A Rip-roaring Good Time

[Jasper Blackwater]

OOC: thread is backdated to the last school day before winter break.

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Of all the places that Jasper Blackwater might have desired to be, wedged between the mop bucket and the industrial sink in the janitorial closet was not one. Unfortunately, he had not been consulted in the matter. His hand had been forced by the circumstances.

He was supposed to be on his way to math class, but he knew that there was no way he would make it in time. His gaze shifted uneasily between his phone’s clock and its contact list, which he had scrolled through no less than five times with jerky, frantic movements of his thumb.

Flick, flick. 

He could hear the last of the foot traffic dying down in the hallway. He could practically feel the seconds ticking away. He could also, rather more tangibly, feel the gritty cold of the polished concrete floor against his indecently exposed thigh. He inhaled deeply and released the captive air into the chemical-scented damp.

He looked back to his phone. Flick, flick.

Jasper was, as a general rule, hard to embarrass. He was insecure about plenty, although most of his insecurities were well-hidden out of necessity. He said—and did—a lot of dumb things, and managed to laugh most of them off. Every now and then, though, something would catch him by surprise; a phrase, a joke, a situation beyond his control.

It was amazing how quickly split seams could become existential crises.

He stopped mid-flick to think. Killian, his best friend, couldn’t afford to be tardy again. Audrey was nice, but her dream was to go to an Ivy League school, and she took her studying seriously. Alanna....

No. Absolutely not. The idea of Alanna seeing him like this was enough to make his stomach clench and his face burn bright with shame. He liked her, but seeking her out for help in this situation was completely out of the question. Indeed, the fact that he liked her was why it was out of the question. She was a sweet, tolerant person, but he was pretty sure that nobody had ever seduced a girl by sending them a text that said hey, this is pretty awkward, but my pants ripped and I’m hiding in the first floor cleaning closet, hee hee.

He looked down again. Then, he scrolled until his thumb was hovering over the entry that said Nory G.

He pressed it and opened the message screen before he thought to hesitate. He’d known Nory for a while, and they were more similar than not. She was nice. More importantly, she was not judgmental. As for the repercussions of what he was about to ask of her—what was he about to ask of her, actually?—well, he would have liked to think about those, but he didn’t really have time.

2:01 PM
nory
are you in class yet
i am in the cleaning closet by the student lounge
my pants are ripped
like
from the back pocket halfway to my knee
help??

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

“To fuel industrial development, Stalin moved to collectivization of Russia's agriculture.” A long squeak underlined the keyword Mrs. Brocklehurst had written on the whiteboard. “Began in 1928, collectivization merged independent peasant farms into joint enterprises managed by the government." Mrs. Brocklehurst paused. "Of the problems that plagued the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule, collectivized agriculture caused more deaths than anything except World War II. Mismanagement of the nation's crops starved as many as 6 million peasants. The 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine was—Miss Gwinn, do you have something to share with the class?”

Nory looked up with one hand holding back the peal of laughter that had escaped her. She forced her mouth into a shape appropriate for the deaths of millions of Russians and squeaked, “No, Mrs. Brocklehurst.”

Mrs. Brocklehurst's eyes narrowed, but she turned back to the whiteboard and continued with the lesson. Nory spared a glance back at the phone in her lap. Of course this had happened to Jasper. A master of blind texting, Nory stared at the back of Mrs. Brocklehurst's head while she replied:

2:06 PM


jasper your making me laugh in mrs broclkhursts class
im going to come give you your medal
for doing thtat
give me 2 min

Careful not to look at her phone again lest it trigger another burst of amusement, Nory waited until she trusted her bearing to remain sober. Then she relaxed her shoulders, closed her eyes, and slid her foot so that it rested against her backpack. She focused on her bag and the tiny, heat-like spikes of trace isotopes inside it, most of them in the battery of her calculator. She pushed. The isotopes flared, and the Geiger counter on her ankle emitted three sharp chirps.

All of the teachers knew what it meant when Nory's leg beeped. Mrs. Brocklehurst stopped lecturing long enough to look sharply at the young woman. Nory allowed herself to flush with embarrassment. “I-I'm sorry,” she stammered. “It's my...” She trailed off and stared at her desk. “I think I need to take a break.”

Mrs. Brocklehurst hesitated, concern and impatience creasing her mouth. Then she turned away and waved her hand dismissively at the door. “In 1947, demands placed on the economy by World War II...”

Nory slipped meekly into the hall and broke into a jog as soon as she reached the stairwell. She'd have to explain her Geiger's jump to Mr. Batista, but Jasper said pocket to knee. That wasn't something you could hide with a sweater tied around your waist. She grinned as she trotted past the empty cafeteria. Ripped pants. Poor Jasper. Of course this happened to him.

The student lounge was empty. Nory closed the door for a few seconds of warning in case the cheerleading squad materialized while Jasper had his pants down, then tiptoed over to the closet and rapped on the door. “Jasper?” she called, unable to keep the smile out of her voice. “Doing all right in there?”

[Jasper Blackwater]

A handful of minutes passed after he’d sent his slew of desperate messages, and Jasper began to worry in earnest. What if Nory had her phone off? He knew full well that she hardly ever did, but what if? What if she was—he paused mid-thought, mortified—actually doing schoolwork? There was no way that he could stay in here until the end of the period. What if the janitor found him? Plus, he was allergic to Pine-Sol! The smell was making his throat itch.

His phone vibrated against his palm. The sensation filled him with such immediate relief that he nearly cried.

2:07 PM
nory this is serious!!!!

Still, he was smiling.

2:07 PM
please tell me that the medal has a button and ziupper
and is my size

2:08 PM
and is pants

The exchange was followed by two minutes of anticipatory silence, wherein Jasper pressed his back against the painted off-white cinderblocks and tried to be patient. He was not especially good at it; the nervous fidgeting of his left foot kept disturbing the lightweight metal shelving on the opposite side of the closet, rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat.

Her voice on the other side of the door caused him to scramble. There were a few rattles and bumps. He almost dropped his phone into the soupy gray water in the mop bucket.

“Shh!” he said. “No!” His voice was hushed and strained with laughter. He found the door handle and pulled the door inward just enough for her to wiggle in.

“Look!” he said, in the same tone of voice. Hysteria seemed to have reduced his vocabulary considerably. He turned to the side, the better to display his left leg in all of its bare, olive-toned glory. The fabric of his jeans, velvety and thin with wear, flapped with the movement. The rip started at the corner of his back pocket and had traveled along the side seam, where it had stopped just above the bunch of fabric at his knee. His boxers were visible: cotton, navy, and covered with tiny white moose.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

The door under Nory's knuckles rattled with indistinguishable banging and jerked open six inches. "You want me to...? Okay." Nory glanced around the lounge again, then dropped her bag and squeezed inside. Inside was dim, gritty, and smelled like Pine-sol. There was barely enough room for two people, and Nory found herself crouched under the tool shelf and straddling a five-gallon jug of bleach. "I wonder how many people have had sex in here."

Perhaps an ill-timed comment, since the next thing she saw was Jasper's generous thigh and moose-emblazoned underpants. "Oh, dear." You are a grown woman. Do not make a joke about underwear. But she couldn't help a stifled giggle and slight color in her forehead. "Man, what were you doing when that happened?"

Nory could have continued on this vein for quite some time, but the incident had clearly pushed her normally self-conscious friend into hysteria. Knowing something about what that felt like, she reached around a broom to rub his slightly squashed shoulder in a comforting gesture. "Aw, Jasper. It's okay." She grinned at him. "We'll get you fixed up in no time. Want me to go find a big coat or something?" Nory, whose build evoked an inedible bit of sinew left on the side of a plate, looked down at her own jeans. "I don't think any of my pants are going to fit you."

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper shot his friend a look of desperate amusement.

“Actually, remember when Jake and that one girl with the blue hair whose name I can’t remember—starts with a K—got in trouble for, you know, doing the thing—”

There was an ominous clatter; Jasper had knocked an army of half-full spray bottles with his gesturing hand, and was forced to attempt to steady them all with both. The corners of his bottom lip tugged nervously downward. He needed about three more hands. Served him right, he supposed, for trying to gossip in the midst of a crisis. He steadied all of the bottles except one, which subsequently fell forward and smacked him in the forehead before toppling to the floor between his sneakers.

He emitted a long, exasperated sigh.

“They’re moose,” he said dolefully, in reply to her apparent comment about deer. “And I wasn’t doing anything!”

This was not strictly true. In point of fact, it wasn’t even leniently true—it was a complete and shameless untruth. Jasper felt a little guilty about this, but there were some things he just couldn’t admit to another human being, even if that human being was Nory. Ripping his pants spectacularly while attempting to exercise in the empty student lounge was one of those things.

He’d been watching a re-run of Ellen, and the dancing had inspired him. He hadn’t been able to help himself. It wasn’t his fault.

“Thanks,” he said. The word was followed by a brief sniffle. He smiled meekly as she rubbed at his shoulder. “Nah, it’s okay. I don’t want to take something and risk not being able to give it back by the end of the day.”

He was boarding a flight to Tucson at 5:15 that evening. He offered a weak chuckle at her assertion that he wasn’t going to fit into her pants.

“Can you run up to my dorm and bring me another pair of mine?” he asked. His large, doe-like brown eyes were sparkling with hope. “It’s unlocked... there should be some in my drawers, still. I didn’t pack everything.”

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

"Oh is this where that happened?" Nory pulled her hands away from the wall and wiped them furtively on her shirt. "I mean, I suppose it's convenient, with all the cleaning stuff already--"

The sudden cascade of Windex interrupted them. Crammed underneath her own shelf, Nory could only watch as Jasper floundered with the wobbling bottles. By some miracle he managed to keep the shelf from collapsing, and his efforts were only rewarded by a lone squirt bottle bouncing off his head and clattering to a halt on the ground between them. Nory grinned at him. "You missed one."

The gap in Jasper's pants was so large that she could still see it from here. She had a hard time believing that it had burst open spontaneously. But if he had a flight to catch, she could heckle him about it later. She nodded and maneuvered a few inches out from under her shelf. "Got it. Can you--oof--give me your keys, just in case?" She extracted an arm, tripped on the bleach container, and seized the color of Jasper's shirt to keep from falling over. "Whoops! Sorry, hang on." After some wiggling and a few more apologies, she stood near the door reasonably unencumbered. "Room, drawers, pants. Got it."