you don't have to say what you did; I already know, I found out from him

[psychoenough]

This dinner comes as the direct result of momentary insanity on Annie's part. (Perhaps impulsiveness is a better term for it, but where she's concerned, the two often go hand in hand.) She is, for the most part, a realistic girl, one who had no expectations of winning much at all during Casino Night, let alone enough to partake in the auction. As

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[psychoenough]

Mark Zuckerberg just said her name. He said her name aloud, it came from his lips for all to hear (that there are only so many people within hearing distance is not of importance). For a terrifying moment, Annie thinks she might faint where she stands. Would he catch her? Then not only would Mark Zuckerberg have said her name out loud, but he would have caught her when she fainted as well. But she remains standing, thankfully, breathing deeply and slowly becoming more and more aware of the fact that she must look like a deep caught in the headlights.

"Mhmm," she mumbles, nodding vehemently. Although she hasn't yet tried, Annie suspects she might be physically incapable of speaking at the moment. She can't even explain her reaction, really, never having held the Facebook's CEO on any particular pedestal. Yet he stands before her in the flesh and she can't help but marvel; larger than life, he isn't someone she ever expected to meet, let alone have dinner with. It's disturbingly easy to forget her real reason for being here, to defend Eduardo's honor, so to speak, because long before Eduardo, Annie knew of Mark the way almost everyone in her world does. She'd see his name right there on the website, read about him in Time magazine. He was - he is - their generation's Bill Gates. Anyone would be intimidated.

So, instead of reciting any of the lines she practiced before the mirror in preparation, or even taking a seat as she well should have by now, Annie gestures down at the laptop and asks, "You weren't busy, were you?"

[zuckered]

Facing a myriad of responses from fans and haters alike isn't new to Mark Zuckerberg. What started off as a couple of pretty shrewd groupies- truly, they climbed on that bandwagon pretty early, and had the girls been more compatible with either Mark or Wardo, who knows where they'd be today- quickly blossomed to practically an entire culture, with people inventing applications for facebook, trying to secure themselves the next big hit. Mark could remember certain applications being especially popular. The Honesty Box, for one, which was more or less just a way for people to anonymously send messages to their facebook friends, meant to be used for confessions or other such things. (To Mark, it felt a little high school- but then again, what college student didn't yearn for things from high school, now and again?) Mark's used to receiving angry letters about the lack of privacy on facebook (although really, how stupid can people get, when the settings say that they default to all of one's friends seeing photos, why does it surprise them to know that their employers have gotten a hold of them). He's used to being lauded in interviews, both in magazines and on television. There's something more exaggerated about Annie's response, like she was on fire all but a minute ago, at which point it extinguished in a puff of smoke.

At least this doesn't look like it's setting up to be an actual date, then. That much is a relief.

"Sure I was," Mark shrugs with a single shoulder, lips quirked in what anyone who knew him would recognize as a lightly teasing expression, folding his hands neatly on the table as he continued to look up at Annie, wondering if she was expecting for him to get up, walk around the table, and pull out her chair. (He wasn't about to do that.) "I was waiting for you. Do you want to sit down?"

A wave toward her chair would have to suffice.

[psychoenough]

Confused, Annie's eyes widen, her expression one of sheer panic. In the back of her mind, a stronger, less impressionable version of her begs to stop with the flattery, to take a seat and embark on the intended interrogation, but 99.9% of her is still halted in shock. The moment extends, as such moments are wont to do, drawing out that sense of alarm until she knows of no option but to turn and run. He speaks again just in time, and she crumples into her seat quietly. Beginning to feel dizzy and lightheaded, only then does Annie realize she still hasn't stopped to breath, and promptly inhales a great gust of oxygen.

Catching her breath as last is both a blessing and not, for it means she now has to focus on the incredibly awkward silence building between them. An anxious person by nature, she spends enough time worrying about the impression she gives off to people who don't even matter (no offense to them), and now she has to try and act cool in the face of one of the 21st century's most influential human beings. She can practically feel the pressure weighing her down, like a backpack filled to the brim with the heaviest volumes around.

She clears her throat. Makes the mistake of eye contact. Promptly looks away.

[zuckered]

If this is how the rest of the night is going to go, Mark has the feeling it's going to be quite the doozy. It looks, to Mark, like Annie has to figure out every single step of what she does, consciously making the effort to take a breath, consciously making the effort to meet his gaze, all these actions that should be the work of the subconscious brain. They're things that the human body sets aside and puts on autopilot, just so that the rest of them can focus on deepening relationships and taking learning to the next level. Well, he's not sure that he can rewire her brain to make everything work, but what he can do is at least help the date along. Already in the background, he can see people raising their brows at the odd couple right in the middle of the dining space, wondering whether or not to bring their appetizers out. (Yes, Mark's ordered appetizers. He's not going to gyp someone entirely of what a date is supposed to entail.)

So he gets up from his seat, steps around to her side, and pulls her seat out for emphasis. "Here," he says, a part of him unable to keep himself from thinking how ridiculous it all is, but another figuring that if nothing else, it'll pass the time. "Seriously. You can sit. And the only bytes I work with are on the computer."

[psychoenough]

Guys like it when girls laugh at their jokes. That is, at least, what popular culture has led Annie to believe. Drawing on her own life experiences yields poor examples: she was essentially a beard to her high school boyfriend; Vaughn, bless his heart, was too happy-go-lucky to provide reliable results; Jeff Winger is Jeff Winger. This may not be a date date, but if he did her the courtesy of pulling out her chair, she can at least laugh at his joke, which, in her opinion, was genuinely funny. And laugh she does, if a bit too loudly, initially making a sound closer to a nervous hiccup. Then she clears her throat once more, crossing one leg over the other as she pulls her chair closer.

"It was really nice of you to contribute to the auction," she says, despite knowing that it was in fact Eduardo who did the persuading. On some level, she can appreciate the effort, that an effort was made at all, which is admittedly more than she would have expected. But already her preconceived notions of Mark have been flushed away, replaced by the same degree of wonder and awe that anyone in her position might possess. (Okay, slightly more than the average, but she has always veered toward the dramatic and excessive.)

[zuckered]

It's... nice when she laughs at the joke. Kind of. Mostly. On its own, the fact that she can react to such a joke isn't in of itself impressive to Mark, because even people who don't work internally with computers probably know about bytes (that's the good thing about storage, it teaches people these sorts of terms). But she laughs, and Mark notes that it's in spite of being Wardo's good friend, and maybe that makes it more valuable somehow. Nervous edge and all.

Loping back around to his side of the table, Mark plops himself down in his seat, his posture straight as a board. "Wardo kind of put me up for auction," he corrects, keeping his tone light enough so that she knows, if Mark really needed someone to drag him tooth and nail to this date, that he wouldn't be here right now. Right now, he just doesn't want too much credit. "Was kind of late to take it down by the time I realized. Didn't win enough chips to place the winning bet. But it's not a big deal."

A blonde briefly walks by (he's pretty sure her name is Snookie, or sometihng along those lines) to drop off two glasses of water and freshly baked artisan bread, before zipping back to the kitchen, and Mark immediately grabs for a piece and starts breaking it out of habit.

"So tell me about yourself."

[psychoenough]

The unexpectedly wry part of Annie's brain - which never surfaces when needed and is almost always inconveniently timed - is sorely tempted to direct Mark to her Facebook profile. Were these normal circumstances, she might lack the self control to keep from doing so, but as there is no Facebook here, she gulps back the answer. Unfortunately, that doesn't get her out of answering full stop, which presents an impossible dilemma: How to make herself sound impressive to the world's youngest billionaire.

"There's nothing special about me," she blurts, shaking her head. Better to have him think her unremarkable than know that she is a sophomore at community college because she dropped out of high school to enter rehabilitation. "I'm just a girl from Colorado," adds Annie with a shrug, "This island is the most exciting thing that ever happened to me." That, at least, is somewhat true, albeit not by far. If nothing else can be said of Greendale (and very little can), the shenanigans that school gets up to are likely unparalleled. She doubts Mark and Eduardo spent many an afternoon shooting paintballs at one another in Harvard Yard. "And... yourself?"

[zuckered]

He pauses after her self-introduction (or rather, more like lack of). Being from Colorado means nothing to him. The island being the most exciting part of her life also means very little, given the nature of the island itself. And so Mark feels that in the first few minutes, he's learned practically nothing about this Annie character- it forces him to look elsewhere. Quickly, his gaze scans over the young woman, over her outfit and her expression. (She's got a very distinct sense of style, at least.)

"Not true," he says first. "Everyone has something special about them. There's something that makes you Annie Edison. And I don't think that's Colorado." He takes a bite of his bread, slight impatience fraying his nerves before he takes a swallow of water.

"And you know who I am. Pretty sure my name wasn't up on the auction list. Just my role at facebook," he adds. There's no tone of superiority in his voice; everything's offered as a pure statement of fact.

[psychoenough]

There is indeed something that makes her Annie Edison. Quite a few somethings, truth be told, most of which molded the personality dubbed Little Annie Adderall in her senior year of high school. Some might find her story interesting, even exciting, but Annie has been doing her best to leave it behind for the past two years. Greendale was going to be her fresh start and now Tabula Rasa is her blank slate. Despite everything she claims to hate about the island, that blank slate has proved invaluable, even with Jeff and Britta already privy to all of her dark secrets. She loves the study group and everyone in it, even at their worst, but Annie never felt accepted by her own age group until she came here. As awestruck as she is with Mark, she doesn't trust him not to judge her, doesn't trust him at all.

"Everyone knows who you are," she responds, for the first time less than impressed with the man before her. It's difficult to tell whether he's being serious, sarcastic, or otherwise, his tone of voice so rarely changes, but she's predisposed by her Eduardo bias to assume the worst. One might think that being Mark Zuckerberg might wash away the need to rub it in, as if the billions don't speak for themselves, but apparently not.

[zuckered]

"My point is that it's uneven. You know more about me than I do about you," Mark shrugs, and if she's less than pleased with him, he's not sure that he'll be able to really pinpoint why. Nor is he sure that it really matters. This is just a date, a one-time thing that Annie Edison's bid on for some reason or another and won. They don't need to go on a second, this doesn't need to become anything more, and he's certainly not expecting to find himself in a position of needing to court Annie. He can be exactly who he is, doesn't need to give more thought to anything than he sees fit, and while he does find her to be a curious figure, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't prostrate himself in front of anyone much. Especially not anymore.

"And no, not everyone knows who I am," he also points out, leaning back as they're both served soup, some kind of bisque that he immediately dips a piece of bread into. "Definitely not on this island, but even back in the States, it's not like I get stopped on the streets or that the name Mark Zuckerberg on my credit card stops most cashiers. I just meant that you know who I am. Because you bid on me at the auction. And because you know Wardo."

[psychoenough]

For a moment, Annie actually considers telling the truth. Telling some of her truths, at least, which goes to show just how intimidating it is to hold a conversation with Mark. As a rule, she tries not to judge anyone too quickly these days - the study group taught her the dangers of doing so - but she doesn't always go through with the many, many things she intends.

"Oh, that is so false! If they didn't before, they certainly would after that Time cover," Annie points out immediately. She then gasps, her lips frozen in an open circle when she realizes too late that she may have just spoiled Mark's own future for him. "Wait, when are you from?"

[zuckered]

Mark's eyes narrow immediately after the slip. Time cover. It isn't hard at all to imagine what Annie might be referring to, nor is it even completely surprising. If there's anything that can be said for Time magazine's Person of the Year awards these past years, it's that nowadays, it's the footprint rather than the person who's being judged. Ultimately, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to be some immense genius with unparalleled intellect. He doesn't have to be anyting remotely close. All that Mark needs is to have helped spawn a product whose influence stretches over country borders, or has somehow changed the world as a whole, and Mark knows that he's done that. (The design of facebook is simple, but its effect on networking is undeniable.)

"Before the Time cover," he replies shortly, not seeing what point there is to giving the time down to the day. "But if you noticed, Time subscriptions don't always make it over here."

[psychoenough]

In fact, Annie has yet to experience the supposed horrors of the bookshelf and jukebox for herself. (Okay, so there was that one week where it would only stock her favorite books in Spanish, as if she needed of reminding of the year-long foreign language education that was anything but. Apart from that, the mystical objects in the rec room have generally been kind to her.) Perhaps it can sense that she is perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and although staving off a full-fledged freakout seems against the island's general wishes for the populace, she isn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She can, however, see why the shelf would be less than gracious toward Mark; he doesn't exactly possess her delightful disposition.

"Okay, so from your perspective, the whole world doesn't know who are yet," concedes Annie. "But you're a public figure, I'm not! And frankly, if you're concerned with privacy, the invention of Facebook may have been counterproductive."

[zuckered]

It's a difficult task to avoid rolling his eyes, but Mark does allow himself a pinch at the bridge of his nose again, where he feels something like a sinus headache starting to pick away at his skull. He's not sure what kind of point the two of them are trying to arrive at. What they're driving towards. It's possible that she's only bid on this lunch to give him a lecture, a wag of her finger and a furrow of her brow, all in defense of one Eduardo Saverin. It's possible. But if that was the case, right now there's enough of an ineffectual air to her gripes and complaints that instead of feeling like he's targeted or under close scrutiny, Mark just feels like she's being the equivalent of a bee buzzing around his ears. Something that one might vaguely want to swat at.

(He doesn't, of course, but if there's a way he might be able to change this dynamic for the better, that's what he plans on trying for.)

"The invention of the search engine did away with our previous notion of privacy, so if you want to blame anyone, you can blame Google for coming up with a remarkably effective algorithm. facebook doesn't put anything up that isn't at least partially intended for public consumption," he points out, then adds a small shake of his head. "Anyway, that wasn't even- that's not my point, my point is that you clearly know who I am, but I have no idea who you are. It's kind of uneven. Ideally, I'd get to know more about you."

[psychoenough]

"Oh."

Deep down, Annie suspected this to be the case, but she would not allow herself to believe it, afraid of getting carried away with her own thoughts. It makes her even more nervous than before, if possible, now not only hoping to make herself sound impressive but also under the impression that Mark possesses some actual interest in what she has to say. Even here, she would think he could find better uses for his time, and the fact that Eduardo pushed him into this dinner should only make him less inclined to comport himself.

Now, before her lies the impossible task of saying something, anything, to sate Mark Zuckerberg's curiosity. It's only the knowledge that he is close with Eduardo, with whom Annie has generally been honest, that keeps her from dissolving into a series of grand lies. Telling the truth isn't her only option, but it is the best. Besides, why should she be trying to impress him anyway? He's just some guy with seemingly misplaced loyalties whose website just happened to be popular.

"Fine," she practically snaps, breathing sharply. "Fine! If you really want to know who I am, I'll tell you. For the past two years, I've been attending Greendale Community College because I dropped out in my senior year of high school to enter rehabilitation for a brief addiction to pills which were supposed to boost my focus and academic performance but in fact made me lose my scholarship and virginity and have a very public nervous breakdown wherein I accused several of my classmates of being robots. I live alone because my mother would have preferred we pretend nothing ever happened and cut me off when I insisted on getting help, and almost all of my savings went to rehab and tuition, so my apartment is a musty old hole in the wall above a -" She pauses to lower her voice, as if revealing a dark secret. "- Marital aid store."

"I'm also Jewish."

[zuckered]

This is better. In spite of the way that her words pour out, one tripping over the other, Mark finds that the sudden influx of information is exactly what he's wanted, leaning forward slightly to take it all in, eyes fixated on this strange girl with strange behaviorial tendencies. Perhaps Mark shouldn't be one to label anyone's behavior as strange, being the kind of person that he is, but he finds that he can't help himself. Annie is, if nothing else, not the sort of person he's accustomed to encountered on college campus. Computer science majors have their neuroses, but they're usually easily hidden under lengths and lengths of code, and emotions tend to funnel inward rather than out. His brow arches at the information, already trying to sort it, to make sense of it.

"Adderall, right?" he asks first. It's not an uncommon addiction for children from middle or upper-class families. Provided one has decent health insurance, the road to Adderall is an alarmingly easy one, simply requiring claims of attention deficiency and inability to focus. Mark knows cheerleaders who have used it to keep their waistlines trim, he knows plenty of students on campus who use it during finals week, and imagining a girl merely in high school getting high off Adderall isn't very hard to do. Nor is it even a vice worth judging in full. Does it mean that she has issues with her confidence? Probably. Does it mean that she looks for easy ways out? Probably. But in some circles, it's conniving and strategizing in that very way which pushes one further, and while Mark will have none of it himself, he understands why others try. "They never really mention the side effects. Makes sense, given how much of their revenue is made off of teens and young adults who don't actually need the drug at all, but use it to curb a need to sleep, eat, and other regular bodily functions."

He shrugs, then takes a sip of water.

"Are you completely done with rehab?"