tuesday afternoon

[deepest_magic]

Elizabeth's house is within walking distance. Bella goes over to it the following day, after lunch, carrying two extra clumsily-frosted but perfectly baked cupcakes in her hands and notebooks in her backpack.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. How would you do it unethically?" muses Bella.

[neverbeatme]

"Science can do some pretty weird stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody at some point figured out how to change how fast people's brains develop."

[deepest_magic]

"I suppose. People sometimes talk about 'mental age' but I don't think that's the same thing really."

[neverbeatme]

"I don't think so either."

[deepest_magic]

"I am looking forward to being grown up. My parents know I'm pretty responsible but they don't always act like it, and other people don't even know as much as they do."

[neverbeatme]

"Chris is good about that, and everybody else I can pretty much work around."

[deepest_magic]

"Do you have any good tips on working around people?"

[neverbeatme]

"Not generally applicable ones. Why, who do you need to work around?"

[deepest_magic]

"Nobody in particular right now. Teachers sometimes, unless I get good ones next year."

[neverbeatme]

"I can probably help you work around teachers, but I don't think I can tell you how without knowing who. It's not the kind of thing where there are general principles you can talk about easily."

[deepest_magic]

"Oh. And I go to school in Phoenix so you couldn't meet them really."

[neverbeatme]

"You can meet them, and I'm sure your observations won't be completely worthless."

[deepest_magic]

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

[neverbeatme]

"You're welcome!"

[deepest_magic]

Bella sticks out her tongue.

[neverbeatme]

Elizabeth laughs.

"No, really, though. Even if you're not especially better than other people at figuring people out, I think you would be better than most peole at giving me the kind of information I can use to do that."

[deepest_magic]

"What kind of information? Maybe I can practice before I go home, so you can check my work."

[neverbeatme]

"Okay, imagine you are having a problem with someone that you want me to help you solve," she says. "Think of a specific example. What would you tell me about it?"

[deepest_magic]

Bella closes her eyes. "Uuuum, last year we had to do group projects in English with assigned partners and mine wouldn't do any work and the teacher didn't believe me. I'm not sure whether the right place to solve it would be with the teacher or the other kids though."

[neverbeatme]

"What can you tell me about the conversation you had with the teacher about it?"

[deepest_magic]

"She said that part of the assignment was teamwork, and that if I couldn't work with my team I needed to 'cultivate those skills', and that she was sure they weren't really going to sabotage our project because their grade depended on it too, and that if I kept complaining no one would want to work with me when we did get to choose groups."

[neverbeatme]

"That doesn't sound promising. What about your group?"

[deepest_magic]

"One of them didn't care about his grade at all and outright didn't want to do anything but sign his name and pretend we'd all worked together, and the other one was either trying or pretending to but she always forgot or had other things she thought were more important come up."

[neverbeatme]

"I could probably manage the distracted one. In person I might be able to get the other guy to admit how much he didn't care in a way the teacher couldn't ignore, but that's trickier to pull off."

[deepest_magic]

"What actually wound up happening was I called their parents. They weren't happy, but I didn't really want to be their friends."