Odd companionship

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Having been set to work by Leonard once she entered the kitchen with the plates Xan didn't particularly complain. It was way better than being welcoming, friendly she could do, welcoming was a whole another hurdle. Setting the dishes where they were meant to be she then quickly washed her hands and started on the task of cutting up fruits. Cutting up fruits were nice.

The slightly improved mood had helped and the teen was able to offer a smile to Elise. "I'm fine, and no, I'm not nervous. I just haven't had the time to remember the menu." That would work, that was the perfect excuse even. Surely the blonde would swallow it whole, she made herself seem the type.
 
Well, that made sense. Sometimes customers wanted to get recommendations and if Xan didn't know the menu, she wouldn't know how to answer. "Oh, I see. Just help out in the kitchen for today then and try to learn as much as possible on the menu by tomorrow so you can start interacting with the customers." Elise suggested. She still believed that the younger girl might be a little bit nervous, but the nervousness could definitely stem from not knowing what was on the menu.

"I'll be closing up the shop the day after tomorrow, so that's when we'll take the closing up duties tour, which of course includes the oh so funny laundry duty." The sarcasm couldn't be missed in her tone. Cleaning and washing duties wasn't the most fun thing to do, especially when you closed the shop alone. It became quite boring even if it only was for one hour. Though the morning staff also had their boring period before the shop opened. Ironing and putting back the clothes into their lockers, checking all the deliveries that would come during the day, if any, make sure that all pre-ordered desserts were ready, and so on and so forth. She doubted neither Xan nor her would ever get the morning duty though. Even during weekends, students tended to get the later schedules except if they had evening or afternoon activities. If any of them got a morning duty, they would get to do it with someone else first so they knew how it worked, just like how Xan was with Elise now.

"Well, I better get out with these deserts before our customers makes a riot." Elise then said, waved a goodbye and left the room.
 
... Great, she believed it was nerves after all. Sighing Xan returned with helping on the kitchen cursing the fact that the blonde was clearly among the goodie-two-shoes type of people. In her mind Xan began to remind herself why she started applying for jobs in the first place. Job means money, money means economy, economy means I can get those papers signed, papers signed means finally some freedom. She wanted her freedom so badly, especially now that her mom had began dating... Again.

While spending the shift in the kitchen she did learn a lot, very much of it would be useful for her in the future. Already Xan was planning on spending the quiet moments in the kitchen to help, especially since Leonard was more than willing to lecture on what he did. Towards the end of the shift the teen was in a fairly good mood and when the time came to clock out she headed towards the staff room with the menu in hand so she could memorize it overnight.
 
It was a fairly calm day at work and since another waitress came in for work before the amount of customers started to increase, there was never any need for Xan to help out out there, thus Elise let her work in peace behind the scenes. They could get to the serving of customers part next time.

As her shift ended, Elise ended up in the staff room a minute before the other girl. As the other girl entered with a menu in her hand, Elise smiled towards her. "So, how was your first day?" She asked the girl as she continued to change out of her work clothes. Leonard's shift wouldn't end for another hour and he only took breaks when it was scheduled and Adam had already gone home. The rest of the staff during those hours and that day were all females, so she wasn't too worried of being seen. "I hope you're ready to meet the customers tomorrow. Don't worry about messing up. They are very understanding when it comes to newcomers." She tried to reassure the girl so she wouldn't end up anxious the next day too.
 
So the other girl misunderstood her? Oh, great. Blank-faces she grabbed her clothes and went to the bathroom to change, ignoring the annoying concern of her new coworker.
Locking the door behind her she took her own sweet time to change out of the neutral uniform and into her own, far more comfortable clothes. Looking in the mirror and finding the ambiguous impression she wanted to give the world. This was her, this was her freedom.

Done changing she exited the bathroom, hoping the other girl had left, that there wasn't any more annoyance to deal with for the moment.
 
Elise did feel slightly interested in staying a bit longer so that she and Xan could walk together for as long as their roads matched, but she was in a hurry and couldn't really afford to small talk while slowly walking forward in no hurry to get to the bus. She had fifteen minutes to get to her bus, otherwise she'd have to wait for an hour on the next one and since she didn't have her homework with her, she could not afford to loose that time. So instead of waiting for Xan, Elise ran to the bus once she was completely done changing.

The next day, Elise came to school a little bit too early, as always. Extremely few people were there when she came. As always, she sat down outside of her first class and waited for her friends to arrive shortly before the teacher. That tended to be the trend for most students. Max five minutes early, and at least three had to drop in late. Apparently no one liked early mornings. That was something she couldn't understand. She worked the best in the morning and was a zombie during the evenings. When her friends tried to make her stay up all night during movie marathons and the likes, she tended to fall asleep on the sofa, and once she was asleep, nothing woke her up.
 
Relieved that the girl was gone Xan headed over to the nearest park. The libraries were already closing and there was no way she was going home right now. Pulling out her books the teen sat down on the bench and began working on her homework under the light of the parklight until a police officer on patrol chased her away. Public nuisance? As if. Those annoyingly useless cops. They were never there when you needed them.

**^**^**^**

Sleep-addled, the girl slumped down on the seat next to Elise. Red hair put up in stylish fashion matched with a fairly grown-up style, Melissa was one of the blonde's friends. Putting a box on Elise's desk she smiled sleepily, "yesterday's experiment, remember to give me you opinion, okay?" Clearly not a morning person she was still willing to get up early enough to make food, she had her own agenda of making her too-sweet friend eat at least something every day.
 
"Hard to forget when you remind me every day." Elise chuckled. It wasn't unusual for her friend to give her food, actually it happened every day at this point. She was a bit curious to why she was always asked to try out her recipes, but she wasn't going to pry it out of her. Maybe she just liked cooking a bit too much, or wanted to get into a cooking school. Either way, Elise was happy to help.

"You remember I told you we would get a new employee at the cafe, right? Turns out she's from this school." Elise informed the sleepy red head. "Her name's Alexandra, though she prefers to be called Xan. Very nice girl, though she seemed to be a bit nervous yesterday. I hope I'll be able to get her to do the customer service part today. She can't stay in the kitchen all the time." She didn't talk about her job that often, it was mainly when something new happened that made her glad that she brought it up.
 
Oh, right, Elise had mentioned that they were getting fresh staff at the cafe. Looking at the blonde speak she listened in interest, the interest quickly turning to suspicion and then horror as she heard the infamous nickname 'Xan'. Paling she couldn't believe that girl of all people had actually gotten a job. The girl was a complete opposite of Elise! Selfish, arrogant, disrespectful and troublemaking. That girl would surely...

Sitting up she was more alert then she ever had been in the morning and looked at her overly giving friend with a mix of concern and unease. "Elise, are you sure you're okay? You weren't hit over the head or anything, right? I mean, it's that Xan we're talking about here. That girl doesn't know nice even if it hit her."
 
Elise raised an eyebrow. She wasn't one to really listen to bad rumors, so her memories of the infamous people at school was very vague. "What are you talking about? The Xan I met was a cute, innocent, nice and a slightly insecure girl. Whatever rumors you've heard, it can't be about her, or if they are, it must be a misunderstanding." Elise replied. "We could always search her up during lunch. If you meet her you'll definitely like her, or you could drop in at the cafe sometime. Trust me, she's definitely not a person people would dislike."
 
The worry was unmistakable on Melissa's face, knowing that Elise's time was in the hand of what she considered a dangerous individual was far more concerning that Elise would ever suspect. Already planning on gathering everyone to prepare for the eventual intervention she just hoped that the infamous troublemaker wouldn't do much harm before that.

"Fine, we'll go and see that girl." If that girl was acting like some angel in front of Elise then she was going to unmask that girl fast. Her self-sacrificial friend didn't need another reason to be hurt, again. "But I'm not going to promise anything about liking her or not."
 
Elise chuckled. "You don't have to promise anything, but I know you'll love her. Considering you can get along with me, there shouldn't be any problems between the two of you." She tried to reassure her friend.

"I got a look at her schedule yesterday and if I remember correctly, our lunch starts just five minutes before hers. We can meet her outside of her classroom." The girl proposed.
 
Melissa smiled wryly in return, seeing the innocent optimism of her naive friend she sincerely doubted there would be much friendship between her and that troublemaker. Who knew what that infamous troublemaker could bring Elise into, maybe even something as awful as drugs, for sure.

-*-

Yawning Xan left the math class, figuring it would be easy to skip the class after lunch. Studying was enough to keep up with classes so it never really mattered to her if she missed a class or two.
Though her thoughts of finding lunch outside of school faded when she saw Elise with a redhead that glared at her like she was the devil incarnate. ... Just great. More annoyances.
 
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"Hey, Alexandra." Elise waved and ran up to the other girl as they noticed her in the hallway. "Oh, sorry, I mean Xan. Xan, this is Melissa, Melissa, Xan." She introduced the two, not even noticing the death glare her friend had given the younger girl. "Melissa was curious about you when I told her about you working at the cafe, so I thought maybe we could eat lunch together." Curious was a bit of a twist from the truth, more suspicious than curious to be honest, but she didn't want them to be on bad terms, so she could as well sugar coat it. Xan didn't have to know about the suspicions laid against her to prove her innocence. A few minutes of talking to her would do that just fine.
 
"Curious... Right." Looking dryly at them both Xan didn't even bother to hide her annoyance over the disturbance. "If it's just curiosity then go ahead and eat your lunch in peace. I'm not a freak show." Turning the young teen was leaving, not wanting to be dragged into any kind of useless attempt from the naive girl. So much for a friendly act.


Melissa, as if her suspicions were confirmed, looked at Elise in an unspoken 'what did I say?' and reached out to pull her overly kind and soft friend away from the antagonistic nuisance called 'Xan'.
 
Elise didn't understand why the other girl was taking it so badly. Could it be that people were bullying her? Maybe she heard so many bad things every day that she saw insults in even the tiniest word.

The skinny girl pulled away from her friend's reaching hand and tried to grab Xan. "You misunderstood, she just wants to get to know a friend to a friend." Elise tried to explain. "I'm sorry if it sounded like something offensive." She then continued to apologize.
 
"I don't want any apologies from you," stepping away from the grabbing arm she continued sternly, "people can apologize to me directly if they dare," giving the hostile girl a challenging stare she only broke it to be sure Elise didn't make a second attempt. "But I'd rather eat my lunch in peace. Alone."


Melissa at first agreed with Xan. Elise had no reason to apologize to the resident troublemaker. But any calm was lost from the barbed comment and her anger flared again. Tired of being around that annoyance Melissa stepped up and grabbed her friend. "You heard her. Let's just go."
 
"But..." Elise had no idea how to respond at this point. It felt like everyone were misunderstanding each other. Melissa thought Xan was a bad person and Xan thought Melissa thought ill of her. What a mess. "I think we hurt her feelings." Elise told her friend with a low voice so people wouldn't hear them. "She must have misunderstood us. She probably didn't mean to be so stern. She was really nice yesterday, it could be that she's a bit tired after her first day at work. I'll talk to her when I meet her at the cafe. Then maybe tomorrow we can eat lunch together without misunderstandings." She proposed to her friend, thinking that it probably was best to leave it for now, so that both Xan and Melissa could calm down.
 
Turning Xan left while Melissa had Elise's attention. Ignoring the stares and the small conversation behind her she made her way to a more quiet spot. 'Figures she'd seek me out, that goodie two-shoes... Oh well, as long as I don't lose the job.' Coldly looking ahead the teen turned her attention to other things, not in the mood to linger.


Melissa frowned softly at her friend, not understanding what Elise saw in the combative, and potentially dangerous, girl. "Elise... You don't have to go that extra mile, you know? It's better to just leave her alone. She obviously likes it." And that girl could've just acted nice for the sake of money.
 
"Don't be silly Melissa. I met her yesterday, she's really nice. It's probably just one of those days. Come on now, don't be pouty. Let's go eat outside while the sky's still blue." Elise suggested. It was rare that she was the one mentioning food, but maybe she wished to distract her friend a bit and get her away from the current topic. And here she had hoped for a good first impression. What a mess.
 
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