Elphaba was in an incredible rage when she met Fiyero at the study room two weeks later. She was fuming so much Fiyero was surprised that smoke wasn't coming out of her ears; she seemed very animated – but not in a good way. He decided it best he stay out of her way and not say much more than was required, but curiosity got the best of him. Half an hour into their work, he asked, "Is something wrong?"
"Ha!" Elphaba wrinkled her nose and looked up from the book she'd been reading through (several pages of which she'd accidentally torn in being too angry while turning them). "Do you even need to ask?"
"Okay, fine. I'll reword that." Fiyero said, figuring it was too late to back off. "What is wrong?" He couldn't understand it. As far as he'd known, her life was going fine. There were no major social issues, judging from the usual behavior of everyone at the café (an "everyone" that he was quickly becoming a part of), and he was in one of her other classes as well, and she didn't seem to be struggling academically. Perhaps it had something to do with her sister or her family?
She sighed. Fumbling through her anger, she opened her knapsack and pulled out a flyer. "This is what's wrong."
The flyer had already been through quite a scuffle with Elphaba, it seemed, and it was wrinkled and crumpled beyond belief, not to mention the corners were torn at and it was ripped almost in half from the middle horizontally. As he straightened out the paper and pieced it together, he couldn't help but emit a small chuckle. "Oh."
"It's not funny," she warned. "It was slipped under the doors of each dorm this morning, one with for each girl with her name on it. I can't believe Madame Morrible has the nerve!" Without even having to look at the flyer, she quoted, "'The second year girls of Crage Hall are invited to a MANDATORY ball the night before the fall holidays begin. It is required that each girl have an escort.'" Elphaba pretended to gag.
"Be your sister's escort?" He suggested.
"My sister's a first year!" She reminded him. "Besides, she wouldn't even stoop low enough to be seen with me at a social occasion. And think of what people would say – not that I care; but she would."
"Whom do you think Miss Glinda's going to get as an escort?"
"She can have her pick, I assume. Why?" Elphaba peered at him from a scrunched up fierce expression. "Are you thinking you could seduce your way into being her escort?"
"No!" He exclaimed. "What is with you? You're always accusing me of liking her and I don't even know her."
"Everyone does, no matter if they know her or not, Fiyero."
"I've never seen you do this to anyone else." He said quietly.
She stared at him. "Well, I… Boq already does like her, I don't need to ask. I explained already why Avaric doesn't like her, and that leaves Crope, Tibbett and you. Crope and Tibbett do not like any sort of girl, beautiful or not, as I said. So you're the only one left."
"Whatever you say, Miss Elphaba." Fiyero shrugged and went back to his notes. He thought silence would lure her into saying something, but it turned out that she was much better with patience than he was. After what seemed to him like a long pause, he asked, "So what are you going to do?"
Elphaba grimaced. "I don't know. Maybe Boq will tolerate being dragged along if I can get Glinda to promise to dance with him once."
"What if Glinda takes him?" Fiyero challenged.
"That'll happen the day I get myself a date that actually wants to go with me." Elphaba said sardonically. "That means it just as well might never happen."
Fiyero thrust the flyer in front of her and pointed at something else. "What are you going to do about this?"
"Wear black anyway." She replied, having obviously thought of the solution right away that morning. "Or find some other color, but I doubt I'll even try."
"I'd like to see how this entire fiasco turns out." Fiyero commented.
"I'm glad you find my troubles so amusing."
"I don't mean just you, I meant every second year girl in Crage having to get a date and go to a formal ball." Fiyero told her honestly. "I would like to know how your, uh, situation turns out, but I don't mean that for amusement purposes."
"Whatever." Elphaba dismissed him and sat back in her chair.
"I don't see why it's such a big problem; you seem to have it all planned out. Drag Boq and wear black anyway. Why are you blowing up over it?"
"Because I'd rather not have to go at all! And what if Boq won't stand for being forced into 'escorting' me? What do I do then? I don't need trouble."
"Deal with that when you come to it. I understand that you'd rather not go, but there's no use exploding about it when it's not going to change anything." Fiyero tried to rationalize.
"Are you saying I have no right to be upset?" Elphaba demanded.
"No! I'm just saying you could calm down a bit. Worse things have happened and worse things will happen."
"What a comforting thought," Elphaba remarked crossly. Nonetheless, she got back to her work.
Fiyero smiled to himself as he continued reading through the book he'd grabbed titled The Basic Reproduction Techniques of All Creatures, human, Animal or animal. He couldn't seem to concentrate and stared, bemused, at Elphaba's flyer, wondering what sort of affair it would all turn out to be and wondering absently if Elphaba would dance with Boq, stopping the laughter that came with the thought; Elphaba was taller than Boq, as was just about everyone else. Miss Glinda was actually closer to Boq's height than most of the girls, now that he considered it. They would make quite an interesting pair, if Glinda had any interest in Boq whatsoever.
Who would Elphaba make an interesting pair with? In his mind's eye, he saw her, dressed up in some fancy dark dress, gliding across the room in the arms of… someone. It wasn't easy to narrow Elphaba down to one other person who would go well with her. What would go well with such oddness? It didn't take Fiyero long to figure that the only thing that could work with Elphaba's peculiarity was a similar strange complexion, nothing white at all. When he accidentally began imagining himself as the person whose arm he had pictured her on, he snapped out of his speculations.
"Don't you find it funny," Fiyero asked, "that 'Animal' is capitalized and 'human' or 'person' isn't?"
Elphaba looked at him pensively. "That's interesting. I've never thought of that before. It's almost as if, by capitalizing 'Animal' and not 'human', we're implying that Animals are even better than humans. Of course, with the way things are going, I would severely doubt that's what it means, but it could've meant something like that, once." She nodded. "I think I might want to ask Dr. Nikidik about that one."
"You know he'll just wave it off." Fiyero warned her.
"Oh, well, maybe someone else will hear it and then they'll get to thinking. The more people I can get thinking, the better." Elphaba mumbled.
There was a sudden rapid but not loud banging on the door. It sounded a bit weak, but quite frantic. Fiyero looked up towards the window, saw Boq and nodded at him to come on in. Boq was so excited he was trembling and shaking with amazement. Now Fiyero was curious. "What's going on?" He asked as Elphaba glanced at the doorway, too.
Boq was jumping. He closed the door behind him and gushed, "I'm taking Glinda to the pre-fall holiday ball."
Elphaba choked.
Fiyero remained calm. "That's great. When did this happen?"
"Well, flyers have been posted all over the grounds since this morning after breakfast."
"They have?" Fiyero and Elphaba had been in the study room since shortly after eating and Elphaba had grabbed a lunch for them, too. It was now mid-afternoon.
Boq nodded fervently. "Yes, yes. And I asked Glinda if I could escort her and she said she'd like that! If I'm not mistaken, she even looked happy!" He exclaimed.
Elphaba blinked. "Well, wow. That's… nice."
Fiyero felt bad for Elphaba and wanted to laugh at the same time. He couldn't understand these emotions, and thus ignored them. To Boq he said, "I'm glad she said she'd go with you."
"She made it very clear, of course, that we'd be going as friends." He elaborated. "But I have hopes, anyway." Boq was anxious in the doorway. "Well, that's all. I just wanted to let you guys know. I'd better go. Crope and Tibbett are out scouting the campus and I think I'd better stop them before they get in trouble." Fidgeting slightly, Boq was almost as quickly gone as he had appeared.
Elphaba laid her arms on the desk and then laid her head on her arms. From them, slightly muffled, Fiyero heard her say, "I know what that 'happy' look Glinda had was. It was relief. She was just glad to get a boy to take her who is too respectful to try and feel her up in the middle of a slow dance."
Fiyero chortled at this. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." She picked her head up. "I just have no idea what I'm going to do. I'm happy for Boq and I guess it's terribly rude of me to feel angry that he has a date and I can't force him to go with me, but I'm not hurt. I'm just devoid of any solutions." Her face was blank and pale.
"Well, I'm guessing you're not worried about guys who'll feel you up during a slow dance?"
"I don't think any guys would." Elphaba retorted. "What am I going to do? The only way Crope or Tibbett would go is if they could either bring one another or dress like women, neither of which would go over very well."
"It's a good thing you already know all the problems you might have." Fiyero said, trying to cheer her up. She was never a bright, bubbly, happy person, but she wasn't normally so hopelessly dreary, either. He knew she didn't care for Boq and that she wasn't jealous of Glinda; but Boq had been her only hope. In the back of his mind, there was another answer to her problem, and he racked his brains trying to get it to tumble out.
"Right. That's just so helpful that I know nothing's going to work. Whatever way you look at that, though, I'm screwed." The green girl turned to Fiyero and looked at him helplessly. "Why am I telling you this? You're right. No use freaking out." She took a deep breath and then went back to her book.
They didn't stay for very much longer, for they'd been working all day, and as they were leaving two hours before dinner, Fiyero caught Elphaba's wrist before she turned the knob on the door. "Elphaba?"
She jerked her wrist away in alarm, her eyes wide. "What?"
He realized that he had scared her. Physical contact panicked her when she wasn't expecting it, certainly when she wasn't used to it. Nonetheless, he put a hand on her arm, praying she didn't pull away. "Well, I was thinking. If you'll allow me to, I'd escort you to the ball."
Elphaba swallowed hard and stared at her feet. "Thank you. I know you don't really want to go and you're only doing this because you know I have no other ideas, but thanks. I have nothing else to do, so I'd have to allow it, then, wouldn't I?" She didn't give him a chance to say anything more; she flew out the door and down the stairs before he'd even noticed her arm torn out from under his hand.