time to open fire {evander!}

[juliette eliza bloom]

outfit!

There were ups and downs to every situation. The situation in which Juliette found herself entering college--already having about thirty credit hours and having no need to take most freshmen classes--had not appeared to her to have any downs, but it was starting to look like it did. For one, her mass of credits meant that she was taking mostly upper level classes. This was great in that they were more interesting and specific and not useless, but there was no one in any of them that was her age. Juliette looked young anyway, but everyone in her classes seemed to her to be decades older than she was.

She had never been a meek student before, but she found herself now sitting nearer toward the back and taking frantic notes without ever raising her hand. No one had tried to talk to her in any of them and none of the professors had made any effort to get to know her. She should have taken a classics class--at least then, she would have had something to say that was relevant and didn't make her look like a child. She had never before felt so young and alone.

Today in her history of asia class, she had tried to speak to a girl sitting next to her, but the girl ignored her to have a conversation with someone behind her. Juliette was not used to being ignored, nor was she used to ever having a class in which she wasn't friends with at least five people. The worst part was that, since it was summer and an entire semester had to be squished into six weeks, she had every class at least three times a week. She'd gone all this week and tried to find at least someone that she could approach, but all of the girls were way older and spent most of their time in groups of people or on cell phones.

The only person she had noticed as being at all available was a boy that she recognized as being in all of her classes and also talking to no one. He was probably older than her, too, and he was a bit scary and scruffy looking, but she was getting desperate and they clearly sort of ish had the same interests. They were at least interested in the same classes, which was a good starting point for talking. She noticed that they frequently left at about the same time, so it wasn't difficult today to casually align her exit with his and as soon as they were out of the classroom, she skipped over to him and fell in step.

"Hi!" she chirped, putting on her best cheerful face. She didn't want to sound desperate, after all. She didn't have many worries about this because he looked sort of lonely and lonely people obviously loved Juliette. The only problem she could see was that she was still fairly bad at talking to males unless they spoke to her and though he wasn't her usual Type, he was still cute and Juliette was prone to getting flustered.

"Did you know we have three classes together?" she continued, looking at him and beaming, willing him to be as enthusiastic and delighted as she was.

[evander quincy rosemont]

» outfit

Evander's general policy while at school was that it was not really meant to be a social environment. He didn't really mean that in the way that teachers often said it, where they implied that students' social lives often got in the way of their studying and schoolwork habits and had a negative impact in classes. That wasn't really something Evander had to worry about, after all; he got extremely good grades and when he wasn't walking around campus between classes, he was usually either in the library or at his nearby home studying. He was well aware that plenty of students were able to juggle social lives and schoolwork with minimal struggle; he just wasn't one of those people because he didn't really have a social life. He had what he considered to be "enough" friends, and if he accidentally made one along the way, so be it, but that wasn't what he was there for. At school, he was there to sit, listen, learn, and then leave so that he could work on productive things like building models or reading books or, you know, napping.

It wasn't that Evander was boring... at least he wasn't always boring. He just took some prodding to come out of his shell; he expected others to be uninterested in him and to pass him by, so it was natural to him to not really have any companions in his classes. When group assignments came up, he grouped with whomever was nearest to him, or asked afterwards if he could do the project on his own. People didn't pay much attention to him, the quiet, dark-haired boy on the side of the classroom buried in his notes, so Evander in turn paid very little attention to those around him. He knew he came off as somewhat of a loner and he was kind of okay with that.

It was because of this that he was a little bit startled when he was approached after class one afternoon early in the school year by a younger redheaded girl with a bounce in her step and a perky chirp to her voice. He blinked at the girl, who was nearly a head shorter than him and was dressed from head to toe in a gradient of vibrant pinks.

"Um," he said, unsure of how to respond. He honestly hadn't noticed that the girl was in nearly all of his classes that semester, but then, he never really made a point of noticing anyone. Deciding that the best route to take would be the one that didn't offend her, he sort of half-committed to an attempt to pretend to recognize her. "I guess we do," he finally replied, offering her a polite smile, if only to match the broad, nearly-blinding one she was giving him. It felt like she was looking for a conversation, so he continued, "do your friends give you shit for taking weird classes too? Or is History of Asia actually required for you somehow?"

[juliette eliza bloom]

Juliette had given herself a mental pep talk before leaving for college in which she'd insisted to herself that she needed to learn to deal better with the way people talked. In college, people wouldn't think she was adorable like they did in high school--they would just think she was lame for being alarmed by curse words and sex. So, when the second thing he ever said to her involved the word "shit," she tried not to be too judgmental. She thought she did well not reacting at all, except to clench her smile tighter to make sure she didn't wince.

A few nervous giggles escaped when he'd finished talking. She was glad that he'd actually tried to continue the conversation because she wasn't sure she could handle more rejection. Besides, even though she was bad at talking to boys, she was used to them feeling protective over her, since she had a tendency to damsel herself.

"Oh, well, I technically don't need any more humanities classes, but my mum thought it was a good idea to acclimate myself to college with them." She nodded, smile lessening to a more normal degree as she started talking. Now that she was doing something she knew she was good at--talking--she was more confident that she didn't need to beam her way into making him enthusiastic. All she had to do was keep this up.

"And, no, of course not! Just because they don't take any classes they don't strictly need, doesn't mean that they--ehh.." She scrunched her nose, thinking about it. "Well, maybe a little. But if we have to take the credits anyway, we might as well take something interesting, right? Besides, my other classes are required. Sort of. I'm not really sure what to say if I get to choose between required classes." She giggled, biting her bottom lip so that she wouldn't continue talking.

[evander quincy rosemont]

It was a bit of an understatement to say that Evander wasn't really used to speaking to upbeat people. Avery was always angry about something and even when she wasn't she usually acted angry just to be angry, and even Caden, who was essentially Evander's total opposite, was usually more obnoxious and loud than perky and cheerful. Evander let the girl talk at him, because it meant that he had to do less talking, which he was fully content with.

"That still counts as required," he said with a shrug. "I get to do the same thing, though with the last few classes I got to choose between, I just ended up taking both of them because they both sounded interesting. Nice that you've got all your humanities covered, though. I've still got to do art appreciation in the Fall."

He paused when they reached one of the bulletin boards in the school, glancing over a flyer for a visiting speaker later in the month. He bent back the cover of his notebook and jotted down the date and time on the corner of the first page before glancing back at the girl.

"Sorry," he said. "This guy is supposed to be pretty good. I think he's actually the husband of the woman who wrote the Anthropology textbook."

[juliette eliza bloom]

Juliette giggled, though nothing was really that funny. It was her fall-back reaction, when she didn't know what else to do--plus, she was still a tiny bit nervous about the whole thing. "Art appreciation sounds fun!" she said, though even Juliette knew she was lying as her beam grew back into the I'm-smiling-until-you-agree smile.

When he stopped, she stopped, trying not to skid in her flats. She didn't want to seem like an overeager puppy every time he did something--she needed to be casual. No one would think she was adorable if she failed and they didn't even know her yet. Not that she needed him to think this. Just in general.

"Oh!" she said, snapping her fingers in recognition. "Yes, I've heard of him. I think I've read one of his essays. It was a little dull, but maybe he's better in person?" She shrugged, pulling out her phone to look at her calendar. "Oh, that's a convenient night." She scrolled through and started plugging it in. "Do guest speakers usually talk for long here? It's usually very comfortable sitting in auditorium seats and listening to a soothing scholarly voice--which is a bad thing." She giggled again and, done with her phone, looked back at him.