Logs:Brain Sugar

Brain Sugar
Dramatis Personae Celestine, Roscoe, Spencer
In Absentia Jax, Horus	2024-09-28 "I mean Horus's only teaching qualification is 'great at photography' and I'm pretty great at baking."
Location <XAV> Library - Xs First Floor
Xavier's librarian might hope the library is a quiet place to sit and study, but with a school full of teenagers that is not always the case. Nevertheless, it is certainly a treasure trove of knowledge, well-stocked with a wealth of books on its high shelves. Its reference section is vast, though its fiction is as well (much to the delight of many of its students.) The wide octagonal tables and smaller armchairs are often crowded with students, though the whispered conversations that often take place leave some doubt as to how much work is getting done at any given hour. It's somewhat crowded in the library for a Saturday -- not quite at the midterms-cram peak yet, but with enough chatter and bustle and food the students are not supposed to be eating in here to feel livelier than a school library really should. Roscoe is sitting at one of the larger tables with his laptop open in front of him, dressed comfortably in baggy camo joggers and a too-big, plain white t-shirt; his legs have been pulled up in front of him on the chair, so that his knees poke up between him and the table. His laptop screen casts his face with an eerie white-yellow pallor as he works diligently in a composition notebook with a blue ballpoint pen; his handwriting is surprisingly neat for a teenage boy's, aside from the errors he's scribbled through. Though he's working quietly and independently, at least, he's also snacking crunchily from a bowl of tortilla chips beside him. Sorry, everyone around him. Spence hadn't been at dinner earlier, but suddenly -- -- here he is, along with a large tray of fresh cookies . He's in a pale blue t-shirt with an image of a scissor-tail flycatcher in flight above the word "WINGSPAN", black cargo pants, and white sneakers, the kippah clipped neatly to his hair depicting a stylized planet Earth seen from space. He settles the tray down in the middle of the table and leans on its edge, flashing Roscoe a bright smile. "See, I came back." He produces a miniature sandwich board made of two index cards listing the ingredients of his offerings to set up beside the tray, and only then seems to fully take in the kind of raucous study session ongoing. "I guess I should also, probably, do my homework." Did he have a tablet with him before? He has one, now, though he isn't looking too incredibly excited about the prospect. Celestine walked into the library with several different colored folders under one arm and an old laptop under the other. She walked in and started looking around at a table to sit at and work at, when she saw one with two people and upon further inspection a plate of cookies. She walks closer to the table to go a sit down but as she gets closer she realizes she has meet these two before, although she is unsure if they remember her as they only met her once each time. She decides to sit just a few chairs away from them and sets down her stuff silently. She opens her computer and organizes her folders, she opens the one on top can pulls out a worksheet and sets it in front of her to look at. "Yooo," Roscoe is rearranging his bony teenage limbs in his chair to stretch out past his laptop and snag a cookie, bringing it up to one squinty eye rather than reading the little ingredient card. "I never doubted you," he vows, a little more earnestly than is probably sincere. Once he's settled himself back in his chair, cookie mostly already scarfed down, he adds, "Guess it can't hurt. Sorry, I would say let's go somewhere but I have, like, an hour of this thing," sure enough when he angles his laptop for Spence to look at, there is a ticking-down timer in one corner of whatever PSAT practice site this is. Roscoe doesn't seem actually fussed about the time or the test; he's still talking as he gets back to work. "Like I don't have enough on my plate already -- yo, Celestine, try a cookie." The cookies are a mix of spicy snickerdoodles, citrus sparkle, and crackly dark chocolate -- delicious and familiar to the students who have been around for a while as Jax's recipe, though they've turned out not quite as good as his father's. Not that this seems to be dissauding the kids, even the new ones. Spencer glances at Roscoe and winces. "Oh man, I hated those." His sympathy sounds genuine, anyway. He plops himself down at props the tablet up in front of him. "I got like, a week's worth of calculus to catch up on," he admits sheepishly. He salutes Celestine with his stylus as she joins them. "Hey! You also doing math? The citrus cookies help with math." He sounds serious and matter-of-fact about this as he picks up one of his own. Celestine nods to both Spence and Roscoe as to return the greeting. She smiles and nods to Roscoe gladly taking up his offer for the cookies but as she reaches over for a chocolate looking cookie she stops as she hears Roscoe speak about the different cookies and telling her that the citrus cookies help with math. She sits back in her chair and looks through the papers she took out of the green folder as they are all science related. She then turns to Spence pointing at the cookies. "I am working on science right now, is their a cookie that helps with science." Roscoe's first cookie was a snickerdoodle, but -- "Mmf. Okay," he is reaching across the table for one of the citrus ones too, to help with math; he eats this one in about two bites too. "Your dad put you on this cookies-help-with-school stuff?" he says, just a little skeptically. "I guess it's -- motivating. Gonna need a lot of cookies to cover a week of calculus though." He's getting back to work, brow furrowing down at his math -- "I like the chai snickerdoodles. I was gonna pick your dad's elective just for that recipe." "Chocolate for science," Spence declares without hesitation. "Cookies do help with school. Brains use up a lot of energy, and they use up even more when you're using them a lot. Study snacks are important!" He takes another bite of his citrus cookie and sets it down on the napkin that's serving him for a plate. "You can still do, when he gets back." He's not forcing himself to smile, but there's a determined cheer in his voice, anyway. "If not..." Perhaps he's considering elaborating on why he might not, but thinks better of it. "If not, I'll teach you how to bake them." Celestine smiles as Spence tells her what cookie to take so she confidently grabs the three chocolate cookies and puts them on her green folder as a plate. She then looks at the fact that she had three cookies and the fact that Roscoe and Spence so far have only had one cookie. She wipes off any crumbs on her fingers using her skirt and then looks back at Roscoe. "Sorry I should have asked before taking that many, I can put some back if you want?" "Gonna have to be when he gets back, shoot, they couldn't find a sub," complains Roscoe, his tone also picking up a kind of careful, deliberare blitheness, his eyes on his screen. Even with his eyelids lowered he seems to be able to tell Celestine is looking at him -- "Ain't my cookies, ain't my problem," he tells her. "Dunno if anybody wants 'em anyway now you touched them, this place is a lot less hardcore about stealing food than my last place. 'Chyou need all that brain sugar energy fuel for, anyway?" "Oh, don't worry, I have extra dough chilling in the refrigerator," Spence sounds inordinately proud of his preparedness. "Maybe I could sub for the baking class," he ventures brightly. "I mean Horus's only teaching qualification is 'great at photography' and I'm pretty great at baking." He scrunches up one eye. "Okay, he also has 'is an adult' going for him, but I just turned 18! There are student teachers, right?" Celestine then takes a bite of the chocolate cookie in her hand and reads over a problem on her worksheet, but she loses her train of thought when she hears Spence starting to talk. She is unsure of how to answer she thinks about what she knows. “I mean I think former student have been teachers plus” She waves the cookie in the air as to show her reason “you are pretty good at baking” "Yeah but I dunno about current students being teachers though," Roscoe points out, though once he's said it he's tilting his head like, does he? Before he can pinpoint an example he's shaking his head with slow amusement, eyes dropped back down to his screen as he fights off a small but toothy grin. "Calculus comes first, Paul Hollywood." Then, somehow only sort of pointedly, he digs some cheap wired earbuds out of his jogger pocket to plug into the laptop. Earbuds in, Roscoe out. "I think half the subs are just alumni with three other gig jobs, but yeah..." Spence ducks his head slightly, but he doesn't seem all that embarrassed. "I'm not a former student quite yet." He is eyeing the rapidly emptying tray as if contemplating baking that second batch already, but Roscoe's admonition snaps his attention back to the tablet which is directly in front of his face and really should not have been that easy to forget. "Oh crap, thanks!" He roots around his pockets and comes out with headphones of his own, kind of earbuds except that they hook over his ear to stay in place. "More study snacks later," he promises with a bright smile and turns his attention to his screen.