Looking for advice (Charlie). on Teppenpaw Commons

Julian Umland

February 16, 2015 8:45 PM

Looking for advice (Charlie). by Julian Umland

Her essay was only a few inches away from meeting the minimum requirements, and the sensible thing to do would be to finish it while her mind was on it. If she didn’t, she’d spend the next few days thinking over and over again that it was just a few inches and then she’d end up having to rush through them at the last minute, only to discover that minimums were minimums for a reason and that she really still had several paragraphs to go an hour before the stupid thing was due. At least hitting the minimum right now was her best bet.

Julian rolled up her parchment and closed her books resolutely anyway. Her head was starting to hurt, her eyes were glazing over, and she was done for the day. She still had as many days as she had inches to finish this paper and really thought she ought to be commended for starting it so early instead of condemned for needing a break now. Never mind that she was sure to be assigned yet more work in the intervening days....

Advanced classes, she thought as she walked back toward the Teppenpaw common room, were just about exactly as bad as she had expected. She tried to look on the bright side: at least they hadn't turned out to be much worse. Since intellectual masochism wasn't really her thing, though, some days were still a lot worse than others, especially compared to how even the difficulty level of the previous years at least seemed in retrospect....

Back in the common room, she took a seat - if she went to her bed, she was afraid she'd doze off and ruin her night's sleep - and took her mail out of her bag to read. Joe had made her a Thanksgiving card. Stephen had sent postcards from three cities he'd visited in the past month and a half (she assumed part of this was just affection, as one of them was Edmonton) and Paul passed along some notes she'd asked for. Mom had written a long letter, footnoted here and there by Dad. Near the end, Mom mentioned that Kevin Wallace had asked after her.

Julian had kissed him a few times over the summer, and so while she hadn’t really developed much of an attachment (he was a nice guy, maybe it could have been different under other circumstances, but investing in people at home was always a bad idea), the mention of him did make her start to blush just a little. Starting anything serious, or really anything at all that was just between them and not part of the doubles arrangement with some mutual friends, with Kevin had never crossed Julian’s mind, though, so it also concerned her just a little. Was it normal to ask after someone one had had their kind of relationship with - to apparently ask the other person’s mother - or had she somehow, incredibly, given that she was Just Not That Kind of Girl at all no matter how many lessons Charlie had taught her and she had practiced, given the poor fellow altogether the wrong idea?

She was prepared to dismiss it as something she couldn’t do anything about when she spotted Charlie and stood up quickly to get his attention. “Charles,” she said, “I need you.”

Asking Charlie about it might not do any good at all - she was pretty sure the protocols for any kind of relationship she might have would be at least a little different from the protocols of any equivalent he might have - but he was a guy who was simultaneously not related to her and not a romantic option for her, which made him the best option to ask about this that she had. Far, far more importantly, though, she kind of felt like they had not really been around each other much since they came back to school and didn’t like that at all. This was the stupidest thing in the world to talk about, but it was a reason to talk without starting out with the motherly fussing over how he was doing in this mad new world they had somehow grown into. Motherly fussing right at the beginning of a conversation was rarely a good idea; sometimes it was, but not, in her experience, that often.

“For social advice," she continued. "So - if you had agreed to go on some double dates over the summer to help out your friends, and then the person your friend paired you up with, like, asked one of your dads how you were doing now, what would you think that meant?” she asked, compressing the situation as far as she could figure out how to but still feeling as though she were rambling. Economy of expression was not a consistent strength of hers, though it did seem to become strangely easier when writing set-length essays instead of talking to her friend.

OOC: Canadian Thanksgiving is the second Monday of October, so this is a bit fuzzytimed.

16 Julian Umland Looking for advice (Charlie). 254 Julian Umland 1 5

Charlie B-F-R

March 03, 2015 8:50 AM

Don't kiss boys. by Charlie B-F-R

Charlie was a little embarrassed to admit that, with all the delights of Sonora and mail order shopping available to him, the activity he had chosen to engage in that evening was homework. He had found that homework tended to involve the least scantily clad girls, when compared to things like the water room or magazines, and was thus the safest activity to be engaged in. Of course, he couldn’t really escape from his own brain, and that was chock full of naked girls, and homework could be so pleasant to be distracted from that he had to try very hard not to let his mind wander.

He was currently working on his Care of Magical Creatures assignment, which meant he was having to try very hard not to think about Neeka, whom he had worked with in class. The trouble was, Neeka was really very thinkable-about…. She was pretty and opened up a whole exciting world of make up and clothing choices to compliment her skin tones and then remove….

“Huh?” he jumped, coming to with a blush as he heard someone using his full first name and wondering which shocked classmate or professor has mastered legilimency and knew what he’d been wondering about Neeka. But it was Julian, and she was saying she needed him, so she was probably just teasing, though it took a minute for the sheepish look to be brushed off his face and replaced with something more like his usual demeanour.

“Full name stuff. Must be serious,” he noted, closing his textbook and waving for Julian to sit. He listened to her query, the fact that he had only just, very consciously reset his poker face was the only thing that helped him keep it on as she spoke. He was glad that her question warranted some mulling over, meaning it wasn’t unusual if he took some time to consider it, as his first thoughts were just angry ones that someone had taken his Julian on dates. What had they done with her? He felt a twist of jealousy at the thought of them kissing her. “I’d say it means your town’s a lot more interesting than mine,” he countered, “And I think I need to know a few more gruesome details before I could possibly come to a reasoned conclusion,” he wasn’t sure why he was fishing for details because he didn’t want Julian to have kissed a boy and she might say that she had. But the jealous monster in his belly was hungry… It craved the information and wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew. Maybe, maybe it couldn’t be worse than what he could picture, and so it would be better to know. “There are beans. Spill ‘em.” He had so many years of practise that he thought he did quite a good impression of the gossipy gay best friend, even if he wanted the details for quite other reasons.

13 Charlie B-F-R Don't kiss boys. 252 Charlie B-F-R 0 5

Julian

March 03, 2015 4:57 PM

Bit late for that advice.... by Julian

Julian giggled at Charlie’s exaggerations. Her life and neighborhood were like toast: very likable, but not at all exciting unless one was starving before coming across it. It was, though, fun to imagine there was some angle at which it might look full of intrigue and exciting, glamorous people or anything else worthy of gossiping about.

“It was really nothing,” she protested, still smiling. “We – saw a film, and we hung out at – you know, the coffee shop and the frozen yogurt place a couple of times, and were on the same bowling team one night. The only date-dates were doubles, and that was kind of a favor to friends….”

She bit her lip, not sure if she wanted to brag or hide the fact forever. “I mean, he’s cute, and…okay, I kissed him a time or two, but I didn’t think it meant anything,” she said. “We both knew I was going back to boarding school, and I didn’t think a few kisses were very serious for…anyone, really. My mom and dad might think so, but I think that’s just a parent thing, isn’t it? Not for people our age….” She had tried to keep it a deadly secret from her brothers, but that was because she’d known they would tease her, not because she was afraid (well, not very much, anyway) that they’d become insanely overprotective or think that she was doing something bad. If she had started acting all lovey-dovey, they would probably have been concerned because there would have been no ending to that story that didn’t involve her getting hurt, but she had had better sense than that. She’d had fun, enjoyed a lot of it, and had been sorry to see it end, but not sorry enough to mope once she was back at school. She hadn’t even really thought about it very much; she’d had a lot to do, and since her roommates were the kind of girls whose parents chose their dates for them and Charlie had no more luck with what was left around here than she did, there hadn’t been much to bring it to mind….

Julian felt distinctly flushed again and fussed with a piece of her hair. Even without all that, when she put it the way she’d put it, she could see why some might think it sounded kind of bad, at least if she was wrong about what was normal. She knew plenty about boys, which was part of why she had kept her head on about Kevin even when he'd been at his most charming or flattering, but her sources for how girls related to them were mostly books. She wanted to keep trying to justify herself, but she decided she had rambled enough and that now would be a good time to shut up before she dug herself any deeper if there was, in fact, a pit already forming under her feet.

16 Julian Bit late for that advice.... 254 Julian 0 5

Charlie B-F-R

March 07, 2015 1:30 AM

Don't do it again by Charlie B-F-R

She had kissed him. More than once. Visions of passionate clinches in the cinema swam through Charlie’s mind and he fought to keep his face neutral and interested.

“Tsk tsk, young lady,” he teased, “Kissing boys. Can’t say I approve.” And of course he didn’t. It was all wrong and his stomach felt twisty at the very idea. But the way he said it… And the way Julian had seen him for the last five years meant there was no danger of her taking him seriously. In this, or in any other way…

He pondered her dilemma as best he could through the rage that seemed to be pulsing through his brain. She would expect an answer, some sage advice. What, he tried to think, would Charlie say…. Under normal circumstances, he might have thought it was quite sweet. That this Kevin (what kind of stupid, ugly name was ‘Kevin’ anyway?) seemed to be quite a considerate and polite person. But he couldn’t see that, or didn’t want to, about someone that Julian was getting romantic with.

“Seems a bit weird,” he agreed with her. She had seemed worried about it, seemed like it might not be a good thing, and he wanted to feed that idea. Not consciously. His conscious self did not want to sabotage Julian or do anything to make her unhappy. But his jealousy was in the driving seat, and it tricked him, made up convincing sounding answers and whispered them in his ear until he thought they were his own, true feelings. In years to come, he would look back with regret at how spiteful he had been, especially as it wasn’t specifically Julian he wanted… It was girls. Any girl. And he resented the corner he had backed himself into, and the ease with which Kevin could just swoop in and take the thing that he was scared of, confused by and desperate for. “Maybe he got the wrong idea. I’d keep him at a distance next time you’re home.”

13 Charlie B-F-R Don't do it again 252 Charlie B-F-R 0 5

Julian

March 07, 2015 4:16 PM

Not ever? by Julian

“Just the one,” protested Julian, then sighed exaggeratedly, putting her hand up to her heart and sagging back in her seat. “Still, I know, I know - I suppose his dark good looks and fairly average baseball statistics just made me take leave of my senses.” Banter was not something Julian thought she had much of a natural talent for, but it was just Charlie, so it was safe to indulge the impulse to try every now and then and now felt like a good moment. The more she could brush it all off as a joke, the better.

Her smile faded, though, as Charlie agreed she might have led poor Kevin on. “Oh, goodness, I hope not,” she said, her words a little muffled by the fingers now pressed over her mouth. She dropped her hand to her lap. “It’s still strange to think that anyone would - take an interest at all, even just for a bit of fun, I never….”

She could feel herself turning a deeper red as the thought ran on. It was awful to think of hurting anyone just for what had amounted to her own entertainment, especially a nice guy, but she found it hard to pretend there wasn’t something...appealing...about the thought of being someone who could not only get attention, but keep it well enough that someone might still have her on his mind almost two months after he’d last seen her, and like that instead of just in passing, out of courtesy. That, though, was wrong, she knew it was, and she was ashamed of herself for acknowledging, even in her own head, that she felt that way in the slightest. People - Muggles or wizards, boys or girls, whatever - weren’t marionettes strung up and moved around to make her feel good about herself. These thoughts weren’t even supposed to make her feel good about herself.

“Now I’m going to spend all year thinking everyone in the neighborhood is talking about what a - a scarlet woman or something - that I am when I couldn’t pay a boy here to look twice at me,” she said mournfully. She adjusted how she was sitting to focus on Charlie, deciding there was really nowhere to go from that probably literally true fact. Every man had his price, but she couldn’t afford any of them. “When I have time to think, anyway - these classes are murder. For me, anyway. Do you think you’re getting a grip yet?” she asked. What she could do to make it better if he wasn’t, she wasn’t sure, but if there was a problem, particulars would help.

16 Julian Not ever? 254 Julian 0 5

Charlie

March 12, 2015 9:52 AM

I advise against it by Charlie

One was still more than enough boys. He smiled weakly at Julian’s comments, knowing she was trying to be funny and that he was supposed to find it so but he just didn’t.

“Hey, wrong and wrong,” he countered, feeling very guilty when Julian started blaming herself, along with being down on her chances of anyone taking further interest. The last thing he wanted was to make Julian feel bad. And, ok, maybe there were better, nicer things he could have said but they would have been lying, and he hadn’t thought she’d take it on herself. He certainly hadn’t meant her to - it was the guy that was behaving wrong. Kissing Julian, then going around being all…. asky about how she was. Passing on regards and stuff. Who did that? It was just lame.

“I mean, ok, you may be as likely to find a man here as I am,” technically that wasn’t lying… It was unlikely that anyone male would take that sort of interest, even if at the moment he was weirdly unoccupied with the idea of them doing so. “But that’s not you, it’s them. And same with this guy at home.

“I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong. But guys can be a pain in the backside. You were clear with him, and if he chose not to hear that, that’s his problem not yours.”

13 Charlie I advise against it 252 Charlie 0 5

Julian

March 16, 2015 10:31 AM

Aw, you're no fun. by Julian

Even in the midst of the huge, contradictory cloud of shame and pride and guilt and a pair of completely opposite emotions which both refused to answer to any name but ‘embarrassment,’ Julian couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at Charlie’s logic. Structurally, the almost-Aladren in her brain thought it might actually work (that members of one group had no interest in her because of a particular set of prejudices did not preclude the possibility of a member of another group, one with a totally different background and set of perceptions, having a problem exactly the opposite of the first problem) but it still didn’t...sound right, somehow. How did the saying go? When one had a problem with everyone else, maybe the problem wasn’t with everyone else?

“You’re sweet,” she said. “And will surely find someone perfect someday, somewhere that’s Not Here.”

Not Here. That was Out There - a whole different Out There. Now, being Out There meant either having no company beyond her siblings or else getting into conundrums like this one. Later...who knew what Out There would be after next year?

She pushed that thought away firmly. Life was going to be very like it had always been, of course. Being nervous about possibilities was just foolish.

“My advice is to stick to magicals, though.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s just too complicated. I felt like I was in one of John’s spy books every time someone asked me anything all summer. Intelligence officer is not a career I think I’m suited for.” She realized that could sound wrong. “Not that I think anyone suspected anything. And we’re probably blowing this way out of proportion in general. Even if he’s still interested, the guy isn’t a crazy stalker. I get so paranoid when I’m at home - or, apparently, anything even reminds me of home.”

16 Julian Aw, you're no fun. 254 Julian 0 5