Young Writers Society

Elias leaned in close, squinting at Daniel and Billie Benji and thinking reeeeal hard about what they said...

He leaned back again, not impressed. "You don't look like ghosts," he said with pursed lips. "Do you need a bedsheet or something?"

What else was supernatural? Uh... ghosts... uhh... devils? Demons? Was Daniel supposed to be a devil in disguise?

Bo blinked at Jerica's butchered pronunciation of Ratatouille, and a tiktok fluttered through his head.


"You can if you can reach it," Bo said with a smirk. He then lifted his arm and rested his elbow lightly on her head.

"But I won't make a short joke, Carter," Bo added, trying to suppress his grin. "I know you don't like those."

Daniel frown lessened. He had been disappointed that Elias thought they weren't wearing costumes, but now he was realizing Elias genuinely didn't know who the Supernatural characters were. That wasn't as bad.

"We're not supposed to be ghosts," Daniel reassured Elias. He slung his arm around Benji's shoulder. Both Benji and Daniel faltered right afterwards, but Daniel was doing his best to pretend he hadn't accidentally called Benji angelic earlier. "We're more like ghost hunters—as well as other things that go bump in the night. Benji's Castiel, and I'm supposed to be Dean Winchester."

Seeming to prepare for the worse, Benji pulled out his phone and held up the reference photo for Daniel's costume.

Jerica laughed, delighted that Bo was playing into her frat-boy-Carter outfit. She'd half-expected reactions like James had had. Making it obvious that she had simply stolen frat boy clothes. Though she was secretly incredibly pleased that James had noticed that they were, in fact, Carter's clothes.

Going as a generic frat boy was funny, too. Especially with the reputation that she already had made for herself in the few short months since she'd transferred to HPU. But it would be even funnier if people noticed that she was both a frat boy and an identity thief.

Heh. That would be funny for next year. Go as an identity thief.

She filed the idea away.

"Careful what you wish for, bro," Jerica answered, ducking out from under his arm. "Short boys can climb, yo."

She spun around him and climbed onto his back piggyback style, reaching for his hat, but her hand stopped when she looked back at James. This was vaguely embarrassing behavior now. James was always so stoic. It had a way of removing some of Jerica's shitpost-iness. And here she was. Climbing on Bo like he was a jungle gym.

But she was committed.

So she kept up with the persona and went "Yoooooooooo, I can see my roommate from up here."

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Bo laughed loudly when Jerica started climbing up his back, but he braced himself to hold her weight and straightened up, supporting his spine. He'd kind of expected Jerica to take his funny comment as a challenge, and he wasn't disappointed. With a goofy smile he twisted his head to the side, trying to get a look at Jerica over his shoulder.

For a second, he wasn't sure what roommate Jerica was talking about. Did she mean Rek? Or... oh. No, she was being Carter. She must've meant James.

He looked over to James, who was looking at him and Jerica with mild concern and confusion, but it looked like the concern was slowly melting away.

"Hey, Carter's roommate," Bo said. "Aka James the cowboy man. Good to see ya, man."

James offered a small smile and a nod.

"You too. Linguini," James said.

Bo snorted.

"Okay, but I'm not going to attempt a French accent," Bo said, and then paused. "Actually wait. Are Linguini and the rat the only ones in that movie without accents? If the rats are from France, why do they sound American? Why isn't everyone French?"

Elias hummed, stroking his chin (or at least, he tried to with his inflatable dino hand), leaning close to stare at the picture Daniel showed him on his phone. Seemed legit even though he still had no idea who these characters were.

He never really had the attention span to watch a lot of TV shows... had he ever even watched a TV show before? No time to think. It was beer o'clock.

"Well, google never lies, so it's probably legit, huh?" Elias said with a dino shrug, then started to waddle towards the table of drinks. "Come on, let's get some beers."

Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw Benji falter for a moment. He wasn't entirely sure they had gotten past Benji's earlier anxiety, but this felt...different. Daniel stopped. After a pause, Benji slipped past him and followed Elias over to the drinks.

Daniel frowned.

That was weird.

Pushing the thought to the corner of his mind, Daniel joined the two over at the drinks table. He crossed his arms and eyed the available drinks. A beer sounded good, but he was really craving some lemonade...

He glanced over at Elias.

"Do you know if there's any hard lemonade?" he asked.

Benji, meanwhile, looked like he was debating grabbing a bottle of beer. In the back of his mind, Daniel vaguely remembered that Benji was technically a year too young to drink alcohol. Maybe that was the reason for the hesitation?

"If there's no hard lemonade," Daniel said, looking away from Benji, "I think I might grab a Coke instead."

Jerica felt like her brain stopped entirely. What had he said? Was it -- he was right. How had she never noticed that before? Had Disney really gone and made a movie about French people and taken away their French accents.

"Bruhhh." Jerica was still hanging off Bo's back. "That's like... super racist."

Rek also hadn't thought about that before. "That's messed up."

"Wait, are French people white?" Jerica asked. The conversation was turning into a bigger brain one than the brain that she had. It was smol brain hours. But she was invested. "Can it be racist? It feels racist."

"Xenophobic at the very least," Rek said.

Jerica didn't know what that meant, but she nodded. "What a bunch of dicks. Why would they even do that? We could understand the accent of the little man chef and pasta-boy's lady friend. We coulda understood French-Remy and French-Lasagnie too."

"Linguini," Rek corrected, wondering how Jerica managed to be so close yet so far away. In basically everything. Ever. "And are you just gonna keep hanging off Bo all night?"

Jerica hesitated. He had a point. But she wasn't sure what to do now.

"Seems rude to rip the hat off," Jerica said in a shocking moment of self-awareness.

"And clinging to him like a starfish is less rude?"

Jerica flushed and released her grasp, falling the near foot that Bo had on her. She felt oddly embarrassed at her childish behavior -- even though most of her behavior was childish. She muttered, "Sorry... I didn't mean to be... that was rude... I just... Remy...sorry."

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Bo turned and looked down at Jerica with a goofy smile.

"Hey, don't worry about it," he said, then threw out his arm awkwardly to pat her back, as if there really was a rat controlling him, and then he righted himself, patting her more naturally as he adjusted his hat with one arm. While doing so, he slightly lifted his hat just enough for Jerica to get a peek in and see a glimpse of the rat beanie babie underneath.

"I don't mind giving piggyback rides to those who are vertically challenged. Or just to friends who want piggyback rides."

"A few of the characters in Ratatouille had French accents," James piped up from beside them, like he was finally joining in on the conversation but just waiting for an opening. "There just didn't have many in-world explanations for the characters that didn't, besides Linguini I think. I can't really remember, but I feel like it was implied that he might not have been raised in France?"

Jerica squealed with delight, totally dropping her frat boi persona. "You crazy son of a bitch you did it." She hoped he would get her reference. She hit his arm excitedly, grinning up at him. She was delighted that he actually had a stuffed rat in his hat. "You actually have -- he actually has-- aha, love it. That's golden."

She turned back towards James and Rek, grinning stupidly, as she leaned in against Bo's arm.

Rek eyed Jerica. He was still trying to figure out whether her interactions were different with Bo or if he was just imagining things because he thought they'd be cute together. She, of course, denied any and all accusations he made. But he was still watching.

"Huh, that's interesting," Rek said, turning towards James. "I didn't realize that."

"I mean, it makes sense for the rats to be American," Jerica commentated. Her eyes flitted towards the table. "Bruhhh, those cookies look sick! Look at you being all talented over here."

"I'll teach these selfish, jello-brained kids to throw a party without inviting me." Lordy said, stepping out of his car.

"Unfortunately I think whatever little bit of intimidation you usually have will go straight out of the window with that rat costume you're wearing." Morri told him, getting out of the passenger seat.

"A rat and a pirate," Lordy looked between the two of them, "I mean I guess we both travel on ships."

They made their way up to the front of the house, where one of the jugheads from the football team stood checking invitations. The very same invitation that they did not have. What they did have, however, was determination.

"All right what's all this then?" Lordy said, looking up at the mummy boy.

"Oh, hey professor. I uh... don't remember you being on the list." He said to them.

"The list? Do you think I've come here to PARTY or something?" Lordy looked appauled.

The mummy looked between them, "... are you here to shut us down?"

"ABSOlutely. Now if you don't mind-"

"Listen, I really don't think I can let you guys in." The mummy insisted.

"LOOK at me," Lordy inched closer to him, "I was supposed to do this inspection at six so I could go trick-or-treating at seven- and it's ALREADY EIGHT O'CLOCK so if you DON'T MIND!" Lordy walked right past him- as he gave little resistance, and Morri quickly followed, "GOOD day to you, sir."

The mummy blinked a couple of times as he watched them, "... the- the party didn't even start until seve-"

"I SAID GOOD DAY!"

Lordy and Morri made it up the cobblestone and took in the size of the house. There were little groups gathered every which way, and what seemed like an abundance of food and drinks to go around.

"Ready to show these dweebs how to get down?" Lordy asked.

"Aye aye captain." Morri tipped his pirate hat.

"Hard lemonade?" Elias repeated, and then started to rifle through the Big Chungus Cooler™ that held all the drinks in an organized fashion. (Wouldn't that just be a refrigerator? This tagbook is getting to me. Too many shitpost smol brain thoughts.)

"Yeah, I got ya some Mike's Hard!" he said, chucking a bottle over to Daniel. It was a bit dangerous since it was a glass bottle, but Elias had faith that he would catch it. "What about you, Ben? Want one too?"

"Oh!" Bo said with a small smile as Jerica's attention caught on all his Halloween snacks. "Thanks, Jer. I think my favorites are the spiderweb cookies. Took a few tries to get the web pattern just right in the frosting."

Elias was right. Daniel did catch the bottle.

Grabbing his keys from his pocket, he popped up the bottle and took a sip. It was just as refreshing as he thought it would be.

Benji, meanwhile, stood very, very stiffly next to Daniel. He glanced between the drink in Daniel's hand and the cooler that Elias was standing next to. He started to give a tiny nod of his head, but then he looked up at Daniel's face. Daniel, who had only noticed what Benji was doing because he was watching him, quickly looked away.

"...Actually," Benji said, voice quiet and hesitant, "do you have any soda?"

"I've never seen something you've done that wasn't just right," Jerica said playfully. She flushed a bit. Her pre-game game was clearly too strong. She cleared her throat and went on quickly. "Dat why all your food is da bomb diggity."

She stepped forward and grabbed one of the spiderweb cookies. She held it up to James. "Look at this. Immaculate."