Nearly discovered

Ashlyn continued a long draw on the straw of her too-sweet 'coffee'. It was a far cry from the normal black americano she enjoyed, but at least it bought some time.

Logan gave an easy smile, pulling a laptop from his bag as he sat across from Ashlyn.

"College applications can be complicated, especially if you haven't decided what to do yet, but you're quite lucky."

"Uh huh." replied Ashlyn, trying to look past Logan to wear her sister was talking. Logan seemed so eager to help, but she... *he* had already done all of this boring college application stuff... even if it hadn't meant really settling on a major...

Logan swivelled the screen around. *Regional College Courses and Rankings* read the banner at the top. Several white boxes sat awaiting entry below.

"This was launched last year and is a great tool for new students" said Logan, so pleased to be helping an attractive girl like Ashlyn. "If you enter your name here, date of birth and so on, it will find your highschool grades and transcripts and provide your course and college options."

Ashlyn's eyes widened.

"That's... like... great." she faltered, the hesitation genuine.

Obviously, there wasn't an *Ashlyn* in the system. She could enter her real details and try to hide the name with some scrolling, but that would show her already enrolled, not to mention with some 'not-very-Ashlyn' highschool courses and grades.

Ashlyn looked at her keyboard, her hands, the keyboard - her nails!

"Oh, like, I just got these done and, you know, typing is"

She laid it on thick, showing off the long pink nails and moving to a hair twirl with one finger. She hated sounding like such a useless ditz, but needed to extract herself from this.

"Oh! Ha!" Logan gave a polite chuckle. "Of course!"

Ashlyn released a held breath.

"I'll do it for you!" he turned the laptop back and his fingers flew over keys faster than Ashlyn's would have even before the nails. "I'll have all your details in one moment and we can look at your options."

Ashlyn looked around, trying to find a way out.

"Huh. Can't find any Ashlyn... it was last year you graduated, right?"

She made eye contact with her sister, still enthralled in conversation but she just gave a smile at Ashlyn's apparent discomfort with her lunch date.

"Nope... weird, it usually works well. What's your surname? And do you have a middle name? Everyone should be on-"

He stopped short as a Ashlyn yelped. She had meant to 'spill' her coffee on the laptop but the hurried motion and long nails slipped the tall cup from her grasp and onto her top and into her lap.

It was lucky she had such a silly, frothy coffee... it meant it wasn't too hot. The yelp was still genuine, however, as Ashlyn found herself soaked.