benedicimus te

[bright_and_beautiful]

Jenny's siblings are particularly tiring that morning. She suspects it's left over from the Christmas holidays; you would think a month would be enough time for the mania to wear off, but Jenny makes a point of never underestimating her siblings. And of course her parents are both at work and aren't home to help her.

After a while, though, she has finally successfully bludgeoned everyone into eating, cleaning themselves up, and getting all of their stuff together. She contemplates a cup of coffee, decides she didn't really need all of her growth anyway, downs it and gets everyone out the door.

An hour later, her siblings are in their respective classrooms, Jenny's safely ensconced in her own seat, and man is she feeling bouncy. Today's a great day, it's going to be great, let's go!

(Coffee was not Jenny's best idea ever.)

Comments

[keyed_up]

"Oooh, chocolate."

[bright_and_beautiful]

The teacher makes 'okay class actually be quiet' noises Jenny suspects are directed at her. Whatever, one last thing. Class can wait. Chocolate is more important.

"I was gonna stop for chocolate ice cream on my way home after school, want to come?" Jenny offers quickly, lowering her voice. "Your sister too, if she's free?"

[keyed_up]

"Sure, I'll ask her at lunch."

And then Soph is actually quiet.

[bright_and_beautiful]

Jenny manages, by some miracle, to stay reasonably quiet and attentive through the rest of class. But come lunch time, she is off hunting for Soph again. Where, oh where, has hypothetical ice cream buddy gotten to?

[keyed_up]

Soph is sitting with her sister!

"Hi Jenny! This is my sister Bella. Bella, this is Jenny, she invited us to get ice cream after school."

[cross_and_bow]

"Hi. Ice cream sounds good to me."

[bright_and_beautiful]

"Nice to meet you, Bella! Welcome to Sunnydale."

At the advent of ice cream, Jenny starts bouncing slightly on her toes. "Yaaay! Okay, so, important decisions. Place closer to school which sorta just has ice cream, or place farther from school with lots of awesome toppings?"

[keyed_up]

"Oooh, tough one. Is the ice cream quality about the same?"

[bright_and_beautiful]

"Hmmmmmmmmm. Too close to call. The closer one has frozen yogurt, though, and the farther one does milkshakes? If that helps?"

[keyed_up]

"Oooooh. I don't know. The siren lure of toppings is pretty siren. Bella, shakes or froyo?"

[cross_and_bow]

"I'm gonna say shakes."

[bright_and_beautiful]

"Awesome. Front steps after school? Well, mostly you, Bella," she says apologetically. "I have this sneaky suspicion Soph's in more of my classes."

[cross_and_bow]

"That makes sense, considering I'm in eleventh and she's in tenth. But yeah, sure."

[bright_and_beautiful]

"Want to see what we've got?" Jenny offers Soph a rather beat up copy of her schedule, extracted from the front pocket of her binder, for comparison purposes. "We should have most things together, I think, except maybe stuff like languages."

[keyed_up]

"Are you not in Spanish? I'm in Spanish." Soph produces her schedule, which has been folded and annotated but not wrinkled or smudged.

[bright_and_beautiful]

"I'm in Spanish," Jenny says, and grins mischievously. "It's just Italian with an s at the end, it's great!"

[keyed_up]

"Are we in the same one... ah, no. Oh well."

[bright_and_beautiful]

"Math and English this afternoon, though!" Jenny says happily. "You're not free of me yet. Mwahahahaha!"

Exactly zero people should take Jenny's evil laugh seriously. She is terrible at it.

[keyed_up]

Soph giggles. "Noooo! Spare me! You might invite me to go for ice cream again! I'd never recover!"

[bright_and_beautiful]

"You have discovered my evil plot! Death by ice cream."

[keyed_up]

"Best way to die."

[bright_and_beautiful]

"I should probably have been more sneaky about it. Hi, let's go for ice cream, nothing suspicious here."

[keyed_up]

"And then death. Bella, lilies at the funeral."

[cross_and_bow]

"I hereby promise to order dahlias. So there. Stay alive."

[bright_and_beautiful]

"I am fully in support of both of you staying alive!" Jenny agrees.

She leaves out the 'which is weirdly difficult, here,' part. Their dad is chief of police, surely they know this. And the sophomore class hasn't been that bad yet.

"Though full disclosure, if my choices are death or lack of ice cream, I have to think about it."