what's wrong with this picture?

who: kaysen and charlotte
where: kaysen's yard
when: afternoon

Kaysen was sitting in her front yard, staring at the stuff she'd gotten today. At total, weird random, which she was still trying to figure out. It was nice stuff, actually, better stuff than she currently had. Part of the reason she didn't wear anything right now was because her pads and shit were pretty poor quality. And now she had...stuff. From no one. Yeah. To say she was a little weirded out would be a total understatement. So she was kind of eyeing the equipment like she thought they might explode at any moment.

After exploring the house and at least setting up her furniture in her room, Charlotte could officially say that she approved of the inside of her new home as well. She would have preferred the bedroom on the ground floor, but her mother had refused - saying that if she allowed it, Charlotte would climb out her window in the middle of the night to talk to raccoons and bunnies. Which was probably true. So she accepted this compromise, knowing she got one of the bigger bedrooms anyway, and happily unpacked while trying not to wonder what being winked at by Isaac meant. In the search for the box with her favorite bedding in it, Charlotte realized it was probably one of the boxes still in the UHaul still parked in front of the house. So down she went to fetch it, pausing at the back of the truck when she saw a girl in front of Isaac's house. That must be his sister. Kay... Kaysen? Is that right? Should I introduce myself? She felt unsure of herself, but in the end forced herself to shyly cross the road. "Um... hello."

Kaysen looked up and as was habit with her, she also looked immediately suspicious. "Hi." she said, looking around a little as if trying to find who the girl might really be talking to. She then looked past her at the moving truck and everything, and wondered...was this a new girl or something? Wow, points for observation, Kaysen, what do you think? Jeeze.

Isaac had made this much easier. Then again, he had sort of initiated and carried the conversation. Helpful, that. Charlotte held her hands behind her back and tried not to fidget or stare at her feet. That would be bad. "I'm moving in across the street." she said. Thank you, Captain Obvious. "Um... well... yeah. I met your brother? Earlier this afternoon. He said we were the same age so I wanted to introduce myself." And I really hope that's normal.

"OH." Kaysen said, blinking. Okay. Well that was slightly better. If Isaac had set it up, then it wasn't so wonko-crazypants. "Hi. ...um. I'm Kaysen. Which he prolly already told you. I haven't seen him today though, what's your name?" she asked. She seemed to relax ever so slightly, since if this girl was brand-spankin new, then maybe she hadn't heard about her yet. Maybe.

I was right! Charlotte screamed in her head in her moment of triumph. At this point she was relatively certain that one of the cats back in the house screamed back, but she couldn't actually tell when that happened or it was just her imagination. "I'm Charl" -Otte? Ie? I really need to make up my mind on that- "-otte." Habit. "Um. Charlie. I'm not sure yet." At least she was honest. "I hope it's okay I came over, but I don't know anyone, and..." And I'm a nerd that needs to talk to people with two legs, thus sayth my mother. I'm not entirely sure how this works but we're going to wing it!

"Um...no it's okay." Kaysen said, looking mystified. As if this had never in her life happend before. And it hadn't. So that could have explained the shock and dismay. "Charlotte makes me think of spiders, though. Um. If you're looking for an opinion. Charlie's cool though."

Charlotte wrinkled her nose up at that. "I get that a lot." she admitted. "My dad called me Charlie when I was little, but it makes my mom mad. My last name is Angel and she says I'm setting myself up to be made fun of." Which would have required that anyone in her old school actually cared enough to make fun of her. She'd lucked out in freshman year and got a group project with two of the popular kids in school, and when Charlotte said screw it and just did the project herself, bringing up a few grade point averages... well, that had taken her off the pecking list for a whlie. Which she'd been just fine with at the time.

"Well, don't tell them the last part." Kaysen suggested. "Or don't tell them it's anything to make fun of. The morons around here might not pick up on the reference to begin with, they're all stupid." she continued. She noted that the things she'd gotten hadn't exploded, and none of them seemed to be birthing spiders, or be full of poo. She was still running tests, though.

"Really?" Charlotte asked, tilting her head to the side and looking very interested. She was. Isaac had said that he loved the school, and Charlotte had been Charlotte and assumed that went across the board - good school, good people, good grades. She noticed the way Kaysen was looking at her things oddly, and had to ask, "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, someone sent these to me, and I don't know who, and I don't know why." Kaysen answered, kicking the helmet a little and it went rolling over towardfs Charlotte. It was kind of then that she remembered that she looked like an accident victim, with her arm all scraped the fuck up, the side of her chin scraped, and both knees totaled.

Charlotte had assumed with all the padding that the girl had taken some sort of a tumble, but apparently that wasn't the case. She frowned a bit and kneeled down at the curb, picking up the helmet and looks inside. Kaysen had been looking at it like it was going to catch fire or something. "Maybe they thought you needed them? What do you do?"

"Skateboard." Kaysen said. "And the only thing that people would send me anonymously is stuff that would be bad. Like, explode or something, or open up and puke bugs everywhere, or something." she said. "One time in fifth grade, they switched my lunch bag with one that had rotten stuff in it, like crawling with maggots and all that stuff." she added.

There was no help for it. At that thought, Charlotte looked absolutely horrified. She blinked at Kaysen in shock, suddenly a bit more nervous about this school year than she had been before. "Why would anyone do that?"

Kaysen shrugged and went back to trying to figure out if one of the knee pads had anything awful inside. Or more correctly, what was wrong with it. Because there had to be something. "People don't like me." she said. "You'll hear."

Charlotte finally plunked down on her butt, feather-braided pigtail flopping over her shoulder as she did. "Why don't people like you?" she asked, confused. She'd seemed nice so far. A little paranoid, but maybe she had a reason to be!

Looking up, Kaysen gave her a sort of wary, confused look. "...what do you mean why don't they like me?" she asked, obviously not having an answer there. For her, it was just The Way Things Were. There wasn't a reason. No one sat down and thought to themselves 'hey. Why is it we don't like Kaysen? I don't know! Better knock that shit off then!'

For a moment, Charlotte wondered if she hadn't stumbled into the twilight zone or something. Actually, it felt like a conversation she'd tried to have with a skunk once, which certainly wasn't the most flattering comparison and wasn't one Charlotte would ever share with anybody. That darn skunk definitely gave off the beaten dog vibe. Kicked puppies were one thing, but a grown dog used to being beaten? Took control of the situation and either bit back, or got out of dodge and never let anyone near it again so things didn't have a chance to hurt it again. But beaten dogs also turned mean, and Charlotte didn't necessarily think that applied to Kaysen. Thus, skunk! Mother nature's social pariah! Well, that and the porcupine.

My head really is a zoo. Crap. "You seem okay to me." Charlotte finally answered. "I mean... I don't want to inflict maggots on you or anything. I wouldn't dislike you unless you gave me a reason to." Wasn't that the way things were supposed to go?

"Well, Charlie, that makes one of you." Kaysen said. "Awesome, at this rate, there might be two people in the world who don't like, go out of their way to fuck me over on a regular basis." she said, throwing the apparently perfectly harmless kneepad to the ground and picking up the other. "...maybe three." Thom was sooooo on her shit list right now though so he didn't fully count.

Oh my God, she cursed too! Which still seemed endlessly grown up to Charlotte. She tried not to look as awed as she had felt with Isaac, and thought about what Kaysen had actually said. "...Maybe you should try your luck with animals." she finally said, shrugging. "That works better for me. I didn't really have any human friends back home." There were a few girls that she could hang out with because they were the daughters of her mom's friends, but that always felt awkward and forced. Because, of course, it was. Much easier to not bother with them and just do her own thing.

"I had this cat...stray, but I don't know where he went." Kaysen said. "Little shorthair, I called him Edison. He was really cute." she added. "But yeah he ran away, so I have to go look for him. I'm just trying to figure this crap out first." she said, sighing as the other knee pad appeard to be perfectly safe and normal as well.

That grabbed Charlotte's attention. Runaway kitties? That wasn't good. That was, in fact, sad and unfortunate. "I could help you look for him." she offered, attempting to sound casual as she shrugged and looked inside the helmet again. "I like cats." And they like me! Maybe I can actually help!

"He's little and brown, and I dunno. Looks like a cat, I guess. He's got amber eyes." Kaysen described, looking at Charlotte warily. This is where the trick will be. She'll find Edison with me then do something mean to him to make me cry.

Charlotte wondered if she walked the block and tried calling out to an Edison if it would work. First of all, did he even recognize the name Kaysen had given him? And then second of all, was she actually capable of that? She'd managed to find her own cats when they wandered, but, well, they knew her! Despite the look that Kaysen was giving her, that Charlotte didn't really understand, she nodded and offered her her helmet back. "I'll look when I can. I'll let you know if I find him." Does this seem weird? It probably seems weird. Maybe it will seem less weird if I actually find him.

"Thanks." Kaysen said. "If you find him. And er...for looking." she said. She didn't figure Charlotte would, and she was just saying it. Taking the helmet back, she gave it another once over, but she still hadn't found anything wrong. Which just meant it would happen later, unfortunately. She didn't know what the trick was, but there had to be one. She hated when she couldn't figure it out before it sprung.
"You're welcome." Charlotte said, pushing herself back onto her knees. "If we don't find him, you can always come and borrow one of my cats to talk to." And of course, there was the option of talking to Charlotte herself, but the offer of kitties felt so much more natural to her.

"Do you have a lot of them?" Kaysen asked, sort of half looking up to lay her gaze on Charlotte, but she didn't leave it there long. Eye contact sometimes was a bad thing, so she didn't usually stick with it very long unless it was certain people.
"Four." Charlotte answered, though it was a number that tended to fluxuate in Auburn Hills. She took home strays when she found them, and if her mom couldn't find them homes, she begged to keep them. It worked sometimes. "And two dogs. My mom owns horses in Harvey, but I haven't met them yet."

"What are all their names?" Kaysen asked. She'd always wanted pets. And okay there'd been one or two, but they were like, fish. Nothing awesome like a cat or dog, til now. And hers had run away. Her life sucked.

"The dogs are Edom and Anna. The cats are Fluffy, Snuggle Bunny, Matthan, and Amok. I don't know the horses names yet, they're coming pre-named." Then, realizing a few certain cat names were a little odd, her cheeks went a little red. "I, um, named Fluffy and Snuggles when I was little."

Kaysen laughed a little at that, actually, then sort of seemed to catch herself and she broke it off. She wasn't supposed to be like, hanging out here. Right? Er. Something. This was weird. Because she was realizing that she kind of was hanging out and having a conversation. Uhoh. When was the laughing and pointning going to happen?

Charlotte wondered why she had cut herself off, and if she'd done something wrong. Don't freak out, don't think about it, just, um... keep talking! "They're mostly Biblical names, my mom picked those ones out." she rambled. "And we got Fluffy and Snuggles when I was younger and I insisted. Amok was another Biblical name I saw in one of my mom's books, but... the name's just kind of fun to say. And he's crazy, so I can say things are Running Amok when we hear things fall over in the other room."

"Is that what it means?" Kaysen asked. She'd heard the saying before, but hadn't ever stopped to think of the origin. She had no idea that it might have been a name at all. But then her studies didn't really run towards the bibilical in any description.

"I don't really know where that came from." Charlotte admitted, cocking her head to the side and looking purplexed. "I got excited and thought maybe it did and there was some cool story, but all the book had to say was that the name meant 'valley'. It wasn't particularly helpful. But... still. Fun to say!"

"Yeah." Kaysen conceded. "And better than like, Rex or Spot and stuff." she added. "So points for creativity, really. Most people name their pets dumb stuff. At least yours are orignial."

"My mom always wants them to mean something, so she has this book of Biblical names leftover from when they were trying to figure out what to name me." So, considering she could have been something with six syllables and utterly unpronouncable to anyone with an American education, she'd actually lucked out in the grand scale of things. "When I was a kid all I cared about was that the kittens were fluffy and... snuggly. And Amok runs Amok all the time; he really likes to start running and jump and then just grab onto whatever's there and stay there until he falls. Anna was my grandma's dog." Charlotte still had hopes for the days that she got to a higher level, wondering if Anna would be able to tell her stories of her grandmother. It was so backwards, but Charlotte looked forward to it.

Kaysen was learning just in this conversation that she knew little to nothing about the bible. Charlotte was just a spider from a kid's book to her. "Are you guys really religious?" she asked, and she tried to keep the kind of wary tone from her voice for once, but didn't quite manage it.

That was a question Charlotte never really knew how to answer. "My mom really is." she answered, because that was much easier. "So I guess by extension that means I am? But I dunno. I believe in God and stuff, and angels, but sometimes I wonder if my God is different than the one in the Bible. My God always feels more forgiving and less smite-thee when I think about Him." Charlotte also realized that that was something she only ever really talked to animals about, because if her mother heard it? She would absolutely kill her.

"Are you made to like, go to church and all that shit?" Kaysen asked. Her parents had never really instilled any kind of religion in their family. It was just kind of a non-issue, entirely. No preference, no mentions, grace had never once been said, and holidays weren't about going to mass.

Charlotte nodded, her face a bit blank. "This will be my first time going to a public school, I begged my mom. She doesn't always make me go, but she tries. I didn't like the priest at our church back in Auburn Hills. He told me that unbaptized children don't get to go to heaven just because they never did anything wrong, and that animals have no souls. I wouldn't worship someone that cruel, and I don't want to be associated with someone else who justifies it." Which seemed really simple and logical to Charlotte, at least.

Kaysen made a face at what the other guy supposedly preached. "Why wouldn't animals have souls?" she asked, the idea kinda...stupid. She didn't like it. "Kinda sounds like bullshit to me." she added.

"He said that only people have souls." Charlotte said, making a face to match Kaysen's. "I think that's about the most egotistical thing anyone can say." Clearly he's never had a dog comfort you when you're crying yourself to sleep. Anna was really good at that. "Animals have just as much soul as we do." And probably twice the brains. "What about you? Is your family religious?" She couldn't help but be curious. She and Isaac both seemed so... sophisticated.

Kaysen shook her head. "No, I don't think my parents would know religion if it bit them." she admitted. "We've never like, gone to church or anything. So I don't know anything about it at all." she explained further. "Like, at all. I don't think we've been babtized. I'd have to check." There weren't any pictures of it if they had been.

"Wow." said Charlotte, unable to help it. She looked a little awed again, not that her mother's religion was something she really minded. It just made her nervous sometimes. She was pretty positive that her God wasn't the Bible-God, and if that wasn't her God, then who was it? Was He only hers? She'd never get her mother to understand that. "Sometimes, I think it might be better that way." she confided, lowering her voice a little bit. "Being able to pick your own, or not, or do whatever it is that feels right. My mom's kind of intense about it."

"Sounds that way." Kaysen said. "I really can't imagine going to like, religious school. Is everyone weird there?" she asked. "Like, everything's all god all the time?" she continued, realizing her first question was just stupid.

Charlotte actually giggled a bit, and shook her head. "There's a prayer at the bell, and at lunch, but it's just over the loudspeaker. We have religion class, which is a very short period that was basically bits or stories from the Bible followed by a quiz about it, and after a couple years you're just repeating the same lesson in tougher language. They don't really care if you fail it, either. It just meant that we had uniforms and services once a week instead of an hour of class. I think a lot of the kids there were there because their parents were religious, and not because they actually cared. It was kind of clique-y. Then again, the students that were the huge suck-ups and ones to talk about religion on Sundays and service on Wednesdays were the same ones getting their names written in the bathroom, so..." She shrugged. "Doing 'God's work' sometimes got you extra credit, like if you went out of your way to help someone for no reason. Which means you went out of your way to help someone for no reason while you knew a teacher was watching you."

Kaysen looked at Charlotte like she was speaking another language. "Seriously?" she asked. "Freaky." she decided. "I think I'll take public school. At least there you don't have to like, pray and all that. Sounds creepy. Sorry, no offense, but really. And why would they teach you stuff that they don't care if you learn? That doesn't make sense."

Charlotte didn't look offended. She was actually still smiling, and she was feeling pretty comfortable. Thus the honest rambling her head off. "I think it's all become so much habit. There were a lot of optional things too, like once you turned sixteen you were eligible to take a course and learn about Revelation and the end times, but only your parents could decide if you took it. This one girl didn't want to and burst into tears in the middle of class, she had to go to the nurse. It was pretty ridiculous." she went on, biting at her thumb nail as she finished. She realized she was doing it and forced herself to stop, settling instead for picking at the sole of her shoe that was starting to come loose in the toe. "What year are you going into?"

"Sophomore." Kaysen said. "I'm sixteen. My brother's a senior, though." she added. Next year he wouldn't be around. And why was that thought suddenly hitting her now, and filling her with terror such as she'd never felt? Oh god. Oh god. She was going to be alone. Thankfully, Kaysen was very used to panicking and not showing it, so it didn't come through.

Charlotte nodded a bit. "I don't know what grade I'm going into." she said, sounding a little nervous about that for a moment. "I have to take a test at the board of education to see what grade I'll be in the system here. I was going to be a junior in Auburn Hills. I'm only sixteen, though." she added quickly, feeling that the fact that she and Kaysen were the same age was somehow helpful. It felt helpful. Like maybe it was something that sort of mattered?

Weirdly, it did. "You were already gonna be a junior?" Kaysen asked. And she sounded maybe a touch envious. "Wow, you were almost done, that's gotta suck, if you do have to repeat a grade for no reason." she said. "Like, you don't sound dumb or anything, so I'm sure you wouldn't be held back or anything. Maybe you'll luck out and they'll let you be a junior anyways."

"I turn seventeen in December." Charlotte sort of half-explained. "So I'm one of those in-between ages somewhere in the middle." She didn't feel like she was going to be turning seventeen soon. She barely felt sixteen, and knew she wasn't sixteen by other people's standards - something that made her nervous and very self-aware when she thought about it. But seventeen was almost an adult, and dear GOD that was terrifying. No part of Charlotte felt ready for adulthood. "I don't know if I'll actually mind if I end up a sophomore again. It's just the not knowing that makes you nervous?" she asked, wondering if that made sense. "Like... sophomore I've done, so obviously I can handle that. Junior I would have had to deal with back home. But I have dreams that they say 'oh my God what did you do to this kid?!' and put me as a freshman, or worse, as a senior, and neither of those I'm actually prepared for. Which has got to be like a point-one-percent chance, but the fact that it's on the table in any sort of universe or alternate universe is just enough to make you nervous." Blink. Oh, it's official. I have said too much, and I am now forever a crazy person.

Kaysen listened to Charlotte, then quirked something that might have been a half smile, though it didn't stay too long. "Well, hopefully you get to be a sophomore then?" she asked. "I'm a photographer for the school newspaper." she added. "I put in for it over the summer and got the letter the other day saying I got it."

Charlotte smiled brightly, thinking that at least if she was going to be a sophomore again, she'd know someone there. That would definitely be a plus. "That's great!" she said, looking impressed. She was. "How long have you been a photographer?" she asked, seeing as she knew... oh, nothing about the subject.

"Not that long." Kaysen admitted. "But I've been kinda messing around with it for like, a year maybe?" she suggested. "So, I dunno." She was starting to get antsy, because she was still talking to this girl, and they were having a normal conversation. Or what was amounting to that. It was crazy, she wasn't used to it, and she was starting to get paranoid again. Like, if someone was going to jump out from behind a tree to point and laugh. 'ha ha, you thought someone would talk to YOU? Neener!'

"That would be fun." Charlotte said, thinking about it some. "Do you have to match pictures to someone else's stories?"

"Yeah, sometimes." Kaysen said. "Like, basketball games and homecoming and crap like that, I'm sure I'll have to go and take pictures for people." she shrugged. "I just like messing around with the camera."
damn the muses: "That sounds like fun." Charlotte said. "I never went to that kind of stuff back home, it might be cool to have a reason." Or if this town was really as sleepy as they made it sound, something to do. Whichever.

Kaysen shrugged. "yeah." she said. She didn't say what she was thinking, which was she hated being at those things. It was like giving her classmates extra time to target her. Only without so many teachers around and all that shit so they could get away with more. Wait, why had she taken this job again? Oh yeah. Because she wasn't going to let them keep her down. That was why, damnit.

Charlotte had never actually gone to a school dance (the very few her school had) or the various sporting events. She'd been nowhere near a jock or a cheerleader, and she wasn't about to go with one of the daughters of her mom's friends. People seemed to like them in movies though. "Well... maybe we'll have lunch together, if nothing else." she tried out, not sure if that was okay to say. She didn't want to flat out ask if it would be okay to hang out sometime or be friends, she didn't think people asked to be friends after first grade anymore.

Kaysen was blinking at her again. "That's a bad idea." she said. "Um. Like, I mean, if people see you around me, they're just gonna pick on you too." she added, since she knew it had come out wrong the first time. She internally winced. Gah, she was terrible at this stuff.

At the first answer, Charlotte had wanted to go hide behind the moving truck, but the explanation just puzzled her. She still didn't really get the concept of being picked on for no reason, at least as mercilessly as Kaysen had described. "Well..." she began, fidgeting a bit. She wasn't really sure what to say to that. "I don't know anyone here." she finally settled on. "And they don't know me either. I guess if people pick on me, I'll have to deal with it then." It would probably horrify her, but she'd know who she'd want to avoid. She wouldn't want to be nice to anyone that would give somebody maggots.

Looking troubled and pained, Kaysen looked around. "I um...you can. Just. People....people don't like me, and I'm serious. They don't. You probably won't either after a while. It's happened before." she said.

That bothered Charlotte, and a lot more than she could understand or explain. "I'd only dislike you if you gave me a reason to." she said again, obviously perplexed. But she saw that this was bothering Kaysen, and she didn't want to do that, either. "I didn't mean to upset you." she offered, wondering if she should go finish unpacking now. Or a few minutes ago.

"It's okay." Kaysen said, sighing and shrugging. She was half picking at one of the scabs on her knees to occupy her attention. "I um...it's just lame." she said. "And you kinda sorta seem nice, and so that'd be really shitty if it started happening to you too." she continued.

Charlotte wondered if that was a public school thing, or she really had just managed to fly under the radar back in Auburn Hills. It didn't make any sense that this would only happen to Kaysen for no reason, so where the heck had she been? Was this normal? I think I'm the youngest sixteen-year-old I've ever met. "No one really noticed me in my old school." she finally said, because she didn't know what else to say. "I was a nerd? I am a nerd? Nobody really... bothered with me. I'm not holding out hopes of being Miss Popularity here." Though her mom sure was.

Kaysen eyed her for a moment. She could see her being miss popularity. She was pretty, and people would wanna talk to her to find out all about her since she was new. So yeah, it wasn't hard at all to think that Charlotte was gonna be Missus Awesomeness. She should probably stick to hanging with her brother. Isaac was Mr. Awesomeness. They could be a pair. Or Thom. She could totally date Thom. Then Thom could maybe remember that he totally didn't know she existed. That'd be cool. "Not being noticed would be cool." Kaysen said.

Charlotte wasn't so sure. She hadn't really cared much, but it had made things difficult with her mother. She'd wanted to shelter her in the first place, and then once she found out that even unsheltered, Charlotte didn't make friends? Not good. Charlotte did her own thing, early on, and she was one of those people that loved school and studying and reading. And occasionally getting caught talking to animals on the playground. That secures social status early on. Her mom was really pushing her hard to make friends here, and that would be nice. On a few levels. She eventually shrugged. "I still think it's horrible that anyone would torture you like that."

Kaysen looked back up again for a minute. "You get used to it." she said. Which was utterly untrue. While she tried to pretend nothing got to her, that just wasn't the case. Like, at all. Things did get to her. A lot did. Everything did. She just got really really good at hiding that over the years.

"I can't see how." Charlotte said, honestly. If it happened that much, that seemed like the sort of thing that would eventually drive a person insane. Kaysen did seem like a pretty tough girl, but still. Skunk-porcupinely defensive.

"Yeah, well, try it for a few years. You'll see." Kaysen said. "Or don't, because it really really sucks. So just... I dunno." she finished, now frustrated. Because this girl was being nice, and by next week she was going to have heard all the stuff from around town, and when she saw her on the street she was going to pretend she hadn't. "I gotta go." she decided, standing up and leaving the weird random stuff on the grass. She kicked her board up to her hand so she could walk across the yard with it, towards the driveway. "It was nice meeting you, Charlie." she added, because she just felt bad all around.

That was abrupt, and it had Charlotte wondering what she'd done wrong. She almost asked, but thought the better of it. "Oh, okay." she said instead, scrambling to her feet. "Nice meeting you. I'll let you know if I find Edison."

"Thanks." Kaysen said, then pushed off on her board, feeling the terrible urge to cry. Well that totally wasn't allowed to happen. At all ever. Stupid people. Stupid nice, pretty girls. Stupid town.