The Deck | Afternoon | Saturday | July 10

[therewaslife]

The clouds were easing the heat a bit and, without the sun hanging high in the sky, Bod figured that spending some time outside wouldn't give way to an inevitable sunburn. He thought about walking into town but eventually decided that that could wait till later.

Instead, he veered off and clambered onto the deck, sliding into one of the empty loungers and actually choosing to be lazy for once. Usually, laziness was a side effect of having nothing to do or trying to avoid something else but today, he just wanted to relax. He found himself caught up in the movements of the clouds, dark and opaque as they were. He wondered what the sky looked like behind them, if the peeks of blue would stay long and where those clouds would go after moving off.

It wasn't heavy contemplation but he was enthralled by it anyway.

[Deck is open. I like clouds.]

Comments

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"Clouds," Quinn echoed, "are fascinating."

She let that sink in for a few seconds, glancing up in case they were raining skittles or something. Then, because she didn't have anything better to do: "Tell me about them?"

[therewaslife]

"Anything can be fascinating," he told her before his eyes wandered back up to those clouds. "What sorts of things would you like to know? Physical characteristics or what I see?"

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"Tell me what you see," Quinn suggested as she took a seat. "I heard the cumulus and cirrus stuff in science class a couple years ago."

[therewaslife]

"What I see," he repeated and sighed quietly. "Energy. I see energy. The clouds are moving rather fast today. It gives the appearance of having places to go and not wanting to miss out on wherever they might be going. They move erratically. Some slide one way, others slide another but they all eventually cluster again and form cloud cover."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Quinn was surprised by the answer, and she glanced over at the boy. She hadn't heard a lot of people talk like that; it was, in an odd way, refreshing.

"Are you a poet or something?" she asked. "Because that was sort of beautiful."

[therewaslife]

"Me? No," Bod said, shaking his head and looking down at his feet. "I just make some rather eccentric observations sometimes, I suppose. I'm nowhere close to a poet. They speak far better than I ever could."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"Sounded pretty poetic to me," Quinn observed. She hadn't meant to make him self-conscious. "What's your name? I'm Quinn."

[therewaslife]

"Quinn, hullo, it's nice to meet you," he said, nodding at her. "I'm Nobody but I go by Bod. Nobody has the tendency to confuse people at first."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"Bod," Quinn repeated. "Did your parents hate you, or was there some weird family name thing going on?"

... let it be pointed out she had a boys' name.

[therewaslife]

"No, my parents loved me quite a lot. They said I didn't look like nobody but myself," he explained. "And that's where my name came from. It's not a family. It's just my name."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"That's kind of sweet," Quinn said. She wasn't in Lima, so she didn't complete her first thought and add that it was sweet in a mentally challenged sort of way. "I have no idea how my parents came up with Quinn, but I like it."

[therewaslife]

"I like it as well. I've never heard it before, not as a first name," said Bod. He'd heard it as a last name, seen it written on business cards and in articles, but this was a first for him. "I'm sure Quinn doesn't have to be explained as often as Nobody does so you've an advantage on me there."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"When I was little people would hear it and look for a boy, but now pretty much everyone at home knows me so it's not so much a problem," Quinn explained. "And yeah, Nobody has to be one of those names everybody asks about."

[therewaslife]

"They do. I don't mind though," he said and smiled wistfully. "Are you new, Quinn? I don't think I've seen you around the dormitories before."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"I just got here a week ago," Quinn confirmed. "You're an old hand at the weird, Bod?"

[therewaslife]

"From even before I arrived here," he said, nodding. "My upbringing was rather different so some of the strangeness here doesn't much bother me. I'm fascinated by it."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Oh, great, another person from a weird place. Quinn mentally chided herself for the faint surprise -- she really shouldn't be surprised by it at this point.

"Lucky," she said wryly. "I'm just from Ohio. Same place as Puck but he's not my Puck, if that makes any sense to you. It really doesn't to me."

She squinted up at the sky before continuing, "What flavor of weird do you have at home?" She wondered if it was vampires. It kept being vampires.

[therewaslife]

"I know Puck. He's a little..." There were so many words. "...creative. He's very creative and sometimes helpful. I think he means well though."

None of Puck's advice had gotten Bod into trouble, after all. He couldn't really fault someone for believing in themselves.

"And I was raised in a graveyard," he said, saying it as calmly as he could. "By ghosts."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"He's a meathead," Quinn said bluntly. "But he means well. Usually. Unless you're a girl and he thinks you're hot, then...."

Bod would have to parse that one out for himself, because Quinn was a bit startled by the revelation. "And seriously, ghosts? Like .... undead spirits in sheets kind of ghosts?"

She had been doing so well with the idea of vampires, too.

[therewaslife]

"They don't wear sheets," Bod said, shaking his head. "They wear regular clothes and lead regular lives. They're just dead. But yes, seriously, those types of ghosts. I lived there for nearly sixteen years."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

Quinn took that in thoughtfully and sighed. "A week ago I could have just called you a morbid freak over that and run away," she said. "No offense. How'd you end up there? You don't seem very dead."

[therewaslife]

"I'm not a ghost," he said and chuckled. "I've a heartbeat. I'm alive. I was adopted by the ghosts in that graveyard. I wandered down there when I was an infant and they adopted me. That's how I ended up there."

That was the very shortened version.

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"That sounds like a movie," Quinn said sincerely. "And then, what, you grew up and decided you had to try this awesome high school thing?"

[therewaslife]

"I grew up and had to leave home," he corrected, a little quieter than before. "A human boy, he shouldn't live in a graveyard his entire life. Not when he has his entire life to live."

[chief-cheerio.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Quinn went quiet a moment; that was a heavier concept than she'd been thinking about, and she needed time to process it. "It's funny," she said at last. "All I ever wanted growing up was to get out of Lima. A lot of people don't. But that's not the same thing as a graveyard."