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Post by Erin Lily on Jan 27, 2009 8:02:33 GMT -5
Finally, Friday afternoon. Erin Lily had had about enough of this week. The teachers were piling on the homework already. Well, at least the first week of school was over, right? Erin tried not to think about the project for social studies she'd have to start on in a few hours. Right now, Erin was going to go to the park to have fun. It was a warm day for New York, but it was really nice for a girl who had spent all summer in 90 degree weather with the humidity making it worse. Smiling, Erin headed down to the playground at the park.
Everything in this town was just a short walk away, something Erin was glad of, since she wasn't going to be able to get a driver's license until next summer. Still, by the time she arrived, her feet ached from walking so far in three inch heels. She probably should have put on her black converse before coming, but it was too late now. Erin walked over to the swing set and started to pump the swing.
The swing started to move, slowly. Erin continued to pump. In a few minutes, the swing was going quite high. Probably higher than usual, since most people who used this swing were going to be around six or seven, not fifteen. Erin didn't care. She was having fun. Just then, one of Erin's shoes flew off. "Shoot!" she shouted audibly. The shoe was right below her, but she was going to have to get off, and, with one bare foot and one high heel, that was going to be hard. |
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Post by Katelyn Anders on Jan 31, 2009 17:33:23 GMT -5
KK had always loved recess, Fridays, and parks. Now, with the school week over at last, seemed like an excellent time to combine the three. She trotted down to Windy Lake Park, glad that her lightweight turtleneck negated the harsh edge of chill creeping into the air. Ugh--dry days! The things were far too common here, away from the comfortable blanket of warmth and moisture that KK had liked so much in Hawai'i.
The park was beautiful. KK was particularly drawn to the swingset, which promised to allow her to reach impressive heights. There was another girl, about her own age, already using one of the swings. KK was about to leap onto the swing next to this girl when a black high-heeled shoe went flying from the other girl's foot. She didn't think, but rather reacted, tennis reflexes drawing her around to snatch at the shoe. It landed solidly in her hand, but she had overbalanced. KK landed solidly on the ground. Dizzily, she pulled herself up and offered the swinger her shoe back. "You know, slipper-type shoes are ridiculous for swinging in," she said. "They always seem to fly off."
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Post by Erin Lily on Feb 1, 2009 15:20:23 GMT -5
Erin watched as another girl walked over to the swing set and caught her shoe in the air. That was some catching skill the girl had! If this had been the other way around, Erin would have waited for the shoe to land on the ground before picking it up. Erin had many talents, but catching was not among them. Erin had a lot of trouble in PE class for that reason. She couldn't wait for next year, when it wouldn't be required.
"Yeah. I know. I was just so eager to leave school that I didn't bother changing shoes," Erin said, as the swing finally slowed down enough that she could safely jump off. Fortunately, it had not rained in the last few days, so Erin didn't have to worry about landing in one of those puddles that always seems to form underneath a swing.. How awful would that be! "Anyway, thanks," she said, taking the shoe from the girl, who looked only slightly younger than herself. "I'm Erin. You?" she asked. |
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Post by Katelyn Anders on Feb 1, 2009 16:12:35 GMT -5
As Erin leaped from the swing, KK experienced a reflexive jolt of worry. She had stepped barefoot on playground mulch a few times in the past, and it wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat. However, when Erin landed calmly and took her shoe back, KK relaxed. Exchanging pleasantries was something that never did seem to occur to people who had splinters sticking out of their feet.
"I'm KK," she replied in answer to Erin's question. "It's nice to meet you, Erin." She adjusted her watch, pushing the band further up on her slender arm and rubbing the very smooth spot on her arm that now bore a perfect print of the contours of the underside of her watch.
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Post by Erin Lily on Feb 1, 2009 21:51:55 GMT -5
Erin rubbed a few pieces of mulch from her foot, annoyed that they were there in the first place. She laughed a little. This was an odd situation. Weird way to meet someone who probably went to your school. Katelyn seemed nice, though, judging by her clothes, she was less of a girly girl than Erin. Well, that was about the easiest thing in the world to be, considering how much of a girly girl Erin was, but this girl seemed exceptionally un-girly.
"So do you go to Minute Hill Prep? I do," Erin asked. Well, maybe that would be awkward if she was wrong, but, well, Erin didn't want to think about that. She hated awkward situations. Hopefully she was right. |
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Post by Katelyn Anders on Feb 7, 2009 1:46:09 GMT -5
KK grinned, delight spilling over and lighting up her face. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do!" she told Erin. "Once or twice I've wished I didn't--" like the time I rammed into that girl in the hallway and ended up tardy to my next class, she thought "--but most of the time it's nice. Do you like it?" She chomped on her lower lip to stop her runaway motormouth from jabbering on any further. Jabberwocky, she scolded herself furiously. Might as well say that 'twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Not to mention the mimsy borogoves, or the mome raths that outgrabe. KK didn't usually act well-read, but her internal commentary more than made up for her lack of the outward signs that usually went with a thorough education. She knew Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare, and Mark Twain inside out.
The observation that it was getting pretty close to brillig* nearly escaped her, and she chewed harder on her lip. Erin would probably fear for the sanity of one or the other of them if she let on that she knew the meanings of many of the strange, made-up words from "Jabberwocky." Never mind that she had learned them simply by reading Alice through the Looking Glass, it would be difficult to reason with anyone who assumed that you were completely nuts.
*Brillig, n. About four o'clock in the afternoon. |
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Post by Erin Lily on Feb 9, 2009 16:11:30 GMT -5
Erin had no idea was was going on in Katelyn's head. If she did, she would probably be so weirded out that she would do something drastic. She didn't know what, but whatever it was, it would be drastic. Of course, Erin could be like that. Particularly right before a play opened. The week before Romeo and Juliet opened, Erin would probably be talking in Shakespearean language, rhythm and all! People learned to tolerate it, but she knew she'd lost a few friends on the days leading up to last year's performances.
But anyway, Erin nodded. "Yeah, it's nice there. You're a freshman, right?" she asked. If so, Erin felt sorry for her. Being a freshman was awful. At least at Minute Hill they lived there, so there were no lockers to shove people in. That would be quite dreadful. Well, Katelyn didn't look like she would fit in a locker, anyway. Nobody really would. Erin supposed it was all a myth, but some upperclassmen could be so nasty to the freshmen!
((Oh yeah, and it's "all mimsy were the borogoves." I was in the play Alice in Wonderland last fall, so I heard that poem a lot in rehersal.)) |
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Post by Katelyn Anders on Feb 9, 2009 21:59:04 GMT -5
"Freshman? I am a fresh-woman, thank you very much!" replied KK jokingly. Though something of a tomboy, she never forgot her true gender and found her own non-traditional ways to express it. This was a prime example of such an instance. She loved being a "freshwoman," as she put it, although it sounded unpleasantly like "freshwater" and reminded her of the nagging bit of homework that she had to do on the topic of subterranean water sources.
((Sorry, I'm totally museless at the moment: I've just finished the most pointless piece of geography homework EVER (unless you think that "acid rain" and "Trans-Canadian Highway" are terms which actually need defining rather than being self-explanatory) and I've got a new book that I haven't assimilated yet. And yes, I do know that the correct third and fourth lines of Jabberwocky are "All mimsy were the borogoves/And the mome raths outgrabe," but it's at that point in my last post that KK digresses from the poem into her own thoughts.)) |
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Post by Erin Lily on Feb 12, 2009 16:01:27 GMT -5
Erin giggled at Katelyn's witty remark. She wished she had thought of that one last year. Well, at least the definition of 'freshman' did not have any negative connotations, unlike what Erin was, a 'sophomore,' which basically meant "person who thinks they know everything even though they don't." Actually, the definition of 'sophomore' in the dictionary said "a person who is sophomoric," so Erin went and looked 'sophomoric' up to discover that the definition said "the act of being a sophomore." Not helpful!
"Haha. Well, I'm a sophomore. May I sell you an elevator pass to get into the basement? There's a pool down there," she said jokingly. Some person had tried to pull that one on Erin last year, and she was naive enough to fall for it. She lost ten dollars only to discover that there was no elevator in the school. She had been mad.
((It's okay, I get like that a lot.)) |
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Post by Katelyn Anders on Feb 12, 2009 23:52:13 GMT -5
"Really? I hadn't heard that," KK replied. "At one school I went to, the joke was 'The pool is on the roof.' And there were plenty of seventh graders who went off on a wild goose chase trying to find the UP staircase from the top level." She giggled at the memory. Her previous school actually HAD had a swimming pool and a water polo team to go with it, which she had not joined.
"Of course, because I'm an experienced world traveler and all, I didn't fall for it then, and I won't fall for it now." She inspected her hands. Drat it all, they were chapped. That was the worst part about dryness, in KK's opinion. And what was she supposed to do about it? Lotion didn't seem to want anything to do with her hands; it was entirely washed off within the minute after she applied it.
((Guess what the weather is like where I am? Guess what it's done to my hands?)) |
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