A New Lunch Spot

Who: Herbert and Leija
When: lunchtime
Where: outside

Avoiding people had become something of an art form. Specifically, Thom and Isaac. And Isaac's sister, just in case. As well as the other members of the band. In fact, Leija had quite a list going of people that she tried her best to dodge all day long. Between classes it wasn't really difficult, but lunchtime ... she and Thom had the same lunch period. Even though they'd texted during the vampire crisis, she didn't know at all if that constituted them as friends -- yeah, right -- or if she was even allowed to text him ever again, if lives weren't in danger. She wanted to know how he was, but thought that asking was probably a really bad idea on her part. And certainly not in school with witnesses around. So, Leija had more or less taken to eating lunch outside. She usually brought it anyway, and it wasn't too hard to find spots where people weren't sitting.

She'd brought peanut butter and jelly, though she hadn't touched it yet. She sat with her legs crossed, the hood of her jacket up against the slight chill in the air, and stared out at the grass, mind sort of all over the place.

Today Leija had, unintentionally, taken Herbert's usual spot. He'd been running a bit late, having had to make apologies to his previous teacher after class for why he had turned in only half of his homework completed. It only seemed right, after all, to explain why he hadn't done a proper job of it. So he'd gotten out to lunch a bit late, and there was a red-headed girl sitting where he usually did.

Which was fine, unless she didn't want company. Herbert headed on over, catching the scent of peanut butter and jelly and feathers and fire and oh, hey, he knew that person!

"Leija?" he asked as he came up behind her. Then he grinned, holding up his own lunch, and commented, in perhaps the randomest observation ever, "You've got the same lunch as me."

She jumped a tiny bit, startled to hear her name through her reverie, and looked up. ... way up. Leija squinted and lifted a hand to shield her eyes. He looked familiar, where did she know him from? Somewhere where he knew her name, obviously ... oh! "Hi. Herbert, right?" she said, since she wasn't absolutely sure on that one anyway. She glanced at his paper bag and smiled a little. "Well it's a good old standby, as long as you put the peanut butter on both sides of the bread." Which yes, was also random, but the only true way to make pb&j.

"Keeps the bread from getting soggy from the jelly," Herbert said, as if it was only natural, nodding to her remembering his name. Really, it was pretty miraculous that he'd remembered her. Maybe the unique scent combined with the unique name had somehow made it stick. "You mind if I join you?" He could find someplace else to sit. But he'd really rather not.

Leija almost said yes, even though she didn't really have a reason to. She was just wallowing in her own self-created confusion anyway, and maybe she should stop. "No, go ahead," she said, scooting over even a little on the grass, despite there being plenty of it around. She looked down at her sandwich and considered that maybe she should probably eat it now.

"Thanks!" He settled himself down, cross-legged, and added, "You can share my carrot sticks, if you like, just for being so nice and all." He was smiling, teasing her a little. He hadn't seen her... pretty much at all, since the mine thing. Maybe in passing, but not that he'd noticed. It was good to see she'd come out of things okay. They didn't exactly know each other well, and he'd only really thought of her in passing, which made him feel a little bad, now that he thought about it. "How've you been?" he asked, opening his own lunch. He had to eat, or he'd be in trouble later.

She took a breath to answer, and then stopped to chuckle. How had she been? That was kind of the question of the year, wasn't it? "Kind of ... all over the place," she said in a bout of pure honesty. He just seemed like the kind of guy you were honest with. All big and ... with offered carrot sticks. One of which she took when they were out and take-able. Leija then took a bite of her sandwich. She only knew him from the mine-thing, really, and the part of that that had involved other people had mostly been eclipsed in her mind with all kinds of other shit. She looked over at him. "You?"

The first thing he got out were the offered carrot sticks, in fact, offering the bag to her first and then setting it on the grass between them. "Y'know? Kind of about the same... there's just been so much stuff going on." Mostly bad stuff. Which made for "all over the place" kind of being mostly "down and/or stressed", which would probably have been more accurate, but also more depressing. He popped a carrot stick into his own mouth to crunch while he pulled out his sandwich. At least plenty of peanut butter made him feel better, in most cases, even if it was only temporary.

Leija munched contimplatively on the carrot stick, looking out down the grassy hill. "Yeah, stuff is one word for it," she said wryly, picking up her soda. "Makes me think I've completely forgotten what it felt like to be on an even keel." If he was involved in the mine bullshit at all, she figured that he probably knew a thing or two about, well, everything, but that didn't mean she was going to blatantly talk about it. Caution was a hard habit to break.

"Aw, now, I'm not so sure about that," Herbert protested gently. "Once things settle down, I bet you'll figure it out just fine." That's what he was counting on, anyway. He shot her a smile, but it came out a bit sad. "Just need things to settle down first, eh? No v... er. Nobody destroying the town, nobody dying, or no weird dreams and vanishing places--" Not that he ever learned much about where she and everyone vanished to, really. Or if he had, he'd quite forgotten. "No friends' houses burning down." The last made him frown unhappily, even more than the rest, but he rallied bravely. "But once there's been some calm for people to rest, I bet everyone'll feel at least a little better."

Easy for him to say when he didn't deal with strangers' deaths on a near-daily basis, but she didn't bring that up. It wasn't really the kind of thing one talked about over peanut butter. Leija caught where he stopped himself from saying 'vampires' and chuckled very softly. "No vampires," she said quietly, glancing over and up at him again. "That's a plus. ... you knew the people who's house burned?" Because that had caught her attention on the news as well, most definitely. She was beginning to think this town was just ... bad.

Giving her a look of relief that he didn't have to lie to her about the vampire thing, he nodded-- first in agreement, then in sad confirmation. "Sammy and Geo, they're good friends of mine... they have to stay with their sister. They're both fine, but they... lost their parents." The last was said at nearly a mumble, and he went back to his peanut butter and carrots for a moment after. He'd wound up writing his pa the day before, and put the letter in the mail on his way to school, because of that. He certainly didn't want anything to happen to either of them without everything out in the open. He just hoped his pa didn't decide he needed to be shipped home right away.

Leija looked at the side of his face for a moment, and then away again. As with Lullaby's death, she wasn't really sure how to handle the grief of others, even if it was by proxy for Herbert. "Sorry to hear that," she murmured. Burning to death? She'd seen personally that it was a very unpleasant way to go. She hoped in a vague manner that the smoke inhalation got them before the flames did. She looked at her sandwich again. That bout of appetite had been brief.

Maybe this wasn't a very good subject for a lunch conversation. Herbert, fumbling for something a bit better, asked, "So how are you and-- and. Uh. Thom, wasn't it? That boy you're dating?" Damn, he was so bad with names, sometimes. Even though Thom had actually texted him the other day. He thought it was Thom. He was also blissfully unaware that they had broken up. Today was just his day for bringing up bad subjects.

Though her face stayed mild and thoughtful, her damnable cheeks reacted, splotching red at the unexpected question. Funny, she would've thought that people five states away would know by now, with the way the rumor mill worked in the school. Her eyes ticked off to one side. "Not anymore, we broke up," she said. And knew she should probably add something to that to make it a bit less awkward, but couldn't think of anything. Do you ever wonder if you're genuinely a horrible person? Somehow she didn't think so.

"Oh. Oh, no, I'm sorry, I had no idea...." Now Herbert felt a bit like an idiot. He really ought to have known that, the way people talked-- he'd just not been paying attention, apparently. Or maybe the vampire thing eclipsed it all. And here he'd brought it up, like a boor, and she was all embarrassed. Curse it. "Sorry, uh. Wow. Really put my paw in it, that time, didn't I."

"No, it's okay," she said, attempting to shake it off. It wasn't like the whole freaking world cared about her drama anyway. She'd just really hurt someone who didn't deserve it, and she still felt like a total shit for it, despite the recent ... developments with Caleb. Leija looked at him and dredged up a faint smile. "It was just one of those th-- ... wait, your paw?" Cue confusion.

Oh, he was really racking up those points today, wasn't he. Looking faintly embarrassed, he answered, "Uh, picked up that saying from my ma...." Entirely true. Since that's where he got the werebear nature from. "I mean, look at these. They look like big ole' bear paws." He held up a hand as evidence. He still felt like he was lying, though. He hated that. But though Leija might know about vampires, that did not automatically mean she was happy to be eating lunch with a bear.

Her eyes ticked to his hands. She didn't quite buy it, but didn't push, because, well ... it was rude, and she didn't feel up to trading 'what are you' secrets today. So instead she lifted her own hand and held it up to his, palms close but not quite touching, to compare size. Yes, definitely paw-ish. Her hand was dwarfed. "My dad would try to recruit you to play piano with a reach like that," she said with a faint chuckle and a smile.

Maybe if they knew each other better... but definitely not now. Definitely, definitely. "Your dad?" he asked. Much better topic of conversation, seeing as there was no past tense-- her dad was alive-- and there was a smile-- which meant he wasn't a taboo subject. Perfect! "What does he need piano players for?"

"To mold and shape in his own image," she said with a little nose-wrinkle. Then clarified. "He teaches music over at the college. Classical theory, the Russian masters, all that. I picked up analyzing musician-potential in hands from him." Which in a roundabout way made her think of Thom's hands, which just wasn't any good at all.

"Ooooh... I'm afraid I'm not the least bit musical," Herbert said apologetically. Or maybe a little teasingly-apologetically, trying to lighten the mood some more. "I actually didn't even have any music until my friend Peyton made me borrow her iPod and then made me some, I'm that unmusical." And then he'd given it all to Geo. Which made him feel better, actually; he really wasn't using it much, himself. And Peyton hadn't been upset, either, which was a good thing....

Leija arched a bit of a surprised eyebrow at that, and chuckled. "That's pretty damn unmusical," she agreed, though didn't sound like she thought it was a terrible thing. Completely foreign to her, maybe, but to each their own and all that crap. "That'll be a good defense if my dad ever sees your hands. Which ... I can't ... imagine a scenario in which he would, but still. Good to have a plan against fanatical teachers." She nodded as though that made perfect sense.

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever meet your fanatical-teacher-dad." As she said, probably pretty unlikely, but that was okay. He doubted he had the brain for piano any more than he had the brain for algebra, though he would admit it sounded pretty, now and then. "So are you gonna say I'm unnatural and be all appalled, too?" Herbert grinned easily at her, teasing, since she obviously hadn't yet. "So far everybody I've told I don't have any music has pretty much thought I was crazy."

"I don't have any room to call anybody crazy for pretty much anything," she said lightly, smiling a bit easier at him. "I think you're missing out, but I was weaned on the stuff, so ... I'm a bit biased. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing." She shrugged a shoulder. Then realized way belatedly that he'd mentioned Peyton's name, and smiled again. "I know Peyton too." And it sounded very much like her to lend out her iPod.

"I think everyone knows Peyton," Herbert laughed. "Spirits bless, I mention her to anyone, and they all say, 'Oh, I know her!' Not that that's bad," he hastened to add after a quick bite of his sandwich-- which he'd somehow managed to almost finish, despite the conversation. "She's a sweet girl. Are you good friends?" He liked to consider he was fairly good friends with Peyton. She'd made him music, after all. And he'd let her trounce him soundly at video games-- not that he'd had much choice in the matter, really. And he'd helped her to the nurse after a seizure. Good times.

Leija would tend to agree with that sentiment. Peyton was just that kind of girl. She decided a touch randomly that she liked the phrase 'spirits bless'. "Yeah, we're pretty good friends," she answered, trying a bite of her own food again, since he was almost done with his. At least, she considered Peyton one of her good friends, but that might be relative, since she really only had like ... two. It kind of made a statistics difference. "You guys?"

Quite possibly surprising to Leija, once he popped his last bite of sandwich into his mouth, he pulled out an apple and gave it a little polish on his sleeve before considering where to bite into it. And there was more where that came from, too. "I like to think so. She's one of those ones who thought I was crazy for the no-music thing, so she made me some. That sounds very much like a friend-ish thing to do, don't you?" An above-and-beyond friend-ish thing, too. He didn't really want to mention the seizure thing, he didn't know if Peyton would appreciate it, as she'd seemed so embarrassed... so he didn't.

"I'd say so," she said with a soft little chuckle and a small smile. She noted the voracious appetite but didn't really think much of it. Maybe it was a stereotype, but she tended to think that big guys ate a lot. It was just the way of things. She wasn't sure to go from there conversation-wise. It was always a touch awkward to try and make conversation with near-perfect strangers for her, whether they knew some of the truths of the world or not. So she nibbled at her sandwich and his carrots.

Really, for a few minutes, Herbert was content to sit quietly and eat. Company didn't have to be chatty company for him to enjoy it. He finished up the apple before he spoke again, looking over at her with a tilt of his head. "So how long have you lived in Marquette?" It seemed a standard question, and really, given how many people he'd met who were new to town-- and his admitted curiosity as to why so many not-human-people had been drawn here-- it seemed appropriate, too.

"Ah ... a few months?" she suggested, looking over again with a raised eyebrow. "Kind of in the middle of summer. I'm bad with timeframes, but it hasn't been a really long time." Even though it had been packed to the gills with ... everything. Good and bad and their extremes and middle ground. No wonder she felt so fucking tired a good chunk of the time. "You? Are you from here?" She'd kind of found it was half-and-half, natives and immigrants to this weird fucking town.

Another new one. Another new one who at least knew about supernatural stuff, whether she was of it or not-- he didn't recognize her scent as being anything in particular he'd already come across, but that didn't really mean anything. Huh. "Sounds about like me, I showed up... you know, I don't know, either, exactly," Herbert mused. "Something like a month before school started. I'm actually from Canada." He jerked a thumb towards the north and west. "Basically the middle of nowhere." Not that he minded; he sounded pretty cheerful about being from "the middle of nowhere", really.

Leija smiled faintly. Yeah, she'd been to the Middle of Nowhere, Canada, before. Once for a tractor accident that was pretty horrific, but she didn't dwell on that. "It's beautiful country, I hear," she said, even though she knew firsthand. She tended to enjoy wide open spaces more than anywhere else, as interesting as the cities were. There was just ... so much freedom and privacy there. "What brought you here?" The other standard question, but she found herself genuinely curious.

"I had to take off my last year of school, and I had itchy feet, so Pa suggested I finish up down here," Herbert answered simply enough. He knew people thought it a bit odd to just pack up and leave, but it seemed perfectly natural to him. It'd just been time to move. "Got to take a nice bicycle trip, see a lot of sights on the way down, and once I found someplace I liked, I stopped. The place wound up being here."

"You biked here?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. That was ... really hardcore. Color her impressed. "Like, all by yourself? You didn't have a place to live or anything when you got here?" She was assuming not, if he had just decided to stay in Marquette. She didn't think she'd heard anything so ... well, brave, in a way.

Herbert nodded at her first statement, then answered the last, "Nope, just randomly decided I liked it here, so I stopped." It smelled good. And it had Charlie in it, which, silly though it was, had been part of the decision. "I stayed in a tent for a while before things started getting, uh, weird outside... I've got an apartment with a friend, now. It's a bit safer than a tent, y'know."

Leija stared at him like he'd half lost his mind. As much as she flitted about the world, she couldn't even fathom picking up and leaving to go live in a tent in some strange town. "Yeah, I would imagine it's safer than a tent," she said slowly. " ... how old are you, anyway?" Because 'having an apartment' seemed like such a ... non-teenager thing to be able to say.

"Eighteen," Herbert answered readily, and a little distractedly. He'd hit dessert, now, some oatmeal cookies with a sprinkling of icing on one side. Mmmm. "Gonna be nineteen in March. I'm a senior this year-- obviously. Last year, and all." He shot her a glance as he took another bite. "You?"

"Seventeen," she answered, still feeling a bit awed even though he was technically an adult. Maybe they just grew 'em different in Canada. "Junior this year. Any idea what you're going to do after?" Because if he didn't know and he was about to do it, it might make her feel a little bit better about having absolutely no plan.

She was about to feel a little bit better, then, because "after" had yet to actually cross Herbert's mind. "Er. Not really? I hadn't thought that far ahead yet." He wondered if he should. It was a whole nine months, or so, until school got out-- that was plenty of time to decide, right?

That was a slight relief, as screwed up as it was. She smiled faintly and nodded. She knew what her dad had planned for her already, but if there was one thing that Leija was starting to see, it was that the world didn't give a flying fuck what your plans were. "Well, you've got time," she said, echoing his thought without knowing it. She finished off her sandwich and stuffed the plastic back into her bag.

Dredging up his cheer again-- even after the day he'd had so far, it didn't take all that much effort-- Herbert said, "That's what I figure, anyway. Might wind up sticking around here a while longer, I don't know." Depended, really, on whether the whole town decided to fall apart before the school year was out. Cheer, silly bear. Don't think about that. "Want one?" He offered her the last of his cookies.

The angel accepted it with a soft smile. He really was just a big sweetheart. One of those big teddybear guys. "Thanks," she said, taking a bite. It was good. At least, even with the world going to hell in a handbasket, there were iced oatmeal cookies. Leija ate it in silence and then glanced at her watch. The bell was nearly upon them, unfortunately. "Thanks for the carrots and stuff," she said, starting to gather up her stuff. She wanted to get past the cafeteria before it actually rang.

"You're welcome," Herbert said with a nod and a smile. That seemed a good idea to him, too: maybe he could get to his next class a little early. "You ought to feel free to come sit out here whenever, too. I don't mind company at all." He never did-- in fact, he preferred it-- and Leija was fairly nice company, for all he kept tripping up in what he brought up to talk about. At least now he knew.

Shrugging into her backpack, Leija aimed another smile at him. "Thanks," she said. She wasn't sure that she'd make it a regular thing -- sometimes she just wanted to sit and stare off into space, after all -- but it was kind of nice to have someone she could eat lunch with that wasn't ... tied up in all of her personal crap. "Have a good day, Herbert." She stood up and started off, pausing to toss her trash before she headed into the building.