Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

blue, and I thought maybe his eyes were too. Hadn't they been green?
    Did it matter? I turned to getting my supplies out of my backpack. He started thumping his fingers on the side of the table, moving up and down the edge as if sounding out the acoustics. His nail polish was blue too.
    "So you're a transfer student?" I asked.
    "Yep." Now he was drumming with his hands, to a tune I could almost recognize.
    "I've worked with everyone else before," I said when he didn't go on. "So I know their strengths. What do you see as yours?"
    "You're already stuck with me," Alan answered, punctuating with a three-fingered double-thump. "I don't have to pass the interview."
    "Mallory will make you porter if we don't give you another role," I warned. "Now's the time to speak up."
    "You voted yourself boss. You tell me."
    "I'm not the boss. I'm the guy who set the time and place. I tend to take on the organizational stuff, but I don't—"
    "Here we are, boss!" Mallory bounced up, grinning at me as she set a cup in front of Alan and slipped into the seat next to him with a tall drink of her own. "So! What's the plan?" she asked as Tania sat next to me. Alan tossed his head, playing piano on the edge of the table and apparently lost in his imaginary music.
    "That's what we're going to figure out." I handed around the calendar grids I'd made. "First I want to set up when we can meet. Tuesdays will work for a while, but we'll need more time as we get into the project, so—"
    "Oh God, you've made it a speech," Tania grumbled. "Fill in your schedule," she told Alan. "Note any special plans like if you're going out of town or you have a game or a performance. Bring it back next meeting. And don't plan on any actual no-work vacations."
    "Lukas is a slave driver," Mallory said, tossing her head to flip her long, straight, shining gold hair that helped make her so photogenic. Between that and her smile, in every project she ended up on camera. "But he's worth it. So what genre are you on, Lukas?"
    "The assignment is a news segment," I pointed out.
    "Easy enough to make that horror," Tania said. "Or action."
    "Or science fiction, even." Mallory pulled a handful of writing instruments from her hobo bag and put them in the middle of the table. "Lukas wants experience in every style," she said to Alan, "so he has a rotation drawn up. What are you on, Lukas?"
    "Drama," I admitted. "But we don't have to do my thing. We do need to decide what we're doing. A twenty-minute segment will take some work, so the sooner we know, the better." The girls would work with me even if Alan didn't want to cooperate. Or maybe Mallory could cajole him when needed. Jollying people around was one of her most valuable skills.
    Tania picked up a pencil to twirl through her fingers. Mallory said she'd been a cheerleader. I couldn't imagine her smiling enough. "We could interview those idiots outside Planned Parenthood," she suggested. "And talk to some of the clients."
    Planned Parenthood , I typed in a document. Sometimes the best ideas were the ones that we all talked around, so I liked to keep track of the conversation.
    "Funding PP is important," Mallory said, "but it's old news. What about the election?"
    Voters? I wrote.
    "Everyone will be covering that," Alan put in, now playing air guitar. Or maybe bass.
    "Do you have a suggestion?" I asked him.
    "How about we hunt down the Invisible Brothers and see what they think?" Alan asked. Mallory shook her head.
    "Not much, from what I've seen," Tania muttered.
    "I'm not going to waste meeting time looking for them," I said. "If they show up, we'll let them in, but it's on them."
    "And Lukas keeps back some of the worst stuff in case they do," Mallory said with a snicker. "Credits, citing sources, filmography— one or both guys will probably show up in December wanting to earn a grade, and Lukas will have the worst stuff saved for him/them."
    "Yay, Lukas. So!" Alan thumped his hands on the table. "This is it. A fag, a hag, a hick and a drag. Yeehaw."
    "Alan!" Mallory punched his arm. "Be nice!"
    "I was!"
    "All right." I handed out the next sheet. "Contact information. Matt and Darren are on here, so if anyone feels like trying to drag them in, go right ahead. I should tell you that I don't answer unknown numbers, so if you need to call me from a phone number not on this list, leave a message and I'll get right back to you. Alan, Mallory didn't give me your number."
    "Email works," Alan said. "It's fast. Like