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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on May 16, 2016 20:19:42 GMT -7
Edgar couldn’t believe his terrible luck today: the left-over in the fridge had gone bad, and his alarm didn’t wake him up on time, so he has to spend his morning class with an empty stomach. Not only that, he didn’t bring enough money to get anything filling during lunch time, so the hunger only escalated further. But he doesn’t have time to run home and prepare something for dinner, not when he have something important to do that afternoon. The task was simple enough, but today of all day it have to run into a snag.
It all started from the day he went out to the mall in order to hand out his survey and investigating Dr. Mallard. In the afternoon someone bumped into him, caused him to drop some of the survey. The young girl bought a lot of dog toys when she bumped into him, and the floor was a mess. After he helped her picked up her toys, asking her a few question and wave good bye, the day went on normally. It wasn’t until that night when he returned to his apartment that he noticed his keys was missing. After some thought he realized that the key-chain must have been mix-up with the girl’s dog toys since it does have a small plushy of a teddy bear on it.
Though he was used to spending his time away from his apartment from time to time, and the landlady was kind enough to give him a spare, he still needs to find that key-chain. It wasn’t the key that he need, but rather the USB drive that he attached to it. The content in that USB is very importance to him, and he can’t leave it like that. Unfortunately, he only gave her his contact, but didn’t get even a name from her that day to look in a phone book. After some time waiting, he didn’t get a call from her about finding the USB, but considering the amount of dog toys she got on her that day, it wouldn’t surprise him if she didn’t noticed it at all. At this point he had no choice but to find her. The only clue that he had so far about the girl was that she was young, and must own a lot of dog for her to buy those dog toys. He can at least guess that she must still be in high school, so the most unfortunate situation is that he had to spend most of his afternoons outside of some high school near the mall. Not only is this embarrassing, but a small misunderstanding could lead to a much troublesome situation.
Thus, it all lead to today’s event: he was standing outside of Gardner High, starving, until he can see students begin to walk home. Of all the luck, the school security noticed him and begin to ask question about what he was doing, snooping around and looking at the students walking home; bringing along his camera might not be a good idea either:
“Sir,” the security guard said to him, “I would like to ask you to leave the premise.”
“I’m very sorry, but there’s a misunderstanding. I wasn’t doing anything shady, I swear.”
“Sir, either you leave right now or I’ll have to report you to the police.”
Edgar tried to explain to the man about his situation, but he doesn’t buy it. The man sound very serious about calling the police, but if he leave now he won’t know if that girl is going to this school. And yes, it does sound very sketchy when he think about it, but it’s not like he can hang around the mall again, hoping to bump into her.
Though in hindsight, he would rather prefer that now than dealing with the police because of a stupid misunderstanding.
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Post by Yulia Sokolov on May 18, 2016 17:52:38 GMT -7
Yulia yawned, finding it difficult to not just take a little nap on her desk before class ended. School would be ending soon, which meant finals, something she hadn't had to deal with in middle school. It was all the teachers could talk about for nearly the last month, always emphasizing how important they were and how large a percentage of a grade they were. Her grades were already bad, and her understanding of the material was even worse. She never did well on tests to begin with, and the amount of buildup on these tests just made her even more anxious and made her even more likely to do poorly. She had long given up on the idea that she'd be able to do any better than Cs at this point, but she couldn't shake the idea that she wouldn't even be able to pull that off. It made it difficult to focus, or even care.
After a moment of zoning out, the bell finally rang. Half-asleep, she lazily put her books into her backpack and headed for her locker, forgetting to zip up her bag before heading there. However, once she reached the main stairs, she decided there wasn't much point in grabbing the remaining books from her locker. There was no way she'd be able to get any useful studying done tonight, and even on the off chance she could there didn't seem to be much point in trying. If she had questions, the school couldn't help her. There were so many other kids in her class that they couldn't help everyone. The school was practically bursting at the seams and the teachers just couldn't keep up. She couldn't ask her parents for help either, they had four other children to take care of. They didn't have time to spend an evening sitting down and relearning everything they forgot from high school. Yulia didn't blame any of them, but it was a frustrating situation to be in. She wanted to do better, she wanted to understand everything, but she just didn't know how to go about doing that.
Once she got outside, there was a small crowd looking at something going on. Security was hassling some adult with a camera. Creepy. Why were there so many creepy adults hanging around the school lately? Yulia tucked her shoulders in, trying to make herself look as small as possible. Even so, she still towered above most of the other students. While there were plenty of students trying to get a good look at what was going on, Yulia wanted nothing to do with it and just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. She crossed the street early, but as her luck would have it, she wouldn't be able to escape as quickly as she liked. Some of the threading in her backpack was a bit frayed and falling apart, and apparently right now had to be the time it finally snapped. Of course it did. The left strap disconnected from the rest of the backpack with a small snap as the threads finally gave way. She managed to keep her balance, but the sudden shift in weight caused her backpack to nearly flip upside down, dumping the majority of the contents on the ground. Yulia didn't carry that much stuff, but all her books, most of her pencils and pens, and a few odds and ends, like tissues and money, that she kept in her bag spilled out all over the ground, some of it even rolling into the middle of the street. With a sigh, she started quickly collecting everything again, occasionally glancing over at the commotion to make sure everything was still okay.
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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on May 19, 2016 11:07:41 GMT -7
“Alright, alright, I’ll leave.”
Edgar gave up on explaining himself to this stubborn security guard. Not only does he become irritated that he might call the police at any moment, a crowd have also gathered around them. He can hear some whispers among the crowd, a wide variety of the same phrase: “what a creep,” can be heard between each student. Honestly, these kids have way too much free time on their hand if they stop and stare at the commotion like this.
“If I see you around here again, I’ll detain you before the police show up.” The security guard said to him before breaking up the crowd away.
Edgar sighed; today was a big waste of time, and now he’s officially on that guy’s black list and the “creepy guy” rumor that is going to spread all over. With this situation, he might even have a harder time going around talking to people; gossip and rumor tend to spread fast, and his reputation of a free-lance journalist hasn’t been a lot to begin with. The idea of spending time at the mall hoping he would bump into her again doesn’t sound like a bad idea right about now. He didn’t see the girl in the crowd, so at the very least it was some progress. But as of right now, he might need to lay low until the gossip die down.
As he made his way out of the crowd and crossed the street, he noticed a textbook lying near the sidewalk. He picked it up and saw a student gathering her stuff on the sidewalk with her backpack open.
“Here,” he walked up to her and handed her the book, “you drop this.”
As soon as she turned around, he recognized her almost immediately. She's the girl that he met in the park not so long ago:
"Hey, it's you."
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Post by Yulia Sokolov on May 22, 2016 9:36:34 GMT -7
Yulia was trying to get everything back into her backpack as quickly as she could, chasing after some of the pens and pencils rolling down the hill. She didn't run, but she moved briskly enough that she was able to catch them before they got too far. However, it looked like she wasn't nearly fast enough. The creepy guy was making his way across the street, and noticed one of her textbooks on the ground. It just happened to be the same algebra 1 text book the last creepy guy floating about the school touched. At this point she was becoming increasingly convinced that math was cursed. Considering he was just trying to be nice, she tried to hide her discomfort as much as possible, as hard as it was.
"Oh, thank you," she grabbed the book from the side furthest from his hands.
When he recognized her from somewhere, she blinked. Part of her just wanted to back away slowly, much like she did with the last guy, but she settled for walking over to her bag and putting the book away. It was probably more polite. Yulia didn't recognize him immediately, but after looking at him for a moment and after he mentioned the park, she was able to place the face. He didn't seem like a bad person at the park. Yulia wasn't sure to take that as a sign that there was more going on here, or a sign that she was just a bad judge of character. Wandering around outside a high school with a camera was pretty weird.
"Oh! Y-Yes," she nodded and paused for a moment. "What brings you here?"
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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on May 23, 2016 11:54:42 GMT -7
Edgar mentally sighed in relief; at least this girl doesn’t ran away from him after that situation with the security guard from earlier. He would assumed most of the students in this school have heard of the rumored “stalker with a camera” in the vicinity, so he was glad she didn’t jump into conclusion like that and ran away from him. Remembering of how anxious-prone she was in the park, he hope he didn't startle her too much by appearing here. It was pretty weird of him to appear in a high school with a camera; he didn't even know what he was thinking by bringing the camera with him, but there's no way to change that now.
He began to explain to her his reason of being here, from the survey incident at the mall to how his USB might got mix-up with the girl’s dog toys collection when she bump into him:
“…and since I haven’t heard from her about finding my key-chain,” he continued, “I thought I went out to look for her. But since I don’t have her name, I can only guess that she might be a high school student. Do you, by any chance, know someone like that in your school? That USB mean a lot to my work, I must find it soon.”
He also explain to her that he’s a freelance journalist, thus the reason as to why he always brought a camera with him was an old habit of his that he did without even realizing it:
“But as you can see, it roped me into a misunderstanding situation with that security guard earlier. I tried to explain to him, but he just wouldn’t listen. I guess something like this might have happen before, huh; otherwise he wouldn’t jump straight into calling the police like that without proof.”
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Post by Yulia Sokolov on May 24, 2016 6:08:25 GMT -7
It was a good thing that Yulia was practiced with blank stares. His story seemed plausible enough, and it didn't sound like he was lying, but it was still suspicious and wasn't making him look any less creepy. Even so, she just listened with a slight smile on her face trying to hide how much she wanted to get out of here, using the fact that she had to collect her scattered supplies as a reason to move around and fidget a bit. His last statement gave her a bit of pause. Did he know that someone had harassed her already, or was he just speaking generally and it was just a coincidence that he happened to be talking to her. He did say he was a reporter, so he might know. At this point Yulia hoped he didn't want to talk to her about it if he did know.
"Um..." she paused trying to think of a tactful way to say what she wanted to say. "So...you thought it would be easier to find her by hanging outside of a high school, one that she might not even go to, instead of going to the police? I-I mean I know you don't think she intended to steal your USB, but she still has it so...Well, they'd probably be able to help you more than anyone here would..."
Yulia had some ideas of who he might be talking about, but she wasn't feeling inclined to share them. She didn't know if it was safe at this point. The police would be able to handle the situation better, and if he was that unwilling to go then what he was trying to find was probably shady anyway.
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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on May 25, 2016 23:48:18 GMT -7
When the girl suggested the idea of going to the police and asks them to help with his situation rather than standing outside of high school all day, Edgar slapped his forehead from embarrassment:
“Son of a biscuit,” he murmured to himself, not sure if the girl heard him, “why didn’t I think of that?”
It might be possible that he was over-thinking the situation, which is why he didn’t goes to the police for help. It’s possible that he was thinking it was weird for a twenty-year-old man asking for a young girl’s address, especially when people keep mistaking his age to be above thirty. Though to be honest, the idea of standing outside the high school with a camera watching kids leaving school might have been the dumbest idea he’s ever came up with. He just couldn’t believe he had spent most of his time doing something completely pointless, even wasting this girl’s time by asking her silly question.
“You have a point there;” he finally told her, “guess it was pretty silly of me to not consider that option to begin with. I apologize for wasting your time like this.”
Now the only problem is how he should approach the police with his story now. It was always a hassle to talk to them, especially for him being a free-lance journalist. As he was thinking to himself, the girl continued picking up her stuff from before. Some of her writing utensils rolled out to the middle of the street, so she decided to walk to the middle of the road to get them. Without much of a warning, a car drove down the street without any sign of slowing down.
“Look out!!” he shouted to her as he immediately rushed down to the road and grab-hold on her arm to pull her back before the car whiz by, running over the utensils that she was going after.
The car continued down the road, seems like it’s running out of control, before it slammed hard onto the concrete pole on the sidewalk, coming to a stop. Some of the students closed by witness the crash and begin to make their way toward it to check.
“Wait here,” he told the girl before making his way to the crash. Looking inside the car, he saw the driver, a middle-age man with some scratches on his forehead, sitting motionless in the driver seat. Edgar checked under the car, making sure there’s no fire or fuel leak before pulled open the car door to check on the man. He put his hand on the man’s neck; he still has a pulse, thought fairly weak. Fearing he might further hurt the man if he decided to move him out of his seat, he pulled out his phone and called 911 to report the crash.
With the school security guard arrived to push back the crowd of curious students, Edgar make his way back to the girl:
“Are you alright?” he asked with concern, “you not hurt are you?”
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Post by Yulia Sokolov on May 27, 2016 13:49:36 GMT -7
Yulia just nodded slowly as he spoke. While she was glad that he was at least willing to go to the police with this, the conversation itself was still awkward as hell. In the end, she didn't really want to know why this guy thought that trying to stalk a teenage girl was a better idea than letting the professionals handle it. Fortunately, she only had a few things left to pick up and then she could finally get out of here. As always, life seemed to have other ideas.
"It's no problem. Good luck finding it."
She managed to summon a slightly larger smile to her face for a moment, before it returned to the usual smaller one. Yulia heard the car before she saw it, but given school was just getting out and there were numerous students walking home at this time, she assumed it would slow down eventually. When it didn't start slowing down, she tried to make her way back towards the sidewalk without making any sudden movements. There was no need to panic. Once again, the world proved otherwise. As the car got closer, the creepy guy grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the way. Yulia's eyes went wide and her heart skipped a beat. She understood what he was trying to do, and while on some level she was grateful about it, in the end, she really didn't like people getting that close to her, let alone actually touching her.
"Don't touch me!"
Yulia screamed, a rather loud one from the belly rather than being shrill. She quickly moved away once the threat of the car passed to get some distance between her and the man. Some students looked their way, but they were quickly distracted by the car running into a nearby pole. She couldn't see what happened in there, but it didn't take a genius to guess. Even so, she found herself unable to look away. She was glad to have a moment to herself as the man went to see what happened. In that time, she took a few deep breaths to calm down a little and finished gathering the rest of her supplies. Yulia knew she could have left right then, but opted to stay, feeling a little guilty over what happened. When he returned, she took a few steps away from him to ensure he didn't get too close again. If he continued to try to approach, she'd just continue moving away until he was at a reasonable distance.
"I'm okay," she said unable to make eye contact, or even face in his direction, "but your hand..."
She was surprised he hadn't noticed. His hand was red, as though a few layers of skin had just suddenly disintegrated. She could only imagine what something like that must have felt like.
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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on May 29, 2016 3:00:34 GMT -7
“My hand?” Edgar asked rather confused; it took a few more short moments before his brain finally register a slight pain in his right palm. He took a look at it and noticed the palm was turning pink, almost like it got a very minor case of sunburn; it wasn’t serious. Other than having his palm slightly pink, it’s nothing dangerous or even painful to touch, it won’t leave a terrible scar or lose his skin; it’ll just be slightly irritated to touch anything for a few minutes or so.
“Was it because I touch the hood of the car and got burn without knowing?”, he thought, “everything happened so fast, I probably didn’t notice the pain because the rush of adrenaline from seeing the crash.”
Despite the burn wasn’t serious, he saw the girl looking away from him, almost like she was feeling guilty about it. Did she think he got hurt because of her? Remembering how she blamed herself for the ice-cream incident, it wouldn’t surprise him if that was the case.
“It’s quite alright,” he told her, “it didn’t even hurt, see?” he showed his hand to her, hoping she would see that it wasn’t a big deal, that she shouldn’t blame herself for something that was his fault to begin with.
“You really shouldn’t worry about the littlest thing like that. I’m fine, really; believe it or not I’ve faced some injury myself in my line of work, so this is no big deal. They all heal eventually, this tiny burn doesn’t even gonna take more than a few minutes to heal. I should have known better not to touch the hot part of the car when I approach it earlier, so it wasn't your fault. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
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Post by Yulia Sokolov on May 29, 2016 14:18:16 GMT -7
Yulia continued to look down for a moment. This entire situation had been a complete mess from the start. Another creepy guy shows up at school? It was times like this that she was glad school was ending soon, and was waiting for them to start crowding around her house instead. The difference was that this one legitimately saved her. Yulia still wasn't sure if she was just judging his character wrong because of one mistake, even if coming to a school to track down a girl was one hell of a mistake to make, or not. Granted, not wanting someone to turn into a bug on a windshield was a pretty normal response from just about everyone, so maybe she was just reading too much into this. Regardless, this entire situation had been uncomfortable for some time, and this just made it worse.
"It's just--Well--but--Maybe--It's..." Yulia closed her eyes, took a deep breath and turned around. "Okay. Is...Is everything okay over there?"
In the end, she didn't feel that much better, nor did she look like she was feeling that much better. There was just so much going on that Yulia was feeling a little overwhelmed. Just how paramedics were able to do their jobs was beyond Yulia's understanding. Having to handle seriously injured people, many of which probably wouldn't pull through, sounded terrible.
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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on Jun 1, 2016 17:21:11 GMT -7
Edgar let out a short sad sigh as he turned toward the crowd:
“I don’t know,” he replied to her, “the man was unconscious, but I believe he’s still alive. You would think that I would get used to seeing thing such as this, but it still rather hard to unseen them.”
He can still vividly remember the last car accident that he found himself being a witness in: not only did the two cars were completely wrecked like ball of aluminum, one of the driver went splatter all over the broken-up windshield. Any rookie photographer would have thrown up from seeing such a terrible sight, but Edgar didn’t even flinch when he took the photo. He wasn’t even sure if the editor used his photo for the paper, he only knew he got paid for the pictures. It was simply work for him, and it was something he has to do to earn some money.
He shook the thought from his head; he almost forgot that this young girl was next to him, and saying something like that won’t put her mind at ease:
“Don’t you worry,” he tried to smile, “I called 911, I’m sure the ambulance is on their way now.”
It took only a few more minutes for an ambulance to arrive at the scene, along with few police car, making sure the crowd gathering there got push back for them to work. The paramedics check the driver before they could put him on their sketches in order for them to apply first aid and the necessary precaution to a car-crash victim. The polices also put some traffic cones around the scene while pushing back the crowd of people gather around, making sure the accident don't interfere with the traffic. Some officers began to interview some people in the crowd in order to get a better understanding of what happen while the other taking crime scene photo for evident.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he turned toward the girl again, his face display a genuine concern, “that car was very close of hitting you, you sure you don’t wanna have a paramedic checking you for any injury or trauma?”
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Post by Samantha Lobo on Jun 1, 2016 19:59:15 GMT -7
Samantha knew it was a dumb idea to keep the USB, it really was. Even now, whenever she even looked at it, she felt a twinge in her chest.
Not that anyone could see that, with her rotating it in her palm while slumped in a bench, wrestling with the idea of calling a complete stranger to return a strange USB. Her parents would explode if she told them of taking the contact of another person who wasn't her age, they wanted her to have friends, but not like that apparently.
She didn't even notice the subject of her worry outside the school, tuning out the students claims of a "creepy man" outside the school...idiots.
He likely also didn't see her either, with her practically melting into the bench with the "emo" hoodie she wore tightly over her head. She didn't tune out for long, however...
She slammed her hands over her ears as a horrific screech rang through the air, followed by the lowest groaning of metal she had ever heard. A crash, a fucking crash!
She glanced curiously over, shoving anybody who couldn't take a hint out of her way. A man slumped in his seat, Samantha couldn't really see if he was breathing or not.
Oh hell
Another person ran forward, checking on the man before calling 911, unlike the pack oof kids trying to take pictures of the accident. The same man who had lost the USB.
Welp, guess even the world got tired of waiting!
She loped over, pulling down her hood to ensure he wouldn't think she was a mugger or anything, she didn't need to get punched in the face for this.
She cleared her throat as she approached, trying to make sure she wouldn't surprise them before speaking up, "Hey...um...guy?" She growled out, sounding aggressive despite her attempt to look almost friendly, "Remember me? 'Cause I think I got something of yours."
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Post by Yulia Sokolov on Jun 5, 2016 17:34:47 GMT -7
It wasn't going to be fine was it? Adults were always so bad at lying. The way he talked, the way he was looking around, the way he looked at her, it was obvious. More than that, on some level she could feel it. It almost seemed like it would have been a mercy if he died instantly instead. He tried to reassure her further, but it didn't work. It didn't matter though, she could pretend. Yulia's lips curled into small, but worried smile.
"Y-Yeah. I know the paramedics will do everything they can," she glanced over in the direction of the accident once more. "I-I'm fine, I promise. If I got hit by a car moving that fast I think it'd be easy to tell. The paramedics have enough to worry about without wasting their time looking over me."
The last thing she wanted was more people getting close to her, or worse, touching her. Yulia really wasn't worried though. She had very good awareness of her own body, and the worse she was able to notice was that she twisted her ankle a little funny when she was suddenly pulled away from the car. Nothing worth worrying about, it'd probably feel better by the evening it was so minor. She got the feeling he might insist anyway, so she was glad when someone came to interrupt that train of thought.
"Looks like you got lucky," she smiled.
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Post by Edgar Pointdexter on Jun 6, 2016 12:12:34 GMT -7
Edgar gave her a slight smile of relief; at the very least she wasn’t hurt. Seeing the car whiz by her inches away from hitting her might still leave some traumatic memory, but as long as she was safe and alive, that’s all that matter. He looked back at the accident, observing the paramedic trying their best to help the man out of the wreck and stabilize him. His inner journalist thought was shouting at him to take the picture of the scene, but he decided against it. He couldn’t do that, not when she’s standing next to him right now. He can always find another story to write about; right now it better not getting her involve in this anymore than it had.
A short moment later he heard someone behind him; as he turned, he recognize the girl with the dog toys at the mall. The girl still wearing the similar hoodie as she did at the mall.
“O-Oh, yes, it’s you,” he said, feeling rather relief he finally found her after all this time, as he tried his best to control his excitement, “Oh my goodness, this is great, you found my USB? Why didn’t you call to let me know you have it? I was looking around for you all this time.”
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Post by Samantha Lobo on Jun 13, 2016 6:52:12 GMT -7
Samantha averted her eyes, coughing awkwardly into her fist as she feigned extreme intrest into the paramedics activities, "Well, hehe, I just didn't think my parents would like me calling a person I just met." She almost blurted out that she was curious, but decided against it.
She held out the thing, ready for it to just be taken off her hands. She tilted her head to the other girl, "So, who's this?" She was kinda familiar, but Samantha had never talked to her personally.
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