Friends who happen to be Girls and Girlfriends who aren't really Friends

"I really like your friend."

"Friend?"

"Yeah," Nudge said, nodding her head. "The redheaded girl."

"Oh." Fang kept staring down at his math book. How could Anne freaking expect him to understand geometry when he could hardly multiply? It was ludicrous!

"Iggy told me that you kissed her."

He blinked. Then he looked back up at Nudge, resisting the urge to narrow his eyes at her. She just stared at him from across the dining room table where they were supposed to be doing their homework, wide-eyed and interested. Ugh.

"So," Nudge said slowly when it was obvious that Fang wasn't going to answer any indirect questions. Honestly, it wasn't like she was expecting him to. "Is she your girlfriend?"

He saw Max, who was sitting further down at the table working on her own schoolwork, stop writing for a minute before going right back to it. So she was listening.

"She's a girl," Fang said slowly. "And we're friends."

"You know what I mean."

He blinked. Then he looked back down at the workbook in front of him and let out a slight grunt.

"Ugh," Nudge groaned. "You're no fun. If I had a boyfriend, I'd tell you all about him."

Fang didn't know which would be worse; Nudge having a boyfriend or Nudge talking about her boyfriend. He decided they would both be equally horrible.

"So…" Nudge began again, glancing around the table. It was only the three of them, as the other kids had no homework. They were off playing and having fun. Honestly, interrogating Fang was just about the most fun Nudge could have, really. "Did you french her?"

Max choked on her own spit, down on the other end of the table while Fang just stared up at Nudge, not able to mask his embarrassment for once.

"Do you even know what that is?" Fang asked her as Max composed herself.

"Yes!" Nudge glared at him before making a noise and looking down at the table. "No."

"Then why would you ask that?"

"Sorry."

Shaking his head, Fang snuck another peek at Max. It wasn't like he was enjoying the fact that she too was uncomfortable. Because he wasn't.

It was, however, somewhat reassuring. Good. So Max did care.

…But that wasn't his plan all along or anything or whatever, so…whatever.

"Do you know her last name?" Nudge asked then, apparently not deterred. Why was Fang so sure she never would be?

"No."

"Do you know if she has any brothers and sisters?"

"No."

"Have you met her parents?"

"No."

"Are you friends with her friends so that you can go out on uber cute double dates?"

"No."

Nudge made a humphing noise before crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair. "Are you even sure that the two of you are boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"By the qualifications that you're giving us? No," Fang said, making a face at her. "But if you mean have I made out with her, then yes. Now would you leave me alone?"

Nudge stuck her tongue out at him before closing her science book. "I was done with my homework anyways, jerk."

And then there were two. Sigh. Fang really didn't want to be left alone with Max. Not after having just blown up at Nudge. Although, on the plus side, Max was the only one that he really trusted to help him with his homework. She seemed to be comprehending the things taught in class better than him, though that wasn't surprising. He was sure that Max was also paying a significant amount of more attention to what was being taught. He had a hard time keeping interested in something fun. If it was something like science or math that was hard enough, actually paying attention was complicated.

The problem was though that Fang didn't no how to approach Max after what had just happened. He knew that it would get under her skin, after his little confessional of sorts to Nudge, that he was talking to her. And though getting under Max's skin was always something that he enjoyed, especially when it had to do with making her jealous, he did not feel like bothering her at the moment. It had been rather awkward for them as of late for some reason and it didn't seem like it would be getting better anytime soon.

"Uh, Max?" he finally asked, glancing down at her. She wouldn't look up at him though. Sigh. Pushing away from the table, Fang slowly walked down to her end and took a seat next to her. "Do you know how to find surface arena?"

She glanced up at him with a frown. "You mean surface area?"

"…Do I?"

Smiling at him slightly, Max pushed her English work out of the way before pulling Fang's math workbook closer to her. That meant that he had to lean in close to her to see it fully…err, rather that was his excuse.

"Do you have the formulas?"

"…I'm dong math, Max. Not science."

Max let out a groan as she turned away from him to reach into her backpack on the ground. Unzipping it slowly, she rummaged around for a moment before pulling out some kind of piece of paper.

"This, Fang, is a math chart. It has formulas and conversions on it. You use it to do math problems."

He made a face at her. "Don't talk to me like I'm five."

"Maybe if your comprehension level was above that of a five-year-olds, I wouldn't have to."

Touché.

"Can you just help me?" he finally asked. "Please?"

She let out a slight sigh as she tucked some hair behind her ear, as to get it out of the way so she could see better.

"Hand me your pencil."

She did the first problem for him, showing him the whole way where he had screwed up. Fang tried really, really hard to concentrate, but it was proving difficult. This was do in part to the fact that geometry was so boring, but also because Max was wearing some kind of perfume or something and it smelled really, really nice. Where the heck did she get perfume anyways? Bless Anne for all these extra amenities that she had granted them.

He pretended to have to snort up some snot then as if he had a clogged nose or something. Max only gave him a sideways glance.

"Use a tissue, Fang."

"What are you now, Max? Royalty?"

"Just go blow your stupid nose."

"I'm fine. Really."

"Whatever," she said with an eye roll. "Do you get it now?"

"Not really."

"Well, ask questions, Fang."

Okay. Why was it that Fang could get some random girl that didn't even know him to basically offer herself up to him, but his best friend ever had suddenly become so skittish around him that he could hardly hold a real conversation with her anymore? Or how about why suddenly Max thought that it was just such a great idea to force them all to go to school and actually learn something? Or-

"Fang, I really need to get back to my homework, so-"

"Can you teach me how to multiply?"

She stared hard at him then. "What?"

Letting out a long breath, he said, "I have to use the calculator a lot. For things that you guys all seem to think is real simple. I guess I never learned how to…multiply right. Like, if it's more than by five, I get confused. And on tests we can't use calculators, so-"

"Why haven't you said something sooner?"

He just shrugged slightly. It's not like it was something he wanted to go around admitting to. It was kind of embarrassing to admit that even Gazzy and Angel knew more than him about something as simple as math.

"Do you get division then?"

"Not really. I know how to make the little house thing that the numbers go in, but after that-"

"Fang, why would you wait this long?" She smiled at him slightly and she wasn't trying to humiliate him at all. Wasn't making fun of him. She really cared. "You don't have to be embarrassed. You can tell me anything."

They had a moment then, or at least he thought they did, where they just both stared at one another for a few seconds without saying anything. Then, all of a sudden, Max seemed to snap out of it and turned to pull something else out of her backpack. A journal.

"Here," she said, opening it to a fresh page. "Let's make a times table first."

"A what?"

She just shook her head at him before beginning to make some sort of a chart.

"Did you pick this all up at school?" Fang finally asked.

"Jeb used to teach us things. Remember?" Max wasn't looking at him then. "Back before. He really liked when we'd ask questions."

"I wasn't too good at listening, I guess."

"You're just not a thinker," Max told him softly as she wrote numbers in the top row of the chart. "You're better at other things."

"Like what?"

"Well, not conversation."

"Max."

She looked up at him again, staring for a moment before getting that awkward tone again and saying, "Maybe you should ask your girlfriend for help."

"She's not…" He let out a long breath. "Yeah. Lissa."

"Yeah. You should ask Lissa for help. I'm sure she's better at this than me."

"Max-"

"I'm just saying."

That was the end of that though as Max then took him through a crash course of the multiplication table, where they found out that no, Fang did not know his times table up to five. He knew it very well up to two. Three was iffy. Four was hardly there. Five was easy though. And so was ten. The rest was hell.

But Max was nice about it. She sat there with him going over it time and time again, hardly ever getting agitated. She was a very good teacher though and she always had been. It at least gave them a chance to be around each other without being awkward and slightly annoyed. Of course, they were just talking about multiplication, but still. It was something.

And Fang would take something over nothing every single time.

"-it's not like I'm mad at her, you know? I'm just not happy with her either. I'm neutral about her. And she thinks that that means that I hate her, but I don't. You get it, right?"

Fang grunted, just staring blankly into his locker. What was he supposed to get out of it again? Oh yeah. English book. Hmmm. He was pretty sure he was supposed to have taken that home the night before and read a few chapters.

…Oh well. He knew how to multiply up to ten now. He was pretty much set for life, really.

"Nick, are you listening to me? Nick? Nick!"

He frowned, glancing at Lissa before remembering that he was now Nick. Ugh. Last time he ever lets Max pick his name. He found himself more as a…Ares or Zeus. And yes, Fang did realize those names origins and that is why he picked them. So? The hell else would you pick a name?

"What?" He closed his locker then, turning to look at Lissa. "What's wrong?"

"You weren't listening to me."

He blinked. "I was."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you weren't saying anything interesting."

They both just stared at each other for a moment before she smiled.

"You're so cute," she said, grinning at him before reaching out to take one of his hands. Oh good. She thought he was joking. …Or was that a bad thing? Ugh. Now he was going to have to hear her talk more about boring stuff. "Come on. You're walking me to class."

Frowning slightly, he allowed himself to be pulled along. It was the least he could do, after all. No, really, it was the least he could do and he did it pretty regularly. So far, his relationship with Lissa had offered very little other than making out and listening to her vent about her seemingly perfect life. Not that she didn't seem like a nice person. 'cause she did. She seemed really nice and really pretty and really caring and really just an overall stellar human being.

…Except Fang didn't know how to deal with one of those. Most of the people in his life for the most part were either rotten adults or scared children. There was hardly an in between. And because of this, he hardly ever knew what to talk to her about. Not that he really wanted to talk to her to begin with. Or anyone for that matter. So really, all in all, this whole relationship was going great. As far as their friendship though, it was a low.

So far, to compile a list, Fang knew that Lissa liked lip gloss, fingernail polish, romantic movies, celebrities, and earrings. So…basically he knew absolutely nothing.

That was okay though. He had friends. He had Iggy, who he could talk about guy stuff with, and Max, who he could talk about everything else with. So really, once again, he was set for life on that front. Lissa was just there to be a girlfriend, not a friend. And that was great.

As Lissa was tugging Fang down the hall, he happened to glance over the people they were passing. Max just so happened to be one of them, which was cool. Fang thought that they would, like, look at one another and she might smile at him or wave or something. Or maybe they'd both say hey. Err, she'd say hey and he'd grunt. Mmmm, or she'd say hey and he'd just give her a blank stare back that she was supposed to somehow decipher into his deep interest for her.

Yeah, probably the last one.

Instead, however, Max was too busy to even look at him or say hey or decipher the indecipherable stares that were Fang's silent language, because at the moment, she was talking with some…boy. Some goofy looking, brown headed idiot that Fang totally wasn't jealous of because that was just crazy. Max could talk to other guys. Even little boys like this one clearly was. At least in Fang's mind he was. A stupid boy. Fang didn't own Max though and if she wanted to talk to some…boy instead of share looks with Fang that she would never truly understand, that was fine. He understood.

But she had to understand that that meant he could talk to other girls. Even call them his girlfriend if he so chose. Because…because those were just the freaking rules! God.

"Hey, uh, Lissa?" Fang ventured then. She was talking, but he had no idea what it was about. She did that sometimes. Talked. Endlessly. Fang found it best to just let her without complaint.

"What?" She looked back at him then, smiling. See? She understood him. "Nick?"

"It's just…uh…could you help me with something?"

"With what?"

"My math homework," he said then. "At lunch maybe? Or after school we could-"

"Can't you just, like, ask your teacher or something, Nick?" She started pulling him along again. "I really don't like focusing on, like, homework outside of class, you know? It's really just a drag anyways. We should spend our time together doing fun things."

Then she winked at him and Fang forgot for a moment what he had asked her to begin with.

…Oh yeah. Damn her and her womanly necromancy. He had almost forgotten that her denying him help meant that he would have to go back to Max. How could he go back to Max now? Now that she hadn't agreed to his silent telepathic wavelengths that they should share a look in the hall and she should say hi to him so that he could give her coded stares? Huh? How do you go crawling back to someone after that?

Not to mention that boy. Ugh. Fang hated him already.

"Okay, this is my class, Nick," Lissa said, turning then to kiss his cheek. "Hurry so you're not tardy, huh?"

And then she was gone, off into some classroom. Fang only turned and headed back the way his class was. So that was the line then? Lissa was a girlfriend, but not a friend. And Max was a friend, but not a girlfriend.

"Hn," he grunted softly to himself. What else was he expecting though?

"Hey."

He glanced to his side when Max suddenly appeared there. He thought about asking her what class she was headed to, if it was the same way as his, who that guy was from before. Any of the three would have done.

Instead, he only looked her straight in the eyes and Max looked off, almost seeming embarrassed. Fang held down the smile, though it was hard. Sometimes just being friends was better.

Much better.

I haven't read School's Out Forever since, ooh, probably 2007, so any inconsistencies with that can be blamed solely on my memory.