Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio

[6]

In Which Eden Roy, In Dire Need of a Date For the Dance, Tries to Woo Ingrid Fitzgerald

5) Include a Hunger Games reference (preferably one specific to Katniss Everdeen because I think we all know that she is a revolutionary queen).

Eden throws her styrofoam lunch tray consisting of a boiled hot dog and undercooked tater tots unceremoniously into the trash can as the vice principal wheels it past her table, holding her head in her hands as she stares over Marley's shoulder. Marley shovels another spoonful of corn into her mouth before turning around and trying to focus on whatever Eden's staring at.

"Do you see that girl over there?" Eden asks, jutting her chin out in her general direction. Marley nods and wipes her chin with a napkin. "You think I can get her to go to the dance with me?"

Marley finally focuses on the girl Eden was talking about specifically, who puts her cookie back onto the table and adjusts the hem of her tank top. She squints and turns back to Eden, glaring as she asks her, "You want to ask Ingrid Fitzgerald to go to the dance with you?"

Eden nods. Having emigrated from France a mere four months ago, she's seemingly been immune to the terror and destruction Ingrid leaves in her path. (Harrison once told Marley that maybe it was because she only picked on people she thought were idiots, but that only resulted in him getting pushed down a flight of stairs.) Marley sighs and focuses on peeling the crust off her sandwich, engaged in a mental battle of whether she should tell Eden it's not worth it and save her dignity, or if she should say nothing and watch Eden get utterly destroyed by the sheer force of Ingrid Fitzgerald.

"I mean, she has nice boobs, no?"

Marley snaps out of her trance and turns back around, just in time to see Ingrid once again adjust her shirt before covering her mouth with her hands as she laughs. "Hmm, yeah, they are pretty voluptuous."

Eden pretends that she knows what "voluptuous" means and reiterates, "So, do you think I could get her to go to the dance with me?"

Marley makes a tsk sound and tries to throw her crust into the trash can on the other end of the table. It misses, but they both ignore it as she tells Eden, "I dunno. I mean, she probably would go to the dance with somebody who has skills."

Eden shrugs and cranes her neck a little so she can catch another glance at Ingrid. Marley takes a bite out of her sandwich and continues. "Besides, we're friends now. I can't let you do that to yourself."

Eden raises her eyebrows high above the hairline and shifts her pile of books closer to her, cracking open a dog-eared government textbook and holding it above her face so she can still take the occasional glance at Ingrid Fitzgerald and her boobs without her noticing before asking, "Can't let me do what? Sell myself?"

"Sell your—no! I'm not running a prostitution ring! I meant I can't let you ask out Ingrid Fitzgerald and look like an idiot."

"Why not? I would not look like an idiot, I think. I have skills."

"Yeah, but Ingrid probably isn't looking for someone with lock picking skills, drawing skills, and machete skills," Marley says, counting off more of her various self-proclaimed skills in lieu of skills she doesn't know Eden has (most of which fall under the knitting spectrum).

"What skills does she look for, then? I can bake. That's a skill, no?"

Marley rolls her eyes. Baking doesn't fit her own definition of what she considers a "skill," since all that she knows how to cook involve a microwave somehow, but comes to terms that it is, in fact, a talent and nods, prompting Eden to purse her lips together until she comes up with an idea.

"I could make a cake," is all Eden is able to come up with moments later.

Marley shrugs and mutters, "Seems a little amateur, but whatever," under her breath before popping another tater tot into her mouth.

Eden promptly furrows her eyebrows together and retorts with, "Everybody likes cake, no?"

Marley thinks for a minute and shrugs again (it's her signature pose). "I guess, yeah."

"So that would mean that Ingrid probably likes cake too?"

". . . Yeah."

"So it's settled." Eden slams her textbook shut and slings her backpack over her shoulder, scraping the plastic chair back to its original position and walking to her next class as Marley trots behind her. "What should we write on the cake?"

Marley scratches the nape of her neck and suggests, "How about. . . 'let's get baked at the dance'?" before laughing to herself, only stopping when Eden doesn't return the same disposition.

They both stop in their tracks and Eden blinks. "What's that?"

Marley, oblivious to the mass of people trying to make their way around her, thinks for a minute. "Well. . . we're baking a cake. . . and being 'baked' is when. . . you know. . . "

"I don't."

"Oh," Marley says before pausing and bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Let's just think of something else, then."

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hi, i flaked on this one on the basis of (brace yourself) having never read/watched the hunger games, my bad guys