"Hey E!"

Eric paused with his cafeteria tray hovering over the table, so he could call over his shoulder, "Hey C. I thought Mrs Burrows must have kept you in again. I know she only wants to stop the kids having food cause she's on some serious diet herself."

"Well if she's not," Eric's friend dropped his own tray down on the table and slid onto the bench seat opposite, "she ought to be."

Eric laughed. "How was your weekend?"

"Could have been better, hows about yours?"

Eric shrugged non-committedly as he bit into his salad roll.

"How did your oldies take the news? Your dad, I mean, Mr Burke looked like he was ready to string you up when we came out of the headmaster's office."

"Yeah, he was pretty pissed."

"Guess it'll come as no great shock that my mom hit the roof too. Told me she didn't want me turning out like my older brother and then she put Dad on the phone. He read me the riot act, in between taking his, 'more important' client calls. Said, 'Listen here, Carl'…and then he said, 'Hold the line, I'll speak to you in a moment.' So I put Mom back on the phone and the two of them had this massive fight over who was to blame for my 'delinquency.' Then Mom ended up bringing Dad's new girlfriend into the conversation and that's when I left the room."

"Well, at least you haven't been grounded from now till the end of time."

"No, that may be true but Mom said I could kiss my NaNOT3 Gadget Gear goodbye that she had promised me."

"No way. I was so looking forward to you getting that!"

"Yep. Would have been a lot of fun to play around with during recess." Carl let his eyes wonder around the room, as he spotted the various electronic devices the youngster were messing around with between bites.

Eric gazed around the cafeteria also. He was disappointed that Carl wouldn't be getting the NaNOT3. He'd been excited about trying out the spy tech functions, but he also felt bad. It had pretty much been his fault that they'd gone and got into trouble in the first place – he'd talked Carl into skipping class, and he'd been the one that had got himself caught at the mall because of his height. And to make it worse, not once during the headmaster's grilling inquisition, during the phone calls to the parents/guardians or the subsequent doling out of three pounding strokes of the old wooden school paddle across each backside, had Carl attempted to protect his own butt by ratting out his friend or even suggesting for a second that it hadn't been his idea.

"Hey, not to worry," Carl offered. "I'm sure we would have just got bored of it anyways."

"Mmm," Eric considered. "I'm not so sure about that. Give me a few days to try and think of something. It's not right that you should be missing out on something good due to our unfortunate luck." And it had been bad luck. When they had heard during the morning announcements that the senior students were allocated the afternoon session off due to some teacher PD thing, the two boys had figured it was only fair they treat themselves to some time off as well. So rather than going to gym class, they ducked out and headed over to the Westside Center Mall, which was a popular after-school hang out due to its close proximity. Not surprisingly, many of the senior students had the same idea and the food court was abound with the dull brown and white, antiquated Barkley House uniforms. Unfortunately, said senior students were all considerably taller than Eric so when he was approached by the mall cop as he purchased his lime-splice spider from the ice-cream outlet, his story didn't gel like it should have and the headmaster was called. Apparently, the headmaster explained on the ride back to school, the mall snitcher's son was also a student at the school and didn't have the afternoon off.

"Errr, I dunno, E. I don't want either you or I getting into trouble again, anytime soon. I can only speak for myself, but my poor rear end is going to stay well away from the headmaster's room for a very long time."

Eric chuckled, "Hopefully mine too." He stood up and collected his tray. "I need to make a bathroom stop before Italian class. Seniora Martia said if I took any more bathroom breaks during her lessons I'd have to make it up in detention."

"That's only cause the last lesson you were out of the room for over twenty minutes."

"She's not to know I don't have some chronic bowl condition."

Carl laughed after his friend as they pushed through the doors of the boys' bathroom. But the laughing came to an abrupt end as he was thrust against the wall by some giant buffoon.

"Give me your money, scrawny gutter grot."

Eric stopped in his tracks for a moment, as his brain fast-tracked their current predicament. The student holding his friend against the wall was an older boy, maybe fourteen, so most likely a Year 9 student. He was more than a head taller than Carl but that's not where the advantage ended. His two friends, who were guarding the exit, were about the same height, maybe even taller and at least twice as ugly. Eric hadn't known they allowed actual buffoons to enrol in this supposedly prestigious school. The mental image of apes in the fancy uniform made Eric laugh out loud.

The ring-leader turned and snarled at the smallest of the boys. "You think this is funny, gutter licker?"

"Yeah. I do," Eric lifted his chin and even stepped closer, impressing that he had no fear of these idiots. "Just how stupid are you? We're coming out of the cafeteria, Einstein. You're supposed to get the money before we go in."

"Plant his smug face in the bowl," the leader demanded of his goons. "See if he still finds it funny after he's licked someone's lunch leftovers after they've come out of a smelly asshole."

"No problem," Eric stated, still unfazed by the whole experience. "However, I want you to know, 'Einstupid,' that before this is over, despite what your mindless friends do to me, if nothing else, I will make it my mission to knee you in the groin, slide my fingers into your eye sockets and gouge out whatever nerve endings I can behind your eyes. But," he continued, "before you start something here, you all need to ask yourself, "Eric glanced over his shoulder addressing the other two boys, "if you're happy to go down this path. I myself, don't give a stinking rats ass about this school, my permanent record or what college I don't get into. Some do, not me. Apparently this school has a zero tolerance on fighting, so if you're as happy as me to get expelled, go ahead, I really don't have anything to lose."

The leader's mouth dropped open ready to repeat his original order but one of the other boy's cut in, "Come on, Alec, these babies aren't worth the trouble. Let's get outta here."

Alec pressed his lips together before declaring, "You know what, this skinny toilet brush aint worth the shit he's been rolling in. Let's go."

Carl waited till the door shut completely before grabbing Eric in a grateful thank you hug. "E, you were amazing! How did you not shit your pants? How did you do that man?"

"It was nothin."

"It was Somethin! Man, you were the coolest bad ass, I've ever seen. That piece of shit was like, twice your size. Were you really going to gauge his eyes?"

"Of course. It's one of the easiest places you penetrate a person's body to made contact with a bunch of sensitive nerves. It would have been very painful…and seriously damaging so don't go trying it out on your older brother."

Carl shook his head, "Man, I don't know how you know this stuff!"

Eric shrugged, "I picked things up along the way. We lived in some pretty tough cities along the Mediterranean coast – they weren't all Port Grimaud and Naxos Island. You learn things to help you get through when you're the new kid on the block all the time."

"Well, I sure am glad you decided to drop into Brooklyn for a little while. You saved my butt."

"Yeah, well I'm not going to be able to save it if were late for class, so hold this for me while I go." Eric handed his friend his school bag then disappeared into one of the stalls so his friend couldn't see his face. It hadn't been his decision to 'drop into Brooklyn,' and he'd wished many times over that they'd never stepped a foot in the city. If they hadn't come to New York in the first place, everything would have been just like it used to be.