Ignorance. [open]

[L.C. Milliner]

*--outfit

One would think that, being a ‘private academy’, Hammel Institute would have much better lunches.

“Well, can’t complain about free food.” The pale girl sitting by herself said, swirling her chicken strip through a pool of ketchup. She only had two more left, but she knew from experience she would still be hungry. She was fairly certain the extra vegetables weren’t going to tide her over until supper either. As she polished off the last of her ketchup covered meat, she dusted breading off her fingers and looked around, feeling like a prairie dog as her head swiveled above the heads of the other students. The room was sparsely populated, but it still seemed like nobody wanted to get close to her today. Her whole table row was entirely empty as well as the one behind her. She blamed Saturdays. Most students didn’t eat lunch in school on Saturdays. They took the money their parents gave them and went out to restaurants. It was kind of like how no one ate dinner there except her.

“Freakin’ free lunches. Jujubees.” She muttered, choking down some more chicken as she longed for a cheeseburger from McDonalds instead. She wished vainly for money. She needed money. She always had needed money. Holding up the remainder of her last piece of meat, she leaned her head on her hand. “Well, L.C., what have you always done when you needed money? Stolen, right? Well gee, look how well that turned out.” She popped her food into her mouth, picking up her fork to stab at some green beans. Limp and disgusting, she realized eating them was going to be a chore in itself. She sat the fork down, rubbing her eyes as she felt her skin prickling. She resisted the urge to scratch it and instead focused on not falling asleep over her lunch.

Looking at herself in the concave portion of her unused spoon, she noticed how ghastly she looked. Her eyes were rimmed with red and her skin looked as pale as a sheet. The bleached blonde of her hair didn’t help her, and neither did her outfit. The white t-shirt under her grey tank top nearly blended into her skin, the lines of the top showed she was unhealthily thin. Was she becoming anorexic? The thought of it made her pick up her fork again, daring to digest the rubbery green beans that had gone cold long before she had finished her chicken. She looked in the spoon once more and rubbed the skin under her eye lightly. She blamed it on the nightmares. It was the twisting terror that crawled into her bed to ruin her sleep each night, making her bolt up screaming with six inch spikes tearing out of her skin, ripping up pajamas and bed sheets to the point where casualties were into the triple digits.

“Jujubees.” She repeated, pushing her tray away to lay her forehead against the table. She resisted the urge to stab a hole through it the size of a quarter and took off her hat, revealing browning roots coming in. ‘Note to self, hair must be bleached again soon. Consider that tongue piercing while you’re in the mall. Buy painkillers and sleeping pills. Talk to the nurse about horse tranquilizers.’ she folded her hands in her lap, concentrating more on closing her eyes to rest then what other people may have been doing around her. Some may have thought a cafeteria table was an odd place to rest, but it served her knees just fine.

It wasn’t like she was about to finish her lunch, anyway.

[/blockquote][/blockquote]

[Vincent Verax]

Vincent had made an amazing discovery this morning. Something greater than leftover pizza in the fridge or $20 stuffed in a pocket of his pants that he'd forgotten he'd had. No, this discovery would change the world forever! Okay, I lied, it may not be able to change the world, but it would certainly change his day for the better. What is this amazing discovery, you ask? What could Vincent have found in his dirty little apartment that would make him so excited?

Roller Blades.

Hidden under the world's largest pile of dirty pants were the pair of roller blades he'd bought last year in order to attempt various stunts. They had all ended as painful failures, if you're wondering. After he'd run out of ideas for what to do with them, they were tossed in the corner of his bedroom and began to disappear under heaps of dirty laundry. Vin had a tendency to buy new clothes when his closet was getting sparse and he didn't feel like doing laundry, so the pile had been pretty massive before he'd finally worked up the nerve to wash everything (it had taken him the better portion of six hours until everything was once again clean) and even longer to force himself to hang it all back up in his closet. It was then that he discovered the holy grail on the floor, just begging for mayhem and misery.

And that is how we come to find Vincent blading down the halls of the school, bursting through the doors of the cafeteria, and attempting to jump over the tables like they were hurdles. Laughing like the maniac that he is, he managed to clear one table with little trouble, the second he lost his balance, the third he face-planted into. That third table also happened to be the one at which L.C. was sitting. Recovering from his royal fail, he pushed his messier-than-normal hair back out of his face and shot a proud grin at the blonde girl sitting there. "Was that fuckin' AWESOME or what?" There was a red mark on his forehead where it made contact with the table, but it was quickly fading, and there wouldn't even be a bruise there, bless his power.

[L.C. Milliner]

Hearing the noise of the doors slamming open, L.C. rolled her head to the side and gave a gust of air to move her hair out of her face to see what exactly was going on. Seeing that it was only a student, and what seemed to be an idiot one at that, she moved her forehead back to the cool table. She was trying to pretend she didn’t know him. She closed her eyes for a moment, but two seconds later that proved to be the biggest mistake she had made all day.

The first thing she heard was the squeak of a table and the clack of skates on the linoleum floor. The second thing she heard was the clatter of chairs just a table away and another table squeak and, just as she was about to lift her head, literally lifting it an inch off the table, something smacked the table and bounced it upward. She yelped as her forehead cracked against it and, instinctually trying to anchor herself down, two spikes shot from her skin and the cracking of wood was heard as two dime-sized holes were punched into the table. It worked, but she retracted them quickly to see what the hell-- or who the hell, for that matter-- had scared the crap out of her and made her cause property damage. Sitting up, she pulled her hair out of her face and ignored the holes to stare at the person across from her, who was grinning like an idiot. Though, that might have had something to do with the fact that he was slightly an idiot.

“I missed it, Vin. Do it again.” L.C. smirked, propping her chin on her hand. She was glad he hadn’t run into her tray she had slid across the table; he had only just missed it. She used her unoccupied hand to slide it a little further over so that way no accidents would befall it, because really, the lunch tray hadn’t done anything to deserve something that bad. The lunch, maybe. The tray, no. Nothing deserved Vincent’s dangerous stupidity.

For the record, L.C. liked Vincent, she really did. He was probably number three on her list of crushes she had developed. When it came to looks, he had everything going for him; he was tall, dark, and she had seen him in leather pants to know that there was probably a good reason why it was so tight down there. Shirtless, he wasn’t bad, either. She had a thing for him for the first two weeks after they met. …But he was so stupid, it ended quickly. She could only deal with stupidity for so long until she was tricking him by asking him to go into town to buy fork handles and headlight fluid for her. She smiled at the thought and tuned back in to the world, looking down at the table and the holes in it.

“How am I going to explain this, then?” She muttered, poking her pinky finger through the hole to elaborate what she was talking about, then through the other. A perverted thought came to mind, so she quit. “Gotta stop putting holes through things. Damn.” She muttered to herself. She looked up to Vincent, catching the last of the mark on his forehead fading out of sight, and sighed. She probably had a red mark too, but it wasn’t going to heal like his head. She stooped to look under the table, staring at the roller blades on his feet before sitting up again.

“So, where’d you find them?” She asked, trying to recall if she had stolen them and hidden them or if she had stolen them and simply tossed them back into his room after discovering she disliked them because they were too big. It was one of the two. That was the best part about stealing from Vincent; he never noticed his things were gone. “How’d you find them? Your place is a mess.” She hadn’t been around to see if he had cleaned lately or not.

[/size]

[Vincent Verax]

He was a bit unstead on the blades as he grabbed a chair and collapsed down into it, looking back behind him at the chaos he had caused. Not only had he gone flying over the tables, but he'd sent chairs skidding away snd overturned a few and the tables were no longer in their tidy little line. Ah chaos, that was what he found most comforting. If you asked him, he'd say the cafeteria looked better that way. "Hey, y'broke th'table!" He pointed out, as if it was secret worth telling. "An' ya broke ya head!" He leaned across the table and poked at her forehead. "Aww, 'm sorry, s'my fault. Y'wanna hit m'?" L.C. was not the first to become collateral damage for his stupid stunts and she certainly wasn't going to be the last, but that didn't stop him from feeling bad when it happened. "Y'wan' m'to kiss it better?"

Vincent had a tendency to attract the outcasts of the school, those who didn't fit in with the normal social circles or those who were on the retarded side. L.C. happened to be one of the outcasts, but as far as Vin was concerned, she was a cool girl, she told cool stories, and her power was awesome. In fact, it was because of her power that they met, but that's a story for another time and another place. Of course, at first he'd found her attractive, but when she failed to put out in a timely manner (What? This is Vincent we're talking about here.) he stopped chasing her for that. He still liked having her around, she was fun, but friends is where the relationship stayed. It was better that way, really.

He too began to poke at the holes that she'd put in the table, trying to think up a way to explain them away. "Uhh... y'could say that two tiny meteors crash'd through th'table?" Well no one ever insulted Vincent for his imagination, it seemed to be always on at full force. This was Hammel, however, and I'm rather certain worse things have been done to school property than piercing by spikes. Like Sammy, who had burnt a dictionary and was thereby banned from the library. Eli's love for books was unhealthy, but at least it gave Vin someone smart to bother. Surely L.C. wouldn't get in trouble for two tiny holes in the table and if anyone said otherwise, the goth boy would just declare that they added character.

"An' I found 'em 'n m'room." He leaned back in the chair and kicked his feet up so that the blades were resting on the table. "Under this... like fuckin' ENORMOUS pile 'f dirty pants. Like... so big y'could hide a whole family 'f midgets in it. DUDE! I want fuckin' midgets f'pets, wouldn't that b'the SHIT?" He was grinning like a fool, picturing a little army of midgets running around his apartment, cleaning and cooking and generally doing his chores. Fortunately, that's considered slavery and is illegal. Midgets are safe from being under Vincent's command, but that's not going to stop him from daydreaming about it.

[L.C. Milliner]

“Can you be any louder? Don’t think they heard you in the Gym.” Swiveling around to make sure no one heard Vincent, or at least no one of authority did, the pale girl continued. “Nah, I’m not going to hit you. And kissing it won’t help.” She muttered, rubbing her forehead a little. She didn’t feel a headache coming on and there wasn’t much pain to begin with, so the best thing to do was just leave it alone. It wouldn’t bruise in all likelihood, just leave a small mark for a little bit. She ignored the throbbing and went on half listening and watching Vincent. Her right hand fell into her lap where she rubbed her stomach, still growling for food that would never come. She didn’t want to go ask for seconds though. She always got either a look of pity or scorn, neither of which she liked. She had gone hungry before, she could do it again. She knew true hunger, but she let herself go soft over the years. The memory of her childhood years looming over her was enough to make her appetite hit the road running.

While Vincent saw L.C. as a friend, she saw him the same except more of a possible annoyance at times. Some days, he was the greatest friend ever, other days he was another egotistical teenager she had to tune out. Today she wasn’t sure what he was, though he was already leaning toward annoying, but she could deal with that. Instead of admonishing him or letting herself become annoyed, she forced a weak smile at his excuse he was trying to make up for her. At least he was trying to help. “Yeah. Or… Someone burned holes in the table. Sam did it! That’s it. It was all Sam.” If she could toss the blame on someone else, she was happy. Sam was the perfect culprit, if she needed one. She wasn’t afraid of Sam and his fiery wrath. Much. She propped her head on her hand again as she thought about it and began playing with the tips of her hair.

Vincent making comments about midgets for pets elicited a couple of laughs from L.C. as she confirmed in her mind that she had thrown them in the corner after using them. What Vincent didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Some people would think she thought of Vince as a tool, but she really didn’t, his stuff was just so easy to steal she couldn’t help it. “Midgets would be fun pets. They could live under your bed. But I’d be afraid they’d steal my socks.” She pondered, looking to Vincent again. She squinted her eyes as she looked at him, then handed him the spoon off her tray for a reflective surface.

“Your guyliner looks messed up.”

[/size]

[Vincent Verax]

Vincent does not have an inside voice. He does not know how to be quiet unless he's whispering and he saves whispering for... well, I'll let you guess at that one. What I meant to say is that Vincent cannot be quiet, he's just obnoxiously loud 99.9% of the time and it was just one of his many quirks. "I coul' b'louder... but uh... I don' think that's whatcha really want." Oh look, he actually caught on. Somebody give him a gold star. Scratching at the back of his head, he shrugged his backpack off and swept it up on the table, unzipping it and pulling out a bag of salty potato chips. "Y'wan' some?" He offered the bag over to L.C. first and slid his feet off from the table, the wheels making a little whirring noise as he absently rolled them against the linoleum.

"Fuck yeah, Cactus, blame Sammy!" He looked proud of her for blaming Sam, because that was one of Vincent's own specialties. Blame Sammy for everything. Although he'd abused it enough so that he blamed the pyro for things he never could have possibly caused and thus ended up in trouble himself for trying to pass the buck. Sammy wasn't exactly a model student, but he certainly wasn't as destructive or as accident prone as Vincent was. Then again, if anybody was as accident prone as Vin and unable to heal themselves, they would be dead. It's called natural selection, folks, and Vincent somehow beat the system. Little bastard.

He took the spoon and rubbed it against his shirt for a moment before holding it up to examine his oh-so-manly makeup, wrinkling his nose and trying to fix it with his fingertips. "... wthat th'fuck would midgets want wit' ya socks? Aside from like... I 'unno, cuttin' off th'toe and wearin' 'em liek a dress... or a toga. Fuck yeah, toga. I should wear togas. Y'think I'd look fuckhot 'n a toga?" Once he was satisfied with his eyeliner, he spun the spoon around his fingers, then stuck the handle down one of the holes that L.C. had put in the table. No, Vincent, no togas for you, because you don't own underwear and I don't want to imagine the sorts of comments you'd make about wearing one while going commando. It's not healthy for anyone to hear.

[L.C. Milliner]

The blonde girl debated on taking the chips or not. Knowing Vincent, she didn’t want to know where they had been or what they had been through, but at the same time, she was starving. She sighed and shrugged, taking a handful out of the bag to eat. “Thanks.” She muttered, remembering her manners for once. She ate them all in a few bites and took another handful to eat, listening to Vincent talk as she leaned back in her chair. She focused on his mouth, particularly his canine teeth, and wondered to herself why they looked so sharp. Was he secretly some sort of vampire too?

L.C. realized she smelled like incense and she was probably giving of some weird Zen vibe with it. She was trying a new technique to keep away nightmares but all it did was make her dorm smell like some hippie halfway house. She’d try a bit longer and if it didn’t work, she’d give up on it after a few days and try something new. Zoning back into reality once again, she crinkled her nose at the nickname ‘cactus’ and gave him a ‘try again’ sort of look. She had a tolerance for Vincent’s nicknames that most people didn’t have, but there were some she didn’t like. Cactus fell into that category.

“Sleeping bags.” That was her only explanation for it. She hadn’t examined the idea of dresses or togas, though imagining Vincent in a toga made her laugh out loud. Pondering for a moment, she spun the spoon he had shoved into the table. It made an annoying clacking sound, so she stopped. “Depends. Is the toga made out of leather?” She joked, one half of her mouth turning up in a smirk. She moved her legs to sit cross-legged, stretching her toes out inside her shoes.

[Dear Rae; the next post will compensate for the utter fail this one is. I’m out of it.]

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[Vincent Verax]

I only have one thing to say to the vampire thing: thank god, no! I don't even want to begin to imagine a world in which Vincent is a vampire. That's scarier than being attacked by a hoard of zombie children, trust me.

Pulling open the bag of chips further so that they could both fit their hands in at once, he grabbed a handful then proceeded to attempt shoving them all in his mouth at one time. Isn't he an attractive one? Vin felt there was no need to bother with manners when he was among friends, chances were that they'd seen him in more compromising situations and he didn't feel the need to impress them. Moe, on the other hand, was a different story entirely, so he was often on his best behaviour around the Japanese boy. (Even if his best behaviour was still atrocious when compared to a normal person.) He might not be the perfect gentlemen, but his heart was in the right place though his brain wasn't.

He was then thoroughly derailed by the thought of leather toga, images running through his head that I wouldn't dare to explain. "Fuck yeah, 'd b'leather. Wit' like... studs'n'all skin-tight." He was grinning madly. "An' everybody'd jus' fawn all over me an' shit 'cause 'm sexy like that." Only in your dreams, Vinnie, only in your dreams. Prying himself from his fantasies, he pushed himself off his chair and then began skating around the table. As he passed by L.C., he snatched up her hat and put it on his own head, then propelled himself out of her reach. He didn't amek it very far before he lost his balance and scrashed into a row of chairs, earning a few awkward stares from the few people who were still lingering in the cafeteria.

"I'm booooored!" He whined pathetically as he tried to disentangle himself from the chairs. One he pulled himself free and hobbled back to his feet (wheels?) he skated back over to L.C. "C'mon, Spkey, think 'f somethin fun w'coul' do!" He grabbed the back of her chair for support. "An' I don' know any midget s'we can't start a midget army 'f DEATH." He laughed, then tipped L.C.'s chair back on two legs and attempted dragging it along the floor.

[L.C. Milliner]

L.C. let out a stream of laughter as Vincent perfected her leather toga idea. “Of course girls would fawn over you, Vin. I’d have to beat them off with, well, me.” The image of it in her head was not only funny, but made her think lustful thoughts about Vincent for a second. The thought was entertained for a moment. Not only was it Vincent in a studded leather skintight toga, but there was also her beating up blonde girls that looked similar to the ganguros of Japan. She promptly put it out of her mind as Vincent got up to skate around the table, leaving her alone for a moment. Noting he had left his bag she figured he’d be back soon. She took his chips off the table and sat them in her lap, popping them into her mouth and ignoring the snatching of her hat for the greater good of her foodstuffs. A strip of brown showed where her roots had to be done again, though her bleach job was obvious enough because of her un-bleached eyebrows, which rose as Vincent crashed into some chairs and toppled onto the hard linoleum floor. She also noted he was wearing no protective gear whatsoever.

If it were anyone else, she’d be worried.

But it was Vincent.

So she wasn’t.

Popping another chip in her mouth, she smirked as he struggled to remove the chairs from his body. “That was graceful.” She said in a good-natured sarcastic way, a chuckle tacked on at the end for an emphasis on the ‘good-natured’ part. Listening to him complain, she drew up a list of things in her head he could do. If she wanted to be rid of him, she could tell him to buy her some fork handles again. However, she wasn’t sick of him yet, so she would hang out with him for a while. As he skated over, she took the now empty chip bag and pulled his book bag over to her lap to stuff it inside. So what if it was empty? Vincent wouldn’t care. His book bag on her lap, she left the tray on the table for someone else to deal with. She had better things to do now, apparently.

Feeling her chair being lifted backward, L.C. yelped. “Holy shunpikes!” She leapt up out of her seat as quick as a cat out of water. Normally she wouldn’t mind having her chair pulled around, but this was Vincent, and Vincent was also on wheels at the moment. She already had a head injury; she did not need another one today. Smart girl. Thinking on her feet, she slung Vin’s backpack over her shoulder and shoved her hands in her pockets. She was happy to note her hat was still safe on his head even after the nasty fall. She’d snatch it back later.

“We could go bug Eli in the library, go buy toilet paper for you to TP a dorm with me, or we could go… I dunno. Somewhere in town.”

[/size]

[Vincent Verax]

Vincent also received a great deal of amusement at the images of L.C. beating the shit out a gaggle of girls. Perhaps it was because in his mind they all looked like the same thing or perhaps it was because it was L.C. spike-punching the shit out of them in order to get them off him. He certainly would love to have girls (or boys) fighting over him. It would be a huge stroke to his already enormous ego. "Shit yeah, coul' boys fawn over m'too? Like Moe." He smiled at the mention of his boyfriend, only adding to the image that he was already completely smitten with Misato. "But y'can't punch him." Vincent added, nodding as seriously as he could manage.

L.C's remark at his crash only earned her a laugh and a crooked smile. "Yeah, y'know it. 'm as graceful as a fuckin' ballerina. Where's m'fuckin tutu?" No, Vincent is not above wearing a tutu. It would be over his leather pants of exceptional tightness, of course, but there would still be a tutu and Vincent would parade around in it without shame. Someone get this boy a tutu. By the time he'd righted himself, the majority of the chairs he'd crashed into were a jumbled mess, some upside down, some on their sides, some balanced precariously on top of others. Did Vincent fix them? Hell no.

He was slightly disappointed when L.C hopped up out of the chair. He'd wanted to try skating while dragging her behind him, but she'd had enough common sense to get the hell out of that before he could crash again. Sometimes Vincent just forgot that not everyone could heal like he could, but his memory is a sieve and it's a wonder he remembers his own name at times. "Awwww, y'not gunna play wit' me?" Was that an attempt at pulling a guilt trip? Maybe. Even if it was, it wasn't a very good one.

"I like Eli!" Vincent chirped, grinning again. Okay so he'd met the man once during a drill, had thought he was a nerd at first, then had an awkward conversation with him regarding alligators and dead bodies, but that was apparently enough for Vin to declare that he'd like the librarian. How this statement added to L.C.'s list of things they could do, I haven't a clue, but he'd felt it was important to announce. "W'could TP th'dorm? OOOOH! What 'bout a teacher's house?" No, Vincent. Just... no.

[L.C. Milliner]

The tutu comment only made L.C. laugh even more. She chuckled as her imagination switched from Vincent in a toga to Vincent in a tutu. What was with this boy and trying to put on time period and gender inappropriate clothes? She humored him though. “You could get a tutu from that tiny girl. What’s her face, the blonde one.” The older blonde pointed out, thinking about the little squirt she had given some soda to the other day. (Because Fedora likes linking her threads to other threads.) She wasn’t sure why she had thought of that at the moment, (ha) so she pushed it out of her mind.

“I don’t trust you with my chair.” The teen stated bluntly, knowing she wouldn’t hurt Vincent’s feelings. She wasn’t sure if there were any other true feelings besides blissful ignorance inside his thick skull. Crossing her arms, L.C. leaned onto one hip, his backpack shifting on her back. She shrugged it back up to where it was supposed to lay on her shoulder. “Sorry.” She tossed that in after a second’s pause, just out of habit. It wasn’t remotely sincere.

She didn’t comment on his thoughts about Eli, because she didn’t really have a high opinion of him. True, she hadn’t even had a conversation longer then ‘I’d like to check this out, thank you, have a nice day’ with the librarian, but she still thought of him as a complete know-it-all. She wasn’t a fan of people with mental powers, mainly because she didn’t like people inside her head. Instead, she jumped onto his next sentence with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Yeah, let’s TP one of teacher’s houses.” She grinned, going along with his plan even though Rase already had told Vincent no. L.C. was willing to indulge people that normally didn’t get indulged… As long as she didn’t get in trouble herself.

“Who should we do it to? How about Mr. Collier? Tonaya? Nah, not Mr. Tonaya. He’s a nice guy.” She was sort of hoping Vincent would roll with her idea to hit Adam Collier, for the same reason she disliked Eli; he messed up her chemicals and she had enough imbalances in her brain already.

[Vincent Verax]

Vincent's mind can never stay on one track for too long. Unless that track involves one of three things: food, violence, or sex. A combination of the three is his preferred topic of conversation, but, for the time being, obscene and awkward fashion seemed to entertain him enough. In fact he was now trying to picture a mixture of his studded leather toga and a super manly pink tutu, the bridge of his nose all wrinkled up with intense thought. (Anything that involved thinking on Vincent's part was usually intense. He didn't like to use his brain much and most of the times, his brain was stuck down in his pants.)

"But I don' want 't t'hide m'glorious manbulge!" He gestured to his crotch, his pride and joy, with a lopsided grin. Not like anyone needed to look at Vincent's crotch, but he's just letting you all know it's there. The disturbing tightness of his pants left very little to the imagination and he liked it that way. He didn't want people to have to squint through a layer of pink tulle to see his manparts (and in his mind everyone wants to see, no matter what Sean said.)

L.C.'s list of names had Vincent slowly putting faces to names. Collier was the one he struggled with, it took him a few moments to finally realize who L.C. was talking about. Vincent had never really interacted with him much. He preferred to torment Chase when it came to the teachers. "Not Mr. Toenail, he's cool. He's got TOYS!" Vincent agreed with a nod, trying to circle around L.C. on the skates and nearly falling flat on his face when he lost his balance. "Yeah! Or w'could do Mr. K!" No, please for the love of god leave Chase and James out of this, they have enough on their plates at the moment. "Naah, Collier works. Let's get some fuckin' toilet paper now!"

He grabbed L.C's hand and tugged on it, trying to tug her across the floor. "Shit, y'should get some wheels on y'feet too." Of course, without proper traction and L.C. not assisting in his attempts to move her, Vincent's feet were moving but he was going nowhere. He looked rather retarded as he kept trying to pull on the girl, finally scowling and giving up. "I wanna go down th'stairs on these!" And then he rushed to the door of the cafeteria and opened it, waiting for L.C. to join him.

[L.C. Milliner]

The ‘glorious manbulge’ bit made L.C. snicker, as usual. “Nope, we don’t want that.” She said, shaking her head as if it would be the most awful thing in the world. For some, it would be; she knew plenty of preteen girls in Hammel who would in all likelihood cry themselves to death if Vincent started regular pants instead of his leather ones. L.C. wished she could afford clothes like that, but all she could afford was goodwill and the seventy percent off rack in most stores. She had already considered the idea of no longer dying her hair, but she had a feeling no one would recognize her if she did.

She watched Vincent’s thinking expression fade from his face, only to return a second later as he began to decipher who she had been talking about. Normally she would feel bad for making Vincent think so much, but at the moment she was already planning the toilet paper barrage that would befall Adam Collier’s house. “He’s got toys? Sweet Huckabees, I didn’t know that.” She never paid enough attention to Mr. Tonaya to notice he had any toys in his room, next time she was in his class she would have to look out for them. “Mr. K? Oh, Chase. Kilbourne. Nah.” She owed James for finding her, so she was going to have to skip that idea and leave the two men alone. She could be benevolent when it pleased her. The thought alone made her smile. Vincent’s agreement to Collier only made her smile more as she pulled her hat from his head, as he skated around her. She put it on her head and fixed it quickly so it looked right.

L.C. stood and watched Vincent’s epic failure to pull her, feeling as if she was in a cartoon as she watched his wheels clack on the floor without going anywhere. “Don’t have money for skates.” She shrugged, watching Vincent leave her in hopes he could go down the stairs. She followed quickly, not quite running but not quite walking either. “Wait for me! I wanna see it!” The good thing about Vincent was, even if he was an idiot, he could always get L.C. to smile, and that made him about the best friend she had.

In fact, in some social circles, he was considered the only friend she had.

Reaching the doors and passing through, L.C. patted Vincent on the back and pointed as she left the cafeteria, saying something about ‘those stairs over there, the concrete ones’.

Her lunch tray remained on the table, cold green beans floating in a watery grave.

[Exit L.C.][/size]