Survival Of The Fittest

Madeleine let out a little laugh, if a little uneasy, as Chloé mimed shooting herself. She had never really been into humor like... that. She got the appeal, of course - making fun of yourself in a darkly comical way - but it never just sat right with her. Oh well. Chloé could make whatever jokes she wanted, Madeleine wasn't gonna stop her. University was a pretty good thing, especially if she was gonna be doing something in politics or economics. Heh, who knows, maybe in a few years Chloé would be the President and Madeleine would be an ambassador somewhere. Even if it wasn't likely at all, it was a nice thought to think about, that they'd both be doing something important.

"Yeah. My mom always talks about how me and Klinton should always take as many opportunities as we get, because like, the people she knows back in Kosovo would love to have those opportunities and we should be like, grateful for the chance to take them!" Madeleine supplemented Ethan's statement. Come to think of it, what her mom said didn't make full sense but she sorta got the meaning behind them? It was just worded weirdly, she decided. The meaning was pretty sound; other people would love to have the opportunities that you have, so you shouldn't waste them. It was kind of like how your mom tells you when you're a little kid that you should eat all the vegetables on your plate because people in Africa would love to have that food, and so you shouldn't waste it!

"Uhh... fuck, uh..." She knew who Ethan was talking about, she just couldn't place a full name. He was the dude who was so fat he had to get a special bathtub made for him because he got stuck in the normal one in the White House too much, right? No, that was William Taft, but she remembered something from that. "William. That's his first name, but I dunno, uh, what the rest of his name is. Henryson or something, I think?"

Madeleine gave an uneasy laugh in response, and Chloé felt a pang of guilty sympathy. Her finger gun hadn’t exactly been graphic, but it had probably been in poor taste; making the jump from academic pressure to suicide could definitely hit too close to home for a lot of people. She normally thought things through better than that. She almost reached out to give Madeleine’s arm a reassuring squeeze, but hesitated and decided, when Ethan provided another nugget of his mother’s wisdom, to just move on.

In response, this time to Ethan, Madeleine went on to allude to some life back in Kosovo. So Madeleine had also come “across the pond”, albeit from a much less fortunate part of Europe- that country’s relatively recent conflicts could even have been another trigger for her earlier discomfort. Tragic as that was, Chloé had to stifle a slight laugh at the name Klinton, presumably a brother or sister. From what she knew of Kosovo, they really loved their NATO allies, but that was a bit much.

Ethan brought her attention back to a question she’d previously left blank. The president with the shortest term. It had to be one of the ones who died in office- her mind went straight to Garfield, mainly because of the cartoon cat, but “William Henryson” rang a bell.

“William Henry Harrison?”

Confident, she jotted it down, and put her pen down as well. With that, she’d reached the end.

Mr Kennedy didn’t seem ready to move the class on just yet so, almost subconsciously, Chloé took her phone out her jean pocket. She scrolled through a few messages that had come through during the lesson while the others finished their papers. After batting off a few responses she clicked back to the home screen, where the red play button caught her eye.

“Ethan, what did you say your YouTube channel was called?”

William Henry Harrison sounded as good as any other possibility, so Ethan wrote it down. WIth that, his paper was full.

Chloé seemed to be in a similar position, because her next action was to put the schoolwork to rest and turn into a smartphone-zombie. Or at least that was what it looked like for a moment.

“Ethan, what did you say your YouTube channel was called?”

The question caught him slighty off-guard. It didn't happen often that people he didn't knew that well brought this topic up.

But whatever, he held no reservations against talking about his work.

"It's called Ethan Watched Something. You might have to scroll a little since I am too small for the first search results sometimes. My profile picture is a drawing resembling me with a blue background."

"Yeah, that's it! William Henry Harrison." He took pneumonia and died because he gave a speech in the rain and wind and cold for like, hours and hours. Considering how most of his fellow Presidents who had died in office went, in comparison that was a pretty peaceful death. Dude didn't even make it a month, though. Probably kind of embarrassing, having the shortest Presidency in history. Madeleine wrote it down and like that, she was done. It was nice to actually be writing stuff down, instead of typing in online classes. She didn't realise just how much she missed that until now.

Noticing Chloé's stifled laugh at her brother's name, Madeleine cracked a slight smile. A few years ago she would have got mad, but nowadays she'd learned that being named after a President's surname was kinda odd. "Could've been worse, Chloé. Could have been Tonibler, after Tony Blair." She knew it wasn't a common name - granted, Klinton wasn't a common name - but it was a little more, say, outlandish than Klinton.

And then Chloé was asking Ethan about his channel, and to be honest, Madeleine didn't really care all that much, as harsh as it might seem. Especially with his thing about journalism being too political. Would there be a dreaded The Last of Us Part II essay? Complaining about Brie Larson? The name registered in her mind - Ethan Watched Something - but right now she was idly texting her friends, checking up on the news, social media, the usual.

Maybe she was being a little harsh, Madeleine thought. What was the harm in checking it out after school? Scrolling to YouTube, she bookmarked his channel. She'd watch it after school - well, maybe just give it a look, not fully watch.

Madeleine responded to Chloé’s little laugh with the excellent counterpoint that Tonibler was, indeed, a worse name.

“Toe Nibbler? Eww.” She laughed again, then realised something.

“I’m being a bit hypocritical, aren’t I? Since I guess I have a weird European name too. My ‘é’, I mean.”

When he replied to her question about his channel, Chloé tapped Ethan’s response into the search bar and scrolled down to the result that best matched his description. Sure enough, she had to swipe past some only tangentially-related posts from larger creators- that darn algorithm at play- but eventually she found the right channel, and clicked the subscribe button. She couldn’t promise she’d watch all his videos, since she didn’t use the app all that often, but she might at least be able to boost his profile a little.

With that done, Chloé slipped her phone back into her pocket, and only had another ten seconds or so to wait before Mr Kennedy called the class to attention. Directing that attention to a PowerPoint that popped up behind him, he began teaching in earnest; with the first half of the lesson spent recapping last year’s content, it seemed the next half would be covering new material.

((Chloé Delacroix continued elsewhere))

Somehow the topic of the conversation had shifted to weird names, which Ethan was kinda uncomfortable with. During the last three years of highschool, no one who didn't already knew had found out about his middle name, and he would love to keep up this status quo for the final year.

"Yeah, parents can be merciless when it comes to names." He laughed. "And I don't think there's anything wrong with european names. I mean, unless you two are native americans, odds are our ancestors some hundred years ago were european."

He wasn't exactly sure if this bold statement made sense in this situation, but he prefered keeping the topic away from the name-thing.

Meanwhile, Chloé had apparently looked up his channel and pocketed her smartphone again. Ethan didn't really expect to gain a new fan, but if she gave his channel a honest look, she did already more than many others. Maybe she would bring the topic up one day, now that they sat close together, or maybe not. In the latter case, Ethan wouldn't press it. Back at the start of his channel, he had often annoyed people by constantly asking if they watched his latest video, driving them away in the process. Nowadays he left the decision if they wanted to follow his online presence up to them. This had proved to earn much better results.

Before any of the girls could say a comment about american history, Mr Kennedy decided to remind everyone that he was the teacher in the room.

Some of the other students seemed caught off-guard by that, their papers still empty. Thank god Ethan wasn't among them. Sometimes, teamwork really made the dream work.

"Well, whatever. Was fun talking to you two." He kind-of-whispered while getting himself into a better position for the oncoming lecture.

((Ethan Kemp continued in With Great Awkwardness Comes Great Responsibility))

Madeleine was about to respond, to Chloé's talk about toenibblers and Ethan's sorta weird thing about European names, when Mr Kennedy called everyone to attention.

"Talk to you guys later." She mumbled, already fumbling through her bag to grab a pen and notebook. You didn't really need to take notes, but Madeleine always found that having something to look back on later when she was studying helped. Plus, writing it down helped her remember it, and knowing was half the battle! As GI Joe always put it. She should see if she could find those cartoons again; she had always watched them with Klinton when they had just moved here, and it would be fun to get all nostalgic.

((Madeleine Molliqaj continued in Skateballing, Anyone?))