Title: Absorbing the Spectrum
Author: Allison
Summary: It's Monday morning in Shermer, Illinois.
Word Count: 1537
Notes: You can all thank MidnightBlue88 for wheedling the good bits out of me and making this look pretty :D You'll probably notice that it's pretty heavy on the Allison, but she's my favorite and the easiest to write. I'm still working on my Bender and Claire, but we'll just have to see what spills from the finger tips. Enjoy!
Allison ran into Bender that morning as he was walking to school. In his rush to get to work, her father had accidentally dropped her off at the junior high school. She didn't bother saying anything to him. She still had plenty of time to get to homeroom and wasn't going to make a fuss and he wouldn't have turned around anyway. The two of them arrived at the corner of Quail and Willow from opposite directions and turned in companionable silence toward school.
Bender nodded and grunted, "Hey."
Allison just squeaked, blowing the bangs that had escaped her dark headband out of her eyes. Bender had longer strides than she did, so she had to walk a bit faster just to keep up with his meandering pace. It was an awkward and unfamiliar thing for her to change anything about herself for the sake of someone else, hindered further by the constricting material of her black skirt.
She did like Bender; he had noticed her in the past and had never been a total asshole. She laughed, which drew a look from him, but she didn't explain and he didn't care. She was thinking of that moment in detention when Claire challenged Bender with "And are you going to invite Allison to one of your heavy metal vomit parties?" She had laughed then too. If only Claire knew that that was where Bender had seen her before.
It wasn't so hard to hitch a ride to Skokie or Evanston on the weekends and then take the L into the city. She liked the basement clubs where nobody knew who she was and she could pretend her name was Jane or Sophia, and no one knew any. That's why she'd been so surprised to run into Bender there, but he'd just smirked and bought her a drink with his fake ID before disappearing back into the crowd, never mentioning their meeting to anyone.
That's when Allison decided that maybe John Bender wasn't so bad.
In between first and second period she saw Claire in the bathroom. She was leaning over the mirror, plucking a stray hair from her eyebrow. She seemed to be alone, but Allison could see several pairs of expensive pumps beneath the stall doors.
Claire's eyes flicked away from her reflection, checking to see which of her friends had finished. When she saw Allison, she smiled.
"Hi! How's your Monday going?"
Allison smiled back, but shrugged noncommittally as she washed her hands. Claire's ever immaculate appearance was making her feel self-conscious about the way she had butchered the makeover from Saturday. She wore a headband, yes, but it wasn't white and flowery, just a simple navy blue cloth that held some of her hair back from her face. She liked her black shit and had stuck with it, but smeared a bit of raspberry lip gloss over her lips and a pale blush over her cheeks.
Claire must have noticed the way she was biting her lip, because when Allison reached past her for a paper towel she murmured, "Baby steps."
Allison grinned wider, nodding, suddenly not caring that most of her clothing was shades of black, except for the blue sweatshirt she was hiding under her outer coat. The bell rang and Allison nodded to the door, universal body language for 'gotta go'.
Claire nodded. "I'll see you later."
Allison opened the door and waved good-bye as a series of flushes erupted from the stalls. Before the door swung closed, she heard a voice ask, "Claire, who were you talking to?"
"A friend."
Brian juggled an armload of textbooks as he tried to remember the combination for his new locker. 18...26... what? Those were the only numbers he remembered, which didn't make any sense to him because he had a great memory. He could remember his locker combinations all the way back to sixth grade: 17-9-24, 12-24-3, 36-5-19, 7-27-17, and 8-25-11. Not that remembering those served much of a purpose when he couldn't remember the combination to the lock he had now and when he was going to be late for fourth period.
He glanced around the hall; maybe Bender would drop by and show him how to jimmy it open. No such luck. He did see Allison, though, exiting Senor Creighton's class with a bored look on her face.
"Hey, Allison!"
He grinned as she looked both ways down the hall, trying to figure out who was calling her or if there was another Allison around.
Finally, she saw him across the hall and he waved, dropping his physics textbook. Where he was normally jostled back and forth trying to move from one side of the hallway to another, she moved easily, slipping through the gaps between bodies like a ghost. Or maybe Moses. His father would consider it some sort of blasphemy if he knew his son had just compared this strange girl to a great biblical figure, so maybe Brian would just keep that observation to himself.
She leaned up against the locker next to his and looked at him expectantly. He was the one who called her over in the first place.
"Hey, Allison, how's your Monday been going? Claire smiled at me in the hall, which I thought was pretty cool, and Andy waved cause I was on the other side and couldn't exactly stop to talk, you know? I've got shop after lunch and I think I might see Bender. Do you think he'll help me with the next project?"
She blinked as all the words came rushing at her and continued chewing her gum.
"Anyway, I was wondering if maybe you'd want to sit with me and my friends at lunch? They're pretty nice guys, just don't mention anything to Larry about the Andy thing, he's still kind of touchy about that, but who can blame him, right?" Brian shrugged, nearly dropping another book. "Could you hold this, please?"
Allison picked it out of his hands easily and held it against her chest as she blew a purple bubble.
Brain took a breath, "So what do you say?"
The bubble popped and she turned away, taking his book with her.
"That's cool, you know? I don't need that until tomorrow anyway! See you at lunch."
He was getting odd looks from the people around him, so he bent to pick up his physics book and retuned his attention to the lock… 18-20-6. The lock opened easily in his hands.
Andy slouched low in his chair, his thumb beating a rapid tattoo against his jeans as Mr. Tepper droned on and on about World War I. Normally wars were his favorite part of history classes as they were certainly the most interesting, but Tepper had a way of making them less interesting than the ceiling tiles. Of which there were exactly eighty four. No, eighty eight… that one had a giant crack in it, so did that make it eighty seven or eighty nine…
Andy blinked and tried to focus his attentions back on the blackboard, but he really wasn't in the mood to here about Serbian nationalists and the archduke of Austria, or was it Hungary?
The door opened and the entire class turned their head to see who was offering them a reprieve, however brief, from Tepper's voice; each hoped a pass might come along and give them a longer break. Andy grinned when he saw his best friend Trevor leaning up against the doorway, looking properly apologetic for interrupting the class.
"Excuse me sir, but Coach Doherty needs to see Andrew Clark right away, if it's all right?"
Andy sat up straight in his chair, trying not to look too pleased, as Mr. Tepper looked at him over the top of his thick glasses. "Do you have a hall pass?"
Trevor reached into his pocket, but came out empty handed. He sighed, "I'm sorry sir, but you know how the athletic coaches are sometimes…"
"I suppose it's all right, but Mr. Clark I'll still expect you to do the reading tonight, pages 486 through 510."
"Yes, sir," Andy nodded, gathering up his belongings before slipping through the aisles to the front of the class.
He knocked fists with Trevor when they stepped out into the hallway, and as soon as the door slammed shut behind them he asked, "So does coach really need to see me?"
"No, man. We're just headed over to the deli and thought you'd want to come along. Never leave a man behind, and all that."
"Thank god, I thought I was going to go crazy in there. Tepper is such a prick!"
"Hey dude, you don't have to tell me. I had him last year and if I never hear the words Russian Revolution again, I'll die a happy man."
Andy laughed, "No shit. And you know, you've got to stop wearing your letter jacket when you break me out. One of these days he's bound to realize those are baseballs on your sleeve, not wrestlers."
Trevor grinned, "Fuck, he hasn't yet. Why should he start now? Come on, let's drop your crap at your locker and meet Stubby and the rest in the parking lot."