Ariadne (building_dreams) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-14 17:21:00 |
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Even though it was only 3pm, Bee was tired. Her day had started at the crack of dawn, doing coursework until class started at 8am, and then it was a rush to get to the Soup Kitchen in time for lunch preparations. She hadn’t been able to volunteer for the past few days for more than a meal and she wanted to spend most of the day there. Between the two clinics, two shelters, and the orphanage she volunteered at, her time was spread thin. Classes certainly didn’t give her extra time considering it required two hours three days a week. Her life was in a constant state of motion and she thrived on it. After volunteering for the past two years, Bianca knew all the regulars with enough familiarity to call them friends. She even knew a fair number of the volunteers, either from her other commitments or her fellow students. Lunch went by easily and around clean up time, a new set of volunteers came in. They usually stayed to clean up and then re-set for dinner, doing a little food sorting in between. Bee was clearing off the tables and wiping them down when she heard the doors open. It was well posted when the serving times were, so when she looked over her shoulder and saw a man, she didn’t immediately think that he was there for a late lunch or an early dinner. “Hi,” she greeted warmly, leaving the sponge on the table and wiping her hand on her jeans before offering it to him. “I’m Bianca. Can I help you?” She wasn’t the Volunteer Coordinator for the Food Bank, but she certainly knew well enough where they’d need help and it seemed like Kate was busy with something in the kitchen. Cory had never been especially active in charities and benefits, not even in high school when that was all the college counselors wanted to talk about. Despite his tendency toward immobility when he was depressed--especially when he hit a dark spot and ended up mired in never ending doldrums--he was still not one to turn down people that needed him, and he found solace in things that made him feel needed. Entry-level jobs and manual labor didn’t give him even the slightest feeling of accomplishment or reward, but stupid things like checking to see if Evan showed up to his appointments did. He was looking like he could very well be one of the people that needed helping at the moment, though. The t-shirt, a black on red thing that read “EJECT PORKINS” was worn to near threads, and he was thin and pale in his old jeans and even older sneakers. He had managed to get himself out of bed, however, and showered for the effort. Cory tilted his head when he saw the brunette coming toward him. He recognized Becky’s little sister on sight, but probably because he hadn’t been able to get Becky out of his head since she died, and anything connected with her prompted immediate memories. He did not encourage her in a recognition likewise, however, not really wanting to discuss Becky outright, since the thought of her, her blood and her hair and the red pieces of her, made him simultaneously depressed and physically sick to his stomach. “Cory. On the journals,” he said, shifting to a stop in front of her. As soon as he introduced himself, Bianca’s smile grew and she held out her hand for him. “Fantastic, it’s great to see you,” she replied. It was always comforting when she was able to bring in volunteers, a sign that she was doing good. The more people she could bring in, the more people that could be helped. There was something sort of familiar about him but she chalked it up to her chatting with everyone she came across. “I’m glad you were able to make it. I could use some help clearing off these tables,” she suggested, already moving back toward the table she’d left her still damp sponge on. Bee knew cleaning tables probably wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind, but it was necessary. There was a second sponge on a small window that opened between the main area and the kitchens which Bianca grabbed after giving her’s to Cory. She went to the next table that needed wiping off - there were fifteen large round tables in all - and got to work. “Have you given any more thought to my suggestion about volunteering?” She hadn’t forgotten their conversation about his lack of employment. Volunteering was a good way to show productivity while looking for a job. How serious he was about finding a new job wasn’t something she knew but she’d certainly help him if he wanted it. He was close to her age, she guessed, but there was something about him that made her think that maybe he needed a little more help than just finding a job. Cory took Bianca’s hand in his own and gave it a brief, somewhat nervous shake. His fingers were loose and his palm a little too warm, and he let her go almost immediately, averting his eyes so he wouldn’t see if he made a mistake with his first impression. He turned to face the table she indicated, the small black book and its pen visible in the back jeans pocket, and somewhat reluctantly began to venture off toward the window and the sponge. Cory didn’t do a lot of cleaning; his previous job had been dealing with cards, which were dirty but not visibly so. He watched her for a second and then, taking his sponge, mimicked her movements on another table. He made wide sweeping motions and tired not to make a mess of his shirt. “I guess,” he said, shrugging. “Some other people were giving me tips on a resume, and stuff.” He wasn’t going to admit that he hadn’t exactly done much job shopping. He was having a hard time caring about getting a job, which made the search almost nonexistent. “You don’t have one?” Her smile only grew at his nervous handshake, finding it rather endearing that he was nervous around her. There was nothing to be nervous about as far as she was concerned so she did her best to not make it worse for him. It was clear that cleaning tables wasn’t something he did very often but it wasn’t rocket science and he’d get the hang of it in a moment so long as he wanted to put forth a little effort. He was doing a decent enough job of it, from what she could see out of the corner of her eye. “Did you find their advice to be helpful?” she asked, content to carry on the conversation about him. “How long have you been looking?” When he asked about hers, Bianca chuckled. “Not formally, no. I’m still working on my masters at UNLV. I go to class three days a week, intern two and a half, and volunteer whenever I can. I should be done by the end of the year,” she replied, more than willing to share about herself. “I prefer this to my internship honestly. I feel much more useful here as opposed to in the DA’s office as just an intern, but my hope is that I’ll be able to help once law school is finished.” Bee gave him another smile. “What do you do?” Cory wasn’t naturally a nervous person, but he wasn’t the best at meeting people and he preferred to get introductions out of the way as soon as possible. He found it interesting, if not exactly surprising, that she didn’t recognize him right off. He thought about it as he swiped the sponge over the table, watching the little soap bubbles pop. It was probably better that she didn’t. It’s not like he wanted to bring back any bad memories. He had enough of those to go around. He realized she’d asked him a question and looked up blankly from what he was doing. “Do?” He obviously didn’t have an immediate answer. Cory didn’t do anything, as everyone was constantly telling him. He seemed to have forgotten her earlier questions regarding his job search but that was fine. She just took that to mean that he didn’t want to talk about it and she wouldn’t push considering he was here. That was making an effort as far as she was concerned which was more than what most people were willing to do. Her thoughts drifted to Becky then, wondering what it would have been like if she’d made an effort to behave more appropriately. She pushed it away though, because now was neither the time nor the place to be thinking about her older sister. “Yea, like what you do every day? Or the kind of job you’re looking for,” she clarified. “I don’t have an extensive network, exactly, but there are all sorts of people who volunteer here.” Okay, maybe she was pushing a little bit, but it was all in an effort to help him and there certainly couldn’t be anything wrong with that. Cory was selective about his short-term memory. He wasn’t eager to broadcast how lame he was to “new” acquaintances, even if he wasn’t exactly trying to impress. “I don’t do anything. Games, sometimes. I read some stuff.” He squeezed out his sponge, wandered over to a bucket, and dunked the sponge in antibacterial solution and went on to another table. “I don’t actually need help. I just need some lame nine hour thing. I don’t care what it is. Something to get my parents off my back.” He took a breath, spit the air out again in a huff, and then shifted a different direction for a new table. He scrubbed at it and it felt pointless even as he did it. “You don’t really need help. I mean, you could totally do this.” He threw the sponge at the bucket in a show of pointless temper. “That’s not all that bad.” It definitely sounded like he was more of a recent graduate or a college student, waiting for a job in a market that wasn’t all that receptive to inexperienced recent grads. Bee glanced at him again and tried to determine how old he was. Twenty-four? Younger? Guessing someone’s age had never been her strong suit so she gave up after a few minutes. When she was finished with her table, she turned and watched him as he started on another table. “If you don’t care what you do, I think there’s a good chance you could get a copy job. I print out all my fliers at this print shop a few blocks away that just lost one of their employees. It’s not the most glamorous, but it’s a job.” Her eyes narrowed slightly when he threw the sponge into the bucket. She didn’t think she’d done anything to warrant his temper but she also didn’t think he’d take kindly to her asking if there was something wrong. “I enjoy helping people,” Bee said quietly, watching him carefully. “Volunteering can be rewarding for some people, but it isn’t for everyone. It’s all about finding out what makes you happy.” Cory wasn’t stupid. He knew very well that there were expectations for people his age that he wasn’t meeting, but working out of it, trying to find a trivial job he hated just so he could get yet another job he hated, seemed almost impossible. The last few weeks had been like the ones after Becky died, days when he just stared at the ceiling and thought about her, what she would be doing, the things she used to laugh at, stupid stuff like that. Getting out of bed and facing the idea that he was a small speck facing a pointless storm of other small specks was just too much. He looked at the wet tables and saw only that they would only get dirty again, and better people than him could keep them clean in the interim. He gave her a sour look under the floppy fringe that made him seem so young. “I can’t think of anything that makes me happy. So then what?” Bee offered him a warm smile, not at all put off by his behavior. It felt a little bit like talking to a petulant child and she wasn’t a stranger to dealing with those types of people. Granted, she was used to it from literal children, but there had to be a reason why he was acting the way he was. It sounded at the very least like he might be depressed, but broaching such a topic would need tact since it was such a delicate matter. She moved over to the table he was standing near and took a seat, crossing her arms on the still wet table and looked up at him. “That just means nothing you’ve done so far is what you want to do. Maybe you just need to try new things, even if it might be a little uncomfortable at first. It’s a difficult thing to decide to do, and a bit more difficult to keep true to it, but there are plenty of people around here that would be willing to help.” There was something about him, that kicked puppy look, that made him seem so familiar but Bianca still couldn’t place his face. “If there’s really nothing you could think of,” she started, a small amount of disbelief in her tone, “then I would absolutely suggest trying new things. Go out to a club and dance, go to a bookstore and ask for a recommendation and read it in the park, even wandering down Las Vegas Boulevard and having conversations with passersby or going into shops just because something looks interesting could be informative. At the very least, you might make a few more friends.” Cory backed up a step when she came nearer. He wasn’t all that good at confrontation, and while he could be loud and opinionated, he usually railed at people that ignored or placated. He had a feeling Bianca wouldn’t do either. He looked down at her with a sense of dislocation. What was he doing here? “I’m not a good friend,” he said, shortly, as if this one argument would brush all of her other suggestions aside and prove them impossible. He rubbed at his forehead, scratching at his hairline, and then finally turned away in a restless movement half-pace, half-sway. He couldn’t decide which way to go, or even if he wanted to move. “I bet you make friends all the time, handing out things and jumping out of bed to say, ‘hooray, I’m going to help people,’ but I’m just not like that. People don’t depend on me for stuff.” Anymore, he added, silently. “You could become one,” she countered easily enough. “It’s a learning process, Cory. It takes time.” She tilted her head to the side when he turned away from her and Bee wondered if he was going to walk away and give up. She was pleasantly surprised when he didn’t. “Actually, making friends used to be really difficult for me. I was that annoying kid that always knew all the answers in school and it didn’t help that I didn’t have the best role model.” Bianca sounded almost upset by it, but she pushed the thought away and smiled. “But then, I moved to New York to live with my uncle and I made a few friends. Those friends got me a few more friends and I found my passion in helping people.” She paused for a moment, debating on whether or not to say anything else on the matter for the moment, but she decided not to, waiting to see how he’d react to that. Cory searched his memory. He vaguely remembered Becky mentioning her sister here and there, almost always in negative terms,and he’d gotten the impression she was a know-it-all. In the end he hadn’t cared all that much. He remembered seeing her at the funeral, but no one had said anything directly to him, probably because he’d still been in a wheelchair at the time. He raised holy hell when they said he couldn’t go at first. These thoughts smoothed his expression, and when he surfaced from them, his mouth had relaxed and his steps stilled. “Not the best role model,” he repeated, making a little soundless laugh through his nose. She took his brief silence to mean that she was finally getting through to him, that maybe he was beginning to see that it wasn’t nearly as hopeless as he made it out to be. His back was still to her but she could see the slightest change in his body as some of the tension drifted away. That was only further evidence that she was right, that he was coming around, but she realized just how wrong she was when he did reply. Her back straightened, tension starting to coil within her. Becky had been the worst role model as far as Bianca was concerned, but the way he said it just didn’t sit right with Bee, leaving her feeling a little defensive. “No, she wasn’t,” she said after a moment, doing her best to quell the slight warning her tone was taking. “But, like I said, I moved to New York and that set me on this path. I probably wouldn’t be doing what I am today if it wasn’t for my sister.” That much was absolutely true, but seeing as he didn’t know her sister, he probably wouldn’t read into her words. It was probably the unspoken warning that did it. Everyone but Evan was on eggshells about Becky around him, and it made him want to break things. Cory turned around, pinned Bianca with a resentful glare, and shifted his weight forward like a horse at the gate. “Oh yeah? Why, because you had to end up so much better than her? Being alive wasn’t enough?” It was a horrible thing to say, but Cory was too angry to really notice. Shock coursed through her first as she froze. She hadn’t told him that Becky was dead, she was absolutely sure of that. “What do you know about my sister?” Bianca hissed, pushing herself off the chair to face him. Looking him over critically, as best she could with the tears starting to form at least, she recognized him. Her hand flew before she even registered it, slapping him hard across his cheek which left her hand stinging afterwards. It was worth it as far as she was concerned. “Don’t you ever talk to me about my sister again.” There were very few things that angered her but Cory was one of those things. He’d fed Becky’s addiction, made her worse, and although it had been a surprise to discover that Becky had been stone cold sober, it was really just a matter of time. Bee hated herself for thinking that, hated Cory for making her remember. Her lip trembled and she tried not to cry because she was not going to give him the satisfaction. Cory hadn’t really ever been hit before. There had been some tussles, the boyish things that happened when you just didn’t like that kid that stole your Transformer, but nothing all that violent. The slap didn’t actually hurt but Cory was stunned that anyone would actually lay hands on him. He fell back two steps and put his hands up to his face, eyes wide, mouth open. He took in a breath that was not outrage but surprise--and then the anger came back. He sputtered without words, outraged that she should take the high path. He tried to come up with something, accuse her of not being grateful enough, not treating Becky’s memory like she deserved, but he couldn’t form the words. In the end he just dropped his hands, glared at her, and then stalked out of the cafeteria, kicking the door shut as he went. |