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Side plot, woop woop~

T minus one week before homecoming

As it was in the beginning, is now, and even shall be, the cafeteria was fucking loud. Sandwiched between two thrilling conversations, Ellie picked at her half-eaten lunch unenthusiastically. On the left, she got to hear Francesca (between intermittent bites of twenty-dollar macaroons) rant to Ashly Roggenfell and Stephanie Gensheimer about what a big stink people were making about that one supreme court nominee's teenie little sexual assault scandal. And in the other ear she was stuck listening to Katie Ludenberg making fun of the Boy's soccer team captain Evan Hunt for wearing a pink shirt... sitting at a table full of libertarians and cheer leaders certainly was thrilling...

Obviously Ellie didn't fit in with the confident and social elite that owned the center lunch table, but as the student president Francesca's personal slaveright hand Racoon, she had every right to sit there. The perks afforded to her a member of the student council were nice: Being invited to parties that she only sometimes went to, being able to use the nice guarded bathroom at the front of the school, having the occasional person strike up a conversation with her (even if it was always about student council stuff). But on the other paw she was only seventeen and already felt ready to retire because lord almighty did Francesca work her like a machine.

She had an entire network, yes, network of notes from student council meetings and Francesca's inspired talks with her at the center lunch table. Heck, it was only thanks to her hard work keeping track of everything that the student council was able to host so many events. Curse her mother for bestowing upon her organizational skills and knowledge of professional event planning...

Lunch period reached its dying breaths. Francesca always left with Ellie three minutes before the five minutes before bell rang to AP econ class. But the thought of moving her body made her want to sigh out her soul. So today the tiny Raccoon told the imposing Husky that she just needed a few minutes to go over her notes for homecoming, and that she'd catch up later. It worked; the Racoon was rewarded with smug 'au revoir', and a pink-clad Husky sashaying away fabulously. Students in the area were careful not to walk too close, lest their eyes burn in her pink radiance.

With the queen of hearts soon out of sight, Ellie quickly surrendered her upperbody to gravity, collapsing on the lunch table completely indifferent to the curious eyes and amused comments from those around her. Ellie savored the state of sweet mellow half-sleep. When you only ever get five or six hours of sleep a night, you take what you can get.

Too bad the school bell existed.

The harsh clattering of the analog bell ravaged her eyes, mocking her as if to say, 'Time to get marching you scholarly warrior you~ You aren't ever going to get that PHD if you succumb this early on in the game~' Long term goals gurl!

Cue the inevitable groan. Ellie demanded her body to stand with from her seat with one paw on the table and the other pushing her glasses up to rub the sleep from her eyes. "What I wouldn't do for a 15-minute nap, and a nice chai latte..." The Racoon muttered longingly, cursing the meager five minutes remaining before the next class bell. Francesca would have a fine lecture in store for her if she were late to her next class...

With tilted glasses, Ellie gathered her things, watching the student body flood out of the cafeteria... only to notice a well-documented phenomenon at Grovedale High. Two students entered the cafeteria counter to the current; as they walked a good foot of empty space pervaded around them in the throng of furs as if they were doused in an anti-crowd repellent. Two female students popular enough that even in a crowd of students, the plebs dare not enter their personal bubble... Allie and Pesto. They approached the center lunch table, chatting flippantly with cocky smiles stretched across their muzzles, until their gaze met Ellie's.

"Hey Ellie, how's it going girl?" Pesto asked with a saucy trill as she placed her odd green and black splatter designed purse down at the circle table. The Badger then pressed her lips together looked back with a discerning look. "That's funny... you're not with Francesca for once. Did hell finally freeze over?"

"Yeah, you guys stick together so much, you'd think you two were surgically attached to each other," Allie added in with a playful yet intent smile. The Squirrel wasn't multi-tasking on her phone for once... odd.

Ellie stuttered for a moment before collecting herself. Conversation was never her forte, and her being the topic of interest was a rare occurrence, to say the least. "Oh, hey guys... uh, Francesca went on ahead, I just needed a few more minutes to res- take notes for next period..." the Racoon fumbled her words as she reneged on telling the embarrassing truth. "B-But, anyhow, you guys got here early. B lunch only just started. What's the occasion?" Ellie asked softly to the newly-arrived duo, enviously eyeing Pesto's fashionable (if peculiar) black body belt.

"Oh, Mr. Macklemore let us out of class a few minutes early," Pesto responded with a casual swish of her colorfully polished paw. "Something about a family emergency with his baby daughter being hospitalized after choking on one of those laundry detergent pods or something?"

"Oh dear!" Ellie responded sincerely, both paws placed to her chest. Ellie suddenly found her open mouth stretching into a deep yawn, leaving her blushing in embarrassment.

Pesto looked at Ellie with concerned pursed lips and a wrist to her hip, "You know Ellie, you seem especially tired today. Are you sleeping alright?"

"Yeah, it's like you have camel toe on crow's feet you're so tired. It's really concerning," Allie commented, attracting some nasty stares from a Camel and Crow student passing nearby.

Ignoring the obvious impossibility of Crow's feet on an anthropomorphic Racoon person with fur, it took a few moments for the significance of the comments to sink into Ellie's tired mind.

...Could this actually be happening? Are my struggles actually being noticed by others? Oh wow... this is... this is something I never thought the universe would afford me! There was no way I can pass this opportunity up! If I run to econ class, I can probably fit in as much as three minutes of complaining!

The words flew out of Ellie's mouth, unleashing wave upon wave of cathartic release, "Well, Chemistry class is really stressing me out. The homework is so bulky, and it's like everything goes wrong every single lab... But even more than that, having to call all the companies for homecoming has been so time consuming. If something I'm trying to order isn't available or up to standard, I'm the one who has to figure out what to do about it. So after a lot of back and forth when I couldn't find the right type of strobe lights at this one place, I just got finished ordering the new strobe lights and other decorations, but I haven't even gotten to the entertainment or catering yet, and we've only got a week until homecoming. Did you know that Francesca wants us to have a croquembouche for the homecoming dance? I didn't even know what a croquembouche was until she told me about it. Apparently it's like a creampuff tower. Isn't that crazy? Tell me that's crazy."

Pesto and Allie exchanged glances upon hearing the unnecessarily French-sounding word. "Leave it to Francesca to order the world's bougiest sounding dessert," Pesto muttered with detest thick in her mouth, shaking her head disapprovingly as she stared at her nails.

Suddenly Allie's face sparked to life, steepling her fingers gleefully, "Hey, he's a thought to write down, why don't you let us do the rest of the planning for you?" the not suspicious Squirrel that wore nothing but dungarees offered generously out of nothing other than the purest intentions to help her friend out.

Ellie couldn't help but stare and blink. She certainly wasn't used to being offered help before. It felt... surreal. She couldn't help but wonder if this what it felt like to be an actual person whose basic needs were met? Only there was one obvious issue... "Oh, are you sure that's a good idea? If things don't go exactly as per Francesca's instructions, then she's bound to get very upset... at me," Ellie responded uneasily as she imagined a gargantuan Fidel CastroFrancesca towering over her imposingly and laughing passive-aggressively while exclaiming 'this is not the croquembouche I requested'.

"Oh come on, stop being such a perfectionist. You can trust us! I mean it's practically a crime how much you're being worked here when we have so little to do in comparison! We would love to finish planning the party night for you, heck we'd enjoy it even," Pesto insisted fluently, slinking behind Ellie and placing her paws on her shoulder, as if to sit the Raccoon down for a massage.

Ellie's eyes widened as a creeping realization stirred in her mind, "so I am being overworked...?" she shamefully thought to herself.

Then, taking the opportunity to strike, Allie closed in on Ellie. She stood next to Pesto, leaning forward with both hands behind her back a big fat valley girl smile, "Yeah I mean, our nicknames are only one letter apart! We're basically twins! If that's not serendipity then I don't know what is!" said Allie, who did not know what 'serendipity' was. "Like, we're all in student council here. It's totally, like, #squadgoals."

Pesto nodded to the comment if she were bestowing the blessing of 'common sense' among cavemen, "Yah, how can you not trust faces like this?"

With that, Pesto and Allie presented two fangy smiles so vicious and scheming that you could practically see hellspawn miasma seep through the spaces in their teeth. "...Oh my," Ellie commented as the temperature in the room dropped several degrees and lights began to flicker on and off.

Right at that moment a Beaver student, Collin Guz, a was nearby on his way to throw out his trash toward the enclave of horrendously stank, wheeled black garbage cans. Turning around to check out the stand user anomalous presence in the vicinity, the hapless Beaver unwittingly caught a glimpse of Pesto and Allie's *smiles*. Dropping his empty lunch tray, he threw up his hand to cover his eyes. "THE HORROR!" he screamed before he was petrified into a stone statue.

Realizing what they had just done, Pesto and Allie put a plug on the smiling, opting instead to exchange uncertain 'oh shit' expressions as if they had just blown their true intentions.

In the aftermath, Ellie brought a finger to her lips contemplatively as she looked at the fossilized Beaver, "Hm, well your smiles were so sinister that they just turned Collin Guz into a stone statue a la Medusa..."

"Dammit Allie, I told you we shouldn't have listened to that Flaming Pendulum album backwards last night!" Pesto whispered prissily out of the side of her mouth.

"Hey, don't blame me, it was trending," Allie whispered back, feeling no responsibility whatsoever.

"...but I am in dire need of some help, so I see no reason not to trust you guys," Ellie finally conceded with a grateful, if tired smile.

"Sweet!" Pesto said with a gleeful clap of her hands, as a janitor started wheeling away the fossilized body of Collin Guz in a lift trolley to the de-fossilization chamber (no explanation needed there).

With incredible alacrity that would make any business firm say, 'hell yeah we want you as our unpaid intern', Ellie pulled out her tablet and quickly accessed the file with detailed list off all the remaining needed services, decorations and businesses to call. "I'll email you guys the list. Just remember to do everything exactly like it says," Ellie said with an emphatic wave of her finger.

"Exactly like it is on the list, you got it!" Allie beamed, "We'll get it done lickety dickety split!"

"You won't regretting trusting us in the slightest!" Pesto assured Ellie with a friendly pat on the shoulder.

With that, the relieved Raccoon thanked her two friends profusely for their generous assistance. Smiling in eager anticipation of all the sleep she was going to be able to get, the Raccoon scurried off to her next class, lest Francesca lecture her on the importance of punctuality as a representative of Grovedale High.

*three minutes later*

Pesto and Allie are in in the guarded / limited access girls bathroom by the front of the school (Newly renovated with marble tiling, a three tier fountain, potted plants, and jumbo tampons for those extra red meat curtains!)

Ring Ring Ring

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Allie said playfully to Pesto's mischievous snickering, covering the talking module of her glittery cellphone that was adorned with yaoi-themed stickers and keychains_._

"Do the voice, do the voice!" Pesto encouraged right before the call went through.

"Mrhmhabamrmamanbabanm" the guy on the other end of the line said in one of those unintelligible cartoon 'other end of the line' phone voices.

Allie comported herself to get into character, straightening her posture and smiled as if she suddenly became a kingpin political emissary to the Middle East or some bougie job like that. She spoke in a voice that sounded uncannily close to Francesca's, only even more stuck up, if that were possible.

"Hello, Neo-Paris Resplendent Desserts? Yes, I would like to place a custom order for a croquembouch for the Grovedale High homecoming dance," she started before going into the boring details like payment, time, location and blah blah blah.

And then she got to the good part, "And I would like to request a custom design. I'd like the creampuffs to look like hairy testicles. Yes, that's right. Big hairy ballsacks. For reference I'd like them to look like 60 percent hair, 40 percent scrotum."

"mrhmhabamrmamanbabanm"

Allie, in character as much as any hardcore LARPer, opened her mouth in deep offense, "I don't care if the pastry decorator doesn't want to do lewd art, I'm Francesca Buchannan! Thee Francesca Buchannan! My father is a senator! Tell your decorator that if she doesn't submit to my whims then my father will subpoena her ass in court! Mh, mh, mh. Yep that's all. Toodle loo!"

And with that, Allie cut off her phone, and casted a sly sidelong glance to Pesto.

With slowly accentuating amusement, the two girls snickered before soon succumbing to such an unrestrainable laughter that they couldn't help but tumble down on the ground and flail their legs around in the air.

"I don't even know what 'subpoena' means!" Allie cackled, giving a pronounced thwack to her thigh in glee. And the girls continued to laugh, and then calm down, but then look at each other's faces again and start laughing in a cycle that lasted... like 10 minutes.

"Oh this homecoming is going to be a downright hootenanny," Pesto finally said with a content sigh, wiping a tear from her cheek fur and the two finally ceased laughing. And then, a moment of sympathy from the Badger, "Yo Allie, you think maybe we're going a little too far here? I mean, we're like, really throwing Ellie under the bus here," Pesto asked wonderingly, speaking through intermittent fits of petering-out laughter.

"Dude, did you see Ellie today? She looked like an extra on a low budget horror flick. If Francesca gets mad at her then maybe Ellie will finally realize that she's a bitch and shouldn't be taking any of her shit," Allie responded confidently, getting back to texting those mysterious shadowy figures that always followed her around.

"Yeah I guess that's true..." Pesto conceded in a wispy voice, standing up and wiping off the nonexistent dust on her black denim miniskirt. "Only other thing I feel bad about is that Rob's going to get caught up in this. Francesca's going to blow up worse than the Hindenburg when she walks in and sees what we... I mean, Ellie did with the decorations. Poor Rob's gonna have front row seats for that since he's taking out Franny for whatever reason. ...total waste when he could take out hot trade like Daren too."

"Oh he'll be able to handle her just fine, he's well-adjusted yadda yadda," Allie assured with a flutter of her fingers. But then her expression waxed contemplative, and she brought a finger to her lips, thinking of a strangely specific possibility, "Unless he chickens out and last minute tells her he's gay and tries to cancel or something. She might actually kill him for that."

Noticing some minute flaw with her lipstick, Pesto beheld the pristine bathroom mirror. Taking out a liquid lipstick tube from her purse, she recoated her lips, opened them with a loud pop several times. "Oh come on, Rob's not stupid enough to do that," The Badger asserted with 100% utter certainty in the inexorable finality of her true statement.