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 Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2025 7:05 pm
School was going again, and Brooklyn was…not unhappy but…school would always be better if it didn’t have all the classes. And the homework and the expectation that you cared. Right now, she did care about things! People…
One person took the cake but…that was neither here nor there.
The one good thing about being back at Crystal was the social aspect, and as she walked back to her dorm, fully intending to take a nap after that catastrophe that was her Pre-Calculus class. She…thankfully it was still early on, and hopefully she would be able to find someone to help her figure things out because right now…
Gosh she was lost.
However, a familiar face on the sidewalk made her light up. “Hey! Heyyyyy! Maisie!” Swiftly, Brooklyn crossed the distance between the two of them and hooked her arm through her friend’s.
“How are you? Are you also drowning with all this work or is it just me?”
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Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2025 1:23 pm
Maisie jolted at first, startled by the arm looping through hers, like she thought she was about to be hauled off to be made fun of by some snooty Crystal girl. (Was there something wrong with her make up? Did someone have a problem with the color of her hair again? Honestly the girls here could be so vain it was infuriating even for someone with a perfectly normal level of vanity like Maisie.)
Fortunately, no such circumstance seemed imminent. Maisie relaxed as soon as she realized who it was.
“Brooklyn! Oh my God, the amount of work we have already is so lame!” she said, launching into her typical School Sucks tirade as soon as she knew she had a willing ear. “Like, summer break only just ended. It should be illegal to give homework during the first month back. I already have a paper due next week. I can’t wait for this year to be over. I’m so ready for college.”
Nevermind that she had no idea what she wanted to go to college for. That insecurity didn’t need to see the light of day yet.
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2025 7:24 pm
“I think, as a senior we shouldn’t be given homework at all! Like, this is our last year, what’s the point?” School was kind of really useless, it didn’t do anything for the real world except get them used to being miserable and get them used to staying in one place for a long time. That was real world experience.
“Besides. If they knew what most of us got up to, they’d have to change their tunes…”
She paused and stopped walking, looking at Maisie for a moment. “Do you think that it’s like. A set up? Like it’s run by the you know what and they’re overtaxing us with homework to keep us too busy to do what really matters?”
It made sense. Either that or the schools were just run by sadists. Could be both, though.
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Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2025 7:27 am
“You might be onto something,” Maisie said, lowering her voice only because of the topic. (Not that she was very good at lowering her voice. Her whispering still carried. Fortunately there wasn’t anyone close enough to hear them.) “They want us drained dry. I bet they put stuff in our desks to take our energy while we’re taking notes. I always want to fall asleep in world history.”
Maybe that had more to do with the monotone droning of her teacher than any potential Negaverse plot, but Maisie also wouldn’t be surprised if the Negaverse thought helpless school children made perfect targets. They were nefarious like that!
“If that’s what it is, it’s working,” Maisie continued. Whether or not she truly believed it was some ploy was unclear by the tone of her voice. “By the time I’m done with all my work, I don’t want to do anything except rot in bed. Maybe I should’ve made better choices the last couple of years so I could’ve had a reduced classload this year… Not that we even need have the stuff they say’s required. I already know next semester’s gonna be a total waste. I’ll know what colleges or universities I’ve gotten into before Christmas.”
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Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2025 11:16 am
Brooklyn was nodding along as Maise took her half baked idea and ran with it. Friends who did that were the very best kind, honestly.
When Maisie started talking about colleges and universities, she paused and shrugged dully. “...Yeah but. Do you know what you want to do? Like, honestly to me the idea of more schooling just…sounds awful…but then again, I’ve never…really…thought of myself ever…being an adult? If that makes any sense? I don’t think it makes any sense and honestly, when I say it out loud it sounds pretty damn bleak but. Yeah I have no ideas for what I want to do. Have a place to live and money, I guess…but other than that, it’s just…white noise and a whole bunch of question marks. Like…Future who? Never heard of them.”
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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2025 1:36 pm
“I have no idea either,” Maisie said, more candid than she would have been with her teachers or other classmates, with whom she would have tried to play it cool. “I try to think of stuff my family’s done. You know, to figure out if I’d be into any of it? Like, if I’d want to follow in their footsteps or whatever. Dad does investments, but that sounds boring. One of my cousins did the Navy, but that ******** him up. I had an uncle who did that, too, but he was away a lot. Too much responsibility for me. If I could be anything I’d be like my aunt who married rich and does fun things like parties and book clubs and stuff, but that requires tolerating someone enough to, like, marry them and share a house.”
Maisie’s face puckered like the very idea seemed displeasing to her. She’d never so much as had a boyfriend or girlfriend. She liked the first in theory but not in practice. The latter was of no interest.
“If I get into DCU I’ll probably go there and figure it out as I go along. Take a bunch of random classes until something clicks. I hate thinking about it, but also… I bet it’ll be so much better than being here. Did you apply? I can help if you haven’t yet. If we went together we could take the same classes!”
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Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2025 10:14 am
“I don’t think I’d be too unhappy to be married if I found the right gir–person. But I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m just better off alone. Like you can’t be disappointed when you’re alone? Like, not in the way you can be with other people. Sure you can disappoint yourself but…you absolutely see that coming? So it doesn’t count. Not really.”
Brooklyn nodded. “I wouldn’t mind if it meant I could have a friend with me, yeah! I don’t know what I want to study or even if I want to study, but if you’re offering to help me apply…I’ll take you up on it. You always seem like you have everything put together. I envy you. Even when you’re saying you don’t, like…it’s the kind of don’t that’s just your own brain getting the better of you. You have the basics together which…is the hardest part. You’re so cool!”
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2025 7:06 am
Maisie noticed the switch mid-word but let Brooklyn continue without harassing her about it. Girlfriend, boyfriend, personfriend, it didn’t matter to Maisie. Her friends were her friends and could date or not date whoever they wanted. (Really, only Riker would get s**t for his choices, but that was because he was a jerk.) Maybe she could set Brooklyn up with someone! Maisie almost verbalized the thought, then remembered most of her friends were queer boys, at least half of whom were twinks.
There were plenty of girls at Crystal, but… well, it was Crystal, and a lot of the girls there were definitely Crystal Girls. Nevermind that Maisie herself was a Crystal Girl. She would insist she wasn’t like them. They were snooty and judgmental and had their own exclusive cliques long before Maisie moved here. Brooklyn would know, having experienced it for herself now.
“Honestly, dating’s probably more trouble than it’s worth,” Maisie decided. “So far I don’t really mind being alone if it means I get to spend more time with my friends. What if we dated someone and they weren’t, like… you know… us? Or worse! What if they were secretly evil? It’d be like Romeo and Juliet, but even worse.”
Yeah, no. Maisie didn’t like that idea at all.
“I promise I don’t have anything together,” she confessed. “I’m just lucky I have my dad. He’s the one who helped me with the applications. But now I know how to do it so I can show you. We’re gonna finish this school year and then we’re gonna go to DCU and only take the minimum number of credit hours we need to stay enrolled so we’re not drowning in schoolwork and have more time to save the world and go to cool college parties.”
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2025 5:15 pm
Brooklyn flushed slightly and then nodded, opening her mouth to say that she did possibly have a crush on someone, and that she was like them, but then the subject shifted, and honestly…she wasn’t upset about it.
“Yeah! I would…honestly really, really like that. You’re so lucky to have such a cool dad.” Parents had always been such a touchy subject, not that she would ever have admitted to it, but…now? Now she was safe from the system. She had a house that was pretty much all her own and loved it, and she lived in the dorms of Crystal Academy, like a proper rich girl..and it was nice.
Fun. Safe?
Shaking her head slightly and shoving any residual jealousy or feelings down to where they couldn’t touch her she grinned. “...I like that idea. What do you think the parties will be like? Should we like…try to find some alcohol to practice so we don’t make drunken fools of ourselves?"
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Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2025 11:21 am
Maisie opened her mouth like she was going to continue to ramble, then stopped when she realized she had no idea what the answer was.
She knew what the answer should be, depending on who she was trying to impress. If she was trying to impress other kids her age, of whom Brooklyn was one, then she should agree to the idea of trying alcohol beforehand because that was the cool thing to do. Or at least it used to be at some point when all those popular teen movies were being made. Maisie didn’t actually know anyone at Crystal who went to parties and drank underage, she just assumed they existed.
If she was trying to impress her dad, which was important to her even when she whined about him, then she should reject the idea outright and be a good little girl who never did anything wrong.
Maisie really had no idea which option she liked better.
She peered at Brooklyn nervously, uncharacteristically quiet. “Do you think we should? I mean, like… I’ve had wine before, but… it was a really small glass and it actually tasted kinda gross. I kind of… um… the only parties I’ve ever been to have been, like, family birthday parties and holiday things and we usually just play board games or video games or watch movies, so… I don’t even know what college parties are like. I just said it ‘cause I was trying to seem cool.”
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Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2025 3:12 pm
“I mean…” Brooklyn thought through the question, thought through what she wanted. “I guess…it really matters what we want to do at college? Like…if we’re going for parties and to find groups to be popular in…I think…getting drunk with a group of close friends might be safer? Like, we’d be able to keep each other safe and not be in a huge sea of possible creepers…and we can see how the alcohol treats us…but. It’s…not something I’ve actually thought about really. I’m kind of glad it came up though…it’s…kind of important?”
Not the drinking bit, but learning more about themselves now that they were going to be real(ish) adults…learning what they could and what they couldn’t tolerate…what made them feel safe….all that fun stuff.
“...And like, really though…is college worth it if we’re only going to party? Shouldn’t we…want to like…better our lives or whatever bullshit that they spew at us? I don’t know. I do know that I wasn’t planning on philosophical thinking when I ran up to you today, so go us for being mature and s**t!”
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