find piece of mind

“Yeah, I guess.” He chuckled. “I mean Bradley is one of my friends, or at least I think he is.” Finn frowned when he heard about the other boys parents. It was sad to hear about that. Criminals for parents could have been the reason the boys misbehaved or acted supposedly like assholes. It’s still not really an excuse. Him and Jake could have been mad at the world for taking their parents away, but instead they decided to move past it. “Well, Brick and Ben are my roommates. I haven’t seen them around yet, so I guess I am good.” 

“You think he’s one of your friends?  Don’t you think that’s a bad thing, though?” she bit her lip, trying to figure out a better way to explain it.  There really wasn’t a better way, and Mabel went with what she was originally going to say—that is, a whole lot of nothing.  “I don’t know, I don’t think they’re the friend types.  Benedict hangs out with Tara, but I think they mostly hang together, you know?  It’s like me and Dip but way different ‘cause we don’t go around acting tough... or bully people when they don’t fit in, or whatever.  Well~ hopefully being friends with Bradley means you’re safe from that,” she shrugged, not even knowing if that was likely or not.  Hopefully, the optimistic vibe she was putting out was enough to convince him of that.  Even if Mabel didn’t sound as optimistic as usual.

I’m not, though.  Who’re you to tell me that  astrology isn’t this totally real, scientific thing?  It’s like— what about ligers?

“This is an activity of bonding shared between two friends, yes?”

Um, kind of.  Only in the Cruel Intentions-way, though—I dunno if it could be considered much of a good thing.

Finn’s eyes scanned for the door with the pig on the whiteboard. A pearly white smile coming to his face as he saw it. It was pretty cute. When his gaze returned to the girl, her cheeks were a pinkish hue. Did he do that? He wasn’t really used to causing a girl to blush, but she looked as though she was. Maybe the hallway was just a little too warm for her and it caused her cheeks to flush. 

“Oh, I know the Rowdy bros!  Everyone does, but I’ve talked to all three and I think I could give you a pretty good rundown?  Would you mind?”  The question was a courtesy more than anything else and she only paused for a few seconds.  She wasn’t a gossip; not really, and Mabel didn’t like hearing herself talk as much as some people probably assumed, but it was the nice thing to do.  “So the rundown is, they’re from like, a really bad place?  Or their parents are criminals or something.  Yeah—no, their parents are definitely criminals, one of them told me.  And the really nice one’s the one with blond hair.  The other two are kind of assholes, if you get what I mean.  One has like a smirk stapled into his cheeks or something, and that’s Brick.  The one with the reddish hair.  And then the last one’s the meanest, Benedict.  He’s the one with the black hair and I just—I dunno a lot about him, but he’s kinda cute.  Like, don’t touch him, though.  I did once and I’m pretty sure he was ready to punch me.  So, yeah.”

Steven shrugged. “Maybe, who really knows? I do know that they’re delicious though so there’s that.” Nodding his head he agreed. “Sure, I’ll ask around and see if anyone I know wants to join us. You don’t have to do everything yourself, I can bring somethings if you want. I’ve thrown a few before but we did mainly put the “sleep” in sleepover but that’s what we were going for so I think we did okay.” When he was younger Steven had tried multiple times to get the other kids at the boarding house to have a sort of sleepover together which ultimately ended with Steven and a few other kids sprawled out on blankets in the game room more then anything. “Thank you, you’re seem to be pretty nice yourself Mabel. Aw, come on now, everyone can be nice when they want to be.”

“Yeah but they’re totally not my fave.  I like Fun Dip a lot— but my dad’s kinda banned me from buying it because I used to get really,” she moved her finger around once, “crazy, you know?  So I stick to like Sour Patch stuff now.  Like my roommates saw me on Halloween and stuff and they thought the same thing so, I guess it’s a bad thing?”  She scrunched her nose, remembering how fast she crashed during homework the day after.  Few months impressions weren’t her best, to say the least.  “What do you want to bring?  There’s the little kitchen thing in the dorms so we could probably make, like, microwave s’mores if y’wanna bring chocolate and marshmallows and things like that.  And I’ll teach you the art of, um, staying up all night!  I’m really good at that in a not-insomniac way.”  Mabel shook her hair in front of her face, running a hand through it while Steven talked.  “Yeah, well.  I’m pretty weird, some people don’t really... like that, if you catch my drift.”

We could so try those!

Maybe next time?  If I bump into you in the hallway soon, I’ll definitely grab ‘em.

Finn had gone exploring around the campus without Jake, which he had soon realized was a bad decision. Somewhere along the way he had gotten spun around with no clue where he had gotten himself. The puzzled blonde looked around. He didn’t recognize anything. So he assumed it was one of the places he never ventured. Tapping the nearest shoulder, he decided they knew where he was. “Ummm… Is this the girl’s dorm? Because I guess I am lost.”

Mabel’s favorite haunts were losing their touch by now.  It was the end of her first year at Network but her favorite places were a little her favorite places everywhere else—the Home Ec room was like the craft room her mother never used and her dorm was just as messy as any room she shared with Dipper (on her side, at least).  That wasn’t why she was getting bored, though, and she chalked it up to mid-summer boredom.  That always happened.  It always happened to mess with Mabel’s head, a little more than any alcohol she consumed on the week of the fourth.  She jumped a little at the tap of her shoulder, mouth popping in an ‘O’, like she was somewhere else than two steps away from her dorm.