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Brooke Scott was determinant.
She’d read through dictionaries and thesauruses alike to find the word that best fit her personality. She’d decided it was determinant. It wasn’t that she was clever (though she was) or sarcastic (though she was) or even strong-willed (though she was), she was simply determinant.
Determinant;
Adjective
1: serving to determine or decide something.
Yep; that was her. Plus, it was a criminally unknown vocabulary word, that really should’ve been taught to her in the seventh grade. Blame the dysfunctional schooling system, she supposed.
Brooke Scott was determinant. She served to determine or decide things - whether it was for herself or for others. She wanted, not so much to know, but to have decided. She wanted to have a firm, educated stance on every problem, issue or just plain event.
And, to others, she was often seen as just a means to that end. As someone to ask for grades, or to cheat off of, or some ridiculous something or other of that nature. Of course, she always turned them down. People wised up eventually - though it was a bit too eventual, in her opinion.
Well, blame the continued stupidity of the human race, she supposed.
The human race just wasn’t very determinant. They didn’t want to decide anything.
People thought she hated anyone that wasn’t smart, which was wrong. Okay, sure, she didn’t respect anyone who wasn’t smart; but that was a different issue altogether. She hated people who couldn’t fucking decide.
So many people wanted to stay on the fence about something so they didn’t upset people, or didn’t care enough to form their own opinion and just went with the masses, or - worst of all - lied to themselves and try to say that they had an opinion that they didn’t. Brooke had always been wonderful at lying - it came to her as easily as deciding did. But lying to herself?
That was just ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. She thought that quite a few people were ridiculous.
She liked finding a label for herself - she loved finding labels for others.
It was always so easy, too.
Look, over there - someone’s cloying. Down there, by the lamppost - oh you can just tell that he’s sedentary. Urgh, someone complaisant - get them away from her. Altruistic? Blergh!
Oh, God, not someone else bibulous. So many stepdads these days…
Oh, her? She’s voluble.
It shocked her that other people didn’t have the vocabulary that she did - how could they not want to know these things? How could they stand not having the right word for something?
It was ridiculous.
Laughable.
Grotesque.
God, here comes Warren again - impolitic.
Uh oh, the Dana Ward train is arriving in the station - empathetic, she was. Oh, and self-centered, plus very bad at consoling, but those were just bonus bad traits.
And don’t forget - empathetic contains the word pathetic for a reason. At least, Brooke thinks it probably does - some clever son of a bitch made the word that way, she’s almost sure of it.
Brooke Scott sat on the step, watched the people rolling by, and judged them.
It was fun.