Research is for the weak *Gwen*

[alex renee malcolm]

Outfit

Alex was, to say the least, bored. Besides the recent death of one of her heroes, Master Steve Jobs himself, and all the blogging and twittering and crying over apple products [not literally, she didn’t ever cry] that that had led to, she hadn’t really been doing anything. School was school, and for someone who had succeeded IQ levels and could’ve passed the SAT without all the preps schools gave like four years before hand, it was even less that regular school. It was like…some amusing little game of Sudoku. That was what Alex would compare it to. Something to keep her preoccupied while she did well with most of her classes. The only class she wasn’t really doing that well in was the class where they had to deal with everyday situations and learning to “camouflage”, if that was the word she wanted to use. It was just…a class she couldn’t really wrap her head around just yet. She wasn’t good in most social situations, she came off as too brash and abrasive. She could rub people the wrong way sometimes because they didn’t understand that her sarcastic nature was NOT her trying to be mean and pester them but it wasn’t something she could just turn off. It was hard for to try and be someone else when it came to the whole ‘disguise’ thing. One, she was freaking short. She couldn’t change that. Two, they tried to put her in things that made her look extremely different. Like dresses, or high heeled shoes. Alex had threatened to walk out of class the day they had said she would have to wear a dress, and finally they had switched her around with someone else. The same thing almost happened when she had been made to wear heeled shoes. Alex had tried to convince herself they were just like her combat boots only a little higher, but the fact that she couldn’t take two steps with them before falling on her face in front of everyone had made it clear to the teachers they really needed to stop stereotyping her with only girl characters. Hell, she’d do marvelous as a boy. But instead, they had told her to research.

How the hell do you research being a girl? She should’ve been asking her friend Gwen. It seemed like this class that Alex was struggling in happened to be one of Gwen’s best classes. But go figure, Gwen seemed good at pretty much everything. Alex wasn’t resentful, she wasn’t jealous. It was just…well, it was just true. You couldn’t slip up in perfection when you were the headmistress’s daughter. Oh yeah, Alex had found that out. It wasn’t normal for people to do background checks on their friends, but that had been one of Alex’s class assignments and she couldn’t really find any info on the creepy vampire guy from Germany, so she had done Gwen instead. Interesting. Perfect record, really. But it was almost like she kept it up herself, in case someone background checked her, they wouldn’t find a thing. Alex hadn’t really said anything about knowing, but word got around. It didn’t make it so Alex was any less friends with the girl. She hadn’t thought she would be friends with Gwen in the first place – it just seemed like the two of them wouldn’t be the kind of people who would actually get along. But after meeting Gwen in Subzero, playing some games with her, actually talking to her, and then figuring out they shared some classes, Alex didn’t see the harm in having at least…one…friend who was a girl. Because really, that was almost shocking. Alex was more one of the guys than one of the girls, a tomboy through and through. Girls normally couldn’t relate to her, or she butt heads with them too many times. But Gwen was really nice, and she wasn’t like Alex thought she would be. Headmistress daughter…when that phrase popped into Alex’s head, she had automatically thought of the word Priss. Just priss. Literally, that’s it. And…snooty? Snobby? Goody two shoes? Even if Gwen seemed like a goody goody on the outside, it didn’t really come across in her personality, there was something more to her. Like a present to unwrap. Alex normally didn’t trust people who seemed to have one layer, but for some reason, it was like she could see through Gwen at the same time Gwen was opaque. Was that the right word? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember.

Though with where she was, she could look it up. Alex had brought her scrawny little butt to the library, to “research”, just like her teachers had told her. She had picked up a few magazines…seventeen, people, Cosmo girl. She had started to look through but got a little side tracked at the fact that the magazines were right next to the comic books. She was in a table in the corner, her nose deep in a Get Fuzzy collection book. Don’t get her wrong, Get Fuzzy could’ve been considered stupid, but for an intellectual like herself who actually got the jokes that were slightly rounded on word play and politics, she found it amusing. It was a bad place to put the magazines. She had texted Gwen earlier to see where she was…letting her know her whereabouts. More things from class. Eh. But that had been a while ago, and now Alex was distracted. It must’ve looked weird…a pile of girly magazines in front of her, and a pile of comics and star wars books to her right. You would think a spy school would have selective books but no, they weren’t trying to bore their students to absolute death. Looking up a bit, Alex blinked, looking to her phone for the time and looking up just in time to see Gwen enter the library. She blinked, moving to quickly save her spot and shove the comic aside and pick up a magazine to make it look like she was actually putting some thought into…”green is the new black” and “How to turn on your man”. What did this have to do with spying? She didn’t know. She just hoped something rubbed off on her so she didn’t have such an embarrassing time. That, or maybe she could just learn to walk in heels and that would be an accomplishment all in itself. Feeling Gwen’s presence, Alex didn’t look up, her pencil eraser pressed to her chin, her face wearing an exaggerated thinking expression, and she murmured, ”Benson.”

[/color] She moved the magazine down slowly, looking up at Gwen with a bored expression. ”What are the point of things like these?”[/color] She held up the page where it showed the shoes that Gaga typically liked to wear – the ones that looked like oversized hooves or something. She just hoped she didn’t look like an idiot, she was already feeling her brain melt.[/size][/blockquote]