second cousin to the new invention

[scrtnvrwntd]

Out in front of Looney High, having just completed his first day of classes after getting transferred here by his over-enthusiastic fosterparents, Russell Sykes is sitting on the back of a stone bench donated by one of the previous classes and trying to look cool. And not, you know, like he's waiting for his parents to come pick him up because he

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[pplrunincircles]

Elizabeth walks out of the high school heaving her backpack behind her. It's heavy even for an angel, okay? Or maybe she's just being dramatic. Either way, she collapses on to the stone bench and drops the backpack to the sidewalk next to her. It drops with a clunk.

"Phew." She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead as if she's actually sweating. "I hate school."

Elizabeth stares up at the sky and takes in a deep breath or two.

"Don't you?" She turns to look at him at long last. "Hey, don't we have a class together or something? You look kind of familiar to me, but then again, sometimes I have dreams and people are in them, and then I'll see people later. They kind of like match the people in my dreams, but I forget that it was a dream that I saw them in so I go Oh, hey, familiar person, and they look at me like I'm crazy cause it never really happened."

[scrtnvrwntd]

And then there's some girl on the bench, talking at him. It takes him a moment to put himself into "talk to new people" mode, and then... a lot more because she doesn't stop talking for long enough to let him say anything.

In the end he just kinda stares at her until words stop happening.

"Uh... I dunno." He shrugs, working at a hangnail on one thumb. "I don't really care. You a senior?"

He didn't pay attention to a lot of the people in his classes. He was mostly staring at the grade requirements and doodling things in the margins of the syllabi.

[pplrunincircles]

"Nope. Do I look like a senior?" A big smile pulls over her face at the thought. She tends to get mistaken for a middle schooler. "I should be a junior, but I'm not. I'm a sophomore. I sort of flunked out when I was littler. I failed, but like we're talking first grade. So no biggie. I think I need medication, cause I have a hard time focu- Oooh, butterfly!"

Elizabeth jumps to her feet, and then runs over which spooks the butterfly into fluttering away like they do.

"Drat." She turns back toward him, and then raises an assessing eyebrow at him. "Are you a senior?"

[scrtnvrwntd]

Okay, this chick is officially Something Else.

"Yeah," he says. "And I think medication might be a seriously good idea for you."

After a moment, he sticks his hand in her direction.

"Russell," he says. "I, like, just transferred over to this school. John and Lisa are totally serious about me doing well in school, and they thought this would be some great place for me to learn stuff. I dunno. Seems kinda like a normal school to me."