[center][color=green][h3]Imogen Reed[/h3][/color]
[b]9/15[/b][/center]

[i]Huh.[/i] For a semi-remote, almost forlorn dockhouse, there seemed to be a surprising amount of people here, all about her age too. This must be an official school event after all, to have somehow roused so many students from their warm dorms to brace themselves against the nippy coastal gusts at sundown. But as Imogen looked between their faces, a sensation of familiarity quickly built up within her. She might not know -or she might have just forgotten- their names, but something about this particular assembly of students convinced her that she’d seen them all before. Or was that just her own wishful thinking tricking her, out of a subtle urge to do right by others where she felt they did wrong by her, and conscientiously avoid letting others fade unceremoniously into the background?

Regardless, there really were a lot of people here. For a little while they made no attempt at conversation, instead listening to the gentle chorus of wind and sea under the implicit assumption that they were all here for the same reason, not just bystanders drawn into awkward proximity by the whims of fate. Imogen felt no need to disturb the peace and quiet, or to insist on meeting anyone else’s gaze, even if just for a rhetorical questioning glance. They probably didn’t know any better than her, after all, and she gauged that the air of resignation here, about an evening wasted on probably nonsense, outweighed the air of curiosity. There was even a girl up on the dockhouse roof, chowing down on a bag of snacks while she gazed imperiously down. Imogen admired what struck her as bravado, and wondered which of the frozen meals in her fridge she ought to thaw out when she got back. She’d been so busy with her homework that she forgot to eat before coming, and to her chagrin she felt a little weak from hunger.

A couple more people trickled in to join the small crowd in waiting for whoever orchestrated this event to reveal themselves. Some of those who arrived, however, couldn’t stand the silence, and felt the need to break it. A guy with brown hair greeted his forerunners halfheartedly, asking them what was going on. Not that anyone would know, but Imogen felt it would be rude to ignore him. “Wish I knew myself,” she replied, just loud enough to be heard over the breeze-licked surf if the others were listening, but quiet enough that her response could just as easily slip away if nobody cared to hear. After coming to a stop next to Danny the eighth and final arrival, a fidgety beanpole who seemed so slight and shy that one of the stiff winds around here might knock her into the water, dithered about the ambiguity and weirdness of the situation. The weirdest thing to Imogen, though, was how lightly dressed some of these people were. An English shore was no place for shorts!

Then the dockhouse door flew open with a crash, startling Imogen pretty badly. It took only a split second to realize that everything was fine, but the sight of Sofia -whose face and name she did acutely remember, for better or worse- threw all her expectations out the window. Some of her peers might have expected this, but it did come as a surprise to Imogen. After what happened at the Icebreaker, she figured that Sofia might as well vanish off the face of the earth; by her reckoning, there wasn’t a single soul on God’s gray earth with enough guts to try and follow up that act. But here she was, just as abashedly goofy as she’d been before. At least this time she spared her audience the dated pop culture references in favor of a simple ‘thanks for coming’.

Imogen’s face had morphed from one of mild shock to a wince, with eyebrows both furrowed and upturned accompanying a thin, uneasy smile. It was the sort of expression one might make at a kitten who’d just failed to clear the jump from coffee table to couch. “...Sure,” she replied tentatively. She didn’t want to spit in the face of Sofia’s clear -if woefully misguided- sincerity, but she realized that she could now leave at any time with zero academic consequences.

Then Sofia told the students what she wanted them to do. Imogen blinked. “Wh…what?” Her word wasn’t bashful or fearful. It was sharp and flat, like someone had said something so incredibly stupid that she was checking to make sure she heard them right. “Are you mad?”

Imogen suddenly realized she was breaking character, and cleared her throat with an apologetic glance at Sofia. “Ach, forgive me for sayin’, but surely you don’t really mean it, right? Tradition or not, it’s freezin’. We’d catch our deaths of cold.” She backed away from one of the ladders the girl pointed out as if it might reach out, grab, her and hurl her into the drink. “I’m not about to…”

A raucous laugh cut her off, and when Imogen glanced upward she came to the sudden realization that some people [i]were[/i] about to. She watched in stunned silence as Verity began to disrobe, then turned her gaze on the others. Wait a minute. Those weren’t shorts on Frankie. They were swim trunks! And in Danny’s case, not some kind of vibrant exercise wear, but a competitive swimsuit! Her eyes continued to widen, her mouth ever-so-slightly ajar. Were they really planning to throw themselves into that frigid water? Did they expect [i]her[/i] to?

“No. Way,” she blurted out, despite her usual calm and agreeable manner. Maybe she should have inferred it from the note’s mention of a towel, looking back, but the thought of a swim in the ocean didn’t occur to her even once. Now several people were readying themselves for a dip. Even the shy girl was pulling out her towel! “You all must be off your nutters!” Imogen stared at Sofia with a mildly pleading expression, and tried to compose herself. The organizer was watching the others like a hawk, waiting for them to take the plunge with a smile that to Imogen looked rather gleeful. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” she confessed, attempting to negotiate. “I don’t even own one. Besides.” In a pouting manner she crossed her arms, turning up her nose at the whole superstitious premise as she looked off into the cloudy sunset. “I got where I am today without any luck at all. Just blood, sweat, and tears. Sorry to disappoint you, really I am, but I’m not gonna risk my life for a wee bit of luck now.”

Despite what sounded like a firm refusal, however, things were a little more complicated on the inside. Accepting the mantle of ‘uninteresting, unlikable, and unmemorable person’ did not mean that she ever stopped struggling with that lot in life. Even as she vocalized what she knew must be a perfectly reasonable and understandable objection, Imogen couldn’t help but wonder…was this sort of thing why nobody ever cared about her? By now she knew that she couldn’t expect anyone to come to her, that was just asking too much after all. But it was true she’d given up on going to them, too, and being a stick in the mud on the rare occasion a chance came her way probably didn’t help. The intrusive thought crossed her mind: if she did do this, maybe it would score some points with these people. It might give them something to remember about her, and even help her fit in. Would it work? Did it matter in the first place? Hard to say. But even after her refusal, Imogen did not go away. To an onlooker, it might be obvious that she, being a little too close to the edge, lacked the strength to stand by her convictions. A little push could be all that was needed to send her over.