Second Chances : Chapter 4
#9 of Ar
Author's note - I just wanted to thank everyone for their support and comments. I tried to go slower writing this one and forced myself to slow down my proof-reading, let me know if it helped. Also I was kind of curious about what you guys think about the length of my chapters, I noticed they're a little short when compared to others. As always this is a story dealing with gay themes so if that bothers you sorry.
Well it just seemed that since Mrs. Abear didn't feel like nailing me with any more excessive punishment, save the detention and two Saturday work details, she just decided to give me the worksheets I had missed from the previous days and continue with her lecture. 'Pardon me for interruption your lecture miss Ahole'. The teachers here can be so ridiculous. This just meant that my day couldn't possibly get worse and with lunch time approaching I couldn't help but let my mind wander back to Luke. It's curious, now every time I thought of him I swear I could smell a soft hint of apples. Periods 1 and 2 flew by fairly quickly giving rise to our 15 minute 'break'. I never understood why they gave us a break instead of just extending our lunch period, as it is 10 of those 15 minutes are used just struggling through the mass of students just to get to one's group of friends leaving about 5 minutes to talk, which I could do that on my passing periods if I really needed to. Well a break is a break at least some time away from the drone of the classroom does me good.
"Hey Ar! What happened to you? You were missing for like two whole days!" said Roosevelt. Roosevelt is a basic brown bear with a little tummy. Its kind of endearing actually. He is a loyal person but is a little hard to deal with at times, with his immature sense of humor and intense love of terrible puns sometimes you just want to smack him in the face. Yet he is truly a kind person and out of the group of my friends I have known him the longest, so I guess that qualifies him as a "best friend" of sorts.
"Just the stomach flu, puking my guts out all over the place man." I know what your thinking. I lied. Keen observation but, honestly, what good would the truth do them? There would be a moment of quiet staring, probably talk of 'what they should do' behind my back and not knowing what to do they would either settle on 'confrontation' or 'ignore it'. The group would be split in half on that decision I guess, Rupin, Helga, and Dianne would say 'confrontation' while Monroe and Roosevelt would choose to 'ignore it' thus creating drama. See it my way now? I would be the last person on the planet that would want to create drama between my friends. Especially for something as meaningless and useless as my life.
"Oh please, my mom made me go to school with a fever of 101. Your parents are just nice."
"We know. We've all hear the story about your evil mother, and yet you still manage to stay attached at the hip," retorted Rupin. Rupin is a black wolf with strange rusty orange patches on his stomach, face, and back, he swears he is full blood wolf but I think there has to be something else in there somewhere. He is a funny guy and is pretty much someone who is so comfortable in his own skin that he plainly doesn't give a shit what others think. I guess if you want you could kind of label him the groups alpha, if only because he is the only one of us with a real temper. I met him sophomore year and I really have nothing but respect for him for he is a creative and talented individual especially in areas that revolve around writing.
"Oh my gosh Roe (Roosevelt's nickname) I think we've heard your sob story at least 20 times," jumped in Helga. She was a Bengal tiger of Hungarian decent... I think, or at least that's what she tells me, honestly she just looks like a fierce cat with tiger stripes, classic orange with red instead of black. She is kind of the female version of Rupin. Doesn't give a shit what others think and doesn't care who knows it... in fact I think she takes a kind of pleasure from letting people know they're meaningless to her. Strangely though she gets extremely attached to boyfriends... really quickly too. A two month boyfriend lost is equivalent to a minimum of 1 year grieving period... ridiculous I know.
"Come on Helga, we all know Roe's mom thinks that they are the same person. If she isn't sick he isn't, end of story for her," Monroe jumped in. She is a pink and white bunny cat mix, really the cutest and softest looking thing you ever saw... until her Latina side decides that your not worth her time, then your not. End of story. She is nice most of the time, though the fact she plays to favorites is painfully apparent, I believe her 'good list' includes Roe and Rupin.
"*sigh* you guys are ridiculous," slides in Dianne. She is a dusty grey Siamese cat that has an air of elegance. She does her best to see the best in everyone and in doing so she turns into 'Dianne the sociologist' and she explains emotional situations as clinically as possible. Which is weird in my opinion but, however she wants to treat people as 'equal' and 'good' so they know her affection for them is not up to me.
"See you guys at lunch then," I called after the group as I turned to head to third period economics. This was the class that filled me with dread and boredom, not even because of the subject, it was more because the teacher hated teaching. He only taught so that he could be the coach for the track team, he didn't even need the money because he owned a small financial law firm, and he made sure everyone in all his classes knew it. That period ended up flying by as opposed to the ususal because my stomach tied into the tightest knots imaginable, when the bell rang to go to fourth and I stood to move and I thought I was going to throw up... or at least pass out. Fourth period was a relief because I couldn't focus on Luke's impending approach, it's hard to think about anything else when you're concentrating on learning a new language. Four years of Japanese and I still struggled every step of the way. After Japanese was lunch though and I couldn't stomach the thought of eating so I just made my way over to the spot where the group ate lunch.
When I got there Rupin and Helga were already into a discussion about what they would do during lunch. I guess one of the biggest things that came about through my group of friends was that since they didn't care what others thought they had no problems doing whatever they wanted, no matter WHAT it was. I mean it was never anything harmful or illegal or even sexual... just weird. Don't get me wrong, they are probably the most accepting and understanding people in the whole school they just didn't exercise restraint, ever. For example I remember when our classes had just finished reading 'The Crucible' so they all went around accusing people of being witches and hauling them back to where we normally sat and had public 'hangings' and when the witches were 'dead' they would join the group and help accuse someone else. You'd think a stunt like this wouldn't last and we would be ridiculed but by the end of lunch we had a group of at least thirty-five compared to the six we started with... I find that a little bit scary. So they were probably coming up with the next crazy antic they could do with the group, hopefully nothing too drastic that would scare Luke away.
Soon Roe and Faux walked up and sat down on the floor and started the discussion with Rupin and Helga but I stayed silent just watching them have their debate between the 'spider web' game and the possibility of nothing, a rare occurrence, when Dianne walked up with a smirk on her face. I knew that look that was the 'I brought something to make a fool of all of us' look. It was then she slowly bought out a box that said 'Twister' in colorful letters. That's right they all decided they were going to play twister during lunch, near a fairly high traffic area. I just sat by and watched as they set it up, long since given up on trying to get them to rethink their decisions, and then Luke came into the corner of my sight. I went ridged with nervousness.
"Hey Ar... So, these are your friends huh?" he spoke slowly as he drew his eyes slowly over each and every one of them.
"Hey Ar, you spinning for us or what?" called out Rupin, it was then he noticed me talking to Luke, "oooh and bring the new player with you!" I couldn't help but laugh as Luke looked at me with deer-in-the-headlights eyes. I was almost certain he was going to just bolt right out of there.
"Only if you let me take you somewhere tonight," Luke whispered in my ear. I froze. What did he say? Was I hearing things? Did he want to beat the shit out of me for my friends making a fool out of everyone in the situation? What did he want with me? All I knew for certain was that this was a chance to spend some alone time with Luke, no matter what he wanted with me at least I was with him.
"Sure," was all I managed to say, pushing him into the tangled mess of my friends. The rest of lunch was a fairly uneventful game of twister, until I gave up on the boring spins and just started to call out whatever I wanted just so they would get tangled and fall. As the bell to signal the end of lunch rang and I helped my friends put the game away. As I started to pick up my backpack to leave Luke walked over and told me to meet him in the parking lot after school, apparently this was going to take all afternoon but, to my surprise he actually looked kind of happy. My heart fluttered for his happiness as he walked away and I wondered what he could possibly have in store for us after school.