bwuh?

who: kaysen and jeri
where: the chapel
when: early evening

Kaysen was wishing, particularly after hanging out with Nic earlier, that she'd brought her skateboard. That she'd figured out a way to bring it along without her parents being the wiser. Really, it would have worked out pretty awesome. She was still wandering around, just sort of looking at shit. There were some truly creepy ass rooms, but some especially neat ones, and she also wished she'd brought her camera. She'd really kind of stopped taking pictures so much since she and Chance had broken up, or more, a little before then. She'd not really had time or whatever. Maybe she needed to get back into it. She was coming up on a bigger room, and a quick glance at the arrow on the wall that read 'chapel' she discerned that that's what it was. One of the heavy doors was ajar, and so she headed inside, looking up immediately because religious-type places always tended to have high ceilings. She paused as she got a text message, just as she was heading in, and she dug her cell out of her pocket, wondering to herself if that smell was what she thought it was.

Jerilyn, on the other hand, wasn't really wishing for anything. She had everything she needed - privacy, a pipe, a lighter, and some rather decent weed. Having packed it in, she lit it up and inhaled. Yeah, this was pretty good. No parents. No drunk father and apathetic mother to fuck with her. And it was good to get away with her friends - while she was on her way to forgiving them for being jerks (and vice-versa), she wasn't quite there yet. Exhaling the sweet grey smoke, she watched it lazily drift up to the ceiling and dissapate into nothingness, and admired the prettiness of the act. Though it was getting a little hard to see and she wasn't interested in advertising her presence by turning on the lights, so she wouldn't be able to do that much longer.

And besides, someone walked in right about then and Jeri dove to hide the pipe and get out the little bottle of transportable febreeze in vanilla icecream happiness or whatever the scent was, and she spritzed herself and the immediate area around her.

Kaysen looked over at the commotion, then headed over, and arched a brow when she spotted the girl. "Subtle." she said, tone dripping sarcasm. "For real? You're goin with pretendies that you weren't doin what I think you were doin?" she asked, putting one hand on her hip as she smirked.

Jeri raised an eyebrow at Kaysen, and tossed the febreeze back into her shoulderbag. "It might not be plausible deniability, but it's better than being that much more glaringly obvious. ... do you know if febreeze is flammable?" This was was now a concern, as Jeri didn't want to spark up and end up setting herself on fire. Sniffing her wrist, Jerilyn wrinkled her nose. "And I think the febreeze commercials lied to me."

"Flammable?" Kaysen asked. "I'd assume so. Isn't all that shit a fire hazard?" Said the fire elemental. 'Course, she was a fire hazard herself, so who was she to talk? "Could always test the theory and hand me your lighter and the can." she suggested. "And yeah you still smell like weed wicked bad, I'd like, bathe in that shit if I were you before you head back to the dorms."

"Eh, fuck it. Everyone knows I'm a pothead anyway. Why bother making it that much worse by pretending that I care what they think about it?" It sounded more like she was talking to herself than to Kaysen. Or maybe she was talking to the ceiling. It was hard to tell. Then she turned and looked at Kaysen thoughtfully. "Kaysen, right?"

"That's me." Kaysen said. "And you're...something that starts with a J." she said, not really remembering. But then again, the girl was kind of a non-entity at school. But in the good way, the way Kaysen wished she was. Kaysen was just a target. "Most of what you've heard about me is bullshit." she added on the end, just to disclaimer herself.

"Jerilyn, and probably everything you've heard about me is accurate to one degree or other. Alternatively, it's completely false. I don't know what rumors go around about me." She picked up her pipe from where it'd ended up on the floor and picked flecks of old paint off of it. "So, while I'm sure I met you in those grand trust-building exercises, I wasn't listening to any of it. Here, you can sit if you want and if you don't mind smelling my pot-smoking-and-febreeze-spraying scent." Jeri scooched over so that if Kaysen chose to sit down she'd have somewhere to do it.

Kaysen was wary, but she chose to sit, dropping down in the vicinity of the girl, even if it wasn't what one would consider 'close'. She also didn't try to wrack her brain about what she had heard about Jeri, since she didn't figure relaying that information would be a good conversation to have. She did dig her cell out again to check what text she'd gotten before she'd been walking in, and frowned. "Weird." she said, noting the string of numbers.

"Almost exactly what I say every time I look at my phone." Jeri agreed cheerfully, giving up on picking paint chips and finally just wiping it on her jeans. It left a speckled trail across her thigh. "No, that's not true. Usually I swear because it's someone I'm not interested in talking to and it's almost always bad news."

"Is it ever a string of random fucking numbers?" Kaysen asked, holding her phone up so Jeri could see the crazy number message. "And it doesn't say who it's from, either. Like I said. Weird." she concluded. She tended to get texts now and then. Thom used to text her ever night, and Kaysen had a very strange compulsion. If someone texted her she had to text back. Which was why she went about sending a 'wtf?' message back.

"It's zeros and ones. It's, oh, what's the word." Jeri snapped her fingers, trying to remember. The pot was currently not helping her. It was possibly a really good thing she hadn't smoked much. "Computer language. Binary! It's binary. Or a random string of zeros and ones. Never gotten that, but one of my friends once changed my contacts to people like God, Jesus, Legolas, Harry Potter - you get the drift. Had to delete them all, even though it was kind of neat having a texted conversation with god about the merits of getting a new keyboard. I wonder if I get a signal in here? Want me to see if I could look up a translation on the grand interwebs?"

"Or someone sat on their phone." Kaysen suggested. She looked at the numbers again, willing them to make sense but yeah. Really not. she tried to send her message, but her phone told her the message was undeliverable. Frowning, she sighed then pocketed the phone again. "Whatever. No way to text back, I guess. Weird. And sure, if you want. Who did you name God?" she asked.

"I didn't name him. My other friend did. And of course he named himself God." She smirked at the memory, and then flipped open her shoulderbag and pulled out her Shiny New Laptop (in all capital letters) and sat it on her lap. "I ended up getting the new keyboard." Flipping open the laptop, she turned it on and waited for it to do it's start up thing. One password later, and she was on her desktop, and she double-clicked on her connections. "Augh. Only one bar. Well, I could possibly do this in maybe an hour, hour and a half - hold on, my phone is buzzing my leg." Jeri shifted and pulled her own phone out of her pocket, and pressed okay to see her message. "Huh. Weird."

Kaysen frowned slightly, distracted from her oogling the laptop, which was pretty shiny, really. And as far as she remembered, Jeri wasn't like, one of the kids who was well off. She was, and she didn't even have a laptop like that. Or, like, a laptop at all. But then again she didn't especially want one either, she wasn't exactly what anyone would consider computer savvy. "Weird what?" she asked, leaning over a little to try and catch sight of the screen.

Jeri showed Kaysen the screen, which had the same series of numbers. "Weird that."

Raising an eyebrow, Kaysen had to agree there. "yeah that is weird." she said. "...which makes me more inclined to wait the hour or so for the connection to figure out what it might mean." she added. "What time do we have to be back to the dorms?" she asked, thinking they might not have time. Or, well, maybe if they headed back they could wait for it there. She wasn't really a little stickler for the rules or anything, but she didn't actively want to get in trouble, either.

"We have a bed time?" Jeri wasn't a stickler for the rules, either, but she would've been more inclined to break it if she knew about it. "I don't know. Before the ghosts start coming out of the walls, I suppose." She poked at the computer, though it didn't help the whole connection thing. "Oh, look. It brought up google."

"They've totally been doing that all day." Kaysen pointed out. Though she did notice that there weren't any in the chapel at the moment. Then she looked at the laptop again. "Cool. So I'm assuming there's a site to translate this magic number language?" she asked. She scooted a little closer, now that they'd kind of established a sort of 'we're not fucking with one another' vibe. It was weird, this was twice in one day. Maybe she was starting to meet less retarded people.

"Oh, there'll be a zillion. It's a matter of finding one that I won't get bored and distracted with while waiting for it to load. See, it's the internet. There's a site for everything. Even the craziest shit that's impossible. The vast majority of it I'm not altogether sure I want to see, but it's gonna be there." Jeri nodded to herself, while she put her feet up on the pew in front of her and tilted the laptop so that Kaysen could see it better without twisting her neck.

Kaysen watched Jeri finding a site. "It's probably going to be something stupid." she said. "Like just meaningless letters or something, right?" she asked. "I mean, with the whole not being able to text back or anything thing...it's a mistake, yeah?" she suggested. "And it doesn't say who it's from. Who sends texts when they don't have an address?"

"See, I was asking that a couple days ago? And then I got a laptop. So I stopped questioning it. Maybe addressless texts are the pipeline to the wish fairies or something." Jeri clicked on a couple of sites, and cancelled them out almost immediately when she realized how long it was going to take them to load. She mumbled to herself about image-heavy sites covering up their inadequacies with shiny things, and kept searching for something that would be low signal friendly.

"...you got a message like this before?" Kaysen asked. "And you got a laptop out of it." she repeated. "Did I get that right?" Since it sounded kinda...well, nutty, really. So she suspected she was being taken for a ride. Who did that? It was just kinda fucked, right?

"No, I just got an addressless text message asking me how I was. It wasn't randomness - ha! I found a site! Take that, patience! I knew if I clicked on enough things I'd find what I was looking for." Jeri grinned to herself, and then started copying the string of zeroes and ones into the textbox provided, making sure she got each one right. "I was pretty concerned at the time, but then I remembered that I wanted to go back to sleep. So I did."

"Weird. Maybe you've got a secret admierer." Kaysen suggested, even if she didn't really think that was the case. She didn't know what to think, really. It was just kind of weird in general. But she guessed not too sinister or anything, and it could still be someone who just sat on their phone. She knew she'd done it in the past. Lucky for her though, when she'd done it, the only numbers she'd had in her phone to butt-dial were her family.

"That look right to you? Always good to have confirmation." Jerilyn turned the laptop so that it was facing Kaysen and she could see it properly. "Did I fuck up somewhere on there?"

Kaysen took out her phone again to re-check the number sequence, and she reached out to correct one of them, then sat back. "Okay I think that's it." she said. "Now what? Just hit...what, 'translate'?" she asked. She sounded and looked skeptical, kind of expecting that they were going through all of this for nothing. That it'd wind up saying something like 'aksjfdsp' or something else nonsensical. Or something stupid like 'lulz'.

"Lawl." Jeri said dryly, but she did move the cursor to the 'translate' button and clicked it. And she let the laptop do its groovy computerizing thing. "Are-tee-eff-em. And so forth. I try to speak as much English online as I can, rather than leetspeak. I have standards."

"I'm not online much, really. I don't really do leetspeak at all, I guess. I mean sometimes I shorthand it in texts, but not all the time." Kaysen admitted, watching the screen, waiting to see what might be translated. She was still thinking it would be dumb, but there was part of her that was curious. Almost hoping it'd be something interesting.

"'help'. It translates to the word 'help'." Jeri read off the screen, and she wasn't quite sure what to say after that. "... well, at least it wasn't leetspeak."

"Help?" Kaysen asked. "That's...creepy." she decided. "And just...no. Sticking with creepy." That was ominous sounding, even. It was weird, and she didn't know what to think about it. And apparently she couldn't text back, either, so what good was asking for help in some stupid language no one knew anyways, and then not being able to be responded to either? "And maybe pointless."

"Definitely pointless. There's no address. There's no way to tell where it came from unless you happen to be some elite hacker in disguise." Jeri pointed out wryly. "If it came from somewhere in the hospital, it would matter about as much as if it came from town. There's no way of knowing."

"Well if it came from somewhere in the hospital, that'd be wicked fucking creepy, and I would like to remain oblivious if that's the case." Kaysen said. "Guess there's not much to be done about it though. Thanks for looking it up, though." she added.

"Hey, no worries. I would've done it if I cared enough after my pipe when I got the message, so really? You kind of encouraged me to do the right thing anyway." Jeri shrugged and patted Kaysen on the shoulder twice, just lightly. Then she started shutting down the laptop, not willing to waste the battery. "Want to finish my pipe with me?"

Kaysen thought about it, and in the end shook her head. "No, thanks, though. I should probably get going anyways." She was thinking that if she got busted for it, there would be nothing but bad going on. Her home life was weird now, with Isaac having gone. It was like her parents didn't know what to do with themselves so they spent a whole lot more energy on her than ever before. She didn't want to hand them the excuse to make it negative attention.

"Oh. Okay." Jeri, feeling kind of awkward about saying goodbye when she'd wander back to the dorm room shortly after but higher than a damn kite. "So. I'll see you later, then?"

"Yeah, I'll be around." Kaysen said, heading for the door. She gave a little awkward wave, and then headed out, still thinking about the weird message, and the way she was actually having civil conversations today. Weird. Weird, weird, weird.