Learning Curve (Anita)

[Taya Robbins]

"Excuse me - do you know where the librarian is?"

Taya kept her voice low, partly out of respect for the sonic sanctity of libraries everywhere, and partly because people got enough of a shock when they saw her for the first time anyway.

The three students huddled over a giant textbook looked up to see a cat's head on a girl's body, and, as always, there was an awkward moment of cognititve dissonance before they realized it wasn't some sort of bizarre, elaborate costume.

"Um... I think I saw her organizing the shelves back in English Literature?" a white-haired boy whispered back.

Taya smiled, showing just a bit of fang. "Thanks. Nice hair, by the way."

"Oh, thanks, um, nice... tail."

The girl's feline grin broadened, and she playfully flicked her white-capped tail as she turned to find the 800's section.

The architecture of the Cullen mansion covered a broad spectrum of antique grandeur; in the library, it took a definite turn for the gothic. The towering shelves were made of a stately dark-stained wood cut with elegant bevels and flutes, and marble busts and strange figures peered down like gargoyles from the shelf tops. This place would be awesome on a stormy Halloween night.

Taya's padded feet were perfectly silent on the plush carpeting, quiet enough that she could hear books shuffling around in the next aisle. She turned the corner and saw a girl in capris and short sleeves perched high on a rolling ladder rooting for something on the top shelf.

She lightly cleared her throat. "Sorry to interrupt - I'm looking for Miss Florence?"

[Anita Stern]

Seemingly, Anita's delicate form was stretched almost to its limit. The item in question which she was rummaging about for, but could not see had been just barely in reach. Until a slip of the fingers pushed it back further.

"Ooooh...You naughty, elusive, mean-spirited book. You're taunting me. I'll get you, oh yes, I will..."

Her body was almost halfway into the shelf, and during this process, she had managed to knock out several volumes on the other side, and almost had a grip on the hardcover she was after when a voice spoke up. She smacked her head on the inside of the top of the bookcase.

"Oww..."

Followed by dull thud. Anita drew herself slowly out of the shelf, and looked around, rubbing her head and muttering to herself.

"Well if all I had to do was beat my brains out on the shelving, then it would have saved me some time..."

And then she looked down to see a cat, standing on hind legs. Taya.

"Oh, hello there." Followed by her usual gentle smile. The short librarian slowly descended the ladder and upon reaching the ground, proceeded to dust herself off with her hands.

"What can I do for you, Taya? Oh, it's such a mess up there..." She brought one hand to her forehead, shaking her head and smearing it with thick dust.

[Taya Robbins]

Taya winced in empathy - the hollow bookshelf seemed to amplify every impact. It was something of a relief to see the librarian re-emerge without a catastrophic literary avalanche.

"Hi! Well, uh..."

She found herself momentarily distracted by the grit Anita had smeared over her forehead. She rubbed her own head, as if it would somehow clean Anita's, then realized how silly it must have looked and simply flipped back her red-gold bangs.

"See, my parents have been talking to me about this for a while, and, well, I finally decided to talk to Mr. Daniels about it, and he said that he'd been talking to my parents, and they all thought I should probably talk to you."

[Anita Stern]

Anita, looking at her hands and then realizing that she had rubbed them on her face, got a rather sheepish grin on. She then went around to the other side of the bookcase to at least organize the fallen books and retrieve the one she had so strenuously searched for, then headed towards the library office, which outside of her normal office, she had made quite her own. The librarian beckoned Taya to follow, and retrieved a wet wipe out of a plastic desposer to clean up her face and hands when they arrived at the intended destination.

"I'm sorry. Talk to me about what, exactly? My powers don't seem to extend into telepathy or mind-reading, as far as I'm aware..."

Miss Florence gave her face a close look-over in a mirror posted on the outside of the office door, which had a beautifully scripted sign posted over it which read:

"As this face does not necessarily reveal the innermost parts of you, so shall a book also not be judged by its cover, its dog-eared pages, or notated margins of memories. Love in its truest form should be unconditional."

"Ahh. Much better." Anita sighed.

[Taya Robbins]

Taya caught her own face unexpectedly in the mirror, which, along with the plaque hanging nearby, made her grin at the irony.

And then she realized what Miss Florence had asked her.

"Oh! I'm sorry..." Her ears dipped sheepishly. "I don't know if you knew - my mutation had me in and out of hospitals for about the last year and a half while the doctors were trying to figure out what was going on with me. And I tried to keep up with school while I was away, but most of the time it didn't really work out, and I basically missed my entire freshman year. And, well... I'm hoping to go to a good art school, which means I'll probably need to do some college courses in high school, and since I'm already behind..."

She realized she was providing a biography by way of explanation and decided she'd better cut to the punchline.

"My parents think I could use some tutoring," she said. "Y'know, to help catch me up."

[Anita Stern]

Her face lit up.

"Ohh! I understand now." Anita's almost trademark smile shone through, as she fetched a notepad and clipboard from her desk, and pulled a nearly forgotten about pen from behind her ear and amongst her curls. She was poised to chew on the end of it (an oft-times absentminded thing) before she started to talk again.

"I'm an absolute flunk when it comes to art, unless it's art history. But I'm sure you're angling for tutelage in other things, hmm?"

[Taya Robbins]

Taya gave a half-hearted smile in return. "Art is the one thing I'm ahead on. My sketchbook is what kept me going sometimes. But, yeah..."

She sighed and looked just off Anita's face, clearly recalling a list that had been dictated for her. "History, literature, composition, biology, either Spanish, French, or German, and," she flattened her ears in distaste, "math. Because I really need to know how to multiply matrixes so I can draw better."

She rolled her eyes as only a teenaged girl could.

[Anita Stern]

As the girl spoke, the librarian wrote. Though the list of subjects was not extensive, it was still quite a bit. The mentions of composition and literature made Anita grin. Her literature classes tended to carry off with the talk of being 'adventurous' amongst most of the students who took part in them. It sometimes lent her a title or two of eccentricity. She didn't mind that.

"That's quite a bit, Taya.You do realize things like that are going to take a while...well, that's ok, really. Fortunately, thanks to my mother, I'm fluent in a handful or two of languages. So let's start there. Tell me what language of the three you would most like to learn, and then tell me if there's any languages not on this list you're more interested in."

Anita watched Taya for an answer, and nibbled at the end of her pen as she waited.

[Taya Robbins]

Darn it, why'd she have to go and make this all so easy? Taya had really been hoping she'd say something like, "Well, I'm all booked until the end of the year, but why don't we talk about next fall?"

Trying to make the best of it, Taya said, "Well, I kinda already had most of a semester of Spanish at my old school. But I dunno. I was also thinking it might be cool to learn Japanese."

She watched as Anita began to write again and then broke in, "Do you know how this is gonna work? Because I'd rather not drop the classes I'm already in - well, except maybe eight AM algebra - but is that gonna mean, like, doubling my course load?"

[Anita Stern]

Without looking up from her notes, Anita replied.

"I did say this is going to take a little time. My excellent mental faculties would allow me to pull off what seems like a doubling in course load without any noticeable effect of stress, if I were a student. But you..."

She then looked up again.

"...your blessing is different. It seems to have had nothing to do with enhancing you mentally, so no, we will not be doubling your course load. For now, just a couple things at a time. It will mean working outside of your class schedule to get it done, though."

Anita sat back in her chair, relaxing. She tapped the pen against her jawline, and appeared to be deep in thought, albeit rather briefly.

"What is your class schedule like?" The professor/librarian then looked rather amusedly at the student, and then waved her down to an empty chair nearby in the office. "Oh, Taya. Really, sit. I don't mean to have you standing in my doorway all day."

[Taya Robbins]

Taya breathed a sigh of relief - and then tried to figure out if she'd just been dissed. No... but maybe - well, no.

"Oh." Out of habit, she glanced back at the chair - score, open-backed - and slid her tail through the gap as she took a seat. She started tallying her classes on her fingers - four for each hand.

"Well... all right. Eight o'clock is algebra. And then I have two free periods, how does that make sense, then English at ten-forty-five, then Cato's history, which is awesome, then chemistry, then art, thank God, then civics, and then I alternate mutant studies with Mr. Daniels and mutation development with Mr. Rhee. And then I'm also signed up with the intramural league, so I usually join whatever game's going on outside the gym after that. Um..."

She dropped her paws into her lap and started toying with her claws - pushing them out, wiggling them, pulling them back in - clearly a nervous habit, one you didn't see every day.

"This is... well, just a little embarrassing for me. Being so far behind, I mean. I'm used to being a good student. I just have a harder time focusing than I used to. And I don't know if it's because I've been out of school so long, or because..."

Her ears twisted backwards for a moment, giving her a helpless look - almost a sort of shrug.

[Anita Stern]

Anita gave a sympathetic smile.

"I understand. At least on some level."

Perching the pen behind her left ear, she crossed her legs, wiggling the flip-flop on her dangling foot on and off. The notepad in her lap, the petite woman folded her small hands on top of it.

"Weeeeeeeeellll..." She drawled out, glancing to one side, starting to offer a suggested course of action. "...I think at least what we could do for now is support your algebra, and brush up on the spanish, then take off from there to improve it. I don't want to get into anything too intensive when there's only so much time left before summer break. You have two free periods almost first thing, so we can look at anything from algebra that you might need clarification on, and delve into any other curiosities that might be nagging at your brain. I just want to support what you have going on now, and then we can look at something more focused in the new school year. And I do make sure that frequent breaks are taken, so nobody gets burnt out."

The librarian turned her eyes again to the cat-girl.

"What do you think?"

[Taya Robbins]

Taya shifted her eyes between Anita's and the wiggling flip-flop at the floor as the librarian spoke. Adding more math in the morning was not especially appealing to her, but she knew she needed the help, and maybe it'd be easier for her to grasp coming from someone like Anita. Mr. Chandrashekar was adorable, but sometimes it was like he was speaking sentences with all the punctuation removed.

"I think that sounds good," she said after a moment's pause. "Maybe the change of pace will help wake up my brain in the morning."

It wasn't exactly a vote of unbridled enthusiasm, but Taya knew Anita was talking about a substantial chunk of her own day, and that meant a lot. So she smiled gratefully.

"So... when do you think we should start?"

[Anita Stern]

Anita thought about it a full minute, before giving her response.

"Soon. Next Monday morning?" She looked on Taya as if asking permission, but knowing that this was in her hands, the expression had no real point. "I guess we've got some ground to cover between now and exams. Then we could also continue after the summer, if it's needed."

She had the end of the pen in her mouth again - an old habit that has mangled many a writing implement over the years - while looking over her notes. After a moment or two, she removed the pen from her mouth and looked to Taya again.

"Is there anything else? Any questions, concerns?"