helping hand {Wren}

[Lany Bishop]

Lany sat on the second seat to the left, front row. It hadn’t been very long since school had started up anew, and she was very quiet at that, and it was unlikely that anyone knew her by name. Her classmates were probably familiar with her type: bookish, scholarly, meek.

Though she did well in English class, she wasn’t as dedicated as some of them might think her to be: most of the time, Lany was busy doodling rather than taking notes. By the time the teacher was done talking and class was finished, she’d covered her notebook page full of sketches in the margins. Most were depictions of horses. She had a particular fondness for horses; she worked at the Pilot Ridge stables after school, and the great irony was that she was paid for it. To Lany, the job wasn’t a job at all. It was a privilege.

She was in the middle of sketching out a pair of hooves when the teacher called for group work. This was cause for alarm. Lany dreaded groupwork, because it meant that she’d have to find someone to work with, and she didn’t know any of these people – and nor did she want to work with them. She was not the best at communication. Lany looked around wildly, her brown ponytail skimming her shoulders.

[Wren O'Hara]

Of all the classes Wren was taking this semester, English was by far the one he was dreading the most. It couldn’t be fairly said that he disliked the subject, per se; he enjoyed reading, for example, and sometimes did quite a lot of it in his spare time. But the fact remained that English class required a great deal of writing, and writing was something that Wren was – and had always been – absolutely miserable at.

He’d blamed it on his dyslexia for as long as he could remember, even though his dyslexia primarily only affected his spelling, and there were problems in his writing that transcended his ability to excuse them. The scribbles of red in the margins of every paper he’d ever handed in bore witness to the fact. Poor grammar. Bad analogies. Run-on sentences everywhere.

It was for this reason that the announcement of a group assignment made him panic a little. Several of his classmates were apparently already very good friends, and those people paired off quickly. This left a little less than half of the students to gaze around cluelessly at each other; steeling himself, he turned to once side.

He met the hazel eyes of the quiet, brown-haired girl who had sat beside him since the beginning of the semester. He gave her a look that was slightly apologetic, as though to make up for the fact that she was probably about to do most of the hard work. He’d asked her for spelling help a few times, anyway, so it wasn’t as though they’d never talked before.

Sort of.

“Hi,” he said, a little awkwardly. “Do you have a partner yet? Want to team up?”

[Lany Bishop]

Lany nodded demurely, putting her hands on her lap. Her small smile – with a little bite on the bottom lip – showed nothing of her immense relief.

“Yeah. Sure,” she replied.

She knew of him, of course. She couldn’t say they were good friends, but they’d spoken before, usually when Wren needed help with something. Lany never questioned why he did…but then, why should she? It wasn’t like Wren needed her to help him all the time; in fact, the frequency was quite normal, and as happy to be approached as she was, Lany was even grateful that he did. She’d always sensed something of a kindred spirit in her fellow classmate. Wren, too, seemed to possess that humble but powerful sensitivity. He was quiet, like her. Maybe not as quiet, but just enough.
Lany liked him, in that his presence in the class was a comforting one, and that they were mutually beneficial to each other. He for his classwork, and she for situations like this. (Plus – she’d heard that his power was a rare one, and that made him interesting.)

Lany took a hold of the bottom of her chair and scooched closer to him. “Well…this shouldn’t take long,” she mumbled, her attempt at a conversation starter. “Um…so…”

She fumbled with the papers. Lany blinked at them, then pulled absently at her ponytail; picking up her pencil she scribbled a mark on top of it. “I can handle this, if you want. It’s not hard, and – and I don’t know why she thinks two people need to do it.”

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren nodded his approval, offering a small smile.

“Awesome,” he said. He stood up, then, and tried to meet her halfway by sliding his desk next to hers. With one reach of his arm, he pulled the chair over, too.

Wren didn’t know terribly much about Lany Bishop, apart from the fact that she was a Bishop, and he was pretty sure that almost everyone knew at least one Bishop. He knew that she was a very good speller, which was fortunate for him. He knew that she sometimes smiled at him when he wished her good morning before class, and he knew that he smiled back.

Really, that was all he needed to know to like somebody.

He made a show of straightening his textbook and his assignment papers perfectly. Unfortunately, that was as far as his enthusiasm went. She blinked at her papers; he blinked at her.

“Oh,” he said with a hint of surprise in reply to her generous offer. “It looks hard to me,” he said with a quiet huff of a laugh. “Hey, thanks for this. I owe you one. Let me know if you need me to do anything,” he finished, valiantly.

Several beats of silence passed between them. Wren was a little afraid of breaking her concentration, especially after she’d been nice enough to do all the work for him. Unfortunately, Wren also had a lot of energy in the mornings – he was what one might call a morning person – and he couldn’t stop himself from skimming Lany’s notes.

“Cool horse,” he said, quietly and a little randomly, pointing to the half-sketched doodle in the margin of her notebook paper. “My cousin had a horse. His name was Cinnamon.”

He paused.

“The horse, not my cousin,” he clarified unnecessarily in a half-whisper, even though everyone else in the classroom was talking at full volume; there was something very intense about Lany’s concentration that made him feel like he should be whispering.

[Lany Bishop]

Lany didn’t say anything in particular when Wren offered his thanks, just glanced up from the paper and gave him a small smile. She went to work almost immediately. It looked like she knew what she was doing, and, for the most part, she did; Lany did well in most classes, and English in particular, thanks to her love for the literary arts.

She didn’t mind the silence – she just hoped it wasn’t making her fellow classmate uncomfortable. After all, she could hear snippits of conversation around them, from students who knew each other, who were joking around or gossiping. Lany thought perhaps she should say something, too. She was just about to when Wren pointed out her horse.

Lany put down her pencil and looked up, breathing an embarrassed giggle. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.” She bit her lip, as if to restrain the smile growing at her lips. “Your – your cousin has a horse? That’s so cool.”

Now she was winding her ponytail in between her fingers. Her eyes had lit up. She maintained eye contact without fear. “I can’t afford a horse – I mean, my parents can’t. We’ve got a big family, so…” she shrugged. “Oh, but I work at the stables. They give me free riding lessons for it.”

Lany held up the paper she was drawing on. Wren couldn’t tell from the sketch, but the horse she’d tried to depict was a big gray, with black knees and a dappled belly. “I can’t say it looks like him exactly, but this is Cochise. He’s a big guy. Kind of a baby.”
Not many people were familiar with horses, because the animals needed a lot of upkeep and a lot of money, and the majority of the population wasn’t able to afford one, so Lany didn’t talk too much about it. She had a dire need to communicate to people that horses’ personalities were as varied as dogs’ or cats’, though, and she took the chance whenever she could get it. The subject was a source of unending fascination to her.

“You ever ride Cinnamon?” she asked.