The New Student...is Bored (open)

[Chris Carpenter]

So...this was the school, huh? Chris looked around at the buildings, the compound, the field...he really, REALLY wasn't impressed. To the boy who was so used to running free without anybody telling him what to do or where to go, this felt like a prison, one that he hadn't even DONE anything to get sent to.

His red hair blew a little in the light breeze that flowed over the grass as he sat down in the courtyard, looking for anything that might relieve his boredom. Damn it...why did it have to be Vermont? Weren't there about a hundred...now...a THOUSAND...places in the USA better than Vermont? Places that it would have been cool to be sent away to, where there were big cities and lots of people and all kinds of sights to see and places to go.

Not that he would be allowed to go out to them anyway. He wasn't even allowed to leave before he got permission. The unfairness of it chafed at him as he picked at a loose thread in his torn jeans. Hadn't he said that he'd come to their stupid school? He hadn't fought, or even argued very much beyond what he'd felt was necessary to assert his independence. It wasn't as though there was anything back home to keep him tied there anyways, and learning to use his power might be cool...but he still felt trapped.

He flopped on his back and looked at the clouds passing by. They were pretty nice clouds, he supposed. Still, watching clouds was dull. He quickly sat up again and got to his feet, pacing around. He didn't know anyone at this stupid place...not a single student or teacher. He didn't have anyone to show him the sights...provided this place had any sights to see, and he wasn't so sure about that. He didn't even have any of his brother's hand-me-down games or toys to play with...the jerk had gone through Chris's luggage and taken out everything he 'might' one day want again, threatening to accuse Chris of stealing them if he'd complained. It hadn't mattered that the older teen had tossed them away some time ago. Just that no one should have them but him.

Maybe he should go for a run. Just a short one. He had some candies he'd bought at the airport with a little of what money he had...but he probably shouldn't waste them. He wasn't going to get much, if any, money from home. He might need the ones he had.

Flopping down on the ground again, he threw up his hands. "Damn it!" he muttered. It wasn't that he was homesick. Hell no. He was too tough for homesickness. Yeah. Much too tough.

He could even almost convince himself of that.

[Andi Thalis]

For the past five years, this place had been her home. She loved it here, but she would never admit it to anyone without the drugging effects of alcohol first. As it was, she never shared personal information about herself until they shared the info themselves. She was just selfish like that. The girl, young woman really, walked out of the dorms and into the fresh air, her heels clacking on the pavement. Her outfit was represent of the current season; cool enough for the dark colors, but warm enough for the thin fabrics.

Her fingers were busy shuffling cards, flicking a couple to make them hover and glow around the edges. Normally she would do it with the bag of popcorn she normally carried around, but she wasn’t feeling popcorn today, so that’s why she was walking around, shuffling cards in her hands, hazel eyes concentrating on them instead of the people milling around. She ignored the lingering looks of appreciation and interest as she passed them; if one boy approached her, then they would all come over, and then she’d have to break rules and blow stuff up.

Wait…that sounded like a good idea.

Hearing a curse being muttered, the woman looked up to see a little boy with ruffled red hair laying down on the grass, looking like he was missing home. Hell, Andi missed home sometimes, but this kid just sounded like it. She walked to his head and bent over, her chocolate hair hanging around her face as she looked down at him. He reminded her of herself when she had first arrived here at Hammel, but she had gotten over it as soon as she had started working on her powers. This kid would too.

“Hey, small fry,” she greeted, her voice teasing. She kept shuffling her cards. “Somethin’ the matter?”

[Chris Carpenter]

A shadow fell over him as he closed his eyes, trying to make himself relax. He could feel the sun's warmth fade as someone moved between him and it and he opened his eyes to see the older girl standing over him. He raised an eyebrow curiously, unsure of how to react to the sudden intrusion...until she spoke.

At that moment, Chris was torn. If a guy had come up to him and said something like that, he would have been on his feet in a second, asking if the other male was trying to start something, ready to go at a moment's notice to avenge the insult. He HATED being talked to like a kid. Still, this was a girl, not a guy. You didn't just start fights with girls. They were...well...girls. Still, he couldn't just let her get away with talking to him like that.

He scowled and got to his feet, glaring up at the girl with his arms folded across his chest. "I am NOT small," he said irritably. "I'm big for my age." His eyes challenged this newcomer to say anything derogatory about his age. Anything at all.

"And..." He glanced away, scratching his cheek. "Yeah, somethin's the matter. This place just don't seem right. Maybe it's just too different, and I miss bein' able to go wherever I wanted." It was about the closest he'd admit to being homesick and even having to admit that much stung his pride.

[Andi Thalis]

Andi watched as the boy got to his feet and crossed his arms, and indeed, he was big for his age…whatever age it was. He looked to be twelve or thirteen, with big green eyes that held promises and freckles across his skin that made Andi smile a bit. Yeah, she was a badass sometimes, but she liked little kids. He reminded her of that time after her mom had died, when she had been lost and rebellious and alone.

She wouldn’t leave this kid in that place.

She pocketed her cards and let him see he had her full attention. “I’m sorry for calling you small, but small fry was all I had, since you’re younger than me,” she apologized. “And everywhere you move is going to be different and not right, but it grows on you after a while. Me, I’ve been here five years, and already this place seems like home.”

She could see the battle he was having within himself and sighed softly. “As for the being able to go wherever you wanted, well, I can help with that, if you want,” she offered, looking down at him with a smile tilting the corners of her mouth. “I have a motorcycle, and I can give you a ride whenever you need to go into town.”

[Chris Carpenter]

The older girl's attitude put Chris off his stride somewhat. Weren't people supposed to get the whole 'aloof/macho' thing and be impressed? Damn, maybe he really just was too young to pull it off. Nah...she was just different, that was all. He'd just have to work at it. On someone else.

For another thing...why was she being so nice to him? They didn't even know each other, after all. In Chris's experience, which he considered quite extensive, most people weren't nice to someone they didn't even know for no reason. They always wanted something from you, like Mr. Mandragora...Sean...had. That one still hurt, and the hurt made Chris wary of accepting most helpful strangers at face value. Still...she was, as previously noted, a girl. Girls were supposed to be nicer than boys.

Yeah, it was probably something like that. Well...in that case, it really would be pretty rude to just ignore her or push her away. He wasn't exactly a gentleman, but he could be polite when he wanted to. Really. Sorta. Maybe a little?

Besides, she was apologizing for calling him small already and that went a ways towards soothing his pride. "Yeah, well...it's okay I guess. I'm Chris." He shrugged as though to say there were no hard feelings.

Still, as she started offering more help, the tingling of suspicion remained. Why would she want to go out of her way to help him? "Why would you help me?" he finally asked, feeling as though he had to give voice to his suspicions or he'd never be rid of them. "Why would you...wait, did you say a motorcycle?"

Chris's eyes lit up in excitement. "Wow, really? I mean...I've never ridden on a real motorcycle before. I've only seen them and most of the older guys I met back in New York who had motorcycles wouldn't let me near them." He could randomly get hyper like this as a side-effect of his powers, especially if something interesting or exciting happened. For the moment, his mood had completely changed.

[Andi Thalis]

He was cute, she would admit that. She smiled when he introduced himself, having that tone of voice that tried to make him sound like he was brushing off her apology. She chuckled a little; this kid was amusing, and she liked him for the way he tried to fit in. “My name’s Andi,” she told him, reaching out to ruffle his hair.

“As for helping, well, let’s just say I was a lot like you when I first came here,” she offered. Lost, alone, full of anger and sadness, her father placing her here so that he could tend to his injured wife and cowering in fear of his daughter. “So I know how you feel right now. I just want to help, so you don’t end up like me, ‘kay?”

His excitement over her bike made her grin. The Ferrai bike was brand new to the market, and Andi had been one of the first to have her dad buy it for her. “Yes, I do have a motorcycle,” she told him. She flipped out her phone and scrolled through her pictures, finally finding the one she wanted and showing it to him. “I can give you a ride, I have spare helmets. Don’t worry, those guys back in NYC aren’t cool enough to have someone like you ride a bike like this.” She smiled at him. “What do you say, Chris? Friends?”

[Chris Carpenter]

Chris's eyebrow twitched as she ruffled his hair. Damn it, he hated it when people did that...besides, it took him forever to get his hair to lie down flat, even if it was just for a few hours, and now she'd just gone and mussed it up again...well, alright, the couple of hours had already passed and it had already started to resume its usual messy state, but that was completely beside the point. Once again, if she'd been a guy...oh right, motorcycle.

Chris switched moods from irritated to excited in an instant, though he did pull back a little to protect his precious hair from further female-initiated assault. He just wasn't going to let that get in the way of actually getting a REAL motorcycle ride. "Nice to meet you, Andi." Hair-ruffling aside, she was already becoming one of his favorite people.

The bit about her being like him gave him pause. His initial reaction was the typical teenage 'no one understands me' statement, but something in her voice told him she was being sincere. She wasn't all THAT much older than him...maybe she really did understand. He looked away uncomfortably. "It's just...like you said, everything's different. It feels like things are changing way too fast." He paused. "Ah...not that I can't handle it of course. I mean...I'm a guy, it's no problem." Right, no weakness. He'd forgotten for a moment.

He watched as she scrolled through pictures, impressed at what he saw. "That's a really cool bike...how'd you get it?" Something like that had to have cost a fortune. He couldn't imagine ever having even half as much as it would cost to buy a bike like that. It probably cost tens of thousands of dollars. "And...yeah, friends! Definitely!"

[Andi Thalis]

Her eyebrow quirked. “So if you’re a guy, it’s no problem, hm?” she said, getting the idea that, like every other kid, he had a complex that girls were nicer and sweeter and softer than boys. Well, the kid was wrong. “You would be surprised by how many boys here do have problems.” She winked at him. “You see, the boys here are a bunch of dumbasses, so they don’t use their brains straight.”

When he asked about the bike, she chuckled and put her phone away. “I asked my dad to buy it for me,” she told him, slipping into her pocket to grab her deck of cards. “You see, I have this power to make things explode and float and stuff like that, and I hurt my stepmom, and so my dad bought it for me to make sure I behaved. It seemed to work at the time, but I make trouble every now and again.”

His declaration of their friendship made Andi smile wider. “All right then, we’re friends now,” she said, shuffling her cards and making the top five glow and fly around Chris’s head before popping loudly as they exploded into colorful fireworks. “You just tell me whenever you want a ride, and I’ll take you for a ride. Need help settling in?”

[Chris Carpenter]

Chris nodded at Andi's words. He wasn't mysoginistic in a harmful way, really, much of it was childish naivite and misinformation that came from hanging out mainly with boys his own age or a little older. Still, at the moment th ese beliefs were fairly deeply ingrained and getting free of them wasn't going to happen just overnight. "Well...yeah, I mean...a guy can't be worried about things like that, right? I'll handle it." He smiled happily. "Especially since I've actually got a friend here now. He didn't quite understand what she meant about the guys around here being a bunch of dumbasses, but he supposed he'd find out soon enough if he hung around for awhile.

He listened in silence to her explanation about how she got her bike. "Must be nice having someone who'll buy stuff for you...even if it's just to get you to be good," he said with a grin. Really, his own parents hadn't especially cared if he was good or bad so long as he'd stayed out of their way and hadn't caused trouble for them personally. "But...you wouldn't have really hurt someone on purpose, right?" Surely not, she didn't seem like the type.

Part of him did wonder just a little if he could get stuff like that...but the idea of being feared felt somehow wrong to him. He didn't want people to be afraid of him, just like him.

"Cool!" he said, shaking off the thoughts as she made her offer. "I'm really not supposed to be heading off campus without permission...ya know, not that I care that much what they say, but I don't want to get in trouble my first day here. I really could use a hand settling in, though. I'd really appreciate it."

[Andi Thalis]

His grin lifted her spirits. He really was a good kid, and if he was anything like her, they would be able to cause trouble together. She chuckled and shook her head. “Nah, I wouldn’t hurt anyone. The reason I hurt my stepmom was because she was yelling at me, and I was twelve, and I threw a Barbie at her and it exploded, and that’s how I found out I had powers,” she explained.

“It is nice to get someone to buy you stuff, but then sometimes, you have to earn it. When that happened, I scared my dad so badly that every time I did something bad, he was afraid I’d take it out on him, so he would buy me nice things so that I would never get angry with him,” she told him, her expression a little sad. She had never meant to scare her dad, but now that he was so terrified of her that he never visited, it was a trade-off she’d just have to deal with.

When he accepted her offer, she winked at him in a friendly manner. “I’m the queen of sneaking off, so you’d have no trouble getting off campus,” she told him as she looked around at the other people, pocketing her cards once again. “Now, which dorm do you live in? I can carry a few bags and such, or do you just want a tour of where the cool kids hang out and stuff?”

[Chris Carpenter]

Chris couldn't help but laugh a little at the idea of an exploding barbie doll. "Man, that must've been somethin' to see...a barbie exploding like that. It's good that no one was really hurt, though. I found out about my powers when..."

For a moment, he hesitated. He didn't really want to reveal the whole story. It was kinda embarrassing, how stupid he'd been. "...I was running away from some people, and the next thing I knew I was way, WAY ahead of them." Fortunately he'd outdistanced them by enough that when he collapsed a driver had found him and helped him to a hospital before his pursuers could reach him.

He took a moment to consider what she was saying. That...made a lot of sense, and they were clearly thinking along the same lines. It must have been kind of lonely, he thought, to have someone get you things not because they liked you but because they were frightened of what you'd do if you didn't get what you wanted. Some people...like Mr. Mandragora...clearly thought there was nothing wrong with this, but it wasn't something that Chris personally understood. "Yeah, I guess people are just scared of what they don't understand. My parents were pretty glad to send me off here when they heard." Of course, they'd never really cared much anyways, but that was beside the point.

He pondered sneaking out and then grinned. Well, he wasn't much for rules anyways and if she was a master at it then he could probably get away with it too. If nothing else, he could always run. "Sure, sounds fun. Umm...my bags are sitting in an office right now while they work on assigning me a dorm, so maybe you could show me any neat places around here?" He wasn't sure if there really were any neat places in this area, but he could always hope.

[Andi Thalis]

His story told her that he was a boy used to being bullied, if anything by the way he had gotten his powers. Andi had never stooped down to bullying, since she was fairly confident that she could make people scared by her power alone, not with her cheerleader-type appearance. He was a strong kid, able to take the changes in his life in stride and still be able to hold his head up and butt personalities against her.

He was a keeper, this one.

“Everyone’s scared of what they don’t understand. I was scared once too,” she said softly, lowering herself to half-kneel in front of the kid. “This school changed everything. I have a place of my own, somewhat, and some friends who like to cause trouble with me.” She gave him a quick grin. “You’ll get used to this place soon enough, Chris.

“Now, for the neat places,” she continued, “Personally, there’s nothing neat at Hammel, except Mr. Campbell’s office and maybe the way the jello wiggles a certain way.” She chuckled. “Everything neat is in Pilot Ridge itself. Well, not everything. It all depends on how you see it here.”

[Chris Carpenter]

Chris felt more relaxed than he'd been in weeks. His concerns about Sean...about the road his path was taking, his worries about moving away, his bitterness about his family problems, they all seemed distant right now. Maybe this place wouldn't be so bad after all...provided it lasted and he wasn't disappointed again. Still, he couldn't just go through life expecting to be disappointed, could he? That would only make him and everyone around him miserable and unhappy.

You couldn't live your life expecting everything to go badly. You had to look forward, and that was what he was going to try to do. Whether he would succeed...well, he'd see.

He gave Andi a bright, honest smile as she came down to his level. He liked it when bigger people did that to look him in the eye. It made him feel like they were treating him as an equal instead of talking down to him. "Yeah," he said with a grin, scratching his nose with one finger. "Yeah, I think you're right. Maybe I can start fresh here. I admit I'd rather the school was somewhere a bit more..central, ya know? But what the heck, right? It's still a place I haven't been to before."

He listened to her explanation fo the nearby area and facepalmed. "The way the jello...wiggles? Okay, maybe I was wrong. Either way, what's outside of the school does sound a lot more interesting."

[Andi Thalis]

When she had come to his level, it was in her best interest to get closer to the boy. His bright smile made her feel like a superhero, like she could do anything for him and it would be just enough to keep that smile on his face. He spoke about the school and she was amazed that she had had the same thought when she first came to Hammel. Sure, the school was located in a place where the kids could practice their power without harming anyone, but really, secluded in the mountains, away from the big cities with all their lights and fun things to do?

“Outside these walls, there be fun, I tell you,” she said with a grin. “Trust me, I know we can find fun things to do. There’s this mall, and anything you can imagine is inside it. And there’s this café, when you open the door, it plays guitar, and the owner is a sweetheart,” she told him in detail. “There’s a lake on the outskirts of town where a lot of people go swimming and boating and stuff, and about a half hour away from here is the University of Vermont.”

She couldn’t wait until she graduated and went to college. It would be so much fun. “Despite all these fun things outside, it all depends on the person you hang out with,” she told him, looking at him with bright eyes. “Me, I’m probably the best person to do this with.” Oh, so modest, Thalis.

[Chris Carpenter]

Chris sat back on the grass and listened to Andi tell tales of the area and the more she spoke, the more confident he got. Yeah, why couldn't he find a way to enjoy this place? He was young, tough (as far as he was concerned), and had a great imagination. No matter where he was, even in the stix like he was now, he'd be able to find things to do and places to go...and friends to hang out with.

"The mall sounds awesome...and the cafe sounds like it'd be a neat place to go and relax. I can't wait to meet the owner, I bet he's a neat guy." Chris looked up at the sky for a moment, thoughtfully. Well...okay, so there was still a bit of a hangup about the mall. It would be kinda sad to go through those neat stores filled with stuff he wanted...and not be able to buy anything. Still, maybe he could find a part-time job somewhere, or run some errands for teachers or something like that. He was certainly fast enough. He didn't want to steal anymore. It was odd, how the farther away from Mandragora and the rest of his cronies, the stupider the older man's reasoning sounded. Sure the idea of getting money without having to work for it was appealing, but stealing from people hurt them, and it just wasn't right in the end. No, he was better off finding work for a living, at least until he could think up a way to make a living off his powers without hurting anyone. Hey...a kid could dream, right?

He couldn't help but laugh a little at Andi's bragging, but whether she was exaggerating or not, he could tell that hanging out with her was a lot of fun. "Sure, we'll have fun together then, if you don't mind hanging around with someone who's so much younger than you." That was, admittedly, part of what made him nervous. Older kids had talked to him back in NYC, but mainly they'd treated him as somewhat annoying or at best, a mascot, he'd never really been like family or a friend. Would it be alright for Andi to hang out with someone so much younger? Wouldn't her friends bug her over it?