Alex Maverick

Alex Maverick. 18. Melleray. Nothing, cause nothing ever happens here.

[maverickalex]

LUNA TURNER

ba-central

On second thought, perhaps wandering into the woods upon hours of arriving at the Retreat wasn’t the best of ideas. Luna hadn’t even bothered to ask around who she would be sharing rooms with, she simply dropped her things, made her bunk look somewhat to what her room at the academy looked like and called it a day. She wasn’t good with change and when her grandmother had recovered enough for her to go back to the academy she wasn’t expecting to come back to this. It was already bad enough that she had missed almost four months of her last year, but coming back to find they were moving them into middle of nowhere? Yeah, she was having a hard time adjusting.

For the past twenty minutes Luna had been walking around without really paying attention to the directions she was taking, therefor, she hand’t paid attention to which path she was supposed to take to go back to the cabins. It hadn’t really struck her that she was lost until she managed to circle the well for the thrid time. Luna sighed and leaned on her elbows on the walls of the well, she propped her head in to get a good look inside, it went further down than she would’ve imagined. She softly hummed a melody to see if the well would return it back to her, and in no time the melody echoed back to her. 

At the very bottom she could spot her distorted reflection on the water, it wasn’t much of a reflection as it was a shadow she was casting due to the sun. Luna was ready to try and find her way back to the cabins when another shadow joined in next to hers. It she hadn’t covered her mouth she would’ve screamed, instead what came out was an agitated gasp. “Jesus fucking christ! What the— you don’t do that to people!” She said turning to face them. 

Alex had settled into Cabin 1, lasting an astounding ten minutes before she diagnosed herself with a case of cabin fever. ‘Settling in’ for Alex was more like haphazardly tossing her bags onto a bunk and calling it a day. She wasn’t even sure it wasn’t an already claimed bunk, but that was a problem for someone else. She’d always had a fascination with the forest around Broadripple. If she had been more superstitious, she would’ve declared the shit haunted the moment she set foot on campus. She had settled on her own pet theory that decades of Catholic guilt threw off some weird energy, and it had to go somewhere. She had explored the grounds, but always with the knowledge that it wasn’t somewhere she was meant to be. It had added a bit of excitement to it — now, she was just looking for a place secluded away enough to sneak a cigarette without one of the sisters tracking the scent like a fucking bloodhound. 

As she tromped rather indelicately through the forest, it occurred to her that she hadn’t paid much mind to her proximity to campus. She had maintained a straight path, mostly — through the occasional downed tree or briar patch forced her to slightly divert the course. She looked over her shoulder, unsurprised to find the cabins had long since been swallowed by the trees. She had nearly deemed the spot just as good as any to finally settle in, when she heard a voice. Immediately, Alex froze. Singing. It had definitely been singing. She narrowed her eyes, searching the treeline for the source. If she was going to get offed by some kind of musical ghost, she at least wanted to know which direction it was coming from. She moved forward with far more care, treading lightly enough that no twigs snapped underfoot. She nearly let out an audible sigh of relief when she realized it was a student. Alex remained silent, though — trying to see what the other was getting into. When she whirled around, Alex barely stifled a laugh. It seemed fair — Luna had startled her too, even if she didn’t have the pleasure of seeing that flicked of wide-eyed fear. “I’m not the one in the middle of the forest on some Snow White, Samara bullshit.” She startled, fishing a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her waistband. She held the pack out to Luna in offering, nodding toward the well. “What the hell are you doing anyway?” She asked, only slightly craning forward to look into it. 

[maverickalex]

MARISOL ALVAREZ

location: seniors cabins, room 2 starter: open

@ba-central​

“damn piece of shit door.” marisol had camped in higher quality tents than… than whatever this was. some cabin in the woods that was high key out of some horror movie from the 90′s. she’s jimmied her key into the lock, which looked older than the school itself. but it refused to budge. so she resorts to kicking it. why? marisol doesn’t know, but it’s a way to channel out the frustration that had been building through her body all morning as an excuse to open the door to her school work. pacing back, rolling back at tense build up in her shoulders, it’s only now marisol notices the presence behind her. “what are you looking at?” her words don’t come out of malice, it’s evident in her voice she’s just frustrated.

She shouldn’t just stand back and watch Marisol struggle with the door — but that didn’t stop Alex from doing it, arms crossed over her chest and wry amusement reading out across her face. Part of her idly hoped the other would snap the key off in the old lock, just to see how the administration responded to an entire cabin being locked out. But as Marisol levied a kick at the door, she let out a surprised chuckle. As the other wheeled on her, Alex made a futile attempt to cover her mouth as she raised her shoulders in a shrug at the question. “A really shit B&E attempt,” she mused, inclining her head toward the door. “You gotta kick the door jamb, unless you’re planning to Kool-Aid man your way through. But don’t let me stop you.” She added, hands going up in a gesture of surrender. Alex sighed, taking a step closer to get a better look at the lock. “Why would they WD-40 the goddamn locks before they sent us to sleep in the murder cabins?” She muttered sarcastically, looking around the building. “Feeling up to climbing in a window?” 

[midsommars-deactivated20201109]

Booksmart (2019) Directed by Olivia Wilde

[maverickalex]

TASK 001. Character Introduction

BASICS

Name: Alexandra Maverick

Age: 18

Grade: Senior

House: Melleray

Cabin Room: Cabin 1, Room 4

How long have they been at Broadripple: One year

Where are they from originally: New Canaan, CT. 

Extra curricular: Rock/Jazz Band

TRAITS

Positive Personality Traits: Creative, independent, practical, relaxed, persuasive

Neutral Personality Traits: Artful, impassive, irreverent, sarcastic, skeptical

Negative Personality Traits: Stubborn, insensitive, private, easily bored, unpredictable

FACTS

Comes from a well-off family that she’s always referred to as  Stepford-caliber nightmare. Her father’s a plastic surgeon, and her mother comes from old money. Neither of them were particularly fond of the whole ‘parenting’ thing, so Alex was essentially raised by a revolving door of nannies. 

She learned early on that she could act out and get away with it. At first her antics were attempts to get her parents’ attention, but after years of failing, she did the things she did just to spite them. But once she reached high school and the truancy officer came knocking, her parents took note. Only then did they learn about her prior suspensions, how her homeroom teacher thought she’d transferred schools because she’d only seen Alex four times since the semester started. How she’d been swiping her father’s prescription pads and making her own money on the side. 

Unwilling to deal with her anymore, her parents shipped her off to her father’s Alma Mater. They painted the picture of it being in her best interest — something to make her ‘grow as a person.’ But Alex knew exactly what it was. She had finally gotten their attention, and they weren’t keen on dealing with the little monster they’d created. 

Once the bitterness at being unceremoniously tossed out, she saw her own silver lining. She didn’t have to care anymore. Not about angering her parents of impressing them, not about keeping up any sort of appearances when family friends were looking. She knew Catholic school would be a whole different set of issues, but she always welcomed them.  

HEADCANONS

She’s had trouble maintaining friendships since the moment she set foot on campus. She’s hot-headed and contemptuous, and she still hasn’t managed to dull her well-sharpened edges. It doesn’t even take a well-qualified therapist to point out her abandonment issues, but Alex has never been particularly introspective. She’s always been more of a ‘burn the ground and run’ kind of girl.

While she’s not particularly academic, she can get by. Often relying on well-copied notes or an exam placed just within her eye line, she’s a firm believer in doing what you have to do to get by. She loves art and music, though — it’s one of the few things Alex actually cares enough about to keep secret. She doesn’t want to open herself up to the kind of criticism she throws out so freely. 

She regrets her bullshit a lot of them time. She’s just too stubborn to admit when she was wrong. Alex is a master of a non-apology apology. I.E. ‘I’m sorry you’re mad’ instead of actually apologizing for whatever she absolutely did to piss them off. 

She’s oscillates between agnostic and atheist, depending on the day — but that’s one of the few things she keeps to herself. The idea of sitting through Mass truly almost bores her to tears, but one of the few things she actively fears is being forced into some mandatory Bible buddy bullshit. 

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RETREAT

What do they think about The Retreat? Alex has been surprisingly tolerant about the retreat. Maybe it’s the option to finally make good on her year-long threat to run screaming into the forest and never come back. That, and the spotty signal is a better excuse than she ever could’ve asked for when it comes to dodging her parent’s bi-monthly phone call.

Do they have any previous experience with camping or other outdoors? None. The best she can do is start a fire, but she attributes that to binging four seasons of Naked and Afraid when she got the flu sophomore year. She’s always been a fan of hikes, but never in a practical or responsible sense. 

What does their cabin bunk look like? How will they decorate their space? Alex doesn’t really do much decorating. She traveled light when she first transferred to Broadripple, and has never been the sentimental or knick-knack type. Apart from an unmade bunk, her part of the room seems fairly unoccupied.

Do they believe in the supernatural? To what degree? She believes in it in the same way she believes in just about anything else — barely, and only when it suits her. She’s not superstitious enough to let it stop her from telling ghost stories if she sees the opportunity to give someone a decent scare. She absolutely believes Edith Lynch lost her shit, though.

Are they easily spooked? No.

AND FINALLY,

you're the real danger

everyone talks about what they hear and see out in the woods but what about what's in the room with them? if everyone already thinks they're hearing things, it wouldn't be that hard to cover everything up

[midsommars-deactivated20201109]

[cinemadeco-deactivated20241209]

[maverickalex]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“Mmm,” Kat hummed thoughtfully, a high, almost chirpy tone that made it evident that she was flattered, if not slightly surprised by Alex’s assessment. “That’s generous,” she conceded, a week seemed like a long time to be without meals, a bed and her cell phone among other necessities. “Oh yeah?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. She was admittedly caught off guard by the image of the two together, they seemed to remain at odds with one another. Katherine didn’t know the details but she was aware that something had happened between the girls. She wasn’t convinced that either Alex or Ella would ever tell her the story but she was curious about it.

“Minnesota,” she informed the other girl, there was a sense of pride when she said it despite that she tried to avoid letting her accent get the better of her or fall into the trap of being tragically cliche by saying things like ‘you betcha’ or talking about hockey too often. “Kind of near Minneapolis,” she explained, since she’d learned recently that mentioning that she was from a place called ‘Eden Prarie’ tended to result in other students thinking she was a farmer, a hillbilly or grew up in some kind of a remote religious cult.  “Rich fancy parents?” she asked, again, finding herself a little surprised to find out more about Alexandra Maverick. Evidently, Kat knew next to nothing about her, “Where are you from?” she asked curiously, in return. 

She laughed openly at Alex’s concerns, “Oh, if you think we’re not gonna sing hymns on camp, you’re mistaken- no fucking way are we going to get through a whole trip without somebody suggesting it,” she insisted with a laugh, “I give it a night- first night there, we’ll be singing about Jesus around the campfire, I’d put money on it,” if she had any money to put on it. “-and we’ll have to pray for like, good weather and firm ground or something like that,” she mused, clearly not looking forward to that aspect of their trip. 

“What can I say? I’m an optimist,” she said with a half-smile. It wasn’t even a convincing joke. If anything, she tended to dance the line between cynicism and nihilism, hopping neatly to whichever better suited her that day. She may have lacked generous self awareness, but there were a few finer points she had nailed down. The inquisition was a baiting one, she suspected, and she was only half in the mood to be reeled in. Instead, she feigned misunderstanding the direction the question was pointing. “That I could possibly be disagreeable?” She asked, wryly. “You’d be shocked.” She added, idly swinging long legs from her counter perch. 

She studied the other, perhaps for a moment too long, trying to align what she knew of the state with what she knew of Kat. After a moment, she nodded, as though she’d finally gotten the outline to lay over the picture. She couldn’t miss the subtle lift in her voice. It almost sparked a bit of jealousy in her — the tiniest little flicker, gone as quickly as it had come. She nodded. “Like, actually near, or middle of the nowhere and it’s the closest town near?” She asked, suspecting there was a wide gap between the two. Though, that could’ve just been her own absolute ignorance about Minnesota geography. She knew Minneapolis, she knew St. Paul, and she thought maybe they were neighboring cities. Beyond that, her closest reference point for the state was a Tom Waits song about Minneapolis, and even that only mentioned a dirty bookstore above Euclid Avenue. But in this moment, she was curious enough to ask. Before answering the question bounced back to her, she chewed her thumbnail, considering on how truthful to actually be. Fuck it, she decided, almost visibly so. “Plastic surgeon meets family money. Best Connecticut has to offer.” She said, sardonically. “New Canaan. It’s great, if Stepford is your thing.” 

Alex pulled a face, once again drawing from the well of how exactly to get out of it. She was one more piece of bad news from acting as though she were carted off to the gallows. “God, I really want you to be wrong.” She said, almost pouting at the thought. But every fiber of her being knew that Kat was right. At the idea of the prayer, Alex let out a breath of laughter. “Firm ground in a fucking swamp. Fuckin’ a.” She muttered, though there was at least at hint of amusement. “Does it make me an asshole to say I hope it rains?” It did, she would wager. Some people were probably genuinely excited about the trip, group bonding and new experiences or whatever. Just because she was predetermined to be miserable didn’t mean the rest of the school had to be — though this happened to be one thing she did prefer to share.

[sofiebauers]

the ghost of lamps past and a pumpkin stealing cryptid, a seemingly innocent episode title of one of sofie’s favourite podcasts. little did she know that she would be tuning in to em and christine talking about … well, about exactly where her and her classmates were supposed to be going camping. she didn’t notice it at first, happily listening to the hosts catch up with one another as she typed away at an assignment. then they say it: the bridgewater triangle. 

it catches her, but she thinks maybe she heard it wrong, or she was misremembering the name of the place they were supposed to be camping in a week’s time. or maybe bridgewater was where they were going but the bridgewater triangle was an entirely different thing. but then they continue. the corners of the triangle: abington, rehoboth, and freetown. wasn’t freetown one of the places they were going too? with concerned features she minimised microsoft word and opened chrome instead. in one tab a google search from the triangle and in another, her school emails open with the information about camp. there was only one freetown massachusetts, just like there was only one bridgewater massachusetts. both were in this bridgewater triangle, both were locations of philip’s war,  and both were where they were going to be camping. oh boy.

she paused the podcast, removed headphones from her ear, and wondered to herself, was this nuts? it had to be, right? she hated to disturb other people while they were working but if they were going to some crazy supernatural vortex, surely people had to know about it, right? “ hey, sorry, ” she said, reaching out a hand to grab the attention of the other person at the table. “ have you ever heard about this? ” she asked, spinning her laptop around to show the wikipedia page. “ the bridgewater triangle, ” she said, even though her companion could surely read that for themselves. “ i think it’s where we’re going for camp– i mean, do you like, ” she paused a second, lowering her voice a little as she continued “ believe in all that spooky stuff? ghosts, and cryptids and whatever? ” because sofie absolutely did, but she wasn’t in the mood to be completely mocked for it.

[maverickalex]

Alex’s eyes snapped to the hand that touched her — irritation rippling through for just a ‘blink and you miss it’ moment. Admittedly, she had stopped working nearly fifteen minutes ago, awarding herself a break from the not work she had been doing for what felt like the entirety of her life. Still, the disruption startled her all the same. Chewing her lip in an attempt to bite back the flicker of annoyance, Alex leaned forward, examining the site the blonde was presenting. 

She had barely skimmed through the first paragraph when Sofie echoed the headline to her. She let out a breath of laughter, regarding the other skeptically for a moment. “Are you asking me if I think Bigfoot is going to drag us into the forest over a Native American burial ground in the middle of the night?” She asked, brow raised. Though, there was a part of her that didn’t rule out cryptids (even if this was the first time she’d actually heard the word — thank god for context clues), it was a part of her that would stay perfectly quiet for the duration of this conversation. Maybe, once they were in the ‘Bridgewater Triangle’ or whatever, she would engage in conspiracy theory corner. Then, she skimmed through the rest, expression shifting. “This though —” she paused, finger hovering just above to bullet point about Freetown-Fall River State Forest, detailing Satanic cult sacrifices, “this shit I’ll buy.” She said, even though she very much did not. A rogue weirdo roaming the woods was in her scope of possibility, but a congregation of them was too far-fetched for even Alex to buy into. No use in sharing that information, though. Brows furrowing as she continued her act, she looked at the other with light concern etched across her features. “Super weird that they’re dragging us out into that, though. They’ve gotta know about it, right?”

[holyterrainn]

[maverickalex]

Scratch, kick, let gravity win like Fuck this, let gravity win like You could leave it all behind, even the devil need time alone sometimes You could let it all go, you could let it all go It's called freefall Called to the devil and the devil said quit Can't be bothered better handle your shit Keep about your wits man, keep about your wits

[midsommars-deactivated20201109]

[maverickalex]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

Katherine was primarily focused on her cell phone, her feeble attention span consumed exclusively by scrolling her Instagram feed, absently liking posts with wholesome captions and replying to messages from Andrea, even though she was in their dorm room just a short walk away. “Spooky,” she decided, stating her case quite plainly. It answered Alex’s question, even if it didn’t provide much information, nor any form of profound academic discourse on the matter.  Her eyes widened at Alexandra’s next comment, a little twitch in her stomach at the thought, “Oh my God,” she uttered, clearly perturbed by what Alex had said or something she’d added to it on the inside of her head, “Do you think ghosts see us like-” she didn’t want to implicate herself too overtly so she was careful with her words, “- you know- do stuff?”

Alex pulled a face at the short answer — admittedly, one she absolutely would’ve give herself, had she had any strong opinion on the matter. “The portraits around this place are spooky. I always feel like Sister Clary is judging me every time I leave the library to pee. She’s fuckin’ spooky.” Alex muttered, then shook her head. “How much worse can a piece of cardboard be?” She mused. Brown eyes widened in surprise at Katherine’s adverse reaction, chewing her lip to bite back a laugh. Instead, she rose an eyebrow and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Hell yeah I do. Wouldn’t you?” She asked, leaning back in her chair. “Especially all the old nuns who have eaten shit in this place. School this old? There have to be at least a dozen, right?” 

[maverickalex]

Alex tended to tap dance the line between being overly invested, and entirely disinterested in the goings on of her peers. At the moment, she was so bored with the student body that she was considering communing with the spirits for her own entertainment. Looking up from her phone, she sighed. “What’s your take on Ouija boards? I’m sure there’s a complicated accurate history or some shit, but how dangerous can something made by Hasbro or whoever really be?” She asked. She had already added it to her Amazon cart before realizing that getting one delivered right to campus was likely a one-way ticket to the Headmaster’s office. And even if she were more willing to get expelled, that was an incredibly stupid way to go out. Still, she clicked her tongue, leaning back in her chair. “Ghosts have gotta have better stories than who’s fucking who.” She half-muttered. “Or at the very least, have a great list of who’s fucking who.” She added, brow raised in consideration.

[atsumu-miya]

[maverickalex]

nicodigiovanni‌:

“By three thousand miles give or take.” Nico tilted his head slightly to the left and smirked playfully, but irritation still unmistakably crept in his voice. Yeah it would have been fun to actually smash it on his old man smug face instead that down the bridge, but well…

Now Nico wasn’t really an habitual smoker, well of weed maybe, but even that wasn’t as common either, smoking didn’t exactly fit the plan of becoming a pro athlete after all. Not that he didn’t partake once in a while however. 

That day he definitely needed one.“’Nks.” He cleaned the sweat from his brow and took one from the pack. Ahh right, no lighter, he didn’t bring any when he went jogging. He pointed at her own when Alex lit a cigarette herself and waited his turn before taking a sip and exhaling a cloud of smoke toward the creek.

He kept the cigarette in his mouth and lifted himself up on the bridge stone railing, his feet dangling down toward the creek below.

“Well I’d say that depends on what kind of business…” He raised his eyebrows smirked again. “I can think of way better things to do than listen to me complaining about dad.” Continued the young man playfully, but then again he was not at his usually cheerful self yet. “I mean he is an asshole that’s it.”

He wondered how much Alex could have heard of the whole conversation. Especially the whole rant about not paying a dime. While a scholarship should have been a mark of pride, for Nico it was more of a clue of his family real economic status a matter that he definitely didn’t want to get out. Not that Alex looked like she cared much about these things though.

“Fuck, they have a way of getting under your skin don’t they? Parents I mean.” He exhaled another puff of smoke, his eyes wandered to the torrent darting down the creek below, briefly lingering on the remnant of his Galaxy on the rocks. 

 “Maybe I can try to climb down.” He mused, yeah hopefully the sim card was still working and who knew, maybe he could even salvage something out of his phone. The water, though, looked so inviting in that warm springtime afternoon.

“Shit,” she muttered, craning her neck to look at the distance the phone had actually sailed, clicking her tongue in feigned disapproval. “Keep working on it. You’ll get there, champ.” She said with a wink, and a weak nudge to his arm. Alex assumed he wasn’t the ‘pep talk’ type — which worked, because she clearly had never been the pep talk type. Her best attempts were often deeply rooted in nihilism, and even that was half-hearted. 

Extending the lighter to Nico, she idly swung her feet until it was back in her hands and tucked safely away in her jacket pocket. She never could keep up with them, whether they vanished by her own negligence or wound up carefully hidden away with another student was just as much a mystery to Alex as anything else that had happening on campus since her arrival. Wry smile curved her lips at Nico’s words, as hollow as they sounded. It was a valiant effort, and if she had mastered any course since her studies began, it was the art of distraction. “Aren’t they all?” She asked with a sigh, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. “The world is built on daddy issues.” She mused, accompanied by a lighthearted eye roll. God knows she was. She never stood a chance.

She could have drawn her own conclusions about the half of the conversation she was able to faintly make out — but she didn’t. Money, that much she’d clearly understood. But she had no intentions of prodding. Before she could dwell, he spoke again. Tapping ashes against the stone, gaze lingering on Nico. She chuckled. “You can go three thousands miles away, and they still manage to breathe down the back of your fuckin’ neck.” She agreed, though that was hardly the case for her. “You’re welcome to mine, if you’re more into the ‘negligent, just shut up and don’t embarrass us’ types.” She offered, words candy coated as if she were truly extending a grand offer to him. 

Alex looked down at the water, the phone sitting on the bank, before looking back at Nico. She held the cigarette between her lips as she shrugged off her jacket, draping it carefully over the wall beside her. “Fuck it, right? We break our necks, your roommate can spearhead the investigation about which demon offed us or whatever.” She said, getting to her feet and dropping the cigarette, neatly stamping it out before making her way back toward the start of the bridge. She had seen enough people getting shoved into the water from the bridge — but she was absolutely not about to break her own ankle by clipping some rocks or something. She’d take her chance with a slide down the bank. “Come on if you’re coming dude.”

[maverickalex]

kitsnovak‌:

kit got the sense that alex meant more than she was saying, but he interpreted it more as her being mean about it. “i really am sorry. it’s- i didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. i didn’t even mean to look at you for that long. i don’t want you to think i’m, like, a weirdo.” at least, not the bad kind of weirdo. 

“oh, yeah?” he didn’t even want to know what she meant by self-medicated; sure, kit ate weed to unwind, but he was also on some pretty hardcore anti-depressants. he couldn’t even imagine how bad he’d be without them. “i, uh, i got tested for adhd once. turns out i don’t have it.” and now he was rambling. fuck, cool, alright. that was fine. 

he instinctively reached for his notebook as alex grabbed it, but let go at her words. she had a point; kit had been the first to snoop. besides, it wasn’t like it was anything personal, just his history notes. he shoots her an awkward smile, “yeah.” his handwriting had always been a sore spot; his father hated it. he wrote like a preschooler until he was, like, ten, which harry novak had zero qualms about mentioning, and it got so bad he’d been sent to a physical therapist. meanwhile, benji’s handwriting looked like a goddamned google font. kit’s penmanship had improved greatly since the fifth grade, but it was still awful, and remained an insecurity. a stupid one, at that. 

he gave a half-hearted chuckle. “i know i look like the lost member of the trenchcoat mafia, but trust me, i don’t have any manifestos.” though, honestly, if you polled the student body about who was most likely to pull a columbine, kit would likely win. the bullied, mentally ill loner, with his true crime fascination and a notebook in his bottom drawer full of  “””””satanic”””””” symbols. “besides, why would i want to cause a blackout anyways? we’re stuck on campus with no wifi and no ac; it sucks.” listen, kit was already kind of a sweaty person, okay? the lack of any climate control in the mid-may heat was making him damp in all the worst places. 

Alex wrinkled her nose at the apology, as if Kit had suddenly shoved a plate of rotting garbage in her direction. For a moment, she debated on whether or not she should leave him on the hook, or release. In the end, her face relaxed a bit and she shook her head. “Dude. Relax. S’all good. We’re all weird. Don’t trust any bitches who aren’t.” She said, barely resisting the urge to accost him for the apology — only because she was afraid it would elicit more. She’d never had the stomach for apologies, issuing or receiving.

She chuckled. “Yeah. Apparently, it makes me aggressive and impulsive.” She said, her voice lowering to sound more ‘official.’ While she’d been diagnosed at a young age, her parents had essentially refused to treat it, citing the condition as little more than ‘a poor reaction to red dye.’ The fact that her father was a doctor only validated their own decision to themselves. Alex was more comfortable taking things into her own hands anyway. “Why’d they test you? Climbing trees? Failing tests? Beating up other kids?” She asked, chewing her thumbnail and deliberately posing the question as if it weren’t incredibly invasive, though the slightest grin curved her lips.

Her own handwriting was nearly spitefully bad. The letters all too sharp and close together, each one falling into the next. Gaze flickering up, Alex half-returned Kit’s own smile. She almost liked to uncertainty — at least, stacking against the rest of Broadripple’s holier than thou and more self-assured than any teen had a right to be crowd. Sliding the notebook back across the table with a flick of her pen, Alex leaned back in her seat. Her posture had always been terrible — but she’d been 5′10 since she hit 13, and she tended to feel like fucking Brienne of Tarth if she was fully upright.

“Boring.” She teased, eyes scanning the shifting and uncomfortable crowd in the midsummer heat as he spoke. Raising her shoulders in a slight shrug, the same grin with an edge of mischief resurfaced. “Fuck if I know. Chaos? Making the freshman believe in the ghosts and demons hiding in the dark corners?”

[maverickalex]

kitsnovak‌:

kit looked down at his spidery handwriting, trying to hide how embarrassing it was to be caught. he thought, or rather, he hoped, alex wouldn’t give him too much shit for it. when he heard her amused tone, though, he thought he was in the clear. “i was, uh, y’know,” he flittered his hand in the air, “gone, i guess. in my own head.” he wasn’t quite sure how comfortable alex would be with him relaying all the gory details he had going in his head, so he chose to keep it to a minimum. 

instead, he changed the subject, leaning forward slightly to take a peek at her notebook. “what’re you working on?” when he caught sight of her sketch, he couldn’t help but grin. “fuck, that’s really cool. are you an artist?” kit used to draw stuff like that, too, just poorly. and then he’d watched a true crime special about some poor teenager who was arrested and convicted on a murder charge based almost solely upon his sketchbook full of disturbing doodles, and he thought that that was one habit he should kill. kit already looked like a member of the west memphis three; he didn’t need more reason for people to be suspicious of him, especially with the goings-on around campus. 

Brown eyes immediately followed his gaze, leaning forward to get a better look. Sardonic grin curved her lips at Kit’s explanation as she gave a placating nod. “Yeah. Caught that.” She said, in a tone that absolutely sounded sincere — or at least, it would, to someone who was speaking to Alex for the first time. She wanted to pry — anything that could invoke that deep of a daze seemed far more promising than her own Battle of Bunker Hill notes. 

Kit had glimpsed her own artwork before she thought to properly shield it. Her brows knit together in momentary surprise at the genuine compliment, at a small loss for words for how to receive it. Instead, she settled into her own little deflective comfort zone. Alex chuckled. “Not even close. Just got a wicked case of self-medicated ADHD. Fuckin’ stellar for creativity, I can’t recommend it enough.” She mused, barely holding back her own eyeroll as she reached forward and neatly jabbed her capped pen into his notebook’s spiral and dragging it back to her. “Showed you mine.” She said in a half-justification for her not at all subtle thievery. “Shit, I thought my handwriting was bad.” She teased, half-heartedly scanning through the notes. She heaved a sigh and clicked her tongue. “Was kinda hoping for some blackout manifesto. Little disappointed, Novak.” Alright, so maybe Alex hadn’t taken the week’s events quite seriously enough — but she had been comfortably on the sidelines, and she had never been one to fall into a rabbit hole of questions on the Broadripple peculiars.