Straight Up Kind Of Girl

Hannah has three missed calls, and a voice mail message, all from Agent Booth, when she turns her phone back on after class. The message is a little ominious in its brevity -- Hey, kiddo, call me when you get this, okay? Whenever that is. Or maybe it's ominious in that for all he's clearly trying to sound light and neutral, Hannah can hear in Agent Booth's voice that whatever he wants her to call him about is going to fall into the category of Not Good.

She doesn't even bother going back to her room to drop her things, just calls him on her way to the Metro station. She's not surprised when he asks her to meet him, as soon as possible, though she is surprised when he asks her to come to his office. And while it's clear he doesn't want to talk about Whatever This Is over the phone, Hannah's starting to genuinely and truly worry.

The last time someone had news they didn't want to give her over the phone, it was that Agent Booth was dead.

It takes an eternity to get to the Hoover Building, and another eternity to get through security even though they've been told to expect her and had she realized where she was coming she SO would have gone back to the dorm to dump her stupid bag.

Eventually someone shows up to escort her up to Agent Booth's office, and she doesn't know if he's an agent or what, because aside from confirming her identity and asking her to come with him, he doesn't say a damn word. Hannah doesn't know if that means he knows what she's there to talk about and it's so bad that he doesn't know what to say, or if he's assuming that she's some sort of suspect or something and therefore not worth talking to, or if he just has the social skills of a cactus.

"Your visitor's here, Booth," the man says, and leaves Hannah standing in the door to Agent Booth's office.

All in all, it's a pretty uneventful graduation ceremony, by Neptune standards. Which is to say, no one is arrested in the middle of it. (Say what you like about Vinnie Van Lowe, but he knows better than to interrupt the big day of the little darlings of Neptune's Who's Who just to arrest a nobody biker.)

The ceremony itself is, of course, only the beginning of things -- there will be a solid week of parties around Neptune, with a great deal of negotiation between parents to determine who gets Saturday night and who gets stuck with Wednesday afternoon. There's a school sponsored please-don't-get-yourself-killed-on-graduation-night party tonight, but it can't compete with the blow out Amber's throwing, and no one who's anyone is going. Hannah's skipping both (not that she was invited to the latter); she's had plans with Em for graduation for years, and they might even let the boys tag along.

She needs to find her parents (who seem to be doing a halfway decent job of getting along today, much to Hannah's utter relief) but right now there's a brief lull in the hugs and congratulations, and Hannah is taking a moment.

She's survived high school. In Neptune. And she has the diploma to prove it.

Previously . . .


It’s the way high school halls work. One moment, they’re empty, and then a bell rings, and they fill very suddenly with people who have four minutes to get to wherever they’re supposed to be next.

Of course, at Neptune High, getting to your next class is the least of the things to worry about in the hallways between classes – it’s a chance to grab things from your locker, catch teasers on gossip to be shared over lunch, greet friends and shun enemies. There’s a chance, too, you’ll see which couples have gotten together or split up (or at least who’s holding hands in the halls today). You might see a fistfight, or a fellow student being led out of the school in handcuffs.

Hannah’s seen all of those things, at one point or another. But there are certain things you just do not expect to see in the halls of a high school, even if that high school is in Neptune.

This? Would be really high on her list.

“Dr. Brennan? Agent Booth?”

Hannah thinks that Brennan is right about most things, and Hannah knows she's right about needing to eat and sleep and so on.

So Hannah eats. All right, Hannah mostly pushes soup around the bowl with her spoon, but she eats at least a third of it, and in her defense, it is a very large bowl.

She drinks all the juice.

She brushes her teeth, showers, works the tangles out of her hair, puts on mint green flannel pajamas provided by Bar, hangs her clothes in the bathroom so the wrinkles would fall out.

Small things that add up to living, right?

It would be nice to sleep, because sleeping is one way to stop thinking, and one that doesn't later involve having to join a twelve step program. Hannah is just not especially optimistic about it happening any time soon.

But she curls up on her side, arms and legs drawn in tight, blanket pulled up to nose, facing the chair Brennan is sitting in. There's some conversation about nothing in particular, but Hannah's replies get slower and shorter and less distinct, and (if she were awake to notice) she'd be surprised how quickly she falls asleep.

She stays very still for a long time, but eventually, (and gradually) she relaxes, uncurls.

She might be dreaming.

She also might now be drifting in that place between sleeping and waking, not quite dreaming but also not quite picking her thoughts.

Whatever it is, those thoughts are tumbled and jumbled and they don't quite fit together, like pieces of different puzzles dumped out onto the floor.

And then she sits bolt upright, gasping.

Whatever she was before, she's awake now.

Hannah slept till late afternoon today. Which is not that unusual for a teenager on a Saturday, though it's unusual for this teenager, who usually runs three miles before breakfast. But this is hardly a usual Saturday, and Hannah slept though both breakfast and lunch.

And now Brennan has gone to pick up Chinese food for dinner, and Hannah has had a very long and very hot shower and put on her own clothes for the first time in two and half weeks.

She's busy painting her toe nails a rather vivid shade of green, and watching Legally Blonde on her laptop while she waits for Brennan to get back. She's not especially concerned with the trials and triumphs of Elle Woods today, she just wants the background noise.

It would have been hard to miss Angela's scream. Maybe -- maybe -- if you were deaf. But Hannah kind of thinks you'd have heard it anyway.

She bolts out of her chair and starts for the door.

"Miss Griffith, I need you to stay here, please," says the guard, moving between her and the open door, reaching for his radio.

"That was -- I have -- what's going on? I'm not going to --"

"Miss Griffith, calm down, please. I need to you stay here."

Most of the chatter into his radio is in code, or pseudo-military guard speak, which might as well be code, for all Hannah understands. It is a few minutes before he turned back to her.

"No one's hurt."

Hannah eyes him, skeptically. "I heard Ang--someone scream."

"Just startled. Please wait here, Miss Griffith."

Hannah doesn't buy it, but she sits back down. And when the guard outside the door is suddenly joined by a second, she buys it even less.

There's a journal open in her lap, but Hannah isn't reading it.

For the most part, Hannah has spent the first two days of her internship shadowing someone while they went about their regular routine. Usually, she follows Tempera--errr, Dr. Brennan, but also Ang--Ms. Montenegro and Dr. Hodgins and even the newly PhD'ed Dr. Addy. (Dr. Addy did not, contrary to confindent predictions, have kittens. But he also didn't know exactly how to deal with a sixteen-year-old intern, so he just talked very fast at her about whatever he was doing. Hannah caught about a fifth of it, understood maybe half of that, and tried not to smile.) She even talked briefly to Dr. Saroyen, who first asked how she met Dr. Brennan, and then tried to steer her towards pathology.

But there are times when people are doing things she really can't shadow -- because she lacks security clearance or because they require a level of concentration that doesn't lend itself to explaining as you go along or simply because there are some things you just don't show a sixteen-year-old intern, no matter how interested in forensic anthropology she is. And usually that means she's just off shadowing someone else, but now they're all reviewing something on the Angelator that Hannah can't see for at least one and possibly all of those reasons.

So she's settled at one of the couches on the balcony that overlooks the lab with coffee and her laptop. She's making notes on what she's seen and what she's learned, because she has a report to write when she gets back to Neptune. And if she finishes that, she has a pile of journal articles she's supposed to read. Or, you know, try to read.

It's been a good day.

For one thing, her parents have (unintentionally) been very helpful with making certain logistical aspects of this visit easier. Mom had errands to run that kept her away all day, and (even better) Daddy has gone off for a conference in Detroit.

So it was easy enough to slip into Milliways and slip back out to Neptune. And while there wasn't a great deal of time for sightseeing, they managed a short tour of Neptune (avoiding the sites of interest most tourists come for now -- namely, where the Echollses died). Hannah packed a lunch, sandwiches and pretzels and chocolate chip cookies, to eat at the beach, which was half-deserted and fairly quiet.

And then, because she didn't think he'd be at all interested in sitting in a salon for an hour and a half while she got her hair done, and because not getting her hair done really is not an option, she left Henry on his own in Barnes and Noble.

When she got back, it took a while to find him, but she did, eventually, sitting in the floor with his back to the shelf, and a neat stack of books about two feet high next to him.

"Little light reading?"

Henry just looked up at her and grinned. "No."

Hannah laughed. "Do you need help with those?"

He let her help, in the end, but he took the heavier bags.

And now? Now she is upstairs, engaged in ritual that has changed only in its details since 1802, Getting Ready For a Dance.

And he has just finished a ritual that hasn't really changed at all since 1802, Meeting Her Parents.