"Danny," Mindy whines poking him in the ribs with her toes.
"Hmm?" He answers distractedly. They are seated on a couch in the study lounge. Or rather, he's seated. Mindy is sprawled out next to him, her feet infringing onto his half of the cushions.
"Danny!" She continues more insistently, her poking evolving into a more aggressive shove.
"What?" He asks finally laying aside the large tome of Shakespeare he's been reading onto a side table. He and Mindy have been lab partners for a little over a month now and for the most part it's been as horrible as he'd imagined. For one thing she can never be silent and more often than not the things that come out of her mouth are borderline ridiculous. Because of Mindy, Danny now knows more than he'd ever wanted to about bored fame-seeking housewives of various American metropolises and been subjected to some 'documentary' about a group of British kids in desperate need of haircuts. 'Documentary?' He'd laughed at her, 'Baseball by Ken Burns. Now that's a documentary!'
"I need your help," she tells him earnestly sitting up along the side of the couch and tucking her feet beneath her.
"With what?" He asks. She certainly didn't seem like she'd been studying, he notes thinking she's talking about schoolwork. "I've got a big English exam coming up," he adds gesturing to his discarded textbook.
"Shakespeare," she says in disgust. "Ugh. Danny. Forget about that hack. Do you know I heard he didn't even write those plays. It was his butler," she adds in a conspiratorial whisper.
"Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure that's not true" He sighs hoping she'll get to the point soon. "What is it you want?"
"I need your help getting Casey Peerson to make out with me," she announces cheerfully like she's just proposed something incredibly enjoyable rather than totally insane.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can't help you with whatever little 'boy trap' you've got planned," he says reaching for his Shakespeare once more.
"But you can though," she whines reaching across him to swat his hand away from the book. "Listen Casey is going out for Jesus in the spring production of Jesus Christ Superstar and I am going to get the role of Mary Magdelene. We are going to spend every afternoon together rehearsing, falling in love, and tonguing in the courtyard" she finishes triumphantly.
"What if he doesn't get the part?" Danny asks. He wonders if she ever thinks through any of these crazy schemes she comes up with.
"He will, Danny. He totally will. I don't think anyone else is even interested. Although, Brendan Deslaurier did tell Tamra she ought to try out for Jesus, something about it being more historically accurate. She does have a killer voice…" she adds thoughtfully.
"And what if you don't get the part?" Mindy's definitely a drama queen, though he isn't sure if that would really transfer to the stage.
"That is where you come in my friend," she says happily clapping him on the shoulder. "Now normally I detest your sense of style and would never come to you for advice."
"Naturally." He replies with a roll of his eyes.
"But, Ms. Neuhauser is directing the musical this year and she loves you," Mindy explains. It was true. Their history teacher had taken a shine to him after he'd been the only one in the class to be able to correctly place Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia. "I need your help to, you know dress bad and act like an old person, like you do, so that she'll like me and cast me as Mary. I need you to come with me to the mall. I need you, Danny Castellano, to be my personal shopper."
"No way," he states definitively. Sometimes Mindy is crazy even by Mindy standards.
"Is this because of our personal relationship?" She asks in a tone of total seriousness.
"What?!" He laughs, because really the idea that they have any kind of relationship is ludicrous. "We don't have a personal relationship. We're lab partners; that's it. My relationship with you is about as personal as my relationship with this sofa."
"Alright. Then you can have no objection to watching me try on a bunch of outfits. You're going to reupholster the sofa that is Mindy Lahiri," she announces with a flourish gesturing at herself. "We'll go to the mall after school. Chico's here we come."
Before he can argue, she rises from her seat and ducks quickly towards him to give him a peck on the cheek. "I'll buy you a frozen yogurt as a thank you," she says. "Nah. Scratch that. Frozen yogurt's disgusting. We'll get some soft pretzels instead."
He sits on the couch for a while after she's departed, Shakespeare forgotten and still oddly aware of the place on his cheek where a trace of her lip gloss lingers. The thing about being Mindy's lab partner is that it is horrible. Most of the time. But every once in a while, it isn't.