Empathy No. 028

08/08/02, Levitt kitchen, 5:00 PM (approx)

RODERICK: ...Mom? Did you want something?

ELEANOR: You got your schedule today, didn't you? You weren't going to show it to me?

RODERICK: It slipped my mind. I had an idea and I wanted to get it down.

ALLISON: Well, come on down. It's schedule chat time. Family's got to talk about schedules.

LLOYD: They gotta give me a hard time just because I want to know what they're studying. How about you, Roderick? You and Allison have any classes together?

ALLISON: Yeah, we do. Two of them. Psychology and uh...Calc II. Lucky us on that one, a math class at the start of the day.

JASON: Yeah, mine is second class. Who puts math that early?

ELEANOR: Come on, sweetheart, let's see. Usually he'd tell me what he was going to take, but this year it was a big secret.

RODERICK: Not a secret, I just didn't know yet.

ELEANOR: Okay. Let's see...creative writing? That's perfect for you, but I didn't know they had classes like that.

ALLISON: Yeah, I did that one last year. They have you write about your life, stuff like that. Pretty easy-going class.

LLOYD: Especially for a kid with publication credits.

BROOKE: Publication credits?

LLOYD: I didn't tell you about that, huh? You know those magazines in Roderick's room?

ALLISON: You're in those? You're published?

JASON: Oh, that is so cool! You've gotta let me make some copies!

RODERICK: They're not important magazines, it's not a big deal.

ALLISON: Not a big deal, right...anyway, they put me on newspaper staff but other than that I got nothing I wanted. Computer screwed me over again.

LLOYD: Well, that's life. Now - we're finishing up the back-to-school shopping on Saturday. That's clothes plus anything else you absolutely need, dinner after that at the usual place. And Roderick? How'd you feel about getting some new frames?

RODERICK: ...Okay, that's fine. Um, can I go back to my room now?

ALLISON: Working on another story?

RODERICK: Something like that.

JASON: Hey, is that what's in those binders you have?

RODERICK: A lot of those are just notes, I take a lot of notes.

JASON: Hold on, I want to see these magazines. I mean, what do you write?

RODERICK: ...Science fiction, mostly.

JASON: Okay, cool. I can just borrow those real quick, get out of your hair.

RODERICK: Sure, no problem.

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