Offering to run errands for Mrs. Penney is an excellent way to escape the horrors of math class, at least for a while. Some brilliant part of Tyler's 16-year-old mind decided that taking Foundations Math instead of standard-level Math 11 would be a good decision – that it would require a lot less effort, and sneaking a nap or two or droning out to doodle would have less of an impact on his overall ability to not fail.
However Tyler was on a certain borderline of stupidity that put him far above hopeless, and he began to realize about two classes in that Foundations Math was actually too dumbed down for his tastes. He already knew how fractions worked, at least, to the best of his knowledge, and if Lindsay Page raised her hand one more time to ask a wide-eyed, droning question that could be sufficiently answered by a sixth grader, he'd probably cry.
But at least the testing would be easy, and he'd get a seventy-something or more instead of the squeaky lower sixties he's survived with since seventh grade. Provided, of course, that he didn't come dangerously close to falling asleep during the quizzes, too.
One such instance of getting drowsy is what prompted Tyler to raise his hand when Mrs. Penney asked for a runner to retrieve the newly-issued computer logins from the office. The math room was sort of at the centre of the top floor, so he'd figured he could take the long way around and complete an entire cycle of the school hallways before returning. Sometimes, when the going gets tough in class, it's fun to find ways to waste as much time as possible, like when he and Zeke decided to run a business of rubbing everyone's erasers on the rough edges of chairs until they were pearly and white as if they were fresh from Staples. But getting a chance to actually leave the class? That was golden.
He thought, just maybe, he'd run into a random friend in the hallway and be able to waste an additional minute or two shooting the breeze. Or at the very least, he could toss a grimace into a classroom in hopes it mustered a laugh.
The first room he passed contained both Gwen Blasczyk and Alejandro Buerromuerto, and they aren't really ones for humour.
Or maybe he'd run into Noah Khosla once he got into the office. Noah was supremely gay, but he was right on, and since he had a role on student council, he was in the office literally once a day at least. Noah confided in him once that he always made sure to plan his office meetings to land during Chemistry, because Mr. Dentzel was a 'balding loser'.
But when Tyler set foot in the glass-paneled office, there was Noah, no student council members, and no Tyler-wannabes simply wasting time. There was nobody beyond the plump, curly-haired secretary, pounding her long-nailed fingers into the keys of her computer.
"Hey." He says, approaching her desk.
"What can I help you with?" the secretary replies. Her voice doesn't lose its warm, friendly tone despite being forced to answer a zillion phone calls a day.
"Um, yeah. I'm here to get my logins?"
"Which homeroom, hon?"
"Kelley Penney, 217…?"
The secretary motions for a stack of paper. She shoves a few stick-pens out of the way and browses the multitude of sheets cluttering her desk. "Oh shoot. I let Harry take them. He just went up to the computer lab. He'll be back, and then you can take your logins. Just go to the waiting area."
Part of Tyler is displeased that he needed to sit on his butt and wait, but on the other hand, the longer he sits in the waiting room, the less time he'd need to spend listening to math class, so his waiting surely has an upside.
He sits on a sparsely-padded metal chair with his legs splayed in all directions. He feels like he's at the dentist, except at the dentist's, there are usually sports magazines and good housekeeping, so he could learn about Lance Armstrong's testicles or how to make killer olive tapenade. In here, there's only pamphlets for activities he doesn't want to do.
He can spy the trophy case from here, knowing full well that any trophies featuring his name are back at the junior high school, possibly for mini handball. Things just got a lot more competitive once the kids' bodies were fully pumped with their sexual hormones.
In the glass of the trophy case, he notices the curving silhouette of a girl entering the office.
There's no reason to wear dress slacks and a button-up top to school, not on just a regular Tuesday in September. She enters with the clack-clack of three-inch heels, and by her gait, you can tell she means business.
"Hello, Courtney…" the secretary begins, usually tender voice worn a bit more thin. Clearly she's dealt with Courtney Vega before. "What can I help you with?"
But hasn't everyone had to deal with Courtney before? She tried to usurp Noah's position on student council, when everyone, even the freshmen, hell, even the grade nines who don't even go here yet, know that he's been set on president since he knew the definition of the word. She makes motions to build memorials to people who haven't even died yet.
"Yes," The freckled girl begins "Apparently there has been a mix-up, I have an unexcused absence on my record. There's no way that's right. It's only September 27th, and I have not missed a class."
"Hold on, let me look at your records." Some tapping. "It says you missed third period on the 16th."
"Well, that's incorrect. If I remember correctly, I had a doctor's appointment on the sixteenth."
"Did your parents call it in?" the secretary says, pained. "It can't be excused unless your Mom or Dad excuses it for you."
"I should suppose they did!"
"Well by the looks of things, they didn't."
"Those…" a sudden flash of darkness crosses her tanned face, breaking through her sugary diction. "I mean, well, would I be able to get them to call?"
"There's a five-day grace period for that. You had until last Thursday, so unfortunately, yes it's too late."
"This is ridiculous. I don't see why I should be punished for having a doctor's appointment! I want that unexcused absence gone!"
"There's nothing we can do about that, Courtney, if we let things get called in retroactively, people could just lie about where they were last month once they get close to the absence limit."
"Ugh." Courtney makes a small grunt. "I want to talk to the principal."
"She's busy, hon. Just…take a seat over there, next to Mr. Petrakis."
With a huff, Courtney stomps her blocky heels all the way over to the chair beside Tyler. There is no one else in the room, but she takes the chair beside his.
Her arms cross tightly, squeezing her prominent bosom. She spends a moment silent, in a pout, before finally deciding to cool down and engage her waiting room peer.
"Let me guess, you were sent to the office for another disruptive stationary fight?"
Tyler snaps into reality, coming to his own defence. "Come on! That was two years ago, let it go already! Besides, it was Duncan who started it."
"Of course it was Duncan who started it, it's always Duncan who starts things. In fact, that was the day where I first understood to what point Duncan 'starts things' and decided to at long last give up any hope of reconciliation with him!"
Tyler may not be the most perceptive person in school, but two things in her speech are immediately apparent: firstly, that reconciliation with Duncan is certainly a sore spot with her, and secondly, that she was making a bold-faced lie.
"More like you realized you were in love with him…or something."
"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not thirteen anymore. Lots of girls my age prefer 'bad boys'," she makes air quotes, "But I'm not a child. I know that bad boys are simply that, bad,"
And Tyler could tell she was making that up, too. She loved bad boys. As soon as someone did something naughty or forbidden, it can be assumed that Courtney would get a raging hard-on for them for the next couple of weeks. Whether it be Geoff's parties, Duncan's mowhawk, or even back in sixth grade when Bruce 'Lightning' Kareem got his diamond stud. Which was particularly messed up, since Lightning Kareem is like two grades behind them, and in grade six, that's tantamount to pedophilia. With any luck, Courtney never finds out that her established rival Noah Khosla smoked a blunt with Tyler and Geoff during the Summer, or else she might molest him or send him to gay camp or something. Goddamn it, Courtney.
"Whatever, Courtney." Tyler utters, reclining in his seat and splaying his legs even further.
"You still didn't tell me why you're here. Did you cut class? Did they take your cell phone away? Did get into an argument with a teacher?"
"No! It's not even your business, dude."
"Don't call me dude. People don't go to the office just to 'hang out'! Underage drinking, maybe? No, that wouldn't be a school issue."
"Why do you want me to look like a bad guy so badly?" Tyler says, jolting more erect.
"I don't. I was simply wondering how someone…" her eyes follow the line of his figure, "Upstanding like you could need to come down here. Have you been spending time with Duncan or something?"
"You need to lay off the Duncan stuff, you're like, obsessed with him."
"Am not! He's a bad egg! I can't believe I just called him a bad egg, but that's exactly what he is!" She whines.
"If she's so bad, why do you keep talking about him?"
She opens her mouth but doesn't speak. She faces forward and crosses her arms tightly again, squeezing her mass of her breasts against the edge of her dress top.
"I just came down to get the logins for my class." Tyler finally says. Courtney's expression warps slightly, a look of embarrassment laced with almost a kind of disappointment.
"But to be fair, I only wanted to run the errand so I could cut math. It blows, man."
Courtney turns to him, mouth parted. Her coffee-brown eyes, heavily skirted in mascara, gaze thoughtfully at his face. Tyler replies with tight lips and a shrug.
At that exact moment, Harry returns with the login list, and Tyler's task is nearly complete.
Tyler decided to take the long way around. The long long way around. After grabbing a cookie from the caf and strutting around the school for a good fifteen minutes, he realizes it's probably in his best interest to return to Mrs. Penney's room before someone calls a search party out on him. He runs up the stairs three at a time, remaining half of his cookie pinned in his mouth.
He reaches the top stair and shoves the last piece of the oatmeal confection in his mouth. As he chews, he hears the familiar clackity-clack of high heels.
The moment he swallows his oatmeal cookie, Courtney rounds the corner.
"What are you doing here?" She says with an accusatory tone. "Shouldn't you be back in class? It's already eleven-thirty."
"I felt like taking a walk." He says, passing her.
"Hold up." She says. He turns to her.
"Dude, you told me to get to class. Now you tell me to not go to class. What do you want?"
"You're impossible."
"I'm just minding my own beeswax, dude! Can't a guy munch on some cookies without getting hounded?" his hands flail in exasperation.
"You'll run out of absences before the first month is over!" she says in a squealing, airy, voice.
"Why do you even care?"
"You'll fail, and you're not lowlife like Duncan! You're not a bad boy!"
"I bet you wish I was!"
"I!" Her voice cracks and dissipates. She examines Tyler, wide eyed, bosom rising and falling with strong, silent heaves.
"Get back to class."
She clacks her heels against the ground double time, and hurries down the stairs.
Offering to run errands for Mr. Dentzel is an excellent way to escape the horrors of chemistry class, which Tyler, being in foundations math, probably shouldn't be taking at all. But the pH scale isn't really that hard, and the teacher said the quadratic formula will be written there for them when they need to solve problems with it.
When he runs errands, Tyler always finds a way to make the simplest excursion take the longest time possible. Under the guise of having a particularly arduous bowel movement, he can surely find the time to sneak a good ten minutes of handicapped bathroom stall make-out time with Courtney.
Of course, only if she has an off-period.
This is the first thing I ever posted here that isn't 1st person and isn't Noah-centric! So it's really different using Tyler as my focus instead. He isn't as wordy or thoughtful so I couldn't be as flowery, but on the same note, he's a lot more innocent and fun than cynical Noah. Also I'm totally in love with him, he's like my favorite male character along with the Noco boys. He doesn't get enough love! So in this story, he will get love. Literally. And with everybody. Enjoy!