Sarah and Meggan- Backdated to July 18

[x-meggan.livejournal.com]

Meggan gives Sarah her copy of the driver’s manual, just as she promised earlier that day.



Sarah was messing around with her laptop, laying back on her bed with the computer resting, appropriately enough, on her lap and using her powers to surf the net. To anyone listening outside her door, they'd be confused at hearing her saying things like 'back,' 'forward,' 'scroll,' 'reload,' and the like, but she found it to be a good practice of her abilities.

She looked up at the sound of someone knocking on her door. "Minimize." Not that she was looking at anything embarrassing or whatnot, she was just used to closing or minimizing her windows whenever her parents would inevitably intrude on her and her sister when she was little. It was a force of habit these days. "Come in!" she yelled out to whomever was outside.

“It’s just me,” Meggan announced as she opened the door and peeked in. “I’ve got your manual,” she said as she held up the item in question. It had accidentally ended up on top of a closet shelf, instead of a bookshelf, but she’d found it in the end. Unless absolutely everything about the process had changed without any warning in the last five months, it should be helpful to Sarah.

"Oh, hi Meggan, come in!" Sarah smiled and put the laptop down on the bed. She looked to the manual and smiled even more, it would definitely be a big help to her. "Awesome, thanks so much!" She wasn't a big fan of studying, really, but this was something she'd be more than eager to study for now. "I can't wait, I hope it goes well. Was the test that difficult?"

“It wasn’t that bad, not too hard,” Meggan reassured her. “I messed up on a couple questions for the written, but it wasn’t enough to have to go back and redo the entire test. Nerves mess you up more. For both.” It was second guessing that had messed her up on those few questions. Sarah would find that a lot had been highlighted in the little book, but maybe that would be a help for her. Meggan remembered one of her questions from the journals. “You don’t have to have your own car for the driving. When you get to it. I didn’t.”

"Yeah, I think I'll be more nervous than anything, really." Studying would hopefully help relieve that, at least with the written part of the examination at any rate, that was the goal anyway. "Ok, that's good, I'm glad to hear that since I don't actually have one and have no idea when I ever will be getting one." It would've seemed like a bizarre catch 22 otherwise - no good to have a car without a license, but if you couldn't get a license without a car how could that work?

Meggan nodded. “If you don’t have one that you’ve borrowed from someone around here, there should be one there that you’ll be able to use. There was when I went, anyway.” Which had been fortunate, because otherwise she would have had to come back and beg for someone to volunteer to let her take their car away from them for a little while. “Once you’ve done the written, and you have a permit…you can practice whatever you need to with my car. If you want, I mean,” she offered after only a second’s consideration.

"Hopefully nothing too big." She imagined it'd be pretty hard to parallel park a huge car, hopefully they'd have something nice and compact for her when it came to that kind of thing. "That's great, I'd hate to have to bother someone else to borrow their car." It'd be much harder to get one's license then, if that's what one had to do. "Oh, wow, really? Thanks, that's sweet of you to offer." Sarah just might take her up on that sometime, once she had her permit anyway.

“The one I used wasn’t big and bulky, more smallish medium-sized. Maybe they change them around?” Meggan didn’t know the kind she had driven that day, but the driving instructors were probably sneaky enough to rotate cars. To keep students on their toes, if they came back for a second or third time for the test. “If you end up where you have to do your test in the winter like me, and you need to try icy roads without actually going over roads…there’s an empty parking lot near the Waffle House. It’s covered in thick ice before the roads really get it as much,” she clarified.

Whatever had once used that lot must have gone out of business, if it was always vacant. “You can try stuff without accidentally playing bumper cars.” Meggan had been fortunate enough for things to be thawing the day she finally took her test, but at least Kevin had shown her what to do if you got stuck in a very long, very slow spin.

"Medium-sized wouldn't be too bad, I suppose." They probably did do something sneaky like that, rotating cars so the students wouldn't quite know what to expect. Sarah's eyes went wide at the mention of ice. "Oh my god, I hadn't thought about that. Driving on ice? Oh man." That sounded terrifying to her. "I definitely don't want to play bumper cars with anyone's vehicle, I don't even like regular bumper cars!" It would be handy to learn to avoid doing so in the winter though, but the very thought of it happening was scary enough. "I'll keep that in mind though, hopefully I can get my license before it gets cold, though."

“Neither do I,” Meggan laughed. Bumper cars wasn’t a ride she enjoyed all that much. “It just seemed like a good thing to learn, just in case winter stuck around for longer than it should.” First an abandoned parking lot, and then a hill on a day few people were in sight, so nobody would get rear ended. “I took mine on a day in February when the temperature went up suddenly. It was a surprise thaw, so no ice.” Could there be a chance it wouldn’t be so icy next year? She hoped so. “It’s 6 months between tests. Maybe if you did very end of August, you could try for March? Unless there’s one last blast, the ice is gone by then,” she suggested.

That would definitely be a useful skill set to have, even if the thought of acquiring it was a little scary. "It's good to know how to drive in those conditions, definitely. March might not be too bad, hmm. I guess time will tell anyway." Sarah smiled and looked at the handbook. "First thing's first, though, will have to study up and be ready for the written part before I can do anything else, which I can do now thanks to you!" She got to her feet, stretching a little bit. "Is there anything I can do to pay you back? Maybe I can buy you an ice cream or something sometime?"

“There’s a website listed on the back inside cover…or the last page before that, I don’t remember which,” Meggan pointed out. “I highlighted it in pink. They have sample questions for quizzing yourself if you want, stuff you might be seeing after each chapter.” She hadn’t seen all of them on the test she took, so maybe they switched out questions, like they switched out test cars. Just to be sneaky. “An ice cream cone sometime later would be nice, yeah.” It was the best way to beat the heat.

"Ooh, great, I'll have to check that out." Getting a sneak peek at some of the potential questions was definitely a good thing, even if they would be sneaky and not put all of them on there. "Awesome, then we'll definitely do that some time. I owe you one, thanks so much Meggan!"

“No problem,” Meggan smiled. “Just let me know if you need help with anything else—once you’ve done with the written, I mean.” She didn’t know what else she could find for Sarah to help with the written. At least there weren’t any essay questions to get prepare her for, just multiple choice—because that part would probably have something to do with how many gestures must be used to let each size truck go by for different circumstances, before discussing when and where to yield. That would make people stress even more, hoping for the right phrasing.

“Will do, definitely!" She picked up the driver's manual, flipping through it a little. Her mission in life was to assimilate all of that information into her brain as soon as possible. It was nice to have something to look forward to and to preoccupy her time now instead of worrying about nightmares. "Anytime you want to cash in on that ice cream, just let me know!"