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Black Magic Cookery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | Tuesday | Period 3

Nina was exhausted.

She'd made it back just in time for Summer's class and, like, that had left her not much time to work with her own class.

Ugh.

Sure, she could've skipped Summer's class but then she'd have felt bad about it and she enjoyed the ranting even if she was conflicted on the things Summer was ranting about…

On the bright side, there wasn't much to set up. No one else really seemed to be using this room, so it was a matter of sticking the spices at each station and checking the fridge to see what they were going to make today.

"Gooooooooooooooooood moooooooooooooorning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she said cheerfully, turning away from the fridge as her class showed up, with a bowlful of tomatoes and another of shellfish. Nina beamed at them as she wandered from station to station, leaving a few tomatoes and a few fish at each place. "Today we're branching off from eggs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She was already predicting a few comments on this day, oh yes she was.

Nina took her spot at the front of the class with the left over tomatoes and shellfish.

"I'm starving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she announced, grinning at them. "So, like, I want you to look at what I've given you and guess what we're making today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Were they likely to get it right?

Probably not. But that was part of the fun.

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"Is this a conversation that'll require ice cream?" Summer asked. "Or even one you really want to have?"

Because she didn't exactly see Nina leaping at the opportunity to get back into it. And this was all just a little bit weird for her, having to actually be, like, a teacher or something instead of just messing around for shits and giggles. Like, obviously, she was okay with it, a little part of her actually felt, like, proud about it, but it was still weird, too.

"I don't know," she admitted, a bit moodily. "Like, it's not my favourite thing to really talk about, you know???????????????"

But then again, she'd been having all sorts of uncomfortable conversations lately.

"The class is going to deal with a lot of things that aren't fun to talk about," Summer admitted. "It's just the nature of the beast, and I...I think..." Her expression softened a little bit more, as if she wish she didn't have to say this part, but, no, she definitely had to say this part, "...maybe the reason it's not your favorite thing to talk about is kind of the whole point?"

Edited 2020-05-26 19:10 (UTC)

Nina grimaced.

"People like pretty, smiling girls."

Nina was very, very good at being a pretty, smiling girl. For a long time it had been all she'd really had to make people like her.

Whomp, there it is.

If Summer's expression got any softer, it would practically be ice cream itself, on a hot July day, and she had a moment of kind of wanting to hug Nina but also not sure if that was, like, okay because of the whole teacher thing, which is where that weird element in all of this threw her off just that little bit.

So she just sort of grinned a little at Nina. "Some people like pretty, smiling girls," she said, "and some people can seriously just kiss my ass. But I never was very good at the pretty, smiling part, and I know that I, personally, became a lot happier when I stopped trying to always be that pretty, smiling girl. I'll give you credit, though. You're way better at it than I could ever be.

"But....you do know it's okay, right?" The melted ice cream look was back. "To not be a pretty, smiling girl?"

And, in Summer's current disheveled state, she was definitely not hitting that pretty part any time soon.

Nina shifted a little, uncomfortably.

"............... Theoretically???????????"

She did her hair and everything up even if she had no plans to leave her room that day. So. She understood the theory other people might dress down but, like, she was really bad at it...

Prompto was just about the only person, aside from Vette, who'd seen her with her hair down fresh from a shower.

Summer supposed there could have been worse answers to that. But that was still pretty heartbreaking, and put a lot of things Nina had said in class so far in perspective, as well as a lot of the things Summer had said in class so far.

"Well," she said, "that's a start, at least. Come on, though." She cocked her head toward the door, offered a faint smile. "We're getting that ice cream." The Smith in her required it, and besides.... "Hopefully, if anything, me allowing myself to be seen in public like this," there were so many holes in this shirt, Nina, so many, and it fit her like a tent and she was pretty sure that the slim opening of ever having a chance with anyone on this island would be firmly shut for good if some certain people happened to see her, "will allow you to maybe consider the idea that your hair getting messed up in class isn't the worst thing in the world."

She looked at all the things she had to put away and... she was just going to, you know what, forget about that for now.

"I mean, like, what other people do is other people's business," she said, a little doubtfully. "But it's different when I do it................."

"And now," said Summer, with a little twirl of her finger in the air, "we're cycling right back to the whys. Why is it different if I go get ice cream looking like hot garbage compared to if you did it? Hell, let's take it a little step further. Who do you think is even going to care?

"Besides," she added, after a beat, "yourself, anyway."

"I mean, like, I don't know," she said slowly, discomfort itching at her as she headed for the door. "Someone might????????????????????"

Just wait until the ice cream, Nina, to soothe out all the uncomfortable itching of the soul, at least for a little while, in a way that was at least slightly healthier than chasing it away with booze.

"And why," Summer continued as she walked with her, knowing that this was the tumultuous why that brought them here in the first place, "do we care if some amorphous, general, anoynmous and potentially even nonexistant someone cares?"

At least there was calcium in ice cream!

Nina considered that.

"I just do," she ventured. "Like, when you're basically nothing, the opinion of anything's important???????????????"

"This," Summer realized, when Nina went and dropped that one, "is going to require a lot of ice cream. Nina..."

No, she was going to go ahead and put an arm around her shoulders and try to give her at least a little bit of a consillatory squeeze.

"I know that the fact that you just said that," she said, "is going to make my next words seem a little ineffective, but you are not basically nothing. Even if you started out that way, even if you've spent your whole life either feeling like you're nothing or being told you're nothing, or that you're unwanted, or that you've..." She exhaled slowly, "screwed up everything just by existing...or whatever the messed up details might be...it's just...not true. Or, at least, it doens't have to be, and then it's just a matter of what kind of something you're going to be. But I can bet you anything that, if you're trying to live by someone else's idea of what that something is, you're always going to fall short. You need to find what your own something is, you know?"

"I mean, like, I'm good at a lot of things," she said, letting Summer hug her though it was... weird. "And, like, I'm adopted now and............"

Prompto would be pretty upset, she figured, if he ever heard her say she was basically nothing.

"But, like, it's not that I think I'm worth nothing, but that other people thought so............."

Yeah, well, Prompto would also be a big old hypocrite in that respect, too.

"Other people," said Summer staunchly, "who think you're nothing, or even who might think you're nothing, aren't even worth your time, Nina. Because you are good at a lot of things." She wasn't even going to touch the idea that being adopted gave her worth because that was....yeah, out of her wheelhouse, and a whole different can of worms, but also a big oof on just how deep this one ran. "And you're smart and passionate, and you definitely have the personality to prove anyone who thinks that wrong. But, like, don't prove them wrong on their terms. Their terms suck. Prove them wrong on your own."

What was with Summer and the pep talks about people doing shit on their own terms lately, anyway? At least this one didn't involve way too much wine.

"Because, like, if you really do believe you're worth something, Nina, why even give people who don't the time of day? You have to think you're worth more than that..."

"When you start from nothing, though, you have to play the game on their terms," she said, though it was more complicated than that. "And, like, the people who raised me didn't have to. I do owe them."

Even if that was increasingly complicated to consider.

This was venturing a bit beyond the oppressive hand of patriarchal expectations right about now, causing Summer to bite her lip a little and think maybe this was being a little more than she could chew.

"Owe them for what?" she finally asked. "Being decent human beings?"

Sorry, Summer?

"They didn't have to," she repeated. "It would be nice if, like, everyone always did the decent thing but even if everyone did--they didn't have to. They could've just gotten rid of me."

Summer was quiet for another moment.

"I get that," she said. "I really do, Nina. The only reason I'm even here is because my parents' car broke down on the way to the clinic. They tried to get rid of me, but they messed it up. And my mom will never let me forget it, either, because I basically ruined her life."

She shrugged, as if it was nothing, as if it was fine, but everything else about it suggested otherwise.

"How are you going to even pay a debt like that back? You can't
Not really..."

She gave Nina another melted ice cream smile.

"They could have just gotten rid of you," she said. "But they didn't. And that's something to be grateful for, but you don't owe them for choices that they made. Especially if that debt is something that can't ever be paid back. It's not like you could agree to it, right?"

"Well, no..........," she admitted, part of her desperately sorry for Summer and part of her just...

Conflicted.

She was really tired of feeling conflicted all the time and, like, lately that seemed to be all she was.

"But, like, I feel like I'm obligated to do something about my debt anyway?"

"Of course you do," said Summer, quickly, easily, because boy, had she been there before. "And that's great, it really is, but if that debt means always having to be the smiling, pretty girl when literally no one can be that all the time, then you're always going to feel like you owe them, you'll never be able to free yourself from something like that. You can still be grateful, and pay them back, and also be, you know, flawed and imperfect and have messy hair sometimes and want to be more than an accessory. Love shouldn't be conditional, Nina, it's not a contract. That's really the whole point in all of this."

Edited 2020-05-26 23:15 (UTC)

Nina slanted a sideways glance at her.

"The only reason my adoptive parents adopted me was so they wouldn't have to look out for my brother any more," she said, abruptly. "That's my job."

She didn't think Prompto had realized that part of it all. She didn't want to know if he knew, honestly, and hadn't gone looking about that. Some things, really, it was better off not knowing.

But, like. Love was kind of a contract.

And Summer was going to slide that sideways glance right back at her.

"Do you love your parents?" she asked.

"I've met them once," she said, shrugging. "We talk a fair bit but it's all......... work-related.

"I admire them. I like them. I don't know them well enough to love them."

And she didn't expect them to love her either, though she did hope they liked, if not her, the work she did.

"I'm too old to expect parents to come out of nowhere to love me anyway."

"You don't need them, anyway," said Summer. "You know getting adopted didn't give you worth, right? You had that already..."

Summer sighed, stopping a bit to rub her eyes before looking at Nina again. "Can I tell you something? It might be a little morbid and dark, but it's something my brother told me once when I was having a really hard time dealing with my own sense of self-worth, and I think about it a lot, whenever I start to feel worthless or crappy or lost..."

"It gave me things I didn't have," she said softly.

A family. A last name. A room in a home that was just hers.

"What is it?"

"Okay," said Summer, who took a deep breath, because she was pretty sure the only other person she talked to about this before was BDG, "so, some context: my brother is not really my brother. I mean, he is, but not the same version of my brother I grew up with. This version of my brother came to my world because his world was pretty much destroyed, and he and my grampa died in my world, a d so they took their places without telling anyone, and they're buried in the backyard and my parents don't even know, but anyway, when he told me that, he also told me this: that, you know, nobody actually exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere, everyone's going to die, so...come have some ice cream."

She let that linger a moment.

"Actually," she amended, "he said, 'come watch TV,' but I changed it a little, because, you know..."

She gestured toward their nearing destination. "Ta-dahhhh. Ice cream."

Yaaay.

"I............."

Why was your world so very, very strange, Summer?

"I can see why he'd........ say that?" she said doubtfully, even as they approached Ice Cream. "But, like, what if you want to belong somewhere?"

She DID warn you, Nina!

"Then make a place for yourself," said Summer, shrugging as she reached for the door. "Like my brother did. Like I did when I went to go help Kanan. Like any of us do whenever we want to belong somewhere. The point is, everything in our lives is such a colossal crapshoot, Nina. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. In the end, who is even going to care if you weren't always the smiling, pretty girl? We're all just lucky not to be worm food yet."

"There's more to living than not being dead yet," she protested.

"There is," Summer agreed. "And there more to it than being the smiling, pretty girl, too."

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Black Magic Cookery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | Tuesday | Period 3

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