Wait, what? [OPEN]

[Angela Weber]

No me crucifiques
con los clavos del amor, mi morena,
no soy de tu propiedad, mi reina
y no voy a ser tu esclavo

Angela really hadn't wanted to take a language class when she first entered at Forks High. She had been hoping to somehow get around it. Obviously, that wasn't the case, since she was now sitting in Spanish II. She had passed last year with a B average, but was now trying to get her D+ up to at least a C. Luckily, there weren't any progress reports or report cards to be mailed home yet. So Angela still had time to get her grade up.

There was something about the tenses and the switching of the vowels that just wouldn't click with Angela. At times there she would switch the verbs and nouns. After all, you couldn't translate word for word, otherwise the sentences would be messed up. Other times, the words had double meanings and couldn't be used in a certain way. It was more than enough to make her want to pull her hair out.

She sighed angrily and grabbed her pink eraser. She rubbed hard against her lined notebook paper and blew away the particles. She glanced at her book at the conjugation table. "Mi pasatiempo favorito es llenar [el crucigrama]". My past-time favorite. "Favorite past-time" She reminded herself. Is fill in the crossword puzzle. That shouldn't be too hard, she encouraged herself. "It's making it plural. You add an 's' in English." So following that trail of thought, it meant..."los crucigramas?"

She wrote it down in her neat script and skipped to the back of the book to check her answer. Her eyes scanned the several foreign words, and landed on the Actividades. She scanned down to number four and "YES!" She did her best to keep her voice down, but obviously failed, seeing as a few heads turned back to her. She didn't mind much though. Perhaps she was getting a hang of it?

Lyrics by Mana:
Don't crucify me
with your nails of steal, my darling,
I'm not your property, my dear
I won't be your slave

[Jonathan Ainsley]

[[Hope you don't mind me joining, dear Lisette. ]]

You brought me here for this.
I see nothing but disaster.
Now I'm taking you with me.
Taking you with me.

He didn't need to be studying Spanish, of course. Life as a nobleman in the 1800s, he remembered, had given him many advantages as a young boy, and one of those was his extensive education. Jonathan had been required to work up at least rudimentary knowledge of just about every language of every country that had ever maintained a relationship (whether it be good or bad) with England- at least, it had seemed that way when he'd been seven years old and struggling through Latin, French and Spanish all at once. Spanish had been his second best of the languages, and consequently had also been his second favourite- Latin being his most loathed, of course, and French his most enjoyable. Nonetheless, despite the fact that he only had the opportunity to learn the languages for twelve years during his first life, his second...well. Jonathan Ainsley was, by nature, a rather nomadic vampire, and over a century of travelling had polished his command of French and Spanish to a shine, and incidentally dulled his Latin to a point where he could only recall certain sarcastic phrases now.

Still, if he were not taking Spanish right now, he would be stuck in a class far, far worse- something like Calculus or Physics...which wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't done them before...several times. As such, he'd settled for the language class, and it wasn't so bad- a nice (quaint, even) little class of students who seemed to like the subject, which always helped. Jon treated it as a study lesson (which meant, for him, a chance to catch up on some literature) and the teacher prudently allowed him to do as he pleased. It was really a win-win situation. As a matter of fact, though, today he was breaking with tradition and drawing instead of reading. The vampire was not a particularly avid artist, but he dabbled a little every now and then. At present, he was sketching- from memory- a rather less modern London than it was today. Odd, really, for a supposedly 'normal' young boy from Forks to draw nineteenth century England, but everyone else seemed too immersed in Spanish to notice or even care.

He was just forming an angled line which was to serve as a component of the Tower of London when an irritated sigh reached his ears and forced him to look up from his notebook. Jon's golden eyes- he had fed quite recently- flickered to the left, where they appraised the girl who seemed to be the source of the disturbance. She was quite viciously trying to rub a hole through her book with her eraser, or so it appeared, and this activity caused him to raise one dark eyebrow at her with what was quite possibly chagrin. She did eventually subside- probably after she'd rubbed off half of the lines on her page and realized that she was back at square one (or worse- was it possible to be at negative square one?), and when the distraction that her scrubbings made had disappeared, he returned to his notebook, pencil held aloft.

The drawing was almost done when his classmate began speaking in a soft murmur, causing his eyes to snap back to her with something akin to irritation- but it was then that he realized she was only puzzling over sentence structure and pluralization, and his impassive face relaxed into a smile of sorts. He watched the girl a little longer this time, as she seemed to try and solve whatever it was she was trying to work out. Interest waned once she flipped to the back of her book and he turned his attention to his sketch of London again, but nearly jumped out of his chair at the junior's exclamation, amplified so many more times by his acute hearing. Reluctantly, he set his notebook down on the table, noting that he'd gotten the shading near immaculate, before turning his whole body in his chair to regard his neighbour. She'd obviously gotten it right- whatever it was that she'd been checking.

"You okay?" He asked in his melodious voice, amusement barely concealed within it as he glanced first at her notebook and then at her face. A smile crept over his lips when he spoke next, joking that, "You sounded like you were having some kind of seizure." He paused, realizing that it was odd, even for him, to just randomly stop what he was doing and talk to someone he had never conversed with before, but remembered that as such she probably didn't know who he was, just as he had no clue of her identity (due to an egregious error in his memory perhaps, although he did recall that her name might just be Angela). "I'm Jon Ainsley, by the way...and no, I don't normally engage strangers in conversation." He gave a light laugh under his breath at his own folly after this statement, shooting a look around the classroom at all the other students who were engaging in banal conversation of their own.

[Angela Weber]

Me da igual, me da igual
Que me hablen de la vida
O de la muerte también
Me da igual, me da igual
que me hablen de los buenos
O de los malos también. . . .

Waves of triumph swept through Angela’s veins, making her feel as if she had fought a battle against hundreds and survived, rather than just conjugating a sentence correctly. It wasn’t much, but the victory was large and the rewards…were minor. The corners of her lips turned as the thought crossed her mind. Still, she couldn’t conceal the grin on her face. If she was able to get a hang of this, perhaps she could retake the last test. At least she would score higher and that would certainly help her grade out. “One down, several to go,” She sighed and turned back to the Actividades section. If that one was easy, the rest had to be okay, at least.

"You okay?" Angela heard the soft tune and smiled at the boy next to her. It was odd to hear him speak; he was usually quiet and kept to himself. What was he doing speaking? Well, a better way to phrase it was: what was he doing speaking to her?

She blushed slightly at his comment, but continued smiling. “Sorry for disturbing you.” She apologized. “It’s just that I’m not good at this. Everything’s in gibberish, it seems and I was finally able to answer something correctly.” She motioned to the page she was at and the exercises she had been completing. “I was kinda loud, huh?” She shook her head. “I got too excited I guess. I mean, I know it seems so small to you- you seem to be doing ok- but to me, this is like…getting crowned homecoming queen.” Another red spot bloomed on her cheeks. He must be thinking her a dork.

“Sorry,” She apologized again. “I tend to yap a lot when I’m…excited. Or nervous. Either one.” She grew quiet and shuffled her feet. She felt self-conscious now, as she peeked at him through the curtain of hair that so conveniently hid her features as she looked down at her sneakers.

When he addressed her again, she pulled her hair back, deciding it was only proper and tucked it gently behind her ear. “I’m Angela,” She told him, “Angela Weber.” Another pause filled the air as he turned to look at any of the other students. “Y- “She paused and kept her mouth shut. What kind of stupid remark would that be? ‘You’re good at Spanish.’ He was and he knew it.

‘The hell with it,’ she told herself. ‘He just told you he doesn’t talk to strangers normally, you’re an exception. Make it last!’ She moved her body as to face him and smiled nervously at him. “So…” She began, taking a stab at a conversation. “Uhm…seen any good movies lately?”

Lyrics by Juanes:
I don't care
If you want to talk to be about life
Or death as well
I don't care
If you talk to be of the good things
Or the bad as well...

[Jonathan Ainsley]

Every time we lie awake,
After every hit we take.
Every feeling that I get,
But I haven't missed you yet.

Those peculiarly hued eyes of his did well to hide most traces of the laughter that he was holding back when she tried and failed to keep a self-satisfied (but not smug- for some reason Jon doubted that she was the type of girl who could be smug) grin from her face. He smiled back in a reflex reaction to the one she gave him after his inquiry as to her health, polite to the fingertips, as always. Unfortunately, though, the cool and charming demeanor which he had about him disintegrated somewhat as he noticed the blush that suddenly suffused her cheeks at his words, replaced by both a strong sense of amusement and a heightened awareness of the scent of her blood. It was odd how blushes did that to people- how funny that embarassment could cause greater circulation. He wasn't perturbed in the least, though- really, being in a room full of healthy teenagers was like being in a flower shop, the smells of all the different bouquets all negating each other and creating a generally pandemonic overall fragrance.

And if that were not enough to put a vampire off, self-control certainly did the trick. Jonathan was so accustomed to humans that he didn't even notice anymore, for the most part. Taken from his reverie by the apology she offered (though really, he'd probably only been thinking for a split second), he flashed a rather seraphic half-smile and responded, "Well, I'm not...disturbed." He paused, gave voice to a light laugh, and continued, "Actually, I am disturbed, but not in the sense that I think you were referring to." After listening to her brief explanation, he shot her a sympathetic smile and stated, "Ah, Actividades. I don't think I've ever met anyone who enjoys them." He shook his head at her question and responded, "Not too loud. Just a little startling- you know, usually when a room's quiet and someone makes an exclamation it sounds noisier than it really is." Well, duh. Of course she knew that. "Me, doing okay? Hah, I don't even do anything," he commented, but subsided as she continued. "Nobody's ever compared getting a Spanish question right to being crowned homecoming queen, I'll give you that."

Come to think of it, nobody he knew (and he wasn't exactly the most social of all people/vampires) really gave much thought to the language subject at all- certainly not enough for it to compare with the dubious distinction of homecoming queen, anyway. Perhaps she was merely joking, though- humans had a way of doing that. "You're blushing," he pointed out matter-of-factly and also a mite curiously as he noticed her at it again. She seemed to enjoy the activity of blushing more than most. He actually went so far as to physically wave a hand at her apology, attempting to shoo it away like it was actually there. "Again, don't apologize. I can understand your excitement, but not why you're nervous. Are you, actually? Nervous, I mean. If it's me, you shouldn't be. I'm harmless." He paused and flashed a genuine grin, as if to reinforce this fact. The poor girl seemed to be a little unsettled, and he was probably not helping much. Once she emerged from the veil of her hair and introduced herself he nodded, pleased that he'd recalled her first name correctly after all. "Nice to meet you, then, Angela," he stated in automatic response.

"Yes?" He asked her when she began to say something but decided to stop herself, faint stirrings of curiosity piqued. Jon raised one eyebrow at Angela, suddenly fighting back laughter as she decided to tell him that he was good at Spanish. "I'm alright at it," he conceded, modest on the matter despite the fact that he had years upon years of experience with the language, "You could just say that I've had a lot of practice. And after all, practice makes perfect, I guess." His head tilted without his knowledge when she turned in her chair to look at him properly, returning her smile with an expression that was both encouraging and friendly (or so he hoped) at once. Movies? Movies. She was talking to him about movies. Trying to make conversation, it seemed. That was oddly endearing- she was making an effort, so his smile nearly doubled. "Ah, well, to tell you the truth I haven't had much time for movies of late-" He broke off. Try about four years. "But I've been meaning to go check a couple out." Lies, lies, all lies, but at least they were talking. "Any recommendations? Actually, have you seen any good ones lately?"