Chapter 2 - Highschool

'Ben! Hey Ben, wait up!' I turn around and smile. Brooke is running full tilt towards me, his backpack dangerously close to falling off his shoulder, waving his hand in the air to catch my attention. He didn't take the bus today, and I was wondering whether he'd show up or not.

When he finally reaches me he's panting, and I catch his bag before it falls to the ground while he gets his breath back.

'Brooke! Man, I thought you were going to leave me alone to suffer at the Frog's hands. What's up?' The Frog is Mr. Ambridge, our chemistry teacher. His voice is so much like a croak it's not even funny, and sometimes, when he's dealing with what he calls "troublemakers", he puffs up like a bullfrog trying to frighten off a cat. 'Did you oversleep again?'

'Nah, Mum had to talk to Liz's teacher so we skipped the bus.' He doesn't get mad at me implying he can't even make it to class in time, but you should see him when Joe says it –it's scary. I don't think they get along all that well, sometimes. We all know Brooke is a chronic oversleeper, anyways, it comes with being almost nocturnal.

'Liz ok?' Liz is Brooke's younger sister, and probably the most amazing kid I've ever met. She's caring, smart, and she just listens to people in a way that makes them all fall in love with the little tyke. She is also extraordinarily responsible for a ten-year-old, so Brooke's mother having to talk to her teacher is a bit worrisome. Between crazy-smart Brooke and scarily-responsible Liz, I don't think she has ever had to come in to speak to anybody.

'Yeah, it's all good. She's going to miss some classes to go to the championship upstate, so Mum wanted to explain and get her excused.'

'Wait, she's in the championship already?'

Brooke smiles. He's really close to Liz, despite the age difference and the fact that anybody sane would be jealous if they had a sibling that perfect.

'Well, she's my little genius.' His eyes twinkle whenever he thinks about Liz; it's kind of adorable, not that I'd let him know that. 'I think even dad was surprised, this time, since Liz just got started with golf, but her teacher says she's a natural.'

'I'm still waiting to see if we find anything she isn't good at. Has she finished the book I gave her?' Even though Dylan is a great younger brother, I've kind of adopted Liz as a little sister too. Since she's been studying Spanish for a while I got her a copy of one of the Narnia books in Spanish for her birthday. Last I heard Brooke and her had been reading chapter ten together, but she was pushing him to go faster.

Brooke groans and mock-punches me.

'No, man, we are suck on chapter twelve until I finish my literature project. She's been driving me crazy about it, since we were apparently at a crucial point and she just had to find out what happened to poor Lucy.' He rolls his eyes, but I know he's excited his little sister has a favorite fictional character already. It's not like he hasn't lost sleep over fictional characters before. Hell, he's made me lose sleep over fictional characters before. I still remember the HP sleepless night of 2003.

The bell rings and we hurry to make it to class. Ms. Autenberg is really strict about punctuality.

. . .AlmostAverage.

We all file into the cafeteria, and I can't really talk for the others but I'd say we are all feeling pretty miserable. Brooke and I just had our first math class with Mr. Burke, the substitute teacher for the rest of the year, and it might as well have been all in Greek because I don't think I caught a single word. Brooke seemed to get it, mostly, but Mr. Burke won't let him work ahead like Mrs. Delaney did, and that means he has to keep to our dunderhead speed. Riverside is pretty small for a high school, so there are no separate advanced classes, which usually means Brooke and the other brainiacs work ahead with teacher supervision so they don't get held back, but Mr. Burke doesn't seem to care for it. I don't know what's bugging Sam and Joe, 'cause as far as I know they didn't have math today, but they look just about as happy as we do.

The food doesn't really help. I usually bring something from home and heat it up at the cafeteria, but Mum was really busy this week and we are supposed to get something here. I don't think most of what they have is edible, but I already burned through my breakfast and need food, asap.

Brooke drops his tray besides mine with a grunt, and I eye his food while it slides over to one side, then the other, and finally decides to stay still inside the plate.

Sam's looking at it as well, a bit green around the gills. She pokes at her food halfheartedly. Brooke is picking at his food too. I take a large mouthful and gulp it down with half my water. The taste is not bad, kind of like cardboard, but it feels slimy going down. Joe's practically inhaling his spaghetti, like he's afraid we'll give up on this crappy food and try to take his. It happened, once, when Sam was going trough a particularly bad PMS. As soon as she mentioned that Joe relinquished his noodles, and since the three of us pretty much lost our appetites at the news she ended up having our food too.

I manage to keep down another mouthful. Joe and I usually bring our meals from home and I always end up sharing with Brooke, so I'm kind of used to the taste of cafeteria food, but they have really outdone themselves this time.

Sam sighs, gives up, and starts rummaging through her bag.

'I don't know about you guys, but this is just making me more depressed. Chocolate, anyone?'

She hands us all chocolate bars that we don't even pretend to try and refuse. I need sustenance, Brooke is a chocolate whore, and Joe loves anything sweet. They are pretty melty from being in her bag, so while everyone is cleaning up as best they can I end up licking my fingers clean. No need to waste perfectly good chocolate. Sam laughs at me and that breaks the dark cloud that's hovering above us a bit.

'So, what has you two in such a mood? I know you didn't have Mr. Ambridge yet.'

'Urg, don't remind me, we have class with the Frog next.' I let my head hang back. 'No, we had the new math teacher, what's-his-name. He sucks big time. I don't think he even speaks English, there's no way that class was in our language.'

'It was English, Ben.' Brooke sounds amused. We can't all be genius like him.

'Maybe it was brainiac-lese and that's why you understood.' I crack an eye open and see Brooke's hand about to hit my stomach, too late to stop him. He never hits hard, anyways. 'Oof. Alright, alright, I take it back, you are clearly all brawn.'

'I'm dying, really, that was hilarious.' Brooke can pull deadpan surprisingly well, taking into account how expressive he is. 'Heads up, Joe, Mr. Burke won't let me work ahead.'

'Oh, come on! It's not enough that I get chewed out by the Frog, now I have to take dumb math too?'

'Hey! It's normal math, not dumb math. Not our fault you guys are so smart.' I grin as I say it, straightening up again. 'And talking about smart, guess what? Liz is going to the championships!'

'Aw, that's great Brooke! Say congratulations from me?'

'Sure Sam.' He shoots me a look, and I just wince a bit and smile. I know Liz is his sister, but I just couldn't help myself. I like to brag about how well she is doing almost more than Brooke does. 'Yeah, she's going to be away for a couple days though. Actually, I've been meaning to ask you Ben, can I stay at your place from Thursday to Monday? Mum and Liz won't be back till then and Dad wanted to take advantage of that and make a couple of business trips he's been putting off.'

'No problem, let me just check with my parents. They love you though, they'd probably trade you for me if the could, so I'm pretty sure you can stay.' Brooke smiles at me and the conversation goes on while I text mum. By the time I look up again they are dissecting the latest episode of some show, I don't even know which one. I stay out of the conversation, and at some point Brooke looks towards me and sneaks me a cereal bar as Sam and Joe argue about whether something is a deliberate mistake or just the writers being lazy. I smile back and munch happily until the ring tells us it's time to suffer the Frog.

Sometimes it's a bit weird, being a casual nerd when my friends are all like, hardcore. (Is it nerd, or geek? I'm never quite sure. Maybe they are both?) Brooke will say something, a little phrase or a sound or make a gesture, and they'll all crack up or Sam will say "right in the feels!" clutching at her chest and I'll be just standing there, feeling dumb and clearly not getting it.

Mary, a girl who used to hang out with us before she took up drama, she'd giggle and pretend to get it, but it was really obvious she just didn't want to look left out and I always thought it was a bit sad, so I don't do it. Most times Brooke will notice I've no idea what they are talking about and fill me in, or if it's too complicated he'll just smile at me like 'hey, it's cool man, what can you do? Not everyone can be as nerdy as me' and that's fine, 'cause they don't get it when I go all stupid over football scores either (Sam gets baseball, but that's about it when it comes to sports and those three). Sometimes I go sit with the jocks and have a normal sports conversation, to get it out of my system, before I go back to banter peppered with "oh holy TARDIS of Gallifrey" (apparently the capitals are important in TARDIS, trust me, that's a conversation no-one wants to have) or "I have a bad feeling about this" (which sounds normal but isn't) or even "Frak!", "A world of no" (I know that one!) or "Make it so".

My life is weird. Good weird, but still.

Urg, there's still thirty minutes of chemistry left, and I've doodled the rest of the class away so I've no idea what we are supposed to be working on. Thank god we have Philosophy next, I'm actually good at that, and then we're free to go. I promised Dylan we'd practice his throws today after school.