"Sounds like you," Mel said. "The slaughtering part, anyway." She had not missed the blush that marked that Astrid had been talking about something she really cared about - more than arguing with others over the right way to do things, maybe even more than glaring. Mel filed it a...

Well, now Astrid was just acting like a deflated balloon. Any bigger of a sigh and Mel would have drawn the conclusion that if she pushed Astrid's buttons enough, Astrid would flip from workaholic to sensitive artistic soul. But hey, maybe it was part of a scheme - to weaponize a general aura of res...

Mel furrowed her brow, any semblance of a smile disappearing off her face. Her mostly eaten banana shifted from her left hand to her right, and then found its place back in her backpack again, in a pocket where it was less likely to smear over everything. If she thought really hard, or even not that...

"It's so arbitrary," Mel said, swinging her legs a couple of times. She stopped when the table shook under her. "I mean, it's just dumb that people are always telling others what they can or can't do. Like we should all be the same or something." It was funny that Astrid seemed m...

"Not a bad idea, y'know?" Mel traced the back of the chair with one fingernail, taking a bite out of her banana as she did so. Chewed. Swallowed. "Could carve my initials - go all Zorro on it. Swish!" That was a joke, of course. She was probably breaking enough library rules alre...

((Melanie Beckett: Pregame Start)) That was right about when Mel walked up and plopped herself in the contested chair, her backpack unceremoniously landing on the floor next to her. Hey, you snooze, you lose. "Astrid!" She glanced over a bit, grinned. "What's up, Maxim? Funny finding ...

He hadn't really thought this all the way through. Still, he had permission to go to the bathroom, and everyone had heard him ask, so he couldn't very well back out now. Wayne took a moment to straighten out his notebook as he got up, casually scooping the scrap of paper he'd written on into his han...

Wayne stared at the back of the girl's head for a moment, his expression unchanged. It wasn't as if he'd been trying to make a mess out of her desk. Hell, she hadn't read the note. That would have probably at least explained it. Maybe. Probably not. He shifted, then slouched slightly lower in his se...

((Wayne Cox: Pregame Start)) His pencil scratched on paper. YO, what're you doing? that was really obvious, you know Wayne faked stretching, then lobbed his own paper ball aimed at Kimiko's desk when he felt no one was paying attention to him. Especially Mrs. Brown - he made extra, super sure in her...

He was a leader now, was he? He wasn't much of a leader. He wasn't much of anything when he cared to think about it, but he didn't have to think right now. This wasn't a time for thinking, no more than it was a time for picking holes in what he did, what people said, how they judged him, how he dese...

"Once," Wayne said, sticking his almost forgotten fry into his mouth. "With family, so... you know. My sister dragged me around all day, and it was hot, and by the time I got back I just flopped on the bed and blocked out the memories." He chuckled. "Lower end of Vegas exper...

"Not really. Might have played a game of basketball around here once, though," Wayne said, easing up more, his eyes straying from the road every so often to glance in Raina's general direction as they talked. She didn't seem like the basketball type. He'd known he wasn't for a while now, o...

((Wayne Cox continued from I Know What My Fortune Is )) Wayne rolled his eyes, but he couldn't pretend like he wasn't smiling, too, just a bit. Her cheer was infectious. Still, the Frosty thing? No way. He was up for an adventure, not insanity. He'd never tried anything like that before. Refused to,...

Well, he was being dragged. That was something he hadn't expected. Raina was just using him for his car, wasn't she? The thought came to him, sarcastic, hiding any real concern away to be forgotten. Still, even if it was true - even if he believed it was true - he didn't mind. Adventure, she'd said....

Any attempt of his at finding anything of significance in the night sky was interrupted by Raina's response and the shifting of weight on the bench. Wayne shot her a questioning look. "Sure," he said. "Did you walk here or something?" His car wasn't a topic that came up often. Mo...