Legacy Blues (Room One, tag Leonor). on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Mara Morales

March 28, 2020 2:41 PM

Legacy Blues (Room One, tag Leonor). by Mara Morales

The last time Mara had seen Leonor, things had ended at something, she thought, of a standstill. There had been a lot of things said - a lot of them which didn't so much offend anyone as confuse them, as though they were speaking across a much greater culture gap than they had previously assumed - and a lot more things almost certainly left unsaid, and it seemed incredibly likely that both Jessica and Leonor had issues under the surface which they didn't want to admit, but which might have had a lot to do with the conversation ending at a standstill.

Mara did not have that many underlying issues, as far as she knew, but she had still fretted about the other two and contemplated tearing her hair out, or better yet, finding Felipe and punching him. Jessica was her sister, Leonor was her friend, Felipe was an ass who had hurt them both. Hitting him wouldn't really do much to fix the situation, but it would be satisfying, she thought. At least, that was, until the part where she got in trouble. That part would put a damper on things.

Since she didn't want to lose her hair or put things on her permanent record, she had reluctantly accepted that she was going to have to try to use the fact her head was relatively level to take the lead in figuring out the situation. Therefore, she wrote a note inviting Leonor down to MARS on Saturday and sent it along, and then on Saturday, she went down to the water room a few minutes before the proposed meeting time and shrugged out of the jeans and sweater she had had on over her red one-piece swimsuit. The joys, she thought, of indoor swimming pools; winter didn't have to stop them swimming, even if it never did really feel quite as right as swimming in the summer did. At her dad's house, they had both an indoor and an outdoor pool, and the indoor pool was as useful in summer when the weather was bad as it was in winter, but it still felt more natural to swim indoors during a summer storm than it did to swim in the exact same pool in the wintertime.

She had thought about waiting for Leonor to show up before she even shed her layers, much less before she jumped in the pool, but she was nervous and the water was there, so she got in and started swimming, using long, steady strokes and kicks to move herself through the water quickly but without a lot of splashing. The water rushed over her shoulders and into her black hair, currently tied back into a ponytail, and she closed her eyes for a moment, just enjoying it. When she reached the other end, though, she stopped, turned around, and saw her friend.

"Hey," she said, lowering her feet back to the floor to show Leonor that the pool was not deeper than their heads - one of the things about this room which had slightly freaked her out but which she couldn't help but see the utility of - in case Leonor wanted to finally make good on that summer suggestion of learning to swim. Or even just wanted to wade into the water for something to do besides just sit and talk. "Just a sec." She began swimming back toward the first end at the same speed and pace she had moved at before. When she touched the wall, she pushed back, then treaded water, looking up at Leonor. "Want to give it a shot, or just start talking about how you're doing?" she asked, figuring that she might as well just go to the point, to avoid things going kind of the way they had before.

16 Mara Morales Legacy Blues (Room One, tag Leonor). 1472 1 5

Leonor De Matteo

March 28, 2020 11:17 PM

You're leaving a better legacy than me. by Leonor De Matteo

Leonor was slowly becoming more and more exhausted. Well, maybe not that slowly. Since accepting Felipe's offer of help, no matter how much she hated it, things were a little better, but that came at a price. She was understanding more of what she was meant to understand faster, which meant that she was moving on to the next thing faster, too. So she was learning everything better, which was great, but she was also plowing through way more material than she had been on her own. She'd been sitting in the library, staring blankly at the table in front of her and not really seeing the stacks of papers and books there, when she'd gotten an owl from Mara.

Truth be told, Leonor was thinking about her parents. Would they be proud of her? Would she disappoint them because she still wasn't learning enough? She wasn't catching up fast enough? Would she be ready for any of her official duties by the summer? She couldn't remember exactly what Felipe's duties had been when he was her age, but she suspected had done a better job than she previously had realized. Leonor was definitely the more naturally suited to leadership of the two of them, but Felipe had a more learned leadership style about him, and Leonor realized now that he really would have been good for Ciudad de Matteo. But he would have hated it, and Leonor wouldn't. She was actually pretty excited about the prospect of spending her life there because that was where she loved. She couldn't imagine leaving Los Jardines de Plata and now she wouldn't have to. However, she would work a little harder than her parents had to make sure that all of her children - if she had more than one - were equipped to take over after her, should they want to.

Mara's owl had pulled her out of her near stupor and she was almost smiling by the time she'd finished reading it. The offer to teach Leonor to swim had been thrown out so long ago, in very different circumstances. It felt like a lifetime ago, and it felt like Leonor was very possibly not the same person at all as she'd been then. It was nice to know that Mara didn't think of her that way. Leonor had finished her study session with renewed vigor and by the time Saturday rolled around, she could almost say she was caught up with everything. Really, there was no such thing as caught up. But Leonor had least checked off everything on her "must-do" list and begun working on her "to-do" list. She hated that she had lists now.

Leonor didn't actually have a bathing suit because she had never needed one before, but she had a pair of spandex shorts her mom had bought her for exercising if necessary, and one of her thickest spandex training bras. It would have to do. She wore these under her regular linen dress and made her way to the MARS rooms.

When she entered the room, Mara was already swimming. She looked majestic and fierce and dangerous, like a mermaid princess. Mermaids were, on the whole, terrifying. Princesses were terrifying in a different way. Mara looked like the sort of swimming creature that could both lure you to your death and actually kill you. Really, she just looked like she was swimming and good at it. But she had the sort of strength and grace about her that Leonor really wanted to learn to possess herself.

Mara stood up and greeted Leonor, who was surprised that the water wasn't deeper. Wouldn't it be harder to swim with the floor so close? Would she not kick the floor? Well, this was an adventure and Leonor was just going to have to get used to that. She just hoped she didn't drown in the interim.

Leonor didn't return the greeting with any words, but waved, removed her linen dress, and kicked off her shoes while she waited for Mara to come back. She'd been trying to only use English since Christmas, but it felt so weird to do that with Mara. Still, it was a good exercise in self-discipline. "I wasn't sure what to wear," she explained when Mara arrived, feeling exposed in her makeshift bathing suit. "I didn't have one of those," she added, pointing to Mara's red one.

Mara wanted to talk about how Leonor was doing, and Leonor felt her guard automatically go back up. She was doing fine. She didn't need help. She was fine. Except this was Mara, and Mara could probably tell. They weren't super close yet, but they were closer than Leonor and anyone else. She liked to think she and Theo were becoming friends but he was so hard to read.

It did worry Mara that people seemed to think she was definitely not doing fine. On the bright side, it only seemed to be people that knew what was going on. Maybe they were just asking because they were worried and because they were decent human beings. That seemed unlikely given the emphasis Leonor's parents had put on standing apart from others by being altruistic; on the whole, others must not be. That aside, Leonor couldn't help thinking she must not be doing a good job keeping herself together. She thought she was; she did her hair for classes each morning, she picked out a nice dress to go underneath her robe . . . she wasn't getting much sleep but she was trying to at least, and she was eating normally. What else could she do? She was not struggling and it hurt a little to think that Mara thought otherwise.

"Either way," she said cautiously, lowering herself to the edge of the pool and then slowly dropping into the water. She held her arms up, not sure what to make of this yet. She'd been in water before, but not anything like this. It seemed like the sort of thing that a Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson would warn about. "Do you have a preference?"

22 Leonor De Matteo You're leaving a better legacy than me. 1471 0 5

Mara Morales

March 29, 2020 11:36 AM

Hopefully no time soon... by Mara Morales

"That looks fine," Mara assured Leonor about her makeshift swimsuit, mostly not wanting to embarrass her friend. It would serve the purpose, after all, and they were not exactly showing off for anyone here. It was not a fashion show or an event, just...friends hanging out.

She half-grinned, acknowledging a fair point, when Leonor asked if she had a preference about which of the topics they addressed first. "I figure we might as well get the weird stuff out of the way first," she said. "Though there you go - that's a better start than I made the first time I got in a pool," she added about Leonor's descent into the water, still amazed that Leonor didn't know how to swim, or had apparently ever thought about learning. She knew a lot of people didn't have the space or money or space and money for a pool of their own, at least not a proper one that would last more than one season, but it was still a little amazing to her to think of just...not even thinking of swimming before. She knew some people at her old school had gone to the Y or Boys and Girls' clubs or even gyms for lessons; it was just...one of those things most kids in Georgia, at least, learned. For one thing, it was a really useful skill on a planet which was majority water, and for another, it was an even more useful thing to know when one lived in godawful humidity combined with godawful high temperatures every summer.

She put that thought aside, though, in favor of concentrating on the weird stuff, or remembering being really little and Dad teaching her and Jessica how to swim at the same time. She didn't remember their mothers being there, either of them; perhaps they had been having wine together in the kitchen muttering about how he ought to have hired a professional or something, as was their habit when they were both annoyed with their man at the same time - normally they didn't really socialize, because Mara's mom was technically the help, but they put that aside when they thought Dad was being stupid. Her granddad - someone Mara had never met, though she had seen his portrait at Arvale - must have still been in charge of the company then, for Dad to have that much time to take up with them...

"So. Things were kind of...weird, the last time we talked," she said, deciding to continue being blunt. "And you can put your arms down...swimming, really, you just lean forward with your head up high and your arms out in front of you and push up from the bottom with your feet, then use your hands and feet to keep moving," she added. "Like this," she added, extending her arms in front of her and slowly lowering her torso into the water, holding her head up high above the surface of the water, to demonstrate. "You can try that a while before you try taking your feet off the ground. That might be a good idea. Anyway. Things were weird. Jezi...didn't help, did she?" she hazarded, thinking back on that meeting. "I think - she's got her own issues, they kind of...made her miss the point, I think," she concluded. "Maybe. Just a feeling I got, listening to both of you," she said. "Am I wrong there?"

16 Mara Morales Hopefully no time soon... 1472 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

March 29, 2020 12:50 PM

I think mine has already begun. by Leonor De Matteo

Mara had a way about her where even when she asked questions that Leonor didn't particularly want to answer, she still seemed pretty okay. Like, Leonor didn't feel like Mara was picking on her, or looking down at her. It was like she was legitimately just curious. That was sort of hard for Leonor to wrap her head around as she generally wasn't a curious person. It wasn't that she was against curiosity, she just generally wasn't curious. She supposed Mara being Aladren made sense.

"Thanks," Leonor replied, doing her best to relax. It was an odd sensation just standing in a ton of water for fun. It was warm though, which was nice; the benefits of magic were endless.

Another thing Leonor appreciated about Mara was that she gave her some time to think. No one seemed to do that here and everything moved way too fast-paced for Leonor's liking. When were people supposed to have time to react to things if everything just kept moving? She wasn't sure if that was an American thing or a Sonora thing or what, but it was stupid. In this case, Leonor was largely able to tune out Mara's directions in favor of the visual demonstration, which meant she could think more about her thoughts on the topic Mara had raised. Then, the Aladren neatly brought the subject back around for Leonor, which was helpful again, although Leonor sort of resented that she wasn't the one in control of the conversation. She supposed that made sense, all things considered, but she really would have preferred to have a handle on things herself. But now the questions came out and Leonor would be expected to answer them. She'd been given time to think and prepare herself, after all.

"I hope that's not the only reason you wanted to meet me," she commented stiffly before attempting the same motion that Mara had used. She was surprised to find how easy it was to float, and picked up the movement fairly well. Then, Leonor sighed. She had no business being rude to Mara, particularly when Mara was by far one of the least annoying people Leonor had met literally in the entire world. "Yes, she wasn't . . ." Diplomacy, Leonor! "I felt that our conversation strayed a little from the original point," she conceded. Then, with a little more emotion and a little less resistance, she sighed again. "You are not wrong."

Truth be told, Leonor wasn't sure whether it was Jessica or herself that was the problem. She would never admit as much, even to Mara, but she couldn't help wondering whether she was the problem. Why else would so many people find the need to intervene in her life? On the outside, Jessica was the one who had it all together and Mara was the spare. Not even. But really, once Leonor had gotten beyond the surface a little bit, it wasn't that hard to see that Mara was a much more well-rounded person than Jessica was. Leonor liked to think that that meant years of being the spare would be an advantage and help her get on her feet the right way around.

"Your sister is wrong about you, by the way," Leonor said, giving in to one of her rare moments of sincerity. "You understand a lot more than she thinks, and you're a lot smarter than she thinks."

22 Leonor De Matteo I think mine has already begun. 1471 0 5

Mara Morales

March 29, 2020 2:00 PM

Yeah, but later events could totally overshadow what we do now. by Mara Morales

"Nah," said Mara when Leonor said she hoped this wasn't the only reason Mara had wanted to meet up with her. "I also wanna avoid my roommates," she joked. She liked Morgan and Josie fine in small to medium doses, but they both seemed too upbeat for her to really relate to very well. She had trouble imagining having a very substantial conversation with them - they seemed like what she had gathered normal kids were supposed to be like, kids who didn't come from money or power or at least high expectations. They were obvious at least a little like her, to be in Aladren, but she strongly suspected they had not been brought up with the expectation that goal-oriented behaviors would be the norm.

Of course, from the picture she had pieced together, Leonor's parents had also failed to raise her with the kind of pressure that Mara and Jessica took for granted, which was why it had been a real jerk move on the whole De Matteo family's part to suddenly expect her to slip into that role without a pause for breath. Mara relished a challenge, but she did not like the idea of one being thrown at her from out of left field, much less one she had no real preparation for. That would suck; she would have been endlessly frustrated had Jessica's role devolved onto her after Jessica had left, and she thought she would have let Dad know about it, too. But it hadn't, and never could have, which was an even more crucial distinction between her position and Leonor's.

"Jessica knows I'm smarter than her," said Mara, more than a little confused, when Leonor gave her credit for being smarter and more observant than Jessica gave her credit for. "In some places, anyway - or maybe it's not even that. Like the other day - she was answering the question you asked. She does exactly what she's asked. She doesn't think about it too much, or take a chance on anything," she said slowly, watching Leonor's efforts to learn to float closely in case she started to flounder in the water. She suspected the magic would make the room just throw Leonor back onto the ground if she started drowning - otherwise, the school was just asking for trouble having a water park and no lifeguard - but she didn't care to trust to speculation much more than necessary.

"It's a difference in people. We get thrown in here - Jezi, she sort of loses her mind, because the rules aren't the same here that we know, and she can't do the things that Dad and Mrs. H always wanted her to do anymore. Me, I figure - hey, let's exploit this market, you know? I've been working with Mr. Row to set up a couple of businesses here," she added absently. "But Jezi - she doesn't know what to do without Dad or Mrs. H or the Senator telling her, and plus, well...the other day, she's stressed out because we had a fight over Christmas, that was the first time we'd talked to each other in a few days, and I think she wanted to go strangle your brother when you told us about this situation, so she just...did the best she could. Which was taking things really literally and not noticing there was other stuff going on. Or at least, that's what I thought was going on," she added, covering her bases again. "Everything she was right, though - as far as we understand things. Jessica always knows which answer bubble to fill in, so to speak. But you looked like you had more on your mind than what you were, er, directly asking us," she prompted gently.

16 Mara Morales Yeah, but later events could totally overshadow what we do now. 1472 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

March 30, 2020 3:53 PM

Let's just get all the decisions out of the way now. by Leonor De Matteo

Leonor nodded, although she couldn't quite relate. Mab was quiet and altogether hilarious, so Leonor generally didn't mind being around her. Whether Mab minded having Leonor around was an entirely different question of course, but Leonor wasn't the type to think about that. Mara wasn't like anyone else Leonor knew, although she was pretty sure Josie was appropriately amazed by her. Maybe that was Joana? Or Johana Leonie. Jo something. Either way, Mara wasn't like anyone else Leonor knew and that meant it made sense for the half-sister of a fallen heiress to be the odd one out in her dorm. It also meant her roommates were dumb though, as Mara was clearly the best of them.

When Mara responded to Leonor's comment about her intelligence, Leonor grinned. "I like you," she said, happy to have someone in her life who would own up to their strings. "Jessica talks to you sometimes like she doesn't think you could understand her life, or my life," she added by way of explanation. "I don't know, maybe she's just trying to protect you from it." The way Mara explained it sounded like Jessica just couldn't think for herself. On the whole, Leonor liked Jessica fine, but she couldn't help admitting to herself that that seemed like an apt description. The pretty strawberry blonde with a head full of etiquette had much less to offer a world that needed a problem solver than did someone like Mara. Leonor knew which one she'd rather have on her side. Which also meant she knew who was the better person to go to for advice on things going on at home. She probably should have seen that before, but she wasn't sure what it was that she needed advice on. As it turned out, clothes wasn't the answer.

"She wasn't exactly right though either," Leonor countered thoughtfully. "Her advice was right for her life, but she didn't really seem to understand mine." She considered that for a moment. It did not cross her mind that maybe she had not said enough. Or explained well enough. Leonor was not the one at fault, so of course she wasn't the one at fault. That was the only logic that mattered to Leonor. She shook her head to clear it and to dismiss the thought. "But that's fine. On my mind . . . I was thinking that important people should look important. But I am sort of small and I don't know how to look important."

22 Leonor De Matteo Let's just get all the decisions out of the way now. 1471 0 5

Mara Morales

March 31, 2020 12:58 PM

I doubt that's the wisest course. by Mara Morales

Mara thought about it, trying to figure out if she knew what Leonor meant about Jessica sounding like she didn't think Mara could quite understand where Jessica or Leonor were coming from. She remembered, with discomfort, that moment she had felt Jessica was shutting her out, that afternoon with Leonor....

"I like you too," she said. "I don't know about Jessica, though - I mean, I guess I'm really not in the same category as you two, am I?" She looked Leonor in the eye, refusing to be ashamed of her position. It was, after all, something she had never considered something to be ashamed of or proud of. People were just born into their circumstances. It was what they did with those circumstances that mattered. She had...other thoughts, sometimes, but those were irrelevant data. Statistical blips. Not important. "Jezi was born with a job - you just got given one, just because of who you are. Me...I'll get a lot of opportunities just because of who I am," she acknowledged. "More than most people do. But there's not this expectation that I do this one job, whether I like it or not, just because I'm me. I'm a different category. From...like everyone I know except my baby sister, actually," she added with a slight frown, her mind wandering for a moment to wondering how many there were like her and Lola, and what such a community would even look like, but she didn't have time to follow the thought. She was here to help a friend out, not to speculate about the world's appearance if it were ruled by a hypothetical Association of Illegitimate Children.

She began to see some of the problem as Leonor commented on the situation further, though - namely, that there was a fundamental disconnect going on somewhere. "She was giving you the best general advice she could," she reasoned. "I think she even said something about you probably having different events than she does or did - you're in some kind of commune, it sounds like, not a business." And Mara did not want to discuss that any further right now, because she did not have enough details to back up her theories. "We don't know much about communes. Our dad's...I mean, he's not a pure capitalist, he's got standards, but he does what he's got to do to make sure Mrs. H. gets her Louboutin allowance every year," she joked. Mostly joked. "So that's...different. And I do think she got it a little wrong - it's at least as much a head game as a...visual detail game. You have to think of yourself as important - and you got to find the problems - or make them up, in business, sometimes - and then jump in and take a risk with your idea for a solution, even if you can't be sure how it's gonna go, you know? But having the look does help, if you...have trouble getting your head in the game, maybe." Mara tried to think how to phrase things carefully. "It's kind of like swimming," she said. "You have to trust yourself to do it right and keep moving, or you might get in trouble, but it helps if you don't jump in the pool in a ballgown, you know? You have to know what to do with your arms and legs, but the right suit, or something close to it, it makes it a little easier sometimes."

She shrugged. "Or I could be completely off base. Dad always taught me about business stuff and made sure I was important, too - in my own way - the same as he did with Jessica. I don't know anything about your parents and what they think of you two and what they even think is important." Except, it seemed, that it had not previously been Leonor, which prejudiced her against them from the start. For one thing, that was a real jerk move, acting as if one of your kids was important and making the other feel...small. For another, it was also stupid, as the current situation was illustrating. That second one wasn't relevant to Mara's case, but it was still a thing. "If you tell us more about what you need, maybe we can help you more - or if you just wanna vent, or hang out and do stuff that has nothing to do with our screwed-up families, we can do that too," she summarized.

16 Mara Morales I doubt that's the wisest course. 1472 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

March 31, 2020 4:38 PM

Ugghhhhhhh by Leonor De Matteo

Leonor hated to think about what Mara was saying. Like a lot. She hated to think that she was any different than she had been six months ago. She also hated to think that smart people and nice people like Mara were considered a different class of people. That was the sort of stuff the De Matteos tried to stand against, for wizards and Muggles alike. That did raise some questions for Leonor about how best to do that in such a reclusive community as Ciudad de Matteo, but that was a consideration for another time.

She cocked her head though, catching one phrase she hadn't thought about before. "I don't think I knew you had another sister," she said. "Is she magic, too?"

Leonor didn't know much about communes either. She was pretty sure that was not a word that she'd ever heard before, although it sounded like "communities" and that was a good thing. She also wasn't totally sure what Louboutin was. Where Felipe would have asked, Leonor would prefer to only ask if she had to. Since this didn't seem to be the point of what Mara was telling about, she just made a mental note to look up those words later. Maybe not so much a mental note as a sticky note on a piece of paper somewhere in the file cabinet of mental notes she had laying around.

She did like the point about swimming and having the right clothes. She knew from getting dressed for this very occasion that the right clothes could make a difference. Swimming was certainly possible in spanx and a training bra but Leonor would much preferred to have had a real swimsuit. So maybe that's what she was trying to find out. It wasn't a question of what to wear, but what to wear. She didn't need to know that a polka dot bikini would be a good option, she needed to know to go to the swimsuit part of the store. she found herself nodding along, agreeing almost absentmindedly with what Mara was saying.

"No no, you're not off base," Leonor said, adding that to the idioms in the back of her mind, too. She thought that the back of her mind might burst at some point but now was not that point. However, neither venting nor accepting help were things she was comfortable doing. It wasn't proper. But was that just with other people? Surely there were different rules with friends. Did Mara want to be friends though? Leonor wasn't sure what she wanted, let alone what others did. Except that she knew it was easier to talk to Mara than Jessica. "I like hanging out with you," she decided, figuring that she would learn by watching and seeing better than anything else. She was proud of herself for not stressing that she liked to hang out with Mara. Jessica was fine but Mara was easier. That was just the truth; no point getting upset by it. "So how do you swim under water?" she asked, bobbing a little next to her friend.

What a funny word.

22 Leonor De Matteo Ugghhhhhhh 1471 0 5

Mara Morales

March 31, 2020 7:10 PM

Yeah, pretty much. by Mara Morales

Mara shrugged when Leonor speculated that she hadn't previously heard about Lola. It seemed possible. Mara, at least, did not have to make a secret of Lola's existence, but nor was it something she just dropped into conversation on a regular basis, just because of the age gap.

"No idea," she said. "Lola's only five. Also why we might not have said anything about her before - she's not really old enough to...do anything you'd talk about much, really. She's cute, but that's about it." She realized this could sound odd. "I love her, don't get me wrong, she's my sister. My full sister, even. But we don't exactly run with the same crowds." To put it mildly. She was just kind of glad that Lola had remembered who she was when she had come home for Christmas and that they hadn't had another scene like that one the first time Jessica had come home, when Lola was even smaller and had seemed shy of their own sister... "So I guess we'll see if she's magic in a few years," she concluded.

She chortled a little, as much in surprise as anything, when Leonor's selection from the available options involved asking how to swim underwater. "I think you should probably get through a few laps on top of the water before you start diving," she recommended. "I...kinda suspect this room won't let us drown - " Mara was fascinated by the idea of rooms that could change according to the will of the person at the door, and had thus tried various things with all of them in her first term, and increasingly suspected their possibilities were beyond her ability to exhaust - "but I don't want to test that hypothesis too far, you know?" She might win the science fair if she was right, but she might go to juvie if she was wrong, and she did not want to go to juvie. She didn't even want to go to regular juvie, never mind wizard juvie. "But you do it...eh, the easiest way is going to the ladder," she said, and swam over to it, standing on one of the steps which continued beneath the surface. "And get a lot of breath and then do this." She took a deep breath, held it, and kicked off from the ladder, this time angling her torso down and using her arms to make wide sweeping motions with her palms turned away from her body to push back against the various forces, chiefly all the air she was holding in her lungs, trying to make her bob back up to the surface. At first, always, it felt as though the water were resisting - but then her feet slipped under, and her body leveled out, and she was weightless, or felt like it, as she pushed herself along, feet and hands propelling her, cool water flowing through her hair all the way from scalp to tips and untangling it - or at least, feeling like it untangled it - as she made her way to the other end of the pool. Reaching the wall, she turned her arms again to push herself up and she began to rise quickly until her head broke the surface again and she let all the air back out of her lungs with a gasp.

"It takes a few tries to get the hang of it," she said. "But I think it's worth the trouble to take some time with it."

16 Mara Morales Yeah, pretty much. 1472 0 5