“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 where 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 neatly 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. Worst 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 asking as though she were being dragged to the gallows. “God, I really want you to be wrong.” She said, almost pouting at the thought. 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.
By no stretch of the imagination did she think that Alex Maverick was indeed an optimist but on this occasion, she decided to keep that to herself, nodding herself in passive agreement instead. “That you’re friends with Ella,” she said casually, allowing her voice to trail almost dismissively while she shrugged a shoulder, just as if she hadn’t put any thought into at all, though she was blatantly fishing now. “We talk about English class and stuff,” she added, providing some semblance of a reason for her interest in the girls' dynamics. Were Katherine and Ella friends? She wasn’t sure. She definitely wasn’t confident enough in the idea to share it with Alex, lest Ella think it was laughable.
“Mmm, like...a half an hour away,” she conceded, “Eden Prarie but it’s not like- it’s not an actual prairie, it’s a city but there’s a lot of parks and lakes,” she expressed, somewhat defensively in Eden Prarie’s favor. “Wow,” she uttered, it felt like everybody had a doctor in their family except for Katherine. Damian had like, twelve of them and those were just the ones he’d mentioned. Kat’s father was technically a doctor...well, he had a PhD, did that count? Probably not. “I didn’t know you were from Connecticut,” she chimed, she didn’t actually know anything about her so this shouldn’t have come as any form of shock, “Andrea’s from Connecticut, did you know that?” she was getting dangerously close to the assumption that everybody from Connecticut knew each other but she didn’t outwardly say that, not yet anyway.
“You can wish and pray but I’m telling you now- no way I’m wrong, can’t you picture it already? Somebody with an acoustic guitar, the house captains trying to get everybody involved,” she could see it perfectly in her head, it was tragic but it was inevitable. “Hello? If it rains we’re fucked,” Katherine reminded her, “They’re not gonna call off the trip, it just means it’s going to be harder to hike, harder to canoe, everything is going to be wet and chafe and then we’re all gonna come home sick and snotty all over each other- no thanks,” she waved a hand in the air as if to brush the idea of rain right away, “One drop of rain and I’m blaming you now,” she looked up at the sky, pointing at God or whatever briefly, “Don’t be tempted,” she begged whoever was listening playfully.
