Second Floor Common Room, Monday After Classes

[not_a_moonie]

There were two reasons for the party being organized in the second floor common room tonight. The official one was that Sparkle and Alana were both campaigning for seats on the Student Council and needed to get their names out there.

The less official one was that Minako's fifth floor party the week before had been amazing, and the hosts wanted to prove other floors could host something just about as awesome.

Other than the VOTE FOR ALANA and VOTE FOR SPARKLE posters taped to the walls, the set-up was standard for a dorm party. They'd filled a table with pizza and snacks (including, at Sparkle's insistence, homemade sparkler-topped cupcakes), and Alana had set up her tablet to play a mix of trancey pop music. The electronica battled for ear space with an intentionally campy sci-fi movie playing on the TV.

Everyone in the student body had gotten an emailed invitation, so now it was just a matter of seeing who would show up.

Comments

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[spin_kick_snap]

"Sparkle hated it," Kathy said with a grimace. "He says it's the unholy lovechild of a hideous sheet and a potato sack."

Just for that, she was voting for someone else.

...Okay, not really. For one thing, she was a junior.

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[not_a_moonie]

"... huh," Alana said eloquently. "I thought it was fine, but I'm pretty much happy with whatever doesn't itch. Sparkle can be the style guru."

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[spin_kick_snap]

"See? Thank you," Kathy said. "It was a dress. It covered the important bits. It was even comfortable! What does the pattern matter?"

Because according to Sparkle, wearing that was the moral equivalent of violating every Geneva convention while murdering a basket full of puppies.

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[not_a_moonie]

Alana shrugged. "Maybe something plaid killed his great-grandma and he has a grudge against it?"

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[spin_kick_snap]

"I could definitely see him claiming something like that," Kathy said, dubiously. "I think he's just decided that I'm some new doll he gets to play dress up with and is going for it."

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[not_a_moonie]

"And that doesn't bug you?" Alana asked, just as dubiously. ""Cause, no offense, I might have kicked him in the balls. I like my dress."

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[spin_kick_snap]

Her dress did look super comfy...

"It's...it's actually kind of nice?" Kathy confessed. "I mean, not being told that a housefrau from the seventies wanted her shower curtain back." Sparkle could be quite the wordsmith when he chose to be. "But that someone cares enough to want to, I guess. It's how he shows he's friends with someone, I think."

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[not_a_moonie]

"That sounds like something my dad would say," Alana said thoughtfully. "Y'know. 'I wouldn't yell at you if I didn't love you.' He was big on that one. But maybe I would have taken it better if he'd brought shower curtains into it."

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy smiled a bit at that. A rather bleak and rueful smile. "Yours, too? I mean, I know he's just doing the best he can. It's hard raising two daughters in a different country than where you were raised. And he works really, really hard, so he comes home tired and out of sorts and that's not his fault."

She'd...sorta forgotten where she was going with this.

"Dads just yell, I guess. And it beats the silent treatment, you know?"

That's when you knew you'd really messed up.

Re: Arrive & Mingle

[not_a_moonie]

"Yeah," Alana said quietly. Her toughness was gone for the moment. "At least when he was yelling, I knew what he was thinking. When he went quiet ..."

She flicked her hair back, drew a breath. "My dad freaking hated his job and he took that out on us, when he bothered to come home. Family life is the best, huh?"