DISCLAIMER The Buffy people are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, and the WB
AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you read this, please review it even if it's just a smile or frowny face… I just need to know if anyone is at all interested.
Buffy finally relented and allowed "Callie" some paper and a crayon to play with while she talked with Anya and Xander. Jen looked at the purple crayon, wondering what in the world she could do with it to convince Buffy that she wasn't making things up. You'd think if someone had been the slayer for seven years, they'd figure out that if their little sister started talking about being a Yale student, maybe she really was. It wasn't as if it was the weirdest thing that had ever happened in Sunnydale.
Jen picked up the crayon and started writing down simple calculus problems. The integral from zero to infinity of 1/x =lnx, rotated around the x axis to form a three-dimensional shape whose volume was…
"What are you drawing, Callie?" Buffy asked nicely, glad that her sister was playing so quietly and not talking about sex.
"I'm doing complex integration to find the volume of the solid created by rotating the equation y=1/x over the x-axis." Her voice was tiny and high pitched, with the smallest possible lisp on the word 'axis.' Buffy looked at her strangely. "It's calculus," Jen explained. "I told you I'm a Yale student trapped in a seven year old body."
Xander patted the top of her head. "What an imagination," he said. "Imagine thinking that little squiggly 's' sign was a math thing-a-ma-jig." Jen realized that the people in the magic shop weren't exactly in with the knowing of the calculus.
"I need Willow," Jen said. Buffy shook her head.
"She's in meditation today," Buffy replied. "She'll be by the house in a couple of hours, but if you want, we'll save your pretty 'calculus' and she can look at it when we see her." Buffy put the paper in her purse, and Callie/Jen sighed deeply. What else could she possibly do to convince them that she wasn't seven?
"Hey Anya," she said. Anya looked at her. "I don't want to sleep with the bar maid because she has wide hips, like a Baltic woman. You have narrow hips, like a Baltic woman from a slightly more arid region." It was the only quote from the show that Jen could remember that "Callie" wouldn't have under any circumstances heard about. Anya started crying.
"Devil bunny child," she shrieked through her tears at Jen. Xander comforted her, not really understanding what was wrong, but figuring that Anya had an excuse to be a little on edge. Buffy hated to ask, but she had to. "Guys, can you watch Callie for a few minutes while I run and meet with Principal Wood really quick?" She hated having to ask with Anya in tears, but if she had learned one thing in the past year, it was that asking for help was essential to making with the not-craziness.
"Sure," Xander said, his arm still around Anya's shoulder. Anya shot Callie a mistrustful look. Jen groaned, wondering why in the world Anya hadn't explained why she was crying. This was quickly becoming one of those episodes that made Jen think that the writers were dumb and didn't think things through properly.
Buffy left, and Callie waited until Xander and Anya were sufficiently occupied with each other. Then she crept stealthily out of the Magic Box, heading for the bus station. If Buffy wouldn't believe her, then maybe Angel would. She was hopeful that there wasn't some sort of crossover-preventative force field in between Sunnydale and L.A.
Well, she thought finally, at least I have a good excuse for missing chem lecture, and an even better excuse to see David Boreanaz in a tight black shirt, in person.