Yes! Yes there is. Over there. A tall kid with dark curly hair sitting in the back corner looking awkward.

Well, awkward tall kid in the back corner, your savior has arrived.

"Hi," she says, smiling a little. "Want to group up?"

... She suspects he's not the only awkward one here.

"...Sure," he says, smiling uncertainly.

"Okay, great." She sits in a nearby empty chair. "I'm Yvette, nice to meet you."

"Steven. Hi."

Smile!

She looks at the clock, and looks at the handout, then says, "I predict that this'll take us about five minutes, and then the rest of the class is going to be small talking within groups."

This seems to be funny to her.

"Yes, that seems plausible."

The handout takes them about five minutes.

"Well, is there a topic you'd like to small talk about,or should I come up with something, or would you rather not talk?"

"I'm not sure..."

Head tilt. "Fair enough. Feel free to tell me to shoo if you'd rather, but if you don't - read any good books, lately?"

"I've been too busy to do as much reading as I'd like. What about you?"

"Summer reading kind of dampened my urge to read other books. So, uh, good job, me, coming up with a topic I can't actually talk much about."

"Congratulations," he says, with a very small smile.

"Thank you very much, I'm quite proud of my achievement. Students everywhere will look back on this day as the day they were outclassed for picking topics badly." Pause. "Unless you want to hear my opinions on The Catcher in the Rye."

"Do you have opinions on the Catcher in the Rye?"

"Yes."

"What are they?"

"I thought that while the main character was very sympathetic and often kind of hilarious, his depression wasn't an excuse for a lot of the things he did. That being said, I think most of it came about from a lack of a proper support network. The school he was in was - uh, itself, and while his narration's untrustworthy at best I don't think he was exaggerating very much, and it seemed to be the latest in a long string of the like, then to top it off, his parents seemed to not really care about what he wanted and saw his life as a checklist to be filled out instead of a life for him to live. And it definitely could be said that he caused it himself with how he pushed people away, but there is a certain level of - acceptance from other people that he seemed to lack. The person with their head screwed on straightest seemed to be his little sister Phoebe, and I adore how she casually turns his romanticism of childhood on its head by easily being more mature than he is."

"Okay, I admit, I haven't actually read the book," he says. "But I've heard things about it, and that sounds about right."

Giggle.

"Thanks. It's not a bad book, actually, but not very good if you want something to cheer you up."

"I'll remember that."

"Assigned reading is really not the place to look for happy books."

"Yeah. Although some English classes are more depressing than others."

"Yeah. It seems - counterproductive to have teenagers that are already dealing with a lot of emotional turmoil read books on only depressing subjects. Smart and happy are not mutually exclusive."

"I agree."

"And really, I'm of the opinion that helping people enjoy - not necessarily reading, it can be other things - absorbing information is much better than stuffing them with the most optimized information possible that everyone thinks is a perfect example of that medium available. One gets you a person that reads a lot, the other gets you a person that vaguely remembers hating English."

"I see what you mean."

"But that gets me started on the education system being incredibly flawed and it might be smart to run now, I'm a horrible malcontent."

"I don't think you're horrible at all."

"Well, thank you. But I understand why some people would not like to listen to me, anyway."

"I like listening to you just fine."

She feels like this is the exact set of actions she would have taken if she were fishing for compliments. She's not, but she's aware that it's a thing she could do. She doesn't mind them, but she'd rather not go fishing.

"Thank you! Now! Let's see if I can come up with a topic I can actually talk about. ... Uh. Do anything fun over summer break?"

"No, I'm very boring."

"Well, did you enjoy the break?"

"Yes, it was fine. I might have lied about being boring. It depends on how bored you are by piano lessons."

"I haven't had any, so I can't really say. Being able to play the piano sounds fun, though."

"It's nice."

She smiles.

"I kind of - lack in creative hobbies. Unless you count impassioned essays, in which case, those. I am good at those."

"What do you write impassioned essays about?"

"The proper essay format ones are for school, the less proper essay format ones are for arguing with people on the internet because sometimes I just like wasting my time."

"Have you gotten in any interesting internet arguments recently?"

She considers. "I mean, yes, but it's - I'm not arguing with people about morality, social justice, or something - I'm arguing about efficiency, because I am absolutely insane, so - I'm not really sure how to relate that into a neat tidy 'this is what I do in my spare time' format."

"...Well, now I want to know what you've been arguing about the efficiency of."

Giggle.

"Depends on my mood. Sometimes it's stuff that matters, like - I once was arguing about the viability of food charities to various parts of Africa, but lately it's been arguing about an MMO and how to properly play a class in it."

"I definitely don't have any opinions about that."

"They nerfed the spiritspeaker class and I am very upset about it," she says, sagely.

"What did they do?"

"The class is based around having summonable minions that help you fight. There's a skill that lets you summon all of your minions to your location. Then there's a buff you can cast on yourself that heals you and creatures around you a little bit every time you use a certain type of skill that the summon skill's part of. It's meant to be combined with retreat skills, help a party get out of trouble while the minions run interference, but when you combine it with the summon one you can summon all of your minions and heal them at the same time. Completely useless in player versus player, because anyone with half a brain will remove the buff in half a second, but in PvE it's good for soloing things you're not supposed to if you're smart and combine it with some other skills and - well, long story short, they changed the skill to a different type so summoning your minions doesn't activate the healing buff. It's very annoying. Especially since it wasn't even a game breaking ability, I know of some more game breaking abilities that are much worse."

"You're right, that does sound annoying."

"So annoying. I don't even play the game very much and I'm annoyed. The game's had a lot of changes that don't make sense lately, this one's just the one that personally affected me and ticked me off. I think once I'm done arguing with people on the internet about it I'll stop playing entirely."

"That's unfortunate."

"A bit. But there are other games, and I was never a very dedicated player anyway. I just like figuring out solutions to things."

"Yeah, that can be nice."