Logs:Fear of Missing Out

Fear of Missing Out
Dramatis Personae Echo, Roscoe	2024-02-25 All the questions come with right answers, imagine that.
Location <NYC> 2024 Chinese New Year Parade route
All along the NYC Chinese New Year Parade route there are crowds upon crowds, pressing up against the traffic barriers, waving and clamoring en masse as the parade wends its way down Mott, spilling out into adjoining streets and shops, enjoying a pleasantly mild and sunny February afternoon. There are waving flags and banners, lion dancers dripping with colorful fringe and blinking their eyes; marching bands and drummers, singers over loudspeakers, shouting and cheering from all corners. It quiets down a little further from the parade route, though not by much. Plenty of paradegoers have passed through this corner bakery today, as the parade is winding down -- there is a handwritten sign taped to the glass display reading, in two languages, "SOLD OUT of Egg Tarts" and then, directly below it, "Sorry! ☹" "They're out of egg tarts," Roscoe says morosely, tapping at the glass, as though his companion can't see this for herself. Possibly this is just habitual. Roscoe has dressed up for the parade -- well, he's wearing a different hoodie than usual, pastel yellow and undecorated, with sidestripe joggers and a black beanie. The weather does not really warrant having the hood up, and in any case he is inside now, but he is wearing the hood up anyway, though he has generously pushed it back enough that his face is still sort of visible. He gives the depleted bakery display a long, searching look even for his standards, but does not come up with a replacement pastry suggestion. Echo's mouth twists in resigned disgruntlement as she reads the sign beside Roscoe, digging absently with the toe of her sneaker at a knot of trampled confetti that has been swept inside to join the crumbs and other trash. Echo's own level of displayed festivity has also decreased throughout the day, her big red sweater now mostly obscured behind the zipper of her thick black coat. "We came all this way, we have to get something," she declares. Her skeptical glance behind, at the girl now walking past the shop with the rest of her parade group, in pigtails and some sort of yellow qipao crop top deal, suggests this bakery jaunt might be something of a consolation prize. She stares at the roughly twelve remaining pastries for a while. "Red bean bun?" she asks eventually. "Or that roll cake. I can get it." Roscoe puts his hands in his jogger pockets, hunching his shoulders. "We don't have to do anything," he grumbles, though this sounds like it's only a perfunctory protest -- he is eyeing the available pastries with similar glumness. His brows scrunch together. "Roll cake," he says. His brows scrunch even lower when she offers to pay -- "No, I can," he counteroffers at once. This might have been perfunctory too -- his frown has shifted from chauvinist indignance to simple contemplation as he tries to weigh Owing Debts against Accepting Gifts against how little money either of them would be spending here anyway against, possibly, how little money he has. Whatever his mental calculations, they elicit a slight grimace. He extracts one hand and reaches for his wallet in a different, zippered pocket of his joggers. But, like, slowly. Echo rolls her eyes. "Okay, we deserve..." she trails off a little, sounding unsure of this, "...something." She gives Roscoe a sharp look, shoving her hand in her own pocket with alacrity. "It's New Year's and I'm older than you. Also, it's three bucks," she says, producing several slightly crumpled dollar bills from her wallet. Approaching the counter itself happens a little more tentatively for some reason -- she stares at the handwritten label for a bit before speaking up. "Uh. A Swiss roll, please," eventually comes out in English, accompanied by a point and a grimace of her own. "Hmph," scoffs Roscoe, but he doesn't push back. He doesn't push back when Echo insists on paying, either, although something in the set of his shoulders suggests he is wondering whether he should. He leaves Echo to handle the transaction, and goes instead to one of the two rickety café tables by the door, brushes crumbs off it with one sleeve and plops himself slouchily into a chair to wait. "They underfilled the red bean," he says. "You been to Chinatown before?" Her awkward feelings aside, Echo is soon unwrapping the paper around the cake and then unwrapping the cake itself, breaking off a chunk of the spiral before pushing the rest closer to Roscoe. She throws a glance back towards the case and then shrugs. “Okay, yeah. Maybe I’ll make some after finals. Unless you’re going home again the second break starts.” Popping the cake piece in her mouth, she gives a satisfied-enough tilt of the head. “Once, ish,” she says before finishing swallowing. “I walked through a bit of it over Christmas. Ate a plate of dumplings. You?” Echo scrunches up her face, licks some extra cream from the corner of her mouth. “Think I liked it better that time,” she adds after a moment. “Maybe I wasn’t expecting it to be…more fun?” Roscoe looks at the cake, pats his pockets like he's looking for something, then gets up without explanation, leaving the table wobbling dramatically. He returns with a pair of plastic forks, which he uses to very carefully cut the cake slice in half. "You know to make those?" he says, impressed. "Shoot, I'll stay just for that. I need to do summer school anyway." For a moment he busies himself with his half-slice of cake, taking several large, hasty bites before swallowing to say, "Once or twice, maybe. Never when it was all..." he gestures with the fork and grimaces rather than come up with a descriptive adjective. "I mean, I'm from Chinatown, but Boston Chinatown is way smaller than this. And my family doesn't really go to parades." "Sorry," Echo says sheepishly, licking her fingers hastily and then dutifully picking up the second fork to eat in a less desperately lazy fashion. "Wellll, I've made different kinds of dough before, should be alright. The filling is, I dunno, probably mostly boiling?" She reaches for her phone in the silence, adds the buns to a list of baking projects whose inputs clearly outnumber outputs, before sliding it back into her pockets. "Yeah, we didn't even have a parade. I used to do a dance thing, I guess. Can't believe I kinda wish I could see it --maybe there's a video..." Echo's brows contract and she sits a little straighter, as though she's just been jolted by a thought, though she sinks back down after a moment. "What do you guys do? Hope it was more festive than..." she mirrors his earlier gesture. "Oh okay, you don't know how to make those," Roscoe says, though he doesn't sound overly disappointed by this news. He tilts his head and nods seriously, as though he has any idea how the filling is made, propping one elbow on the table and his chin on his fist. Most of his portion of roll cake is gone already, but he's slowed down -- now he's just poking at the remainder with his fork. "Maybe on YouTube?" he suggests. "I think some my old karate tourneys are up on there." His mouth pulls to the side at her question, but he answers it cheerily enough, "It's festive enough, I guess, my parents usually have a little family party and we just eat and drink and do party stuff. Karaoke or poker or whatever. And," he adds self-importantly, "everyone gives me cash." "Eh, that's what recipes are for," Echo insists. "Won't be perfect but usually still tastes good the first try. That's the whole point of baking for me, most other things you have to fail way harder." Despite this statement's potential as commentary on a range of her life choices, Echo does not look to be doing heavy self-reflecting, her tone light. "Yeah, I'll check tonight. Maybe I can find my sis. And now I'll have to look for those too, so hope you were good." Her smirk is replaced by a more nostalgic smile. "Uh huh, next time I'll let you pay after all. Probably I should try the food thing next year instead of a parade." Now she frowns, then lowers her fork to the table with an exhale. "God, do you think it's dumb of me to try to recapture the feeling or whatever? I honestly didn't care that much before." Roscoe's expression is on the verge of softening when Echo mentions her sister, but then it swiftly pinches inward again -- his eyes track to one side, like he is very deep in thought about how to get out of this; when they return to Echo he produces an unconvincing: "I was okay." He shifts in his seat, glancing back down at his cake; he presses the tines of his fork against some crumbly bits to pick them up. "I don't think it's dumb," he says. "I didn't care that much before, either. It wasn't that much fun when I was a kid, I was always the youngest person there. But, I'unno, FOMO is stupid. I would be in my cell sometimes like, man I bet all my classmates are taking midterms right now those lucky bastards." Echo squints at Roscoe's expression, her left eye fluttering on the verge of closing. "Nah, I'm just giving you a hard time," she says after a beat, still intentionally nonchalant but a few shades gentler. "I won't be creepy." She reaches down and fiddles with her zipper with her left hand, shoves up her glasses with her right. Her eyes flick up when Roscoe mentions his cell; after a minute she barks a short laugh. "Out of context, that makes you sound more like a nerd than chess club does. But in hindsight, worrying mostly about tests was great. All the questions come with right answers, imagine that." She picks up her fork, opens and closes her mouth, shoves another bite of cake in it to muffle the sentiment. "I'm glad you didn't miss this one." "Pfft," says Roscoe -- though the raspberry he blows is tired and lackluster, there is a gleam of morbid humor in his voice when he says, "I was worrying mostly about tests, actually." His grin at this is fleeting -- he crushes the edge of his cake down with his fork to produce more crumbs. "Me too," he says glumly, "I had fun." Echo presses her lips together and raises her eyebrows, but it is brief; evidently she has neither sarcasm nor chastisement on offer about this subject in this company. “Er. Did you?” She furrows her brow. “No offense, but I’ve heard you more excited about, I dunno, saying what’s for dinner before the rest of us can see it.” At first Roscoe just looks mildly taken aback, until the soft roundness of his eyes calcifies into a harder, narrower stare. "Jeez, ye of little faith," he says. "Yes, I had fun, I had so much fun I got myself kicked out of the party, actually, so shut up, it was awesome and I would do it again." "Oookay, sorry, don't shoot me for asking, I'm not the one who said it like that," Echo says, her eyes widening as she drops her gaze to prod at some of her remaining cake. "What? How did you--" she can't help asking, knee-jerk curiosity getting the first word before principle wins out. "Ah, never mind," she says with a heaved sigh, turning her head to the gradually thinning crowd outside. "I mean obviously I'm down to hear, seems like you feel some kinda way, but share on your own terms, et cetera." She busies herself with the last bite. Roscoe rolls his eyes dismissively -- "You can ask anything you want, I don't care," he says. This is conspicuously neither true nor apologetic, though it's not unapologetic either. He finishes his roll cake off, too, then says, "I got into the booze. All the boomers were drinking in the kitchen, all the millennials were drinking in the family room, nobody was paying attention to me, so I was like, yolo. Anyway, I'm grounded again. Have you ever --" he tilts his head at Echo, and "You've never done that," is not so much a question as a diagnosis. "What does your family do again?" The skin around Echo's eyes tightens a little as she considers this story with -- concern? sympathy? She offers an acknowledging grunt and a "Shit," instead. "You live in a dorm most of the time, what does that even mean?" she asks, then shakes her head, rhetorically. "Yeeah. Mostly just eat and go back to our rooms? Maybe watch the, what's it called, the CCP puts on some TV program. We used to go to Chinese parties sometimes but must've been. Before I manifested." Are these things connected? Echo doesn't seem sure herself, but she adds eventually, "I remember those things kinda sucking. Like your parents insisting it's an Fun Important Holiday about Togetherness but you're just there, watching some weird kid play Mario Kart if you're lucky." "'Means I better not leave campus," says Roscoe, a little too cheerfully for someone who's not currently on campus right now. He doesn't quite manage to make eye contact, not for anything Echo brings up, though he periodically nods along, a little sheepishly. "I used to just play Mario Kart," he admits. "Like I said. I was always the youngest one there." Echo laughs. "Got it. Very enforceable." As Roscoe isn't looking at her, she turns back toward the door, outside of which a team of teenaged lion dancers, divested of the head but still wearing red-and-yellow pants, are trooping by. "Yeah, there were usually a couple kids my age, so I can't totally relate. My sister was the littlest, sometimes, but," she grimaces. "Guess I never stopped to wonder what it was like for her, back then." Echo looks up now, at a panel of fluorescent lights. "You think your sisters know?" "It's prob'ly way weirder for her now." Roscoe is even more studiously not making eye contact, busy trying to spin his fork around his fingers. "She's like ten, right? I was ten when all my sisters moved out." He wrinkles his nose; the fork, too lightweight to spin, accidentally flies across the table toward Echo. Roscoe freezes for a long second, then seems to decide his best option is to just pretend it didn't happen, his hand dropping out of view under the table again. "I mean. What are they gonna do about it?" is not really an answer. Echo wasn't moving much but she freezes at that, shoulders tensing just perceptibly and eyes falling to the table. "Eleven, now," she says in a voice that seems to have lost a dimension. "Well. Maybe it's good there's less yelling," Echo shifts around in her seat. "...What was--" she's starting to ask, but cuts off as Roscoe's fork arrives in front of her cake crumbs. After a second she picks it up and tentatively puts it down again just past halfway between them, then leans back and crosses her arms. "Well, they could try to make it suck less next time. And even if not, understanding more is always..." Her shoulders drop, and she struggles to articulate. "I don't know them at all but I think...even when you're trying not to, sometimes siblings can look a bit like...responsibilities, or something? Instead of people. Talking helps." She shrugs, then continues in a bit of a rush. "I dunno, maybe that's bullshit. I just think I'd wanna know." Roscoe twists his mouth dourly, and he hesitates noticeably before he says, "Maybe." After a slightly awkward pause, his hand darts quickly out from beneath the table to retrieve his fork, replacing it on the paper wrapper in front of him. "I didn't say it sucked," he says testily, but then he huffs out what is very nearly a sigh -- "it only sucked a little," is offered up like a concession of some kind. He manages at last to raise his chin to look at Echo, his face serious and troubled -- "If I knew you weren't even getting a sucky new year, I would have invited you," he says, and then manages a tiny, buck-toothed smile and a sing-song tone as well. "Free booze." Echo's shoulders draw in a little further, but perhaps this is a conversation for another day. Right now she is giving Roscoe her best unconvinced look, as one does. This one blooms into a lopsided smile. "Heh. There's always next time. I'd say you should try to convince your parents I'm a good influence, but that ship probably sailed with the whole Occupy Lassiter thing, so. I can help you get grounded again any day." Echo looks down at the crumbs and the floor confetti, and then flashes Roscoe another half grin. "Next year, we'll do this whole thing better."