[Angelo and Jennie] -- Friday

[x-roulette.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Friday? Angelo finally apologizes for yelling at Jennie for the post thing. Which Jennie had totally forgotten about. Oh well.



He wasn't sure how he'd ended up letting it go so long between his return from Tel Aviv and apologising to Jennie for what he'd said. But then, first he'd been in no fit state and then he'd been packed off to Madagascar, and then... there really hadn't been that much time when he might have seen her between Madagascar and LA.

Still. No more putting it off now, and Angelo walked with a decisive stride to the Teen Girl Suite to see her.

"It's open," Jennie called at the knock. She had a red pen in one hand and a rough draft of her final paper for English in the other. It'd been beaten into all of their heads how important this paper was, and Jennie was not about to let her A slide. Even if she did have senoritis. Bad.

He pushed the door open and looked in without going all the way into the room, unsure of his welcome. It wouldn't be unfair, after all. "Hey."

"Hi" Jennie said, looking up over the couch briefly before returning to her paper. "Yvette and Sooraya aren't in right now, d'you wanna leave a message for them?

"No. I came to see you, actually." He offered a faint smile. "Figure I still owe you an apology."

"Apology?" Jennie blinked. She set the paper down on the coffee table. "Apology for what?"

...huh. If she'd forgotten, then... no. He still had to do it. "What I said to you on your post, back when I was in Tel Aviv. I wasn't in the best place, but... no call for that."

The post? Oh right, where she got chewed out by everyone and their mother for daring to express her opinions in a public place. "Look, I accept your apology. I'm sorry you got offended by what I said, but I'm not sorry I said it nor where I said it. I had a right to express myself to my peers. Often the students are pretty much ignored by the adults, so I didn't realize that people other than my peers would read it or care."

"I think a lot of us read more of the journal stuff than you think", he said. "Just don't always respond. But, yeah, it was a kind of sensitive subject an' it wasn't all that clear who you were aimin' it at, but I still didn't have a right to go off at you like that for it. Only excuse I've got is I was only a couple days out of the hospital an' I really wasn't okay."

Jennie shrugged. "You also had a right to express your displeasure at me. I don't know what I would have done if someone had said something crass when I go back from Europe." She tapped her palm with the red pen in her hand. "But also, you probably could have found a better way to say it."

"I could", he admitted freely. "An' that's mostly what the apology's for. I shouldn't've said anythin' at all until I could get it together enough to say it better." That had been why he'd offered his resignation, but it didn't seem appropriate to bring that up.

"People sometimes seem to forget that there are students here. All I had seen and heard that week was about the bombings. All the students were seeing was the adults being fatalistic, and that rubs off. None of us like feeling helpless like that. Especially the students, because we literally can't do anything. We were just forced to sit back and watch." Jennie quickly held up a hand, "And don't say that I could help by volunteering at Elpis. All that would do would give me a closer view of the action, I wouldn't be doing anything."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. They were getting off-track here. But some days she really didn't like how helpless the staff made the students feel. "Look, I'm sorry. You came to apologize. I don't think you had anything to apologize for, but I accept it."

"We felt pretty helpless too", Angelo said quietly. "In some things, we did. But... okay, yeah, apology dealt with. Thanks."

Jennie had to fight the urge to sigh. "Look, everyone's okay now, right? They didn't break you."

"Not me, an' not Elpis", he agreed, not sure what she was getting at. "But it was a close thing for some of us." He didn't mention the dead, for fear of unnecessary guilt-tripping.

"Well then," Jennie said. She was well aware of the damage that had been suffered, having had it quoted back to her. At great length. It wasn't that she was tactless or heartless, it was just that she simply coped in a different manner than others. You simply picked up and moved on.

"Anything else you need?"

"Think it's pretty much all covered", he said after a moment. The meeting had been oddly dissatisfying, for some reason he couldn't pin down given that the apology had been offered and accepted. But he'd just have to deal with that. "See you in class, then?"

"Yeah, see ya," Jennie said, and turned back to her paper.