As Laurel walks, or rather wanders, she notices nothing short of several things about some of the people that she sees milling about the crowded hallways. A girl walks by her, one she's seen before from a distance, with an elegance that even rapid fire modes wouldn't be able to accurately capture. For a moment, she wishes that she had a video camera, but soon the girl has apparently disappeared into the library. She then escapes the mind, being out of sight, if only because the young woman with the camera around her neck, hanging like the designer accessories other girls might wear, is distracted by the colorful variety of people in this school. She's accustomed to eclectically populated schools, of course, but likes to take the time to appreciate the variation present in each of those schools which she has attended. It helps to keep them from blurring together until she can't remember who went to which school, and what happened where. Sometimes, the young woman will see a person walking by and swear that they attended her elementary school, even though her elementary schools were, for the most part, overseas. At some point or another, Laurel finally realizes that she has let people-watching get her original goal out of her mind, and that she is going in the completely wrong direction. Thus, she retraces her steps towards the front of the school, passing by a blonde boy whom she actually has photographs of in her camera. Honestly, it is probably creepy, though she had no intention for it to be. But she saw him lying in the grass cloud-gazing, and it was simply instinctive to take a picture of the scene, if only because his expression was so innocently serene: as though someone had taken the expression of a sleepy child and grafted it onto a teenaged body.
She also notices as a good portion of the student body, or rather those who are either beautiful or expensively clothed, suddenly take out their phones and check them. Getting a message from the mothership? a little voice in the back of Laurel's mind asks. Still, she has played the part of jocks and preps before, though swimming had only been enough to keep her on the bottom rungs of little ladder within a ladder that is those at the top of the food chain. But not this time, she has promised herself. This time she won't just be the person who kind of fits in with a clique, but doesn't really know anyone. That's what Laurel tells herself, anyway, but that is the easier part of the task. Actually breaking the habit of anonymity is what can be slightly tasking. It might be easier now, at least easier than it might have been in middle school and the earlier years of high school, because she has finally grown into her limbs, which were once awkwardly long, like a baby giraffe. Still, it's several years too early for her to make any claim at elegance, as far as she herself is concerned.
An Indian girl seems to be trying not to stare at a young man with blond hair that leans against his locker and looks the picture of a skater or surfer sort. Laurel manages to recall the first time she ever rode a skateboard, resulting in a down-to-the-bone skinned knee and a trip to the hospital. Regardless of the pain associated with it, or perhaps because it has been so many years that she can fancy it didn't hurt nearly as much as it did, the memory is a fond one. Laurel is fond of all memories, regardless of their content, because she is a nostalgic sort of person, and likes to remember her past with as much clarity as possible. When she was younger, she read somewhere that one can develop a photographic memory by dwelling on the past too much. While she doesn't believe that, and has no desire to develop photographic memory, if it existed she might have it now. Of course, half of her remains focused on the present, evenly splitting her mind and leaving not even a crumb for thoughts towards the future. It would just have to wait.
She is startled out of her nostalgia by a loud and distinct voice, the sort that carries but has little weight, greeting an individual at a volume typically reserved for those who are addressing large crowds or injured, and crying for help. Another guy shows up, probably saying something before punching the blond one in the arm lightly. Apparently done watching them, or perhaps having once again realized that she does need to find her class in some vain attempt to beat the rush, Laurel looks away from the trio and spots another number, though it has a letter attached to it. They are near administration, or maybe that is just a utility closet. The labeling systems tend to vary, she's found, and Laurel doesn't want to chance walking into a utility closet and, by some miraculous stroke of poor fortune, finding herself locked in. It would be better to ask a student, perhaps, but she can't really identify properly who would be an ideal candidate for this. The trio seems occupied, the graceful girl is long gone, and the cloud-watcher is equally not here. Without a better alternative, she snaps a photograph of the scene before her. The trio, all angled slightly so that it is natural for them to look at the blond young man checking his phone. It looks a bit like one of those anti-bullying photos, except that neither party really seems to care. "Right. Enough of that, then," Laurel murmurs under her breath, words lost in the crowd before the makes the executive decision to take a right and hope that it is the right way to go, no horribly bad pun intended. She still has the camera in her hand, of course, but it is such a typical feeling that she hardly notices it there. With this, Laurel simply begins walking.
RPG
