The Bearded Lady [[Open]]

[Tamika Dombrovski]

It’s an unproven fact that forced history causes brain cells to rot at a rate of 20 per second. The only place it was proved was in the mind of Tammy Dombrovski. It was nearly as silly as Josh’s about scented toilet roll giving you cancer. She had also just invented the ratio that for every 3 bearded male teachers in the school there was 1 female bearded teacher. The beard on the current female teacher helped this theory. Thoughts like this were the only things stopping Tamika from throwing a well-aimed, freshly sharpened pencil at the teacher’s eye, or falling asleep for that matter. After about 40 years (slight exaggeration) of her monotonous voice explaining the rise and fall of Hitler, the bearded lady told them to get on with their work and she would return soon.
Sighing with relief as the teacher left the room, Tamika opened her notebook to the back and started drawing. All teachers seemed to have something against students drawing, which grew quite irritating. Before long, Tamika realised there was in fact someone seated next to her, she didn’t know whom though, as she rarely bothered to look up.
“Hey,” she said, casting a glance over beside her.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Madeleine leaned back in her chair in relief as Professor Carell left the room.
She loved History - really, she did. Learning about the past, and learning from the mistakes from the past, was something that Madeleine found important... and usually interesting.
Usually.
Then, Professor Carell arrived.
The rise and fall of the Nazis was a brilliant thing to study, really - but it should not be as boring as she made it. There was just no way...
She relaxed back in her chair, glad to hear real chatter as opposed to the montonous, low-pitched drone of the teacher that would make an Academic cry, and glanced at Tamika beside her, who was sketching something at the back of her notebook. She remembered the drawings she had seen in Tamika's book the first time they'd met, and was a little curious as to what she was drawing, because Tamika could draw.
"Hey," Tamika said, uttering the first sound all this period, looking over her shoulder at her.
"Heya," Madeleine responded. "Is it wrong to be tempted to perform a tracheotomy on her with my pencil, and take out her vocal chords?"

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"Madeleine! Hiya, I didn't realise it was you!" Tamika exclaimed, sitting up from her hunched position. "I doubt it would be, no one with a voice that dull deserves vocal chords."
Tamika quickly moved her hand across half of the page then ripped it out, handing it to Madeleine, "I do believe it would look like this," Tamika grinned, gesturing to the picture of a long-haired stick figure attacking an old woman stick figure with an over-sized pencil.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Madeleine took the piece of paper and laughed.
"Yeah, something a little like that, though I was thinking more with a normal-sized pencil... that'd be a million times more effective, though."
Hmm... maybe Lee would conjure one up for her...
Actually, probably a better idea not to.
She yawned, stretching her legs out under the desk. "So what have you been up to recently?"

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"Everything would be so much better if larger in size..." Tamika commented, her hand absent mindedly drawing again. "Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. Trying to sort the dead from the living when going about my business, filling up notebooks, convincing Joshua not to do stupid things in his apartment... What about you? Starting to plan the wedding yet?"

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

"Except spiders," Madeleine shuddered. Shaun had made her watch Eight Legged Freaks once...
Chills ran up her spine at the memory. That was the only thing to scare her totally sh*tless.
"Oh, God, no," she groaned, slumping back in her seat. "I know we should probably start soon, but there's so much. I've only just got my mum to accept the fact, so I don't know how much help she'll be... I mean, we haven't even decided whether we want to get married in a church or wherever else. And aside from the obvious things like flowers, and dresses, I'm not even sure what I need to plan yet..."
Maybe it would be better to assign Olivia to wedding planner duties.
But then again...

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"Well whatever you do, if you wanna save money look at the flowershops in back streets. They always have the most lovely flowers for cheap. And for suits the most decent reasonable tailors always have some form of hat display in the window..."
This was usually the case, in both Russia and Cardsdale it had happened.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Madeleine smiled, committing the information to memory. "Thanks. I should be better at this, seeing as Shaun was engaged before... I mean, I had to listen to all those discussions, and make decisions, but I seem to have forgotten a lot of it - and what I do remember makes me panic!"
That fact irritated her; that she'd forgotten. Not only because it would have been so useful, but because it was something that she had shared with them, and she'd forgotten about it. She'd forgotten so much, and she wished she hadn't - so much.

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"It would be unatural if you remembered everything, you're a teenager," Tamika smiled. She thought for a moment, when she met Shaun he didn't really seem the type who would get engaged, although they did only speak for a few minutes...
"So is Lee as stressed as you about it yet?"

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

"Well, every time we start to talk about a wedding, the conversation starts to take a bit of a despairing tone. I've no idea how this is going to go, but we've got a while to plan it, I guess."
Olivia would have her strung up for saying that. According to Olivia, every second of potential planning time was precious.
"But, let's change the topic so I don't get any more stressed out," Madeleine added, with a laugh. "Anything strange or startling?"

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"Barr the little old lady chanting in front of the table, not really. Although, there was a bloke who bought one of my notebooks as he 'like the eccentric style', that was a bit strange, in the good way..." Tamika rambled, still annoyed that she had sold the notebook. A little piece of her mind and she sold it to some stranger. Eeesshhh...
"So, what about you? Any odd goings on in the world of yourself?"

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

"One of my Warriors told me that she'd started revising for her exams already, you could say that that was odd," Madeleine said, stretching out her legs under the table.
She remembered the notebook Tamika had shown her on their first meeting, and wasn't surprised that someone had paid for one of them. Tamika really did have a talent for that kind of thing...
"Were you selling the notebooks, or did that just come from nowhere?"

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"Wow, really? Did you get her mental state checked out?" Tamika laughed.
"Nah, I was just sitting on a bench finishing a notebook and this guy had been standing watching me draw, trying to be subtle. When I closed the book he came up to me and started saying about the drawings then offered me 50 quid for it. Quite rad, but strange."

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

"I'm hoping she just got hit in the head with something," Madeleine said, with a laugh. "Hmm, yeah, that would be pretty strange. Still, I bet it made you feel good about your drawings, though? You could end up... I don't know, starting to sell drawings to earn money, or something. It'd be a lot more enjoyable than waitressing or whatever else."

[Tamika Dombrovski]

"Ah I dunno, that was going to be my plan to get me through University but now... Now I just want to open a tea room then leave to open one in New Zealand before I turn 35. My work probably will end up getting sold to afford my business though," Tamika mused.