Say Yes! To T!nn!ss!!

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Is it not fitting," she said in the most pompous voice she could muster with her hand on her heart, "that there should exist in the heart of darkness, a shining pearl of beauty?"

Then, she hit the stop button on her voice memo recorder mindfulness app, and tucked her phone back away into her pocket.

[Violet Schmidt continued from ...But I Just Can't Place It]

School had let out a good ten minutes ago, and the halls of the math department were basically devoid of folks to bug. Apart from the occasional student hurrying out of a classroom with a missed assignment in hand or a chewing out on face, everyone was eager to start the weekend and get the heck out of dodge. She had waited in the back of her English class to wait for the crowds to thin out before she went out to brave the helter skelter of the halls, nearly brushing shoulders with a few people as she went but thankfully managing to weave her way through to this oasis of light in the middle of what had been, for a good deal of high school career, the academic precipice that she could not help but wander dangerously close to the edge of. The cliff.

Didn't most people, though? Wasn't math the stumbling block for most of her peers? Well, not really. She did a decent bit worse in math than any of her other subjects, by a fair bit. Not bad enough to warrant any tutoring, but bad enough that she had to set reminders on her computer to beep while she was in the middle of an article binge to go off and remind her of the fact that, yes, Violet Schmidt had a life to live, and that life included math, for the time being. She wanted to get far away from anything approaching math. It wasn't the only thing she planned to get away from after high school, but it was towards the top of the list, right behind—

Was it okay to say it? To think it?

Leaving.

She was getting tired of her city, her state, her whole region. The whole big wide world out there was waiting for her, and she couldn't let herself stay in the same place her whole life and put down, god forbid, roots here. Her sister had stayed local for college, and, well, that was a thing. A real time, that was. So, she wanted to branch out. Maybe go somewhere more...autumnal? Colder, at the very least. She wanted to see more snow. More dry, crunchy leaves beneath her feet. Nicer fall colors. Somewhere with people who, hey, maybe wouldn't care too much if she conducted a ritual or two in her dorm room?

Violet sat on the bench and waited for someone to come and ask her what she was doing, so that she could divert and ask them where they were going instead. Answering a question with a question usually annoyed her when anyone other than herself did it, and she wondered if other people felt the same way about that. Even if she was leaving, going somewhat far away, and even if it would be a year before she might join anyone she knew, (securing that gap year being the best thing she would likely ever do for herself) she was still a little sad to leave home behind. Home, and the people that lived there. To a degree.

She had one earbud drooping off of her ear, the other plugged in playing something sappy and a little too sickly sweet. Twee? Belle and Sebastien counted as twee, she surmised. Violet figured that this half-interest in whatever she was doing made her look approachable enough, as she scrolled up and down on her phone, opening Twitter, closing it, looking at all of the other apps she had, and then promptly reopening Twitter before she saw something that made her mad, which led her to close it, and so on and so forth.

Though her phone said that it had 34% battery left, on some level she was running on empty.

[Jilly]

Dad: sry running late... be there in 20?
Me: That's fine. Let me know when you're here.
Dad: ok will do love you... bc
Me: Love you too.

Desiree set her phone on the counter as she stepped up to the bathroom sink and washed her hands. She wrung her hands out in the sink and dried them off with a paper towel, wiping the sink down before throwing the towel away. She picked the phone up again, opening Twitter and scrolling through her feed as she walked out the bathroom.

She was ready to start the weekend already, but first Dad had to come bail her out. She had to plan her next move while waiting; luckily it seemed like pretty much everyone went home by now, or if they were still here they'd be at clubs or the library or whatever. In that case, she knew just the place to go:

Desiree was going to the math department.

((Desiree Beck continued from Generation Loss))

It was a hike from the computer labs, but the atrium was the only place Desiree thought could be considered beautiful in this school. Especially around this time when no one else would be there, it was a tiny oasis from this hellscape with sunlight radiating from the ceiling and geometrically pleasing squares and right angled windows, all located right in the middle of the math hallway. During school hours a normal person wouldn't even notice but it truly was a pretty place, as much sense as that made.

At last, she finally made it. But she stopped; someone beat her here, staking her claim in Desiree's domain.

Violet. No, not the goth one, the other one. The one that looked like pumpkin spice Frisk from Undertale with a crazy aspect ratio. Desiree didn't know a whole lot about her, but this Violet seemed to be one of the "good" ones compared to 98% of the rest of these self-centered assholes Desiree had to be around 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. She was maybe a little nosy for her own good, if anything.

But still, why did she have to camp out here? Didn't she have a life? Desiree sighed and turned the other way; maybe there was no one at the library to bother her.

...No. No. No, she didn't come this far to get turned away by some random girl. This was her after school spot, and that was her bench.

She marched to the other side of the bench and sat down, dropping her backpack on the floor and propping her head up with her arm. She side-eyed Violet (Jesus, don't any of her classmates care about hearing loss?) and scrolled Twitter until she reached a mess of old content and refreshed the page, starting at the top again.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Okay.

When Violet had thought, earlier, that she'd be able to strike up a conversation with basically anyone who stopped by? That they'd supply an ask and she'd have no answer but a question to turn back at them, and that everything would fold out from there? That she'd be able to think about her life ahead of her with someone else to bounce ideas off of? That about 99.9% of the people in her class would respond in a way that Violet would be fine with, regardless of whether or not they thought that she was absolutely, completely nuts?

That .1% of people was represented solely by Desiree Beck.

Violet wasn't really comfortable with most of her feelings in this regard. With most people, she found herself thinking of them as nice and right and good. Not perfect, but good people. She couldn't think of many people that she hadn't been able to get along with. Sure, there were a couple of folks who she tried to avoid, but lock the two of them in a room and sit them down at a table and they'd wind up buddies by the end, she was convinced. The presence of others made her happy, and that was a feeling that, for the most part, she understood.

A double tap of the button, a flick of the finger, and twitter was closed. Two more taps, and it was open again. Closed, and opened. Opened, and closed.

She couldn't understand why Desiree made her feel the way that she did. It wasn't entirely alien to her, the slight warmth in her chest, the tickle of a feather kept afloat by her breath inside of her lungs, tickling her with feeling. It had come to her a few times before, this subtle magnetic pull, and made Violet all the more shy around her. Inward panic filled any conversation that the two had gone through together, the few that had been. Several times she had meditated on what this all meant, but the effort had been fruitless. What was it about Desiree that made Violet shiver a bit whenever she entered the cafeteria, or the same store, or the same space in general?

And now, they sat together, on the same bench.

Violet paused her music, heard the thoughts whizzing around inside her head, and unpaused it, clicking the volume up a few times louder, before taking a very thoughtful glance at the way her fingers interlaced with each other in her lap.

Crushed by her crush, Violet wore the same neutral smile on her face, though she had to strain to do so.

[Jilly]

Desiree refreshed the page again. Nope, no new bad discourse or surprise lewds. She turned her screen off and slapped the top of her phone against her thigh, her eyes wandering around the atrium to kill time.

She got bored and reopened Twitter again as the music from Violet's earbuds crescendoed and quaked the building's foundation. Desiree frowned.

And then it happened; an irritating pressure rose in Desiree's throat. Her eyes began to water. The pressure swelled. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her arm away from Violet.

She let out the loudest, sound barrier breaking, magnitude 9.2 of a sneeze that Desiree ever had the misfortune of expelling from her trachea. Desiree jumped fifteen feet in the air and crashed back down to Earth.

She sneezed again immediately after, and a third time just for good measure.

[MethodicalSlacker]

That was, by far, the cutest sneeze that Violet had ever heard and/or seen.

Like, wow.

It almost seemed like it'd be wrong to say anything afterwards. To somehow taint the purity of that sneeze would be something of an affront to the idea of sneezes.

As if to agree, Desiree let out another sneeze, interrupting Violet before she had the chance to say anything. Then, yet another one, and now Violet's concern outweighed her admiration. She wanted to keep herself from saying anything, because really those last couple sneezes were just complimentary, additional bursts of what was quite frankly now in her top ten of Cutest Things just to keep it fresh in her memory. One for the vault, one for the road, and one for good luck.

But she couldn't help it.

"Bless you," she said meekly, "Are you alright?"

Meekly, and then went red around the ears.

"...I have tissues, if you want some."

[Jilly]

Hmm? Desiree snuffled and resurfaced for air. Violet was burning a hole through her with her eyes now. Great.

Desiree raised her palm at Violet and withdrew it in one motion. "... I'm fine. Allergies."

Her eyes squinted again as she buried her face again for the second coming.

She hated spring. She hated the humidity. She hated flowers. She hated pollen. She hated respiratory system distress functions. She hated this school. She hated this city. She hated the people. But, most of all...

"...I hate Tennessee." She snuffled again, rubbing the back of her hand across her nose before she rested it upwards in the air. "I'll take a couple."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Violet opened her backpack and rummaged through for a pack of tissues. Her mother insisted on giving her a new pack of tissues every day, regardless of whether or not Violet had gone through the last seven that were getting crushed under the weight of her books in her bag. Violet found the freshest pack of tissues, from just this morning, and handed them over to Desiree, holding them by the corner.

Running in the back of her mind was the first part to Desiree's acceptance of tissues, however.

She hates Tennessee.

"Ugh," Violet said, "same here. I can't wait to get out of here for college."

The words had to be squeezed out of her mouth. With anyone else, Violet would have framed her statement a little differently, perhaps a little more cheery and nice, but with Desiree she went for the mirror approach. Birds of a feather flock together, except Violet was pretty sure that a flock would be a bit too much of a crowd for her to deal with, really.

"I'm probably, uh, going to, ah, Mount Holyoke?"

[Jilly]

Desiree pinched the tissues, taking care not to brush against Violet's hand.

Probably? Wasn't it a little late to just be "considering" what schools to go to? How foolhardy, especially for these days. Or was she implying that she wasn't even going to start in the fall, also a questionable plan? Not that Desiree cared.

Desiree shrouded her nose and blew her load. It didn't really help, but the softness of the tissues did bring her some relief.

But anyways, back to Violet. How dumb of her; how didn't she have a solid timeline planned out by now? Was she going to be one of those people who take time off to "discover" themselves or whatever, backpacking across Europe on some other sort of vision quest to humble brag about on Instagram? "Just checking out the Champs-Élysées, no big deal! Love Paris! #live #laugh #love"

Desiree sniffled and crumpled the tissues into a ball in her hand.

Just having the time of her life in a far-off exotic land while all Desiree got to do was be trapped with her family for a month in Wenzhou and floss on people in Fortnite for the rest of the summer.

Her hand rolled into a fist. She lobbed the tissue ball into the trash bin next to her; it hit the rim and swooshed in.

She wasn't mad or anything; she just wouldn't dignify Violet with a reply.

...

"...Going to Middlebury, up in Vermont." Desiree's hands squeezed the seat. She stretched her legs out as the sun revealed itself and enveloped both of the girls. "Just counting down the days until I never have to see this place again."

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Middlebury?" Violet repeated, folding her hands across her lap.

That school was on her list as a reach. It was really closer to a stretch than just a little strain away, but, regardless, it was a name she was familiar with. It was also one of the first schools that she knocked off of her list. That acceptance rate was way, way too low for her to even dream of getting in. It was in the rough area that she wanted to end up, but not really close enough to civilization to be truly appealing. A representative had (somehow) made it all the way down to their school once to give a presentation, and Violet had attended. She found him to be both snooty and awkwardly self-deprecating, all at once, a judgement that she hated to have to make.

"I thought the presentation they gave here was pretty neat," Violet said, "but I had to turn them down for, um, financial reasons."

She had no idea what Middlebury's aid program was like, and her family was far from ailing for cash to send her to college, but facts were not what this conversation was about. The world of discussion had gone post-truth. Small white lies like this wouldn't really hurt in the long run, if they were to ever run into each other again. They weren't hard to keep up with, as long as Violet didn't make too many.

"I'm leaving a lot behind here," she continued, nodding in agreement with Desiree's calendar gazing, "but I want to get out too. I feel trapped, here. As much as I kind of feel like sitting around, listening to music, and playing video games all day, it's just not in the cards."

In more ways than one, I guess.

She laughed, and hoped that the little tremble she heard in her own voice wasn't audible to Desiree.

[Jilly]

Oh Jesus, that circus of a "presentation". The way the presenter both tried too hard and didn't try hard enough to draw in "the youth" was laughable all on its own. It was like one of those anti-drug education programs that only worked to convince kids to smoke cigarettes. Five minutes of being trapped in there and Desiree considered one herself.

So no, that presentation was anything but neat. Hopefully Violet was just trying to be nice, otherwise Desiree had some concerns on her mental being.

Desiree kept staring at the ground, her eyes passing over the ridges and edges of the beige floor tiles. She tried to think of something, some way to affirm and agree with Violet's sentiment. She wasn't entirely right - it wasn't that Desiree wanted to escape per se, but she couldn't conceptualize how she really felt either. No one understood besides two other people, and one of them wasn't even a person.

There was no way Violet would comprehend, but Desiree had to say something now. Anything. Anything would work.

"Yeah," she mumbled, kicking the heel of her foot out and drawing it back in.

Her phone buzzed; was Dad already here? She whipped it out and checked the notification.

Dad: traffic!!! gonna b another 15 min

Desiree huffed and opened the messaging app.

Me: All right. Be careful.

She turned the screen off and stowed the phone away again. This was torture, her being trapped in this box when right now she could be working on her Minecraft castle she's spent months building.

This truly was the Dark Souls of Fridays.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Just a "Yeah"?

Violet wasn't sure she could handle just a "Yeah." It left too much uncertainty in the air, uncertainty that flew around her head, buzzing around a few times before maybe settling on her shoulder somewhere, possibly going in her ear, potentially landing and crawling on her leg. Maybe, possibly, and potentially being the key words, here. Whatever Desiree thought, though, one thing was somewhat close to certain—she was losing interest. The air was tense; the conversation slowed down. Maybe the nice thing to do in this situation would be to walk away. Desiree very obviously wanted the space to herself, and, on a few different levels, Violet felt somewhat obligated to honor that unspoken request. Terse, rigid conversation. Closed body language. General disinterest. All of these factors hinted at the fact that Desiree wanted out, or at the very least wanted Violet out.

She gulped.

"Do you come to sit here often?" Violet stammered.

[Jilly]

Turns out saying "Yeah" and ending a conversation only works 40.27% of the time. But even worse, Violet's next question struck fear in Desiree's heart:

"Do you [unintelligible] here often?" No, wait, wasn't that word "come"? Yeah, Desiree was sure of it. 'Do you come here often?' had to have been what she just said.

And then Desiree's face flushed, her eyes popping out at the pickup line as she shuffled slightly further away in the bench. Wh-why did she have to ask it like that? Maybe it was unintentional. But what if it was? She was flabbergasted and didn't know what to say, not really unusual for her but in this case it was maybe somewhat little justified.

"I like squares," she forced out. As soon as she realized what she just said, she wanted to die.

"-the windows," she pointed at the glass, trying to do as much damage control as possible. Her face was an inferno now. She withdrew her hand and sputtered out a pitiful "nevermind."

Well now she had to change the subject. "...I'm waiting for my dad to come get me," she said, her mouth unleashing a torrent of words in a rare moment for Desiree.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Aw, look! Desiree was just as embarrassed and shy as Violet was. No hostility intended, from earlier. Now there was movement. Now Violet was getting somewhere. Hospitality was not dead, and Violet had not pulled the trigger, mere moments ago. It was just a fake gun, silly! No need to get mushy with mixed metaphors gone out of order, now.

Violet exhaled deeply and nodded, letting some of the tension leave her body. She felt like the energy was flowing better around her Heart and Throat chakra areas—like her true feelings were constrained by the fact that she could not speak. Now, though, things had changed, and Violet could say what she wanted to say.

Which was, shockingly, not all that much at all. Violet was just happy to be here, to be honest. Right now, in the company holiday party that was life, Violet could be found in the back across the hall from the food tables in a corner facing the band, with a cup of ice water in one hand and a fork in the other stabbed down into a plate of nice warm mashed potatoes, content to watch the mingling and networking while listening to a GB bluegrass band hammer their way through some standards. Watch, and not participate.

"No, I know what you mean," Violet said, to the squares comment, "on a good day, the way the light shines through those is so pretty."

"I've just been waiting here for the halls to clear up, a little. I'm not good with crowds."

Violet took a look around. Most everyone had gone home, by now. The school was slowly slipping back into its natural state; Empty, devoid of life, a ghost town.

The glass was starting to sweat a little, and cold water was starting to drip down her hands.

Gulp.

"I bet it's still crowded by the main entrance," she stammered.

[Jilly]

Crowds did indeed suck. Cacophonic crowds with too many ideas, so much chatter but nothing substantial. Eyes on Desiree all the time.

She shuddered. And sneezed again, twice for good measure; maybe she was allergic to crowds too.

Desiree shook her head at the last comment, calming down from her probable earlier misunderstanding. "I don't think anyone would hang out here voluntarily. Not noisy enough."

And then a curious sound started to play from the ceiling. What started as a clear occasional tat evolved into a machine gun fire rat-a-tat. Desiree looked out the windows; a sunshower began.

"The devil's kissing his wife again," she said after some silence.

What a stupid saying.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Strangely enough,

"Oh, I haven't heard that one before," Violet said.

It was true, and it didn't make any sense. Why would it be raining if the devil was kissing his wife? Was there something obvious here that Violet wasn't able to understand? Probably. She wasn't the best with innuendo. Either way, it wasn't an expression that she had heard more than once, and that one time was right now. Her time online had left her very conscious of southern-isms, and she had tried to shift them out of her vocabulary. Had she forgotten one entirely in the process?

"I should call my sister. I don't think she has class today, I think she can probably pick me up."

And at this point, she was really just thinking aloud. Desiree wasn't the most talky person. The nerves that had filled her earlier started to subside and give way to a pleasant, serene feeling. Here she was! The girl! And at the very least she didn't obviously visibly ostensibly apparently hate Violet! Hip hip!

"But, uh, if she can't, then I'm a little screwed."