Chapter 20: Imperfection

Well. This is fairly long. I don't know what happened. I hope you like it. It kind of explains the past of a lot of the characters a little bit. It's kind of one of those serious-ish chapters I guess. OK go!

Classes resumed soon after the dorms were reorganized, and Miss Allberry’s class was once again Blue’s favorite. After Miss Allberry kicked Kendrick out of the class, that was. Two weeks in the class was finally a happy place again, with all the old gang plus Evan, Ewan, Jenny, Estela, Pablo, and Kakahi. Hakan had dropped the class when he realized Kendrick was in it, and couldn’t seem to figure out how to sign back up. Gerda told them it was probably for the best and he was a terrible actor. This led to a discussion as to how he got into the school, and Gerda shrugged and suggested Hakan was actually a fairly talented “stunt magician.”

Miss Allberry brought the conversation back to her and explained what they would be doing in lieu of getting a new script for the week. “We’re doing some serious acting exercises this time. I saw something on the telly over the break and then I was like: Wow! What a good idea.”

She paused to let the class take in her impressiveness, until Blue finally asked, “What’s a good idea?”

“You’re all going to share your deepest darkest secrets!” Miss Allberry cheered, and the class fell deathly silent.

After a few minutes of a stare down between the students and teacher, Teddy stated, “No offense, Crazypants, but you crazy. I’m not doing that.” Miss Allberry looked shocked and glanced to the rest of the students, who gave her looks saying they agreed with Teddy’s sentiments.

“Well,” Miss Allberry trailed off and thought for a moment, “everyone has to please share one insecurity then? If we open up and access deeper levels of emotion we become better actors. The TV lady said so.”

“I’m not really comfortable with that,” Teddy protested, but Miss Allberry just glared in response.

“Tough turnips,” the teacher retorted, “pick an insecurity or something that makes you feel upset and prepare a speech about it for tomorrow. Then we’ll create a forum of tolerance and understanding, dammit! If you feel too uncomfortable, I guess you can make something up. Just make it sound convincing, OK? We’ll draw sticks for the order.” She fetched a cup full of Popsicle sticks then and drew them out one by one. Then first name she drew was Kip, next was Estela, followed by Malik, Rashida, Austin, Kakahi, Teddy, the Twingers (“Are we just one person according to those sticks?” “Yes.” “OK, cool.”), Jenny, Pablo, Gerda, and finally Blue. The class had switched to 8th period in the new semester, so the students discussed the assignment as they walked back to the dorms.

“What are you going to talk about, Space Invader?” Blue asked.

“You really don’t know?” Kip replied. “What do you think my biggest insecurity is? One guess.”

“Is it that you like Star Trek?” Blue asked, and Kip laughed.

“Of course,” he said. “You got me there Blue.”

“Really?” Blue replied with a giddy grin. Kip shook his head.

“No, Blue, sorry,” he stated sympathetically.

“Well I don’t know what I’m going to talk about,” Blue declared then, and looked to Teddy and Malik to her side. Pablo had to go to dance practice after eight period, explaining his absence. He and Teddy spent far too much time together since they starting dating, in Blue’s opinion, and her important Teddy time was lacking. “What will you talk about?”

“Me?” Teddy asked, and Blue nodded. “It’s a surprise!” he replied, grinning.

“You?” Blue asked to Malik. Malik was silent in response, as he had been for the entire walk back. Blue turned her attention back to Teddy in the hopes that perhaps with Pablo busy and Malik mentally distant she and Teddy could have Blue-Teddy time. Malik walked into his room with Kip, mumbling something about needing to think about stuff to Blue and Teddy, who glanced at one another and shrugged.

“Blue Teddy party?” Blue asked, and Teddy shook his head and sighed.

“Sorry, darling Blue,” he replied, “I promised to give our favorite twins a lesson on our friends. You could definitely come along, though! They like you a lot, too.”

Blue grinned at Teddy and nodded, following her friend to the twins’ room. Teddy knocked on the door to his former room, and it flung open quickly. “Teddy! We’ve…I’d say been waiting, but we just got here,” Evan greeted.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” Ewan said, then spotted Blue. “And you brought a lovely guest along with you. Welcome to you too, Blue.”

“Triple rhyme!” Evan declared, and he and his brother grinned at each other. As they invited Blue to sit on the futon across from their bunk beds, she looked around the newly decorated room. The twins hadn’t completed removed Teddy’s decorations, as it happened, and parts of the wall were still sparkly and pink. Otherwise, on Kendall’s old half of the room, posters adorned the wall. Many of them were of some man in a bowtie, and a couple were of things Blue recognized, like Harry Potter’s musical group, Harry Potter but from Glee now, and two pretty British (well, one was Irish) men who she was dead convinced were in love with one another. (Teddy agreed with her, and so did, apparently The Internet).

“I never knew you were nerds,” Blue declared.

“Yep,” the twins replied.

“And proud of it!” Evan cheered, as Ewan handed Blue some snacks. Teddy sat next to Blue on the futon, and the twins sat across the room from them.

“So, Teddy and Blue, two of our closest friends,” Ewan began, and then handed the speech off to his brother.

“We have called you here today so that you can tell us what relationships exist and existed in the past,” Evan explained

“Because Facebook doesn’t tell us what’s really going on!” Ewan complained to finish, as they stared expectantly at Blue and Teddy. The blond genius moved to speak, but Evan seemed to think of something at that moment. They inquired as to Blue’s use of the term “Twingers” when Miss Allberry seemed to have thought of it, but Teddy quickly defended Blue and informed the twins Blue had thought of the term independently. Teddy suggested Miss Allberry and Blue were “brain twins,” and the Twingers apologized.

Blue smiled at them, “No worries, Twingers! Do you want to hear about things now?”

“Yes, we would like that,” Ewan said in a strange voice, obviously imitating something, though Blue wasn’t quite sure of what.

“OK, so our class,” Teddy said. “Alphabetical order? Yes. Last name wise, that would be…,” he appeared to be talking to himself, and wrinkled his nose when he realized who would have to go first in the order he selected. “So, that’s me, I guess…Uh. I’m dating Pablo, as you can probably tell.”

“Yeah, we can tell,” Ewan replied.

“Any previous boyfriends?” Evan asked, and Teddy scowled.

The blond didn’t seem to plan on responding as he sat in silence, so Blue chimed in, “He dated someone else!” The twins looked interested as Teddy shifted uncomfortably, and Blue whispered, “But he was an assassin, so we don’t talk about him.”

“An assassin?” Evan questioned, as both twins stared Teddy down.

“Teddy? Explanation? Did he assassinate someone?” Ewan asked, and Blue shook her head.

“No. Well, see at first I thought he was going to assassinate me, because that makes sense, right? But he tried to assassinate Teddy instead. Almost shot him, Teddy said, but then he changed his mind,” Blue quickly explained, and the twins became more intrigued with every word.

“This is fascinating!” Ewan cheered.

“Why haven’t you told us about this?” Evan prodded Teddy, who folded his arms and scowled. Apparently silence was his way of changing the subject.

“Why did someone want to assassinate you?”

“Do you work for some secret agency?”

“Can you not tell us cause it’s classified?”

“What is the classified mission you’re on at the school?”

“Are you secretly a criminal mastermind?”

“Are you a secret agent?”

“Stop!” Teddy shouted, and the Twingers looked at him with shame. “Please, can we just get back to what we came here for?”

“Of course, Teddy,” Ewan mumbled.

“Sorry,” Evan muttered. “We didn’t mean to upset you. Please go on with explaining the complex relations of this school.”

“All right,” Teddy replied, smiling slightly at the others.  Following himself on the list came Gerda, who he explained was dating Hakan. Gerda had dated in Sweden previous to moving to the US, but Hakan had only dated Gerda herself. Next was Blue, was clearly dating Malik, and proceeded to explain that Malik had never dated anyone before. Blue chimed that she hadn’t either. Next was Jenny, who was in a relationship with her first boyfriend, Matthew. When Blue questioned whether that Matthew was the same Matthew as Man Crush Student from Improv, Teddy informed her that they were indeed one and the same. Next was Austin, who the twins informed Blue and Teddy had broken up with her boyfriend. She’d had one or two in the past, none were quite sure. Next was the twins themselves. Neither had ever been in a relationship or even been on a real date before, and they expressed that dating people felt weird because they couldn’t share it. Skipping Malik, next was Estela, who was dating Kakahi. She’d had two previous relationships she didn’t often discuss. Kakahi didn’t date anyone until Estela. Next he discussed Pablo’s dating prowess; Pablo had dated three girls and one boy before Teddy, and all were dancers like him. Teddy then addressed Kip and explained his relationship with Rashida. Rashida had dated two others in the past, but Rashida was Kip’s first girlfriend. The twins remarked that having an explanation for the pair’s awkward behavior toward one another was nice.

“What about Miss Allberry?” Ewan asked at the end. Teddy and Blue both shrugged.

“Your nemesis?” Evan asked, and Teddy scowled.

“Alec Potts has…Had a girlfriend in the UK,” he mumbled. “I think they might have broken up, though I’m not entirely sure.”

“Jerkface and Blue’s roommate?” Ewan questioned.

“No one. Who’d date either of them, honestly? I mean, no offense to Kendall, but…Well, she’s a little creepy. Kendrick is just a jerk…but you know, he’s got the face, so…I might be wrong about that,” Teddy trailed off. “Lots of girls have no self-respect…So Kendrick might have dated someone…Or he might be dating someone…I don’t really care.”

After the information session finished, the group of them continued to hang out, and discussed their assignment before moving on to playing group video games. The Twingers started doing some weird working together tactics that bothered Blue and Teddy, who swore “revenge, if it’s the last thing we do!” Eventually there was a knock on the door, and the twins opened it up to see Kip standing in front of them.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said slowly, confusing everyone in the room with his choice of introductory words, “I love Malik. Like, in a manly kind of way. But I think this is on you guys.”

Blue and Teddy glanced at one another as the Twingers grinned. “Our good friend, Kip!” Ewan said with delight.

“Would you like to join us in video games as our other good friends leave?” Evan questioned. Kip shrugged and walked into their room.

When he spotted the posters on the walls his mouth fell open, and he declared, “You’re awesome, you ginger twins you.” They grinned identically and said something about knowing they wouldn’t regret welcoming him to their friendship as Teddy and Blue walked back to Malik’s room to see what Kip was talking about.

The door wasn’t locked, so the pair let themselves in. “Hey Malik, what’s up?” Teddy greeted.

“Kip thinks you’re being weird!” Blue declared.

“I’m not…I don’t…,” Malik mumbled, glaring at the wall of his room and scarcely acknowledging either his best friend or his girlfriend. Blue and Teddy sat on Kip’s dish chair across from Malik, and then glanced at each other to decide who should speak next. They were leaning against one another, due to the size of the chair, and Blue was nearly on Teddy’s lap.

“What’s wrong, Malik?” Teddy asked, and Malik scowled and turned toward the pair.

“So that assignment tomorrow…I literally can’t think of anything to say,” he mumbled to them. Teddy raised an eyebrow at him and let Blue speak in his stead.

“There’s gotta be something!” she declared. “Like, you’re self-conscious about your…Um…Well, certainly not your body or your face or really looks in general…Your personality is lovely…I’ve got nothing!”

Teddy rolled his eyes, “You’re his girlfriend. You’re not going to tell him the truth about his flaws.” The pair shared a poignant look wherein Blue gave Teddy a slight glare to tell him she disapproved of what he said and of course she wasn’t going to but Malik didn’t need to know.

“I mean, my life has been…pretty much perfect,” Malik trailed off, leaving Teddy and Blue to wonder whether he was listening to them. “Sometimes I felt really bad for you, Teddy, what with grade school and middle school and all…but you’re not me.”

At the mention of his earlier school days, Teddy stood up, causing Blue to face plant into the side of the chair. The blond walked out of the room with a snappish farewell, “I’m going back to the twins’ room.”

Blue flailed around to pull herself back up to proper sitting position, and waved at the door just after Teddy was gone, her farewell missing him completely. Despite slight concern for her friend’s strangely cold response to Malik’s plight, Blue turned her attention to her boyfriend.

“Well are you sure there’s nothing?” she asked, and Malik nodded.

“I’m…practically perfect,” he mumbled, crossing his arms and glaring at nothing.

“Well, um…,” Blue trailed off, struggling to pull herself out of the large chair and walk over to Malik. She presented him with the idea that struck her then, “There’s still time to make bad memories! Let’s go!”

“You’re right!” Malik replied, taking Blue’s outstretched hand and standing up. “What do we do first?”

“Uh…,” Blue trailed off, scratching her head and tugging forward on Malik’s hand. “Get warm clothes and lock your room!”

“OK!” Malik replied, and, detaching his hand from Blue’s, got a jacket for himself and once again offered Kip’s to Blue. After that he turned the lights off and locked his dorm room. Blue led him down outside to the still snowy courtyard. A small group of students was playing in the snow, and Blue motioned toward them.

“Step number one for bad memories and becoming less perfect!” she declared, and Malik listened skeptically. “Go throw things at them. In cold blood! If you hurt them, that’s even better, cause then you can feel guilty about it.”

Malik just stared at Blue for a moment, before replying, “Sorry Blue. You know I think you’re secretly brilliant, but I’m not going to do that.”

Blue glared at him and asked, “Well, do you want to ruin your personality or not?”

Malik stared with a blank face back at her, finally mumbling, “Not…?” Blue made an angry snort at him, grabbed his hand, and pulled him forward. Though Malik inquired as to where they were going, Blue didn’t respond. “Blue…Dollface…Blue!” Malik called to her as she dragged him along behind him. “Where are we going? Blue, where are we going?”

“Shh!” Blue shushed. “You’ll see when we get there!”

“Blue…,” Malik whined, watching where they were walking nervously. Blue pulled him along past the courtyard and past the building most of their classes were in, and they finally arrived at the school’s daycare center for the school’s teacher’s kids.

“OK,” Blue said, pointing at the children as they played in the snow. “Go tell those children their parents don’t love them,” she instructed, and Malik once again stared at her in response.

“No,” he denied.

“Do you want to have something for this assignment or not?” Blue snapped, looking moderately annoyed for a moment before flashing Malik a smile to show she wasn’t actually angry. “Well, what would you like to do?” she asked, and when Malik shrugged in reply she let go of his hand and ran off, holding a quick conversation with one of the children, who was the math teacher’s daughter. While Blue crouched down and spoke with her, she motioned Malik a few times, and once their conversation was finished the little girl trekked over to him. While Blue insisted that everything was fine to the caretaker watching the kids, the girl spoke to Malik.

“Hi,” she said, and Malik frowned and blinked at her in confusion.

“Hello,” he replied, tilting his head in curiosity at her.

“I think you’re ugly,” the little girl said. She proceeded to kick his shin and run away, back toward the area she and the other children were playing in. Bounding over to Malik with a grin, Blue looked incredibly proud of herself. The caretaker scolded the little girl, to which she protested that Blue told her to do it.

“That was a pretty bad memory, right?” Blue asked, but Malik seemed too shocked to respond.

The caretaker started walking over to them to scold Blue, so she quickly bolted from the scene. Along with the caretaker came the little girl, who the caretaker forced to apologize to the still stunned Malik. He mumbled that she was forgiven and trailed off in the direction Blue went, eventually cracking up in laughter as he walked. When Blue popped out from behind a snow covered bush with a deep scowl on his face, Malik only laughed more.

“Stop laughing! A child just called you ugly and kicked you! This is bad!” Blue shouted, but Malik just shook his head, put his arms around Blue’s waist, pulled her forward, and kissed her. After the kiss was finished, because Blue didn’t interrupt kisses of course, she protested, “No! I’m making bad memories for you!”

“I love you,” Malik replied, with another kiss and a laugh.

Blue scowled at him, “Well I don’t love you back…” Malik’s shocked puppy eyes in response to Blue’s words caused her to shriek out, “I lied I was just trying to help I love you too! I’m the worst person in the worlddd!”

Malik sighed, “Amazing how painful that felt, even knowing what you were going for…Not sure how I could use that tomorrow though…”

“Let’s just go back to your room,” Blue sighed, once again grabbing Malik’s hand and pulling him toward the dorms. “It was a good try, though,” Blue suggested, and Malik nodded as they walked together.

“You’re pretty fantastic you know,” he replied, and Blue laughed at him.

“Oh I know, I know,” she replied, “of course I’m fantastic. To land someone as fantastic as you are, I must also be fantastic!”

Malik laughed at his girlfriend, mumbling, “Thank you, Blue.”

“We can make something up for your assignment!” Blue declared suddenly, and Malik nodded.

“Yeah, I figured that’s what I’d end up having to do,” he shrugged. Upon their return, the couple was greeted by Teddy, with crossed arms and a resigned glare.

“Malik, please step into your room and let me tell you why you’re being annoying,” he said, motioning behind him to Malik’s empty room.

Blue quickly looked around to find a distraction, eventually gasping and saying, “What’s that, Shelly? …Shelly needs me!” After her declaration, Blue ran off to her room, leaving Malik and Teddy alone. The two walked into Malik’s room, and Teddy ominously motioned for Malik to sit.

The next day, in Miss Allberry’s class, Teddy and Malik sat far away from one another. Before class began, a group of the students grilled Blue about the situation. She explained to them that she’d avoided them after she and Malik returned to the dorms and focused on what she was going to say for the assignment instead. Therefore, she didn’t know what had happened and suggested the group ask Kip, since he was Malik’s roommate. Before they got a chance, class began, and Miss Allberry ushered Kip to the front of the room.

He sat on a stool she’d provided for the kids to sit on while they presented their problems, and folded his hands together. “Start, start,” Miss Allberry encouraged, and Kip nodded slowly and sighed.

“So…This is awkward,” he stated. Shifting slightly in his seat, Kip spoke, “So going first kind of sucks, obviously, because I don’t really know what to say exactly so I guess I’ll just…Go for it. The assignment was pretty vague, but essentially I guess I’m supposed to talk about something that more or less makes me…feel bad. Now I know you all probably think my parents are, like, the anti-Christ, but I’d rather you don’t think of them that way. I can’t exactly explain my childhood, but I do want to address the thing that embarrasses me most…More than anything else, I mean…Um, so I guess I’ll just say that the…The one thing that bothers me most about myself is my irrational fears. I also don’t apparently see the color you all claim is between yellow and blue. It’s…Really confusing, to say the least. When I first meet people, I worry that they’ll…They’ll think I’m faking it for attention or…I don’t know, that I’m crazy. But, but I’m not crazy, you know! I mean…I just worry so much about what people will think of me and then I just…I don’t want people to think I’m crazy. It’s just…I guess I just worry about what, you know…Other people think. It has actually stopped me from talking to people before, and I don’t…I don’t like that. There’s no telling when during a conversation someone will say something to set me off, and I…I just wish I was a normal person…” He trailed off, and the class stared in silence for a bit, before Miss Allberry clapped exuberantly.

“Fantastico, Alien! It was brilliante,” she said, and then moved on. “Next we have Hispanesbian, in her first solo performance in front of the group. Welcome Hispanesbian!”

Kip slid off the stool in the front of the room as Estela walked up to it and sat down slowly. She took one deep breath before she started speaking, “My…Thing…I guess, it’s just about….When I was young, my first crush was on Britney Spears. I didn’t know anyone would have objected to that, when I was that age. I guess, what I’m saying is, since I was little I kind of…Kind of knew I was…different. As I grew older I realized what the word ‘lesbian’ meant. Unfortunately I, well…I learned it in a Catholic church with my homophobic Catholic parents. D-don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Catholicism, I just…Their views on homosexuality…I was just, I was terrified. In the eighth grade I dated a boy. I mean, just to prove to myself that I could feel…Special feelings for a boy. It didn’t work, so I thought I would try again, you know…A different boy, maybe, was all that I needed. Needless to say, it didn’t work out. Then I met this girl. She was…Well, I’ve never talked about her before…She was so pretty. This was, um…freshman year, I guess, the beginning of the year. She had blond hair, and she was a senior. I fell in love with her. She flirted with me…Even kissed me a few times. I thought, you know…I guess I thought we were dating. When I mentioned something about it, she yelled at me and called me stupid. To make a long story short, we had a weird on again off again relationship with a lot of verbal abuse on her part and then she just cut off contact after graduation, and I was heartbroken. I spent the whole summer in a stupor…But it actually gave me the strength to come out to my family and really change my life for the better, so…It’s a good story, in the end.”

Kakahi stood and excitedly congratulated her girlfriend with a hug and a statement that she’d sounded great. The class clapped, and Miss Allberry remarked, “How very…You of you, turning it into a positive story. Well, take a seat. That was very good. You’re up, Jasmine.

Malik practically stomped to the front of the room and took his place on the stool. He proceeded to look everywhere in the room except at Teddy, and eventually started to speak. “So, I was going to take Miss Allberry’s recommendation about making something up for this assignment, but then my so called best friend decided to tell me all my flaws. It was just awesome, hearing someone you love who you think feels the same way about you do the exact opposite of what friends are meant to do. Would you like to hear some of things my former best friend told me?” Malik asked, but didn’t wait for the response of the increasingly uncomfortable class. “Apparently, I have an ego problem. I think I’m awesome and great, and apparently that makes me a tool and neurotically uptight. Yeah. These are the things Teddy called me yesterday, so thank you, Teddy. Thank you for being the worst friend ever. It was revealed to me recently that I’ve never had to feel bad in my life and everything was handed to me and I’m just a lazy piece of sh—crap. Paraphrasing that one, but it’s pretty much what he meant, isn’t it?” For the first time since he started talking, Malik shot a pointed look straight at Teddy. The blond stared straight back at him unflinchingly. “So basically, I just learned that everything I’ve ever worked toward, every…Every tweak I’ve made to better myself over the years, to make myself into a good person was all meaningless.” Malik stood from the stool angrily, knocking it over in the process, and stomped back to his seat. Blue moved to check on him, but he brushed her away in a surprisingly gentle way, considering how angry he seemed to be.

“That…,” Miss Allberry mumbled, as the class sat in stunned silence, “counts, I guess. Uh…OK, Condy’s turn!” Rashida stood from her seat and walked to the front of the room, standing the stool up and sitting on it, revealing her frazzled look when she sat on it and turned toward the class.

“That was…A surprise, I don’t…Wow, OK,” she muttered, before focusing back on her speech. She took her time to discuss pressures that her parents put on her as well as the pressures she put on herself and how hard living up to expectations could be for her. The class clapped and returned to a tense normalcy when she finished, and Austin took her place in the front of the room then. The tall girl discussed being perceived as “manly” due to her height, chosen haircut, and even rather low voice. After explaining that she didn’t really want to be perceived as anything but what she was, the class clapped for her, and she back sat down next to Rashida. Kakahi skipped to the front of the room, and gave some barely coherent speech about how lonely she’d been most of her life with thinly veiled drug references followed by outright declaration that being with Estela had finally gotten her to be sober. She finished with soft mumbling about being sorry for how disconnected she sounded because she was so nervous. Once she was securely back in her seat, the entire class turned to Teddy as he stood and walked to the front of the room without showing any emotion.

Teddy sat down on the stool, staring down at his hands, before finally speaking, “I haven’t always been the confident guy you all know and hopefully love. When I was younger, I was, well…Flamboyant and girly, more so than now. Not only that, but I was a smart aleck. I knew everything better than everyone, and I was an affront to the kids’ learned societal perception of what a boy should be so I…Let’s just say some people seem to have just been made for bullying. Throughout elementary and middle schools I was…Well, I was picked on nearly every day. It wasn’t physical or anything, just snide remarks but…What those kinds of things can do to your sense of self-worth, I…It’s hard to explain.” Blue glanced at her boyfriend as Teddy spoke, and saw that the tension in his body was relaxing, and he was listening closely. “The only thing that got me through those times, times where I just…I wanted to give up on life, but…There was this one person, who…Who I was able to count on, always. That person is my very best friend, Malik. Without Malik I wouldn’t have gotten through the toughest years I’ve ever seen. When kids called me every derogatory thing they could think of, Malik was there to tell me everything would be OK. And, Malik, I…I’m so sorry for what I said yesterday.  Living with Alec has me so stressed, and this assignment just reminded me of all the crap stuff that’s happened in my past, and I took that out on you and I’m very sorry for that. You mean more to me than anyone else ever has. You’re not the things I said yesterday. Sure, you have flaws; everyone has flaws, but what I said was more about my own misdirected anger than anything you did. And that’s not fair to you, but it happened and all I can say is that I regret it probably more than anything I’ve ever said.” Teddy stared at his lap for the better half of his speech, and the class soon realized he was crying. They looked expectantly at Malik, who was already approaching Teddy.

“It’s OK, Teddy,” he said softly, as the blond stood from the stool and made a poor attempt to make eye contact with his best friend. Malik chuckled lightly before pulling Teddy into a hug. Miss Allberry’s delighted clapping caused them to end the hug and return to their seats, relocating so they were next to one another.

Miss Allberry seemed overjoyed by the performance, “Oh, Jack, Jasmine, that was beautiful. You’re brilliant masters of drama. I’m very proud of what you’ve done here. Unfortunately we can’t spend any more time watching this lovely bromance. Please take the front of the room, Twingers!”

The pair walked to the front of the room, both with slight smiles on their faces as they attempted to both sit on the single stool. Both shot Teddy adoring looks before glancing at one another to try to decide what to do about the stool situation. Blue watched her boyfriend and best friend as Malik made fun of Teddy’s tears and they laughed together, smiling to herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a slight shift, and glanced to see Pablo with an unreadable expression on his face that confused her. Before she got the chance to address it, the Twingers spoke and distracted her.

The twins explained their honest discomfort at the thought that people couldn’t differentiate between them. Ultimately, they said, their personalities were actually pretty different. They didn’t bother to explain their personality and taste variances, and just sat back down instead.  Next up was Jenny, who spoke about body image issues and how she’d been picked on for her weight for most of her life. Pablo ambled up toward the stool, sitting down slowly. He discussed, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, that his largest worry was about being a little strange and not always able to tell when he’d "overstayed his welcome." After mumbling through something about his first boyfriend dumping him for his being bisexual, he meandered back to his seat and sat very quietly. Blue would have worried if it weren’t almost her turn. In the meantime Gerda stood and gave a very short presentation about living in a totally different culture and how she’d had a hard time adjusting to the differences between Swedish and American social norms. Finally it was Blue’s turn, and she got up and walked to the front of the class, taking a couple very deep breaths.

After thinking about it for nearly the entire night, Blue finally came to a consensus with herself about what she should discuss, and confessed to the class that she sometimes worried people thought she was really, really weird. Often she wondered if people realized she wasn’t quite as off kilter as she behaved but was instead making up for her most awkward tendencies. Once she finished the class clapped, and Malik, Teddy, and Blue headed back to the dorms together, laughing and joking, as they should be.