xp_logs | Doreen and Artie, Tuesday afternoon (Reply)

Doreen runs into Artie outside.

Artie was taking full advantage of the fact that, complaints to Crystal aside, whilst it was still winter, it was no longer snowing and was out on the skate ramp Alex had made years ago. He'd swept most of the water off and had warmed up enough to remove his coat, if not his sweater and was making increasingly quick runs back and forward across it.

Doreen was in the trees above. She always was when she wasn't in classes and wasn't inside. She saw Artie below and decided now would be the best time to say high. She jumped right in his path from one of the overhanging trees, "Hi!"

Her sudden appearance startled him and he fell off his board, tucking and rolling as he landed. (After his second broken arm, Scott had sat him down and taught him to fall and made sure that the lesson stuck.) Lying on his back, he looked up at Doreen reproachfully and flashed a sad face at her.

"Oh my gosh! Are you okay?" Doreen said, jumping over. A quick leap was better than running. Monkey Joe followed, but he always did, "I totally didn't mean to make you fall over!"

He sat up slowly, rubbing one shoulder and snapped his fingers to get her attention, before pointing at the ground where he projected, two or three words at a time, i'm fine! dont jump out of trees at me. dork.

"I didn't really jump, kinda like fell, I guess. I'm totally not a dork," at least he was okay. It wouldn't be good if he wasn't.

Artie shrugged and waved his hand slightly before signing "you totally are." He flashed a question mark at Doreen and signed again "what's up?"

Doreen was getting better at reading it, to the point where it was just like talking. Which was really cool, "I dunno. I guess I should be doing math or something but I didn't want to and it's so nice outside that I thought I'd come out side and I saw you so I thought I'd say hi."

If he'd known what she was thinking, he might have laughed - while many of the mansion's residents were getting quite good at Sign, very few of them were fluent or could cope with more than a relatively simple vocab set. "I have a history test tomorrow. I'm going to die." A hologram beside him showed Sam holding up a test with a giant, red F on it and flickered to show him holding a gun and shooting a tiny, cartoon Artie.

"Oh, I don't think you'll do THAT bad," Doreen said sagely, "I mean, it's not like an essay test or anything. Or is it? I hope it's not because those so totally suck."

Shrug. "I wasn't paying attention. I think I had to read a book? It was on mutants and things? So it's maybe the sort where you have to do answers to questions."

"I hope you do okay. I'd say we should study, but I'm not very good at history," Doreen said.

"You still did it last year, though," he signed back. He was willing to conveniently forget the part where she hadn't been here this time last year. Still not certain how familiar she really was with Sign, he coupled this with a flash of cartoon Doreen holding a history textbook while a large 2009 flashed over her head.

"Um... I was sort of failing almost everything when I came here last year," Doreen said sheepishly.

Sadface. He looked over at Doreen and signed "Xbox? Got a new game just now."