fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

"You are sure you do not wants me to wait with you?" J.Lo asked, pressing his squooshy frog face against Slushious's passenger window.

Tip's mom leaned past him to wave. "Text when you get there safe, Turtlebear."

Tip rolled her shoulders back, putting on her absolute bravest face. "I will." They'd already done the tearful goodbye part, J.Lo just hadn't read the memo. Tip resolutely turned away, heading toward the lounge where the school instructions said to wait for the shuttle bus.

"I am changing my minds!" J.Lo called after her. She heard her mom start Slushious's engine up, then start to putter away. "I am not too many olds for high schooooooooooooool!"

Tip made it all the way onto one of the lounge's benches, her suitcases tucked underneath, before her shoulders sagged again. Which was good, because if she hadn't, it'd be one of those legs-gone-away, dropped-on-her-ass moments. Pardon her language.

"C'mon, Tip," she told herself, swiping quickly at her cheeks. "Chin up. You drove across the US with an alien when you were 11. High school should be easy."

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"Okay, I know something's up if you've never heard of Google," Roscoe said at once. "Biggest company in the world? You've really never heard of it?"

Wait. He looked up from her phone and up at the top of her head. "Did your barrette just move?"

Sure, proof of alien life was weird. But you know what was more important? Fashion.

"Bigger than the Happy Mouse company?" Tip didn't believe that. Happy Mouse was enormous. "And that's just Bill. As long as he's on my hair I know he isn't wandering off and getting lost." Bill floated up again at the sound of his name and dropped down to float in front of them. He spewed an elaborate pattern of bubbles from the horn on his tail. "He says 'hi'," Tip said, tilting her head a little at the bubbles. "Or possibly something rude. I'm still not very good at written Boovian."

"Oh my god, what is your life?" Roscoe squealed, clapping his hands against his face and then sliding his hands downward. he was able to compose himself enough to say, "Hi, Bill," and then back to Tip, "I'm going to guess that Bill has something to do with Boov technology? Because hairclips don't do that where I'm from."

For the most part, he was taking it in stride. But he wasn't ruling out the possibility that they were both stoned.

Tip had never been stoned in her life. Though she was sort of hoping to find something that would affect both humans and Boov the same way so she and J.Lo could try it together, someday.

"He's a billboard, actually," Tip said, glad to be back on somewhat more familiar ground. Most people back home didn't have Boov billboards, either. "I adopted him when I went to New Boovworld a couple years ago. He got tired of no one there ever paying attention to him, and since I was gawking at everything like a tourist, he decided he liked me."

...So not the normal kind of billboard, then.

"Well, I can't blame him," Roscoe said, deciding to just roll with the weirdness already and ask questions later. "Kind of like when I find some shoes in a thrift store that just need some love. Except in my case they don't really have feelings."

Tip smiled a little ruefully. "Yeah, like that. I'm not 100% sure Bill actually does have feelings? J.Lo's theory is that he developed semi-sentience because of his frustration, but that doesn't entirely work in human logic, so." She shrugged. "When I was younger, I refused to have a favorite outfit because I didn't want my other clothes to get jealous."

"Me too!" Seriously, pre-teen Roscoe didn't play around when it came to clothes. "When I was in elementary school, I convinced my parents to each buy me little purses for all the days of the week and then I could switch between them evenly. I made up all these rules about not repeating the same one two days in a row."

Okay, kind of showing his hand there as far as the whole 'spoiled brat' thing.

Tip's mom definitely never made enough money to buy Tip a purse for every day of the week. Even if she had, their apartment back then wouldn't have been anywhere near large enough. "I totally would have done that," she said. "But Mom worked in a grocery store. And I was never that into purses." She smiled. "But I would have done it with shoes or -- cameras or something."

BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

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