tour guide

who: dean and lullaby
where: marquette senior high school
when: noonish

Lullaby dashed up to the school, waving behind herself at her stepdad as he waved in return. Why was she constantly in the school, even when it wasn't in session? She was just a busy girl. Today, she had a tour to give, which was fine by her. Some new student to her year was around, so they'd arranged for her to show him around so he wouldn't be all lost on the first day. She was a little early, and didn't know if he was around yet or not, but she opened up the heavy doors and headed in, looking around. She might have called for him but she knew her voice didn't exactly carry far, so she hoped he would be standing around looking Dean-like.

He was, in fact, standing around - though 'slouching against some lockers' might have been a more apt term. Sophie had dropped him off, going on about how it'd help him to get a feel for the layout of the school before term started. Dean wasn't so sure and in any event wasn't exactly happy about spending an afternoon in school - it was bad enough that as of a couple of days, he'd be here five days a week as it was. But apparently some girl in his year was going to be showing him around - so hopefully she'd be cute and that'd take some of the mind-numbing boredom that threatened to be a tour around an empty school. He heard her footsteps quiet in the corridor before he even saw her, the creak of the door as it opened, so though he didn't come out of his slouch, he was looking in her direction as she appeared.

Lullaby caught sight of a boy, and smiled at him. She didn't know if it was the right one, but she headed on over to ask. She had her usual easy, bright sort of smile on her lips, and when she was close enough, she tilted her head to the side. "Dean?" she asked.

Oh! Christ! What was her name! he suddenly realised that he couldn't remember - something cutesy and stupid, but that could ahve been anything. He'd have to wing it. "Sure, that's me," he nodded, pushing up off the lockers, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. "You the girl they put to show me round?" he asked. Well, his luck was in - she definitely was cute.

She grinned, looking relieved that she hadn't randomly disturbed a stranger. "Oh good, and yep that's me!" she said, signing as she spoke. "I'm Lullaby, or Lulu, or Thia, or whatever you want to call me. Pleased to meet you." she said. "Have you been in town long?" she asked.

"Thia," Dean decided then and there - because 'Lullaby' and 'Lulu' he wasn't sue he could say with a straight face. He was surprised by the signing - and thrown slightly. Did she think he was deaf or something? "I, erm - I'm not deaf," he told her, frowning a little. Sophie couldn't have told them about his hearing problems - she didn't know. He hardly mentioned it to anyone. Anyway, it wasn't like he was deaf or anything - in fact in an environment like this, it was right the bloody opposite.

Lullaby blinked at him. Then she gave him a little bit of an embarrassed look, cheeks immediately flushing red. Her brown eyes ticked down for a moment before she looked back up at him. "I am. Mostly." she said, knocked off of her stride, her usual cheer and confidence knocked down a bit. "Not entirely...but I miss most things. Most people can tell by my voice, I'm sorry." she said, not signing, so she didn't further...what, insult him? She didn't know.

Dean stared, mentally cursing himself and blushing a little himself. "Shit - sorry, I... I didn't realise. The accent, y'know. I can't get used to it - you all sound the same at the moment," he said, which was a bit of an excuse, because he'd noticed the dull, flatish quality of her voice - he just hadn't clued into what that meant. He looked at her, embarrassed and awkward. Great way to start, dimwit.

She quirked a little half smile, and rubbed at the back of her neck a touch. "It's okay?" she suggested. "I can not sign if you don't want me to. It makes some people uncomfortable, I just can't always tell how well I'm speaking, and it's habit. But I'll stop if you'd like, promise." she said, giving him the little 'scout's honor' salute. "You have an interesting accent too." she added. "Oh, and I read lips for the most part? So if you say anything and I have missed it, make sure you tap me so I can read you." She gave him a bit of a better smile. "You have a neat accent."

"I don't understand sign language anyway," he shrugged, taking on board the lip reading thing. He knew that wouldn't be a problem - he always looked at people when he talked to them. He saw it as good manners, always annoyed when people didn't return the favour. And he understood why it was important for her, because he did the same thing. In fact, in the past he'd been called out for staring, because of his habit of watching people's faces. He rarely told anyone he lipread though, because usually it got him nothing but stares, especially when he couldn't really explain in any way people would accept why he did it. "But - I know I kinda speak quietly sometimes, so tell me if you need me to speak up," he offered, his way of an apology he couldn't bring himself to give. Dean had always been softly spoken - though his voice sounded loud to his ears. "And the accent? I'm from England. And it's not really neat - you're the one with the cute accent," he told her, flashing her a cheeky grin, hoping to undo some of the damage he might have caused by jumping down her throat.

It worked. Lullaby wasn't a dweller by nature, and it had her blushing a bit and beaming at him again. "It is not, I sound like a hick!" she said. "Only I'm not quite as redneck as a lot of the population. But thanks anyways. As for the quiet thing, as long as I can see your face, I'm good. I really do have crappy hearing, so might as well not bother trying to talk loud enough, I've lived with this my whole life, so it's not new for me or anything." she added. "Though if you ever want to learn sign, I can teach you, I do anyways for people, and the more people I can do that with, the more fun can be had when everyone else is clueless." she winked at him to let him know she was kidding about that last bit. "I've never been to England before, where are you from in it? Is it true you all have different accents, even if you only life ten miles away from each other?" she asked.

You don't sound like a hick - not that I know what a hick sounds like, of course. So, maybe you do and I just don't realise. I think it's cute anyway," he said, joking and yes, a touch of flirtatiousness dropped in there, even though he felt a little self-conscious about it. But she'd started it with the wink and all. "So, do lots of people sign round here? If you've been teaching them and stuff? And if you lip read, couldn't you just have everyone clueless that way? I mean, it can't be that much harder to learn to lip read than it is to learn to sign, right?" He raised an eyebrow, but then there were her other questions. Right. "I'm from Manchester, which is in the north west, kinda... an hour or so from Liverpool, where the Beatles came from?" Yay for music-based geographical locations! "As for the accents, I think ten miles is pushing it a bit. In my area, you're talking kinda five, tops and the accent's totally changed."

"Kinda? There's a few anyways. I've taught some friends, and other people around how to do it, and actually, if you spend any time with me, you kinda pick up on it after a while, at least bits and pieces. It's not too hard, and people usually are really lost on the lip reading thing. I think you have to kind of know what you're looking for? And if you can hear it, it's harder to figure it out because you don't actually have to. Or that's my theory anyways, so I could be totally off base. But if people knew it? I'd totally be open for silent, secret code conversations from across the room." she assured him. "And really? Five miles even? Wow. Here, if you travel five miles, you're going to find yourself out in the middle of the woods. Though most of the time, we're all mistaken for being Canadian."

Well, I can lipread. He couldn't quite tell her that - he rarely told anyone that, never mind some girl he just met. He didn't see what was so hard about it though, but then again he thought that maybe she was right - it was harder to do when you could hear someone. "Does this mean you're inviting me to spend time with you?" he asked instead, internally cringing as he said it, because it sounded too bloody corny. "Canadian? Why?" he asked hurriedly, hoping that maybe she'd forget about that first bit.

"Of course!" Lullaby said, not skipping over that part. She was nothing if not friendly. "The town's boring, so the more the merrier, really." she added. "And Canadian because I guess we sound like that? Like, have you ever seen Fargo? It's really weird, hearing other people try to do the accent that's the norm here, because like, I can't hear it, but I can hear them doing it. Is it like that when people try to pull a fake British accent?" she asked. "Also, we say 'eh', which is pretty damn Canadian." She started walking, but waited for him, so he could go with her.

"Yeah, I saw that film once I think - but your accent's different to that-" Shit, you said they all sounded the same, arse! "-I think, er, isn't it?" he covered, badly. "And as for people doing fake British accents, the problem with that is that there's no such thing. Cos, I mean - okay, I come from Manchester, which is open city and there's probably, what? One dialect there, with maybe twenty different major accents, plus the minor accents that aren't one thing or another. And that's just one city! And doesn't take into account that 'Britain' isn't just England - it's Scotland and Wales too. Then there's Northern Ireland as well... So, yeah - people that fake a British accent generally get the wrong part of Britain. And we can tell." He shut up at that, realising that he was rambling to cover for his fuck up - but hey, at least he was looking at her whilst he did it! That had to count for something, right?

Lullaby listened to him ramble, and was giving him an amused kind of cute smile. "Oh, it is. It's thicker?" she suggested, not really thinking he'd slipped so much as could pick out accents. Maybe it was a natural ability coming from a place that apparently had thousands of them. "And I gotcha. Also, I didn't know that Britain wasn't just England...go go public education system." she shook her head. "But hey, I know now...and my boyfriend's from Ireland. I don't know exactly where in Ireland, but from there. He hasn't been in town long either. I could introduce you if you'd like."

"He is, cool - I'd like that," Dean said, the fact that the guy was from Ireland overcoming the disappointment that she had a boyfriend. But of course she did - she was cute. All the cute girls had boyfriends, Dean was sure there was a law about that or something. "And yeah - The United Kingdom is made up of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain's made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Eire is southern Ireland and a different country altogether. I guess because it's something I've grown up with it's normal. I guess the nearest you'd come to it is like you guys have lots of states within one country, but it's not like that. It's... yeah, different. I'm shit at explaining that kind of thing. So, erm - what's the school like? Anything I should know before they throw me in here?" he asked.

Lullaby thought about that. "Well, it's not a very big school, for one." she said. "I don't know if you're used to huge classes or not but we don't have that, since we're not that big a place, so even with all four grades here, it's not too overwhelming. There's open campus at lunch time, so we can all take off for a while then come back when it's back in, which is nice. I know that your school system's different than ours, so I'm trying to think of what kinds of things you might need to know? Do you have questions?" she asked, hoping she could at least give him something more than a 'here's the office, here's the biology lab' tour.

"Open campus?" he asked, trying to figure that out until she explained. "Oh cool - so we can leave school at lunch? That works - they never allowed us to do that back home. Don't think they liked the idea of thousands of kids roaming the streets," he chuckled. "Let's see.... I'm used to class sizes of around thirty to forty and about two hundred pupils in a year. So this is probably gonna be smaller, right? I have no idea what to expect - I mean, they gave me these tests and stuff to do to find out where I should be at, but other than that I'm just gonna go with it and see what's what." He didn't really care that much - school and he weren't exactly best mates or anything. Dean saw it was a necessary evil, because it was compulsory, but he was never gong to be an A student.

Lullaby started pointing out rooms as they went for him, though she was more interested in the conversation. "A little smaller, yeah." she said. But yeah, we can get the hell out of here for a while at lunch time. There's a few restaurants nearby, and for people with a car, you can go anywhere. I don't have one though. I don't have a lisence either. The idea of deaf people driving makes some people nervous." she added. She shrugged though, she lived in a small town. It wasn't that big an issue for her.

"I don't drive either - I'm not old enough back home, but my aunt says I can have lessons and I think I should be able to get a car out of them when I pass my test. She lives with her, well, boyfriend I guess and from the looks of things I think they're got a few bob, and I figure in a town like this a car's kinda a necessity_" What with the rampant 'be careful of things that go bump in the night' of it all. Oh and the fact that everything as kinda spread out and they lived right on the edge of town, of course. "So, does that mean that you're never going to be able to drive, or just that you have to do some convincing? And you're not totally deaf, right? Anyway, it seems unfair - just because you can't hear something doesn't make you blind. You notice things other ways, like... you're more aware of things because you can't here them. Or something."

She smiled at that. "No, I know what you mean there, I'm not helpless or anything, and I can hear some things, but I only have about twenty percent of my hearing? So anything too high, or too low I miss. Like I can't talk on the phone. I have a cell, but it's for emergencies and text messages, if you want my number, you can text me whenever." She gave an embarrassed sort of look. "I guess I worry that I wouldn't hear something important, and it would get people hurt." she admitted, coloring a bit. "Like, sirens, or horns or whatever. Because I can be really observant sight-wise all I want, and if I miss something big, it'll still mean something bad."

"So the idea of a deaf person driving makes you nervous then," Dean observed - because before she'd phrased it as though she would drive if people would let her, but now it seemed that she was keeping herself from doing it as well, which was something a little different. There was no challenge in his tone though, just an observation.

She made a face, and nodded. "Yeah." she said. "Though, my parents are nervous about it too, like, they're kind of convinced that I'll get hurt or something, so I just sort of haven't pursued it or anything. I'll just take the bus, and hope I wind up with friends who have vehicles that I can puppy-eye into taking me places." she teased lightly. "Though my parents are also pretty okay with carting me around places too, so it hasn't been an issue, really."

"My aunt's being cool about taking me places as well - though I kinda think she's used to playing taxi. Her boyfriend-" Somehow he doubted he'd ever be able to call Oz 'uncle', that felt too weird and though Sophie was theoretically his cousin, he'd kinda got into a habit of calling her his aunt when they were younger and that had come back to the fore now that she was playing guardian to him. "Oz - he's mostly blind in one eye, so he can't drive either," he explained.

Not one to sort of balk at anyone's disability, she merely nodded. "That's cool then. Having transport will be a lot better to have when winter rolls around. Then things around here suck fairly badly, with a ton of snow and it's really cold. Where do you live?" she asked, pointing out a few more rooms as they walked.

"Up on the north side of town? Kinda out a bit - not like miles out, but on the edge." Which was vague, he knew, but he didn't know landmarks or anything yet to describe it better. "So, how much snow is a ton of snow? Really - cos we don't get all that much at home."

"Like, feet. Some winters, the snowbanks are so high that you can barely see around them on the road. We've been known to get really bad storms that dump like four feet at a time on us, or more. Two to three feet isn't unusual at all." she added, smiling. "So, hopefully you like the stuff, because there's a ton of it." she promised. "But it means we get snow days, so that's occasionally nice."

Dean stared at her - more so that he had been doing as a part of normal conversation. He'd already decided that he liked talking to Thia, it was the easiest conversation he'd had in a long time and though partly he knew that was because the school was quiet enough he could hear her, it also was because she looked at him when she talked and he could watch her mouth. He wondered absently if she noticed that - though he did try and remember to look up to her eyes occasionally. But right now he was staring because of the snow. "You're shitting me? Bloody hell, I'm gonna chuffing freeze!" he exclaimed.

She giggled. "Oh my god, that is the best word ever!" she cried. "Chuffing?" she giggled again. "It's awesome! And I don't really know what it means, but that is my new favorite word as of right now!" She bounced a bit in her step, and grinned at him playfully. "And oooh I am not in the least bit playing with you on that, I'm serious! We get tons, so be prepared! Buy a heavy coat, gloves, boots, a hat, a scarf, and be prepared to routinely lose feeling in your extremities if you plan to be outside a lot." She winked at him. "But don't worry, I'll help you prepare." she promised.

Dean blinked at her sudden adoption of a word. "Erm, it, er, means..." Damn, what did it mean? Really? He had to think. "Bloody, damn, stuff like that," he tried to explain. Though it didn't mean either of those either. "Okay, so I'm going to have to go shopping, because I have none of that stuff." He rolled his eyes, because if there was one thing in life he hated, it was shopping.

Lullaby smirked at his fumbling explanation, but didn't try to get more out of him on it. "Yeah, you'll have to. And soon, winter can hit really early here sometimes. Like, I've gone trick or treating as a kid in boots and a snowsuit." she explained.

"How long does it stay for?" Dean asked, thinking that this was gonna be taking a major mind set adjustment - and that he should get those driving lessons in quick-smart. Though the idea of driving on snow and ice didn't seem appealing - but it did seem more appealing than walking on snow and ice.

"Anywhere from October to May." Lullaby answered. "So expect a long, involved time with the snow. Though you could luck out. Like, last year we didn't get snow until December really. So maybe it'll be a nice, leisurely winter where it doesn't smack us all upside the head with crazy white stuff for an extended period of time." She smiled at him. "But I'd count on at least snow in November."

"Greaaat. I'm gonna bloody freeze, I know I am," Dean moaned. He'd find out that he was thin blooded or something, he was sure of it. Winter for, like six months. Or more! How did people live here?

"Probably, but don't worry. You'll have me around to help you out!" she promised. "And there's always stuff to do in the winter, like ice skating, and skiing, and snow mobiling...all sorts of crap. Though my personal favorite is making a snow man out of the first sticky snow, because occasionally I'm like, five years old. But still, it's not as bad as it sounds, might just be rough at first."

"Snow mobiling sounds cool - I've never done that. We don't really get all that much snow. Mostly it rains. Which is, y'know, wet and dull," he joked. Even when the rest of the country got snow, Manchester got rain - it was known for it. "I used to go ice skating with my mates back home though, so hey, something I can do!"

"Cool, want to go sometime?" she asked. "There's the ice rink at the peif, too. So it can be done before winter hits. Though, you might want to hold off on winter sports until it's actually winter, so you can hold onto as much summer and fall as you can." She pointed out a few other classrooms again, and the lunch room.

"Peif?" Dean asked her, not having a clue what the hell she was on about. "But sure - that would be great!" Because watch him hook on to something that didn't sound totally alien - winter sports or not. Next year maybe he'd want to hold off til actual winter, but now, reality hadn't sunk in and he was cool with whatever.

"Oh yeah sorry, it's a sports building sort of place, like, part of the college, but not for really? It's across town from there. But it's got everything there, and they have open skating like once a week or so." she explained. "So we could go whenever!" she said cheerfully and genuinely.

"Okay - if, erm, you're sure..." Dean told her. But she seemed genuine enough. And she seemed really nice - boyfriend or not. And it would be great - to actually know some people his age in town. And it wasn't like he was worried about who was who in the school, or his having a reputation or anything. Generally, he was happy to pass under the radar. After all, he was going to find it hard enough to fit in as it was. "So, erm - should I give you my number or something..." he suggested, tentatively.

"Oh yes, that'd be great!" Lullaby said, taking her phone out of her pocket. "Remember that I can't talk on the phone, I wouldn't be able to hear you, but text me any time. I'm usually around and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. But seriously, if you want to hang out, or anything, I'd be game." she assured him, holding out her phone to him so he could add his number to her index.

Dean took her phone and entered his number from memory - that was, actually the first thing that he;d learnt when he got here. He had to know his mobile phone number off-bat. He handed it back to her. "There you go. And, er - yours? Or you could just phone me or something. Not, y'know, answer, but it'd register and I could just save it, right?" he checked.

Lullaby nodded, then texted him while she stood there, so he'd get it and they could check. Hi Dean! :) was what she sent. "Not stunningly original or anything, but there you go. You have no excuse not to contact me now." she informed him.

Dean thumbed his way to pick up the message and smiled with a little laugh, recording the number under 'Thia'. "Okay, no excuse - thanks," he agreed, looking across at her. "So - gotta ask, why 'Thia'? I mean, where does the nickname come from?" he asked.

"My middle name is Amarantha." Lullaby said. "My mom hates my name, so she kind of came up with variations that she'll call me that aren't 'Lullaby'. But I answer to it, so all's well. You can pretty much call me whatever you want to."

Yeah, she had a stupid name - put at least she was cool about it. Dean appreciated that. "Okay, great - so, erm. Is there much more of this place to see, or..." he trailed off, looking around.

Lulu shook her head. "Naw, not really. Pool's that way, you know where the office is and the lunch room, those're the main points. The gym too, over that way, and when you get your class schedule, if you want me to show you where all the rooms are, I can do that." she promised. "But yeah, pretty much tour concluded, not too big a place, and not too terribly exciting, so there you have it."