Interlude

The student council room.

Elise had been trying to study and hadn’t wanted to get involved when Neil had clearly made up his mind about the two students. After they left, though, she was curious about his reasoning. While they’d been working together the past few weeks, she hadn’t known him the prior year and wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“What was the big deal with letting them have a booth?” she asked.

“They’re probably just doing it to get out of doing something with their classroom,” said Neil.

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“So? We’ve always had national booths.”

“There were only two of them,” he said.

“At the last two year’s festivals we had one girl from Wu with her own booth,” said Elise.

“That’s a real place. Do you expect me to have believed their story?”

Elise shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“I do. They won’t be back.”

Elise was sure there was more to it, but she hadn’t wanted to make a scene then, and had even less desire to get into more of an argument now. She decided to head out for the day and started packing up as she could finish studying at home.

“You shouldn’t go,” said Neil.

“I’ve got my job this evening,” said Elise. It was a lie, but everyone on student council knew that she worked a lot.

As she left, she heard Neil talking to himself; he must have thought she was out of earshot. “She isn’t nearly dedicated enough,” said Neil, and if anything followed, she was too far away to hear it.