2. i am no scientologist/the one thing i don't understand
Raeger, perhaps due to the curse of biology, is able to keep pace with Lillie, Angela choking on their dust.
Always several paces ahead of her everywhere except in the classroom, they commingle in ways Angela could only dream of doing. They discuss sports, compete in the forest, bounce energies off of one another. They are popular in and outside of the classroom, and Angela is not. She does not care for things this trivial, but reasserting this principle loses its effect every time she repeats it in her mind.
Raeger is quiet when she walks home with him, and Angela feels a little more than slightly insulted. They are friends, too, she once reasoned, but silence and awkwardness are poor substitutes for the company of a human being. They do their homework together, but only because it is the most reasonable choice and they share the same distaste for one of their instructors. In those few hours, Angela supposes, they become friends again.
Once they finish, Lillie is home, and the two run out of the confines of the Guild or the Restaurant or wherever their feet take them to meet her. Raeger and Lillie share a handshake, Angela left with not even the spoils of companionship.
This, she swears, is not biology. It is some other kind of inexplicable phenomena.
