SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

Soon as he was sure the banner was reasonably straightened out, Carlos gave the blu-tack one final push and recoiled away on slightly springy legs like he'd put more effort into it than he should.

"I think that's about everything. Anything you wanna ask Carl?" Dave then asked. The look on his face could've been summed up in three words: He's onto me.

"Ah, nah...not right now." Carlos probably didn't notice that he actually did look bashful to match his tone. Maybe it was that one bit of him that actually still wanted to see some hope in people. "...I'm still getting that e-mail though, right?"

((Brianna Battaglia starts here))

"Thank you." Brianna flashed a smile at the cafeteria worker before lugging her tray over to an unoccupied table.

It wasn't hard for her to find an unoccupied table in the spacious Aurora High School cafeteria, especially at this time. Most of the underclassmen were just getting out of classes, while the seniors with cars were surely driving out for lunch. After grimacing at her lunch, she really didn't blame them.

"Is this supposed to be pesto?" Brianna questioned exactly what she had placed in her mouth. She could taste the school's budgetary substitutions to traditional pesto sauce. Garlic powder in place of real garlic, some substitute for the pine nuts (cashews?), and definitely some sort of cheese that wasn't parmesan. "If Nonna were here," Brianna thought, "she'd probably be whacking the chefs over the head with a wooden spoon. This shouldn't be called pesto. It's... I'm not quite sure what it is."

Nonna, who's real name was actually Constanza Battaglia, was Brianna's paternal grandmother, and one of the best cooks Brianna had ever known. She was also one of the firmest women Brianna had ever met. By simply suggesting substituting an ingredient in one of her dishes, Nonna would fire back a deathly glare. It was an amusing thought to think of Nonna working right in the kitchen, berating the staff for their culinary...creations abominations.

Upon glancing at her wristwatch, Brianna stood up and picked up her tray. Sure she had time to kill before she had to set up the GSA room for the afternoon's meeting, but she didn't really want to spend it here. As she walked towards the trash can, she heard a loud thud. Craning her head to investigate, she saw a boy pick himself off of the ground.

Oh! Something fell. Sounded kinda heavy too.  Brianna couldn't tell from across the distance of the cafeteria, but she was still going to investigate.

After hurrying over the rest of the distance to the trash can, Brianna emptied the remainder of her culinary torture and turned to travel towards the direction of the fall. By the time she refocused, she'd seen that two people had congregated around the fallen person. Though their backs were faced to her, she could make out the boy standing between them.

David... umm...

Brianna thought back to Sophomore year of high school. Back when she ran for her grade's class president, she took effort into trying to memorize names of her year's class. She spent a good preliminary week before the campaigning began trying to connect names to faces.

David Russell

That was it. David Russell. She remembered that he often wore those headbands. "He looked straight out of the 60's with his shaggy red hair peeking out from over his headband." Right above that tuft of red hair hung a shoddily strung up banner. "Ah. That's what must have fallen."

Student Volunteers Club Recruiting!

"Is he really bringing back the Volunteers Club?" Brianna continued to head over, pulling out a pen from her purse.

"Are you guys really bringing back the Volunteer Club?" Brianna asked.

Absorbed in thought as she was, by the time Alice noticed the fallen banner the two guys had already moved to fix it. At least Carlos's speed in trying to help return it to its proper place spoke well of him. Perhaps there was still hope left for him! Unless he's acting the part so his sudden but inevitable betrayal hurts all the more...

"Are you guys really bringing back the Volunteer Club?"

Alice spun around, startled by the sudden voice from behind. Another one drawn by the commotion, seeking to do harm? She relaxed upon seeing the source of the question, though. She was a rather pleasant looking girl, definitely not the sort to be suspicious of.

Straightening her glasses, Alice replied. "Yes. Not really bringing it back though. That would imply that it'd been gone. Sign up sheet's there." She pointed at the table, then, satisfied that her duty as a club member had been done, turned her attention back to the others, who had finished with the sign.

She'd been planning on leaving soon, but she figured that she might as well stick around until they dealt with this new candidate. At this rate they might actually get a healthy-sized club, if that Carlos guy proved to not be a total jerk.

"Yeah, of course!" Dave said to Carlos, his smile returning of its own will as its faith in the sincerity of Carlos' interest beginning to resurface. Even with his weird vibes, he was making himself useful and showing nothing but interest in the club; Dave was never going to take him off the list anyway, but for now he'd stop worrying about his interest in the club and welcome him as an ally and a friend.

As he stepped down from the chair, banner once again firmly in place, Brianna's voice came from behind him. Alice was already answering her question as he whirled around and tried to place her face when she just managed to avoid Dave cutting her off as he remembered his former club partner. "Brianna!" he yelled in delight, that smile of his once again transitioning into a grin. They'd worked together within the club the year before, though they'd never really gotten to know each other that well. Dave remembered pretty much everyone from last year, however, and Brianna was the recruitment drive's first familiar face.

"Yep, what she said." He continued from where Alice said, waving to the slip of paper on the table that had been signed twice already. "So Brianna, how've you been? Haven't talked to you in ages now." he asked, nodding back at her whilst still grinning. He'd meant to email everyone from last year before today, but between a lack of emails and the rush to get everything sorted and ready since he'd decided to get it restarted yesterday, it'd all just slipped his mind.

Carlos returned the smile as he finished returning the banner to its proper position on the wall, and outwardly even he knew it looked genuine. Not so much out of sincerity for being accepted into some kind of social circle but out of relief that they hadn't been able to see through a plan he hadn't actually thought entirely through. In fact he wasn't exactly sure how he was going to subvert these do-gooders and expose them for the superficial fucks they probably were.

Dave quickly turned to talk to Brianna Battaglia, aka Miss Overachiever (among many "over-" things.) The fact that the daughter of the man that lost to now-Governor Gregoire appeared to be taking an actually-genuine interest in the club was a pleasant twist. It could mean more attention to whatever the club was going to do, which could as well correspond to more stuff actually done.

Hell, he could just skip the subversion altogether and ride the damn coat-tails to pad the application of whatever place away from Seattle he was interested in.

Carlos' smile now bared both his upper and lower sets of teeth.

"Four members in a few minutes? Oh yeah, we comin' back now."

Dave grinned and nodded in agreement at Carlos, fears of his intentions being put to rest at his enthusiasm, then turned back to talk to Brianna. Before they knew it the two had found themselves in a long talk, as time flew by with the whirling of clock hands.

"Woah!" Dave jumped, spotting the clock on the wall at long last: it was practically the end of lunch already. Turns out he'd ended up talking to everyone longer than he'd realized, and suddenly their lunch time recruitment drive had come to a close.

Carlos, Alice, and Brianna: the new faces of the Aurora High student volunteers club who'd shown interest in his little booth.

Three people was better than none!

"Agh, sorry guys. Where'd the time go there?" he chuckled, though an anxiety at having lost track of time broke through into the laugh. "I'd better get everything taken down then, if you guys got class or whatever." With a final nod, he turned on foot and went back up to the banner that had actually managed to stick this time, starting to get everything taken down. "Oh, I'll email you all tonight!" he added as a final note, the words coming as quickly as he was working on demolishing his advertising stand.

((Permission given by Slamexo to shuffle Carlos out.))

Dave's exclamation about the time caused Carlos to also look at the clock and realize he'd spent so much time here plotting and setting up the banner that he too forgot where time went.

"Well shoot, and we just finally got the damn thing t'stick," Carlos replied, hoping his fake improvised redneck accent would do more than a shitty job at hiding the sarcasm dripping from his replaced profanity.

Putting one foot up and swiveling in position like one of those mannequins at a Disney ride, he turned and almost marched out of the cafeteria toward his next class with a disturbingly confident stride.

In fact, it was so confident that even the casual observer could chance upon a fairly uncommon but not altogether rare occurrence. Because every once in a while when the stars of schadenfreude aligned, Carlos Lazaro could be seen with a crooked smile across his face indicating that he was having some ongoing or imminent entertainment at someone else's expense.

In this case, it was the latter. If Carlos could somehow get himself to commit to more than the e-mail - which fortunately wasn't the case with most of the other clubs he'd been interested in since he started here - the volunteer club was in for some fun times indeed.

((Carlos Lazaro continued in Getting Dates Over The Internet For Fun And Profit))

And just like that, Dave's banner was back in his hands after serving it's job and attracting a handful of fellow volunteers. It had definitely earned its hero's rest in the recycling bin.

Carlos had left pretty much as soon as Dave had noticed the time, so he figured he must've had things to get to. Alice and Brianna were still hanging around by the time he was done, but there wasn't really much of anything left to say to them either at that point.

"Sooo yeah, thanks for signing up guys." He said, giving a wide smile in gratitude. "I'll get those emails sent out as soon as I can. But I guess I'll just see you round 'till then." he finished with a small shrug, before breaking off into one last grin.

Gripping the banner and table in both hands, he set about returning the supplies he'd borrowed to their rightful homes, waving a bye to his new friends in the process.

All in all, it'd been a pretty successful drive.

((David "Dave" Russell continued in Stars and Bucks))

Alice, having set her lunch tray down on the table, was now studying her watch, oblivious to the conversation. It was almost time for lunch to end, but she hadn't even eaten anything. Not that going without lunch for a day was anything new. She often see something interesting, drop everything to sketch it, and promptly forget about her meal until the bell rang to remind her that she was hungry.

While it looked like this would be another one of those days, that would mean that Alice would have to throw away perfectly good food, which seemed counter-productive when she had just joined a club dedicated to helping others. Of course, if she left early to finish her lunch, she may miss important information, lessening her ability to be a productive member of the group. Either way, Alice's actions would add up to a net worth of zero, at best. That would be no good.

Realizing that it had gotten quiet, Alice looked up to see that she had just missed the entirety of the conversation around her. Dave was waving goodbye, with Carlos already gone. Well, it looks like the decision had been made for her. Alice grabbed her food, intent on at least finishing the main course before the period ended, leaving her sustenance-less.

((Alice Gilman: Continued in V = - ∫ E · dl))