Brian woke up on Sunday morning to his little sister's incessant knocking. "Briian! Mom says it's time for Church! Get Up!" she said impishly. "I'm up!" Brian said before he rolled over and went back to sleep.
He hadn't slept well the night before, after the day he had. Almost as soon as he got home, the doubts started in on him, and they didn't let up when he tried to go to bed. At first he thought he had found four new friends, regardless of what Claire said. And then he thought to himself, would he even want to be friends with them? He thought Claire was stuck-up, he didn't know what his friends, including Larry Lester would say if he was friends with Andy. He was downright afraid of the kind of trouble that would ensue if he decided to spend time with bender, and Allison, well she stole his wallet.
Brian woke up to his Mother looking down at him, she was in her Church clothes and beamed down at him with such disdain that he would rather of gone toe-to-toe with Darth Vader than to hear what she was about to say. "You just lovve making everyone wait for you, don't you? Well we didn't wait for you, not this time. You missed church."
She made this sound like it was one of the most offensive things anyone ever committed by a human. Brian absentmindedly rolled over to take out his retainer, his mom took this as a sign of disrespect. "You can go ahead and add two days to your punishment from yesterday's ordeal. Oh, and you can grace the 6 o'clock service tomorrow morning to make up for missing church."
Eat my shorts. This is what Brian would love to of said. But instead, he just lay there motionlessly, as his mother walked out of his room with her hands on her hips. Scolding well done, Mrs. Johnson.
Brian thought of John Bender in his situation. He doubted John ever got hassled for missing church. They are probably not the church-going type of family. Claire and Andy probably went to Church every Sunday. He imagined Claire's mom staying behind to chat and gossip with all the other wealthy, Shermer moms in their identically posh Sunday best. Allison more likely than not had her own religion, he thought.
He got out of bed, and went over to his dresser and began to change into his day clothes. He looked over at the pile of clothes he had worn yesterday to detention. Putting them back on won't bring back the feeling he had walking out of Shermer High School the previous day. He started his homework at one in the afternoon, and ended it at eight at night. He got about four hours of sleep Sunday night.
Andy woke up at around noon, he was sore from yesterday's workout, he could not fall asleep. As soon as he was picked up he went for a long run with his father, of course his father pushed him, and pushed him until he had to give up. He mentally blamed it on smoking grass earlier that day. Fucking Bender, he thought to himself, that's the last time he would get stoned. His knee burned deep and it hurt even to sit up.
After his workout he and his parents sat down to talk about colleges. The deadline was approaching for his admission process. He had two schools to pick between, Minnesota, and Iowa. Two Big Ten schools, both with good wrestling programs, both offering him sizeable scholarships to get him through school.
He had never been to either school; he had never been to either state, although he had a strange dream that he became a coach for a boy's hockey team in Minnesota. He remembered something about geese, who knows, he was a wrestler. And he was going to be a wrestler in college. It was that or good old Oakland Community College, working and attending class from home. He would have preferred to go to a nice small college in a city, but that just wasn't in the cards.
He thought about the kind of schools his new 'friends' would go to. Brian to an ivy-league school or something like that. Claire to some private school where she could join a sorority and spend her days with her polo-clad boyfriend. Bender, well Bender was probably going nowhere. It is a shame because as much as Andy hated to admit it, he knew Bender had the mind, and the body to get him into and through college. But instead of having a father who pushed him too far he had a father who pushed him too far back. Allison however, she could go places, she was artsy, intelligent, and really cute. Well he didn't think being cute would get her into college, but she was a junior and didn't need to be thinking about these things.
"Andrew! Your father needs help out back! Come down and I'll fix you some breakfast after you finish up!" Andrew's mom yelled. Andrew was snapped out of his thought, and he got up, pulled a sweatshirt and jeans that would keep him warm and he headed out to help his father with some yard-work.
Andy spent the rest of the day watching TV and relaxing his knee for the hard week of practice that would follow.
Claire sat down on the sofa in her room after just returning from Church. She decided against going shopping at the mall with her mom. She looked over at the stack of homework she had to do for Monday. She thought of the assignments she had to do for tomorrow, and then she thought of something else that was due tomorrow.
She didn't know why she gave away her earring, and she didn't know why she snuck into a janitors closet for that asshole. Then she thought, wait, he was locked in a janitor's closet. He was actually locked in that janitor's closet. What if there had been a fire? Then she thought of him saying "I think violating fire code, and endangering the lives of students would be unwise at this junction in your career, sir." Claire laughed at that how he seemed to be so uneducated and barbaric, yet he had such a puckish eloquence, what a smartass.
She wondered what he was doing, well she knew very well that he wouldn't be awake at 1 o'clock on a Sunday. She then wondered what her fellow detentioneers were up to on the cold March Sunday. Andy was working out, Allison was in a corner looking at a wall, Brian was studying, or watching Star Trek. She already established that John Bender was asleep right now, but she wondered whether it was in his own bed, the bed of a girl he 'considered', or he was waking up in the Shermer police department's holding cell. Either way, she decided not to care.
Claire's phone rang, and she picked it up. "Hey Claire, what's happening?" her friend Jules asked. "Nothing just sitting in my room, procrastinating on some homework," Claire replied. "How was detention yesterday?" "It was boring, Vernon's a huge jerk, but Andy Clark was there, and a few other kids you don't know." "That sounds lame, so why didn't you come out last night?" "I don't know, didn't feel like giving my parents something to argue over," "That depressing, well give me a call later, I might go to the mall a little later if you want to come?" "Thanks, maybe, I'll call you later."
The truth is, she ended up enjoying detention more than she would ever have anticipated. She thought again about those four 'friends,' she still had no idea what would become of this. Before going downstairs to make some tea she thought about John Bender and prayed he hadn't pawned off her earring for drugs. Even if she did partake in the highly questionable act.
She spent the rest of the day chatting with her girlfriends, catching up in a few of her classes and had dinner with her family at the country club.
Allison looked up from the little nest she made herself in her bed; she did not sleep last night. Instead, she pulled an all nighter finishing a particularly challenging piece of art. She was sitting crosse-legged crouching down over her new work. She had obsessed over it, she worked as hard as she could to perfect it.
Her water colors were all over her bed, her hands were filthy and the only thing she used to clean up were a few paper towels before she resorted to using her bed sheets. She looked down at her work; it was a colorful piece (black, white, and gray) In her mind, at least. In the center of the piece were five gray trees surrounded by a whole forest of black trees. She looked at the unused colored supplies, and she eyed a container of green, she was going to have to wait for her artistic inspiration before she could use it.
She thought of the people who were going to ignore her tomorrow. She thought about day before when she walked out of Shermer High School thinking she had a boyfriend, and a few new friends. Well she mostly thought of her new boyfriend, then she realized that she probably not going to have a boyfriend on Monday. She thought about calling him, just to clear up any confusion that might end up hurting her.
She rummaged through her drawers in hopes of finding the school phone book, but could not find it. She knew she had it, but had never used it, perhaps she threw it out. This is unlikely, she didn't throw anything away, her room was littered with odd items, happy meal toys, garbage, old paintings, paper, pens, clothes, an Atari videogame set she stole.
She doesn't have a television of her own, and her parents were not the type to share it with her. She entertained the idea of giving it to Brian, he could always use something nerdy like this, Bender would break it, and she didn't want all her hard work to go to waste. Andy might like it, but she would never know how to give it to him. Claire, Allison laughed at the thought of Claire having fun with a video game.
Allison spent the rest of her day in her room, except for one trip to the kitchen to get a piece of lettuce, two trips to the bathroom, and one trip to the living room to retrieve her TV-dinner. It is unknown what she did with the piece of lettuce.
John woke up in his friend Spencer's basement. He was both on the couch, and off the couch. His jacket had apparently been stolen by one of the other inhabitants of this basement and used as a blanket. He spotted the thief and retrieved it accordingly (he kicked them person until they let go). He sat down on the couch and took a look around, mtv was running in the back of the basement on a beat up box.
It hadn't been a great night, he didn't returned home after detention, he went straight to his buddy's house and hung out. He was out of weed due to the events in detention. He didn't mind, it was well worth it to get a nerd, and two preps stoned. He didn't know if Allison got high or not, she was always high in some way or another he bet. He and his friends hung around they're basement kicking it to tunes passing around an 'expertly liberated' bottle of whiskey.
He felt his new 'accessory' on his left ear. He was crazy to believe that she actually gave it to him, and he hadn't thought about yesterday's happenings yet. He didn't want to think about it. He thought about all of them, where they were, what they were doing. Andy working out to his slave-driving father's whips. Bender wondered if his father actually had whips to drive his son onto the state wrestling championship. That would certainly something that he would sympathize about. But John hated thinking about stuff like that. Brian was studying, he knew this. Allison was, well he would absolutely love to know what kind of stuff that girl gets into. Claire was in her castle, thinking about shoes, she already forgot about him he bet.
"Dude, what happened to Jack and Christian? I thought they were supposed to crash here," John's groggy friend Spencer who appeared to have just woken up asked him. "Those fags were either a.) at home getting a bedtime story from their mom, or b.) professing their undying love to each other, and making out," John replied, John's two friends Jack and Christian were inseparable, not dissimilar from Spencer and John's other friend Brent. John was kind of odd-man-out in that group of kids. They had some sort of a crew, they all got high together, they all backed each other up, and they all loved to sit around and do what 'burners do': make fun of people who think that their life revolved around Shermer High School.
John left Spencer's house for the long, cold, trek back to his house. He was 'welcomed' by his father at the door, he was ignored by his father at the door. John sat around all day watching a few old movies on his beat up television set, he read some old comics, and listened to music before tracking down some dinner and shutting himself in his room to enjoy some 'quiet time'.