Nano. RolePlay

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If there was one thing Robin didn't like when it came to school work, it was group projects. Not because she disliked others or working with them, far from that. But that was precisely the point: she preferred to hang out with others without constantly arguing about who was going to do what when. She'd seen too many friendships ruined by group projects gone wrong and didn't want to be the next one on that list.

Another thing Robin didn't like when it came to school was that teachers didn't care about whether or not she liked their assignments, and so the next group project had been announced that very morning. Yay. A presentation about the Space Race. Well, at least the topic was an interesting one. Apparently, that particular teacher didn't trust them to form groups and had already paired them all up. Robin took a quick look at the list to find her assigned partner. Emmett Reed. Well, that wasn't too bad. As far as she knew he was the class' quiet guy that teachers berated from time to time for "not working to his full potential". All in all, she couldn't say that she knew him, but he didn't strike her as a bully or someone who'd go out of his way to be difficult. So, once the class was finished, she walked up to him with a smile.

"Hi! Seems like we'll be working together for this one."

She may not like group projects, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to do her best to get along with her assigned partner.

Once they had enough books to leaf through, Emmett took his stack and walked towards the tables at the center of the library where he set them down. Do we have an idea of the angle we want to take? If all groups were going to talk about the moon landing, there was bound to be some repetition. If they wanted to score well they'd have to stand out.

Narrowing down what they were going for was a good starting point. No sense making tons of work they wouldn’t end up using in the end. "I think most people will focus on American successes in the space race, so maybe we could look at the points where the USSR was faster, why that happened and which effects it had here? Or maybe go through old newspapers and see how it was framed here?" Was she suggesting that something propaganda-is may have been going on? Well, to be honest, what was the space race if not one gigantic ‘our country is the best country’ communication operation?

He gave her a quiet look. You seem to like challenging popular opinion, huh? He absolutely understood what she was implying with such a presentation and considering their school's political background, wasn't exactly sure this was the brightest idea they could have. But at least they'd stand out. Lets do that.

"Where’s the fun otherwise? Besides, by the end of the presentations, we’ll have heard the name of the first people to land on the moon at least ten times, that’s boring." And, luckily, he seemed to be on board with her idea. Splendid. And it wasn’t as if they’d get in actual trouble as long as they used the right words… which happened to be something she was good at.

Now that they had a general idea of what they were looking for, the most boring part of the assignment could begin: research. How there were people that could do this for a living, Emmett would never understand. So, are you coming to the party tonight? He asked about ten minutes in.

Robin dove into the sources they’d gathered and started reading them as throughly as she usually combed through the school gossip to find the little gems that turned out to be true. That is, until the party came up. "Wouldn’t miss it for the world: it’s only Halloween once a year, after all. You?"

I'll be there. He was expected. He would get questions if he didn't show up, even if he wasn't generally considered the life of the party. I can give you a ride if you don't have one yet. I don't know when we'll finish all this. He added, gesturing to the open books on the table.

The million dollar question was now how good a driver he was, and it’s not a question Robin expected anyone to answer accurately. Still, she didn’t drive and if she could not depend on her parents, it was certainly a plus. "You don’t drink and drive, do you?" Because the last thing she wanted was to get into a stupid and easily avoidable car crash.

No, ma'am. The question almost made him chuckle. What teenager would willingly confess to this? To be fair, he may have had a couple of beers at a party and still drove home, but it was no different to his parents drinking wine and driving back from a restaurant. Emmett wasn't the type to overdo it. If he had to play designated driver, though, he'd make sure not to drink at all. Do you have a curfew?

She had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth, of course, but his reply was good enough for her, and she smiled in response. "Great! Thanks for offering a ride!" Maybe she should have started with that. Oops. "I usually need to be home for 1 AM, but I could negotiate to push that back a bit. What about you?" She would need to present it wisely, though, because saying that she may be home later because she went to the party with a boy would cause all sorts of questions she didn't particularly want to face.

I don't have a curfew, so whatever works for you works for me. As long as his grades were good and he kept his squeaky clean school record, his parents did not really care where he was or what he was doing. They were too preoccupied with Maxwell to remember they had a second son.

"So let’s maybe start with 1 AM in mind and I’ll negotiate with my parents in case we want to stay past that?" Truth to be told, her parents weren’t particularly strict about curfew and the 1 AM deadline was mostly there to make sure she kept track of time and so they knew if they should be worried that she hadn’t come home yet.

He chuckled. Somehow he could picture her negotiating curfews. Are you sure you're only in the Newspaper Club? Or are you on the debate team as well? It fit her profile.

Now it was her turn to laugh. "Actually, I did consider it, but then I’d have less time for the Newspaper, so I had to make a choice. And I’d rather look for school news than argue with others about whether or not a tomato is a fruit." Which wasn’t a dig at the debate team, because it took a lot of skill to come up with a coherent argument about some of the nonsensical topics they got, but arguing for the sake of argument wasn’t Robin’s thing. She’d rather have a real cause to defend.

Tomato's a fruit? Not the topic at hand, but the concept caused mild confusion. Please tell me that's a nonsense topic to spark a debate and not the actual truth. He was only briefly distracted, considering his eyes were still semi-scanning the contents of the books they had pulled off the shelves for analysis.

Robin’s smile only got wider as she got the chance to inflict the results of this absurd debate on yet another person: "Well, that would depend on the point of view. Botanically, a tomato is a fruit, since it has seeds and grows from the flower of a plant. But botanically, vegetables aren’t a thing. In cooking, tomatoes are a vegetable, because the difference between fruit and vegetable only exists for cooking, not in botany." That was the very short summary of two and a half hours of 10-minute debates.

So... it's semantics. Both arguments are valid? He shook his head. This is why I'm not on the debate team. That and also because it was the debate team. Not to sound like a douchebag, but he was still a teenager and he wasn't eager to be associated with "nerdy" clubs. Emmett preferred to stay on neutral territory. For as much as that was possible coming from one of the richer families that attended this school.

"Well, yes, but it was also used as a way to show that you always need to take into account the context of a debate to see if your arguments are true and relevant. If it’s about cooking, it’s perfectly fine to call a tomato a vegetable, but if you’re talking about botany, you’ll just make an ass of yourself. ‘An argument can be both true and wrong’, is how they put it." Yes, it could give a headache and yes, Robin loved following the debate team exactly because of those nuances.

It's giving me a headache. He shook his head, then closed his book. So, what do you say about calling it a day? We can borrow some of the books. Keep each other posted on the interesting stuff. And they could head out early. They had a party waiting for them, after all.

Yes, headaches weren’t uncommon after debates like that. And not a good thing when you were trying to gather info for a group project (or at all), so that concluded the brainstorming session. "Sure! Although I hope your tomato-induced headache will get better before the party, it would be a shame to miss it." It was only Halloween once a year after all. But Robin was confident that the headache might magically vanish by the time of the party.

Don't worry. There's an easy fix for tomato-induced headaches: you stop thinking about it. He grinned. They stopped by their lockers first to put away schoolbooks that could stay in school, then headed to the parking lot, where Emmett walked up to his car. He threw his bag in the trunk and kept it open so Robin could dump her things in as well, if she wanted to.

Ah yes, that would do it. "I’ll keep it in mind." She picked up the books that looked the most interesting to her to check them out. In the parking lot, she expected to say goodbye to Emmett and agree on a time to go to the party, but if he offered her a lift from school too, she certainly wasn’t going to refuse. Her bag joined his in the trunk and she smiled: "Thanks!"

No problem. Opening a car door for her seemed a step too far. She was a capable woman and there was no need to posture. Just a classmate, after all. So where do I drop you off? He wanted to know. Maybe home. Maybe she still had errands to run at the mall (don't most teenage girls?). Maybe some illicit underground journalist club. Who knows.

She was indeed very capable (not that opening a car door needed advanced capacities in the first place). "Kensington Street, 17." She could also have said ‘home’, but that wouldn’t have told him anything, unless he’d been stalking her, which she frankly doubted (fortunately, because that would have been creepy). "I can give you the directions if you want." She had no idea if he lived anywhere near or in that direction, because she hadn’t been stalking him either (again, that would have been creepy).

As this was the 80s and there was no such thing as a cellphone or a GPS, Emmett had no choice but to rely on Robin's directions. But first he turned on the radio in order to avoid any possible awkward silences during their ride. So, who are you going home to? Parents? Siblings? (Things he would've known if he were a stalker.)