fandomtownies | The Beach, Monday Afternoon to Evening

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The Beach, Monday Afternoon to Evening

The fact that there weren't classes this week suited Sparkle just fine. It meant that he wouldn't have to be a little sneak skipping classes in order to stake a claim on the beach, where he was building a little bonfire right there on the sand because ha, like he could afford to rent a grill or something. Not on top of the bunch of burgers and hot dogs and the sneaky fake-ID beer that he'd purchased with his pay for working Saturday and Friday at Dite's, anyhow. Or the shitload of sparklers and glowsticks that he'd picked up from T&C, because no, he wasn't going to be affording real fireworks, either.

He did have a case of Canadian junk food, though. Lewis had been thoughtful enough to ask Sparkle if he should send a care package of some sort, and Sparkle had informed him that he was about to kill someone for a Caramilk bar. Maybe it was because Lewis actually cared, or maybe he just didn't want to see Sparkle get his ass deported for the sake of some chocolate, but he'd sent along more than just Caramilk. There were Coffee Crisps and proper Smarties and potato chips with real flavours, like dill pickle and ketchup. And Coke! Coke made with sugar! If anyone asked nicely and then proved themselves worthy, Sparkle might even be willing to share. Maybe.

And, topping it all off were the little speakers hooked up to the little mp3 player that Sparks had brought along, blaring a mix of Canadian music as loud as they possibly could. Which... wasn't too loud, but if you were to hang around close enough, you'd probably be able to hear. And appreciate that Sparkle was skipping over all of the Bieber. You're welcome.

Even if nobody happened to wander by and decide to stick around, Sparkle was in a pretty fine mood today. It wasn't a concert and fireworks in North York or anything, no. But his low-budget rainy-day Fandom Island Canada Day would do.

[Open beach is open!]

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"Well, they'd bounce, right?" Sparkle was enjoying this too much. "I mean, they're dead, they're obviously not jumping, but they're still all rubbery, so they'd have to bounce. Or at least make a decent splat."

"Yeah, they were pretty rubbery so they did bounce pretty well," Theo recalled. "They were...kind of damp too so if they hit you in the face, it was going to leave behind some good."

Ew.

"Amazingly, I didn't get in trouble for it," he said, still amazed at that. "I mean, my psychologist wasn't too happy but it could have been worse."

Now Sparkle had to kind of stare in awe.

"How do you start a dead-frog-fight in a classroom and not get in shit over it? Teach me your secrets, man."

"Well, psychologist."

He shrugged and shook his head.

"Maybe they felt sorry for what they perceive as the already crazy guy?"

He didn't know if that was the case but it could be!

"Yeah, they think I'm crazy too, but that never stopped anyone from throwing my ass into juvie," Sparkle groused. "Dead amphibians, man. Not even fair."

"Guess I just got lucky," Theo said, shrugging. "Though, I did feel pretty bad because the teacher was pretty upset. Guess maybe my guilty conscious was enough punishment."

"Did your teacher have their heart set on cutting open dead things?"

Sparkle was still pretty convinced that the frog-fight was way better.

"I dunno," Theo said honestly. "But, I bet she had to clean up the mess after we were done so even if she didn't want to cut frogs open, I'm sure she didn't want to do that."

Don't be such a soft heart, Theo. Dev was groaning and trying to get him to be more proud of his mess.

"Huh. I always thought that was the janitor's job. Or else teachers made kids, like, stay late to clean up after themselves. I probably would've had to."

And it would have gone extra late, because by that point he'd probably be puppeting them around and making the frog corpses up and dance and sing or something.

"I'd encourage you to try and recreate the whole thing here but I get the feeling punishment here is a lot different than at any other school."

Mostly, he wondered if there was punishment at all.

"Yeah, they probably encourage it, here," Sparkle groused, shaking his head. "Kinda takes half of the fun out of it, you know."

He held that face for a moment longer before perking a little.

"Never caught your name," he noted, offering Theo a hand. "I'm Sparkle."

"Theo," he answered, sticking the hand not holding his skateboard out towards Sparkle. "Semi new kid still getting used to being on the complete opposite coast."

"Pretty big change between West and East?" Sparkle shook Theo's hand, and then stuck his hand back into his pocket. "You notice a lot of difference even between Toronto and Baltimore, but you have more distance to go if you're from the coat, I'm guessing."

"The heat here is a little different than the heat there," Theo said, fanning himself to illustrate that. "A lot more...muggy. Feel like I could step outside and be in a swamp if I didn't know any better."

"Kinda sticks, doesn't it?" Sparkle nodded a little, wrinkling his nose. "Thirty degrees here and thirty degrees back home are two really different beasts."

A beat.

"Uh. Celcius."

"Yeah, I figured that one out," he said, snickering. "One thing I retained from school back home even if asking me to convert it wouldn't work because I can't remember how. But, I can't conjugate verbs in other languages either."

"Yeah, I might be Canadian, but the French I know is, like, Happy Birthday, and then a smattering of crap I read on the back of the cereal box," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "God, I'm never going to understand Imperial, though. It's all twelves and sixes and weird. I can't use my fingers."

"Yeah, I tried to use my fingers when I took geometry," Theo shared, rolling his eyes at himself because he remembered how that had gone.

"You can't really use your fingers when you're looking at stupid triangles and trying to get circumferences and means and crap. Couldn't even use a calculator!"

"Meeetric," Sparkle said, leaning his head back and looking wistfully up at the sky. "A whole world of sense opens up to you when you start thinking in tens, man. It's awesome."

"Tell that to the American education system," Theo replied with a huffed laugh. "If you can get it changed, many people like myself would probably be in your debt."

"See, what you really need to do is move to one of any of the other countries on the planet," Sparkle offered. "I'm pretty sure America is the only country left that hasn't gone metric, you know. We get a bit of imperial trickling over into Canada, but it's hard to avoid when the people downstairs are clinging to the Old Ways."

"The only thing wrong with that is since I'm used to America, I'd probably be a massive screw up in other countries."

It was sad that Ange was agreeing with this sentiment. But, she was rationalizing it quickly so Theo wouldn't feel too bad about himself.

"I can only mess so much up in a place where I know how things work."

Aw, Theo. Sparkle kind of wanted to pat you on the head. You were adorable.

"You figure you screw up a lot?"

"Enough," Theo said, shrugging one shoulder. "Luckily, nothing so bad where I couldn't fix it."

Almost dooming the human race to Ember Silva had been a close one.

Yeah, that would be a tricky one to live down.

"That's the best sort of screwup," Sparkle offered. "The sort you can fix again."

The Beach, Monday Afternoon to Evening

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