"True enough." Orion is complete bullshit and she's so jealous. "But it didn't pan out and here we are. While you're advertising things, do you know anybody who wants their homework done?"

"New York's shopping around for some stuff, you'd have to ask Silas...wait, are you doing other peoples' homework?"

Why does she sound surprised? Enclavers can sell homework; it's allowed. "Yeah. History and literature, mostly, but math too if it's something I've taken already. If you want to offload trigonometry I'll have to refer you to Franklin."

Julia is so confused!

Why is Julia being so weird about this! Is it revenge for being weird about the makeup because if so this seems weirder than Marcy was being. "I know enclavers don't usually sell homework but I don't think there's actually a good reason not to, if I can do it fast enough to make a profit."

Okay you know what they're not friends but they're not enemy secret agents, at this point the thing to do is to just talk with their mouth-words. "I need to find a Gandhari dictionary, want to help me search the stacks?"

Yeah okay she will go talk about Julia's weird homework-market secret in private. "Sure." Did Julia get stuck with Korean? Is she doing some kind of weird schedule thing where she needs to buy homework for a class so she can pretend she's not in it? Is she trying to defraud someone on a trade and wants to bribe Marcy to stay out of it? Surely it's not that last thing; Julia's weird but she's not a moron.

. . . Man, if Julia actually just wants a Ghandari dictionary Marcy is going to be so disappointed.

Julia considers actually saying her line about how they're not friends but they're not enemy secret agents, because it's a great line, the kind that should escape her head, but 'we're not friends' is a kind of confrontational thing to say to someone out of nowhere. 

"So I was behind you in the lunchline when you said it seemed like your head was going to explode," she says, "and I thought that might be a metaphor, but then I was also behind you in the hallway when you said Abigail'd found you a dark sunglasses spell and when you were dragging yourself up the stairs while a junior scolded you for being out of bed, and so if you're trying to hide something I think you're hiding it kind of badly? And letting me bully you into wearing magic makeup will be hiding it lots less badly than that!"

Bwuh?!

"I wasn't hiding any of--okay I kind of was hiding having worn myself out in the gym, pro tip don't try to keep up with a junior with giraffe legs. But the head exploding totally was a metaphor. And the sunglasses spell is for my completely not a secret project welding myself some new shelves, not, I don't know, some disease that makes your head explode and then you borrow a welding visor!" Is that even a thing? Head-exploding welder's disease?

"...headaches. Are the disease that make you want dark sunglasses and that feel like your head exploding. You know, whatever. I'm glad you're okay."

"Huh. Okay. I'm glad you were trying to be helpful and not doing some kind of scheme."

"I brought in makeup from home, I'm not that invested in whether everyone else wears it. Aside from that it's protection that can be made in large batches so they'd be dumb to pass it up."

"Yeah, it does sound pretty neat." At least she got a useful tip out this weirdness. "Anyway, see you around."

"Yeah." She does actually need a Gandhari dictionary but she'll just go do that with someone else so it's not awkward.