PREVIOUSLY...
The laptop's screen turns black. M&M goes over to restart it, but it won't turn on. "Well, this is strange…" he says musingly.
"UGH! Forget it! Looks like we're gonna have to share again," I say.
The rest of this afternoon went – not too bad actually. It's really strange. We got some of our ideas in place.
"This is the key to unlocking both of your potentials – to healing an ancient wound. Use it well; use it wisely. And with that, I depart."
Okay. No way. There's no way this is happening...
I have got to get that idea out of my head.
But, maybe, by the slimmest of chances, was mutant guy right? Is the laptop really the way M&M and I are going to settle our old fight?
No! NO!
Out, out, out!
I knock my hand against my forehead to physically clear that disturbing thought.
"Folding T? Are you okay?" M&M asks with a CapriSun straw in his mouth. (We had helped ourselves to refreshments during the arduous studying session. I have a brownie. Hee, hee, hee! I love brownies! Ahem, sorry about that. I didn't mean for that to slip. Just… forget I said anything.)
"Huh?" I look up and try to smile. "Yeah, I'm fine."
M&M doesn't look like he completely believes me, but since we're sworn enemies and all, he doesn't push it.
Chapter 3
"Hey, you know what's weird?" I ask M&M, drumming my fingers on the table. It annoys the heck out of him.
"What?" M&M replies. His voice is strained; his hands are gripping his pencil to prevent themselves from flying up to protect his ears from the rat-a-tat-a-tat. Rule number one of an age-old rivalry: Never let your opponent know they are winning. That little, unspoken rule really tests our self-control sometimes.
We're in English right now. Our teacher told us to get with our partners and refine out theses for the paper due at the end of the next week. For most of our classmates, that means going through the finer points of their positions and really deciding what they want to say. For M&M and I, it means going through this huge list we made the last (literally) time we were in the library and pick a topic. Yeah…we're a little behind. We may be good readers, but we are definitely not good compromisers.
It's like déjà vu with the reading choices list all over again. I really hope the teacher won't stick his hand in our business again. It's bad enough that M&M and I, of all the possible project partner combinations in the world, got stuck with Romeo and Juliet, of all the possible project readings in the world. We don't need to exacerbate issues by having the teacher say something like, "Why don't you discuss the emotions of the main characters before, during, and after their romantic entanglement? It's the only topic left on the list. Bwah ha ha ha!"
Okay, so maybe I'm going overboard. There isn't really a list of prescribed presentation topics, but still – you can imagine the nightmare I'm going through.
"Folding T?" M&M waves a hand in front of my face. The uber-sharp point of his number two pencil dances a millimeter away from my eyes.
"Gah! Seriously, you've gotta watch where you wave that thing. It could take someone's eyes out," I admonish him.
M&M twirls the pencil on his fingertips, making it spin like a propeller. He leans back on the two hind legs of his chair and says, "No harm, no foul."
I glare at him. Oh, there will be plenty of foul.
Boy, wouldn't it be great if his chair tipped over? I only need to nudge it a fraction of an inch and Sir Isaac Newton's famous law of gravitational pull will take care of the rest. The floor will attract the chair; the chair will…
"Is everything alright over here?" The teacher peers down at us. I feel like he's staring into our souls.
M&M sits up properly, and I retract my telltale finger that was about to give M&M's chair a little, harmless poke. I busy myself with papers, and M&M does the same. It's so lame – you can totally tell we're faking.
"Fine and dandy," I say, flashing the most plastic, blinding smile at out scrutinizing teacher.
"Hmmm…" The teacher gives us the evil eye. He looks at us that way for a long time. I start to sweat from the nerves. He finally walks away, but he keeps his head turned so that his eyes are still drilling through us long after his body had left.
"Fine and dandy?" M&M questions my choice of words after the teacher (and his eyes) is gone for good.
"You think you can come up with something better under pressure? Next time, you do PR," I grumble.
"PR?" M&M asks, confused.
I smirk. "Really, don't you know anything?"
Just FYI, PR stands for public relations.
"Fine. How do you build a fence in Minecraft?" M&M lashes back.
"Why would I need to know that?"
"Why would I need to know what PR is?"
"Because everyone does."
"Everyone also knows how to build a fence."
"I doubt Nudge does."
"What kind of a name is that? And who is he?"
"She, you dummy, and it's a perfectly awesome kind of name," I defend.
"No, it's not. It's stupid."
"You just think so because you don't know her."
"Because I don't need to!"
I get an idea to end this tiff once and for all. "Do you know what a lemon is?"
"Of course I do. It's a type of yellow citrus fruit."
"No, there's something else, too," I bait him.
"No there isn't. You're being stupid."
"Yes, there is."
"Really, what is it, then? Oh, I know! You're gonna lecture me on its pH level, aren't you, smarta*?"
Oh, no he didn't! "It's something you'd really, really like… If, you knew what it is."
"What?"
"You'll find out later." I smile wickedly. Point to moi.
"Jerk."
"The real jerk is the one who calls others jerks," I say in my most Aristotle-y/philosophical voice. I pretend to stroke my imaginary beard while contemplating in a grave and serious manner.
"Are you calling me a jerk?" M&M asks, flabbergasted.
"Hello, I am Dr. F," I say is a snobby voice. "Mr. M, do you always doubt yourself like this? This may be the sign of a serious and rare…"
"Forget it," M&M cuts me off. "There's just no reasoning with you."
"Hey, you know what I said before, about what's weird?" I ask after I mentally log another point.
"No. I am not going to talk to you," M&M turns the cold shoulder.
"You just did, and it's about that story in the hologram."
"I said going to, as in, future tense, and what about the hologram?"
"Well, you said going to earlier, in the past, when you meant the future, but now is the future, which means you broke what you said in the past about not talking to me in the future, and I feel like the story's familiar somehow."
"I meant future in the past like whenever I want to initialize the future, and I do, too."
"You can't initialize a verb. Grammar isn't code, and what do you think it is, that story?"
M&M looks at me for a long time before resorting to the last weapon in his arsenal of insults, "Jerk."
"Ha! Like I've never heard that one before!"
The rest of class was just so productive. The teacher dismisses us when the bell rings.
When we're going out the door, I ask M&M, smirking, "Hey, do you know what a lime is?"
"Arrgh! I am not playing any more citrus fruit innuendo games with you!" M&M rushes out of the classroom.
And that would be point number three, but who's counting?
After school, we meet at my house. M&M grabs a CapriSun from the fridge. I start up my laptop and his. (No brownies for me today; my parents happen to love them, too. I think they raided the pantry sometime around midnight on Sunday, yesterday.)
M&M pulls up a chair. He sits down, slurping his juice and shaking his foot. The sound and the motion at the edge of my peripheral vision get on my nerves.
"Can you stop that?" I ask politely.
"What?" M&M grins sardonically. "Is this bothering you?"
Snap. I shouldn't have said that.
The slurps get louder, the foot shakes faster. I grit my teeth and force myself to block the sound and motion out of my head. Zen… Inner peace… Ommmm…
I start Microsoft Word on my laptop, expecting a blank document, but again getting:
The Second Installment of Shakespeare's Quill and James Patterson's Typewriter
"What the heck?" I try to close out, but the program won't let me.
"Huh? What's up?" M&M stops slurping and shaking his foot to hop behind my shoulder and take a look at my laptop.
When he sees, he says, "Again? Folding T, I think the guy who gave you this laptop bugged it, and he's tracking you right now."
"Why would…?"
The hologram projection pops out again. (I seriously have no idea how it's doing that.) The curtains open, the scene focuses, and we watch as Max gets out of a shiny black Mercedes wearing sunglasses and a light blue, pleated dress and carrying an oversize designer tote bag on her arm.
"Bye, daddy!" Max calls. She turns around to blow three air kisses at the car before it drives away.
"Rich snob," M&M says with disgust.
"You don't know that. You don't know her," I say, trying to save the revamped version of one of my favorite characters.
Angel skips over to join Max. Her blonde hair is perfectly curled. She has the exact same bag as Max. "Oh, Max!" she says with a bright smile, hiding a grimace underneath. "We match!"
"Oh my god, you are correct! Is this not superb?"
"I know, right?" Angel squeals with her bestie before turning around and silently cursing. That girl has a large vocabulary, alright.
A chariot being drawn by six white horses pulls up
(She'll be comin' around the mountain when she comes. She'll be comin' around the mountain when she comes. She'll be comin' around the mountain; she'll be comin' around the mountain; she'll be comin' around the mountain when she comes.
She'll be ridin' six white horses when she comes. She'll be ridin' six white horses when she comes…)
A boy who looks like the splitting image of Dr. Gunther-hagen gets out. He's dressed in a sharp, impeccable, gleaming white suit. He waves goodbye to his chauffer, and when he turns around, I can see that he has the bushiest, most caterpillar-like of an unibrow crawling across his face. Eek! For a guy who has a plastic surgeon for a father, that is one monster in need of a machete – or a bushwhacker.
"Largy!" Angel exclaims.
"What a joy," Max mutters. She throws on a smile and heads over to greet her new, forced-on-her beau.
The scene cut to another section of what I think is a school. Fang, Iggy, and a few other guys are sitting on the curb, totally decked out in leather, studs, and chains. Their bikes are a few feet away, and they're smoking something that I presume is worse than tobacco.
"Dude, why're you tying yourself down so soon?" Iggy asks Fang.
A clique of girls walks past. They giggle and wave, acting like total dorks. One of them actually works up the nerve to say hi to Fang.
M&M ogles.
I roll my eyes.
Fang lifts his hand lazily to acknowledge them. The girls shriek happily and walk away whispering among themselves, trying to decipher which one Fang was waving at.
M&M looks like he's just seen a god.
I think, Big whoop.
"See man, they're all over you," Iggy says. Is that… jealousy?
"No one can compare with Lissa. She's, like, the hottest girl out there," Fang says calmly.
"You'll change your mind," Iggy says with confidence.
"No, I'm set. You won't find anyone out there who's better than her," Fang says.
"Really? Okay, there's a party tonight at that one club. Let's go and see if Fang'll change his mind. There's gonna be tons of hot chicks there," Iggy says, nudging Fang with his shoulder.
"Sounds okay. I'll go, but I don't think you're gonna be right," Fang concedes.
The gang gets up, snuffs out the-whatever they had been smoking on the sidewalk, and buries them at the bottom of the school trash cans' abyss. They're walking to the doors, flaunting their coolness, when another boy runs across the schoolyard, perpendicular to the gang's direction of travel.
Iggy and Fang crack their knuckles. The rest of the guys do the same. Their leather gloves squeak.
"Ey, Montague, ready to kick some wimpy Capulet a*?" Iggy asks Fang, a mean glint in his eyes.
"I was born ready," Fang replies.
(I was born this way hey! I was born this way hey! I'm on the right track baby I was born this way hey! I don't know what's gotten into me…)
He leads the way, his and his gang stalking the boy like he's prey. The boy must have heard the menacing crunch of the gang's feet on the gravel, because he turns around, mouth set in a determined line. The scene zooms in, and I recognize the face.
I can't believe Fang has turned into this brutal gang leader. I can't believe they're targeting this poor kid.
I can't believe they're going to beat up…
A/N: Who is it? Gentle (sort of, anyway) Gazzy? Arrogant (sort of, again) Ari? Despicable (all the way, no sugar coating this one, baby) Dylan? Find out next week, or the week after that; it depends on how busy I am.
A note on the profanity: I've never cursed before in my whole life, and I never will. That doesn't mean I don't know the bad words out there. So, anytime someone says one of the Forbidden, I will write the first letter, followed by an asterisk.
Oh, also, I write all these chapters by hand first, so there's this huge bump that developed on my finger. And you know what? It's kinda numb. Heh, heh, heh...
Folding Turtles, out! ;)