2. The Quirky Experiment.
Life has a funny way of screwing things up for you.
It was just one day of acting sick, just because I felt too lazy to go to high school for once.
I mean, could I really even be blamed for playing truant, given my current situation?
Marks - Top of the class.
Attitude - Indifferent.
Life - Boring as fuck.
So what was so wrong about staying home a day, just once ?
Unfortunately, some higher power does apparently exist, an Entity that shall be named as the I-SHALL-SCREW-THEE entity, and it decided to screw my life for two whole weeks just for one lousy day of skipping class.
'This is what I get for faking sick.' I said, grimacing softly into the phone to Johnson the following day.
"Sorry bro, that's the way the cookie crumbles." Johnson replied, and I could almost feel the evil grin on his face.
"You do realize this is your fault ? If you hadn't convinced me to stay home I wouldn't even be in this situation." And it was his fault.
"Dude, every teen has got to experience the thrill of skipping school !"
Why I'd even listened to him and went through with that, I shall never know.
"It's not the end of the world Sunny, I mean, you only have to deal with it for two weeks max, and I'm sure you guys can work out something... like a way you'll never actually have to be face to face."
"You do realize this is Bree we're talking about? The golden girl of high school, second
only to the Goddess of our hallways, Dana. And wasn't it you who told me that we are nothing compared to her-" I began before he cut me off hurriedly.
"First of all, who says that you're not good enough to hang out with that crowd?"
"You did?" I said in a deadpan voice.
Maybe he'd forgotten about it but he did say that I shouldn't have any hopes of being in that group.
"Oh, well that was during my dark phase. I'm a much nicer, more optimistic person now."
I tried not to snort.
When a guy like Johnson says something like this, you know its only because one of two things have probably occurred - either his mom had got him the anaconda he'd been asking for, or he'd just got laid.
I guessed it was the second, but I decided not to comment.
"So who are you with for the project?" I asked.
"Oh, don't remind me, it's the Skunk." He whined and I laughed, glad that I wasn't the only one stuck with an awful partner for this project.
"Yes, real mature bro, kick me when I'm down. Go ahead, laugh. Just wait, I'll get an A+ on this one by just showing up at her house every few days."
"Yeah, and soon her smell will take over your brain and you'll die before you can bask in the glory of your only good grade. What a shame. Or worse...You could absorb the stench and scare Juniper away for good!" He huffed angrily into the phone and said he had to be going.
So, I hung up the phone and flopped back on my bed, pondering my current predicament.
I, one of the most shut-in people in the world, was stuck with a girl like Bree for two weeks.
Two weeks. That was practically a lifetime.
First off, I began to list the known facts in this project of death in my mind.
Fact: There was no way to bridge the gap between her stunning popularity to my complete abhorrence of it. It just wasn't possible.
People who spend all their time and energy making each other miserable aren't just going
to set aside their differences and start over. We were just fifteen.
Surely the teachers couldn't expect us to be that mature.
Fact: Bree was the biggest slacker I'd ever met in my life, which meant it was all up to me to do this and do it well because if not, we'd both be murdered by the project teacher and put on the failure list, though she was already one-up on that.
Fact: The topic of experimentation was up to me to decide. Sure it was a group project, but you wouldn't take your dog into consideration while buying a car, would you?
Yes, that was the relation between me and Bree considering the topic of contribution to the project.
I don't think I have to be gender accurate on this one.
Fact: I had no idea what I wanted to do. I could never think outside of
the box and my closed in mind kept bringing me to the same conclusion.
I was screwed.
Hypothesis: If you force a shut-in and a popular person in any environment, then disaster will ensue.
It was then that my muse whispered a quirky and insane idea into my ear.
Now, the only hard part was deciding to actually follow the plan.
After mulling the thought through my head I decided there was no way in Heaven or Hell that I was not going to go through with it.
This was also why I was not surprised when I found myself face-to-face with Bree the next day.
Technically, she had approached me in the cafeteria, grinning ear-to-ear with a beefy guy at her side.
"Hey, Lee." she said, and I tried to block out the overpowering smell of perfume that had invaded the air. I coughed to hide my disgust and pretended to be indifferent. Johnson nudged me in the arm.
"Name's not Lee." I said, and caught a glimpse of Johnson grinning proudly beside me.
"Yeah, sorry, anyway, you got the project done yet or what?" she asked, and her bodyguard slunk away, bored of her inattentiveness.
I sink back into my chair as she plopped down in one beside me, creating a disturbance in our finely
balanced jigsaw system.
This was blowing our group out of the water and I could tell by their stunned and angry faces that half were about to die of a heart attack and the other half were ready to rip this chick's hair out.
"Hey, you." She said again, drawing me back to earth.
"Oh sorry, what?" I ask, noticing the others growing dazed and very uncomfortable by the moment.
Then I realized that she was encroaching on their territory.
Part of me wanted to tell her she had no right to bother us, just because I knew that's what she would have said to me had the roles been reversed.
But the other part of me wanted to see how far my idea would go.
"Oh, the project, yeah, sorry. I've got a few ideas." I replied, and feigned an expression as if I was feeling extremely irritated. Johnson nudged me again.
"Well, you see," I trudged on, through the valley of scorn and indifference.
"We're supposed to be researching about human minds, especially the way they think. So, I thought we could see how they react when something completely out of the ordinary happens. See if it shakes them a bit, you know?"
"What kind of thing are you talking about here?" she asked, looking a bit more interested.
Well, to me, in a way she asked for it. So I gave it to her.
I wondered as to what she'd thought I had meant, since I knew it was definitely not what I'd said, because her jaw about hit the floor when I told her.
"What?" She almost shouted, looking disturbed, confused, and slightly smug all at the same time.
"You heard me. I think we should pretend to date, see how people react when the golden boy is with the loser chick." I said, with a strange confidence crackling in my veins that I hadn't felt since grade school.
"Nothing big, you don't have to sleep with me or anything."
She choked quickly with wide eyes and my face tightened, desperately trying to hold back laughter.
"We don't have to do it. I just think it'd get a high score."
She ran a hand through her hair and her features looked troubled.
I knew she wanted to have nothing to do with me, but she also needed that grade.
Johnson was the assistant in the staff room, and he had cracked open Bree's files and found out that she was on academic probation for her D- in Social Studies.
This grade accounted for forty percent of the entire subject this semester. She needed this and she knew it.
"What do we have to do?" she asked in a tired voice, finally giving in.
"Well, we'll just have to act like boyfriend and girlfriend. Hold hands in the halls; go on a few dates where people can see us, stuff like that." I said with a shrug, trying to hide my mirth.
The more I thought about this, the funnier it sounded.
For her, it probably didn't sound appealing at all, it probably sounded more like torture.
So why was I doing this? Well I was simply bored, what else can I say.
"Fine, but once I get my A, which I better get, we're done and we tell
everyone the truth." She extended a slim hand, and I placed mine in hers and shook it lazily.
"Deal." I muttered and snatched my hand out of hers. Then I turned away, back to
my lunch, back to the wide eyes of my friends.
"What are you doing?" she suddenly whispered in my ear, causing goosebumps to rise
over my arms.
"Um, eating?" I answered, wondering what she was talking about.
"Come on then boyfriend, you're eating with me." She grabbed my arm and steered me away from my table and out into the courtyard. I shot a glance at Johnson, but he just shrugged sympathetically and
looked down. The guy had no idea I had planned all this.
Bree plopped down on the short brick wall around the tree and pulled me down next to her, practically on top of her. She slung her arm over my shoulder and pulled me even closer.
"Act natural." She whispered into my ear, and I shivered involuntarily and nodded.
This was certainly new.
I relaxed back into the tree as much as I could make myself and she put her hand on my knee nervously.
I didn't let her miss the satisfied grin that spread on my face.
She probably thought I loved every minute of this. She had no fucking clue.
"I'm only doing this for the grade." She hissed and I hummed in disbelief.
"Sure." I said lightly and was about to pull away and head off to my group again when her arm tightened around me. I followed her gaze to a group of her crowd walking closer to us, peering straight at me curiously.
Let the games begin.
She laughed at the group and I resisted the urge to smack her head.
"Relax," she whispered to me and then directed her attention to her friends.
"Hey guys, meet Lee, my boyfriend."
She got my name wrong again. She would be made to suffer soon for that.
Life has a funny way of screwing things up for you.
It was just one day of acting sick, just because I felt too lazy to go to high school for once.
I mean, could I really even be blamed for playing truant, given my current situation?
Marks - Top of the class.
Attitude - Indifferent.
Life - Boring as fuck.
So what was so wrong about staying home a day, just once ?
Unfortunately, some higher power does apparently exist, an Entity that shall be named as the I-SHALL-SCREW-THEE entity, and it decided to screw my life for two whole weeks just for one lousy day of skipping class.
'This is what I get for faking sick.' I said, grimacing softly into the phone to Johnson the following day.
"Sorry bro, that's the way the cookie crumbles." Johnson replied, and I could almost feel the evil grin on his face.
"You do realize this is your fault ? If you hadn't convinced me to stay home I wouldn't even be in this situation." And it was his fault.
"Dude, every teen has got to experience the thrill of skipping school !"
Why I'd even listened to him and went through with that, I shall never know.
"It's not the end of the world Sunny, I mean, you only have to deal with it for two weeks max, and I'm sure you guys can work out something... like a way you'll never actually have to be face to face."
"You do realize this is Bree we're talking about? The golden girl of high school, second
only to the Goddess of our hallways, Dana. And wasn't it you who told me that we are nothing compared to her-" I began before he cut me off hurriedly.
"First of all, who says that you're not good enough to hang out with that crowd?"
"You did?" I said in a deadpan voice.
Maybe he'd forgotten about it but he did say that I shouldn't have any hopes of being in that group.
"Oh, well that was during my dark phase. I'm a much nicer, more optimistic person now."
I tried not to snort.
When a guy like Johnson says something like this, you know its only because one of two things have probably occurred - either his mom had got him the anaconda he'd been asking for, or he'd just got laid.
I guessed it was the second, but I decided not to comment.
"So who are you with for the project?" I asked.
"Oh, don't remind me, it's the Skunk." He whined and I laughed, glad that I wasn't the only one stuck with an awful partner for this project.
"Yes, real mature bro, kick me when I'm down. Go ahead, laugh. Just wait, I'll get an A+ on this one by just showing up at her house every few days."
"Yeah, and soon her smell will take over your brain and you'll die before you can bask in the glory of your only good grade. What a shame. Or worse...You could absorb the stench and scare Juniper away for good!" He huffed angrily into the phone and said he had to be going.
So, I hung up the phone and flopped back on my bed, pondering my current predicament.
I, one of the most shut-in people in the world, was stuck with a girl like Bree for two weeks.
Two weeks. That was practically a lifetime.
First off, I began to list the known facts in this project of death in my mind.
Fact: There was no way to bridge the gap between her stunning popularity to my complete abhorrence of it. It just wasn't possible.
People who spend all their time and energy making each other miserable aren't just going
to set aside their differences and start over. We were just fifteen.
Surely the teachers couldn't expect us to be that mature.
Fact: Bree was the biggest slacker I'd ever met in my life, which meant it was all up to me to do this and do it well because if not, we'd both be murdered by the project teacher and put on the failure list, though she was already one-up on that.
Fact: The topic of experimentation was up to me to decide. Sure it was a group project, but you wouldn't take your dog into consideration while buying a car, would you?
Yes, that was the relation between me and Bree considering the topic of contribution to the project.
I don't think I have to be gender accurate on this one.
Fact: I had no idea what I wanted to do. I could never think outside of
the box and my closed in mind kept bringing me to the same conclusion.
I was screwed.
Hypothesis: If you force a shut-in and a popular person in any environment, then disaster will ensue.
It was then that my muse whispered a quirky and insane idea into my ear.
Now, the only hard part was deciding to actually follow the plan.
After mulling the thought through my head I decided there was no way in Heaven or Hell that I was not going to go through with it.
This was also why I was not surprised when I found myself face-to-face with Bree the next day.
Technically, she had approached me in the cafeteria, grinning ear-to-ear with a beefy guy at her side.
"Hey, Lee." she said, and I tried to block out the overpowering smell of perfume that had invaded the air. I coughed to hide my disgust and pretended to be indifferent. Johnson nudged me in the arm.
"Name's not Lee." I said, and caught a glimpse of Johnson grinning proudly beside me.
"Yeah, sorry, anyway, you got the project done yet or what?" she asked, and her bodyguard slunk away, bored of her inattentiveness.
I sink back into my chair as she plopped down in one beside me, creating a disturbance in our finely
balanced jigsaw system.
This was blowing our group out of the water and I could tell by their stunned and angry faces that half were about to die of a heart attack and the other half were ready to rip this chick's hair out.
"Hey, you." She said again, drawing me back to earth.
"Oh sorry, what?" I ask, noticing the others growing dazed and very uncomfortable by the moment.
Then I realized that she was encroaching on their territory.
Part of me wanted to tell her she had no right to bother us, just because I knew that's what she would have said to me had the roles been reversed.
But the other part of me wanted to see how far my idea would go.
"Oh, the project, yeah, sorry. I've got a few ideas." I replied, and feigned an expression as if I was feeling extremely irritated. Johnson nudged me again.
"Well, you see," I trudged on, through the valley of scorn and indifference.
"We're supposed to be researching about human minds, especially the way they think. So, I thought we could see how they react when something completely out of the ordinary happens. See if it shakes them a bit, you know?"
"What kind of thing are you talking about here?" she asked, looking a bit more interested.
Well, to me, in a way she asked for it. So I gave it to her.
I wondered as to what she'd thought I had meant, since I knew it was definitely not what I'd said, because her jaw about hit the floor when I told her.
"What?" She almost shouted, looking disturbed, confused, and slightly smug all at the same time.
"You heard me. I think we should pretend to date, see how people react when the golden boy is with the loser chick." I said, with a strange confidence crackling in my veins that I hadn't felt since grade school.
"Nothing big, you don't have to sleep with me or anything."
She choked quickly with wide eyes and my face tightened, desperately trying to hold back laughter.
"We don't have to do it. I just think it'd get a high score."
She ran a hand through her hair and her features looked troubled.
I knew she wanted to have nothing to do with me, but she also needed that grade.
Johnson was the assistant in the staff room, and he had cracked open Bree's files and found out that she was on academic probation for her D- in Social Studies.
This grade accounted for forty percent of the entire subject this semester. She needed this and she knew it.
"What do we have to do?" she asked in a tired voice, finally giving in.
"Well, we'll just have to act like boyfriend and girlfriend. Hold hands in the halls; go on a few dates where people can see us, stuff like that." I said with a shrug, trying to hide my mirth.
The more I thought about this, the funnier it sounded.
For her, it probably didn't sound appealing at all, it probably sounded more like torture.
So why was I doing this? Well I was simply bored, what else can I say.
"Fine, but once I get my A, which I better get, we're done and we tell
everyone the truth." She extended a slim hand, and I placed mine in hers and shook it lazily.
"Deal." I muttered and snatched my hand out of hers. Then I turned away, back to
my lunch, back to the wide eyes of my friends.
"What are you doing?" she suddenly whispered in my ear, causing goosebumps to rise
over my arms.
"Um, eating?" I answered, wondering what she was talking about.
"Come on then boyfriend, you're eating with me." She grabbed my arm and steered me away from my table and out into the courtyard. I shot a glance at Johnson, but he just shrugged sympathetically and
looked down. The guy had no idea I had planned all this.
Bree plopped down on the short brick wall around the tree and pulled me down next to her, practically on top of her. She slung her arm over my shoulder and pulled me even closer.
"Act natural." She whispered into my ear, and I shivered involuntarily and nodded.
This was certainly new.
I relaxed back into the tree as much as I could make myself and she put her hand on my knee nervously.
I didn't let her miss the satisfied grin that spread on my face.
She probably thought I loved every minute of this. She had no fucking clue.
"I'm only doing this for the grade." She hissed and I hummed in disbelief.
"Sure." I said lightly and was about to pull away and head off to my group again when her arm tightened around me. I followed her gaze to a group of her crowd walking closer to us, peering straight at me curiously.
Let the games begin.
She laughed at the group and I resisted the urge to smack her head.
"Relax," she whispered to me and then directed her attention to her friends.
"Hey guys, meet Lee, my boyfriend."
She got my name wrong again. She would be made to suffer soon for that.
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