Back to Battleschool, 2/?: Who'd be the fool / In my position?

 I picked up Ender’s Game again over this past break, and now I have the strongest image of Jake doing the same, right around the beginning of the war. He and Marco could be wandering through the mall, and Border’s has a display for summer reading lists, and something has a spaceship and won some awards, so Jake picks it up... 

“I told you. His isolation can’t be broken. He can never come to believe that anybody will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks that there’s an easy way out, he’s wrecked.”
“You’re right. That would be terrible, if he believed he had a friend.”
“He can have friends. It’s parents he can’t have.” (p38, 1994 TOR paperback)

And in the first weeks of the war, at the breakfast table, he looks up at his family, and slowly puts the book down. 

“What’s that, squirt?” Tom asks.
“Nothing much,” he lies. “We’ve got a book report coming up.”

So he takes the book to hide in Cassie’s barn.

Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now. (p45)

Marco puts it back carefully, without disturbing the bookmark. He gets his own copy, instead, and finds the parallel story as well.

“Ho, Fearless Leader,” he greets Jake. 

and,
<Remember,> he whispers for their ears only, as they surveil a McDonald’s from on high, <the enemy’s gate is down.>

As with the rest of their lives, even a joke can’t last, though:
Jake comes to the scoop once, and finds Card piled next to Mortal Kombat and Pokemon.
“We,” he insists, “are not an army!” 
Marco tucks them back onto the shelf. “Really, Patton? Because the way I see it, the sooner anyone accepts what their situation is, the sooner they can live with it.”
Jake is silent for a long minute, until Marco looks back up at him.
“I don’t want to live like this, though.”
Marco looks around, at the tarpaulin roof keeping dew off of Ax’s transmission station, heavy TV was used to falling asleep to, just like his dad had -
“I know, man. I know.”

 And so they didn’t talk about Ender again. There’s plenty of their own war to fight, instead.

That's it!

 
With credit to Antosempai on tumblr, I've taken a stab at the Memory Lane Pastry from FFXV. No, I haven't styled it like canon, but I'm certainly pleased with it, and myself - this is all from scratch! The crust is nice and dry, the fruit is bright, and the cheese is light and soft! 
With three steps, it's a bit of assembly for an amateur like myself, but the ingredients are all simple. I only had to buy mascarpone! 
Recipe under the cut!

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I'm sure I'll make them again, and if I change it up, then that's just in the spirit of things ;) but I'm quite happy with this!