Author: Servo Blue
AUTHOR'S NOTE: =============
This chapter is a bit longer than the first two, and I am totally aware of the fact that there is no sex yet. Trust me. I know these things. But stick around, and they'll get to it. ;)
DISCLAIMER: ==========
This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The author asserts all legal and moral rights (copyright (c) 2000 - Inverse@mindless.com) to this work and you may not copy it or transmit it in any way except in its entirety and with this disclaimer. Same old, blah, blah, blah.
The Out-Crowd ===========
Part 4: Loose Ends
"Oh my god," said Jeremy, looking at the accoutrimental warzone of my bedroom floor. "You DO need help."
"I told ya," I said, working my way through the junkyard to sit on my bed. Jeremy followed and plopped down beside me.
"First thing's first," he said, looking around then standing up and facing the bed. Then, pointing with both index fingers, he dclared,"The bed cannot be here. It must be there." He pointed to the wall perpendicular to the wall with the big ol' window.
"It must?" I asked, smiling at his appearant decor know-how.
"Oh, it must, my friend," said Jeremy. "It must."
We shoved a bunch of the junk on my floor to the doorside wall and moved the bed to it's predetermined destination. The same went for the computer desk, the t.v. stand, the slightly fancy antique-ish dresser that was willed to my mom when her mom died. Then it was down to unpacking all of the "little" stuff.
Jeremy made a point of knocking the green and yellow lava lamp, as well as a severe majority of my clothes, or as he calls them, colorful rags. We went on for some time, making fun of each other based on the junk we unpacked for my room, and by 6:00, we had only a few things left. I was hanging up another box of plaid button-up shirts when he picked up a luggage style case, while sitting on my bed.
"What is--whoa, this sucker's heavy--what is this?" he asked.
"Wait one minute, and I'll show you," I said, ready for his reaction.
I turned around and took the case from him. I set it on the floor and opened it, still not letting him see what gorgeous treasure it held. Then, I pulled it out and slipped my arms through the straps. At first, he stared at me and my accordian with his mouth hanging open. Then, as I started to play a jumpy little tune, he fell backwards laughing. He was in convulsions for quite some time, but managed to recover before I ended my song.
"What?" I asked, smiling at him.
"You are such a dork!" He yelled, and started laughing again, but not as hard as before. "Where did you get that thing?!"
"New Orleans, baby," I said in a Conan O'Brian "sexy" voice, which is meant to sound more pathetic than sexy.
"New Orleans?" he said, sounding surprised.
"You've never been?" I responded in a snooty tone.
"I thought you were from Ohio."
"I am. Family trip six years ago."
"You started playing that mechanical monstrosity when you were ten?"
He had a huge smile on his face, and his eyes were almost too big for his skull.
"Yup. And kudos on the alliteration."
"Kudos?"
"Nevermind." I said, realizing I'd lost him.
"Isn't that a candy bar?" he asked.
"Oh my god, nevermind!" I said, getting loud and grabbing my head, acting like his answer had hurt my brain. He just laughed.
"Well, dude," he said, standing up and looking around. "I think we did a pretty good job."
"I'm afraid I'd have to agree with you there, bud," I said, putting the accordian away. I stood up and motioned for him to follow as I went down the stairs.
"Let's go see what we got to munch," I said.
"Sweetness!"
Halfway through the living room, I stopped dead in my tracks as a couch pillow slammed against the back of my head. I turned around and gave Jeremy the angriest death-look possible on my cute little face. He looked terribly sorry.
"Oh, dude, I'm sorry--but it was a throw pillow, right?"
I felt my expression change involuntarily from angry to 'what the hell?', but before I could think about what he'd just said, he'd thrown himself at my stomache and leveled me to the floor. Instinctivly, I grabbed him by the belt and flipped him over me, giving him a suplex on the hardwood floor.
"Outside, please," my mom said, and she opened the door in the kitchen to the backyard.
Jeremy had spun around and was holding my arm behind me in an uncomfortable but not quite painful manner. As he forced me outside, he gave an extremely polite 'thank you, Mrs. Blazer,' and she shut the door. Right away, I hooked my right foot behind his right knee and jerked it forward, causing him to lose his balance and his grip on my arm. He'd landed facedown, and I rolled over to him. I put my knee in his back and grabbed both of his forearms, lifting them up and pulling, causing his shoulders to raise and his back to bend against my knee. The poor boy seemed to know very little of how to wrestle.
"Give up," I said.
"Never," he said, his voice struggling.
"Give UP!" I said, in a powerful tone.
"Never!!" he yelled, so that the whole block must've heard. He gave a swift kick to my upper back with his right leg, and I fell forward, crashing over him. He wriggled out from under me, and I regained my footing, but at the instant I was poised and looking, his shoulder slammed into my breastbone and he had leveled me once again.
For a second, I just laid there, catching my breath, realizing he had pinned me and won. I looked up at him, and the expression on his face was one of 'You thought you had me beat, huh?', but a second later he snapped back to his usual self, and then to a worried kinda look.
"Oh, no," he said, as he stood up. "Shit."
"What?" I asked, sitting up.
He turned around, and swore again, but I couldn't tell what he said for sure, just the forceful tone in his voice. He had his hands up, holding his head. I stood up and walked towards him.
"Hey, what's wrong? Are you O.K.?" I asked. I put a hand on his shoulder, but he threw me off and spun around, glaring.
"I gotta go," he said, sounding either scared of pissed off.
"Jer--"
"I SAID.... I gotta go."
And with that, he just walked off and disappeared into the darkness of our yard, reappeared on the sidewalk in the streetlight beams, and vanished down the street.
I stood there for quite some time, trying to figure out what had happened-- what I'd done--to make him just leave like that. This was, indeed, the most mindwarping day in the history of my life.
I went back inside, said goodnight to my mother without really waiting for a response, and went up to my room. I grabbed a pair of boxers and pajama pants, and went across the hall to take a shower.
I didn't sleep too well that night, partly because of Jeremy, partly because of Micheal, Partly because of Rudy, and partly because of orientation the next morning.
Then the radio came on.
Damn.
I got up and looked at myself in the full-length mirror that fit perfectly in my closet. I looked like I was dead. Then again, I had also just gotten up.
I went in to the bathroom, did my stuff, and came out squeaky clean. I got dressed wearing dark grey cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a tie-dyed short sleeve dress shirt over it, of course, left unbuttoned. When I got downstairs, I met the first surprise of the day: Wally was there to walk me to school.
He was wearing blue jeans and a red and black Billabong T-shirt. He looked at me and his face lit up.
"You know you're going to school, right?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. What a dumb question.
"And you know you'll get your ass kicked for that?" he asked, still smiling and waving a hand at my current attire.
"Nonsense," I said, confidantly, "I got style."
Wally laughed, as I grabbed a quick glass of milk and about three cream filled doughnuts. I offered him a few, but he declined and reminded me that we had a schedule to keep.
We got to school in about twenty minutes, walking of course, and we talked of a few things, but I didn't mention any of my brain chomping questions to him because I didn't want to pester him with things that were most likely stupid things to dwell on anyway.
I walked into the building and Wally showed me the office but had to get to class. He wished me luck, and I walked in. A very, very old lady looked at me through glasses that were thick enough to make the Hubble jealous.
"Are you it?" she said in a creepy old lady voice.
"What?" I asked, slightly taken aback by being referred to as an "it".
"We have a new student starting today. Is it you?" she asked, much more clearly now.
"Oh, yes. That's me. Casey Blazer."
"Mr. Spalding's office is back there," she said pointing to a door behind her. "I'll see about getting your schedule printed out."
"Thank you," I said, heading to see my new arch nemesis.
I knocked on the door, and heard a gruff 'Come in,', and decided to do just that. I walked in and saw a fairly tall man with jet black hair around the sides of his head, but none on top, black wire rimmed glasses, and a black suit. 'Must be a special agent', I thought.
"Hello there, young man," he said. "I'm Principal Spalding. You must be Casey."
"That I am," I said, still not sure of what to make of this new adversary.
"Well, Casey, I want you to feel right at home here at Stonewood High, so I'd like to show you around to make you a bit more familiar with your new surroundings. Sound good?"
"Sure does," I said, more enthusiastically than I meant, but it was still better than actually starting some kind of class.
We walked around the building--the ENTIRE building--and took up only the first two periods. What stunned me was that he not only showed me the different parts of the school, but also gave me a breif history lesson on each nook and cranny he could find. He showed me the cafeteria, and told about the odd phenomenon of the at least yearly kitchen fires that none of the cooks could explain. He showed me the auditorium, and went on forEVER about the necessity of proper lighting structures and seat placement. He showed me the gym, followed by the locker room, followed by the pool, and I swear, every other sentence out of his mouth was "And again, safety is of the greatest value. Horseplay is entirely out of the question, I can't stress that enough." But, finally, we ended up back at his office.
"Well," said Mr. Spalding, picking up a peice of paper from his desk and examining it, "I suppose you're ready to start your day?"
"I suppose I am," I said. He handed me the paper--my schedule.
"Well, here's your schedule, Casey--"Then he glanced out the window from the office to the hall, as the bell for second period had rung. He waved at a kid that I couldn't see yet. "Shelby, come over here," he said.
A few seconds later, a kid came through the crowd. He had a pair of blue jeans that were probably two sizes too big, a white sweatshirt, and black T-shirt over it, which held the Decepticon insignia. I knew this kid was cool right away.
"What's up, boss?" asked Cool Kid.
"Shelby, this is Casey Blazer. He's Stonewood's newest member. Casey, this is Shelby Jet. Shelby, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind showing Casey around as much as possible?"
"Hey, no prob, Bob. Taken care of." said Shelby. He put his arm around my shoulders and we walked off.
"So, did Spalding give you the whole sha-bang about Stonewood's historical heritage?"
"Not really," I said. "Just the unexplained grease fires."
We laughed. Shelby really was pretty cool, and his manner of speech was obviously complete originality. He showed me to my third period: Art. I expected to see him leave, but it turns out he and I had the class together. Ah, the joys of photo realism. His was already half-finished; a picture of a Jack-in-the-Box with a dagger-style blade shoved into it's head. The really scarey part was that it was a polaroid of his own. He promised to show me his "collection of scarey stuff" some day.
Fourth and fifth period were Shelby-less, although he did find me to show me where to go. Fourth period was geometry upstairs, and Fifth period was English, the sinlge most useless class for anyone in the eleventh grade.
But after fifty minutes of a subject I know everything about, I met Shelby to go to lunch.
We walked into the cafeteria, and Wally and Kate were sitting at a nearby table. They waved, and I waved back.
"Who ya see, boss?" asked Shelby.
"A couple friends of mine. Wally and Kate." I said, not really looking at him.
"Oh," he said. He seemed kind of disappointed, but he went over with me anyway. We sat down beside each other, facing Kate and Wally.
"Hey, look, Wally; Shelby made a new friend," said Kate, smiling.
"What, with this fool?" said Wally.
"Hey, now, don't be raggin' on Casey, here. He's a regular hep cat." said Shelby, and with that we all laughed.
"So how goes the first day?" asked Kate.
"Not too bad," I said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I got to miss my first two classes, I got myself yet another friend, and there's just two classes to go."
"That's the spirit," said Wally. He was going to follow it up with another comment, but Kate interrupted him.
"So what are you doing this weekend? For fun, I mean," she said.
"Fun?" I asked. "I don't do fun. I use my weekends stricly for pain and boredom."
"Seriously," Kate said with a smile.
"I don't know! It's Monday!" I said.
"Wanna go see a movie?" she asked, then added,"as a group, I mean."
"I...I guess."
"Cool. I'll be right back, boys." she said, and she got up and disappeared into a crowd of people.
All three of us watched her go. Shelby whistled. I looked at him.
"What?"
"I didn't say a thang, boss," he said, raising his hands in a surrender form.
"You workin' double-time or what, man?" asked Wally, chuckling and poking at his cafeteria spaghetti. I looked quickly between the two of them.
"Double-time?" asked Shelby. "Man, he IS good."
Wally laughed.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked. I hate being left totally in the dark. Wally looked at me with a 'duh' look on his face and suspended his fork above his meal.
"You mean you didn't just hear Kate pull a 'Micheal' on you?" asked Wally.
"A wha--" I stopped when it dawned on me. Kate had just asked me out, but in the style of Micheal, she was gonna have other people around so I didn't think it was a date. "Oh my god. How'd I miss that?"
"I guess you're just not the sharpest bulb in the sky, Case." said Shelby.
"Wait a minute--" I said, looking up at Wally again. He choked on a bite of spaghetti. "Whattaya mean 'double-time'?" Wally swallowed and started laughing.
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....To Be Continued....
Any Comments or Criticism go to me at Inverse@mindless.com