age had also been eighteen rather than twenty-one. By the time he had graduated from Hammel, he could drink inside or at a club back home, if he so desired, and he had.

“Did you sneak inside with the rest of your friends, or did you use your powers to blend into the scenery?”

Typically, the psychiatrist didn’t have to ask that question, since the vast majority of meta-human powers would have no use in that situation. Something that he argued frequently with people who viewed meta-human status as a danger in and of itself. Yet, for people with his power, or with Chase’s mind control, or who had something more physical like teleportation, phasing, invisibility or Marnie’s camouflage, it became relevant.

[Marnie Sullivan]

With one hand, Marnie began to pick at the cuticles of the other, reddening them one by one until they stung.

"I didn't use it," she told Dr. Neville. "I couldn't. Even if I wanted to." Even as she became more experienced, gained more control over her power, Marnie had never been able to extend it to her clothing. Which made it useless, didn't it? she thought bitterly. Completely useless.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

That was a valid point. Although her phrasing left her moral culpability somewhat ambiguous. “Even if I wanted to” could mean that she wouldn’t have used it even if she had been capable of expanding her camouflage powers to encompass her clothing as well as her body. Or it could mean that she would have, but since it was impossible, the mattered had been rendered moot. If it was the latter, then he would have to address it during this meeting; if it was the former, then that would spare him a lecture.

Sean chose to assume it was the former and to modify if necessary. “That’s good. I don’t like giving the ‘we shouldn’t exploit our powers for lawbreaking and personal gain’ speech any more than you’d want to hear it.”

He felt confident in that assessment.

Which brought them back to the matter at hand.

“Even without it, this is automatic detention, you know.” He expected she was aware that it was more than that, but the automatic detention was the starting point. All of the students were informed of this through their student handbooks, although the psychiatrist knew for a fact that most of the students never bothered to open their handbooks. Some were holding up otherwise slanted furniture in their dorms while others lay forgotten on bookshelves.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Automatic detention was the least of her problems, Marnie figured. While panicking over the weekend she'd touched upon detention and then sailed right past it to more extreme possibilities. If she could get away with only detention it would be a miracle, but she knew better than to expect that. So she only nodded, with the tiniest sense of gratitude that she would at least be spared that speech.

What did detention even involve, anyway? Marnie hadn't been in trouble before, having spent her time at Hammel just trying to get along and graduate. Surely it wouldn't be as simple as just copying lines, not for an offense this big. Those details hadn't been in the handbook.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Automatic detention was the beginning of her problems. If Marnie had been caught drinking in her dormitory rather than out at a club, then she would go through the housing punishment system with the Head of Housing watching over her. Instead, she had landed squarely in Sean’s office, for better or for worse.

Up until this point, Marnie had more in common with the psychiatrist than she knew. He had never deliberately run afoul of school rules during his time as a student at Hammel, and thus he had never interacted with the disciplinary system. He had never had detention, since any problems he caused had been accidental due to his powers, and Robert Hopkins had intervened on his behalf. Despite not earning detention as a student, he knew that the system had been reminiscent of other detention systems across the country, and consisted primarily of sitting around doing nothing, with occasional busywork.

Sean preferred that the students have more productivity than that.

“Detention is after classes end, five days a week, for two weeks. I’m going to give you a research topic to work on during that time, in addition to your homework. I do read them and give notes, so expect comments.” He mentioned that not because he thought Marnie would slack on the assignment – he did expect more of her – but because he had seen plenty of students who treated it as a joke, only to learn otherwise when they doubled their workload.

“You’ll also be grounded.”

Which she should have expected.

[Marnie Sullivan]

As Dr. Neville walked through what her punishment would entail, Marnie stayed silent, opting to save her questions for after he'd laid everything out. Two weeks' detention didn't sound like very long, considering the offense - not that she was going to argue about it - until she realized that it would probably interfere with track practice. Her teammates would notice her absence, no doubt. If the Hammel rumor mill got ahold of what she'd done, Marnie though with a twist in her gut, that would probably be why.

The research paper, though she couldn't call it unfair, was its own beast. They were halfway through her last semester as a senior, which meant she had plenty of homework already. So far she'd managed to stay on top of it, but adding to her workload meant Marnie would have to cram as much as she could into those detentions.

So basically she was replacing track with extra work for two weeks. Swell.

The grounding was no surprise, but not having been grounded even by her parents before, Marnie wasn't sure what all it entailed. No leaving campus, that was obvious, but what about her morning runs? Would she have to give up her trail runs and stick to the gymnasium where she could be supervised? Or would she not get even that, forced to go straight from class to detention to her dorm? Could she visit her roommates? Could she receive visitors herself?

Another realization colored her cheeks with an embarrassed flush. Being grounded surely meant no more home ec room dinners with Safia. What would she think about this? 

Marnie slumped a little lower in her seat. The next few weeks didn't look pretty.

"What's my paper supposed to be about? Or do I find that out later?" she asked, glancing up nervously from her lap.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“The topic will be determined,” Sean informed her. The drawback to his philosophy about school discipline was that he had to individualize the assignments to the particular student receiving them. He wanted students to learn and improve themselves, rather than engaging in mindless busy work, which meant that he had to take the time and effort to decide what would work best, while also familiarizing himself enough with the subject to offer meaningful critique.

And the students thought that he did this for fun.

He had time to think of her assignment, and so he wouldn’t concern himself with details right now.

“I also wouldn’t worry about the rumor mill,” he informed her, replying to the thought she hadn’t voiced. Given the behavior of some of the other students, Marnie still didn’t fall outside of parameters, and, as scandalous this might have been to him at her age, given that he was a former Boy Scout and Altar Boy, none of this would faze the current study body.

He kept his gaze on her from across the desk. After watching her for a moment, he asked, “Do you have anything that you want to say?” Not in her defense, since she had already received her punishment, and because this wasn’t a hearing. Rather, he wanted to know what she had been thinking, and the psychiatrist would give her the opportunity to explain herself.

[Marnie Sullivan]

The corners of Marnie's mouth pinched tight in a facsimile of a smile. Don't worry about the rumor mill? Easy for him to say. She supposed the comment was meant to be reassuring - because graduation was right around the corner? Because people with strong character weren't supposed to care what other people thought anyway? That was all well and good, but she did care. Marnie didn't know how not to care about it.

"Do you have anything that you want to say?"

From another adult, it might have been a prompt for an apology, and she would have tripped over herself to give one if it weren't already completely obvious how much she regretted breaking the rules. Instead, Marnie wished for the umpteenth time that it had been somebody else, anybody else, who'd found her.

Back in August, it was Dr. Neville standing on that auditorium stage, putting into words for the first time Marnie had ever heard that the way she'd been feeling, the thoughts she'd been having, were not only possible but normal. It hadn't been enough to put her confusion to bed, and lord, was there plenty of that; but it meant that instead of shoving her questions off into a corner and ignoring them, she was allowed to wonder and inquire and investigate, even if she didn't want other people knowing about it. It was why she'd bothered going to the LGBT center in the first place! And if it hadn't felt so intensely personal, if Marnie had felt comfortable bringing her questions to anybody besides one or two of her peers, it would have been Dr. Neville.

But instead of turning to a trusted advisor, she'd turned to a pack of lesbians, and that mistake was what had landed her in this chair. How was Marnie supposed to explain that?

"...My parents," she said finally, "will they find out what kind of place it was?"