Spring/Summer SA34 (Tag Jessica) on Crotalus Commons

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

February 28, 2020 12:41 AM

Spring/Summer SA34 (Tag Jessica) by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Sadie hesitated on the threshold of her own room, wondering if she was going to be welcome if she made the short trip up the corridor. There had never been any indication that she was unwelcome, but there had been no strong indications that she actively was either. It wouldn’t have surprised her, to think that Jessica Hayles had neither noticed nor thought any more about her since their encounter at the feast. After all, she was so much older, and probably pretty popular.

The weird thing was, though, Sadie had seen her hanging out in Tumbleweed with Mara Morales. She had no idea how or why they’d have crossed paths in the first place but there they had been, sitting in the saloon bar, eating ice cream together and laughing. It surprised her to know that Jessica was willing to make friends with people in their year group, but it was sort of encouraging. Well, on the one hand it was sort of encouraging… On the other, Sadie clearly hadn’t made much of an impression at the feast. After all, Jessica had never sought her out again, and in whatever smaller space of time she’d gotten to know Mara in, they were up to the level of ice cream time. Sadie supposed that was par for the course. Maybe even what she’d sort of been striving for, being unnoticeable. But there was a difference between being an unwanted centre of attention and just being… unwanted.

Maybe Mara was pushy. She’d sort of got that impression from class. Well, not pushy exactly. But… not a timid little mouse like Sadie. A lot of her classmates seemed super outgoing. Maybe Mara had just had the guts to ask. Maybe Jessica had seen her on her own, and just been nice about it. Either way, it suggested that maybe Jessica wasn’t the kind to totally shoot someone down. If they just… tried.

She had put a disproportionate amount of time into choosing what to wear. On the plus side, she had just come from home, so she was aware of the latest styles. However, she was never sure which of them suited her or whether she was wearing them right. It was also that odd part of the year where it was hard to know if you were going to look forward if you were already wearing spring trends or behind the curve if you were still in winter. Plus, she didn’t want to look super dressed up. There was nothing sadder than trying way too hard, so she had put every ounce of effort she had into not appearing that way.

There were some fashion trends that were just a ‘no’ however #SoInRightNow and #OnPoint they were. Tangerine orange was, apparently, due to be big. Sadie could not imagine that flattering most people, and definitely not here. Luckily, rose prints were also coming in as this year’s twist on the ever present need for a floral element in a spring collection. She had a cute cord skirt with a rose pattern all over it, which was going to do for the colder side of spring, and was a way of embracing the trend without wearing a cutesy little flower print cardigan that was bound to make her look about six years old. In fact, she felt quite grown up in the almost knee length skirt, which she’d paired with thickish tights and a pair of ankle boots. On top, she wore a white shirt with a very slight pink criss-cross pattern, and dusky pink sweater, the logo of a well known brand taking the place of a school badge on her chest. ‘Preppy’ had been ‘in’ apparently, during the last/current season, and they were styles that Sadie just considered… normal looking and safe. It was classic, which was what Jessica went in for, and Sadie thought it meant she wouldn’t look totally out of place side by side with her… It might even be enough that her school bag, which she was still toting in spite of having clearly dropped the class look at the end of the day, might not seem totally out of place. Maybe Jessica would assume it was a statement accessory. Anyway, she’d found no other alternative, other than just going in with things in her hands, and that seemed presumptuous. At least the black leather backpack was designed to go with everything, so it didn’t clash with her outfit, or draw attention to itself outside of its oddly placed existence within the scenario.

She moved from her own room, and stood outside Jessica’s door, where she remained for several minutes, torn between the risk of exposing herself to failure and embarrassment and the continuing feeling of being lonely, or at least wanting Jessica to notice her. On the one hand, it was easier to turn tail and run, and let the status quo continue… On the other, she was bound to do something dumb or clutzy sooner or later, and what if the next time Jessica noticed her it was for all the wrong reasons? If she didn’t have anything else to go off, that might be her lasting impression. Of course, putting herself deliberately in Jessica’s space increased the chances of messing up in front of her- a door further up the corridor opened, changing the choice. Changing it to either being seen scurrying back down the corridor or actually doing this.

She knocked.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Spring/Summer SA34 (Tag Jessica) 1480 1 5

Jessica Hayles

March 05, 2020 5:01 PM

Hopefully it'll be a decent season. by Jessica Hayles

It was odd, the thing one missed. For Jessica, in her first year, a big one had been music - so much so that it was one of the things about her situation she had been motivated to ask her parents to help her fix. The result, purchased at a shop in Atlanta which had given poor Robert a headache when he tried to look at it too long, was something which looked very much like an old-fashioned record player.

It wasn't really an old-fashioned record player, though - they had proven that by buying a regular record from the hipster section of the bookstore and putting it onto the machine. The results had made Daddy make some jokes about Stephen King, and then they had all looked at it apprehensively for a moment, just to make sure it wasn't going to start talking of its own accord despite being turned off, not having a record on it, and - obviously - not being plugged in. Since it had not, however, Jessica had been allowed to bring it back to school, along with a small selection of wizard albums. She had not yet had much luck finding singers she liked here, but with some effort, she had found some purely instrumental pieces to underscore her activities.

After classes ended for the day, she had gone for a swim in the Water Room, then back to her room to put on one of the calm piano arrangements she listened to so she could start her homework. She had been allowed to pick up some correspondence courses she found moderately interesting, and while it was soothing to finally feel good at something again, her workload had increased significantly as a result. She had fallen into a routine: she did most of her homework for her magic classes during the day, taking advantage of lunch and the long breaks between classes and the boring bits of actual other classes, then devoted her evenings to finishing up the longer stuff and focusing on the electives. She felt she was obligated, somehow, to do those to the best of her ability - as some kind of penance for the times when she felt the tiniest soupcon of relief that she was no longer staring down the terrifying prospect of what should have been the next ten or so years of her life.

She was not going to have to - assuming her parents wouldn’t have put her into an IB-focused high school instead - take AP Psychology and Human Geography as a ninth grader, or try to get a perfect score in all four of the AP Economics and English exams, or pass AP Comparative Politics and U.S. Government with at least high scores. She was not going to have to juggle all that with also - despite not being as strong as she would have liked in math or science - making As in calculus and physics just to prove she could, after she made no less than a 97 in, at a bare minimum, Honors Chemistry, though she knew Daddy would really rather she pull out a college-level chemistry credit as well, just because he had studied chemistry and nominally worked in product development for a while. And after she didn't do all those things - she was sorry she wouldn't go to Princeton or Iowa, but she had already been terrified by the prospect of getting her MBA when she had arrived here. When she was writing, she always knew where to go, how to find a subject. With business projects…if she was given a prompt, she could make an interesting enough response, she guessed, but she was not good at looking for prompts, figuring out what was a problem, or how to manipulate people into seeing a problem where there was no problem, which was a crucial defect when it came to business.

Now, though, it didn’t matter that she was critically flawed. It did not matter that she found the thought of studying all the charts and graphs necessary to be proficient in economics about as appealing as a head cold. She didn't have to worry about any of that anymore, and as a result, she felt restless, as though she were intentionally being lazy or otherwise doing something wrong. Even after she worked hard on her electives now, after all, she still often had time to hang out with friends or her sister and go on a swim on the same night and still go to bed by 10:30. It wasn't proper, having this much time on her hands which wasn't firmly scheduled when she was thirteen already, so the best she could do was try to do the extras she had acquired well, so she could become the best writer she could possibly be.

Instead of doing that right now, though, she was standing on some blocks her parents had bought her so she could do yoga, and was busily, to the fast beat of something like instrumental dance music, adjusting the canopy over her bed.

This was one of the problems her parents had decided to fix for her, without her seeing fit to ask about it. She had never been overly fond of the color red. Her mother knew this. As a result, for the past several years, she had had spring decorations for her room – in winter, she tolerated the color because the school issued ones were velvety and practical in that regard, but in warmer weather, she redid the room. To keep vaguely in line with Sonora and Crotalus’ colors, her mother had centered the room around the colors green, white, and grey. The quilt on the bed was reversible – on one side, there was just a light, lavender-tinged shade of grey, but on the side Jessica invariably kept top-up, the base was a spring green with a sort of lacy overlaying white pattern. In place of heavy red drapes on the window, she had a pair of translucent, silky, lace-trimmed panels which let in more light. In place of heavy red bed curtains, she had a sort of wispy canopy, which was an absolute nightmare to get into place, but which looked like something out of a stereotypical fairytale princess’ French cottage once she finally did wrangle it into position, the job she was now working on instead of her ‘home’work.

Jessica had gained a lot of new skills, she supposed, at Sonora, despite them all being ones that would really look stupid on a resume. Once she got the pieces of the canopy on the rails, she could float them up to get them sloppily perched – but had to actually put them on the rails herself, then climb around on her yoga steppers and the bed itself to get it all perfectly in place. She could make a bed now, and also neatly put away the school-issue comforter and sheets and curtains until it was time to start sending things home – since she was only supposed to bring this standard trunk to school on the wagon, her parents ended up sending the rest of her things to her over the course of the first week, and then she sent those things back over the course of the last week. As a result, she also knew how many owls it took to support various weights, though she hoped she would never really need to know that after she left.

History (wizards appeared unaware the other social studies existed; it was rather bizarre) and literature and German were different matters entirely. Those were things she did need to know. She was not sure, then, why she was not settled on that, but instead on dusting and then putting back the canopy of her bed.

She just about had the fourth corner back exactly as she wanted it when she heard a knock on her door. “Just a second!” she called over her shoulder. Once she got it done, she hopped down, kicked the block under her bed, and turned the music down before opening the door and finding herself looking at Sadie.

“Sadie! Hey,” she said with a smile, grateful she made it a habit to quickly pencil her brows back in and put on a very light single layer of mascara and a coat of lip gloss before she even left the Water Room after she took a swim. She already, she thought, looked bad enough compared to the younger girl; where Sadie was well put together, Jessica still had her hair in a ponytail and was wearing the aqua-colored, ballet neck long-sleeved t-shirt and navy blue relaxed-fit leggings she had shrugged on after swimming, as she couldn’t see the point of putting her good clothes on when she had just gotten out of a presumably chlorinated pool, her hair was slightly damp, and she had only planned to come to her room to study. “What’s up? Want to come in?” she invited.

16 Jessica Hayles Hopefully it'll be a decent season. 1442 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

March 06, 2020 6:37 AM

Fingers crossed by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Jessica was smiling. And saying ‘hi’ like she meant it. Well, like she was pleased about it. About seeing Sadie. Probably she was just an enthusiastic person, but it still felt nice. And she’d remembered Sadie’s name, and didn’t seem to have heard that it was anything but Sadie, and this was already therefore safely past several of the worst case scenarios she’d been able to imagine.

“Thanks,” Sadie smiled, as Jessica invited her in. She managed not to squeal it or break into an overly done smile or anything but the relief might have shown just for a flash in her eyes, especially to someone who was good at looking for such tells.

“Wow, your room is really pretty,” she complimented. The light gauzy curtains around the bed were super #Fairytale but in a much more #Romantic way than the #GothicHorror of Sadie and Esme’s room. Theirs looked like a cross between Christmas having thrown up on it, and some kind of bad 90s vampire film set, depending on what the light was doing (#LightingIsEverything). She had thought that the way the school decorated their rooms was consistent and also a rule, but Jessica’s was clearly very different. She assumed that, given that Jessica was so stylish, she’d probably made the choices herself, which also led her to the conclusion that it couldn’t be against the rules. She definitely wasn’t going to question whether it was or not, because that would be really rude, but she wondered whether she needed to add ‘have an original looking bedroom’ to her list of #SchoolGoals in order to #OnTheItList.

Jessica had also asked what was up, which was a pretty good, neutral lead in. She was here, in Jessica’s room, without having been laughed at (yet) and without having to awkwardly stammer her way around any misunderstandings (yet). Now she just had to say some of the things she’d practised in her head without falling over own words or losing her confidence halfway through.

“So… um… I was thinking about this ball thing they’re having at the end of the year,” Sadie began, brushing her hair back even though it was already out of the way. “I know it maybe seems like a while away, but like… We can’t Google anything, and we can’t online shop. I talked to my grandma about it a bit, actually. Cos like… she never had that stuff. And she was telling me these stories about mail ordering cosmetics and sending cheques and stuff. And… I guess that’s how we live now?” she asked. She hadn’t quite meant to ask questions so early. She’d wanted to come armed with useful knowledge. But Jessica probably already knew that yes, people mail ordered cosmetics, because her family ran a business, and however young and trendy they advertised, they probably still had some fussy old lady clients who’d been using their signature lipstick since the day it had come out. Did people still send Jessica’s family cheques in order to buy their products, if they lived too far from a decent retailer?

She had wanted to be useful, but it seemed so unlikely in the face of everything, and she was suddenly self-conscious that maybe she was standing spouting a bunch of stuff Jessica would already obviously know. Jessica, after all, had the dual advantage of being a cosmetics heiress and two years in this world. It would be pretty stupid of Sadie to start trying to explain to Jessica how any of it worked. She’d just wanted to seem like she could be… maybe… fun, or something, not just here to beg knowledge of how everything worked. She’d wanted to have something to contribute so that Jessica might like her…

“She also got me a magazine subscription for Christmas,” she added timidly, sliding the backpack half off her shoulder, her hand hesitating on the zip as she waited for further permission.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Fingers crossed 1480 0 5

Jessica Hayles

March 10, 2020 8:37 PM

I think the indicators are promising. by Jessica Hayles

"Thanks," said Jessica, smiling, when her room was complimented. "I've never really liked the color red, and there's not another girl in here to say anything, so - why not, right?" she asked rhetorically.

She listened as Sadie began explaining what was up, nodding as she talked about the problems inherent in trying to get ready for a ball without the ability to search for and order things normally.

"Honestly, I don't even know if they have checks here," she said matter-of-factly. "The entire economy looks like it's based on the gold standard - literal coins. The banks are completely pre-Renaissance, as far as I could tell the times I went." She realized that this could sound very not reassuring to someone who was possibly as lost and confused as Jessica had been when she was first thrown into this loony bin. "Don't worry, though - I'll help you figure it out," she added with a smile.

Her own dress was, truthfully, not even a thing she had thought much about. It was a public occasion, so her mother would choose and pay for everything; all Jessica would really have to do was refrain from growing much or gaining weight between Easter break - since that was the last time she'd be anywhere near her mother's alterations woman - and midsummer. The weight thing, at least, wouldn't be a problem - all the time she spent swimming just to kill time was more than equal to the amount she ate, because thinking about Mommy's expression if she broke the rules was possibly even worse than experiencing it in person, at least sometimes. Growing, however, was rather harder to refrain from consciously, so she would just have to hope really hard and add one more thing to her list of grudges against this place...

"Really? Which one?" she asked, recognizing the implicit request in Sadie's hesitation over her bag zipper.

With the recognition came an odd feeling, one she struggled for a moment to place. Sadie was treating Jessica like a social superior. Like...girls in books or movies did. Like Jessica was the queen bee.

Jessica had always, she supposed, had status at school back home. She had a revered and long-lasted brand on her father's side of the family and substantial fortunes and power associated with both her father and her mother, plus her mother's family had held power in at least parts of Georgia for about two hundred years. She had never, however, really been someone the others had deferred to. For one thing, she had always been too busy and secretive for friends - she had been in as many activities as her parents could figure out, and when she had free time, that was spent with her sisters, since she couldn't spend time with them in the normal way, much less with other people. For another thing, almost everyone at her old school had been related to some constellation of politicians, executives, or both. She was reasonably sure she had not even been the richest student there, though that had been somewhat balanced by her mother's family having such a long pedigree in the state. Either way, though, she thought there had been a sort of general equality among most of the students, except for the scholarship kids, and since Jessica hadn't been one of the scholarship kids, nobody to the best of her knowledge had ever really looked up or down at her before Sonora, which so far had mostly consisted of self-important, self-indulgent people who either had nothing to offer to humanity (Jeremy Mordue) or who were too lazy and selfish to use the resources at their disposal (Zara Jackson, and now Felipe) all presuming to look down their noses at her. Until, it seemed, now.

Was she feeling pleased or terrified? Was it possible to do both at once?

16 Jessica Hayles I think the indicators are promising. 1442 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

March 13, 2020 8:56 AM

Oh good by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Sadie nodded in mute agreement, pretty sure she wasn’t expected to give an answer to Jesscia’s ‘Why not?’ Obviously Jessica could do whatever she wanted. Though it was interesting to note that the lack of a roommate was part of the reason why. Maybe that was something she could fall back on if she couldn’t think of anything to do with her room. Not that she would outright lie, or say Esme hadn’t let her (her first reason for this being that lying was bad, though she subsequently realised as well just how spineless it would make her sound). But like… having to negotiate. Not wanting to bother the person she shared with.

Apparently they didn’t have cheques. Only some kind of standard gold. Which Jessica seemed to think was a bad thing. Maybe it was like… how some gold was twenty-four carat and some was only twelve. Maybe wizards used only the lower one. It would make sense that Jessica was used to better gold. Or rose gold. Or platinum. Because gold wasn’t really that classy. It wasn’t important though. The important thing was that she was willing to help, and Sadie broke into a very relieved smile.

“Thanks,” she smiled, “I knew you’d know how to handle it.”

Jessica also didn’t dismiss the magazine idea totally out of hand, though Sadie still clearly had to pass the next test.

“Teen Vogue?” she stated, it coming out as a question not because she had any doubts as to which magazine was currently in her bag, but clearly because she was asking ‘Is that acceptable?’

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Oh good 1480 0 5

Jessica Hayles

March 15, 2020 5:54 PM

Though sadly, nothing's ever perfect. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica smiled back at the younger girl, thinking she could get used to this kind of behavior. She couldn't even recall the last time Mara had just deferred to her like that; even if Mara asked her for advice, she would go and check it against something else, too, and made no bones about this tendency. She wouldn't blame Sadie at all if she did want to check other sources, but she didn't have to be, well, open about it.

She did, however, think that the upspeak could get a bit much if it went on indefinitely. "Cool," she said brightly when Sadie said that she had Teen Vogue. The research standards could be...iffy, sometimes (there had been at least once incident Jessica remembered where it had said an actress was from Mexico when she was actually part-Scottish and part-indigenous Canadian), but it was a pretty respectable publication. It covered a lot of politics and culture along with fashion - mostly aimed at the late high school and college crowd, but most everything was. There really was, she thought, a gap in the market for their age group; it went straight from Barbie magazines to Teen Vogue.

"What exactly are we looking for?" she asked. "Make-up or style ideas?" She expected that they would have better luck with the make-up ideas - which could have applicability to Mara's thing, if it got cleared by the school and Jessica had a role in it - because her experience with such magazines said they leaned more toward covering the big fashion shows than toward anything a person would actually wear, but both could be found in the contents of the magazine, she expected. "If you're looking at ready-to-wear collections from our world, you might be able to pick a dress up at Easter break and not worry about figuring out wizard money," she added. "I'm pretty sure that's what I'll do, unless they bring a fashion show to the Cascade Hall," she joked. "I really did not realize how much I miss shopping until this year," she sighed.

16 Jessica Hayles Though sadly, nothing's ever perfect. 1442 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

March 21, 2020 7:44 PM

I wasn't assuming by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

She got a smile. She got a ‘cool.’ Sadie unzipped her backpack, pulling out the copy of Teen Vogue with a more genuine and less anxious smile than she’d worn at any point since entering the room. It had been fun flicking through the magazine, but it would be even more so with a fr-another person. No need to get ahead of herself.

“Everything, I guess,” Sadie sighed when Jessica asked what they were looking for. “Like… How do you even put a look together when you can’t create a Pinterest board, or how do you work out your hairstyle without a youtube demo. Or like… any functioning straighteners. One of the articles on mood-boarding for prom talked about going old-school and making a collage,” she added, actually having discovered the answers to some of those questions already. “So I guess it could be fun to just collect ideas for now.”

She nodded to the dress question, reassured that Jessica gave her own answer about what she would do, which meant Sadie knew it had to be acceptable to do the same thing.

“It’s a bit hard to know where to start. I mean, everything I’ve read says to choose your dress first, but that seems like it’s going to be the hardest thing, or have to wait for now,” she added, to acknowledge Jessica’s plan of shopping opportunities. There was mail order shopping too but she had no idea how to do that in the magical world, and doing it via the non-magical, with her mom or grandma sending things on, was going to make the returns window hella narrow if things didn’t fit right. Which they almost undoubtedly wouldn’t. She had had plenty of clothes sent over without trying them on first – things people wanted her mom to feature on their page. But with those, they were casual enough that it didn’t matter, or you could pinch, tuck and photography trick your way into making it pass. She didn’t think that formal-wear, to be witnessed in real life all evening would be so forgiving. Though that begged another question, “How formal do you think this thing is? Are we talking like… prom level? Home coming? Regular school dance?”

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers I wasn't assuming 1480 0 5

Jessica Hayles

March 26, 2020 1:41 PM

That's probably for the best - don't want to make anything unflattering out of u or me. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica smiled sympathetically as Sadie talked about how hard all this was without the comforts of home. "I guess there's finally a good thing about my parents not letting me on the computer much," she said lightly. "I've never made a Pinterest board. I guess we could probably put together something kinda like one with a, like, a real bulletin board?" she suggested. "Hair is harder though. I know there are old books that taught people how to do hair and stuff, before computers were invented, so maybe we can figure out something. I'll ask my mom. Or maybe she could, I don't know, do a lot of screenshots of a Youtube demo and print them out and mail them to us."

There was always, after all, a way around any problem. Sometimes it sounded kind of ridiculous, but how something sounded didn't have that much relevance to how well it worked. At one time, after all, everyone would have said it was completely absurd for Jessica's great-grandmother to start her own cosmetics company as a woman in that era, and that had actually, in the end, worked out very well for Ariana.

She tilted her head, considering what she had heard about the Midsummer Ball. "I wasn't here when they did the last one, full disclaimer," she said, "but I think it's kind of like prom-level. Or at least, I hope it is, because I know my mother," she added with a wry smile. "I'm almost definitely going to end up in something pink with roses somewhere on it - her name is Rosalie, and my middle name is Rose, and she's really keen on the theme," she explained. "Plus there's only so many colors - or even shades of colors - I can wear with this hair," she added, twisting the ends of her light red ponytail. "It's all either pastels or muddy darks. And teal. If it were just regular school dance level, I might get to wear teal, but I'm pretty sure Mom is going to stick me in pink again. What colors do you think you'll go toward? That's one place to start."

16 Jessica Hayles That's probably for the best - don't want to make anything unflattering out of u or me. 1442 0 5