Nonchalance Or Nerves (Sept 3)
Jul 10, 2018 21:12:01 GMT -6
Post by Snick on Jul 10, 2018 21:12:01 GMT -6
A good distance from the library, Pratt slipped into an unlocked and unused classroom. With a slam, a swish, and a click, the former condition was remedied. The door being locked, he plopped into the teacher's chair. His elbows went to his knees and his face went into his palms.
After doing counting exercises for a few minutes, he sat up with a start and began digging through the desk drawers. Though this wasn't a potions classroom, it was possible that a potion of peace or calming draught or some other elixir had been confiscated. Pratt was halfway through scouring the shelves of a large cabinet when he realized his chances were even slimmer - classes hadn't even started.
So, he reclaimed the teacher's chair and sighed. Pratt wanted to be known as a joker, not a joke. Who he had been was the joke. So, he liked to kid around. So, he was (usually) very laid back. That didn't make him an idiot or lazy. Why were the people he thought were his friends treating him like he was? His ideas were good, they were just as valid as anyone else's. They were completely ignored.
And then the queen bitch implied he was just being lazy when he said they didn't have the time or resources to do anything big. He didn't give two shits about what she thought - until she started giving Makepeace verbal fellatio for saying the exact same thing. It made his blood boil. And he threw his notepad away. Not that it mattered. He wouldn't have anything else to do with the dance. He wouldn't even go. And he wouldn't be on the council again, if he could help it.
Pratt's back straightened and he sat completely still. Had he heard footsteps? A voice? Maybe two, more? He sat in complete silence, hoping whoever was out there would keep walking. Of course, the closed and locked door among all the open ones was a dead giveaway that someone was in there.
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"Do you always pout in dark classrooms? Kinda emo don't you think?"
Cam pulled herself up through the window that she had jimmied open. She had planned on looking through the quiet room herself when she had found herself ducking in the bushes outside when Pratt came in, slamming the door. She sat on the ledge for a moment before swinging her legs over and slipping down into the room.
Her brow raised as she studied him, before she reached into the pack pocket of her loose, holey jeans and removed a familiar flask. She tossed it to him with a smirk. "You look like shit."
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Pratt jumped when a voice (soon followed by its owner) came through the window. Emo? What was that? He looked at Cam like she was speaking Russian. Maybe she meant 'emu', but that didn't make any more sense. Deciding to go with the bit he did understand, he furrowed his brow and said, "I'm not pouting."
He fumbled the flask and it landed in his lap with a somewhat metallic sound of liquid sloshing. "Do you have a habit of lurking outside random windows?" he asked, screwing the cap off the flask and taking a swig. "And I look like shit because I feel like shit because everyone thinks I'm shit."
The truth was that he was embarrassed. He wanted to stay, he wanted to work on the dance, but he flew off the handle in front of his friends. Pratt couldn't stay in there after that. His shoulders lifted and fell as he sunk down in the pleather of the executive seat. A show of renewed indifference. After taking another quick sip from the flask, he tossed it back toward her. His cares were floating out of the open window.
"Where'd you get that, anyway?" he asked, watching her. "It's not exactly easy to come by, and the quality... is it a prescription?"
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As soon as the meeting was over, Siobhan went to find Pratt. She hadn't liked the way he was treated, nor had she liked the way he'd left. She stepped outside the room and looked in her back pack at his notebook. She leafed through a couple pages, looking at the one he had been working on before he threw the whole book away.
Ginger, will you go with me It looked like the beginnings of a perfectly good dance invitation to her. She penciled yes underneath with a smiley next to it and put it back into her bag. Now to find Pratt and give him his notebook.
She didn't need to go far before she found a classroom with a closed door; someone was inside.
She pushed the door open. "Hello Gilli . . ." Much to her chagrin, Pratt wasn't alone, "Hi Cam . . ." She looked at Pratt, puzzled, curious, and maybe, just the tiniest bit hurt.
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She laughed at his comment, "There wasn't much else to do but look around this place." She shrugged and brushed a few bits of brush and leafs from her hair and clothes. His next comment had her raising her brow but she said nothing. Given that she was still making her mind up about Pratt, she didn't feel she'd be the right person to soothe his ego.
She walked over toward the desk, catching the flask with ease. She slipped it back into her back pocket before leaning her hip against the wooden desk, letting her leg swing lazily.
A slightly angsty smirk touched her lips as she watched him relax before he asked his next question. She nodded, "The Grandparents thought it would curb my anger." She snorted, "Because you know, its totally better to over medicate your grandkid instead of trying to understand why they might be angry."
"Anyway," she said with another shrug of the shoulder. "I have an unlimited supply should you ever need a..." She jumped when the door opened like a caged animal ready to bolt back out the window. She relaxed slightly when she noticed it was Siobhan and not a teacher. Granted, if what she had heard was true, then she was a Keeper like Pratt, and she certainly seemed more goodie goodie than he did. She'd be more likely to turn her in for breaking into the classroom. She gave the girl a nod, trying not to look nervous.
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Pratt thought the girl was lucky to have grandparents that tried at all. If his parents or grandparents had sent him to a shrink for anger and stress management long ago, maybe he wouldn't be in the state he was. The few calming techniques he knew he learned from the hippies, and they never worked. Drowning his anger and nerves in potions seemed to be the only effective treatment. If he had some other way to vent or someone to vent to, maybe he wouldn't need to be medicated.
He actually didn't seem startled by Siobhan O'Brien's unexpected entrance. The draught was so calming, it hindered the fright, fight, or flight response. Pratt sat there, a lazy grin creeping across his face. "Ginger, you came," he got to his feet. "I hoped you would. I... I'm sorry... about the meeting. Are you mad? You look kinda mad."
There was a fog over his brain, like he was half-asleep. To keep his balance, Pratt gripped the edge of the teacher's desk. His eyes shifted to Cam. Sudden realization dawned in his dark-circled eyes. He was alone in a locked room with a girl. That might look bad. But they hadn't been doing anything like that. He hoped Siobhan didn't think they had been. But how would she know any better? They hardly knew each other, truthfully. He wanted to know more about Siobhan. He wanted to know everything. That's why he'd been working on a letter to ask her to be his girlfriend.
"Cam and I were just..." he furrowed his brow, his mind was swimming. He briefly couldn't remember what they'd been discussing. Finally, he finished with a broad smile, "...talking about how everyone hates me. Is the meeting over? How's Drake? And did her majesty spit or swallow? I'm sorry, I shouldn't talk like that in front of a lady."
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Siobhan frowned, feeling like there was something going on here, but she had missed it. "Nobody hates you." Although Cam seemed to act like everyone hated her. Was this her influence? "You're acting kinda funny." And not like she wanted to laugh at his jokes. "Are you all right, Pratt?" She stepped toward him, looking closely at his face.
She turned towards Cam. "Did I miss something?" She tried to smile at the girl to put her at ease.
She moved a little closer to Pratt. She lowered her voice. "I found your notebook . . . there was a note in it to me. " She opened her backpack and got it out, sliding it into his. "I answered," she said, even softer.
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Cam watched the odd look exchange and then the calm covered panic that briefly entered Pratt's eyes. Oh Lord, he liked the girl! And the odd look she had given Cam...she must like him in return. Gag!
She shook her head absently before standing straight. Siobhan seemed far more concerned with Pratt's fogginess than her presence, so perhaps that was her cue. Granted, it was kind of a shame, considering she had actually been enjoying watching Pratt get stoned.
"On that note, I should probably be off," she said with a slight snicker. She had heard the quiet exchange, but backed toward the window. She wasn't about to use the door and risk getting caught.
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"I'm fine. Just a little frazzled after everything in the meeting... Then with her randomly climbing through the window," he thumbed toward Cam. "And you coming in and... you looked in my notebook?"
He looked to Cam, trying to furrow his brow to no avail. She was trying to leave? She was the one that gave him the draught that was mucking up his mind. She was the one that Siobhan might think he was doing things with in a dark, locked room. No, she needed to stay. Her leaving just made them look even guiltier.
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"Yes, I read it."Wasn't that a good thing?
"She can leave if she wants to. Or maybe I should leave, if I was interrupting something . . . " Siobhan's eyes went from Pratt to Cam to Pratt, trying to understand why he was acting so funny. Her eyes moved to the notebook. Maybe she shouldn't have written yes in it in answer to his dance invitation.
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Cam shrugged, "I was just looking around." With that said, she crawled back into the open window. Swinging her legs out she dropped down. Unfortunately she didn't quite angle it right and ended up in the bushes below. A rip could be heard, and she felt a searing pain in her leg.
"Son of a bitch!" she cried out as she fell half out of the bushes and clutched her leg below the knee. A sharp branch managed to slice through her jeans and cut into her skin. Her face wore a grimace of pain, but she didn't cry. It wasn't like she broke anything after all. A bit of blood managed to dribble out between the fingers that were over the wound.
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"You weren't interrupting anything," he insisted. "Please stay."
Though he didn't really have the courage, they needed to talk about the notebook. "I wasn't finished," Pratt to Siobhan, watching Cam crawl out of the window. "With the note. I - What the?"
He craned his neck, trying to look out of the window, then looked to Siobhan, wondering if they should do something.
"Uh... You alright out there?" he asked, moving toward the window.
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Siobhan looked out the window. "Are you all right, Cam?" she asked.
She turned to Pratt, now in take charge mode. "You learned summoning charms last year, right? Well, summon a broom. We've got to get her out of there and to the infirmary. You can fly her on a broom and leave her there. I'll meet you. We can have our talk later."
She went to the teacher's desk and grabbed a box of Kleenex and threw it down to Cam. "Use this to stop the bleeding. We'll be down to help you."
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Tissues? Cam's eye twitched slightly as she looked down at the gash on her leg. It was bad, probably bad enough to warrant going to the nurse's office. The hell she was going there! Nurses reminded her too much of doctors. Doctors meant the hospital and the hospital was were her life completely fell apart. Screw that!
"No. I'll be fine," she said through gritted teeth as she struggled to her feet. She'd have a good limp for a bit, but she was relatively sure she could take care of it herself. Well, maybe. Cam began to hobble away, in what direction she wasn't sure at the moment as the pain in her leg was strong enough to shake everything but the fear of medical personnel from her mind.
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Pratt nodded to Siobhan, a little glad the conversation had been interrupted. He was terrified of the subject. If she said 'no', he would be incredibly embarrassed and wouldn't be able to look at her again, let alone talk to her. That was the last thing he wanted.
He climbed through the window carefully, then called out 'Accio broom!' while brandishing his wand and focusing his thoughts on his practice broom in the locker room. Getting blood on his good broom was not appealing in the slightest. A moment later, the sleek PrestoChango zoomed right through his hands. Though he was great with charms, he didn't do so well in the eye-hand coordination department (Hence not joining any real sports). With a hop and a skip, he grabbed it, jumped on, and chased after the retreating girl. With her inability to run, catching up was a breeze.
"Don't be stupid, Cam," Pratt stopped in front of her. "Get on."
After doing counting exercises for a few minutes, he sat up with a start and began digging through the desk drawers. Though this wasn't a potions classroom, it was possible that a potion of peace or calming draught or some other elixir had been confiscated. Pratt was halfway through scouring the shelves of a large cabinet when he realized his chances were even slimmer - classes hadn't even started.
So, he reclaimed the teacher's chair and sighed. Pratt wanted to be known as a joker, not a joke. Who he had been was the joke. So, he liked to kid around. So, he was (usually) very laid back. That didn't make him an idiot or lazy. Why were the people he thought were his friends treating him like he was? His ideas were good, they were just as valid as anyone else's. They were completely ignored.
And then the queen bitch implied he was just being lazy when he said they didn't have the time or resources to do anything big. He didn't give two shits about what she thought - until she started giving Makepeace verbal fellatio for saying the exact same thing. It made his blood boil. And he threw his notepad away. Not that it mattered. He wouldn't have anything else to do with the dance. He wouldn't even go. And he wouldn't be on the council again, if he could help it.
Pratt's back straightened and he sat completely still. Had he heard footsteps? A voice? Maybe two, more? He sat in complete silence, hoping whoever was out there would keep walking. Of course, the closed and locked door among all the open ones was a dead giveaway that someone was in there.
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"Do you always pout in dark classrooms? Kinda emo don't you think?"
Cam pulled herself up through the window that she had jimmied open. She had planned on looking through the quiet room herself when she had found herself ducking in the bushes outside when Pratt came in, slamming the door. She sat on the ledge for a moment before swinging her legs over and slipping down into the room.
Her brow raised as she studied him, before she reached into the pack pocket of her loose, holey jeans and removed a familiar flask. She tossed it to him with a smirk. "You look like shit."
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Pratt jumped when a voice (soon followed by its owner) came through the window. Emo? What was that? He looked at Cam like she was speaking Russian. Maybe she meant 'emu', but that didn't make any more sense. Deciding to go with the bit he did understand, he furrowed his brow and said, "I'm not pouting."
He fumbled the flask and it landed in his lap with a somewhat metallic sound of liquid sloshing. "Do you have a habit of lurking outside random windows?" he asked, screwing the cap off the flask and taking a swig. "And I look like shit because I feel like shit because everyone thinks I'm shit."
The truth was that he was embarrassed. He wanted to stay, he wanted to work on the dance, but he flew off the handle in front of his friends. Pratt couldn't stay in there after that. His shoulders lifted and fell as he sunk down in the pleather of the executive seat. A show of renewed indifference. After taking another quick sip from the flask, he tossed it back toward her. His cares were floating out of the open window.
"Where'd you get that, anyway?" he asked, watching her. "It's not exactly easy to come by, and the quality... is it a prescription?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As soon as the meeting was over, Siobhan went to find Pratt. She hadn't liked the way he was treated, nor had she liked the way he'd left. She stepped outside the room and looked in her back pack at his notebook. She leafed through a couple pages, looking at the one he had been working on before he threw the whole book away.
Ginger, will you go with me It looked like the beginnings of a perfectly good dance invitation to her. She penciled yes underneath with a smiley next to it and put it back into her bag. Now to find Pratt and give him his notebook.
She didn't need to go far before she found a classroom with a closed door; someone was inside.
She pushed the door open. "Hello Gilli . . ." Much to her chagrin, Pratt wasn't alone, "Hi Cam . . ." She looked at Pratt, puzzled, curious, and maybe, just the tiniest bit hurt.
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She laughed at his comment, "There wasn't much else to do but look around this place." She shrugged and brushed a few bits of brush and leafs from her hair and clothes. His next comment had her raising her brow but she said nothing. Given that she was still making her mind up about Pratt, she didn't feel she'd be the right person to soothe his ego.
She walked over toward the desk, catching the flask with ease. She slipped it back into her back pocket before leaning her hip against the wooden desk, letting her leg swing lazily.
A slightly angsty smirk touched her lips as she watched him relax before he asked his next question. She nodded, "The Grandparents thought it would curb my anger." She snorted, "Because you know, its totally better to over medicate your grandkid instead of trying to understand why they might be angry."
"Anyway," she said with another shrug of the shoulder. "I have an unlimited supply should you ever need a..." She jumped when the door opened like a caged animal ready to bolt back out the window. She relaxed slightly when she noticed it was Siobhan and not a teacher. Granted, if what she had heard was true, then she was a Keeper like Pratt, and she certainly seemed more goodie goodie than he did. She'd be more likely to turn her in for breaking into the classroom. She gave the girl a nod, trying not to look nervous.
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Pratt thought the girl was lucky to have grandparents that tried at all. If his parents or grandparents had sent him to a shrink for anger and stress management long ago, maybe he wouldn't be in the state he was. The few calming techniques he knew he learned from the hippies, and they never worked. Drowning his anger and nerves in potions seemed to be the only effective treatment. If he had some other way to vent or someone to vent to, maybe he wouldn't need to be medicated.
He actually didn't seem startled by Siobhan O'Brien's unexpected entrance. The draught was so calming, it hindered the fright, fight, or flight response. Pratt sat there, a lazy grin creeping across his face. "Ginger, you came," he got to his feet. "I hoped you would. I... I'm sorry... about the meeting. Are you mad? You look kinda mad."
There was a fog over his brain, like he was half-asleep. To keep his balance, Pratt gripped the edge of the teacher's desk. His eyes shifted to Cam. Sudden realization dawned in his dark-circled eyes. He was alone in a locked room with a girl. That might look bad. But they hadn't been doing anything like that. He hoped Siobhan didn't think they had been. But how would she know any better? They hardly knew each other, truthfully. He wanted to know more about Siobhan. He wanted to know everything. That's why he'd been working on a letter to ask her to be his girlfriend.
"Cam and I were just..." he furrowed his brow, his mind was swimming. He briefly couldn't remember what they'd been discussing. Finally, he finished with a broad smile, "...talking about how everyone hates me. Is the meeting over? How's Drake? And did her majesty spit or swallow? I'm sorry, I shouldn't talk like that in front of a lady."
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Siobhan frowned, feeling like there was something going on here, but she had missed it. "Nobody hates you." Although Cam seemed to act like everyone hated her. Was this her influence? "You're acting kinda funny." And not like she wanted to laugh at his jokes. "Are you all right, Pratt?" She stepped toward him, looking closely at his face.
She turned towards Cam. "Did I miss something?" She tried to smile at the girl to put her at ease.
She moved a little closer to Pratt. She lowered her voice. "I found your notebook . . . there was a note in it to me. " She opened her backpack and got it out, sliding it into his. "I answered," she said, even softer.
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Cam watched the odd look exchange and then the calm covered panic that briefly entered Pratt's eyes. Oh Lord, he liked the girl! And the odd look she had given Cam...she must like him in return. Gag!
She shook her head absently before standing straight. Siobhan seemed far more concerned with Pratt's fogginess than her presence, so perhaps that was her cue. Granted, it was kind of a shame, considering she had actually been enjoying watching Pratt get stoned.
"On that note, I should probably be off," she said with a slight snicker. She had heard the quiet exchange, but backed toward the window. She wasn't about to use the door and risk getting caught.
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"I'm fine. Just a little frazzled after everything in the meeting... Then with her randomly climbing through the window," he thumbed toward Cam. "And you coming in and... you looked in my notebook?"
He looked to Cam, trying to furrow his brow to no avail. She was trying to leave? She was the one that gave him the draught that was mucking up his mind. She was the one that Siobhan might think he was doing things with in a dark, locked room. No, she needed to stay. Her leaving just made them look even guiltier.
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"Yes, I read it."Wasn't that a good thing?
"She can leave if she wants to. Or maybe I should leave, if I was interrupting something . . . " Siobhan's eyes went from Pratt to Cam to Pratt, trying to understand why he was acting so funny. Her eyes moved to the notebook. Maybe she shouldn't have written yes in it in answer to his dance invitation.
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Cam shrugged, "I was just looking around." With that said, she crawled back into the open window. Swinging her legs out she dropped down. Unfortunately she didn't quite angle it right and ended up in the bushes below. A rip could be heard, and she felt a searing pain in her leg.
"Son of a bitch!" she cried out as she fell half out of the bushes and clutched her leg below the knee. A sharp branch managed to slice through her jeans and cut into her skin. Her face wore a grimace of pain, but she didn't cry. It wasn't like she broke anything after all. A bit of blood managed to dribble out between the fingers that were over the wound.
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"You weren't interrupting anything," he insisted. "Please stay."
Though he didn't really have the courage, they needed to talk about the notebook. "I wasn't finished," Pratt to Siobhan, watching Cam crawl out of the window. "With the note. I - What the?"
He craned his neck, trying to look out of the window, then looked to Siobhan, wondering if they should do something.
"Uh... You alright out there?" he asked, moving toward the window.
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Siobhan looked out the window. "Are you all right, Cam?" she asked.
She turned to Pratt, now in take charge mode. "You learned summoning charms last year, right? Well, summon a broom. We've got to get her out of there and to the infirmary. You can fly her on a broom and leave her there. I'll meet you. We can have our talk later."
She went to the teacher's desk and grabbed a box of Kleenex and threw it down to Cam. "Use this to stop the bleeding. We'll be down to help you."
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Tissues? Cam's eye twitched slightly as she looked down at the gash on her leg. It was bad, probably bad enough to warrant going to the nurse's office. The hell she was going there! Nurses reminded her too much of doctors. Doctors meant the hospital and the hospital was were her life completely fell apart. Screw that!
"No. I'll be fine," she said through gritted teeth as she struggled to her feet. She'd have a good limp for a bit, but she was relatively sure she could take care of it herself. Well, maybe. Cam began to hobble away, in what direction she wasn't sure at the moment as the pain in her leg was strong enough to shake everything but the fear of medical personnel from her mind.
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Pratt nodded to Siobhan, a little glad the conversation had been interrupted. He was terrified of the subject. If she said 'no', he would be incredibly embarrassed and wouldn't be able to look at her again, let alone talk to her. That was the last thing he wanted.
He climbed through the window carefully, then called out 'Accio broom!' while brandishing his wand and focusing his thoughts on his practice broom in the locker room. Getting blood on his good broom was not appealing in the slightest. A moment later, the sleek PrestoChango zoomed right through his hands. Though he was great with charms, he didn't do so well in the eye-hand coordination department (Hence not joining any real sports). With a hop and a skip, he grabbed it, jumped on, and chased after the retreating girl. With her inability to run, catching up was a breeze.
"Don't be stupid, Cam," Pratt stopped in front of her. "Get on."
