"Guess what today is!" Mrs. Carmichael said as soon as she entered the classroom. I looked up from my notebook then looked at the board for the answer. Nothing was written on it. I should've figured that but I had to do the obvious thing.
"A free day?" A kid answered. The english teacher shook her head.
"Nope! Today is the first day of your new project!" She said in a sing-song voice. I, along with everyone else in the class, groaned. Another project? Hadn't we finished one last week? Now she wants to start another one? Great. "Come on everyone, cheer up! This project will be a cinch! Trust me!" The teacher added, trying to get some people enthusiastic. She had told the class that last time and guess what happened? There was so much stuff we had to do for it that half the class, including me, didn't meet the deadline. There were so many details to it.
"What is the project about Mrs. Carmichael?" Chet asked from beside me.
"Glad you asked Chet! This, my class, will be about your best friend."
My interest was caught. On our best friend? Seriously? Wait, there had to be a catch. She wouldn't just make this as easy as it sounds. I know it.
"You will be writing a two page essay about your friend," She said, walking to her desk to get some papers, "now these will tell you everything you need to have and know about your best friend." She slapped the stack down on Brinker's desk and Brinker nearly jumped. He sighed then got up to pass them all out. "I forgot to add but don't forget to put a picture of you and your best friend on there too!"
When the paper was set on my desk, my eyes scanned the paper. We need to know their birth date, where they were born, interests, hobbies, favorite food, favorite color, eye color hair color, weirdest thing they've ever done, role model, views on the school, and other random things. We also had to write about why they were our friend. Sounded easy enough. "Why's this extra credit?" A person asked. Extra credit? I turned my head and saw one of the guys pointing toward the bottom of the paper. I looked down at the paper to read it but it was quickly taken off of my desk. I looked up and saw that my teacher was holding it up for the class to see.
"This information at the bottom," she pointed to the bottom, "does not need to be known but you can do it for extra credit."
I looked impatiently at my teacher. I didn't mean to be rude or anything but I was now curious as to what that information was. She wasn't talking to the class for a few minutes so I opened my mouth to ask her for my paper back. Before the words could even get out, she walked away with my paper. I grimaced. Of course. It had to be my paper.
"Chet," I said, trying to get the person sitting next to me's attention, "can I see you paper?" Chet looked up and held up his paper then set it back down.
"There, you saw it."
"Chet, I want to read, it." I explained, angered slightly.
"You have your own." He said passively. I glared at him.
"Our dumb teacher took off with it."
Suddenly a hand was slammed down on my desk. I quickly jumped and sat up straight in my seat. In front of me was now my teacher, fuming. "Excuse me Mr. Forrester?" She asked.
"N-Nothing Mrs. Carmichael." I stuttered. The class went silent as all their attention went to me. Why does it always get silent when you're the one getting in trouble?
"Well, this 'dumb' teacher, as you put it, isn't going to stand for such rudeness," she hissed at me, I could literally feel the daggers coming from her eyes peircing my skin, "now you, Mr. Forrester will have to write 10 pages. Typed in size 10 font." My eyes widened. That was murder! I couldn't write that much about any of my friends regardless of who they are! "I expect this to be on my desk in 10 days. It better be in my hands before the bell rings on the tenth day." She said, smiling smugly. After stating that, she walked to her desk.
"Okay, you have free time now. Talk to your friends and get answers for your essay. Gene, I seriously advize you do that now." She said, shooting another dagger at me.
Brinker and Chet lulled at my desk while everyone was talking. I set my head down, frustrated. "Gene, you okay?" Brinker asked.
"Obviously not! How the hell am I supposed to write ten pages about my best friend?!"
"Well, Finny does have alot to him. It may be easy." Brinker mused. I picked my head up.
"Who said I was going to write about Finny?"
"Well he's obviously your best friend."
"I could be writing about Leper. I'm close to him too."
"Yeah, but your closer to Phineas," Brinker explained, "like two peas in a pod."
"That makes me sound really gay, don't say that again." I said, putting my head back down.
"Well that's what I intended." Brinker said with a laugh. I snapped my head up and growled at him.
"I'm not you-" My eyes went to the teacher who was still shooting daggers. Brinker turned around and she ceised fire.
"She absolutely hates you now." Brinker said, turning back around.
"No shit."
"Sorry about what happened Gene." Chet spoke up.
"You should be! If you would've just let me look at your paper, I wouldn't have-" Brinker poked my forehead.
"Cool it Forrester."
"How can I cool it? I'm not going to be able to finish this paper in time and Ms. Carmicheal will fail me for sure!" I retorted.
"Well, do the extra credit with it. It'll take up more space in your essay."
"What is the extra credit?"
"Here, you can look at my paper." Chet offered, already shoving the paper onto my desk. I quickly pushed it off.
"Keep your own damn paper. You didn't want me to see it before, why now?"
"I was just trying to be nice." Chet sulked, picking up the paper.
"Gene, calm down." Brinker advised, "the extra credit was to find out your friend's crush."
"I see why it's extra credit," I sighed, "not all people have one and I doubt Finny does." I saw the smirk on Brinker's face and I glared at him.
"Maybe he likes your sister, he's met her before, right?" Chet asked.
"Why someone in my family?" I groaned.
"Because Finny will do anything to stay close to you without actually having you. Unless he just wants to make his move soon." Brinker prattled. I kicked him underneath my desk.
"Mr. Forrester! Such obscene behavior will not be tolerated! Apologize to Mr. Hadley then kindly come up here for your detention slip!" Ms. Carmicheal yelled across the classroom. Everyone got silent and looked at me.
"Sorry." I apologized through gritted teeth. I got up from my seat and went over to the teacher's desk.
"You will serve this after class."
"but-"
"I don't care if you have a class after this, you will serve this detention and you will make up your work for that class," She growled, violently shoving the sheet of pink paper into my hands, "now take your seat and don't so much as utter a word to anyone else."
I did as I was told like a good boy and complained in my head the whole time. With this teacher on my back about everything, how the hell will I be able to finish this project? This is probably part of her plan to get me to fail. My eyes looked over to Chet and glared. This was all his fault.
--
Fifteen minutes into this detention and the teacher hasn't stopped glaring for even a second. It's actually making me uncomfortable. I keep trying to not pay attention but that woman can glare.
The door opened and I hoped that her deadly glare was going to take a pause. Shockingly, in walked Phineas. Curiously I watched as he walked over to the teacher's desk. It was so quiet in the classroom that I could hear everything they were saying.
"Mr. Ludsbury needs Gene in the front office." Phineas said.
"Really? Where's the note?" Ms. Carmicheal snapped.
"I lost it on the way here, I'm truely sorry. I can't help that sometimes I'm paying attention to those small things, you know like a butterfly on a flower or a bug on the wall, that some things just slip my mind and end up getting lost. Although I regret doing it, that's what happens in your class but I'm excited to hear everything that happened from Gene when he gets back. Your lectures have actually gotten more and more interesting. That one about Romeo and Juliet was superb. I loved the little line about Romeo's interests in women."
"Oh yeah! the one about if they were to live, Romeo would've stopped loving Juliet and would've fallen for some other beautiful girl that walked by?"
"Yeah! That's the one!"
"I loved telling that one," She said with enthusiasm, "it was good."
"So, about Gene going to see Mr. Ludsbury, I--"
"It's quite alright, he can go." She said leniently. I hopped up from my seat and followed Phineas out of the classroom.
"Thank god for you and your smooth talking Finny," I said, relieved, "I didn't know how much longer it was until I went insane! So what does Mr. Ludsbury want?"
"Nothing." He said plainly, walking across the far common.
"Where are we going then?"
"To the tree, we're skipping class." He said with a smile.
"B-but Ms. Carmicheal will kill me if I don't get--"
"Don't worry! We'll just say Mr. Ludsbury had a good, long talk with you!"
"For what?"
"For being too smart." He said, grinning back at me. I rolled my eyes at him. With him being so laid back, it made me feel at ease. Getting in trouble felt like nothing now that I was with my friend. He made things better and he didn't even know.
I found this file on my computer! It was labeled "Essay [GeneXFinny]" I sighed and wanted to just see what it was about before deleting it because there wasn't really reason to keep it. I was reading it and I noticed that it wasn't really Gene x Finny. well it wasn't yet anyways. A few jokes cracked by Brinker about it but other than that, it was fine. It has a few errors and Gene doesn't have a sister; Finny does. I don't think I knew that when writing it and I just made it up so Brinker could tease Gene Anyways, there's nothing bad in it. No guys are kissing, no guys are saying they're gay, no guys are in love. See! absolutely nothing wrong . . . Oh yeah! I just remembered what I was thinking when writing this (and no, it has nothing to do with Ms. Carmicheal's thing with the number 10 XD I thought that was weird and complete overuse of the number) I used Ms. Carmicheal for the name of the teacher because I was looking at some sites that gave info about the movie for A Separate Peace and one of their teachers was named that so I picked one out of the list of teachers used and made them the English teacher. She probably isn't; maybe she's like a history teacher or something (lol, just found out that she was a replacement for Mrs. Patch-withers. I don't know why they didn't just stick with Mr. and Mrs. Patch-withers.) and if you can't tell I don't like Chet and Bobby for some reason. that's why Gene is angry at Chet