525,600 Minutes [Ginny]

[L.C. Milliner]

*--outfit

Late.

The blonde flung open the door, closed it, and leapt down Sean’s porch steps in a single bound, landing, skidding, and regaining her balance before tearing down the road that pointed her toward downtown Pilot Ridge.

Late.

She was running at full speed, her bag was snapping and punctuating her steps by slamming against her hip whenever it could. Her breath turned into haze in the air, illustrating to her how cold it was, if she would notice.

Late.

Her hands were freezing because she had thrown on the wrong pair of gloves, the fingerless ones. One hand was balled into a fist, the other was on her head to keep her hat from falling off. The teen ran down the salted slate sidewalk, not stopping until she got to a stop sign and a car was coming. She let it pass, then took off running again. She wasn’t entirely certain if she was allowed to go out, because she hadn’t really asked Sean. If he got mad about it, she’d point out to him that he should be happy for her, making friends out of school.

L.C. looked up as she ran, noting the gray sky that was leaking out white snowflakes, the same snowflakes that dusted her jacket. The trees that were planted on the downtown sidewalk were leafless, yet were wrapped in Christmas lights and some were covered in snow and icicles. She didn’t stop to take in the beauty of the snow or admire them, like she normally would, but kept running ahead, passing people on the sidewalk without bothering to say ‘excuse me’ which led to many people yelling after her as she whizzed by, shouting their opinions of her and her running, even though she frankly didn’t much care for what they thought.

Because she was late. That was all that mattered.

She was out of breath when she reached the café, but she burst in nonetheless, causing many of the patrons to look up at here over their newspapers as she caught her breath, putting her hands on her knees as she panted. She pulled her hat off, not caring about the hair sticking up, and shoved it in her bag, looking around to see if her friend was there.

She had only met Ginny a few weeks ago, so L.C. wasn’t sure if she would be called a ‘friend’ yet, but it was the first word that came to her. Mind you, Ginny was in a category that was very much separated from the rest of her friends (er, friend, Vincent), but that didn’t mean anything. Ginny was smart and was capable of intelligent conversation when L.C. needed it, and, oh, Ginny was a girl. A girl that wasn’t afraid of her because of some incident that happened four years ago, or thought she was tacky because she had holes in her old clothes, or had accused her of stealing something, or was anything that the girls at Hammel were. She was spunky and sarcastic and fun.

She looked around, but she had been blinded by the light outside reflecting off all that snow and it left imprints on her eyes. It seemed dark to her in the café, even with the windows. But then again, she looked and saw the shades were down. If Ginny was already there, she couldn’t tell in the semi-darkness. She hoped that she hadn’t left because L.C. was late. That would suck royally.

“Well, jujubees.”

[Ginny Campbell]

Ginny slouched over the small, round table at the back of the café, earbuds jammed into ears and iPod playing Streetlight Manifesto at a much louder volume than her father would ever approve of, pencil scratching out math equations as she waited for L.C. to arrive. She kept glancing up when the movement of the door opening caught her eye, hoping it was the other blonde girl; when it turned out to be an older gentleman bundled up with scarves or a young mother with two children in tow she sighed and returned her attention to her homework. Even here, as far from the door as was physically possible she could still feel the temperature drop every time someone walked in through the door. She'd been lucky something that far back had been available; most of the tables were occupied now.

She was beginning to wonder if the other girl would show at all when the door opened once more, letting in flurries of snow along with her very late and obviously very flustered friend. The people nearest the door glanced in the direction of the new arrival, some with glares that didn't leave until the door thudded closed, shutting out the cold. She watched as L.C. yanked off her hat and began to scan the room, glancing right over her as if she wasn't there. It was dark in the corner, between the already dim mood lighting and the drawn shades, and perhaps that group of elderly men sitting at the table in front of her kept her hidden, tall as a few of them were. That just meant she needed to do something to get her new friend's attention.

She jumped up from the table, nearly tripping over her messenger bag, which she'd shoved under her feet as all attempts to hang it from her chair had resulted in the chair tipping over; apparently it could only hold the weight of her coat, and no more. She waved one hand frantically at L.C., the other turning off her music and yanking earbuds out of ears. "L.C.!!" She greeted, trying to be loud enough to be heard over the crowds without being too disruptive of other people's conversations. "Back here!!"

Once the other girl was closer she carefully stepped over her bag and pulled out the second chair, gesturing for her to sit. "So glad you could make it! I was starting to get worried." She looked L.C. over, admiring her outfit; they had similar taste, which thrilled Ginny. So many of the girls in her class were content to throw on a sweatshirt over jeans and call it a day. "I love your gloves," She informed the meta-girl with sincerity, "Aren't your fingers cold, though?" She knew hers would be freezing if she tried to get away with fingerless in this weather. In the fall they worked fine, but in snow flurries they were much less helpful.

She dropped back into her own seat, snapping her math book closed and shoving her homework to one side. "So how's your week been? I am so glad finals are over. Teachers are a bit mean, though, giving us work over winter break." She glared at her math assignment. She liked math, but it seemed awfully unfair to have any work to worry about between finals and the beginning of the next semester.

[L.C. Milliner]

The calling of her initials made L.C. jolt, and then relax immediately. Ginny was there, and everything was all good. She had worried for nothing, as usual. “Yo.” Raising her hand in greeting, she acknowledged she had seen the other girl. She made her way to the back table, tossing her bag over her chair, which was so empty that it that chair didn’t even squeak under the weight. All she had in it was her wallet, her shuffle, and her headphones. She threw out a quick ‘thank you’ as Ginny pulled her out her chair for her and the older girl sat, bringing her feet up so she was cross-legged, her favorite sitting position. She didn’t like her feet touching the ground. It was a quirk. She looked over to the counter where the coffee was ordered and debated on getting something, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to spend three hard-earned (read: stolen) dollars on a small frappe-whipped-cream-cappuccino-coffee-every-flavor-under-the-sun whatever.

Looking back to Ginny she smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I, er, had to clean up after an accident. It’s all good though.” She didn’t elaborate, but she was still thinking about what had delayed her. She had bought a can of soda from the school’s machine the day before and hadn’t opened it yet. She had shoved it in the refrigerator to take with her to the café so she wouldn’t have to buy anything, but when she pulled it out, she dropped it, which made her angry because that meant she had to wait to open it. She picked it up and was contemplating taking it with her or leaving it in the fridge. Then, Sean’s phone had rang, startling her, causing the hand holding the shaken Pepsi to twitch involuntarily and then there were spikes and an explosion and a gasping L.C. and a kitchen covered in soda to show for it.

She had picked up the receiver and slammed it back down with force, so whoever called Sean was still probably confused as to why they had gotten hung up on so violently.

L.C. snapped out of her memory to look at her gloves. “Oh, thanks. Yeah, I threw on the wrong pair when I was rushing to leave. But it’s okay.” The fact that her fingers were stark white said otherwise, but she overlooked it. They didn’t hurt, so it didn’t bother her. She unbuttoned her coat to reveal the bright yellow giraffe face underneath, but left the coat on. It was freezing. She casually leaned over to look at Ginny’s math, curious, and found out quickly that the equations made her brain hurt. How could she do that? It looked impossibly hard, even for someone as smart as Ginny. That was saying something.

“I didn’t have finals yet. I still have a week left before break, and when we come back we’re reviewing for a week and then we’ve got them.” She leaned back and tried to look contrite, but she couldn’t help but smile about it. She hated finals. “ I’ll probably have homework too. And Sean knows when I do, so I can’t lie and say I don’t to get out of it. My week’s been okay though. Just might get out of Hammel this year at this rate.” Not bloody likely, if Sean found the utterly destroyed can in his trash that was surrounded by brown stained paper towels. She wasn’t sure if the floor was still sticky or not. She waved it all away though and smirked.

“Enough about school though, school sucks. What’re you doing for the holidays?”

[Ginny Campbell]

Ginny waved a hand dismissively at L.C.'s apologies, "Happens. You made it, it's fine."

Punctuality was a virtue, but cleaning up after messes was infinitely more important, as the longer they were left undealt with the more difficult they were to undo. While she hadn't grown up with her father she'd visited often enough that this outlook had been beaten into her head; it was almost second nature now to clean up after herself, even if it meant tardiness.

"I know homework is necessary, I just wish they wouldn't assign it over the holidays." Ginny sighed. She had tried to get out of doing homework exactly once, when she was in Kindergarten. She had gravely informed her teacher that she only had to listen to her parents and thus didn't have to do anything her teacher said; it had come as quite a surprise to her five year old self when it turned out that her parents and her teachers communicated with one another. She didn't remember this incident, though it was one her mother liked to recount to all her friends (much to her chagrin), but she had never since attempted to shirk her school work.

She disagreed with the assertion that school sucked but she also understood that not everyone was interested in more scholarly pursuits, and she'd heard enough from the other girl to gather that the social aspects of education were difficult for her. Ginny herself had a relatively drama free schooling, even during the tumultuous middle school years, but relatively drama free didn't mean absolutely zero drama, so she could relate. And even in college, when people were supposedly more mature, she had found herself on the receiving end of what she considered slander: namely, that wearing any makeup at all and highlighting her hair meant she was a ditz and shouldn't be in the Engineering department.

"The holidays? Monday I'm going back down to my mom's and we're going to have Pre-Christmas, then I'll come back here and have real Christmas. My dad is way into it, I swear, if he could get away with it he would start decorating before Halloween." She rolled her eyes, but the giant grin on her face said she wasn't nearly as disgusted as she was pretending.

"Although this year he's been kind of....blah." She made a face, uncertain how to explain the changes in her father's demeanor. He was less enthusiastic than years prior; he'd been behaving oddly since summer. Since he'd injured himself, in fact. He'd never told her exactly how he'd hurt himself, simply that it was work related. At first she'd shrugged off her suspicions that his behavior had changed, told herself that she didn't see him enough to make that kind of assumption, but he was undeniably showing less enthusiasm for Christmas than normal. Unfortunately, she had no idea how a work related injury could trigger that kind of change, and so she had decided that this Christmas she was going to carefully watch James' interactions with Chase. She hoped she was just being suspicious and paranoid, because she liked her step-dad, but her real dad was more important.

"So what are you doing for the holidays? Or this afternoon? I was thinking about baking cookies, my dad has a ton of Christmas related cookie cutters. You know, reindeer and santa hats and crap like that? And as long as we clean up after ourselves he doesn't have to know we borrowed his kitchen." Or he wouldn't be able to be angry about it, anyway, since it was nearly impossible to hide anything from her dad. Scratch that, it was definitely impossible. He would know. But she would clean everything up and share cookies with him, so that should be enough to appease him.

"If I'm gonna make them I might as well make tons, you know? So if you wanna help, we can split the batch. Just need to swing by the store, I don't know how many eggs he has left and he might get a little pissy if I use them all up without asking."

[L.C. Milliner]

The older female leaned forward and propped her head on her hand, listening intently to her friend as she explained her holiday plans. She nodded at the part about Ginny’s Mom and then the part about her dad, smiling at the thought of Mr. Campbell putting up Christmas lights while handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. It sounded like something her would do- the man was a bit neurotic, although she wasn’t about to tell Ginny that. She stopped smiling and frowned when she saw her start to look concerned, though, and tilted her head to the side a bit as she tried to think of what she was talking about. “I don’t see your dad around much, so I dunno. But yeah, he looks all depressed when I see him, instead of his normal self.” She skirted around ‘neurotic’ and ‘cleanliness obsessed’ when it came to describing his ‘normal’ self, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t thinking it.

L.C. hadn’t heard anything about Mr. Campbell being injured. If she did, she would’ve tried to get more information about Sean, as it was, she also turned her suspicions to Chase, and maybe the little kid they adopted, whatever his name was. Maybe the kid was making them miserable- lord knows her mother blamed her enough that L.C. figured it was an adult thing. She wasn’t about to go pointing fingers for Ginny though, that would lead to conflict that she really didn’t want to get involved in. “Maybe he’s just tired or something. Everyone’s been working hard around Hammel lately. Sean’s been getting tired a lot too. He seems worried about stuff a lot.” L.C. wasn’t the most perceptive person in the world (if she was, she’d know what exactly was bugging Sean right now) but she did know something had happened to Sean’s friend, like a car accident or something because the guy was staying with them for a bit and it was really weird to have the two in the house together. He was all banged up when Sean brought him over, and it looked like a car had backed up over him and then ran him over again. That was why L.C. tried to get out more often; she didn’t like injured people, because she felt useless around them.

L.C. snapped out of her thinking and shrugged. “I don’t know. I think Sean and I are going to this dinner thing, and then I’m planning on looking into apartments sometime over break, or at least look into getting a job somewhere. I need one real bad, but nobody’s hiring. Economy’s bad, I guess.” Correction: no one was hiring her. Word kept getting around that she stole things and she went to Hammel, so her reputation that proceeded her usually wound up in the trash, with her application. She had tried the grocery store, the bakery, even some of the fast food places. No luck. She’d have to try harder. Looking back to the fall party, L.C. wished she could’ve taken Zac’s money then, but she didn’t- she should’ve known better then to let her foolish pride get in the way. Now she was poor, and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Baking cookies? Never done it.” L.C. said, perking up noticeably as the thought blossomed in her mind. Maybe she could make some and frost them and give them to Sean as a thank you gift, or something along those lines. She only halfway listened to Ginny talk about her father and his kitchen as she pictured giving Sean cookies she had made and him being proud of her. Maybe he’d actually smile for once and be happy instead of worrying all the time like he’d been doing before.

L.C. nodded with way more enthusiasm then was required and sprang up, ready to go. “Awesome! Let’s go then! To the store, then to your place for cookies! This is going to be epic!” She was almost bouncing on her toes, that’s how excited she was. People were turning to look at them, but since when did L.C. give a damn what other people thought? She was going to make some cookies, dammit!