Doris and Pam had chemistry first class of the day, and while both of their parents were chemists, their levels of enjoyment of the subject varied greatly. Pam made it clear to the teacher that she preferred to work alone, but when nobody else wanted to partner with Doris, Pam was the last resort. Still, it turned out they made a pretty good team: Pam did all the work, and, in exchange, Doris gifted her protein smoothies – sweet, guilt-free, all-meat-and-animal-byproducts protein smoothies...

One of the downsides of this, unfortunately, was that Doris often complained that there was nothing to do, especially when they were working a lab-based assignment.

Like now, for instance.

"I'm bored," was Doris's first gripe of the week. "You want to talk about something?"

Pam jotted down something about the half-empty flask in front of her, really making Doris wait for some sort of answer. Eventually, she set her pencil down and turned to face her partner through those bulky, plastic goggles Doris hadn't bothered wearing.

"No."

She went back to work.

Doris sighed. Fortunately, she may have been bored, but at least she had the decency to try and keep herself occupied rather than bothering her lab partner.

She took her pencil and put it longways between her index finger and the table, trying to balance it where the pointy end was at the bottom. It stayed like that for a few seconds before the pointy bit snapped off and rolled under the table.

And there goes her decency.

"Hey, Pam."

Pam's head seemed to creak as it turned to meet Doris with widened, bloodshot eyes. She really wasn't having it – not that that seemed to deter Doris at all.

"WHAT?" asked Pam in a hoarse, grating whisper.

"Why do you hang around Carol so much?"

Pam huffed out a sigh and pointed over to a tall, olive-skinned girl wearing a green, woolen cap over a waterfall of coffee-colored hair.

"Wait... is that Jessica? The Jessica?"

Apparently it was, as she'd heard Doris mention her from across the room and brought her eyes to meet them. Pam winced when she saw the girl smile and wave in their direction.

"Unfortunately, yes. Carol hates her, so she reacts to her like a reverse magnet."

"Oh yeah, 'cuz of Hal."

"Yes."

"Y'know, if she's creeping on you, you should really talk to someone,

"It's not... can I please just get back to what I–"

"I don't see you girls doing the experiment!" called the teacher from the front of the room.

Even from a sideview, Doris could see the look of dread and annoyance on Pam's face.

"We only have about an hour of class to do this, unlessential you wanna stay after class, which I highly doubt."

"Y-yes, Mr. Tyler."

"Especially you, Doris."

"Yup!" She held out a thumbs-up.

The teacher nodded and went back to squinting at his laptop.

Pam waited to make sure the teacher's focus was fully on his work so she could grab her lab partner by the collar and pull her closer; although, given their weight classes, it was more so the other way around.

"STOP. IT." She was whispering in that breathy way where she still had her teeth clenched tight, even though her breath could be smelled a mile away, given her usual diet.

"Oh, come on! I mean, what do you expect me to do right now?"

"What you usually do: nothing."

'Nothing?' Doris's brow furrowed and her lip hung slightly open; still, she was quiet, and that was enough for Pam to throw herself off of her and go back to mixing chemical A with chemical B, and then write about it.

But while Pam was being by herself, Doris couldn't help but fixate on what had been said about her.

'...what you usually do: nothing.'

Her mouth arched into a frown.

"Nothing? You really think so?"

Maybe Pam was ignoring her, maybe she was just too focused, or maybe the sound just didn't carry. Her question fell on deaf ears.

Any other person and she probably would have groped her collar and turned her around to ask less nicely, but this was someone She knew – someone who knew her. She knew her...

Doris stayed silent for the rest of class. And stared at the table. And the floor. And the clock, and the wall, and the broken-off black tip of her pencil.

And did nothing.


First period algebra was one of the smaller classes on Leslie and Carol's agendas: only six students – Leslie and Carol, two nerdy guys, some girl, a dumb jock with a ginger bowl cut – and the teacher, talking about reciprocals, the zero product property and whathaveyou.

Without plenty of space and with the teacher as relaxed as she was, assigned seats were basically nonexistent, which made it easy for Carol and Leslie to sit next to each other where the teacher could barely hear them whisper above herself and students.

Not that Carol wanted to.

Neither of them really enjoyed the class itself, but Leslie made sure she was the worst about it, always trying to talk through text and almost always getting them both caught.

As soon as class started and the teacher turned away from her students, Carol's phone buzzed in her lap. She decided to ignore it at first, setting it aside where it wouldn't interrupt her. But then she heard it vibrate again. And again. And again. And again. One after the other, it was rapid-paced. Some of the students started throwing her looks. She glared over at Leslie, but Leslie was just staring foward, arms planted innocently (so it seemed) between her thighs, obscuring the phone that was obviously shining light onto the underside of her desk while she typed away. Now even the teacher was beginning to stare.

"Sorry!" Carol said to the room. "Let me just..."

She picked up her phone to turn off the vibration feature, but not before she saw the wall of texts from Leslie in her notifications:

"u relly wanna rob a bank tonigt?"

"Carol?"

"Carol"

"carol"

"c ar0l"

"k-rol"

"carol of eartg"

"this it hte pnik latner core"

"u need ti talk to youre freind"

"she has somthung impratmint to twll u"

"carol pick up"

"cArol"

"DON'T STOP READING THIS IF YOU DO YOU'LL DIE! In 1989, a little girl in Texas City, Nebraska was strangled to death in her apartment..."

She was still getting more, but none she saw before hitting the switch to silent mode.

She held up her phone, now turned off, to the class...

"Got it!"

...and sat it back in her lap. The class seemed to go back to normal after awkwardly shaking off that little incident.

Carol leaned in to whisper to Leslie:

"Stop texting me, my phone battery's low!"

"Aw, whaaat? Give it here, I'll charge it for ya!" She held her hand out and immediately Carol shrank away from it in her seat.

"No way, as if I'd let you hold anything!"

"Oh, come on, you know I wouldn't break it!"

"I don't know what you wouldn't do with it!

Leslie held one hand to her chest and the other in the air beside her. "Swear on my scout's grave, mother's honor!"

Carol scowled as her eyes narrowed in disbelief. Leslie's mock innocence just didn't seem to quit.

"...pinky promise?" Leslie added.

Carol thought for a second how much she actually wanted her phone charged: on one hand, Leslie is unpredictable, and usually that quality isn't in favor of other people, let alone Carol; however, if these calls from her kept up and Hal went back on his decision to block her at any point during the day, or if there was some other way to talk to him through it, she couldn't know right away if her phone was dead.

It was a longshot, enough that even she was willing to admit it, given how everything had played out so far, but it was one she was desperate enough to take.

Carol sighed and dejectedly held out her phone for Leslie to take. She did, using the desk in front of her to obscure the one continuous spark connecting her finger to the recharge port before handing it back hardly a second later. The entire time, her eyes were trained on the teacher, who was still using the chalkboard to answer some of the classmates' basic questions.

Carol looked through her phone to make sure Leslie hadn't fucked it up somehow. Everything seemed to be in ord–

...wait a second.

"What is this?" Carol held her phone up so that the screen faced Leslie as discretely as she could, displaying a mostly empty section of her home screen.

"What's what?"

"What do you mean, 'what's what'? What's this app that just suddenly appeared on my phone after you gave it to me!"

There was a rising annoyance in Carol's voice that Leslie took note of and smiled. She leaned in to look at Carol's phone and squinted, eyes darting around the screen.

"What app?"

"This one! Right here!" She held the phone a little closer, prompting Leslie to back up in order to compensate.

"Carol, unless you tell me what you want to see, I can't–"

"The one that says 'ButtSmackerDaddyPorn'!"

She waited for answer from Leslie only to see her holding back laughter. She was about to ask why when she realized how quiet the class had gotten all of a sudden.

Because regardless of how quiet Carol had intended for that to come out, there was no possible sequence of events in which that specific combination of words would not turn the heads of everyone in a given area – specifically Carol's.

She looked at the students, who were all looking at her. Then the teacher, who was giving her the stink eye for drawing attention to herself. Then at Leslie. Then at the students. Then at Leslie again.

Even without the cover of anyone talking over them, Leslie whispered, "it's a dummy app, I just wanted you to say that out loud!"

Enraged, Carol stomped her foot on the ground under her desk.

"YOU ARE SO–!"

"Miss Ferris," the teacher called out.

Carol's head shot towards the teacher, whose expression was far too neutral for what was happening.

"Uh... yes, Mrs. Durgo?"

"Could you and Miss Willis see me after class?"

Leslie shrugged, still smiling.

Carol nodded shakily. "S-sure..."

The teacher clapped her hands together. "Great! Now, as I was saying..."

She took a small stack of papers and walked towards the closest student to hand them out.

"...this next assignment, I'd like everyone to split up into three pairs, solve the questions on the board, and we'll tally up who got the right ones for extra credit. Okay? Okay. Now find a partner once you get your sheet and start right away."

Leslie got hers right after Carol's, and so jumped up from her chair to say, "you and I are definitely partners on this, right?"

But her question had fallen on deaf ears. Carol got up out of her seat and, ignoring Leslie completely, went over to talk to the jock with red hair. She watched in horror as the two sat down together, huddled over the assignment, Carol nonchalantly scooting closer to him and digging her way into his side like a little dog, and then horror turned to jealousy and disdain as Leslie had to saddle herself with Nerd One of Two (not even the only other girl like she would have wanted) and listen to him rattle on about whatever in the lesson while she just couldn't pry her eyes off of that stupid bowl cut and those stupid freckles and that stupid boyish face and that stupid way Carol leaned up against his shoulder even though they'd only known each other not even one minute...

"Alright, for these first two, zero times anything is zero, so that pretty much... hey, uh, are you listening?"

"No."

He had no answer for that.


Harleen Quinnzel had a luxury most of her friends didn't have: a free period, and it was a free first period, at that. Usually she spent it sitting down or jumping around or texting people on her phone – today of all days, she was pacing. Harley had to come up with something in three more days, or else it was 'good luck finding an apartment that accepts hyenas and hundred-dollar bills!' Needless to say, she was a little dry on ideas.

If they really had reinforced the walls, at least enough to deter Giganta before the supers arrived, she and her friends could try finding a sewer tunnel leading underneath it... if that was even possible, let alone big enough to fit Giganta if they ever needed the muscle, which they might if they needed to carry so much money out of there. She could always go solo and hook a truck up to an ATM, but there was always more strength in numbers, and there was no telling how much those ATMs carried – besides, she wanted it to be something the girls could all do together; she liked having them around. She couldn't imagine having a heist without them anymore.

Now standing motionless in the center of the empty tables just outside the cafeteria, Harleen sighed. She was totally, utterly, undeniably stumped...

...which was second on her mind when her train of thought was derailed by a pair of hands being laid on her shoulders and turning her around like a revolving door; thankfully, who she saw made it worth it.

"Babsy-boo!" she cried out, arms outstretched for a hug.

"Leener-dog!" replied the hooded figure before her with matching tone and enthusiasm.

Babs and Harleen hugged for what seemed like the first time in forever, despite only having been a couple days.

Thank god for guardian angels.

Harleen pushed herself off of her dear friend, though she was still clinging tightly to her shoulders as if they were a lifeline.

"But Babby-bye, I thought ya had class first period!"

Babs shrugged. "We got released early!" Her grin was almost as wide as Harley's.

"I'm glad ya here!"

"Yeah, I noticed you were... actually standing still. Seems pretty serious."

Harleen huffed weakly. "Hoo boy... ya noticed that, huh?"

Eyes still on her friend, Babs took a seat at one of the lunch tables and patted the seat next to her. "Wanna talk about it?"

While the blonde's first instinct was "no, because I'm not gonna let spill that I'm a career criminal failing to plan a bank robbery, OOPS! I just did!" she really thought about it. If only there was some way she could maybe get some advice, some morale support maybe if she just phrased her question in a some way that didn't reveal her true intentions...

She sighed and sat down, back arched downwards as she folded her hands over her knees. "Oh, y'know, I jus'..." Harleen fiddled her thumbs. As if it would help at all. Maybe it did – she liked to fidget sometimes. But right now, she wasn't sure anything so small could help.

"Yeah?" Babs leaned in.

"I... I... don't know if I should even say."

"Aw, come on! It couldn't hurt, could it?"

Yes.

But Harley didn't dare say that.

Babs frowned at her downer friend, seeing that there wasn't much she could do – at least, nothing more than she already knew she could. So she draped her arm around Harleen's back in a hug and smiled as her friend looked up to meet her brightened eyes.

"Well," said Babs, "even so, I'l still be here. If ever you need me."

Harley could at least crack a smile at how hard Babs was trying, even if it wasn't really much.

It broke her heart that she couldn't just tell her what was happening. And it broke her heart even more knowing she couldn't just tell her, "I love you" and mean it. Not yet. Not this soon.

Harley went for the next best thing when she wrapped her own arm around Babs, and squeezed tight.

"Friggin'... bank walls gettin' reinforced," she muttered under her breath.

Babs tilted her head. "Uh, what do you mean?"

Harleen backed away from the guy, thinking, 'shit. That wasn't meant to be out loud."

"I, uh..."

"I mean, I don't think banks even get their walls reinforced, at least not after they're already built."

Harley's eyes widened, a tiny spark shining through them. "Wait, really?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, that's not what they did in Gotham, not that Gotham's banks were always the best, but I remember my dad complaining how nobody has the time to redo the whole thing after just one wall gets melted or cut or smashed or whatever."

"Babsy, you're a genius!"

"Oh, heh, well, I mean, I don't know about genius, but... wait, what does that have to do with–?"

Whatever was supposed to come next was cut short by a quick, forceful peck on her cheek from Harleen, catching Babs by surprise.

But before it could even register, Harleen was already running towards the school's front entrance.

"Buh-bye Babsies, see ya later! Love ya!"

A nearly-stunned Babs rubbed her cheek as she watched Harleen disappear around the corner and think, unbeknownst to Babs, 'finally, this is it: this is what I needed!'

Things were finally adding up.