ArchivedLogs:The Apologies Begin

The Apologies Begin
Dramatis Personae Ivan, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-04-16 '
Location <XS> Classroom Two
Acrid scents of chemicals sting the nostrils upon entering this classroom. Tall tables are set up in clusters, small torches attach to their sides, though they can be de-attached and stored beneath the desks at lessons' end. The chairs here are high, and come on wheels. Around the edges of this room are plentiful cupboards, many of them locked. The edges of the room hold sinks, as well, some of them carefully labeled. The front of the room has a number of whiteboards, though it lacks a teacher's desk. Biology class is once more upon us! What a glorious time. Or it would be, if this wasn't one of the teachers so set on making everyone actually /learn in class/, silently. He may just be lazy, really. They've been assigned two painstakingly long chapters to read in the first half of the class, but not everyone seems entirely willing to do so. Some students are just plain Not Interested, while yet others have already read the material and have taken to keeping themselves otherwise occupied until the allotted time has passed. The teacher looks to the students every now and then, but is otherwise occupied with scrawling things across the board at the front of the class. Questions! Questions that will no doubt be asked later, of those who he did /not/ see reading. And for once... Ivan is one of those students. He's sitting at the front row, eyes intently on a piece of paper on his desk. His book is propped up, open, in front of it in the most amateurish attempt at hiding his /misbehaving/. A few minutes later, Barry silently groans in annoyance, and loafishly stretches an arm across his and Shelby's desk, before withdrawing it to leave-- a NOTE. It is very chickenscratchy and Ivan looks particularly wide-eyed where he sits. 'thank you for not killing lena. it was an accident. I brought you food but it is in the kitchen' There is also a doodle. Of a blue-pencil spider looking REALLY SAD with its vaguely cartoony eyes. Poor Barry. He probably thought he was going to have an easy time of it today, since Shelby has been silent and sullen and disinclined towards causing trouble. The girl even has her book open and is bent over it--but there are suspiciously few pages being turned, even for a /really/ slow reader. When a note appears in her field of vision, it is Unfortunate Barry who receives the glare--but then she reaches for it to fold it open. Read read read. Is that a muscle ticking in her jaw? Uh oh. Her pencil is scooped up and applied to paper. With /pressure/. About half a minute later, Barry is tasked with ferrying the note back to Ivan. Already he looks /over/ this job. 'i dont want ur fukin food,' Shelby has written. While she's had the paper, the doodle of poor Lena has been flipped onto her back, legs curled and cartoony eyes replaced with BIG FUCKING X's. Grump. 'u made me look like a total idiot. u and those dumb bugs.' Ivan remains still, though he's doing a very poor job at pretending to read between the notes being passed. He's just staring down at an empty portion of his desk, brows iiinching closer together as time passes. And this only worsens when he is handed a note back and reads the contents, squirming downward in his seat. Okay. Not ideal. He spares a glance toward Shelby, but it is brief and twitchy. She might look BACK. Wouldn't want that. It takes a while for Ivan's second note to arrive through Barry Postal Service, and even then it is /littered/ with words that have since been scribbled over, made mostly illegible. The only ones that are left are somehwere in the middle of all this, small and tucked away among the rest of the mess: 'are you okay' Shelby is looking back. Darkly. With beetled brows and bulldog jaw. Take /that/, cartoon Lena. Take that, Ivan. By the time the next missive arrives, she has returned to pretending to read. A page is turned but there is a distinct lack of interest in the words on the page. The pictures? Sure. The vascular system illustrated upon the police sketch of a human body has gone hog-wild, giving that figure a bowtie made of arteries and hair made of veins. Its empty hand is also now whacking off a newly existent penis, prompting a /slightly/ more interested glance from Barry. Her response is quick in coming (heh): 'no. and ur still an asshole who needs 2 keep a closr eye on his pets. >:|' Looking over to Shelby has officially been declared Too Dangerous. Ivan makes no second attempt, curling closer to his desk while ripping another piece of paper off of a perfectly good notebook to scribble again. Barry. HEY. BARRY. There is an 'fffh' from Barry as he is gently poked in the side. A few seconds later, the note gets tossed onto Shelby's desk again. It reads, 'why are you not okay ? I want to help. I made a mistake and I want to help'. And there it is again, all the way at the bottom, 'please'. Arggggh. Shelby does not vocalize this but the way she scrunches up her face /conveys/ it. Then...then there is a sudden and worrying shift as she rolls her shoulders back and bends her head over the paper to scribble a response. She is /all the cool/ while writing, her earlier annoyance gone behind a veneer of super casual. Oh Barrrrrry. Her response is, 'its all cool dude, just same shit, diffrent day. anywy im glad i dint kill ur spider. or that big fukin long thing w/ all the feet wutevr it wuz. u wana do my ethics homwork? Upon reading the note, Ivan promptly reaches for his backpack! There is a noise of more pencils and he folds an arm around his next note, tongue poking out one side of his mouth as he prepares the next message. The next note that comes /flung/ across from the increasingly impatient Barry to Shelby contains a /mess/ of tinyscribbled words 'yes okay I can do that also tell me if there is another thing that I can do.' Then, another doodle. A bee hive! ... Sort of. It's a little stylized. That is to say, hardly recognisable. There are equally badly drawn bees around it, and next to those, two yellow jars of sorts? A tinyscribbled label on them says 'honey'. There is also an arrow pointing to each, one with 'Rasa' at the top, and one 'Shelby'. Below, it reads, 'when it is the end of the summer, you can have the first ones'. Possibly the sweetest bribe ever attempted. First things first. Shelby, still in casual mode, /slams/ her foot against Barry's seat. The wheels on the bottom of the stool go skittering across the linoleum, and he is nearly knocked over, having to grab at the long desk with both hands to prevent this. The teacher looks up, Barry glares at Shelby, Shelby just looks back at him like, 'What? What're you gonna do?' Then she bends over Ivan's latest offering. Far too convinced of her own superiority, from the looks of it. While reading, her forehead crumples--and then smooths out as she plucks up her pencil to begin writing. And sketching. It takes a little longer this time. But when their courier pigeon returns the note, she has diligently corrected Ivan's poor drawing. The hive now resembles a proper hive. The bees--and there are many more of them, truly zooming around the hive--now look like bees. There is even grass and wildflowers bobbing in an invisible wind around the feet of the hive. Beneath this, she has written: 'just keep ur fukin bugs away from me dude or next time sware to god ill stomp em.' Then, "P.S. n stop bein an ass 2 Rasa zie knows ur avoidin hir' The scuffle causes Ivan to curl slightly further up, pulling his book closer a second later because I AM READING, HONEST. He does not look up, for fear of seeing anyone look /back/, until that note is passed back. And he... relaxes a bit. Sitting up again, the meekest of smiles on his face. But then comes the end of that note. And he sits up further, smile vanishing to make way for a look of concern. No note is torn off, this time. He just stares down at his desk - through his desk, before simply turning to Shelby to say aloud, somewhat pathetically confused, "Avoiding hir?" Though it is a perfect respectable inside voice, the relative silence that preceded it makes it sound a little less so. The teacher has already twigged to Something Going On in that part of the classroom. It doesn't take much for him to pay /more/ attention to the little trio. "Ivan," he says, though suspicious eyes have fallen once more on /Shelby/. "Your assignment is to be /reading/ the chapter. Not discussing it with your friends." Amateurs. Shelby is surrounded by amateurs. She slumps over the table and plays the innocent game, her chin in one hand and her eyes apparently on the book. La la la, nothing to see here, she's ignoring the troublemaker! Ivan does not immediately respond, continuing to stare at Shelby for several more seconds after being addressed. Alas, when trying to read her expression proves to be in vain, he reluctantly pulls his book closer again to try and read that, instead. "I am sorry, sir." He doesn't /sound/ terribly sorry, some confusion still lingering in his tone. The last message he received gets pocketed, but for now both the looks toward Shelby and the notes cease. Barry silently rejoices. At least until he remembers he's supposed to be reading, as well.