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Post by Bri on Jan 24, 2024 22:30:27 GMT -6
Vaya stalked through the halls, the music in her ear buds blaring as she made her way to class, the last place she wanted to be. She swore the scar on her shoulder throbbed, as if it knew the significance of the day, of the bloody memory it held. She keep her eyes on the floor as she walked, most people steering clear of her as she went. She didn't want to be at this place at all but it wasn't like she could skip the day when her uncle was a teacher and would probably send out a search party to find her, worried for the worst. It was a bit softening to know her family cared about her but she also felt like a burden for her. Her hand drifted to her left forearm that was hidden by her sleeves, another memory bad choices spent across many days. Part of her felt trapped by the eyes of her family which only deepened her frustrations.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 25, 2024 18:28:52 GMT -6
Hayden had been looking for his cousin Jessie since this morning, finding it stupid that they didn’t share classes despite being in the same grade. Now he walked the halls hoping to spot her, writing in his notebook that he constantly carried around since most people didn’t know sign language. Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying attention well and ran into someone in the hallway, his notebook falling from his hands, his pen sliding across the floor. He opened his mouth to apologize, but nothing came out. No matter how much he tried, he failed to produce a sound.
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Post by Bri on Jan 25, 2024 18:49:51 GMT -6
The poor unfortunate soul who ran into her...on impact she stumbled back, ear buds falling to the floor. She whipped around to Hayden, glaring at him. "Watch where the fuck you're going." She snapped.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 25, 2024 19:49:24 GMT -6
Hayden stared at the girl, hearing her snap at him about running into her, and again he opened his mouth to apologize, but his brain and his voice weren’t connecting and only silence was heard. He grabbed his pen and his notebook, flipping to a new page, his hands moving quickly as he wrote.
‘Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. Are you okay?’
He gave her a small smile and a shrug, feeling bad about what happened, though he tried to let it go. For him, it wasn’t a big deal compared to what caused him to be mute.
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Post by Bri on Jan 25, 2024 20:08:10 GMT -6
Vaya was about to lay into him again when she saw his notebook, feeling like it cut a hole in her balloon full of anger. "Yeah," her shoulders slumped, "I'm fine, you?" She asked, looking down and picking her ear buds off the floor. "Sorry..."
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 25, 2024 20:51:13 GMT -6
Hayden shrugged, a small smile on his face as he went back to writing as she picked up her earbuds, people filing past them on their way to class.
‘I’m fine, just a reminder that I shouldn’t be walking and writing at the same time.’
He’d been warned several times not to, that something like this, or worse, would happen if he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going.
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Post by Bri on Jan 25, 2024 22:46:24 GMT -6
Vaya straightened, holding her ear buds in her hands and hoping that they weren't broken but from the way they rattled in her palms from her music they were apparently still functional. "Yeah...that probably isn't the best idea," she agreed, briefly wondering why he felt like he had to write in the first place since he was on his own apparently.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 26, 2024 20:10:42 GMT -6
Hayden stood there awkwardly for a second, unsure of what to say, but was saved by the bell ringing. Students started moving faster, running to classes to avoid being late. He smiled, waved his hand goodbye to Vaya, and headed for class, which was thankfully only two doors down from where they had collided.
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Post by Bri on Jan 27, 2024 1:37:45 GMT -6
Vaya frowned as she looked after Hayden, not sure what to think but flinched when the bell rang, the shrill sound catching her off guard. Reason said that she should be used to it and at times she was but at other times it was like a trigger, stabbing into her conscious, reminding her of the screams of students as they ran for their lives. For a second she was back in that gym, staring at her friends in disbelief then the image shattered and she was flashed back to the hall way, her stomach churning. She wanted to run but it wouldn't do any good. Vaya ran a hand through her hair before heading to class, stuffing her ear buds into her pockets as she walked into the classroom that Hayden had gone into. As usual her eyes stayed trained on the floor until she sat in her desk in the back corner by the window, dropping her binder on the desk and sinking into her chair.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 27, 2024 12:35:42 GMT -6
Hayden took a seat in the middle of the classroom, one desk away from the window. He could look out and not be obvious about it, and being at a middle desk meant he was less likely to be called on. He caught a flash of black and watched the girl he ran into walk in and take a seat in the back. He turned back to the front of the classroom as the final bell rang and the teacher cleared their throat.
“Alright everyone, we are going to be starting our projects today.”
The class groaned collectively, though Hayden couldn’t, and only slid slightly in his seat, hoping he was lucky and wasn’t paired with anyone, but he knew better.
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Post by Bri on Jan 27, 2024 14:38:28 GMT -6
Vaya glanced up when the teacher announced that they would be starting projects. She tried not to roll her eyes as the teacher started to pair up students apparently at random.
"And our last pair is...Vaya Jensen and Hayden Nardell. Use this time to plan out your projects, we'll use the rest of the week to get them ready and we'll start presentations next week." The teacher explained, passing out the instructions for the project then gestured for the students to move their desks together.
Vaya gathered her stuff, walking over to Hayden and putting her stuff on the desk next to his and pushed her desk against his like everyone else was doing with their partners. She sat down, looking over at Hayden, unsure what to say or how to act when she recognized him. She settled on giving him a little nod, "hey."
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 27, 2024 18:33:55 GMT -6
Hayden felt himself sink lower into the chair as the teacher started pairing off people, waiting for his name to be called, and worried who he’d be paired up with. When his name was finally called, his eyes wandered over to Vaya, and he realized who it was. He nodded slowly to her and wrote on his notepad.
‘Hey..’
He held it up and then quickly put it down to write something else, hating that she had to deal with having to talk to him like this.
‘So, a project.’ He said, giving her a weak smile, not sure what topic they should pick, hoping it wasn’t an oral report type.
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Post by Bri on Jan 28, 2024 23:35:05 GMT -6
Vaya looked at his notebook before leaning back in her chair, "why don't you use a whiteboard? Wouldn't that be easier?" She asked him, figuring it would be the same as carrying around a notebook and pen. "Yeah, a project." She said, taking in his smile, the expression making her feel a little stab of sadness, she glanced down at their instructions, frowning a little at the guidelines. "A project that has to be a powerpoint presentation..." she said slowly, glancing towards the teacher then back at Hayden. The idea of standing up in front of the class and presenting something made her want to throw up but instead of complaining she put a smile on her face, "so I'll present to the class and you'll be like my...Vanna White, what color sequins will you prefer for your outfit?" She joked.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 29, 2024 19:38:54 GMT -6
Hayden’s eyebrows shot up, his lips moving as if he would say ‘Ah!’ because he had the answer to that. He quickly wrote off the explanation as she talked, though stopped when she said someone named Vanna White, making him frown. He shook his head and quickly finished writing, almost taking up half the page already. He probably should upgrade to an Ipad or something to type on, but he liked the way his pencil went across the page.
‘So I started out with a whiteboard. Turns out, you get really dirty really quickly. The dust and flakes from erasing the marker constantly just gets everywhere, my clothes got streaky from it, and I would end up losing the eraser and using my hands or clothes. Mom wasn’t too happy about that.’
Hayden watched her read it, giving her a one-sided smirk as he thought about how angry his mom had been about having to deep wash his clothes and pray that it got the ink out. She would shake her head when he’d have the entire rainbow on his hands from the markers, and sometimes I was difficult to wash off.
‘P.s. Whose Vanna White?’
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Post by Bri on Jan 29, 2024 22:45:10 GMT -6
Vaya's eyebrows raised when his pen flew across his paper, peeking over and watching him write, nodding slowly when she finally got to read his message. "Oh...that makes sense," she agreed, "you got a stock pile of notebooks for when you run out then?" She asked jokingly but her smile dropped a little when he asked who Vanna White was. "You don't know Vanna White? She was the hot blonde lady on Wheel of Fortune, her whole job was tapping on the tv screens to show the letters for the puzzle, my grandpa and I would watch it all the time. Her whole thing was to gesture to stuff that the host was saying."
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 29, 2024 23:51:07 GMT -6
Hayden quickly put the notepad down on the able, holding it up to see his reply.
‘I have some notepads in case I run out pages.’ It took a long time to go through this stack of his if he kept the writing small enough. He frowned and shook his head at the name again, not recognizing it until she mentioned Wheel of Fortune.
‘Oh, she turns the letters on. I’ll totally do it.’
He used to watch the show with his own grandparents and thinking he could have fun showing off slides.
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Post by Bri on Jan 30, 2024 1:08:07 GMT -6
Vaya nodded, figuring he probably kept an extra one in his backpack or something just in case he lost his main one or filled it up without realizing he was running out of space. "Yeah," Vaya smiled, "she turns the letters," she said, starting to get a couple ideas, "I bet with the right formatting and evaluations we could make our powerpoint look like it's from the Wheel of Fortune." She said, figuring that if they played it up enough and could make it funny that they'd be bound to get a good grade, though Vaya was more interested in having fun over a high grade.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 30, 2024 11:49:58 GMT -6
Hayden nodded along, loving the fact they hadn’t picked a topic yet and was more focused on the design of it all. Hopefully doing it this way made it feel more equal to Vaya about the project, since some of his other partners felt it had been unfair that he couldn’t speak, and they’d have to do the entire presentation.
‘Shouldn’t be too hard to make a presentation look like. Match the colors, have the theme song playing softly in the background.’
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Post by Bri on Jan 30, 2024 16:33:00 GMT -6
Vaya nodded quickly, "yeah, I think we should be able to do it, you'll just have to make sure you get the gestures right." She joked then looked at the paper, scanning over the list of topics that they could choose from. "Is there a topic you really want to do?" She asked.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 30, 2024 18:00:16 GMT -6
Hayden thought about the topic, a moment in history according to the teacher. He wasn’t sure what everyone else was going to be picking for their project, but he hoped no one would do the same thing. He ran through his list of fun facts he liked to think about with history and stopped on one he hadn’t really looked into much, but he wasn’t sure how Vaya would react.
‘Bubonic plague?’
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Post by Bri on Jan 30, 2024 22:13:35 GMT -6
Vaya certainly hadn't been thinking of that for a topic but she wasn't put off, instead she grinned and nodded. "I think that's a sick topic, pun fully intended." She told him, opening up her notebook designated for class and writing that across the top of the page. "We can definitely make this work." She told him, for a second picturing him wearing a plague mask while she presented.
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Post by Kiersten on Jan 30, 2024 23:25:40 GMT -6
Hayden smirked at the pun, chuckling slightly, though it felt louder in his head than out loud. He pulled out a different notebook set aside for History and wrote that as the title for their project. He listed out what he knew about the plague already, things people already knew probably, and then started writing down questions he’d like to have answered himself.
‘Probably going to need the library or a computer to look up somethings.’
He figured they could head to the library to see what was on the shelves on the subject first, and then use th internet if there wasn't much to go on.
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Post by Bri on Jan 30, 2024 23:49:13 GMT -6
Vaya looked over at Hayden's note book, a bit surprised at how much he seemed to already know on the topic, which was way more than what she knew. All she knew was that people blamed rats for the disease when really it was the fleas on the rats and that it had killed a lot of people. "You sure about that? You seem to know a whole lot." She said but it wasn't mean in a mean way, just as an observation.
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Post by Kiersten on Feb 1, 2024 20:37:34 GMT -6
Hayden blinked at Vaya before looking down at his notebook, which was of course, filled with information, but also questions that he wanted to look up, and he liked double checking his information. He grabbed the notebook where he wrote messages for people and quickly wrote out his response.
‘I mean, I know some. But we should double check my information.’
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Post by Bri on Feb 1, 2024 22:07:36 GMT -6
Vaya looked down at his notebook and nodded, feeling like she had won the partner jack pot with how much he seemed to know. With his information and her having to present it felt like an even enough trade off. She didn't give a shit what other people thought, which made presenting all the more easy. "Okay, but this looks like a good place to start, this should be an easy enough project to get done."
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Post by Kiersten on Feb 2, 2024 21:18:08 GMT -6
Hayden nodded, knowing his childhood wonder of Robin Hood had made him deep dive into Medieval history and the rest was history. There was only one thing he was worried about, and that was making the power point. He wasn’t very good at using the program, basically taking a premade theme and changing pictures and titles.
‘I’m not very good at making PowerPoints.’
He knew she probably knew, since they had all individually presented one already, but he felt slightly bad that she got stuck with him. It sucked even more that he couldn’t speak, and while he knew that wasn’t his fault, it didn’t bring his voice back by accepting it.
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Post by Bri on Feb 2, 2024 22:33:51 GMT -6
Vaya looked at his note and smiled, "good thing you got me then. Not sound smug, but I'm pretty good at making them. We could probably find a premade theme that I could change up to match our topic and overall Wheel of Fortune theme." She told him, figuring that she could look into that while he did research or something like that. "Don't worry too much, I think we got this." She offered him a small smile.
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Post by Kiersten on Feb 3, 2024 10:37:54 GMT -6
Hayden nodded, suddenly thinking about the game show, though it had been years since he had watched it. His grandparents would have it every night, including those nights while babysitting Jessie and him, but the last night they had babysat them was when he was ten.
‘Can you watch Wheel of Fortune?’
He wasn’t sure if it was streaming anywhere, maybe watching the show while they gathered information could yield ideas.
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Post by Bri on Feb 3, 2024 12:45:23 GMT -6
"I'm sure it's streaming somewhere." Vaya replied, knowing it was streaming on Philo, having watched the show during times where she was feeling not so happy and needed something to numb her brain or have on while she read. She took out her phone, glancing at the teacher who wasn't paying attention and googled the question in a show of not being lame. "Google says Pluto or Philo has it."
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Post by Kiersten on Feb 3, 2024 22:28:10 GMT -6
Hayden watched as she pulled out her phone, checking to make sure the teacher was busy, before pulling up google. He watched the teacher so he could warn her in some way if she was heading their way, but she found out what she needed soon enough, and the teacher hadn’t move. He slowly nodded his head when she mentioned the two places.
‘Well, I know Pluto tv is free, but I think it’s because it’s got ads. I don’t have Philo.’
He slightly wished the show was on something like Hulu or Netfix, something he had that he could just stream from his phone onto his tv in his room.
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