Postgame Analysis

[alderwitch]

Alex laughed and let the subject drop easily. She had no desire to pry, after all, and she'd much rather Erin enjoy their boardgame. "Hmm... What about Eddie? We know he'd refuse career after career until something involving music came up."

She flicked the spinner again and sighed as she missed a turn. Alex settled in and tried to fold up her arms and look sullen. The sneer was pretty good but in the effort to squinch her eyes she ended up looking more like some myopic and angry pixie than really managing sullen.

[Electra]

"Wow, it's just like twins," Erin joked, laughing at Alex's attempt at moodiness. "I'm kinda sorry I said no poetry." She rolled and passed the wedding chapel, giving the blue Mark peg a promotion to the front seat of the blue car. "What about for you, though?" she asked. "Maybe you could flip over the cards ahead of time and reshuffle the deck if a bad one was on top. But whenever someone pulls ahead of you on the board, you lose a turn to try and talk them into going back?"

[alderwitch]

Alex laughed breaking out of her expression and pushed her little purple car past the chapel to pick up a little pink peg bride for 'Mike'. "No, I should lose a turn everytime I pass someone as I stop to try and encourage them to pass me. I'm much more about the pep talks than the sabatoge."

She flipped over onto her stomach, her legs crossed at the ankles, "And I'd have to sit around at the chapel until the 'Mike' car passed me and picked up a different little pink peg bride. Of course, I hope I'm moving past that hang around and wait thing."

[Electra]

"Or you could collect all the guys, be like Chris, but with blue pegs," Erin countered. "You could probably get any one of them to go out with you if you wanted, you could collect the whole set. Even have a second car trailing behind with the rest of the boy toys in it. Then you could pass Mike and see if he had the good sense to hop in."

She turned the spinner, landed on an income tax square. "Hmm, motivational speech, or peg prostitution..." She sighed, then cleared her throat. "Four score and seven years ago, Parker Brothers brought forth upon this continent a new boardgame, conceived in cardboard, and dedicated to the proposition that all life is a game, and should be determined by random spinny thing. History will not remember long what we did here once we put the board away, but for now, I regret that I have but one phrase to give for my country: no taxation without representation!" She raised her eyebrows at Alex. "Good enough? I don't have to hum The Star Spangled Banner, do I?"

[alderwitch]

Her friend straight up laughed at the mangled historically inspired speech, "No, that was totally brilliant. You should write that down on a notecard and whip it out at key moments. It could be your thing, you know. Like ka-pow! And then you quote historical speeches. I bet you could get a cartoon."

Alex dissolved into giggles before she added, "I don't wanna collect all the boys unless I can make them bring in incomes. Oh! I could make a killing off the pimp yourself to paparazzi thing. Who cares if they lose turns then. They're just getting towed."

[Electra]

"That seems unfair somehow, but also brilliant," Erin conceded. "Get the guys to do your dirty work, and only have a few of them to deal with yourself at any one time. I like it." She made another move, collected some money from the bank. "For me, I would be able to crash the gates and take shortcuts when the various parts of the path come close together, but I couldn't go to college or have anyone in the car with me. It would be a pell-mell run for the finish line!" She grinned a little. "Which isn't a great strategy in this game since winning isn't really who gets to the end first, but I could at least retire in the nice little house while you and your harem moseyed your way along."

[alderwitch]

"You never know in the Game of Life," Alex teased as she pushed her little car along and collected the first of Mike off-spring, "You could take a side-tour and end up in a whirlwind romance in Cancun with some stupidly wealthy playboy billionare. Then we'd all have to sponge off you for your college years."

She kicked her feet and rested her chin on her folded hands as she eyed her next move, "When we were in the facility, Mike and I used to play anywhere but here on our psychic link. Everything we'd see and go and do once we weren't on lockdown after hours. Neither of us ever did pick Cancun."

[Electra]

Erin nodded at that. "I'd like to travel someday," she said, "not with a playboy billionaire, but maybe if I can ever get it together enough to join the Freedom League, or one of the affiliates. I used to feel sad that I'd never gotten to see Europe or Asia or Africa, and it didn't seem like there would ever be a chance, and they wouldn't really be like they should anyway." She was quiet a moment, sorting through her play money, then smiled at Alex. "Maybe we can convince the school to let us take a spring break trip somewhere really exotic, when we're seniors maybe. Someone around here has to have a teleporter or a wormhole maker or something that would save us the airfare, and we could go someplace warm and sparsely populated, with a very blue ocean and seashells the size of your head."

[alderwitch]

"We don't need to worry about travel prices. If the Pitchoo can't take us, Mike can. He's faster than any jet." Alex pointed out as she popped another kid peg into the little purple car. "And flying's the one power he actually likes."

[Electra]

"We'd have to tie a cartop carrier to him or something," Erin figured, "to hold the luggage. But I think he might object to a bumper sticker. Maybe we could just get a car, like a rental or something, and load it up and get inside, and he could carry that. Then, when we got there, we'd have a car, too." She mimed flying her blue car through the air like a little plane. "I was disappointed, when I started thinking about it, that all my jumps come down pretty much right away. Being able to fly would be pretty cool, but I guess we all have out strengths. And if his only talent were to destroy things, I can't imagine how much more depressed he'd be. Not too depressed for a lot of sex, I guess," she added, looking at the rapidly filling purple car, "but depressed."

[alderwitch]

Alex gave Erin a completely wide eyed and startled look at the 'for sex' comment before she laughed a little nervously, "I'd be the first to say Mike's cute but I don't think he'll ever go for the casual sex thing. I can't even picture him having premarital sex. He's actually really straight edge."

[Electra]

Erin rolled her eyes and pointed to Alex's little car full of pegs. "It was a joke, Alex. Those little backseat pegs in your Mike car have to come from somewhere, you know. I only went to school through ninth grade and they still taught us that. I don't actually think that Mike's really into that sort of thing. Some of the guys, yeah, but probably not him."

[alderwitch]

"I figured that the little pegs were left by the peg stork?" Alex teased with a playful grin.

"D'you really think some of the other guys have done that already?" She asked the question curiously, "The marriage line seems arbitrary but, I dunno, I think it should be with someone really special. Someone you really love"

[Electra]

"Probably," Erin said with a shrug. "Even when I was in school, some of the people my age were already bragging about it. And guys don't think about it the same way girls do. It doesn't mean as much, it's just fun, and for bragging, if they're jerks. You'd know if Mike had, so probably not him, and probably not Darian because he's real young and a nerd, but the other guys. I hear James is going on a lot of dates, and Chris is always talking about it." She spun the dial, then added a pink peg to her own car. "Great, there's a tuition to pay for."

[alderwitch]

Alex paused to wince as the car stopped and she had to peal off a stack of the multi colored money to hand over to the bank.

"Yeah, but I think the more you talk about it, the less likely you are to have actually had any experience. I mean, I'm pretty sure Chris could lie to anyone and almost no one'd know." Alex opinioned before asking, "D'you think Mark has?"

[Electra]

Erin hesitated, then shrugged. "Yeah, probably. Some people who've been around awhile say that he and Zaranna, the girl with the little dinosaur, hooked up for a little while, but he's not bragging on it or anything. But with the way he looks and the way he's always so confident, and you said he's a good kisser, it seems likely. Doesn't mean you have to do anything with him if you don't want to."

[alderwitch]

Alex considered that for a few minutes, her expression thoughtful although not pensive. She reached out for the spinner with one hand when she spoke, "Well, no sense getting flustered over pure conjecture. If I decide it matters, I'll just ask him about it."

She sent it spinning and smiled up at Erin, "Thanks! I do know that. I mean, I don't think Mark's the kinda boy to pressure me and if I'm wrong, then that would end it. If peer pressure can't make me wear boring brown clothes, there's no way its gonna make me do something far more serious."

[Electra]

Erin nodded agreement at that. "That's why he's good to practice on. I don't think it would even hurt his feelings that much if you get tired of him and want to quit. And that's a good reason not to use him for anything more than practice, but it still sounds like fun. What are you going to go see at the movies?" She looked down at the board. "And weren't you supposed to be sulking through this turn since you had to get your car repaired? I'm still stuck with blue collar wages here, you know." she teased.

[alderwitch]

Alex laughed and pushed herself up with an appology, "I forgot while we were talking."

She hunched in on herself and worked on brooding rather than sulking. Alex let her hair fall down in her face and jammed her hands in her pockets as she stared at Erin with an attempt at soulfully.

"I can't see anything like this," She volunteered, "I'm trying not to rule out the relationship thing with Mark turning serious cuz that seems rude. I mean, I do like him a lot. He could grow up a lot emotionally in the next few years. I don't know him well enough to dismiss it and if I thought it was totally doomed, I'd break it off."

[Electra]

"Nothing's impossible, I guess," Erin replied with a shrug. "Maybe he has hidden depths just waiting to be explored." Her expression said she didn't consider that too likely, but she wasn't actually going to say so if Alex wanted to believe that. They took several more turns around the board, the two little cars staying fairly evenly matched. Erin made another dramatic speech, heavily influenced by the Pledge of Allegiance, to get Mark out of a house fire, and Alex got twin boys for Mike's car. "So what did it feel like?" Erin finally asked. "When he kissed you?"

[alderwitch]

"Oh. Uhm." Alex scrunched up her face trying to figure out how to put it all into words, "Warm and kinda moist. I mean, in a good way! It wasn't like all slobbery or anything like that. It was a soft kinda pressure. Emotionally I think it had a bigger impact. It was a sweet moment, and I had all these butterflies in my stomach about it all. He held me real close while he kissed me which was way different than a hug.

[Electra]

Erin thought about that description for a minute while she took her turn. "It sounds nice," she said at length. "A lot nicer than my first one, but I was thirteen and it was half on a dare, so that doesn't count." She smirked, moving her little plastic car and collecting another paycheck. "So did he use his tongue? '

[alderwitch]

Alex wrinkled her nose and shook her head quickly, "No, no. It wasn't like a big make-out thing. He just pressed a quick kiss on my lips when we were in the parking lot and then again in front of the door. It was nice. You kissed someone the first time on a dare?"

[Electra]

"Yeah, sure," Erin said, sitting back against the bed. "We were playing I Never at my best friend Kathi's house, and I beat her because I never kissed a boy and she'd been making out with Ben Bowen in the back of the band room for a month. So when we were outside later and some of the boys came over, she dared me to kiss Luke Debush, right there in front of him, so he would look like a dork if he backed off." Erin snorted at the memory. "I was a sucker for a dare, but I wish she'd dared me to kiss a guy who didn't lick his lips all the time. He was a nice guy though," she said, her voice getting a little softer. "They all were, even when they were being obnoxious." She pushed herself away from that memory, and went back to quizzing Alex. "I thought you said he kissed you once. There were two?"

[alderwitch]

"There were two," Alex confirmed, happy to have gotten Erin to talk about a happy memory and that she'd been able to move on once the memory had turned sad. Her roommate might hate the therapy but Alex thought that the work she was doing there was starting to show. "Let's see. We were in the parking lot, and he made some comment about doing things during the movie and I said 'what else is there to do but watch the movie' and then he kissed me the first time. The second time was a little shorter but that was right after he'd walked me to the door to say goodnight."