Tell Us How You Really Feel

One-shot, with much love to the handler I'm ripping off

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MurderWeasel
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Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:37 am

Tell Us How You Really Feel

#1

Post by MurderWeasel »

((Lavender Ripley continued from I Voted!))

English class could not end soon enough.

It had taken over a day for Lavender to relax enough to approach the subject of the school election with anything other than broiling frustration, and even that small victory was tenuous. Her concerns had kicked up first while she listened to the speeches and found herself casting her vote for Ashlynn, but those nervous musings had been nothing weighed against the actual results. Faith—who Lavender liked, a lot, but considered utterly unfit for office—had narrowly eked out the vice-presidency. That would have been a matter of no more than moderate concern, had the presidency not been handed to Nathan.

Lucas Brady's Facebook screed had been poorly worded, chock full of unfortunate implications, and it had drawn some of the most repulsive (or, dare she say, deplorable) elements of the student body to do what they did best and heap scorn upon the innocent, but the truth that Lavender would never share with anyone was that she thought Brady was absolutely, one hundred percent correct in his core thesis. The class hadn't voted Nathan president because they thought he'd do an amazing job. No, her peers had at best made a misguided attempt to support someone who wouldn't even fully understand what was happening, and at worst had spitefully chosen to cast their ballots so as to heap scorn on Nathan, the presidency, or both. For the vast majority, however, it was probably a little simpler: they just didn't care. It was a microcosm for real politics, and while Nathan was thankfully less harmful (and probably more competent) than Canon, it was a depressing reminder of the widespread apathy that was rotting the country day by day.

Lavender really hadn't been paying too much attention to the class discussion. Ms. Prescott had mercifully not taken much notice so far, caught up as she was in a discussion of whether or not Hamlet actually had Oedipal overtones. She was doing her best to keep the class focused and on task and appropriate without actually shutting down discussion or enthusiasm, and in treading that tightrope allowed Lavender the uncommon opportunity to keep her nose buried in her book uninterrupted, her merely feigned attention for once unquestioned. Truth be told, Lavender's focus was so diverted that she was barely even aware of the scratching of pencils against paper and the raising and lowering of hands all around her. She caught words, and had a sense that some of her peers were getting a little heated, but the only part of the room that seemed a true physical reality to her was the simple black and white clock on the wall to the right of the whiteboard, edging second by second towards lunchtime. Five minutes left.

Four.

Three, and suddenly there was a furor, a clattering of desks and a spike in chatter, and Lavender blinked and looked up from her Shakespeare in time to see the first student making his way out the door. It took her altogether too long to realize that Ms. Prescott had dismissed them early.

Free as she now was to leave, however, Lavender found herself not overly inclined to rush. Her desire for freedom had stemmed mostly from a want to be released from any obligation to pay attention, but with that obligation removed her low mood made the process of packing her belongings feel an almost insurmountable task. She bundled her pens and pencils into her purse, and tucked a bookmark into Hamlet even as she realized she had no clue what had happened in the ten or so pages they'd gone through. Apparently, Polonius was dead.

By the time she finished gathering her effects and slowly stood, even Ms. Prescott was hurrying out the door. Lavender was about to follow, when she realized that she was not in fact truly alone. Off in the front left-hand corner of the room, leaning over to tidy up the backpack resting against her chair, was one of the few people Lavender thought might be having a worse day than she was.

((Juliette Sargent continued from Concession Call))

Juliette was put-together as ever, her clothes neat and her makeup nice and her smile fixed. She'd been talking throughout the class, Lavender thought, up until the discussion took a turn for the risqué, with no real sign of distress, but that didn't necessarily mean much. Lavender was on the student council with Juliette, but she didn't particularly care for the girl. The point of politics, Lavender thought, was to make the world a better place than it would otherwise be. Juliette, by contrast, seemed risk-averse, prone to taking middle paths and throwing in behind others rather than spearheading anything herself. She had a politician's gift for holding smiles and dissembling, but Lavender had some doubts about whether the girl truly believed in any cause.

At the same time, she'd spent the whole year campaigning only for the class at large to let her know it thought a developmentally-disabled boy who'd never in his life attended a student council session more fit for office, and so Lavender couldn't help but feel sympathy. It was this that led her towards Juliette's desk, though the desire to talk to someone else who might understand the disappointment surely didn't hurt.

"Hey," Lavender said, and the other girl turned a little too quickly, seemingly taken by surprise for just an instant before her usual calm returned. "Are you doing okay?"

Juliette took a slow breath. In her mind, she narrated these pauses, commanded herself in words: inhale, hold, exhale. It made the process more conscious, and awareness was a key factor in her ability to maintain discipline and self control. She looked at the girl who'd interrupted her, and wondered briefly at the cause of the disruption. Lavender was a fellow council member, but their agendas rarely aligned. The girl was an idealist, but in pursuit of that idealism often sacrificed practicality. She could, Juliette thought, be spiteful at times, or perhaps just heavily sanctimonious, but that just now she had picked on a still-open wound seemed likely to be coincidence. Lavender didn't know her well enough to have done it on purpose.

It didn't really matter, though. The innocent-sounding question was just the right thing, just the right time and place, coming at the end of what should have been a relaxing class gone inexplicably irritating due to one or two class clowns intent on causing disruption by pushing a radical read that they'd clearly just picked up online somewhere and weren't capable of properly supporting but were sure able to derail discussion with, and so Juliette chose to let her guard down, just for a second.

"I'm fine," she said, "except that everyone keeps asking me that."

Lavender paused, tilted her head a little in this way that Juliette imagined the boys who were all over cheerleaders thought was cute. She didn't want to admit it, but she wasn't totally immune to its charms either, but that thought was quickly and easily locked away in its appropriate sealed cabinet.

"What?"

Lavender's tone was light but held an edge, one that said she wasn't expecting Juliette's brusque candor, and that immediately put Juliette's guard up again, about halfway. Juliette turned to the side again, tugged her backpack's zipper closed, and when she looked back around she was smiling.

"It means I did something wrong," she explained. "A lot of the class seems to expect me to be crushed. That means I handled my image poorly, came off overly invested."

"You're not disappointed?" Lavender made no attempt to hide either her surprise or her skepticism. Juliette's answer was composed, but it was also focused on the campaign, caught up in second-guessing choices. Lavender thought she could read another layer there, a hint of something to the tune of "If I hadn't seemed to want it so much, I would have won," or else perhaps "I don't want anyone to know how much I wanted it, now that I definitely can't have it."

"Not at all." Juliette shook her head gently, and talked as if nothing in the world could be more obvious. "Why would I be? I won."

"Nathan and Faith probably wouldn't agree with that," Lavender said. She didn't add the rest of the names to the list, Brady, Claudeson, Ashlynn, herself.

Juliette shrugged.

"That's okay. I got—" She paused, frowned, a memory of something Lavender was known to do now and then resurfacing. "You're not recording this, are you? I don't consent to being recorded."

Immediately, Lavender wished that she was.

"No," she said.

Juliette smiled a bit more widely.

"Good," she said. She paused a moment, then picked up the sentence she'd interrupted. "I got more votes than any other serious candidate. I don't see why I should be disappointed."

The quiet statement came out like any campaign trail platitude, but turned the corners of Lavender's lips fell instantly.

"None of the," Lavender said, then paused, tried to figure out how to frame this next bit so as to not come off awfully herself, "the 'serious candidates,'" she continued, settling on the undignified but unambiguous use of air quotes, "are president. Nathan is."

Juliette shrugged and stood up, pulling her backpack around and onto her shoulders. She was half a head shorter than Lavender, though the distance between the girls and the greater lift to Juliette's shoes made that less evident than it would be if they stood barefoot side by side.

"The election's over, Lavender," Juliette said. "We don't have to pretend the class president does anything anymore."

Lavender's frown became an outright scowl, and Juliette wondered if she'd overstepped. She wore different faces for different situations, just like everyone, but tended towards a greater casualness in the presence of those who knew the score, especially fellow council members. She had to remind herself, though, that Lavender was not in her corner. A shared interest and understanding could carry them to a point, but beyond that ideological differences might be insurmountable.

"That sounds like sour grapes," Lavender said.

"Just the truth." Juliette shrugged again, but now it took real effort; the straps of her backpack were weighing her down. She normally left it in her locker, but had been doing her best today to dodge others where possible, avoiding expressions of condolence or confusion or glee. What she'd told Lavender had been the truth: she was far less bothered by the results than by how others were taking them. She'd proven to herself that she could maintain focus and composure and run a campaign, and ultimately what had undone it had been something with no analogue in the world of real politics. It wasn't like her class had compared her to Alison and found her lacking. "Sour grapes is making a scene."

Juliette had watched the drama unfold on Facebook, of course, and knew loosely who the major players had been, and what they had done. She had not said a word herself on the platform since the results arrived, though.

"People aren't too happy with Lucas," she continued, "or you."

"They shouldn't be happy about any of that." Lavender spoke slowly, doing her best to keep the mounting irritation down. Juliette was not to blame for Wyatt, for the countless hangers-on and smartasses and uncaring masses. She was, however, conspicuously absent from the whole exchange, less a few name drops from others. "And where was this gracious attitude before?"

"I called Nathan to congratulate him," Juliette said. "It seemed more personal."

Lavender's face blanked for a second, like she couldn't quite process or decide whether she believed the information she'd just been given, and Juliette didn't give her time to finish parsing before continuing.

"In ten years," she said, "when I'm running for an actual office, this will be a funny anecdote about my humility. 'Ms. Sargent came in second to a boy with Down who her school kindly came together behind, and she was gracious in supporting him.' But if Lucas is in that same spot, it's the story of how he called the mentally handicapped unfit."

The scowl was back.

"What if you aren't running for office in ten years?" Lavender said.

"Then what happened in a high school presidential election is the least of my worries," Juliette replied. She sidestepped around her desk, in the process adding a few feet of distance between herself and Lavender even as she moved past the other girl and towards the classroom's door.

Lavender watched Juliette beat her retreat with a coiling irritation building, one somehow stronger than even that she'd felt at the Facebook debacle. She took two quick steps, following behind Juliette, but then made herself stop, gripping a nearby desk. The other girl reached the door, turned the knob and pulled it partway open.

"I voted for Ashlynn," Lavender said, quiet almost to a whisper.

Juliette stood, door half open to allow sight of the hall, where a handful of sophomore girls were passing, and glanced back over her shoulder. Lavender's complexion meant that she didn't flush as deeply as many of their other classmates, but the color in her cheeks was visible all the same, and her hushed tone said her statement was meant to hurt.

"Did that vote get the results you wanted?"

"I'm starting to think it was the better option than you winning," Lavender said. "Nathan's genuine."

"Then don't feel bad about your choices." Juliette put on a wider smile. "See you in council."

With that, she was out the door and into the hall, headed for the lunchroom for a meal finally free now of the feeling that she could be doing something more productive with her time than eating. She had a brief moment of concern, thinking what if Lavender had been lying and had the whole conversation on her phone, what if the girl turned tattletale and just tried to spread around some outrageous slander, what if her ire came back in some other, unpredictable way? But what was done was done, and as lapses went the most concerning thing was that this had happened around somebody else. Juliette hadn't shouted, hadn't thrown or hit anything, hadn't even really insulted. She'd vented, just a little, and if that helped her face the remaining barrage of concern and nosiness then it was a price she could pay.

((Juliette Sargent continued elsewhere))

The door slowly fell shut again, letting out an audible click as the latch set.

Lavender stood in the now-empty classroom, fingertips pressed against the desk next to her, staring a hole in the door. Already, better comebacks and fantasies of how the conversation could have turned were swelling up within her, coupled with a slowly-settling shock at the way things had actually turned. Lavender was no stranger to confrontation, but she tended to choose her fights knowingly, not to stumble into them. It was rare that she had any quarrel with classmates besides those she'd expect such things from, and she couldn't even rightly say what had just transpired. The heat was still within her, making her long-sleeved shirt feel tight and stifling, but she couldn't actually say if Juliette had truly been upset, or what had prompted the little confessional episode.

Ever so slowly, Lavender collected the remainder of her belongings. She was almost to the door when it popped back open, and she thought for sure it would be Juliette back to really bring the fight or to grovel for forgiveness or to search for some greater sense of closure, but it was instead Ms. Prescott, here to retrieve her annotated copy of Hamlet, abandoned by mistake on the chair behind her desk. The teacher gave Lavender a brief look, and Lavender apologized and said she'd just wanted to get a few more notes from the day's discussion down in her book before leaving for lunch, and that excuse was enough to get her out of the room.

She wasn't very hungry just now, she found.

((Lavender Ripley continued in Bring It On 3: Misery Olympics))
Avatar art by the lovely and inimitable Kotorikun
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