WELCOME

The laugh-- or rather, the sound that seemed like a laugh-- that came out of Juliette's lips was probably one of the most unusual things Lauren has heard. She found herself quirking an eyebrow at the young King girl and smirking at how funny her laugh was. Perhaps it was a failed attempt a snigger, or perhaps it was just simply her kind of snigger. Either way, it was simply something Lauren has never encountered before.

"For this," she pointed, almost following after Juliette's response. Her lips twitched, and itched to burst into laughter. "Probably all the money in the world." She knew very well about how dedicated the boy was to Louise, and it only vexed her even more to think that he did. She just didn't think it was possible for someone to love someone like Louise so much. It was almost painful-- yet incredibly amusing-- to watch.

A little part of Lauren also wished someone cared about her that way, as well. She didn't know what it was like to have someone care so much. Perhaps she was so deprived of it, she didn't really know what she was missing.

Lauren Lovett. She was a strange girl, Juliette had to admit. But despite what everyone seemed to say about the girl, she was nice all the same. It wasn't like she was driving Juliette away with a hot poker. That would have been nasty. No, she'd come over and sat beside Jules to have a conversation. And so far the conversation had gone quite nicely. No bitching, at least not at each other, and no really awkward silences. Yes, if Juliette had to make any conclusions about Lauren at that moment she'd say she was a cool girl, just a little misunderstood by the general population of the school.

The twitch at the edges of Lauren's lips wasn't missed by Juliette. Not much got past the youngest King sibling. She was always on the ball, afraid to miss out on something. But, unlike the girl she was sitting with, Juliette allowed her grin to show. What was the point in being happy if you didn't let it show?

She simply nodded, adding a little 'hmm' sound to show her agreement. It was like watching bugs being tortured by some toddler. You didn't want to watch the two of them because it was just that awkwardly weird. But at the same time, you wanted to watch them just to see what would happen. Juliette stifled a laugh again, lest Lauren think she was mad for giggling so much. Oh, she loved to laugh.

"So what are you doing with life at the moment, Lauren?" Another change of subject. This time Juliette was anticipating the Louise/Tristan watching getting boring in a moment. So she changed the subject to avoid an awkward silence. She was an observant girl who took efforts to make sure she didn't get put into any situations where she was uncomfortable. Awkward silence really got to Juliette.

The girls question was something that startled Lauren. For some reason, she found a little bit of comfort in the fact that someone had shown at least a little bit of interest in her extremely boring, and otherwise pointless life-- get Nathan Clare, do the rebellion, and then what? Plus, it wasn't as if there were so many people that Lauren could converse with, so there was hardly anyone to show a particular interest in her life. Her brothers may have been a good option, but after all she's done for and to them, they weren't exactly in a caring position. Lauren had always been a lone island-- and it was only then that she found a little fault in that.

"Well," she began, unsure as to how she should answer the question. She wasn't exactly experienced with these things, and the most that came out of her lips were either flirts aimed toward Nathan, or insults geared toward Louise-- then, of course, there were the occassional tete-a-tete's with Edward, which she suddenly missed dearly. She had contemplated saying "I've been preparing for a really large rebellion here at school, and I've been playing with the resident heartbreaker's heart" but decided otherwise. She shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing much," she admitted, knowing very well that it was partly true. She just had absolutely no idea why she was actually comfortable with holding a conversation that long with a person she didn't really know-- not to mention, not really care about.

Turning her attention back to Juliette-- she never really was comfortable with talking about herself like that-- she quirked her head to one side. "I bet your life's a lot more interesting than mine," she said with a smirk, a off-hand way of saying 'so why don't you say something about your life'.

At first Lauren's reply made Juliette's mental shoulders slump. That was it? What had been a very open question had somehow been closed by Lauren. There went that attempt at conversation out the window.

But just as Jules had been thinking of some reason to give for getting up and leaving without being utterly rude, Lauren spoke again. Ok, so it wasn't exactly a start to more flowing conversation, but it left the field open for Juliette to reply. If Lauren wasn't going to talk, then Juliette would do the talking. In truth she didn't mind it too much. Even though she wasn't quite so self-centred as Jude would lead people to believe, Jules still did enjoy talking about herself a fair bit. Lauren's reply was a sufficient lead-in for her to do so. She was far too bored at this crummy event to leave now anyway.

"Well," she started with a mischievous grin. "I have one piece of rather juicy gossip I picked up on this afternoon." It wasn't really anything to do with Juliette, but it was at least some kind of conversation. Besides, if there was one thing she enjoyed more than talking about herself, it was gossiping about some latest scandal. Like any girl, Juliette loved a scandal, however trivial. "You know that new teacher, Maxwell?" A dramatic pause for effect. Juliette leaned into Lauren a little, her voice lowered as if the news she was going to impart was far more important than it really was. "Well him and Allie Hewitt have been pretty talkative lately..."

When Juliette leaned back out she had a smug look on her face. It wasn't warranted; the little piece of gossip she'd just told Lauren was far from anything major. But it was all in an effort to stimulate some kind of lasting conversation with the girl.

Gossip was never something that appealed to Lauren. For one thing, they comprised mostly of lies, and second, they invaded people's rights to keep their own secrets. She didn't understand why people simply called attention to other people's flaws and secrets when they can't stand it when other people decide to pick on them for a change. Plus, gossip mostly never really concerned her, and if, in the smallest possibility, it did, it wasn't on a need-to-know basis. So she settled herself with living quite a gossip-free life, except for the occassional pass of information about the people she hated the most.

That was why when the girl offered to tell her some piece of gossip (something that didn't really answer the question, per se), she was more than happy to cut her off. She'd already been getting ready to interrupt at any given opportunity, but when she heard the name of a person she knew so well before, she found her tongue refusing to move. She closed her mouth, and unwittingly listened, honeslty a little interested in that small piece of information about Allie Hewitt. Plus, it concerned a teacher, and it was always good to have a little something for blackmail whenever something came up. Having control over the authority just appealed to her so much.

Allie was her friend, and they bonded with each other in more than one opporunity. Nowadays, however, she didn't even know who Allie was anymore. They'd began to drift apart, and though it scared her to a certain point, she found that it was actually very inevitable. "Oh really now?" she asked, sounding very genuinely interested. She mentally congratulated Juliette for actually managing to catch her attention. "Seems like we've got ourselves an issue here. I didn't know Maxwell went for younger girls." She explained, not even bothering to call him by a more authoritative name.