you know I love scandal / tell me / what you waiting for? Who: Gretel/"Penny", Cole, Keelin, Crowley, Rico, Mason, Karen McAllister (NPC), Jenna Whitmore (NPC), OPEN. When: Lunchtime Where: SOHS, lunchroom What:It's all fun and games -- until someone hits an artery. Note: Side threads allowed to anyone in the lunchroom. Watch out for the broken glass.
Generally, Gretel had strong feelings about lunch.
In all fairness, Gretel had much stronger feelings about dinner and equally powerful opinions on the subject of breakfast, but lunch was still—relevant. For one thing, the meal itself had somehow become fiendishly American sometime in the 19th century and Gretel was awfully fond of culinary evolutions.
Lunch in the company of teenagers in a lunchroom, of course, was in a class all its own.
Heh. Class. High school. That was kind of fu—Gretel sighed. She poked her lunch in an effort to distract herself, picking apart the soft “blossoms” (recycled potato burger buns leftover from last night’s dinner) with her fork. It had a smiling frog on it.
Some days Gretel seriously doubted the path her life was taking.
Out of the corner of her eye, she scanned the Ziploc bag in the middle of the table. It was already half empty, crumbs and sprinkles strewn around from people constantly, absentmindedly reaching in for another cookie. The chewy treats were loaded with chocolate chunks, rolled oats, crushed pretzel, and a few more...special ingredients. The perfect combination of chewy, salty, sweet, and mood alternating. In lieu of yesterday’s unfortunate scenario, however, Gretel had kept the potion formula light.
“—was totally out of it. I mean, I heard he was babbling when they pulled him out of the car.”
Gretel looked up, plastic fork in her mouth. Across from her, Jenna rolled her eyes and broke her cookie in two. “As if. He was unconscious when the paramedics got there, I doubt he was doing a lot of talking. The front of his car was completely squashed.” She popped one half of the cookie into her mouth, pushing it behind her cheek. Gretel was reminded of a glossy squirrel. “Ten bucks says he was sloshed.”
A chorus of obviously passed around the crowded table. There were some additional verdicts (high and hangover) but overall Robert Jordan’s sentence in the court of public opinion seemed decided. Gretel popped a grape tomato between her teeth and felt remarkably peaceful.
The feeling didn’t budge even when Jenna kicked her foot under the table and asked, “What about your dad, Penny? Did he mention anything about it?”
“Nah-uh,” Gretel said. “But we, like, see him for thirty second each day since the hospital is in, like, major overdrive with all the,” she wiggled her fingers, black and yellow nails flashing, “y’know. The bridge thing.”
“That sucks,” Jenna said. She bit into the second half of her cookie. “Hey, did you guys hear about the drama club? They’re thinking about a Vegas float a la Shakespeare. Is anybody else imagining Lady Macbeth as a pole dancer?”
And that, Gretel thought, was that. A spark of calamity, a momentary diversion, and then the gentle, numbing wave of normality rolling in over the troops. It was all rather calculable. Easy. Deadening.
Ah, well.
“What did you do?”
The voice cut through the lunchroom’s thrum like a needle pushed through skin. Gretel looked up and there was Karen, little earnest Karen of the Starbucks fame, staring at her with a look on her face that made Gretel distinctly…awake.
“What did you do, Penny?” Karen asked. “Because it must’ve been something impressive to make him let you into his car again. It must have been damn convincing. So, what did you do to him?”
Nobody was paying attention to them, yet. Gretel turned slightly away from the table, bracing the tips of her sneakers against the floor to angle her chair back a little. There was danger here; Gretel could read it stamped across the girl’s posture, her tense skin, the seam of her mouth.
“I think you’re confused, Karen,” Gretel said in Penny’s marshmallow voice. “Rob had an accident. It sucked, yeah, but it was just an accident. We’re all totally miserable about it. If you, like, wanna sit down and talk about it...” She smiled tentatively, pretty and harmless, and reached into the Ziploc bag. “Cookie?”
Karen slapped the cookie out of Gretel’s hand. That got them noticed. The table's chatter dimmed, eyes turning to the show in progress. Nobody looked worried, though on the other side of the table Jenna’s face sharpened in distrust. Good work, that one; the remedies and charms floating in her system were a Gretel's chef-d'oeuvre.
Mademoiselle Karen on the other hand...There was an unwholesome flush on her neck and a shine of sweat that, Gretel’s nose twitched, exuded the subtle scent of muscovado sugar. Any witch worth her salt would recognize a potion overdose gone wrong. She’d been plying the silly chit for days with mille-feuille, a spell of coercion neatly spread between the pastry layers; she had meant to smother the girl’s suspicions in cream and sugar. Clearly, the recipe needed work.
Because along with the smell of sweetness and failure Gretel also noticed the way one of Karen’s hand remained pressed to her side, the line of some object obscured by her skirt.
Gottverdammt!* Gretel silently cursed the recipe and her own unpredictable memory. It couldn’t even get this right.
“What did you do?” Karen repeated. “Just—just tell me. I wasn’t even allowed in to see him in the hospital, they were only letting in family. I saw his mother sitting outside in the parking lot. She was crying.” The girl’s voice trembled, then broke. “Please. Just tell me what you did to him. Tell me what you did, Penny.”
Behind her Gretel heard someone, the tall girl with the blue hair maybe, say, “Hey, I think she has a,” just as Gretel looked up and said in her own, true voice: “No.”
Karen’s expression—broke.
Everything got very confusing after that. There was a shout, a lot of shouts, and someone pushed away from the table fast enough to send their chair tumbling. People were rising out their seats to get a better look.
There was the wink of a blade—
—Gretel was on her feet, the chair biting the back of her knees—
—Jenna screamed—
—Gretel’s hand scrambled across the table, searching—
—and an American History: Civil War to New Deal slammed into Karen McAllister’s jaw. It rocked her back, and Gretel used the hardcover’s momentum to land a hit to the girl’s temple. It landed with vicious satisfaction and Karen fell against the table. The box cutter was still in her hand.
Gretel looked down and saw her blood making a red mosaic on the floor, trailing down the history book in thick lines. Little twit must’ve caught an artery: lucky. Something turned within Gretel’s chest. How long had it been since she’d seen her blood rise uninvited? Even in spells gone wrong, the wounds were to be expected. This was nothing like that. She hadn’t been successfully hurt by another since…since…
Since Marlow. Since her husband tried to kill her.
“Huh,” Gretel said, that something unclenching inside her, and then one of the cafeteria windows exploded.