Philip Chapter Two Re-Upload

Chapter 2
Because You Really Wanted To Go To School With Me.





    Oh yeah, I regretted it.
    Keeping my arms firmly across my chest, I leered out the window as the bus pulled away from the stop. Beside me, Trisha was perched in Todd’s lap as if moving would rip her behind off. Either of them had scarcely spared me a glance when I’d sat down and from that point on the sound of spit being swapped was becoming far too familiar. Donovan and Flip sat a few rows ahead of us and across the aisle. Both boys gave me sympatric glances, only able to guess at the massive amount of suffering I was going through. Other students of Richard High School chattered and laughed, going about their business, babbling on like nobody’s business. Joshua Smith – one of the guys in Todd’s group of friends that only knew me through the couple – turned from the seat in front of me, made some comment about us doing what the pair was and a few other lewd remarks that should have got his face beat in. But I ignored him. If I was ever to be glued to someone like Trisha was to Todd, Smith would be the last person. Then again, if someone were to make a formula that caused the entire male population to spontaneously combust, I would have them test it on Smith before any other guy in the world. The subject of this sentence turned his attention elsewhere when I didn’t respond. The bus hit a bump and Trisha was knocked off Todd’s lap and into the wide gap between her boyfriend and me.
    “Why aren’t you talking to me?” she asked.
    I looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “Your tongue seemed preoccupied.”
    “No, it wasn’t. I was waiting for you to start a conversation. I’m always making the first move.”
    “What does Todd taste like?” I asked with an obvious hint in my voice.
    Trisha didn’t get the hint. “He had coffee today and a peppermint.” she answered. “Not my favorite combination. There was some other weird taste, too.”
    Someone shoot me before I shoot her.
    “I think Flip needs something.” I lied. Just as I said it Flip began waving me over. I knew he couldn’t possibly hear me over the noise of the other students, so the chance that he motioned that exact moment was almost amazing. But then again, he always had great timing. “See? I should see what he wants.”
    Trisha grabbed my arm. “What would Peter say if he knew you ditched me after a solid promise?”
    “Don’t even go there, babe. I came, I sat, you kissed. Promise fulfilled.”
    Flip’s waves were more frantic now, his face in a hard frown.
    He must really want something, I thought. I pulled out of Trisha’s grip. “Something’s wrong. I have to check it out.”
    I picked my way through outstretched legs – one belonging to Smith purposely trying to trip me – to where my two best friends sat. The bus driver glared at me from the rearview mirror, but she wouldn’t object to any student out of their seat. There was a rumor she hated kids more than her job and was just itching for an excuse to “hit a bump” and watch someone hit the floor. Thankfully no “bumps” were around for her. Flip scooted over to make room.
    “You might as well sit; you won’t want to go back there.”
    There went Flip and his obvious yet cryptic BS again. I already didn’t want to go back there, he probably already knew that, but won’t was a little iffy since I had ditched her. But I didn’t have time to voice that. Someone screamed. The sound was so high it vibrated the windows. Every head on the bus, including the driver’s, turned to look at Trisha. She had scooted to the edge of the seat, leaning out over the isle as far as she could without falling. Hunched over, Todd was gripping the back of the seat in front of them, vomiting. On her. Gross. Trisha began making a noise that was between a scream and hyperventilation. Her eyes had nearly bucked out of her head. Todd was making his own out of the ordinary sounds; the sloshing and choking sounds coming from him were loud enough to hear between his girlfriend’s cries. It was a scene of totally utter grossness and hilarity at its finest. Other students either laughed or shied away from the nasty view as the driver tried to handle the situation and keep the bus on the road at the same time. Todd released another spew of chunks onto Trish’s skirt, who continued to make inhuman sounds. Then the smell hit and it wasn’t so funny anymore. Everyone scrambled to open the windows in spite of the wet air outside.
    Like I said; promise fulfilled. I wasn’t going back.
    “How did you know?” I took the seat next to Flip.
    “I can hear a sick dude a mile away.” he said proudly.

~

    “Roll call.” Mrs. Simmers announced.
    Students raised hands or announced their presence as the teacher called them. Joshua Smith was in another of my classes again this year, along with Liam Jones and Todd Cheacks. Though I really can’t say how there Todd was face down on his desk. It seemed like everyone I knew had been assigned to my homeroom except Trisha. Though, I didn’t know a lot of people, so that wasn’t saying much.
    “Donovan William Anders?”
    “Here” Donnie called from the seat across the room.
    This year homeroom was nearly full with only three empty seats in the back of the room. Last year everyone had skipped zero period until the principal wised up and started handing out detention. It took students – I included – half a month to realize we couldn’t continuously get off school grounds anymore without security tracking us down. Photo sharing at school and tagging ourselves at our favorite hang out spots turned security into pro detectives. Groundings had started getting old and people began showing up for homeroom. That being said, some of us still tried to pull something funny by having friends raise a hand or two to make it seem like no one had cut. It was stupid and just made things worse. Now pulling that kind of funny got both parties a week of after school sitting and teachers started calling students by their full names and handing out pink slips if there wasn’t a verbal answer. Parents had promptly agreed, thus humiliating many of their children.
    “Theodore Cheacks.”
    Todd groaned loudly.
    “Claudia Orozco.”
    “Here.”
    “Joshua Andi Desden?”
    “As always, I’m here.” A desk to the side, Flip stood up, announcing as if he were some heroic figure. “Here to learn, here to grow, here for lunch, here for you!”
    “And sometimes I wish you weren’t.” the teacher retorted. She waited for the laugher to stop. “Evangeline Tabatha Florence?”
    “Here.” I hid a fit of giggles as Flip bowed, realizing there’d be nothing else directed toward him from the teacher. “Again.”
    When roll call was done, students worked on different things during homeroom. For me it was last night’s homework and reading. Mrs. Simmers walked along the isles, confiscating three cell phones from two different girls. From his seat by the window, Donnie shifted his wrist so his watch caught the light and bounced it right into my eyes. Seeing me look over at him, my friend grinned mischievously. Every day he got me with that trick. I used to throw paper at him, but without any prompting I had decided that that was childish. Thus I had found other ways. Making sure the teacher wasn’t watching, I stuck my tongue out at him. That made Donnie grin more and give an “I’m watching you” gesture. He could watch me all he wanted since I wasn’t going to pay him any attention right then. Just because he didn’t have anything to do didn’t mean I’d let him distract me from my work. Distractions were the job of my attention span. When the bell rang students piled out of the room. The halls were crowded as Flip and I said our goodbyes to Donnie until lunch and made our way to our next class.
    Science. Mr. Odyent – or Dr. Odd as students knew him – reprimanded any students for entering the class a second after the bell rang. His room was one of the more …disciplined classes due to the strict punishments for unruly behavior. Though his eyes were consistently red and squinty, the man never missed a thing. Still, Odyent seemed to overestimate how unruly teenagers could be and drummed up unneeded enticement. I had the luxury of both sitting next to Flip and in the front of the class. Temptation much? Kinda sorta. Dr. Odd did everything in his limited teaching power to make his students miserable. He sat them next to their friends, tempting them to talk to each other, and for the most part kept his back to the class as he did his teachings. When the temptation was too much for anyone with little control not to talk to whoever was next to them, Mr. Odyent would whirl around and smack them both with a week of detention. Two weeks for anyone who thought themselves sneaky enough to get away with passing notes. He even applied the time tested method of telling the student to come to the front of the class to read it. That brings up another reason Mr. Odyent was called Dr. Odd. If he spoke directly to you he growled and made sure to stand in front of your desk and stare down on you as he smacked his hands with every word. It was the single most annoying thing for anyone in his class.  
    All right, maybe all that stuff wasn’t totally unbearable if, but when you were trapped in a room with him for what felt like years, it drove you nuts. Hell, it drove all of us insane enough that some students had started weekly podcasts conspiring about why the teacher was so weird. Now Odyent headed toward the back of the room, his …interestingly shaped body squeezing though the isles. The should-have-been suspecting victim looked away from her friend just in time to look disappointed in herself for getting caught. She and her friend received detention and class went on as normal – or Odd.
    Math class was next. The most boring of classes that none of my friends were in. That didn’t make it boring. The fact that I was bad at math made it boring.
    Then outside to P.E with Trisha and Todd. Mr. Peaters – possibly the only person in the entire school over twenty-one who still wore tie-dyed shirts and looked good in them – had decided yesterday that we would be playing basketball, despite the lack of boys in his third period Gym class. In turn of Todd’s incorrect assumptions about anyone with dark skin being great at every sport except swimming, I wasn’t very good at basketball. In fact, up until high school I had never touched one of those ugly orange and black dodge balls in my life. I ran across the court with the rest of my team. I didn’t care if the ball was passed to me or not since I didn’t care much for the game. But it was incredible how seriously some students were taking the sport. A good few of them on my team really hustled. That’s the term for running around quickly with the ball, right? I was tempted to remind them that we weren’t graded on winning, just playing, but in the end the teacher did it for us.
    One more class before lunch – the only class that even during school was so not worth mentioning because it was nothing but just there: language arts. So, I’m not going to take a moment to mention it. Only because most of the school was convinced that this particular language arts teacher didn’t know how to teach that class. She literally would just give us a book every two weeks, tell us to read it, and never bring it up again. When we did have a test or some important assignment it was more for spelling than anything else. In some weird way we students felt ripped off. But that’s what I would say if I was going to mention it, which I wasn’t.
    The noise in the lunch room was ten times as loud as the noise on the school bus. The mass of bodies and movements kept the space warm despite the cooler weather outside. I met with Flip and Donnie at a table pushed close to the corner, tucked away from the majority of just about all the other tables. It wasn’t something we had done to exclude ourselves; the table had been moved there a while ago to be fixed and was never put back. My group just took advantage of that when we couldn’t sit together anyplace else. As always, Flip had his lunch already. His appetite was always vigorous. Along with his mad assortment of food, on the table in front of him sat a stainless steel thermos. He drank some sort of homemade energy drink from it at least twice a day, every day, but absolutely refused to let anyone else try any. So while he held our table, Donnie and I went to stand in the lunch line with about a thousand other people. There was something going on way in front of us in the line, right before it split to two isles. The word slow was laughable for the pace we were going.
    So much for eating. I let out a groan, accidently catching Donnie’s attention. Turning back away from me, he leaned slightly out of the line to try and see why things were moving so slowly. Straightening up, he tapped on the girl’s shoulder in front of us, whispering and gesturing ahead. In response she would shrug. Then Donnie put his hand on her shoulder. Super charm powers activate. Blushing insane, the girl stepped out of the way, pulling aside her two friends who had been listening. My friend gave them a confused look like he couldn’t believe they were letting us cut. Knowing him, he probably doesn’t know why. He could charm Spring into coming early and still not know where the flowers came from. Giving the girls a gracious thank you, he brought me forward to our new spot. Then he did it again with the next four or five people in front of us. Donnie smiled at me. Maybe it’s not so accidental after all.
    I shook my head. “You have afterschool today, right? Are we waiting for you to get out of track and wrestling?”
    “Track, yes. I quit wrestling.” He grabbed a tray and headed down the line of food.
    “Your mom’s going to be disappointed.”
    “She’ll live.” he shrugged. “I’ve told her before I like running better. And I really did try to like wrestling. I just couldn’t get into it.”
    In a way I found that amusing. Donnie didn’t have a runner’s body.  
    I gave a little nod. “So are you dropping out of home economics and changing electives, too?”
    “Nah, I think my dad is right: A man needs to know how to cook in case he never gets married.”
    “Your dad says that? Can he cook?”
    “He can cook a trial, just not a meal.”
    Figures.
    We made our way back to the table, talking about what after school activity Donnie might take up to appease his mother. Flip was half finished with his lunch, which had been stuffed with food to begin with. As we sat down, he pointed to one side of the room. Trisha and Todd were approaching.
    Abort, I thought at them as if that would make them change course. Abort. You are not welcome in our air space. It didn’t work.
    “I need a hug.” Trisha reached us first, her bottom lip already sticking out. “I’ll never get the stain out.” she whined. “Everyone is laughing at me. Cheer practice is going to suck today.”
    “No they’re not. Half the people in school don’t know where the stain came from. Besides, you’ll just get home, open a fashion magazine only to find that that dress is so five days ago, and either throw it out or try to give it to me.” I said and cringed knowing it was the truth. “By the way, cheerleading sucks anyway.”
    That was all it took for Trisha to burst into a rant on the pros of cheerleading and how so cool it was and how awesome it’d look on her collage resume and how I should join. And I so did not give a lizard’s scaly butt crack because there was no way in the deepest pits of Hell’s basement toilet that I would go flipping around the way she did. She seemed to have forgotten that I had done cheer early on in junior high and only Papa had seen how much I didn’t like it. Nothing personal against it, it just felt silly for me and if I wanted to look silly every day I would do a ton of other things. But I knew saying that would upset her so I kept my mouth shut until the bell rang. That alone felt like forever and it was almost scary how much I was looking forward to my next three classes. Especially history.