Doddles and school [open]

Audrey Brook Catlett needed paper. Why? She was bored. She wanted just a piece of computer paper, so she could doodle on. Why couldn't she use her own? She was out because she was too lazy to go down to the shops and buy her own. She really needed to do that, but she couldn't be bothered today. Why go now when she could go to the printing lab and get just one piece. She wanted to doodle squares and music notes and little stars. She wanted to be able to think about whatever she wanted while she doodled. Would she be able to do that? Of course not. She went to a school that it was not possible to have peace and quiet, unless it was in the middle of the night. Even then there was still something going on somewhere.

She made her way through the hallways, ignoring most people. She just wanted quiet. Maybe she should go home for a weekend. She pushed that thought away, before she could even begin to think about that, she had to talk to Jane about it. Thinking about her best friend made her wonder what she'd been up to lately. She hadn't had time to really spend time with her. Audie had been working crazily on her recent solo. She had gotten to the point where she could almost play it with the dynamics without the sheet music. She couldn't spend to much time not thinking about it. She pushed open the printing lab door and looked around before making her way inside it. She didn't see anyone, so as she closed the door behind her she sighed. Somewhat quiet. She could still hear all the kids out in the hall, if she listened hard enough she could hear someone playing down the hall. She absolutely loved going to a school like this. She loved how she couldn't go a couple hours without hearing someone play, or seeing someone dance, or see someone working on a new movie or something. She loved it. She wasn't sure what she was going to do once she graduated this year.

She ran one of her hands over the printing press, it kinda made her wish she could write. Sure she could drag a silly poem about daisies, but she couldn't write anything news worthy, or book worthy. The only thing she could do was play her Bassoon. She itched to get back to her room to get her instrument and drag it down to one of the practice rooms, but she still wanted to doodle dang it. She looked around again looking for old scrap paper they couldn't possibly miss.

Darnell didn't usually steal into the Printing Room. It definitely wasn't a location he was in on a daily, weekly, or any sort of basis. Y'know, except when he had to do a paper or something. Not good times. Definitely not good times. Almost always sober times, though. He'd only written one paper drunk; usually when he was drunk he was way to lazy to even think about papers, but one time he'd surprised his drunken self and written one. Of course, his teacher hadn't been impressed, and he'd been too embarrassed to explain his pride in his D. He'd done worse sober before.

Aaaannnywayyy, you wonder, why is Darnell wandering down the hallway toward the Printing Room today? Well, it wasn't because he had a paper to do. Nah, he just needed to make some copies of a drawing he'd been working on. He wasn't any sort of great artist; fair, not bad, either. But he'd been thinking seriously about his collaboration with Abi, and he'd come up with an album cover design. He just wanted to make a few copies, get some friends' thoughts on it, let some of them scribble on his ideas, maybe they could help him out with it. So, he walked toward the Printing Room or Lab or whatever it was called, paying no attention to anything but the scrawls on the wrinkled page in his own hand.

At the door, he pushed it open and closed it behind him. It was eerily quiet around these parts. Then he heard a noise, looked over and saw Audrey. She was friends with Abi, right? Her head was turned; looked like she was looking for something. He felt awkward for some reason. A thought passed through his mind; had Abi told Audrey about what a jacka-- he'd been way back before they'd gotten together? Did girls talk about him and his horrid Darnie ways? He opened his mouth to say something and thought again, looked down at his paper. He over to the copy machine, put his paper underneath the lid, closed the lid, hit a button, hit another button, listened to the hum of the machine gone to work. He thought about the times he'd walked like a zombie around campus, obviously intoxicated. Or when he'd done stupid stuff and everyone had seemed to see or hear or know but no one told. He turned, leaned against the machine, and finally opened his mouth to allow these words escape,

"What do people think of me?- I'm not a bad guy."

Audrey decided to ignore the fact that the door opened and someone walked in. As long as they kept the quiet she didn't care. She continued to look around for the crap paper, but couldn't help but glance over her shoulder at whoever walked in. She raised her eyebrows slightly when she realized that it was Darnell. She knew he had been...well dumb when it came to Abi, but for the most part she kept to herself..for the most part. She smiled slightly, finally finding the paper. She wasn't really sure what to say to Darnell. The last time she had even thought about the guy was when she ended up in his room when he wasn't there. She had actually ended up in that room with a certain Will Gates. She looked down at the paper hearing the humming of the copy machine behind her. She didn't want Darnell to catch her blushing over something that happened. Just her luck Will had gone around and told his roommates.

Audie was tempted to just take the paper and completely ignore Darnell, but it wasn't his fault she happened to like...really like his roommate. She rolled her eyes and turned around right when Darnell ask about what people thought of him. She watched his face, wondering if he was being serious. Obviously he was. She shrugged. "I'm not sure." She paused for a moment to try to think of something. "You know, if there wasn't drama at school then everyone would love each other and that would be boring. People have drama, people hate people. It happens. It makes things interesting." She smiled, hoping he wouldn't take it the wrong way. She was trying to be nice. She was sure someone at school hated her. It just happens.

Well, that was a very intelligent question, Darnell, Darnell thought. Way to set yourself up, buddy. He leaned against the copy machine, feeling the hum run through his body as it worked, and changing up the foot he leant with after it was done, just out of restlessness.

How should Audrey know what everyone thought of him? It was a stupid question to ask anyone, really. Darnell kind of hoped this would be one of those things that would totally blow over and out of both of their minds. Just another weird and awkward part of high school soon to be forgotten, never to be remembered. He looked up at her mentioning that people hate people. Did someone hate him? Hm, that'd be interesting. He couldn't recall doing anything to make anyone hate him. But maybe he'd been really drunk and just didn't remember it. He'd have to talk it over with Abi later... maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he should just start forgetting all this now.

"Right." He sighed and shrugging, turned back to his copies. "Sorry to bother you. I don't know what made me say anything at all. Weird day, I guess." Yes, a very weird day.

Rawr. Jay was in some kind of weird mood today, but instead of holing herself up in her room and ignoring that fact, she'd decided to roll with it. Really, all things considered, it wasn't extremely un-Jane-like to just go with whatever she was feeling, but she usually wasn't as all over the place as she had been today. She'd woken up at the ass-crack of dawn for no reason, for starters. In fact there were several good reasons why she shouldn't have woken up so early. One of them being the mere three hours of sleep she'd ended up getting due to a spontaneous all-night Rock Band party that had burst out in the boys dormitory wing. How did Jane end up there, you ask? Well, it's a long story involving several text messages from Micah, the promise of beer, severe sneaky Jane-ninja skills, and Will calling her out on her vocal abilities. It had turned out being one amazing night, but it had apparently made for a pretty crazy day. As I said, Jay had woken up unusually early and jumped out of bed. No headache, no Rock Band vertigo, no sleepiness. She tip-toed out of the dorm room and pretty much sprinted to library, where she buried herself in an epically large volume of Shakespearean work. She'd given an impromptu performance as Beatrice with one of the younger students, and honestly couldn't remember how they'd even begun reciting in verse.

After that, she slinked into an empty music room and banged around on the keys for about an hour. She'd had piano lessons as a kid, but she was pretty sure that the cacophonous ringing of the keys would make Issac or Audie cringe. She'd gotten bored of that, eventually, and had gone outside and climbed some trees. This had resulted in a nice red scrape on her left knee and raw hands, but had been rewarding overall. Now she was heading quickly for Harriman's printing room, with absolutely no idea why she was doing so. She hadn't a clue what she would do once she got there, but it just seemed important to be there.

She inched open the door and peered in slowly, looking like quite a caricature of herself. Her eyes fell on Darnie first and she smiled nicely. Then she saw Audie and absolutely beamed. "Aha! So that's why I came here." She bounced into the room, her blond ponytail waving behind her. "Apparently my best-friend spidey senses were tingling, Audie!" She gave her bestie a big bear hug and then waved at Darnell. He and Abi were a thing, Jane knew well enough, but he was also one if Will's roommates. This meant that a lot of the time Jay spent with her 'dear Lysander' was also spent with Darnie. They were decent enough friends, maybe even good friends, though Jay never had been able to understand his inability to not overdrink on most occasions.

She grinned at Darnie's mention of a weird day. "I think 'weird' is an understatement, Darnie. Today has been unusual, unpredictable, unimaginable, and all sorts of other words beginning with 'un'. So what brings the two of you into the printing room? Anything I need to warn Abi about?" She put on a wry grin and raised her eyebrows. She knew nothing was going on between the two of them. If Audie was ever going to mess around with one of their friends, it was gonna be Will. Not that Audie would ever mess around, anyways.

Audrey saw the movement of the door out of the corner of her eye and smiled brightly back at her best friend. "best-friend spidey senses are always important to listen to" She hugged her friend back. It had been so not normal around the school that even two best friends don't get to spend much time together, which is weird. She nodded as Jane when on about weird being an understatement. She couldn't think of one person acting like they usually do. Audie laughed as Jane asked if she needed to warn Abi about anything. "Unless you need to warn her that the world is going crazy with oddness, then no." She held up the scraps of paper she found and smiled. "I came in to find paper to doodle on haha."

She couldn't help but think about the one guy Audie was interested in. She hadn't talked to him since their 'catching up' night. Not that she had expected to talk to him right afterwords, but that didn't mean she wasn't curious about what he was doing. She opened her mouth to ask the two in the printing lab with her, but decided not to. Sure, if she wanted to know what Will Gates was doing asking his best friend and roommate would probably be the easiest way to find out. She didn't like letting people know he drove her crazy, that was just for herself to know. Instead of trying to make more conversation, she wadded up a piece of paper into a ball and threw it at Jane. "I bet I can make better paper balls then you two." She laughed. Sure they could go outside and have a snowball fight, or something that made more sense. But Jane and Audie didn't like doing things the normal way. Which is why they were probably such good friends.