The Bauer/Douglas Family (bauerandcompany) wrote in weddedto_sonora, @ 2013-10-18 16:27:00 |
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Current mood: | accomplished |
Finishing the Code
OOC: A follow-up to this post. BIC:
As John looked over the sheets of paper on which he had painstakingly copied out the whole long code, he felt a rare flicker of real pride in his work and smiled thinly as he handed the final drafts over to Lindsay, Joanie, Rafe, and Charini. Normally, he didn’t understand why people made so much over him doing things well – what was the point of doing something if he wasn’t going to do it properly, besides just how easy most things were to do right? And how there was always something else to do, anyway, so anything he accomplished right now was really not going to be that impressive in the long haul? – but this had really taken some effort, some creativity, and some – a lot – of patience, given that he had been working with other people on it, even if they were other smart people. They had been working on this for months, arguing and debating over things, racking up so many books read in those arguments that even their parents had noticed, but yet, finally, they had pulled it all together.
“Here it is,” he said. “Everything. How long do you think you’ll all need to memorize it?”
“I still say we shouldn’t have used constitution,” grumbled Rafe as he flipped through the pages.
“Shut up,” said Joanie sweetly.
“This is really long,” Charini said. “I didn’t realize how long it was getting to be.”
“It’s supposed to be the beginning of our own language,” John said. “Have you seen the real dictionary?”
“Well, duh,” said Charini. “I just didn’t notice, that’s all I’m saying. We just kept adding things and it got really long.”
“No kidding,” Joanie said, then closed her copy. “I can learn it in a month,” she said, a deliberate challenge to John, he was sure.
“I already know half of it,” he said smugly.
“Only because you made the copies,” Joanie shot back. “I’ll do it the next time we add things and see how fast you learn it then.”
“I look forward to it,” John said, bowing slightly, to laughter from everyone except Joanie. He glared at them.
“There’s going to be more?” Charini said.
“Of course!” Lindsay enthused. “We’ll have to update it when we think of things we need to say that we haven’t thought of yet.”
Julian approached them, her – really, John was pretty sure, actually Paul’s, but she was wearing them with her own skirt right now – sleeves unbuttoned at the wrist and turned up toward her elbows to prevent ink stains from getting on them. She was working on something, but he wasn’t sure what; for the past few days, the final revisions and writing out of the code had taken up all his attention, and he had been short with all his brothers and his sister in his absorption. He would have to make it up to them later. “What’re you guys up to?” she asked. “John looks like he’s up to something.”
“I am not,” John said, his momentary guilt evaporating. “Go away, Julian.”
“I’m so sorry for you and your brothers, Julian,” said Joanie.
Julian laughed. “We love him anyway,” she said, and threw up her hands when John glared at her. “I’m going, I’m going,” she said, and made good on her words, though she didn’t leave eyeshot.
John felt his ears turning red. If Julian started thinking of herself as their babysitter, he was going to kill her. Turning thirteen was not a good reason to start thinking of herself as that much older than him. It was not his fault that his body had not caught up with his brain yet.
“Your parents are weird,” Rafe said. “Who names a girl Julian? That’s a boy’s name.”
“Is not.”
“Is so.”
“What about the emperor Julians?” Joanie challenged, throwing her support in the argument to Rafe.
“It is my grandpa’s name,” Lindsay admitted. “Why did your parents name her that, anyway? I always wondered.”
“Listen, it’s not my mom’s fault that your grandpa’s name was popular for girls in the fifteen hundreds,” John said, and there was general laughter. “Anyway,” he continued, trying to recapture the sense of gravitas which had already been lacking before his sister interrupted them. “I want to propose one addition to this – you know, what we’re here about? – right now.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Joanie scoffed, but Lindsay sat up, knowing what was coming. They had come up with this together; Lindsay had suggested proposing it at the last meeting, but John had waited, wanting to save it for dramatic effect. He wasn’t sure now if that had been the right move, but it was what he had now.
“We need code names,” he said. “Me and Lindsay already came up with ours. She’s Queen Lucy, and I’m Sallowpad.”
Queen Lucy rolled her eyes slightly. They had had quite an argument over his name, but he had dug his heels in the more she had argued about it, and finally Lindsay had given it up as a bad job. John just wished people would realize more often that arguing with him was a bad idea to start with, since that was the inevitable result, though he’d find it even weirder if Joanie ever did than he had found Joanie’s absence from book and Lego clubs when she had mono.
Right now, Joanie was raising an eyebrow. “Narnia?” she asked. “Well, then, I’m Aravis.”
Charini frowned. “Why should you?”
“You can be Lasaraleen,” said Joanie. “Remember Halloween?”
They argued for a while longer, but in the end, Joanie – predictably; she got to argue with him because no one could argue with her, either – got to be Aravis, Charini was indeed Lasaraleen, following her best friend’s lead as usual, and Rafe, for reasons no one even wanted to ask about, was Mr. Tumnus. John wrote it all down then nodded firmly.
“That’s done, then,” he said. “Secret handshake and adjourn?”
They shook on it, then parted for the day, everyone more or less, as far as he could tell, satisfied with the meeting of their hidden-in-plain-sight secret society.
Now they just had to figure out what they were going to do with a secret society now that they had one.