"What are you working on?" JJ asked, deciding to finally steal her attention away from her work to turn it over to him. He jumped down from his spot to wander closer to her, as though a magnetic force was pulling him towards her after feeling the distance between them for too long. He squatted down next to her, easing himself lower until he was on the floor with her, legs straightened out in front of him and his arms propped up behind him. 
Setting her pencil down on her notebook, Collins sighed softly and looked up at him with the same gentle gaze that she always has on her face, even when it's clear that she was distraught about something. "Just thinking about things that I could write about that could charm an old person into paying for my education."
"Now in my dictionary, we call that scamming." JJ emphasized. "I'm actually very well acquainted with the term as a matter of fact. Show me what you got, Ponzi." 
Collins shook her head at him, but the corners of her mouth were still turned upwards in amusement. "It's only scamming if you lie in it, which I'm not planning on doing."
"Doesn't everyone? The whole point of these college essays and applications are to make you look better than the next guy. There's bound to be some exaggeration here and there."
"I don't know." Collins shrugged. "I suppose that's true but if I'm going to be writing about overcoming obstacles or my personal growth in life, I kinda feel like that's something I shouldn't be dishonest about, you know?"
"I guess not if you wanna go with the honesty route." JJ agreed with a slight nod. Of course she would be taking the more righteous approach, Collins is an angel, she's incapable of sin and here he was, acting like the devil on her shoulder. "So what are you thinking of writing about?"
He attempted to make an effort to peek over and catch a glimpse of her paper, but Collins was quick to cover it with her hands and block his sight from reading anything that she'd had already written down. "It's a work in progress, right now. Nothing that I feel ready to share at the moment."
JJ studied her carefully, a faint frown on his face at her secretiveness. What didn't she want him to see on her paper? Whatever she tried to hide, it only made him more curious. He'd shared something extremely personal to him with her, something that he'd never tell just anyone, something she had brought out from him because she made him feel safe enough to share it. Didn't he make her feel the same?
Choosing his words carefully, JJ said, "You know that you can tell me stuff, too, right? Anything you feel like telling, at least. I feel like we always talk about me but never about you. So if there was anything you wanna get off your chest, I'm here." Way to be subtle, JJ. 
"I know I can talk to you about stuff." Collins replied, and she looked genuine when she said it, but there was just a voice in JJ's head that kept yelling, then tell me something, goddamnit! "I just don't want you to read this stuff because I feel like it sounds stupid. My greatest strengths are blah blah blah, being an active member of my community is important to me because... It all just sounds so pretentious."
"That's probably why everyone that I've ever met that's gone to college are entitled jerks. They all got in based on who could brag their way into an acceptance letter the best."
"I don't want to be like those people." Collins told him, her voice gone quieter. 
"Collins, if I've learned anything about you this summer, it's that something like that happening is utterly impossible." JJ deadpanned with a grave expression. 
Collins looked down at the floor with a bashful smile on her face. "You're sweet."
"Enough to give you a toothache."