Beyond Chance

By Carnemelloniel

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Jake made his way through the small dark room the school supplied. It wasn't that great, but the equipment was there, and unlike most of the clubs, the students didn't have to pay to use them.

He made it to the small station he'd set up earlier, and reached into his duffel bag -- which he'd cleverly hid under the work table -- and pulled out an economy sized box of film.

"Where'd you go today?"

Jake turned around to see his cousin Rachael in the adjacent workstation.

"Oh, hey," he said, fighting to get a roll of film from the package. "I, uh, just went to go get my camera from Tom. The guy's destructive as hell," he laughed.

Rachael nodded in agreement, giving a sympathetic look to the film package that had yet to be opened. "I know that's right. How'd your prints come out?"  She leaned around Jake to look.

"Eh, not that good to me. I didn't have my camera, so it's just not the same." With a harsh pull on the last word, the film plastic broke. Jake laughed triumphantly as the film came free of the vacuum sealed wrapping.

"Life doesn't get much better than this for you, does it?" Rachael asked, thoroughly amused, and Jake stopped laughing to roll his eyes. 

"I think I'd have to agree," Jake said, and went back to his work. Maybe life didn't get much better.

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"'I don't want you to get mad? Come now, you must be kidding,' Rodney said, and then, well, I was gonna just leave, right? But it was getting so crowded I had to stay, and then the kid they were cornered picked the dude up and threw him down the exit stairs. It's was freakin' classic," Marco was saying. He had a way of catching school events that way, far enough that people wouldn't remember him being there, but close enough that he caught all the details.

"Down the stairs?" Jake asked, a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. "That must've been a must-see."

"Hell yeah, it's a 'must-see'. No one's ever done that Rodney. No one's ever done that to someone whose friends with Rodney. It's like, that kid made history." Marco sounded truly in awe, but more like he wished he'd been the one to do it.

Jake looked down on his lunch tray. His food was...his food wasn't 'food'. It was something that could probably wave back at him, or give him cancer in it's ingestion. "I think this school's made history. This has got to be the first edible form of nuclear weaponry."

Marco looked down at Jake's plate. "I told you to get the grilled cheese. But don't change the subject!" he grinned, "I haven't seen the kid since, I need to congratulate him."

"Who is this kid anyway?" Jake asked, and snagged half of Marco's grilled cheese sandwich.

Marco half shrugged, "His name's Tobias something-or-other. Don't remember the last name, but he just got here a day or two ago. He's an art student, and a writer. His homeroom's somewhere on the fourth floor. He doesn't have relatives in the school, and he never has books with him, only a sketch pad. So of course you know how Rodney and co. works: Cook the fresh meat."

"Wait," Jake said, laughing and shaking his head, "All that, and you can't remember his last name?"

"Hey, my memory's isn't what it used to be."

Granted, Jake decided he'd need to find out the story behind this Tobias kid.

[Fin part i].