the graceless

[instar]

Bella sits out, this year as every year, from gym class. It's just asking for a lawsuit. She does stretches and crunches and push-ups in the corner.

Comments

[instar]

"It means there exist practical obstacles to playing poker. I am largely indifferent to the choice of specific activity."

[pandion]

"We could go raid the change drawer, it's full of pennies," says Andi. "We have to put it all back after so Mom can put it through the machine at the grocery store but that's not a big deal."

[aeskhyne]

"Sounds good to me," says Trouble.

[pandion]

Andi goes and gets a little dish full of pennies, which she distributes.

[instar]

Bella finds a deck of cards near the phone.

[aeskhyne]

"I'll deal," offers Trouble.

[instar]

Bella hands over the cards and arranges her pennies into stacks.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble shuffles the deck, three different fancy ways, apparently just to show off. He's good at it.



He's also really, really good at poker.

[instar]

Each twin can always tell when her sister is bluffing. But neither has much practice at poker in general, or with reading Trouble.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble is completely readable. That's not the problem. He has emotions, but most of them are laughter and they don't seem to correlate with the state of his cards in any meaningful way.

[instar]

Then he will not have much trouble collecting the girls' pennies.

[aeskhyne]

Yep.

But it's all in fun. And he is having lots of fun.

[instar]

The girls start ganging up on him.

[aeskhyne]

That is also fun!

[instar]

However, they are still not very good at poker. Trouble wins.

[aeskhyne]

"That was fun," he says, giggling. "Was that fun? I think it was fun."

[instar]

"It was all right. I think poker is maybe better with more than three people."

[pandion]

"Yeah." Andi collects up all the pennies to put back where she got them.

[aeskhyne]

"So do you mind if I ask what was with that phone call?"

[pandion]

"Dad calls sometimes," shrugs Andi. "Mom calls us when we're staying with him over summers, too, they get along, they just didn't want to be married anymore. A while ago he started volunteering for this Scouting-like thing called the Sharing and he wants us to check it out but I think it looks boring and Bella thinks it looks creepy."

[instar]

"That's a slight exaggeration. I think their recruitment habits are creepy; the organization itself seems to just be barbecues and volunteer work. I just don't know why Charlie's so into it."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay, what's creepy about their recruiting habits?"

[instar]

"The fact that Charlie will not shut up about it? He's not this evangelistic about things, usually. We went fishing with him a couple times, it was boring, we never had to come along again. But for some reason he feels really strongly that we should go eat corn on the cob on the beach with a bunch of people he met through this group and make friends there and do stuff with them."

[aeskhyne]

"...Yeah, that's a little weird," says Trouble.

[instar]

"Yeah."