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

[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."

[pandion]

"Maybe it's a cult. But all their press says they're secular and nondenominational 'except insofar as indviduals among us feel moved to act for the common good by their faith'."

[instar]

"I don't think they're a religious cult. Is there even such a thing as a secular cult?"

[aeskhyne]

"Maybe they're secretly a cult," says Trouble. "You join up and it's all corn on the cob and community shit and then once you're in deep they're like 'by the way, have some kool-aid'."

[instar]

"They have a disturbingly high retention rate."

[aeskhyne]

"So they're a nice secret cult. Or a really, really nasty one."

[instar]

"Anyway," says Bella, shaking her head, "I'm just hoping Charlie doesn't make an enormous fuss about it when we're actually at his house this summer. It's one thing when I can theoretically just hang up on him."

[pandion]

"Worst case scenario, we go eat some corn," shrugs Andi. "It's boring, but we just turn down all the neon-color liquids, yeah?"