His face was wonderful – just further proof that you didn't have to waste your best liquor to do Botts Shots and have fun. She grinned openly at him, enjoying every moment of his screwed up liver face while he fought to swallow his handful. When he finally finished swallowing she laughed outright, reclaiming the bag of beans from him and already beginning to sort through to make herself a nice little collection of like-colored candies. Greens were always a risk, as were yellows, so she stuck to her beloved purple. There weren't so many in the sack and finding them was tricky, but she worked on her task diligently. She was about to open her own mouth to speak as she worked, but Todd beat her to it. She'd had it on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he wanted to come over to her place during the summer. She'd already started planning sleepovers with some of the girls, and though she didn't think even her crazy parents would allow a boy to stay overnight, she figured they'd let him stay at least until dinner.  She hadn't expected him to change the subject so quickly and dramatically. That train of thought fell away almost instantly when she realized what he was asking her. 

She didn't answer right away. She just continued rifling through the sack of beans, searching for anything purple. Somehow Todd had managed to do the impossible – he'd caught Anna off guard. Was it possible he really didn't know what had gone down that day? People had been passing the dumb Prophet around since breakfast. She knew it wasn't everyone passing it around, since, despite her best intentions, not everyone knew who she was or cared about her enough for the dumb article to mean anything. But Todd was in her house, in her year. He hadn't caught wind of anything? She supposed it made sense, when she thought about it. If she had juicy dirt about someone the first person she'd think to go to sure as hell wouldn't be Todd Maculric. She wasn't fond of going back to discussing the topic of what an effed up person she was. Her stomach gave an uncomfortable jerk of nerves. She didn't want to tell him. She liked that he didn't know. It meant that the idiots who wrote the article hadn't won. She didn't respond.

She played it like she hadn't heard him, which was both ridiculous and impossible given their proximity. She had paused long enough before providing any kind of action that her behavior was now incredibly suspect and, though she tried playing it nonchalant, her act was entirely unconvincing. It didn't help make her any more convincing when she popped her entire half collected handful of purple beans into her mouth in a brash attempt to distract him from what he was asking. Her face puckered harshly in anticipation and then relaxed as her frantic chewing turned into the slow, deliberate chewing style of a cow with a mouth full of cud. “These actually are all pretty good ones,” she told him through a mouthful of half-chewed beans, which she proceeded to methodically chomp as she continued to avoid his question. Finally, after an agonizing amount of seconds, she swallowed her purple conglomeration of beans, licked her lips, and looked at him. “We should keep going.”