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Monday, October 22nd: after school

Megan had asked Sylvia to wait a bit after cheerleading practice, the two girls remaining in the dance room the squad had been using for the last half of practice, going over their dance routines.  Once the others had all made their way out of the room and the door closed, Megan turned to look over at Sylvia as she once again thought about the best way to do this.  Deciding once more for the direct approach, she simply began to talk.

“So Sylvia, Lisa told me that she saw you Friday night at a Fenwick fundraising social.  With a guy named Dylan.”

It catches Sylvia off guard, and in a kind of reflex her expression goes blank.  "Oh?  Yeah, I saw her with her boyfriend, I guess."

Megan looked at Sylvia for a moment before she replied.  “That’s funny, because she was under the impression Dylan was your boyfriend.  She was asking if you were there at the party so she could dance with him some.”

After a brief pause, the blonde teen continued, “Syliva, I am not about to try to tell you what you should do or anything like that, though I do think Donnie is a pretty okay guy, and clearly very into you.  I know he was looking around for you at lunch on Friday because he wanted to see you because you were going to be doing ‘sisterly stuff’ with your sister that night.  But I thought you should know that whatever you are doing, it might not remain secret for long.  I have not told anyone, and after we leave here, I won’t ever talk about it again, unless you want to talk some about it.”

“Right now, Lisa said she is planning to keep things quite about this Dylan, but who knows how long that might last.  All she has to do is tell the right person and news of it will be all over the school before you can turn around.  Even if that doesn’t happen, Lisa is arranging herself a date for our Homecoming to come hang out with people.  I could not imagine anything bringing a good time at Homecoming to a screeching halt faster than Lisa coming up to you with Donnie nearby and asking you where your hot boyfriend Dylan is so she can dance with him.”

Sylvia frowns at the air in front of her and lets out a sigh.  "It was all a misunderstanding.  That's all."  She looks at Megan.  "Totally innocent."  Then because she's feeling guilty despite her rationalizations, she goes on.  "I mean, what are the rules anyway?  If I go out with Kel or Colin, it's just going out.  If I go out with Dylan, it's a date?  I didn't do anything," she says, as if it's the twentieth time she's said it to herself.

Megan gave Sylvia a sympathetic look as she replied.  “The rules are complicated aren’t they?  If there even are any rules.  I am not trying to judge you here Sylvia, but you apparently did not want Donnie knowing about this, so regardless of how innocent it was, you must be thinking he might not see it that way.”

“My whole reason for bringing this up to you is so you would be aware that you could be skating on thin ice, so you could try to prevent yourself from falling in.  If you want me to try to help somehow, I will, but I am not sure what I can do other than give advice, and that might not even be worth all that much.”

Sylvia nods, knowing she's on thin ice.  "I should tell him.  I should.  But he's. . . ."  She winces and gives one of her pom-poms a half-hearted toss to the floor.  "He acts kind of funny sometimes.  Like, when we're alone, we're okay.  We're happy, I think.  We talk about stuff, and we have a good time.  Then, when we're at school, it's like part of his attention is on me, and part of it is on . . . "  She tries to pin-point it.  " . . . everybody else.  I mean, maybe it's all in my imagination--"  She always has to allow for that possibility.  "--but he seems to think walking around campus with me is like walking in a gay pride parade--like he doesn't belong or I don't belong, or something.  You know?"  Then she remembers who she's talking to.  "You probably don't know."

Megan listened as Sylvia talked about things with Donnie, she gave the other girl a slight grin as she replied, “no, I probably don’t.  But I think I can guess.  You think he feels this is something that is too good to be true?  That any minute you might realize that you can do better and you’ll be gone?”

“A lot of that could just be him, and insecurities he might still have, though he shouldn’t.  Hopefully that will go away with time.  But I would think that if you do go and try to hide stuff too much, and he senses something, that will only serve to make things worse.  I am really not one to talk, for a long time I had been keeping things secret and to myself about my powers.  Maybe I had good reasons, maybe I didn’t.  Calvin and I got pretty close in the short time we had, but neither of us ever knew about the other’s powers.  Who knows, if we had not kept that from each other, maybe we could have been closer.”

"I miss Calvin," Sylvia says, in a sort of little-girl-lost way.  "I felt safe when Calvin was around, like we could always just hide behind him."  With a sigh she dismisses that thought.  Hiding is for kids.  "Things are going okay with John?"

“There are times I miss Calvin too, used to be a lot more, but I have worked to put that behind me.”  Megan said with a sigh.  “But there is little we can do about that.”

She gives Sylvia a smile and adds, “sides, we can hide behind John now if needed.  So far things are going really good I’d say, and…kinda fast, not that I am complaining.  He has really swept in and demolished any thoughts I had been having about taking my time and maybe seeing about what all was out there before trying to focus in on one guy.”

She paused a moment and then continued, “I mean I told him I was Velocity the second day I had known him, after he told me about his powers.  And I have enjoyed all the time we have spent together, which has been a fair bit actually now that I think about it.  We have seen each other at least a bit every day since we met on Wednesday.”  Megan stopped a moment, wondering why she had not really realized that it had been such as short period of time.

She shook her head and focused back on Sylvia as she grinned.  “But anyway, no more chasing after casual dates with random guys.  Now it is spending time with John when I can, focusing on school stuff and trying to use my powers to make some kind of difference whenever I can.”

In a blur of motion, she moved over and picked up the pom-pom Sylvia and thrown aside and was then standing next to the other girl, holding it back out to her.  Wrapping an arm around one of Sylvia’s, she started the two of them towards the door of the dance room.  “So, you think you have figured out what you are going to try to do?  If you want to think about it and need to talk, just give me a call.  You know, I have a little dance studio in my house, if you ever wanted to come over and work on dance stuff your more than welcome.  I like messing around with new stuff there, trying out different choreography and stuff.”

Sylvia shakes her head, smiling, as she walks.  "New choreography?  I'm only starting to get the hang of the old choreography."  Then that guilty look flits across her face again as she thinks about the Saturday game.  "I think I have to tell him.  But this could really suck.  We're not like Sarah and Colin.  Donnie's . . . complicated."  Which is part of what she likes about him, poor girl.  She loves damaged goods.

Megan chuckled.  “Don’t worry, I am not planning to change all the choreography, or even at all.  If I did that, I wouldn’t have to worry about Pinky, the rest of you would lynch me.  I just like experimenting with new ideas for stuff, most of it will never be done outside that room, though I do come up with some nice dance moves I use at parties and such.  You think the routine we have for ‘Sexyback’ is hot, I have another I have put together that is probably better suited for a stripper.” 

The blonde teens face becomes more serious as a guilty look comes to Sylvia’s face and she talks about how telling Donnie about her Friday evening could be bad.  “Sylvia, we are all complicated in some way or another, if we weren’t life would be boring.”  She sighed and continued.  “As much as it could suck, not telling him and him finding out some other way will only suck that much more.  The sooner you level with him and explain things, the better I would think.  I mean, you would rather stay with Donnie right?  You just need to make him understand that is what is important to you.”

Sylvia nods.  Not telling Donnie has been pure cowardice, made possible by the fact that she thought he'd never find out.  Logan Darklighter would laugh at her hypocrisy.  "I'll tell him.  I will.  It's no big deal.  I'll tell him."  If she keeps saying that, she might convince herself.