Confirmed Paranoia

Who: Ransom and Drea
When: lunchtime
Where: MSHS

Drea had a headache. That was something that was pretty much normal now, though. She felt tired and sluggish, but she couldn't afford to miss too many days of school. They would start calling her dad and that was just too much attention for him. He didn't like it. Maybe when she was eighteen she could drop out, but not until then. So school it was, even though she kept swearing she was seeing shit all morning. Maybe it was just pain or over-exhaustion or just ... something else. She knew it wasn't good drugs, unfortunately. She could use some of those.

Lunchtime came around and she grabbed her sack lunch -- not nearly as packed as it usually was, her eating had started to fall off, which probably wasn't a good sign -- out of her locker and considered just sitting in the hallway. But even more, she wanted to just be around someone. So following her nose, mostly, she started a slow wander to try and find Ransom. Why Ransom, she didn't know, she just wanted him.

Ransom was distracted, fairly certain his eyes were playing tricks on him. It had him on edge, like a storm drawing near, and by lunchtime he was ready to jump at just about anything. Like Drea, he'd decided eating in the lunchroom was not preferable, instead planting himself in a corner to eat. He felt safer there, where he could see in all directions coming towards him, even if it wasn't the most social thing to do. It allowed him to spot Drea, though, and he gave her a little smile and a wave. "Care to join me?" he asked.

Finding him wasn't hard, and Drea was very glad to have discovered that he wasn't in the cafeteria. Because fuck the cafeteria. She gave him a tired little smile back and sat down gingerly, putting her own back to one of the walls he was between. She opened up her sack and looked at it's contents without much enthusiasm before looking at him again. "How's it going?" she asked, fishing out a bagged sandwich. "Happy Halloween." Now, if only everything would stay quiet and sane and not death-bringing ...

"It's going okay," Ransom said with a small smile. "Kinda jumpy today. Must be something in the air. Halloween and all." That's what he was telling himself, even though he'd never been afraid of the holiday or anything related to it. It had to be something like that, since he had no other explanation for what had him so wound up. "What about you?" he asked, having noticed that she was still handling herself carefully. Though he knew she'd physically heal, he was much more worried about them mentally, and that was something he didn't really know how to address.

"Kinda the same," she confessed without hesitation, and glanced away down the hall. Did something just move down there? Possibly, but it was a school for fuck's sake. There were people all over the place. She blinked and looked at Ransom again, trying to refocus. "Um ... I'm tired, I guess. Sore. But present and accounted for and still relatively sane, I hope." It was that last thing that was questionable, really. But she didn't want to whine at him, he was probably having enough of his own problems. She took a bite of her sandwich.

The 'relatively' part bothered him and he felt bad that he had nothing he could offer to help her. That was assuming it was the night of the full moon that was bothering her, and not random things that seemed to be moving out of the corner of her eye. His eyes followed where hers did, thinking he saw something, then quickly to her. "Did you see that?" he asked, curious to know if it was catching her eye as well. "Cause... I'm on the brink of questioning my sanity as well."

Drea stopped mid-chew and stared at him for a second. "You're seeing it too?" she asked, though it was slightly garbled with the food in her mouth. Quickly, she swallowed and frowned a bit at him. "The whole ... flickery movement thingie?" Which was as good as she could describe it at the moment. If he was too ... that was a bad sign. Ransom wasn't all torn up and possibly delirious from bad rest and healing.

Ransom gave a quick, little nod with eyes wide that showed he wasn't quite so torn up as spooked. He'd been resting decently, attempting not to think on the weekend kill, and this didn't have the sort of feel that came with him worrying over something. This... was something else. He just didn't know how to describe it any better than Drea had. "Like when you catch your reflection in something and see movement, but when you look it's gone. Except there's no reflection with this. It's... weird."

She nodded a bit too vigorously and jostled her own headache, but she barely noticed. It was too relieving to hear that someone else was having the same experience, and it wasn't just her. "Yeah, yeah exactly, I just ... have no farking clue what it is," she said, giving another glance down the hallway. It was kind of creepy, really. She didn't like thinking there were things there that she couldn't see all the time. Even if she knew there probably was.

"It's just nice to know I'm not the only one who's been seeing it," Ransom said with a sigh of relief. It still freaked him out, but not near as badly as it had been when he'd thought it was just him. Today it was enough to make him abandon all sensible social skills and find a well protected corner for lunch. "Could be some kind of a ghost," he said, despite the fact that he didn't like that option one bit. Enough people had died lately that he'd believe it.

Drea didn't really like that option either, and her facial expression said so loud and clear. "I don't like ghosts," she muttered. They were just creepy and unnatural on general principle. The dead should stay in their world, and the living in their's and that was that. The back of her brain began to raise a question about what if her mom was a ghost and she squelched it immediately. Her mother was gone, period. She took another unhappy bite of sandwich, subconsciously hovering over her food a bit more. "But better than crazy, maybe?"

"Better than crazy, but still not good. In a different way," Ransom said, scooting just a bit further into the corner. He wasn't going to say he was scared or anything, but he was definitely precautious. "I don't normally see ghosts," he pointed out. "And I've lived here my whole life and never seen one in the school." So what made today different, other than that it was Halloween?

How bizarre was that statement? Even for what they both were born into 'I don't normally see ghosts' really just tripped her out. "I don't fucking want to see ghosts," she burst out with before she could help herself. Because fuck ghosts. Not that Ransom could actually fix that or anything, she was just frustrated. "Is this town ever normal? I mean fuck, gimme a riot or a big ten-car pileup before ghosts, good goddamn." Something else flickered in the corner of her eye and she looked down the hallway again. Goddammit. She stuffed her sandwich back in the bag and hunted down the apple.

"I didn't say I wanted to," Ransom laughed. "But better ghosts than--" He couldn't say it. Somehow saying something worse would mean it would rain down upon them next. Ransom wasn't willing to take that chance. "This town used to be normal. And by normal, I mean things didn't just pop up out of nowhere. Sure, we have our little quirks, like pack-land up north of town, but nothing like what's been going on this year." He'd been brought up to accept his own kind as normal, but he'd never before had issues with shadow creatures, loads of cursed werewolves, vampires, or ghosts.

That didn't really give Drea much hope. She hadn't been sure that she was sort of looking for it until Ransom didn't deliver. Things were getting worse. She'd come just in time for stuff to get weird and bad. Awesome. Looking kind of dejected, she rolled the apple between her hands a few times, just looking at the top of it. "Maybe it'll just ... stop. Like the planets aren't aligned right or something," she muttered, but there wasn't a whole lot of hope for that. But who knew, right? If things could start abruptly, they could end abruptly, couldn't they?

"Maybe it's just a Halloween thing," Ransom said, going along with her line of thought. It was better than thinking this was a permanent situation, that was certain. "I mean, it is All Hallow's Eve. Isn't there some kind of significance there?" He felt like he should know these things as part of the supernatural community, but he'd never been told tales of the occult. If anything, his family was occasionally Catholic, so Halloween was about trick or treating at most. "Things here always seem to start and stop suddenly. This shouldn't be any different."

"Hopefully," Drea mumbled, looking down the hallway again. She didn't sound very hopeful, but she was starting to think that 'hopeful' was a hard thing to maintain around here. Hadn't she heard something about the line between the spirit world and this one being thin on Halloween? Maybe it would go away. She scooted back a bit more so that her back was more firmly against the wall, and resisted the instinctive urge to lean and curl up against him. It wasn't fair to put him in the Protector roll all the time, even if he was sort of there in her brain already. She just had to deal with that. Sighing a bit, she looked at him again, eyebrows drawn together. "So what are you doing tonight?" she asked.

"Charlotte's Halloween party," Ransom said, just the mention of it bringing a smile to his face. He was excited, both about hanging out with Charlotte and their costumes. They were such dorks, he knew, but at least they could be dorks together. "We're going as Padmé and Anakin. Before he went crazy. I get a light saber," he grinned. That was his favorite part of the costume, by far. Plus going with Charlotte as a couple. It gave him a thrill he'd never expected. "If you've got nothing going on, you should come over. I know she's been baking, if you like cookies and cupcakes." Which was his way of saying this wasn't going to be a kegger party.

The way he lit up like a Christmas tree was either adorable or depressing, she couldn't decide which. Or some combination of the two. But Drea gave a little smile through it. She didn't know who Padme and Anakin were -- having only seen the old Star Wars movies, and those a long time ago -- but a light saber sounded cool enough. And she wasn't going to ask for more explanation. "I think I'll probably just be sleeping and hiding from ghosts, but thanks," she said, still holding on to that little smile. "You guys have fun, though." It was anti-social of her, but while she was physically compromised like she was, she kind of wanted to see as few people as possible.

"Okay," Ransom said, his smile turning a bit sad. "The invitation's open, if you change your mind." He really did want to see her there, for a number of reasons. He was worried about Drea, after all that had happened, and he was hoping something like a Halloween party would give her a chance to get her mind off the attacks. Plus, he liked her and enjoyed hanging out with her. But he also got that she might not be up for it yet, especially with ghosts running around town, if that's really what they were.

Drea was pretty sure she wouldn't be changing her mind, but she appreciated that he wanted her to go anyway. She patted his leg and took the first bite out of the apple she'd fished out. It was good and crisp and made her stomach growl, but she could still only really get through half of it before she didn't want it anymore. With a raised eyebrow, she held it out in offering to Ransom. They'd kinda-sorta made out, he probably didn't care about her germs.

Ransom took the offered apple with a smile, having already finished his sandwich. He was worried about Drea, about how quiet she was and what was going on in her mind, but he didn't know what to do about it. All he could really do was be there for her and keep doing what he was already doing, but it didn't seem like enough. He wanted things to go back to the way they were, but it wasn't that simple. Things just kept getting more and more complicated, so the best they could do was hang on and ride it out together.