I am happy. on Cascade Hall

Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau

January 28, 2014 5:48 PM

ATTENTION 5TH AND 6TH YEARS! by Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau

It had been announced the night before during dinner that all Fifth and Sixth year students were excused for a short period of time during their first lesson the following morning and were requested to join the Headmistress in the Cascade Hall once breakfast had been completed. With the year coming closer to the end and the examinations forever looming on her students and the Midsummer Fair coming up quickly, Kiva wanted to get the voting completed so that the students could return to their scheduled lessons and she would be able to tally the ballots in time for the announcement at the Fair.

Kiva stood in the hall waiting somewhat impatiently for those who were supposed to be in class to hurry along while the Fifth and Sixth years stayed behind. She was rather exhausted and she knew that she probably looked that way as well. She had long since stopped having the patience to charm her hair straight, giving her a less than what she thought to be a professional look with her spiral curls. Her clothes were ill fitting with the amount of weight she had lost, but she tried not to let it show in her smile how much stress she was under. Mortimer had taken much of the load off of her shoulders to allow her time with her son, but she still had obligations to the school and to her position until the end of term.

“Hello everyone.” Kiva greeted with a polite smile. She didn’t often get to interact with the students, so even something as simple as this felt a little more personal to her than it probably did to them. “I asked you all here today because it is time for you to vote for next year’s Head Boy and Girl. I have the ballots here as well as some quills in case you need one.” Kiva held out the ballots and some quills. “Please take one and do not discuss your votes. These will remain anonymous.” She really didn’t care if they decided to chat about it after the fact, but she wanted the actually voting portion to remain fresh and untainted by other opinions.

“The results of the ballot will be announced at the Midsummer Event. Find a seat and when you are done, please return the ballot and quill to me. If you have any questions, please ask me.”

(OOC: Here is the link to the voting form. Voting is In Character (if you have more than one character in these years, you vote per character) and can remain anonymous IC if you want. You do not have to respond to this post, but you can if you feel the need. Please be sure to vote because your vote does matter. All votes need to be in by February 14th.)

Subthreads:

Conflicts of interest by Jay Carey

Congratulating Evan by Lucille Carey

I am happy. by Alicia Bauer

0 Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau ATTENTION 5TH AND 6TH YEARS! 0 Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau 1 5

Jay Carey

February 05, 2014 10:48 PM

Conflicts of interest by Jay Carey

Jay was just finishing his last cup of coffee, a lukewarm combination of dregs, not-quite-dissolved sugar, and milk which made his mouth twist itself out of shape when he forced it down his throat, when the last of the lower- and seventh years trailed toward the doors of the Cascade Hall, and he quickly put his cup down in his empty cereal bowl along with his cutlery, then stacked that onto the part of his plate which he thought had the lowest concentration of toast crumbs and residual grease from the eggs on it already, a habit from home. Here, he didn’t have to carry dishes to the kitchen himself, but that might change if he had a cup in his hand when the other things disappeared from the table, and he liked not carrying dishes and then having to dash to his morning lessons. He wasn’t sure, but he was afraid dashing might make the coffee wear off faster.

If he ever, he thought, had a knut to his name which he owed to no one else and which none of his younger siblings strictly needed, he was going to get into the coffee business. He had no idea what people did in the coffee business or how to find that information out, but he was sure there had to be some way to make a lot of money off it. Coffee was socially acceptable, perfectly legal, and highly addictive – a perfect combination. If he could get Alex to bring her head for sums into it and make good use of their fathers’ connections, they might make a killing…..

He lost himself for a moment in happy thoughts of riches, organization, and an endless supply of caffeine and only just got out of his seat when the others did to go get a ballot, having not heard a word the headmistress said. He and Alex had picked their seats, along with Lucille, this morning so they could communicate without speaking at need, so he was surprised to find, as he came out of the line, Alex dawdling near the end of it.

“We’re gonna be bad people,” she muttered, so low he wasn’t sure he heard her right, before resuming a normal walking speed back to her seat. Frowning, Jay opened his ballot and stopped a few steps from his chair, shocked, when he finished reading.

Theresa?

He glanced toward his sister just as she made a screeching noise; he assumed this meant she was as surprised as he had been by her nomination. Jay didn’t think she saw him looking at her, because she immediately turned red and ducked her head, trying to hide among the other Pecaris. Jay sat down, feeling vaguely embarrassed, but still more surprised than anything. Theresa? Really?

Evan, he noticed next, had made the ballot, along with Princeton and Thad and the Pecari guy in their year. He had privately hoped his future distant-in-law wouldn’t be nominated, but had expected these names to all show up, along with those of the three girls who weren’t his sister. He glanced toward Lucille, but she was, as usual since her betrothal, smiling pleasantly, giving away nothing.

At least one part was easy: not Princeton. He could not tolerate the thought of Theresa and Princeton winning together; they would be even more insufferable than they already were, and get him into more trouble than they already had. It was annoying enough to be expected to babysit his older sister, but if she had a badge and her boyfriend did, too, the task would become impossible. Besides, Princeton annoyed him. He would have gotten disqualified for being the reason Jay had been accused of incompetence even if Theresa hadn’t been on the list as well.

What, precisely, he wondered for the millionth time as his mind wandered, was he supposed to have done, put her under Imperius, if he could even pull it off? Tried to change his teachers’ memories after every Beginners’ class so they didn’t notice the issues with Brandon? And the same for Henry? It was not his fault half his family was completely dysfunctional, he had done everything he could, but they all did everything they wanted, and....

Focus. Ballot. Head Boy and Girl. That's all for now. Just do that.

He glanced up again, and saw Lucille looking at him this time, biting her lip and raising her finger twice - one-one. The first name in the first column. He shrugged, not wanting to get involved in her relationships any more than he wanted to think about how he was supposed to perform miracles with his siblings. It wasn’t like he was going to be able to tell her what to do every time in her life it was a good idea for her to do something and lie to Evan about it….

Rubbing his eyes, he thought that Evan and Theresa had thrown them all for a loop. Alex had expected Evan and Arabella to be nominated, but Jay and Lucille had thought she was crazy. He’d have to apologize to her later.

Would it do so much harm to throw Theresa a pity vote? Merit suggested Henny, but if she went power-mad, she’d be no friend to them or their social class. Alicia wasn’t impolitic in the wider world the way the other two were, but she didn’t owe the Careys anything, either, and he wasn’t sure she’d actually be able to function if Thad - Jay assumed he was the one in control, at least in part because it gave him an excuse to think of Princeton as incompetent - didn't win alongside her; Alex said Alicia was the only one of that set who never seemed to do anything on her own, instead behaving more like a Crotalus than their year’s actual Crotali in that way. Theresa seemed to like her, but Terry’s primary concern was to keep Princeton from leaving her, so she’d probably make friends with a doorknob if he asked her to. A high functioning future trophy wife would not bother Theresa much if it made Princeton happy for them to talk about - whatever that sort of girl talked about, he neither knew nor wanted to know.

He had so hoped Alex would be nominated, her own assertions that she didn’t expect or even want to be aside. She took this whole thing too seriously, insisting that it could affect them all even out of school because of how people might react, but other than that, she was reliable and would have solved the whole problem for all of them. It would have set a strange precedent, that only Carey girls pulled this kind of thing off, but there were worse things than that, and given how muddled the generations were around the family, he wasn’t even sure, off the top of his head, it would really be a pattern….

As it was, as he marked two names and got up to hand the paper in, he considered beginning next year with a campaign to abolish the whole system of an elected Head Boy and Girl. The staff could either make the selections, the way they did for every other position which was important in the school, or else they could just abolish the whole thing. Either way, the student body would have one less thing to be paranoid and stressed about which didn’t really matter at all. He couldn’t see why anyone at all, except maybe the staff, would be opposed to his campaign, and he might even get to be famous for a while. It would be like not losing a game by throwing the board.

0 Jay Carey Conflicts of interest 0 Jay Carey 0 5

Lucille Carey

February 05, 2014 11:59 PM

Congratulating Evan by Lucille Carey

Lucille was, she thought, as surprised as Jay and Alex and Theresa by the Head Girl ballot, but she hadn’t, she thought, been as unsettled by it, and didn’t really understand why they were. Theresa was her and Alex’s friend and Jay’s sister, but she had exactly two skills, neither of which were what the family wanted representing them in front of the whole school, whether the role she did that in was important or not. The Carey family did not need people thinking their girls were forward and fond of weapons, so therefore, she had not voted for her cousin. She really didn’t understand why Jay had seemed stressed. She loved Mal, but she wouldn’t have voted for him if he’d been on the ballot and didn’t think it would have bothered her. Her brother just was not leadership material.

Eventually, that would be a problem, but there was nothing Lucille could do about it. Nothing except try to have people around her who would protect him for her. With that and good manners in mind, she waited outside the Hall after casting her votes for Evan.

Mother had been very strict with her for as long as she could remember to make sure she would always behave appropriately no matter what was going on, and she had felt much less uncertain on her feet since acquiring Evan, since – unlike what Theresa would have even if she could get a commitment from Cepheus, given his track record – he meant having a chance at a future which didn't involve being considered a total failure, but approaching him, rather than waiting to be approached, was still awkward for her. Mother had also trained her not to draw attention to herself, after all, but it felt necessary now. So she put on a smile before she started walking once she spotted him and called his first name.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said. “I just wanted to congratulate you on your nomination.”

She didn’t even know if she expected him to win or lose, what system of groups voting together or groups splitting their votes she thought was most likely. She had listened to Jay and Alex arguing about such possibilities for too long, now, to find them at all entertaining to think about. She was going to focus on being pleased that even a nomination should increase the regard their association brought to her instead.

0 Lucille Carey Congratulating Evan 224 Lucille Carey 0 5

Alicia Bauer

February 06, 2014 5:06 PM

I am happy. by Alicia Bauer

As she took tiny sips of her green tea and tried not to look like she was, in fact, holding onto her cup like a lifeline as she waited for the rest of the school to stop eating and go do something productive, Alicia found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she had at some point acquired a taste for camomile. It was not, after all, as though her current level of anxiety and anticipation was an isolated occurrence; it wasn’t as common as it had once been, but had happened once before this calendar year, even, when she had made Thad (only…slightly crunchy, and anyway, they had tasted fine, and there was nothing wrong with crunchy baked goods, and she dared anyone to contradict her on any of those points) brownies for his birthday. The more she was invested in something, the more tense she got, and maybe, if she hadn’t happened to think camomile tasted awful, she would have been able to better control the tendency that tension had to tip her toward being defensive and sarcastic even when she didn’t want to be.

Too late now.

She could take losing, she thought. It would be hard, but she could take it. For one thing, she was not going to lower herself to throwing a temper tantrum in front of most of the people at this school, and for another, at least one of the three people she might ever consider grumbling to privately was sure to win at least one of the positions, and she would have to put all her efforts and attention into being happy for them. They deserved that. But if she didn’t even make the paper….

Distantly, she knew all this was stupid, that there was nothing she’d be able to do about it even if she did not make the paper and that she’d just have to take that blow, too, but that…that one would be harder. It was one thing that they had picked Henny over her before, that had been fair, Henny really was the better woman in a lot of ways, but this time, it would amount to them saying she had never even been a contender. The teachers, the heads, they and their opinions didn’t really matter, any of them, but…It was habit, she guessed, to feel as though they did.

Had it always taken the rest of the school this long to eat, she wondered, blinking and reaching for the teapot for the fifth time this morning. How any of them had any appetite at all was so far beyond her that she couldn’t even fathom it. Even some of her own classmates were eating, and they knew what was at stake. Theirs was, as Momma had noted, a talented year. Any of them might have made the cut, and any of them might not have. There was no way to know at all.

She poured the tea and cast a refilling charm on the pot, since she was afraid she would lose her head if she went for it again and it had been emptied by someone else. The mint in it was soothing, and absently, she wondered if it was chance that it was on the menu often enough, or if the elves knew about her stash – certainly, leaves and bags ended up in the Aladren bins often enough – and had put it out because they knew someone enjoyed it. Did they appreciate a student who was tidy and knew how to make a bed enough to reciprocate by providing her drug of choice at the breakfast table? For a moment, she considered that maybe, her mother had done something, but no – she doubted Momma would notice that kind of thing. Maybe there were students from Morocco that she didn’t know about? She tried to analyze the tastes, the tea and the mint over it, but she was too nervous to concentrate on anything.

Finally, they all went away, and she was able to get a ballot. For a moment, looking at it, she wasn’t able to process what she was reading well enough to understand it, but then names started coming to her: Evan Brockert, Jorge Garcia, Cepheus Princeton, Waverly Canterbury, Theresa Carey – wait, what? Her eyes jumped back up and spotted her own name, and the relief was so strong, it almost made her feel sleepy, but she still hadn’t…Oh, there Thad was. She’d thought that surely they wouldn’t leave him off, but trust for the school leadership was never something she’d possessed an abundance of.

Admittedly, all these names did make her task harder. Two of her favorite people were competing against each other and she was competing against the third herself. She glanced at Henny, wishing they had talked about this, but she had just never seen how to bring it up, especially since she hadn’t even been sure she’d make the ballot and had known she would look both arrogant and stupid if she didn’t after such a discussion.

What do you want? she asked herself, turning her quill between her fingers. She had carried the one she’d brought along this morning when she walked up to get a ballot, thinking it would make her look competent and more prepared than any rivals who had to borrow one from the headmistress, but she doubted anyone had even noticed.

For all four of us to win.

You can’t have that. Next?

The boys were both like her – they both wanted to prove themselves so badly. Cepheus, in that way, had, she thought, a greater need than Thad after all the troubles with Quidditch, with girls, with feeling the pressure of the position his family had put him in. Thad, though, was the better manager, and his position in his family was probably the more precarious. To her, it was proof Fate herself sometimes recognized talent, but she could see why the rest of his family might not quite see it that way. She had dreamed, for so long, of taking over with Thad and fixing the whole points system for Aladren together, but that was before she had made up her mind that she had to Confess if anything obviously romantic ever did happen, thereby making him hate her, and she was sure she and Ceph could have a lot of fun, too, together, in a different way, but then, both of those scenarios rested on the assumption she would vote for herself….

She twirled the quill between her fingers, staring at the paper, willing it to tell her what to do.

She had dreamed, too, for years, of finally having something to say at the annual recitation of achievements at home – of even pointing out that everyone who had ever looked at her like she was a waste of space could just go hang, that she had as much as they did, now, was better than them in every other respect, anyway, and didn’t need any of them anymore. Gradually, though, ever so gradually, she had realized first that it would be an extremely bad idea to make that statement and burn those bridges, and then that it implied far more concern for her family’s opinions than they deserved. It implied their opinions and her desire to yell at a bunch of people who should have been beneath her notice, and one day would be, were more important than Henny. Which they were not. If the law was important enough for her not to curse them all for the way they were with her, then Henny was certainly important enough not to shove off the flying carpet just to get back at them.

There were, of course, other arguments for voting for herself. She didn’t just want the position because she wanted to prove herself. She would be able, she thought, to work better with Ceph, if he won, than any of the others could, including his own girlfriend. She did have to think, potentially, of her own résumé – she had done little else for six years, except become what she once would have sneered at as she termed it a sentimental idiot. She was beginning to wonder if she weren’t still, just now. It was such a muddle….

Finally, she made her decisions and left the Hall, her hand curled so tightly beneath a stack of books that her nails dug into her palm to drive the muddle from her head. Then she let it go and leaned against the wall, and let herself be happy.

She hugged her books to her chest and ducked her head, trying to hide that she was smiling and maybe a little damp-eyed at the same time and wanting to do an impromptu little dance of triumph, to screech it out for the whole school to hear: she was good enough. Whether she won or not didn’t matter at all right now. She was good enough to win, and that had been acknowledged. Everyone knew it now, and stupid as it was...that felt good.

16 Alicia Bauer I am happy. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5