• “...You can shut up now,” said Aidan, his voice and demeanor making it perfectly clear that he really didn’t care at all about what she had to say. Staring apathetically at the girl in front of him, he rolled his eyes, and waved his hands in the air, like he was imitating jazz hands with an audaciously sarcastic air about the action. “Oh, a shoe got accidentally kicked into a mud puddle! Somebody call the cops!” he snapped, voice filled with venom and some combination that lied in between snarkiness and sarcasm, with some apatheticness thrown in for good effort. Dropping his hands to his sides, Aidan stared at the girl, and watched as steam seemed to come out of her ears in giant white clouds. “Shoes? You think these are just shoes. Just shoes?”
    “No, not just shoes. They’re brown shoes. Well, one of them”
    “Excuse me? Just ‘brown shoes. Well, one of them’?” the girl exclaimed, her voice rising with each sentence. Obviously, she wasn’t a happy camper. First of all, they were gray. Not brown. Gray. Gray shoes. And he had stepped on her shoe, then kicked it into the mud on “accident.” And then he had decided to go and act like he was asking to get slapped in the face, or get kicked where it counted. And now, the shoe was ruined. Sure, she could probably wash the shoe off, but there was no way that the shoe wouldn’t look brown at all. Plus, there would be no way she’d be able to afford a new pair anytime soon, nevermind borrowing some money to get a new pair from someone. But the kicker that would send her over a metaphorical edge soon?
    He didn’t even seem to care, and he was acting like it was his life’s mission to go and piss off one person every day of his life.
    He would even be a pain in the butt for the devil, that was how he was acting. And she was losing it faster than you could say “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers” ten times fast. In more detail, she was a boulder hurtling off a skyscraper the height of Mount Everest, and some poor sucker was sitting down right where the boulder would land, and would proceed to get crushed. And that poor sucker was him, the building was her patience ( which was running out fast ), and she was the boulder that would crush him like a bug. Obviously, this wouldn’t end well for either of them.
    “Well, if they’re super duper unicorn farting rainbows special, then why’d you wear them?” Aidan snapped, looking like he was enjoying this. Which only made the boulder grow bigger, and fall that much faster. “Do you even see what I’m wearing? Or are you freaking blind, and just run around kicking hoes like a madman the whole day?” she snapped, gesturing towards her outfit, as if to say ‘Hey, look. You’re an idiot.’ “Yeah, you look like a barbie doll. Congratulations!” Aidan snapped, then burst out laughing. Holding up a hand, he waved it around like he was trying to apologize. Standing up, he tried to stop laughing. “Sorry.. I can’t say that with a straight face!” he said sheepishly. Biting her lip to keep from laughing, the girl let out a mix between a ‘pfft,’ whistle, snort, giggle, and laugh, which prompted a laugh from Aidan. “Why are you laughing?!? I’m trying not to laugh, and you start laughing at an attempt to top laughing!” she said, her voice mixing between a shout, shriek, and surprise. “Sorry! It just sounded kind of odd.”
    “Okay, that’s good enough for today! Aidan, Maia, go sit down. That’s better than last time- by a bit. Maia, you’ve gotta sound more pissed off, okay? And Aidan, you looked like you were waving maracas around, and not your hands! Everything else was great, but you need to look a little less stiff. You’re fighting, and you’re not the tin man without his oil.”
    “Gotcha”
    “Sure, Whatever..” Maia mumbled, stuffing the script in her bag. Parking herself in a seat behind the director, she watched other people start to run around the stage, imitating a market. Population, four. She had to admit, they were doing a pretty good job. And she didn’t understand why Aidan was still laughing. Turning around, she stared at him blankly. “....What?”
    “Nothing.” Aidan said quickly, placing his hand over his mouth. Shaking her head, Maia turned back towards the stage. Just as long as Aidan didn’t burst out laughing when they were performing in front of an audience, she didn’t really care how much he couldn’t keep a straight face while they were in rehearsal.