sugar;

“Oh, no-” her hands flew out, gesturing with her hurried apology. “You’re totally fortunate! In so many ways. Even if you have, like, weird taste in soup, you definitely have great taste in…” she paused, floundering. She couldn’t be weird about it, right? “…Flannels,” she finished lamely. “And people to sit with during lunch. I’ll be over ASAP,” she said, enunciating every letter.

“Yeah? Well it sure doesn’t feel like it most of the time. Hey, the soup is better than the stale bread the food pantry gave me and definitely better than nothing.” She gave a soft chuckle at the others words. “I suppose my taste in flannel is pretty great but that kinda just makes me your everyday lesbian. I definitely don’t dress as good as you do though.” A little grin grew across her face at the rest of the sentence. “Yeah, I definitely know how to pick who to hang with, who would’ve thought I’d run into the cutest girl in school here of all places?” At that she gave a playful little wink and went to sit down. 

rie knew that she could handle the baby project on her own and had never bothered to push reggie for help. she knew pushing her wasn’t necessarily that effective anyways. at least that’s how she personally felt. but with the project needing double participation, she decided for just the bare minimum. so she sent a message to reggie letting her know she wanted to talk at her house. to watch the baby for a little bit at least. 

once she knew reggie had arrived she let her in, closing the door once she was inside. busy, she thought to herself. this was probably about all of the stuff reggie had refused to talk to rie about. this was why she had deemed it too hard to push her. “yeah, i’ve been handling it. we’ll probably get a good grade on it,” she nodded, “though it requires double participation. i figured one day for however many hours would be do-able.”

reggie was absolutely even worse at doing things when being pushed to do them than she normally was, rie wasn’t wrong to assume that. it was mostly because she was just stubborn, she hated feeling forced to do anything, whether that was a little childish or not. 

Holly J raised her brows at the girl’s offer. “Is this revenge for me invading your table at The Dot that day?” she chuckled, scooting to make room for Reggie nonetheless. “We have a spare pump somewhere around here.” She had to admit that since that day, she really didn’t mind Reggie’s company, even if they did nothing but softly antagonize each other – it was a fun challenge. 

“Oh absoutely, I’ve been planning my revenge ever since then.” she crouched down and took a seat beside of the other. “No worries, I got my own!” she grinned, grabbing her backpack and pulling a pump from it. “I keep it for the days I ride my bike, in case a tire goes flat or anything.” She enjoyed talking with Holly J like this much more than she let on, it was a different dynamic than a lot of the ones in her life and it was always fun. She reached out grabbing one of the balls and begining to pump it. “How many more did you say there were?” 

Zoe took the notebook from Reggie and skipped straight to the bookmarked pages she mentioned. Her brow rose both intrigued and impressed by what she was reading. She flipped over to another page and let her eyes scan through it for a few moments. “Reggie..” Zoe glanced up to make eye contact with Reggie once again. “These are really good.” Zoe had to admit, she was impressed. But of course that was never something she would do out loud. “How long have you been working on these for?”

Reggie raised an eyebrow at the others words, searching her features just to make sure the other wasn’t joking with her. Up until recently she’d kept most of her writing to herself, thinking it was awful but as of late she’d hit quite the expressive streak and figured that actually showing her work to people was the first step in getting better at it. “You really think so?” she asks, leaning over ever so slightly to look at the page the other was looking at. “That one is one I’ve been working on for a really long time.” she says, eyes shifting up to meet the others gaze. “Its about my mom leaving and stuff.” 

“Well, uhh-” Frankie paused, trying to find the right words for it. The soup here wasn’t even that good, but… maybe Reggie just really liked soup? There were weirder things to like and be willing to get for free. “Charity! My dad is super big on the Hollingsworth kids helping people who are less fortunate, and everything.” 

Her hand around the scooper tightened. Would it be unethical to give Reggie another scoop of soup just because she looked cute today? Was that, like, nepotism? Frankie smiled. “And my, uhh- my break is soon, so we could totally chill together! I mean, I brought my own lunch because the soup is kind of watery, but…” she trailed off. Oh, god, that was probably so mean to say, wasn’t it? In front of homeless people, too… ugh, she was a mess.

Reggie looked over at the other, giving a little nod. It made sense, with Frankie’s dad being who he was, it honestly wasn’t all that surprising that she was made to help out at these things. She raised an eyebrow though at the words ‘less fortunate’, she maybe despised those words more than she really should. “Less fortunate huh?” she asked, sounding a little more bitter than intended. “Guess that’s me.” 

She genuinely liked Frankie, the other was fun, sweet and just nice to be around. Though in times like these it was absolutely obvious that she was privileged. “Sure we can hang!” she says, giving the other a little smile. “I’ll probably have this soup all sipped down by then so we can talk. She motioned to a table in the far corner. “I normally sit over there, just come by and see me whenever.” 

Zoe plopped down on the couch and handed Reggie a bowl of sour watermelon gummies. “These are the closest we have.” She was referring to a text from Reggie about sour patch kids before she arrived. Zoe plopped one in her mouth feeling the sweet and sour flavor begin to take over her taste buds.  “I’m sure I will, but I’d love to see what you have so far first.”

reggie gave a grin, reaching in to pluck a few of the gummies from it. “These are close enough!” she replied, popping one into her mouth before reaching down to open her backpack to pull a notepad from it and handing it to the other. “there is a ton of stuff in here but the stuff i was thinking of for the play is on the little bookmarked pages.” 

@legitlyreggie​

Charity had, according to Frankie’s grandma, always been the backbone of the Hollingsworth success. This specific family belief was borne from the fact that she met Grandpa Hollingsworth while they were both working at an orphanage in college, and it always got brought up on says like these, days when it was the “Hollingsworth Hour for Civic Duty”.

She didn’t understand why Hunter didn’t have to participate in this civic duty, but hey- she’d had much worse ways to spend her Sunday mornings than working at a soup kitchen, scooping bowls of soup for the poor and feeling content that she was collecting good karma.

At least, that’s what she was feeling, until a familiar face came to her spot in line, sparking confusion and worry all throughout her. “Reggie?” she asked, her hand wrapped around the spoon stilling. “What are you doing here?”

Reggie absolutely had no idea that any of the Hollingsworths were volunteering here today, if she had she absolutely would not have come. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Frankie, in fact it was quite the opposite, she was just embarrassed about the situation life had put her in and had been trying to hide it from people she knew for a few weeks now. 

She had made her way down the line, her plate being filled as she went. Luckily she’d never run into anyone she knew here and had hoped it’d stay that way. She hadn’t been paying attention as she walked through the line, looking down at her phone and the sound of her name made her eyes go wide. “Uh-Frankie what’s up?” she stammered out. “Just stopping by for the free food! I can never pass it up.” she replied, at least that part was true. “What are you doing here?” 

reggie had been more than a little bit of a flop on the project so far, she honestly hadn’t even helped a little bit with it. part of her felt kind of bad but honestly? she had other things she’d been super worried about and the baby had been the last thing on her mind. when rie had asked her to come over though, she’d decided to actually go, knowing that if she didn’t she’d look like a total asshole to the other all over again. 

“I  totally  get  that  musicals  are  a  Degrassi  tradition  or  whatever,  and  I’m  all  for  school  spirit,  but  think  about  all  the  money  that  you  spend  on  tickets  to  go  see  the  show.  All  of  that  money  could  be  going  to  save  the  rain  forests.  Buying  solar  energy  appliances  so  we  aren’t  polluting  more  of  our  ecosystem.  Releasing  animals  from  cages,  shelters,  and  oppression.  Endless  possibilities.  What  good  is  an  elaborate  production  anyway  if  nobody  is  going  to  be  around  to  enjoy  it  in  a  few  year’s  time?  We’ll  all  be  gone  because  of  global  warming  and  do  you  think  anyone’s  going  to  be  talking  about  High  School  Musical  then?”  //  @hqdbulletin​

“i mean yeah, all that shit is important dude, you’re not wrong. though i don’t think the money we make for high school musical is going to make as much of a difference as you really think. its the corporations and shit we need to go for, to make change. our carbon footprints are litearlly like nonexistant compared to theirs. i’m all for helping the enviornment but its their businesses we need to be protesting outside of, not a high school musical.” 

manny: alright so who wants to gift me some of their comp tickets for HSM? My parents heard I was in a 'wholesome musical' and promised way more free entries than I can offer.

manny: I'll pay btw

reggie: you can take all of mine dude

“See, stage managing seems like it’s all glamour and telling people what to do until you’re stuck doing this,” Holly J said out loud to no one in particular as she sat at the edge of the stage, inflating (one by one) the largest assortment of prop basketballs anyone had ever seen. @hqdbulletin​

reggie had been on set, her camera in hand and just filming things going on behind the scenes. she’d talked to eli and she planned to piece together all the behind the stuff she filmed into some kind of little short doc after everything was done. “couldn’t you just boss people around to do this for you?” she asks, setting her camera aside and draping her legs over the stage, grabbing one of the uninflated balls and handing it to her. “lucky for you i have some free time right now and don’t mind helping.” 

Zoe: Alright.. I guess I’ll see you then.

Zoe: Not sure what you want me to do with that information but feel free to bring some.