Pizza Planet, Friday

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Class had been interesting in a nice, relaxed way today, so all things considered Jen was as mellow as a totally-suppressing-the-mope girl could be when not thinking about Homecoming. Which, being a skill she'd honed rather nicely, made for a very convincing appearance of uptight non-mopery (shh, totally allowed to make up words). She was missing the carnival, and planning to go hide out in her ship for most of the weekend, and she was FINE WITH THAT, REALLY.

Of course, getting to work and being hit in the face with the warm damp smell of fungus took her mind off the total non-mopery rly pretty quickly -- as did the rapidly ensuing relief that no, they were not suddenly bait for a health code violation. Nothing that bad, just that the pizza parlor had apparently sprouted mushrooms. Criminis covering the counter, buttons blossoming in the booths, shiitakes sprouting in the storage closet.

. . . well then. Jen shrugged, turned the sign on the door to "Closed," and got to harvesting. Her cleanup routine took a little longer than usual, but by the time she was done and flipped the sign back to "Open" again, the place -- front door propped wide open -- looked as good as new. All that odd-jobs work back in Silver Hills had been good for a few useful life skills after all, go figure.

Today's Special
Wild Mushroom Pizza
(No, really. It's kind of wild.)

[OOC: I blame ella_obeys. ;) Here if slowish until 12:30 Pacific, then will be on a plaaaaaaane.]

Comments

[water-wonder.livejournal.com]

Because Tori had missed Pizza Planet, and even if she'd enjoyed the pizza from Jungle Karma, she couldn't not stop in to see the place. Come on!

Besides, she was here and even though there was a carnival going on and there might be pizza there, Tori had to pick up a slice here. It was the principle, really!

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen was now faced with the question of where to put all these mushrooms, and was just returning from another forage through the storage closet for spare containers of some kind or another when Tori showed up.

She set down her armload of foil pasta takeout dishes and managed a smile. "Tori, hey."

[water-wonder.livejournal.com]

"Hey Jen," Tori returned the smile. Noticing the takeout dishes, she raised an eyebrow. "Busy day?"

Or, you know, it could be that Fandom was just being Fandom. Either one was plausible.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Definitely busy so far, but . . ." Jen shrugged. "Not in the typical kind of way." Duh. It was Fandom.

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

Claire was a little bit frightened by the hullabaloo around the carnival, and she decided to hide and stuff her face with pizza. She smiled when she saw her big sister behind the counter.

"Didn't know you worked here," she offered, examining the menu. "Great way to hide from homecoming, huh?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Great paid way to do it," Jen agreed. "How's it been going, Claire?"

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

"Kind of surprisingly okay," Claire said, in the tone of one who never expects such things. "I like the people here, I got something in the exhibit at the gallery, and it being 20008 is weird but not that bad. You?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"You got something into the art gallery exhibit?" Jen asked, grimacing slightly. "I didn't know, or I would've been there. I'm so sorry."

Note the careful avoidance of how she's been.

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

"It's no big deal, I think they did the kindergarten thing and took everybody," Claire shrugged. "They had this self portrait I did in tenth grade and a photo I took of Jan. Which I had to, because come on, unicorn."

She noticed Jen hadn't answered her question, but didn't say anything just then.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Maybe, but I'm still supposed to do the supportive thing, you know?" Jen answered. "If it's still up I'll have to go check it out. And now you can check 'taking pictures of a unicorn' off the list of things you never thought you'd be able to say."

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

"I think it's closing this weekend," Claire guessed, eyes going wide. "I know, right? And he was awesome about the modeling."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Crap. I'll definitely try and make it down, then," Jen promised her. "Maybe tomorrow. I wasn't expecting anyone to come in today at all, with all the homecoming stuff going on."

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

"People here get really into it, huh?" Claire observed. "I am so not the school dance kind of person."

And besides, no one had asked her.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Neither am I," said Jen, who had also not been asked, but had also taken most of her life to figure out that sometimes being social was fun. "And there isn't even a game, is the funny part."

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

Claire, who didn't really believe being social was fun, crinkled her brow trying to process that information. "So we have homecoming and cheerleaders, but ... no game?" she asked. "Okay, what do the cheerleaders do? Chant while people take the SATs?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"You know . . . I don't even know if we do that," Jen mused. "And if the school's getting invaded, half of them are in the middle of the fight. I don't think there's an invasion at homecoming, though . . . I wasn't here for it last year, but I never heard about one."

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

Claire blinked. A lot. "No invasions seems kind of like a good thing," she hazarded. "But wait, they don't chant or people don't take the SATs? I have to take the SATs. Like, last week."

Claire had been procrastinating on it a little bit.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Well, I've never heard an announcement about it," Jen said thoughtfully. "The SATs, I mean."

Wow, those were so a thousand years ago.

"Are they that big a deal, really?"

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

"There has to be some way for people to take them on their own," Claire said, sounding worried. "It's the SATs. If I mess up, I don't get into college, my mom kills me, and my ghost goes to work in Wal-Mart forever."

She shook it off. "I'll figure it out." And maybe spend the time she didn't spend at the dance working on it.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Can you go off island and take them somewhere?" asked Jen. "I don't know much about them. They stopped using them about 800 years ago for me."

[swipedthatfoot.livejournal.com]

"I'll figure it out," Claire repeated. "You're lucky not to have to worry. What do they do instead?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Composite scores from school tests," Jen explained. "Instead of one test people can cram for, it's based on everyone's overall work."