I Am (Not) All Girl

There were kids. Everywhere.

None of them had flung themselves at Jill yelling, "MOMMY!" or worse, "DADDY!" yet, so Jill was beginning to suspect she had escaped unscathed, and realized that this was an excellent opportunity to make a buck.

A sign outside the the open door to room 417 announced:

Experienced babysitter for hire!!!
Rates negotiable*.
*Based on how evil your kid is.

Hey, she was honest.

((Open door, open post!))

Jack was still sound asleep when voices filtered through the door and stirred him partially awake: "Are you sure it's 417, Richard?"

"Just knock, Helen, if it's not her room maybe they can tell us where she lives."

Jack had just decided he was dreaming and turned over to go back to sleep when the pounding on the door started. "Oh good God!" he said as he fell out of bed and scrambled in the bedclothes. "Uh! Just a second!"

"Jill, honey, are you okay? What's going on in there?"

"Is she sick?" his mother worried. "She sounds sick. Sweetheart, are you feeling all right?"

He found a letter on the bedside table: JACK. READ ME. He opened it and skimmed it. Parents' Weekend, they were here, so was Ramie, she'd told Ramie, don't panic. PS she hadn't gotten around to telling them this weekend would be Jacktime. Of course she hadn't.

They were knocking on the door again, so Jack hurried to open it. Still in Jill's pajamas, yes. "Uh. Hi."

((For the parents.))

Jack was, he had to admit, a little surprised to be waking up this particular Wednesday. According to Jill's wall calendar, with its little blue hatchmarks for projected Jacktime and purple Xes marking time, he was eleven days early. "Whoa," he mumbled, then flopped back on the bed, debating whether he wanted to get up. It wasn't like he had a class or anything, and Jill's stretchy pajamas were actually pretty comfortable, but they were also purple. Not exactly the image he wanted to project.

((Mostly establishy, but open to the roommate if she wants.))

One minute Jill was sitting at her desk, trying to write a 'Dear Jack' letter and not really coming up with anything past 'Seriously DO NOT cut my hair.' This was hard.

The next there was no Jill.

There was, however, a very nice potted geranium sitting on the desk.

It hoped someone thought to water it.

On Monday night, Jill went to sleep.

On Tuesday morning, ( Jack woke up )

When he was as ready as he could get, Jack opened the door and for the first time in his life without fear or subterfuge stepped out into the world. He hoped it was ready for him.

Jill had finally unpacked enough of her stuff to have found the 2009 wall calendar she'd gotten for Christmas, and was smacking herself for not putting it on top of the suitcase where it would be easy to get to, as it was pretty much the most important thing she owned. Now she was busily preparing it for the year ahead: X-ing off the first five days of January with her favorite apple-green marker, sticking little blue dots on Jack's days, as calculated based on the usual 28.76 day cycle she'd figured out, and little red ones on the three days after so she'd remember to have tampons stocked before Jack came to visit, and marking important dates like birthdays, and then spring break and the last day of school from the calendar in her orientation packet. If it looked completely anal-retentive, that's because it was, but she liked to have everything organized, okay? There was just one thing bothering her, and she'd been through her orientation packet three times to make sure she hadn't missed it: she didn't know when prom was.

Clearly, she needed to start planning for the prom now if she was going to (make sure she wasn't going to be a freaking boy) get a decent date and find a dress, especially now that she couldn't get Raimie to help her. How could she possibly plan for prom if she didn't know when it was?

This was totally mal.

((Open! Jill's a little...obsessed with the prom.))