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Quill kicked a desk in frustration, denting one of the legs. The arn protested, which made her even angrier (the chair leg wasn’t sentient, damnit!), and she was still fuming as she tried to bend the leg back.
She was absorbed enough in her own anger that she didn’t notice the Adeola girl standing in the doorway to her classroom. “Were you flirting?”
“No, I was kicking a desk. How bizarre are you that you consider that flirting?”
Tanya sighed, rolling her eyes. “I mean: were you flirting with Mr. Reynolds? Because if you were, well, there was a lot wrong with it.”
Quill ignored her, snapped the leg of the chair off, then swore.
“Like the fact that he’s gay, for one. His partner’s a really nice guy. He makes cakes.” Tanya took the risk of stepping into the classroom. “The next thing is probably the fact that humans don’t think ‘I’d totally kill someone for you’ is a good pickup line.”
Quill resisted the urge to beat the desk with another part of the desk, mainly because that probably constituted weapon usage, and she didn’t want to die just because a desk wasn’t doing what she wanted it to.
“I bet I could get you a really cute boyfriend,” Tanya said, oblivious to Quill’s consternation. “Or girlfriend. You know, whatever.”
Finally, Quill dropped the two pieces of desk. “Adeola, you’re a fetus. What do you know about any of this?”
Tanya bristled, then crossed her arms. “I go on like, loads of dates.” This was strictly true, if you counted computer games as dating opportunities. She’d recently romanced every cat boy and girl in Hustle Cat . Plus, she’d done all the romance options in all the Dragon Age games. These things took skill, dedication, and a willingness to smash the space button repeatedly. “I bet I could get you a date in a month.”
“If you get me a date, I’ll give you top marks in my course for the rest of the term,” Quill offered, because she was, well, desperate.
Tanya opened and closed her mouth. This was highly unethical, but for very little work she could guarantee a good grade this term and prioritize other courses as needed. It was a good deal. “Alright, deal. We just have to agree on a—“
“Target,” Quill finished.
“Probably shouldn’t call them that.”
“Whatever. What about Fitzgerald?”
“Dating someone.”
“Simmons?”
“On the rebound. Not touching that.”
“Jenkins?”
“Super straight, and married. Two kids. Third on the way, she’s just not showing yet.”
“I’ve met spies who knew less about the people around them than you,” Quill said. Her tone was one part admiration, one part wariness.
“Must’ve been really bad spies, then,” Tanya smirked.
“Yeah,” Quill admitted. “What about Jacobs?”
“Ooh.”
“Good ‘ooh’ or bad ‘ooh?’” Quill questioned.
“Good ‘ooh.’ She’s friends with everyone, so she’d definitely talk with you. Plus, she’s like super-bi. And single.”
“You’d think she’d be ‘friends’ with me? Adeola, that isn’t the goal of this experiment at all.”
“Relax. Friends first, then something else later.” She knew that one from The Sims . “Plus, you give off serious Sapphic vibes. You’ll be fine.”
“What now?”
“Oh, I forgot. It must be all Greek to you, miss,” Tanya snickered.
Quill nodded, oblivious to the joke. “So how do we go about this?”
“Give me some time to make a plan,” Tanya said.
“That’s not part of the deal! I thought we’d have immediate results.”
“Hey, perfection takes time, miss,” Tanya protested. Besides, she needed to go to the library.
--
Twenty-four hours later, Tanya had decided on a multi-step plan.
Step one: gifts.
This worked incredibly well in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: II. It would probably be too weird and creepy to be like, “Saw this and thought of you!” but offering Miss Jacobs something nice couldn’t hurt , especially as a conversation opener. It’d certainly be a better topic than what Quill tended to come up with herself, which tended to involve violence.
“Alright, so what should I get her?” Quill asked.
Tanya thought a moment. “I think she likes chocolate. She always has some on hand any time a student is feeling sad.”
“I like chocolate too,” Quill agreed. There was a protracted pause. “Wait, you want me to just give her chocolate?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Why would I give her chocolate when I could eat the chocolate myself?”
“Because you want her to like you, right? So you have to win her over,” Tanya explained, her tone the same one that one would use with a small child.
“But it’s perfectly good chocolate I could be eating.”
“Alright, so get some for yourself too.”
“But why can’t I eat both choco—“
Tanya decided to take a firm stance, risky as that seemed with Quill. “Look, you want a date? You’ve got to do things my way. That’s what this deal is about, because since doing them the Quill way isn’t working, we’re trying it the Tanya way.”
Quill glowered at her. “This is madness. Just giving chocolate away.”
“It’ll work,” Tanya replied, much more confident than she truly felt, but certain that if this failed, it wouldn’t fail because Quill didn’t get to eat two bars of chocolate.
“I can just buy her a bar, correct? I don’t have to get her one of those boxes shaped like what humans seem to be deluded into believing a heart looks like, do I?”
“Just a bar,” Tanya said. The heart-shaped box sounded much too full-on. “Just, during break, get her a bar of chocolate. Maybe get yourself one too so you’re not weird about it.”
Quill grumbled a bit, but finally, she agreed. “Two bars of chocolate. At break.”
“And text me how it goes afterwards,” Tanya said, holding out a hand for Quill’s phone so she could type her number in.
Quill reluctantly handed over her phone. “What, you’re not going to hide in a corner and watch us?”
Tanya didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. Instead, after she’d put her number into Quill’s phone, and texted herself from it for good measure, she began to head off to the library. She had more research to do.
--
By break, Quill had confiscated two chocolate bars to share with Jacobs, whose first name, she realized belatedly, she didn’t even know. She then had to track down Jacobs, which wasn’t too hard, as the other woman was in her classroom.
Quill stood in the doorway then cleared her throat.
Jacobs jumped a bit, but smiled when she saw Quill. “Oh hey. You’re the new teacher.”
“That’s me,” Quill agreed, feeling rather awkward.
Jacobs stuck out a hand. Quill didn’t relish having to shake it, but she thought it was probably best to, at least for her future prospects of dating this woman. After an awkward shake that lasted too long, Jacobs said, “I’m Kalei Jacobs. You probably knew that.” Kalei seemed mysteriously flustered. “Um, so, are you going to introduce yourself?”
“I’m Quill,” Quill said.
“Got a first name?”
“No. Due to a tragic series of events, I was born without one.”
Kalei laughed. “That’s funny. You’re funny. But seriously, what’s your first name? Everyone seems to just call you Quill.”
“That’s because I hate my first name. It’s stupid.”
“Oh,” Kalei said. “Guess I’ll call you Quill, then.”
“I guess,” Quill said.
Silence broke out. It was immensely awkward for a few minutes, and it looked as though Kalei was about to walk away when Quill interrupted. “I brought you some chocolate.”
“Oh?” Kalei said. “Why?”
“I heard you liked chocolate,” Quill explained. “So, I brought you some.”
“That’s…nice. No one told me you were nice.”
Quill scowled. “I’m not.” She had a reputation to maintain.
“But you’re being nice to me.”
“I’m…trying something new.” Quill looked around awkwardly, then took two bars of chocolate out of her jacket pocket, and shoved one into Kalei’s hand. “Let’s eat this chocolate and then go our separate ways.”
Kalei, bemused, merely watched as Quill quickly and messily ate her bar of chocolate.
“Aren’t you going to eat the chocolate?” Quill asked, mouth full.
“Maybe later,” Kalei said, smiling at Quill in a way Quill couldn’t readily interpret. “I’m not super hungry right now.”
“I confiscated it from a student,” Quill said. “So, it’s not poisoned.”
“I hadn’t actually thought it was poisoned,” Kalei said, laughing again. “I’m just not that hungry.”
“Oh,” Quill said, finishing the chocolate and licking her fingers clean. “Well. Alright then.”
“Alright.”
There was more silence.
“I should probably go,” Quill said. “The bell’s going to ring soon.”
“Yeah. It was nice meeting you, though,” Kalei replied brightly, offering her hand again.
This time, Quill frowned. “I don’t like shaking hands that much,” she finally admitted.
“Oh!” Kalei said, fiddling with her glasses with the hand not holding the chocolate bar. “You should have told me!”
“Yeah, well I thought you might not like me if I didn’t shake your hand.” Quill shrugged.
“I’m pretty easy-going, so no worries.”
Quill was beginning to feel out of her depth. There was considerably more conversation occurring than Tanya had prepared her for. Quill finally settled on saying, “Bye, then,” and walking out of the room.
Before she could stop herself, she doubled back, and asked, “But you’re definitely going to eat the chocolate?”
“Yes,” Kalei said.
“Because if you’re not going to eat it, I will.”
“I mean if you want the chocolate…” Kalei trailed off.
Quill bit her lip. On the one hand, she did want the chocolate. On the other hand, Tanya had said… “No, I’m good,” Quill sighed. “Just promise me you’ll eat it.”
Kalei laughed again, and Quill could really get used to Kalei’s laugh, she discovered, much to her surprise. “I will, definitely. And I’ll enjoy it, too.”
With that, Quill finally left, pulling out her phone and finding Tanya’s name. However, she found herself unsure what to tell Tanya. How had that interaction gone? Kalei had laughed a lot, so that was on the plus side. However, theoretically, Kalei could have been laughing at Quill, and there were few things Quill hated more than being laughed at.
Overall, Quill decided to type in, I learned her first name. And she plans to eat the chocolate.
Tanya replied, quickly, with a thumbs up emoji.
So. That was probably positive. Wasn’t it?
--
“It definitely went well,” Tanya said the next day, after Quill had recounted the interaction in more detail. Admittedly, Tanya’s pronouncement had less to do with the description Quill had provided (which, frankly, sounded like an awkward situation Tanya herself would have nightmares about) and more to do with the fact that she’d caught Miss Jacobs defending Quill to another teacher. Tanya wasn’t about to tell Quill that someone had called her an ‘insufferable bitch’ and Miss Jacobs had called her ‘probably just a bit shy.’ Quill seemed like the kind of person who relished being called an insufferable bitch and would think the ‘bit shy’ thing was a horrible misunderstanding or a vicious insult. “So, we have to move on to the next step of the plan, which is pretty easy. It builds on step one.”
“Seems tactically sound,” Quill said. “I keep giving her chocolate, and I also—wait, what do I also do?”
“Talk with her about things she likes. The gifts build esteem and the sharing of interests will build affection.” Tanya sounded like she had swallowed a book. That’s what you got for quoting Dating for Dummies .
Quill sighed, frustrated. “Can’t I just ask her to have sex with me?”
Tanya almost choked. “Oh my god, Miss. That only works when you’re at a bar.”
“Well, can I take her to a bar and ask her to have sex with me, then?”
Tanya rolled her eyes. “Eventually! That’s basically a date, though. And if you want to date her, you have to be friends with her first. You do want to be friends with her?” Best to clarify things. Otherwise, this was going to go down in flames even worse than it appeared to be.
Quill wasn’t entirely sure. She settled for honesty, once more. “I want to make her laugh again.”
Tanya nodded solemnly. “Then you’re going to have to be friends with her. Incidentally, what do you do for fun?”
Quill blinked at Tanya. “What do you mean?”
“You know. Fun? What do you do when you’re not tormenting all of us?”
“I sort of torment you all for fun,” Quill admitted. “My life is a living hell, so making other people’s lives hell too is rewarding in its own way.”
“That’s…depressing.”
“So much of my life is,” Quill said, with the tone of one who is resigned to their fate.
Tanya tried to shake this off. “Okay, not fun, then. What do you do when you’re not teaching or not…with Charlie.”
Quill was about to say that she was basically always with Charlie, but she realized that wasn’t what Tanya meant and decided to take pity on her. “I read a lot. I look at pictures of cats.”
“I think she Miss Jacobs has a cat,” Tanya said. “You could talk with her about that, then use that as like, a jumping off point. Ask her what she likes, then go from there.”
“’Go from there?’”
“Try the things she likes, find out about them, try talking about that too.”
Quill nodded seriously. “Alright. And still bring her chocolate?”
“Still bring her chocolate,” Tanya said, before looking at her phone. “Okay, my first class starts in 15 minutes. Text me again after break?”
“Sure,” Quill said. “Whatever.”
--
“Chocolate,” Quill said, holding the bar out to Kalei. These bars she’d purchased herself, rather than just confiscating them from snotty kids.
Kalei laughed and took the bar from her. “Hello to you, too.”
“Oh. Yeah. Hello,” Quill added belatedly.
Interaction going good so far.
“Still being nice, I see?” Kalei asked, smiling.
“Still experimenting with niceness, I suppose,” Quill answered.
This time, Kalei began eating her own chocolate bar, even as she watched Quill gnaw at hers. “To what do I owe this?”
Quill shrugged. She didn’t think it would be in her best interest to confess to Kalei that she had conspired with a student to get a date with her. “No reason. By the way, what do you do for fun?”
Kalei, for some reason, was flustered again. “Well, I like to read. I knit—I have an Etsy shop! I’m a massive nerd; I love the zombie apocalypse and Star Wars .”
“What’s Star Wars ?”
Kalei gasped. “You’ve never seen Star Wars ?” Thankfully, the fact that Quill didn’t even know of Star Wars passed her by entirely.
Quill shook her head. “But I’ll see it this weekend. I’ll definitely research it.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” Quill said, slightly surprised that this was true. With this awkward realization, she figured it was best to try to change the topic. “Someone said you have a cat.”
“I do!” Kalei said, her face lighting up as she thought of her cat. “His name is Xenophilius, and he’s great. Do you have a cat?”
“No, but I like cats. They seem very soft. But dangerous. I admire the aesthetic.”
“Soft but dangerous? I’ll have to remember that.”
The rest of the break was spent chatting about cats.
Before the next bell rang, Quill had texted Tanya: What is Star Wars ?
--
This, Tanya thought, as she knocked on the door of the place where Charlie and Quill both lived, was the kind of research she could get behind. Not going to libraries and reading weird books on dating. Instead, this was just fun. Watching Star Wars, even if she was watching it with Quill, was way more fun than any other plans she had for the weekend (which generally included a lot of studying).
Quill looked both ways before letting Tanya inside, like she was smuggling Tanya in or embarrassed to be seen with her. Tanya could respect that—this was kind of weird for her too, but she wasn’t going to pass up a chance to whip out the old Blu-Ray box set. In fact, Tanya brandished the Blu-rays now, safe inside Quill’s place. “I brought the prequel and original trilogy. A lot of people don’t like the prequels, but I thought you might want to watch them. Did Miss Jacobs say anything about them? Or about the viewing order? I watched them one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, but I reckon Miss Jacobs would have seen them four, five, six, one, two three, seven. If she watched the prequels at all. Mum doesn’t like the prequels and—“
“Don’t know, don’t care. Just put the movies on.” Quill sat down in an uncomfortable looking vhair and crossed her arms.
As she did so, Tanya couldn’t help but notice a tangle of yarn, stuck to the ground by twin, impaling knitting needles. “What’s that?”
“Knitting.” Quill looked at the tableu with disdain. “Kalei knits. But the arn didn’t like it. Between the excruciating pain and the stultifying boredom, it just wasn’t worth it.”
Tanya did a doubletake from where she was fiddling with the Blu-Ray player. “The arn?”
“The thing in my head? That lets his royal highness order me around?”
“No, I got that. But it ‘didn’t like it?’”
“Thought the knitting needles were too much like weapons, I assume.”
Tanya couldn’t keep from gaping. She hadn’t thought too much about the full ramifications of the creature in her teacher’s brain. But if it caused her pain just from picking up knitting needles, what else could it do? “Does it do that sort of thing a lot?”
“That’s not really any of your business,” Quill replied coolly. “Now put on the damn movie.”
Tanya complied, and the two of them had both settled in for some Star Wars -y goodness when Charlie himself showed up.
“Tanya?” Charlie asked, clearly confused.
“Yeah,” Tanya said, slightly bashful that she hadn’t bothered to mention she was coming over. Quill had been convinced Charlie wouldn’t notice anything she did. “Quill and I are. Well we’re—“
“We’re watching Star Wars ,” Quill finished, frustrated and deeply confused as to why Tanya was suddenly acting so weird. As though everyone watched sci-fi with their homicidal war-criminal teacher.
“With Quill?” Charlie clarified, speaking directly to Tanya and ignoring Quill entirely. This wasn’t the first time Tanya had seen him do something like that, but it was the first time that it made Tanya deeply uncomfortable.
“It’s a thing. For school,” Tanya said. This was all strictly true. “Do you—“ Tanya was going to ask Charlie if he wanted to join them, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Quill’s face fall. “Do you mind? We don’t want to be interrupted.”
Charlie blnked, clearly confused, but also too unfamiliar with earth conventions to truly be suspicious. “I—guess not. As long as Quill doesn’t harm you.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Quill snarled, eyes fixed straight ahead, posture rigid.
“Right, well. Nice to see you, Tanya.”
“Great to see you too, Charlie,” Tanya said, forcing a grin.
Charlie headed off towards the kitchen, acquired some snacks, then left to go back upstairs. The whole time he was downstairs, Quill remained rigid, alert, and clearly agitated.
When Charlie was finally gone, Tanya said, “I’m sorry.”
Quill did a double-take. She opened her mouth, seemingly to be dismissive, but something in Tanya’s tone or look stopped Quill. “Yeah, well. Thanks.”
“If I can do anything for you, you know, I’ll try.”
“Don’t push it, Adeola.”
“Alright, alright.”
“Just watch the damn movie.”
--
Star Wars provided Quill with enough discussion topics for a full week of breaks, her misadventure with knitting another day, and whenever conversation ran dry, there was always cats to fall back on. It was a week and a half under Tanya’s tutelage when Quill whined, once more, about how this was stupid and taking too long.
“It’s probably taken long enough,” Tanya agreed. “I think it’s time you ask her out.”
Quill was too surprised for a moment to respond. When she finally did, however, she was dismayed to find that she was feeling a bit panicked. “What, really?”
“Yeah, really. I mean, if someone gave me chocolate for a week and talked with me about Star Wars I’d totally go out on a date with them. I think it’s pretty likely she’ll say yes.”
“But what if she doesn’t?”
“Quill. Relax,” Tanya said, forgetting herself and digging in her backpack until she found Dating for Dummies. “There’s hints in here for that too, you know. Ask for a Wednesday or Thursday date, because it’s way lower stakes. Ask for a date a week to 10 days ahead of time. Don’t shop around—‘date one person at a—‘ oh we’re not going to need that.”
When Tanya looked up, Quill looked murderous. “You’ve been using a book?”
Tanya slammed the book shut and stuffed it back into her bag. “Not exclusively.”
“You’ve been coaching me and making me watch movies and talking up your excellent human interpersonal relationship skills, but the whole time this has been in a book?”
“First off, ‘human interpersonal relationship skills’ is a phrase that’s really bad for human interpersonal relationships. And second off, I did research, okay? This is a supplement to my original ideas.” This was, strictly speaking, true.
“I could have used a book!”
“And you could have watched Star Wars alone,” Tanya interrupted. Realization was dawning at her. “You’re not mad I used a book. You’re mad that we’re friends now.”
Quill crossed her arms, scowling. “We’re not friends.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re friends now. That’s how these things work. We’ve done the wacky hijinks, so now we’ve forged a bond. We’re friends.”
“I don’t have friends.”
And Tanya could probably take a guess as to why that was too, why Quill probably didn’t want friends. It likely had to do with the nasty creature in her brain. It didn’t seem too wise to point that out. “We’re friends, whether you want us to be or not, Miss. Now get out of here and go ask Miss Jacobs on a date.”
“It’s three hours until break,” Quill protested, reasonably enough.
“Oh, yeah, right.” In her moment of bonding and realization, Tanya had completely forgotten how time worked. Damn. “Well wait, then do that, then text me.”
Quill rolled her eyes, but she had a bit of a smile as Tanya walked off.
--
Quill had done much more dangerous things in her life than ask someone out on a date. Then why was she so nervous? She didn’t know, but she was.
When she arrived at Kalei’s classroom, she found herself slightly wrongfooted, as Kalei had brought them both coffee. This was a new, unexpected development.
Kalei was also slightly wrong too. She looked almost as nervous as Quill felt.
“What’s wrong?” Quill asked, suspicious. Was there some alien incursion? Had Kalei finally decided Quill wasn’t worth it? Was there an impending attack of the ‘zombies’ that Kalei had mentioned sporadically in their conversations?
Kalei swallowed a giant gulp of coffee, then grimaced. It was still too hot. “Nothing,” she said with a shake of her head. “I just had a question for you.”
“Me too,” Quill said.
“Oh?” Kalei asked, something hopeful in her tone. “You first, then.”
“Would you like to go on a date with me?”
“Oh, thank god,” Kalei said, letting out a sigh. “I thought I was going crazy. And then I thought I was stupid. And then I thought I was going crazy some more.”
“What?” asked Quill, confused.
“That was my question, too. See, I finally figured out you were probably flirting with me, but everyone, Sally in particular, claimed that wasn’t possible. So here I was, second and third guessing myself, when I finally decided to just do it, just ask you, and before I even can, you ask me. Isn’t that crazy?”
Quill didn’t respond to that. “So, that’s a ‘yes,’ then?”
“Yes that’s a ‘yes!’” Kalei said with a grin.
“Are you sure? I mean really sure? I’m not actually nice, and I—“
“Quill, you’re fabulous. And gorgeous. It’s a ‘yes.’”
It was Quill’s turn to let out a breath of relief. “I can’t wait to tell Adeola.”
“ Tanya Adeola?” Kalei said. “Why are you telling a student about our date?”
“Erm. It’s a long story,” Quill said, hoping this wasn’t what the humans called a ‘dealbreaker.’
Kalei raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t seem overly concerned. “I’m sure it is. That girl is too smart by half.”
“Oh, yeah,” Quill agreed. “Definitely. Too smart by half.”