Who: Sam and Jason When: Late afternoon, Friday, October 27th Where: The Point Pleasant library Status: Complete
Now that Sam had a costume, she was back to her normal routine, though she went about it with a light bounce in her step. Even if Ruth bailed on going, Sam still planned on getting to that party in Overlook, even if she had to walk the whole way. But today she walked to the Point Pleasant library, one of her favorite places to go when she was finished with her schoolwork back home. She had a couple books to return and planned on leaving with a few more to read. Sam had downloaded one of those lists, 100 Books to Read Before You Die, and while some of them she planned on skipping due to their content, a vast majority of the list was always crossed off, including the book titles she had returned today.
The library was a bit busy, which wasn’t unusual considering the high school had let out not too long ago. Sam wandered, searching for an empty table but it seemed like most were taken. She really didn’t feel like sitting on the floor, so she approached a table near the back of the stacks where just one boy sat, the other three chairs empty. Sam hesitated, feeling her whole body go hot with anxiety before she finally walked up to the table. “Do you mind?” she asked, motioning to the empty chairs across from him. “Everyone else is kind of full.”
Having the day off of school gave Jason extra time to study and stay ahead on homework. He didn’t like staying at home all day, so he had set out for the library, getting there early enough to claim an out of the way table for himself. It was one of the places around town he felt comfortable hanging out at indefinitely, since it was usually pretty quiet and if he finished his work he could just switch to reading.
He had his laptop open and a copy of Hamlet facedown on the table next to him, since he was working an essay for English that he kept blanking on when the question came. He blinked, turning his attention to the girl. She wasn’t anyone he recognized, which would make sense if she were an underclassman and not in any of his classes. “No, that’s fine,” he said, shifting some of his stuff so it was less sprawled in front of him to give her room, glancing around. “I’ve been here a while, so I didn’t notice it filling up.”
"Thanks," Sam said, feeling a sense of relief as she pulled back a chair to sit. She placed her bag on the table to pull out the books she needed to return and she couldn't help but let her gaze wander over the guy's things. "Did you like it?" Sam asked, gesturing toward Hamlet. "I read it last year, and... I just found it pretty hard to feel sorry for him." He was clearly working with his laptop up and everything, but Sam tended to get a bit excited when she saw someone reading a book, or play, she had already read. It seemed much easier to talk to strangers that way than to make awkward small talk, which she was pretty terrible at.
Normally Jason didn’t want to be interrupted when he was working, but he had already interrupted himself so it felt less like a big deal. He would have let the girl read quietly, if she wanted to be left alone, but since she seemed to want to talk, why not? He was mostly glad it was a directed question and not just general small talk, since Jason never knew how to handle that after more than a couple questions. “Yeah, I didn’t find him to be a very sympathetic character. He’s obsessed with revenge but really indecisive about it and then the whole thing just keeps dragging on,” Jason said, with somewhat of a rueful smile. “So, it’s not my favorite, but assigned reading and all that. What are you reading?” he asked, glancing at the books she pulled out.
"It was his fault everyone died, basically," Sam said with a small grin. "I don't even think it was really worth it, in the end. Everybody was destroyed, not just his uncle. But... tragedy isn't tragedy without multiple deaths, I guess. At least in Shakespeare's world." She glanced down at the two books she had pulled out of her bag. "I finished The Little Prince and The Giver. I've been sort of going through that list, '100 Books to Read Before You Die' which I know sounds pretty morbid, but I like the variety. I was going to see if the library had 'Frankenstein' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo' before I left. Have you read either of those?" She wasn't sure what the public schools had students reading for homework and she felt a little silly asking.
“Yeah, Horatio made it despite him, but that’s about it. The body count seems to be what gives it away as a tragedy for Shakespeare,” Jason said, since sometimes he didn’t read a lot of difference between Shakespeare’s comedies and the tragedies up until people started dying in one of them. The mention of the list wasn’t the sort of thing Jason really understood--as far as he could tell it was often a fairly arbitrary distinction that tended to rest upon the biases of the list writer, and assigned reading for school was bad enough. “I haven’t read ‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’ but I’ve read ‘Frankenstein’, since we had it for summer reading sophomore year. Did you not get assigned it?” he asked, assuming she was just in a different year than him, or maybe not on the AP track.
Sam shook her head, stacking the books on top of each other neatly to give herself something to do with her hands. "I don't get assigned things. I mean, I do, just not the way you do. I'm homeschooled," she admitted with a slightly sheepish smile. "I'm technically a sophomore, or I would be if I were in public school." Which sometimes she wished she were, but Mal needed her more. "I have required readings, but I've either already read them, or I read them pretty quick. Are you... a junior?" He looked older than she was, probably by a couple of years.
School was the place Jason had escaped to when he was a kid and even if he hated some aspects of high school, he had trouble wrapping his brain around having the kind of home life where homeschooling would have been an option. Maybe her parents were crazy religious or overprotective? It wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to assume. “I’m a senior,” he said. “So, not much more to go. English is admittedly my least favorite subject; I enjoy reading, but usually not what we’re assigned. Do you like being homeschooled? It seems like it must be less distracting in some ways.”
Sam remembered public schooling, before Mal came along. There were plenty of days she didn't go for whatever reason, and it had been difficult to make friends or focus, because of her dad. She knew it would be different now, but at the same time, she wasn't sure she would do well, or even fit in, if she convinced Mal to enroll her. "I'm used to it," Sam answered after a moment of thought. "I do like it, but sometimes I kind of wish I were in public school, just for the experience of it. It's definitely less distracting, but also... kind of lonely? If that makes any sense." Her cheeks felt warm, because it was possible she sounded like a loser. "What's your favorite subject? If English is your least?"
Jason could get that, given that the majority of his socialization really was based out of school, even more so before they had moved in with Jules and her mom. “Yeah, I don’t typically meet many people outside of school, or here, so I get it,” he said, unselfconscious about it since it just felt like a fact given that there were fairly limited options in Point Pleasant for meeting other people. “Chemistry, or Physics. There’s only so much you can fake knowing for either of them without it becoming really obvious, whereas I feel like in English you can end up BSing whatever you want to a lot of the time. Not that everyone’s that way, but class discussions kind of get tedious,” he said, then smiled. “Plus I’m not great at writing essays that aren’t technical in some way. Is English your favorite, or something else?”
Sam felt her face burn hot again before she laughed a little. "I actually do like English, yes. I mean, I'm... I don't have any classmates, so there's no tedious discussion. But I try not to BS my way through it. I actually like learning, which... probably makes me sound like a dork, but oh well." It would have been nice if she had some semblance of social skills outside of church. Sam always seemed to find it easier to talk to adults than other kids her age. But at least she was trying. Sam picked idly at the corner of one of her books. "Chemistry and Physics. Are you in advanced classes?" Sam considered herself fairly smart, but physics was something that always went way over her head, and she doubted she would actually ever get to learning it.
“I take classes pretty seriously--or very, compared to some of my classmates--, which I guess makes me kind of a nerd,” Jason said with a shrug. It wasn’t the sort of thing he really spent too much time thinking about, since it seemed like a dumb distinction to make and it wasn’t the sort of thing that bothered him. Then again, he was somewhat lacking in social graces, so he wasn’t really about to catch on to the quality of another person’s social skills and school was easy enough to talk about. “Yeah, I’m in mostly AP classes,” he said. “Are you able to do labs and stuff with homeschool?” That was one of the parts he probably liked most with school, even if there was only so much they got to do.
Sam was unable to keep herself from grinning. At least she wasn't the only nerd in Point Pleasant. She would have probably met more of them if she went to the high school. In almost a vague way, she wondered if she should ask Mal if she could go to public school, but she brushed it aside quickly. Things were good the way they were, right? "I can do labs at home, but I don't do them a lot, and it's usually just me. I mean, I can't do group stuff, obviously, and it would cost too much to try and do them at a local community college. I don't even know if this town has a local community college. Do you like doing any of the other stuff? The... sports and yearbook and... whatever else there is. There always seems to flyers in town for the football games."
Talking about school tended to be easier than some other things, since Jason chose to spend a lot of time on it. He smiled at the girl, realizing vaguely he didn’t know her name yet. “Yeah, there’s not a community college in town, so you’d have to drive a bit to even get to one,” Jason said. “I’m on the track team and sometimes the debate team.” The latter was currently a go, but he sometimes went in too hard on topics in a way that he was told wasn’t in the spirit of teamwork. “People make a big deal out of football, but it’s pretty overrated.” Not that he really knew how well or poorly the high school team was doing at any given moment. “Do you like sports or whatever?”
The extracurricular stuff sounded fun. Sam wasn't sure she would want to do sports, but the debate team, or the newspaper - if the school had one - would be something she knew she would enjoy. That was the thing about living in a small town and being homeschooled, there weren't a lot of community things she could get involved in for kids her age. "I... like whatever better than sports," Sam said as her cheeks turned red again, but she smiled. "I'm not very athletic, and I don't really get the rules of most sports so... I don't know, they just don't interest me much. I mean, I'm sure track is fun," she added hastily, as not to offend him. "Running... a lot. Are you any good?"
Track was something Jason had randomly been more into than he expected, but it wasn’t on the list of topics he took offense to. Really, he took offense more often to specific people and didn’t have any reason to really feel that way toward this girl, since she didn’t seem to be shallow or superficial or any of the other things Jason tended to be judgmental about. He grinned at her. “Yeah, other than track, sports aren’t really my thing and I can’t imagine it’s that interesting to spectate,” he said. Being on the team he could get kind of competitive about it, as he could with anything, but before that he hadn’t cared. “I don’t have the time to put into it to be the best at it, but I’m above average,” he said. “I’m Jason, by the way. What’s your name?”
She supposed sports might be fun to watch in person, but she didn't really know, having never done so. Occasionally she thought about asking Mal to take her to one of the high school football games, but she had just never gotten around to it. Track, though... watching people run in circles couldn't be very appealing, could it? "I'm Sam," she told him. "I can't say I've ever watched a track meet before. Are you going to do it this year too?" It was starting to get colder, and Sam figured track was something of a spring sport. But even in Maine, spring could be a bit chilly. "Have you ever won anything?"
“You’re not missing out on much, since they can sometimes take a while with the different events, but there’ll be meets in the spring if you decide you want to check one out,” Jason said. “And I will be. Might as well see it through to the end.” Really, he enjoyed it, even if he had started to do it with the intent to round out some of his extracurricular activities. He was pretty sure it was going to play no bearing on his college admittance, at any rate. “No, not really, though my times have improved over the years. I usually end up around fourth or fifth in the events I do,” he said, since there didn’t seem to be any reason to exaggerate his running abilities. “So other than reading, what does interest you? Since we established not sports,” he said, smiling a little at Sam.
Sam nodded, because the invitation was nice, even if she had no idea what would be happening in the spring. Things could be so unpredictable sometimes. And track sounded a little boring, but that didn't mean it couldn't be more exciting if she was witnessing it herself. His question prompted her cheeks to warm a little, because reading was pretty much all that interested her besides Mal. Maybe that would change if she met some new people. "I like taking walks around town," she admitted after a moment, when she couldn't think of anything more exciting. "I feel like there's always something new I'm finding, and Point Pleasant has an interesting history. I really like the marina. I'll watch movies sometimes but a lot of my time is spent helping Mal, he's my adopted dad, with the church. What about you? Besides a lot of studying and running," she asked with a grin.
The spring was far enough off that who knew what would happen, but Jason hadn’t thought out too much about the general invitation. Though he wasn’t always the most adventurous person, he did believe in people trying things out for themselves. At the mention of the church, Jason blinked, since for whatever reason he hadn’t expected that mention. He smiled at her returned question. “Those are the main things, really, but I’ll also watch movies or play video games. Sometimes hang out with people or go to the diner. If it’s the summer, spending time on the beach is nice. I can’t really say I’ve been in a church since, uh, I was a kid,” he said, since his father hadn’t been religious and sometimes he had gone with his grandparents at holidays, but that was about it. “What sort of things do you help him do with the church?” Maybe it was like. Communion stuff? That was a thing? Or maybe soliciting or whatever it was the people who went door-to-door did? But she didn’t seem like she was going to start evangelizing at him, so he reserved judgment.
Sam was always looking for people to invite to the church, but she had never been pushy about it. She did believe everyone deserved a chance to be saved, though, like she had been. Mal had a gift, which made his church more special than the others. Sam knew words could never do it justice. People had to hear them for themselves. "My dad began to take me when I was twelve. That's where I met Mal. I help him with whatever he needs, really. There are a lot of adults that volunteer for things every Sunday, but I'm there during the week to help clean or get things set up for evening events." Sam shrugged. "I know it doesn't sound glamorous, but he needs me, so.." Sam smiled a touch. "We've only been here about a year, but we've got a pretty decent congregation now. And it's still growing, so there's always something to do."
When Sam had mentioned having an adopted dad, Jason assumed it had happened a while ago, like when she was a baby or something, but from the way she was talking it must have been much recenter. Not that he was even sure why he had made that assumption. He was curious, but it also didn’t feel like it was any of his business, so he didn’t ask what had happened to her real father. “Do you have a lot of evening events?” He would have thought people just went on Sundays. What was there even to do at church? The last time he had given that kind of topic any thought was probably for a history exam and that wasn’t at all the same thing. He knew that Christianity had weirdly specific branches, but couldn’t name most of them or what made them distinct; he hadn’t even noticed that there was a church had come to town a year ago. “Do people just… start showing up to be part of your congregation?” The idea of wandering into a church seemed kind of silly to him, but maybe that was another thing people did that he didn’t really get.
"Sometimes," Sam said. "It depends on if there's anything going on in the church that night. Sometimes they like to come and talk to Mal. Church isn't always just for Sunday." Although that's when the majority of people attended. But at lot of people in their congregation found comfort in Mal, and they needed his guidance more frequently than others might. Her eyes lit up a little, since she always felt more comfortable talking about things that interested her, and even if Jason decided never to step foot in their church, she liked that he seemed interested, or at least pretended to be. Or maybe he was just curious. "Everyone is welcome," she explained. "Sometimes people wander in out of curiosity. Most of the time they like what they hear and they come back. Mal has a way of seeing someone beyond how normal people might see them. I think that makes them feel good, like they're not always alone. Our congregation has grown a lot in the past year. Word of mouth has probably helped too."
Listening to Sam talk about her church wasn’t really where Jason expected to end up, but he went with it. She seemed excited to talk about it in a genuine way that he found a little baffling, but could appreciate, and she wasn’t obnoxious about it. He hadn’t heard of their church, but maybe she meant word of mouth amongst religious people, so he didn’t bother pointing that out. He was unlikely to end up checking it out anytime soon, given that he had a hard time believing in anything that wasn’t concretely in front of him, so he imagined he wasn’t the target audience anyway. Regarding Sam thoughtfully, he smiled at her a little. “Do you mean seeing them beyond a superficial level?” he asked, since it made sense that would make people feel special. He wasn’t sure what else she might mean by normal. “He sounds like he must be an interesting guy, anyway, if he draws in that many people.” It was better to frame it that way than that people were gullible, which was a passing thought. He was trying to be open-minded, or at least not outrightly judgmental since he had no reason to be toward Sam.
Sam paused, her cheeks warming a little, only because she realized that maybe she said too much. She hadn't, not really, but sometimes it was easy to just start talking and not realize certain secrets were slipping out. "Yes, that's what I meant," she murmured, even though it wasn't. But it didn't matter. She glanced around everywhere but at Jason before she smiled and reached for her books. "I should go turn these in and find the ones I came for. Thanks for letting me sit here for awhile and interrupt your homework." He had been nice, at least and Sam was pretty proud of herself for not being a total loser in the company of a stranger.
Jason didn’t think anything about her reaction, or realize that what Sam said might have been any kind of secret. “Yeah, no problem,” he said, since she been easy to talk to and as matters of practicality went, it wasn’t like she had interrupted him went, so he could understand that. He gave her a small smile. “See you around, Sam.” As she made her departure, he turned back to finish working on his essay.