(A/N): Cosmetic author's note for spacing at top of chapter.
Enjoy!
Bea was right, of course, the next day did suck. She woke up with her alarm and after a moment of contemplating how much trouble she'd get in if she simply pulled the blankets back over her head and went back to sleep, she remembered that there was a math test that day. She shouldn't miss it.
She dragged herself out of bed and pulled on clothes, barely paying attention to whether they matched and not sparing a thought to the weather outside as she did so. She ended up in a blue tank top and black shorts, with mismatched socks and her well-worn tennis shoes.
She found that Claudia was already awake and standing at the counter wearing the same blue robe that she had the night before, but now with a fresh face of makeup that made her look healthy and cheerful and a smile that made her look… well, normal.
Claudia motioned with a butter knife for Bea to sit at the table beside her brother. "Sit, and pour yourself some juice."
Her father was already there, with a plate of fruit and toast, a newspaper open and hiding him from view.
"Morning, sleepyhead," he greeted, and as he lowered the paper to give her a tired grin she saw that there was stubble along his jaw—something that she'd often heard her mother refer to as 'five-oclock shadow.' When he caught sight of her, his smile dropped and so did the paper.
It crinkled loudly as he folded it up and he studied her closely. "Why do you look so tired?"
Bea's eyes flitted to her mom, who had frozen over the toaster and looked up at her from under her thick lashes. "Um…"
"Were you up reading that book after I sent you to bed?" Claudia accused, pointing the butter knife at her pointedly, her tone scolding. "What did I tell you about that?"
It wasn't just shock that hit her, something else came with it that stung. An emotion she had never felt before, certainly not in response to her mother. Bea was too shellshocked by the betrayal to fully process it or give it a name.
She could only register that she felt simultaneously hurt and embarrassed as her father continued to admonish her for not looking after herself better, and she wanted to say that no, it wasn't her, she didn't read any stupid book—it was mom too… that they'd been up late sorting those papers and…
But then Claudia spoke up. "Oh, Noah." She sounded more amused than anything by the whole situation. "Don't act so surprised! You know Bea. She's just like you!"
"Just like me? What's that supposed to mean?" Noah asked, turning to make a face at Claudia.
"How many nights have you stayed up way too late, pouring over case files from work even though you have a morning shift—when you should be sleeping? You of all people know how hard it is to go to sleep when there's a mystery to solve."
"Hmph," Noah scoffed, and then his mouth twisted to the side as he peered at Bea from the corner of his eye. She noticed that he suddenly looked greatly amused, maybe even pleased at the comparison. Like he was glad that she was like him. "But you're too young for that, Bea. You need your sleep. You look dead on your feet. Come here."
And in a weird, stilted way, he held his hand out and motioned for her to sit on his lap just like Claudia had done not so many hours ago last night.
She cast her mother one last, unsure look, and then shuffled over to climb onto his knee.
Something about feeling his strong chest at her back, his arms circling around her, instantly soothed her. Chased away the doubt and eased the hurt. Made her feel safe. Peaceful. Protected.
She relaxed and the tension drained from her tightly drawn shoulders, and her dad gave her a short, but warm hug.
Bea took a steadying breath. "Where's Stiles?" She asked as she looked around.
"Still sleeping, can you believe it?" Claudia snorted. "That boy!"
"I'll wake him as soon as we're finished here, or else you'll never get any sleep tonight, Claudia."
Her mom huffed and shook her head, grumbling under her breath as she went about preparing herself some toast.
A large hand rested on the top of Bea's head and ruffled her hair, which she quickly tried to smooth down. "Dad," she whined, causing him to chuckle. "I just spent so long getting that combed out! You're going to ruin it again!"
Claudia laughed at that as well, and Bea's chest warmed happily as she basked in the presence of her parents. This was right. This was how it was meant to be, as her dad offered her the other half of his toast—prepared just the way they both preferred it, with jam and butter. He reached around her to grab the other half, and they touched them together like they were toasting glasses.
"Salut," he said.
"Salut," she mimicked.
Bea giggled happily as she and her dad crunched down on their bread at the same time, crumbs falling messily into their laps.
She was still exhausted, and still uneasy about last night—and confused by the way her mom was so quick to hide their late night activities from her dad—but she thought maybe, for the most part, it was harmless. And it wasn't often that she got to spend time with her dad, anyway. She wouldn't want to ruin it by upsetting her mom. Or him.
She resolved to just move on and pretend it never happened. Because that was easier.
"Bea." Someone snapped their fingers right in front of her face. "Hey, Bea. Earth to Bea!"
She forcefully blinked her heavy eyes that refused to stay open and concentrated on the blurry face in her vision. Tyler. He looked annoyed with her.
"Come in, Bea! Earth to Bea! Anybody home up there?" Then his knuckles were rapping against her skull, and she weakly batted his hands away with a scowl.
She drew in a deep breath and reached up to rub at her eyes blearily.
"Why are you so tired?" Derek asked from Tyler's other side, his gaze sharper and not nearly as aggravated as their shorter friend. "Were you up late or something?"
"Um—" Bea took a breath and tried to shake herself awake. "Pretty much."
"Well you missed kick ball," Tyler informed her with a glare. "And thanks to you our teams were uneven, so guess who we had to let join us?"
Bea shrank under his ire, already knowing the answer. Only one person would cause him to look that annoyed. Tyler hated Derek's fan girls even more than Derek did. Even more than she did.
"Oh, no," she muttered, sparing a glance at Derek, who looked a little put out himself and looked away when her eyes flitted to him. "That bad?"
"Worse," Tyler confirmed. "Ginger and that other weirdo friend of hers decided to test out their new—" he made a noise of disgust—"dance moves or whatever on the sidelines! Every time I went to kick the ball, they'd just start screaming to distract me! I missed twice because of their dumb—"
"It's not dancing, you imbecile!" Ginger sneered from across the room. She'd turned around in her seat to level a hateful glare at him, and Bea rolled her eyes at the uncreative insult. "It's cheerleading!"
"Oh, great," Bea muttered. "Sorry, guys."
They were too young to join an official cheerleading squad, but Ginger's cousin was the captain of the high school cheerleading squad and as such, she, Kelly-Anne and Amy had taken to practicing and showing off the new moves they learned over the weekend at her house. At every given opportunity. Every. One.
"Don't worry about it," Derek waved off. "It wasn't that bad."
"Wasn't that bad?" Tyler gaped. He turned fully to Bea and spread his hands out, wiggling his fingers. "How bad is this? Huh?! Huh?!"
Bea couldn't help it, she had to slap a hand over her mouth to cover her amusement at the sight of Tyler doing spirit fingers. "It's…" she said, her voice strained from trying not to laugh. "Not that bad," she lied.
Tyler's eyes bulged in disbelief. "Oh yeah? Well what about this!?" Derek could only gape as the boy stood from his seat and then started to clap his hands and twirl in a circle. "Ready? Okay!"
Bea busted out laughing as Tyler continued to do what Bea hoped was a poor, mocking imitation of Ginger and Amy. He put his fists on his hips and counted out a beat, nodding as he did so, and began to lift his legs and march in place.
Soon enough, other classmates had begun to laugh at the display as well. Ginger's face was bright red and Amy started trying to shout insults over him, but Tyler just carried on like he couldn't hear them.
He made a formation with his arms and chanted in a mockingly girly voice, "Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick! BOOM! Dynamite!" On the explosion his arms dropped dramatically at his sides and wiggling his hips to mimic the explosion, returning at rest in the previous position with a clap, and repeating. "BOOM! Dynamite!"
"No, no, no!" Amy shouted over the noise of the laughter and Tyler's continued mocking tick-tick-ticks. "Idiot! If you're going to do it, then do it right, or don't do it at all! You have to put your arms like this, see? And then you count down like it's a timer for the bomb!"
"BOOM! Dynamite!" Tyler continued, heedless of her instruction, jutting his hips out sideways again.
"Kelly-Anne!" Ginger whined. "Show them!"
Kelly-Anne stood to join Amy's side and together, they started the proper cheer routine for the whole class to see. Bea shook her head and sank down further in her seat as other boys went to join Tyler's side and mock their cheer back at them.
Derek, who had stayed by her side, rolled his eyes at the display. The action looked very much like something his big sister Laura would do, but the resemblance faded when he focused his gaze back on Bea. "You lied earlier."
Bea shifted uncomfortably and scoffed. "What? No, I didn't."
Derek nodded insistently. "I can always tell when you lie, so don't bother!"
"Cannot!"
"Can, too!"
"Cannot!"
"Bea!" Derek shouted with an uncharacteristically somber frown, which had her drawing up short. "Just knock it off, it's really not funny! You fell asleep in class three times already! Why are you so tired?! Are you sick or something?!"
Bea's shoulders slumped and she looked away. "I guess I just stayed up too late. But I feel a little better after that nap and it's really just not a big deal, okay?"
"Well you're lucky that you haven't gotten in trouble yet," he reproved. "But it's only because I keep kicking you awake whenever the teacher looks!"
She looked down at her desk, where her fingers were fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. "Thanks…" she muttered.
"Mom and Peter are always saying how important it is to get enough sleep since we're still growing," Derek continued, still sounding remarkably like Laura from the lecturing tone of his voice—something she was sure he was unaware he was doing. "Peter says that's why mom's taller than dad, because dad has apparently had a caffeine addiction since he was our age and it stunted his growth. And if he just slept more like he was supposed to he'd probably be way taller."
Bea felt the corners of her mouth twitching, but she tried not to let it show. "Peter's kind of a jerk."
"Well that doesn't mean he's wrong," Derek frowned. "So do you want to be short forever? Do you?"
"Don't be so dramatic!" Bea frowned back. "It's just one day, it's not like it happens all the time!" After a beat, she added, "Your dad's not even that short."
He rolled his eyes again. She wondered if he had just learned how to do it, because she had never seen him do it so often before. "Whatever! Just don't forget about the math test later. Remember what we agreed on?"
Earlier that week, they had agreed that Derek—who was surprisingly good at history, way better than Bea—would allow her to copy some from his short history essay if she allowed him to cheat off her in the math test today. It was just about the only reason she hadn't decided to play hooky that morning and stay in bed. It was the whole reason she had gone to school that day. She owed him.
Bea huffed a soft sigh and nodded, and Derek leaned closer. "Listen, I'll help you stay awake a little longer, then at lunch you can take another nap. The test is right after, so you should be better by then. Okay?"
Bea shot him a relieved smile and nodded right as the teacher came into the room and proceeded to shout at everyone to sit down, and gave detentions to Tyler and all his friends and warnings to Kelly-Anne's group of friends.
Bea and Derek shared a commiserating look as Tyler flung himself back into his desk beside them. He crossed his arms and huffed out a miserable sigh. "It's not fair," he grumbled, as the teacher instructed everyone to read from their workbooks for the next twenty minutes until lunch. "Just because her stupid grandpa's the Sheriff, it means she gets away with so much. Who even cares?!"
When Derek looked at Bea she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. It wasn't the fact that her grandpa was the Sheriff that earned her the special treatment.
Kelly-Anne had worked very, very hard to make sure she was the teacher's pet. She got perfect grades, perfect attendance—their teacher could count on her to volunteer for answers even if no one else in class would raise their hand, and she was always right. She even occasionally helped him grade papers.
But since Kelly-Anne constantly found ways to brag about her grandpa, the Sheriff, wedging that factoid into conversations that it had no relevancy to, it became the favored gripe as to why she got away with so much. After all, who in their right mind would punish the Sheriff's only grandchild?
So, while it might earn Kelly-Anne some brownie points or respect at first, Bea and Derek knew that family reputations could only carry a student so far. After that, it was up to their own efforts to succeed.
Still, they didn't bother to refute Tyler's relatively harmless grousing. Bea propped her chin on her hand and tried to keep from nodding off, and Derek occasionally stuck his foot out to kick her desk and jolt her awake.
At lunch, they carried their sandwiches and chips off to a quiet corner in the hall outside the lunchroom—behind the display of trophies—and Derek shoved her into the corner. He plopped on the ground with a huff and pulled out his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and Bea felt her eyes drift shit as she watched him carefully tear the crusts off and toss them into the sandwich bag.
He kept watch and made sure no one bothered them, and before she knew it, he was nudging her awake and gathering up their trash. "Let's go ace that test," Bea mumbled sleepily, and Derek smirked at her and bumped his shoulder against hers.
"Let's go, partner," he said, and returned her pleased smile with another smirk of his own.
It was the first time Derek helped her stay awake and focused in class, but it would be far from the last.
The semester dragged on, and every so often throughout the weeks, Bea would come into class half-asleep. Derek stuck with her through it all, like he was determined to not let her fall behind—like keeping her out of trouble was his personal mission. She was grateful for it and she repaid him any chance she got. Whether that was through cheating on tests for him or rewarding him with extra fruit snacks.
"Okay, class!" Their teacher began, clasping his hands together at the front of the room. He motioned to indicate the split between the desks down the middle row. "Everyone, in an orderly fashion, line up down this aisle to hand in your permissions slips and money!"
Bea felt her heart stop. Up to that point, she'd been drifting in and out of awareness. She had spent yet another late night spent pouring over documents with Claudia—this time going over what her mother had finally explained were bills.
It had been very confusing, frustrating and time consuming. She still didn't fully understand everything they did, she just knew thanks to the constant reminders from her mother that it was essential that they get everything on it right.
As such, she had completely forgotten that the permission slips for their field trip to the museum were due. That morning. Right now, actually. And she didn't even know where hers was… pinned to the fridge, maybe? She wasn't sure. All she knew, was that it wasn't here.
Bea let her head fall on her hands with a groan.
"Bea, come on! You can stand up here with us. That way we can all sit together on the bus!" Tyler called with a wave of his hand. He and Derek were near the back of the line, and the few kids behind them shot her a dirty look—daring her to cut in line.
Miserable, Bea could only glare down at her desktop with a wobbly lip. How could she have forgotten? How many times had the teacher reminded them? How many times had she written it in her daily agenda, desperate to remember? How often had she and Derek discussed the trip?
She'd been looking forward to it, but now, without a slip—there was no point in pretending. Bea would have to miss out.
So concentrated on her downward spiral of misery, she hadn't even noticed that Derek now stood directly in front of her desk. Slowly, she lifted her gaze until it met his. He frowned down at her and reached out to nudge her shoulder with a finger. "What's wrong?"
A heavy sigh forced its way through her nose. "I… can't go on the field trip."
"What?!" Derek looked almost as distraught as she felt. "But—no! No, no way! You have to go, Bea. We have to see the dinosaurs!"
Already upset, the reminder of what she would miss only piled on to her disappointment. She forced a weak smile onto her face anyway. Bea hummed a noise, though she wasn't sure if it was supposed to be comforting or what. "S'fine."
"Come on, quit joking around," Derek scowled. "Get up and—"
"I can't!" She broke in, her usually mild temper flaring with embarrassment and shame, made worse by the fact that she couldn't truly blame her late nights with her mom, anyway. She'd had ample opportunity to get the stupid slip signed, and she didn't. She forgot, and it was all her fault, and now it's too late to change it. But she didn't voice any of that, she just kept her eyes downturned and shook her head. "I'm sorry, okay?"
Derek was frowning hard, like he did when he tried to figure out how to beat Laura at something. "Well… we can fix it, there's still time. What if we just tell the teacher and ask him to call your mom? That's even better than a signature, right?"
She perked up slightly, but she knew she was way too scared at the prospect to ever approach the teacher and ask such a thing. The humiliation alone would be terrible. "I…"
"Guys!" Tyler exclaimed, bounding over with a sheet of paper fluttering in his hands. "The teacher told me to come ask you guys to get a move on. What's the hold up?!"
"Bea doesn't have her paper," Derek said with a glare. "We were just about to have the teacher call her house!"
"Whoa, seriously?" Tyler gaped at Bea with enough pity to make her squirm. "That sucks."
She couldn't help the responding pout she gave, and Derek frowned again.
"I was actually…" Tyler started, and then trailed off, averting his gaze for some reason. "I mean, it would've been pretty cool. Or whatever."
The corner of her mouth twitched before her face fell again, and for a moment they were all silent.
Then, at the front of the class their teacher's deep voice broke their solemnity like a whip. "Derek! Bea! What are you guys doing?"
"Just one second!" Tyler shouted back, being that he was probably the only kid she'd met that was so unafraid of talking back to adults.
"Excuse me?" The teacher snapped, causing Derek to shift slightly and shield her view from the now fuming man. "You three have got about thirty seconds to get up here, or you can forget going!"
"All right, already!" Tyler hollered again.
Derek choked and turned his equally panicked gaze back to her. "Come on, hurry up!"
She scrambled out of her seat and as they shuffled forward, Derek and Bea began whisper-arguing about what to do. Derek was insistent that she just come clean and ask the teacher to call, what's the worst that could happen? Bea adamantly refused, half afraid that her mom might not even answer with the way she's been acting lately.
Then there was a commotion at the door, and someone caught the teacher's attention. It was the assistant principal, and she waved at him to join them in the hall with a walkie-talkie. He turned to level a warning glare at them, but reluctantly followed her out of the classroom.
"You guys wait here!" Tyler suddenly exclaimed, and then darted through the desks behind the teacher's desk at the front of the room.
Derek was there in the blink of an eye, hissing at Tyler to get out before he comes back.
"Just help me look!" Tyler snapped.
Their classmates began to murmur amongst themselves, glancing at the scene unfolding before them, a few commenting on just how brazen Tyler truly was.
Kelly-Anne gave an exaggerated laugh, reaching out to touch Amy's arm. "Oh, my god, how embarrassing! Imagine not having a permission slip."
"So lame."
"At least she'll be able to go to recess—" Amy said, then gave an unconvincing gasp as she pretended to remember something with a snap of her fingers. "Wait, that's right. She can't because no one else in our grade probably forgot their permission slips and they won't let her join the fifth graders."
"Aww," Kelly-Anne gave an insincere pout. "That's too bad. I heard Mrs. Calvin's class is taking their recess out on the soccer field today—"
Bea grit her teeth and turned to face away from them, doing her best to tune their poisonous words out. As she turned and lifted her gaze she was surprised to see Tyler rushing toward her with—a spare permission slip! "Where'd you find that?!"
"Doesn't matter—quick!" He thrust a pen at her and proceeded to buzz around her like a fly. "Hurry, hurry, hurry!"
"Before he's back!" Derek added from over Tyler's shoulder.
Tyler gasped with an idea. "I'll keep watch."
"What?!" Bea said, staring at the form uncomprehendingly.
"Sign it!" Derek exclaimed.
"But—" she looked at the other students still blatantly watching. "Someone will… tell!"
Derek whirled around with a scowl on his face. "I dare them to," he warned with a growl.
A few kids pointedly turned away and pretended to be otherwise occupied. Kelly-Anne looked like she'd swallowed a lemon, but didn't dare speak out against her Darling Derek, as they had nicknamed him.
Derek nudged her arm. "Come on, you can do it! How would he even know the difference?"
Bea actually knew, by this point, more or less how to forge her mother's signature—thanks to the last few nights she'd been up late helping her fill out tax forms. She might not have really understood the numbers and information that she copied down, but she had learned at least how to copy the way her mom drew her swoopy S's and the long, curving line she crossed her T's with.
Tyler whistled loudly from the door, just like they had practiced doing in the woods during their camping trip, when they went snipe hunting. But unlike then, when they had never gotten any practical use out of the noise because they never actually found the blasted animal—now, he was telling them that the teacher was coming. He stepped aside just as the teacher filled the doorframe.
But the teacher turned away to holler something back at someone down the hall, and Bea took the chance.
She quickly placed the paper down on the nearest desk, put the pen to paper, and hurriedly tried to replicate her mother's signature as well as she could. It was sloppy and what was meant to be a curved line through the T looked jagged and almost sliced the last name clean in half. Derek nodded eagerly beside her. "It's fine, let's go!"
They scurried forward to join the rest of their classmates, Bea gazing sheepishly up at the teacher once he finally came in. He looked totally unimpressed at each of them, sparing a genuine look of distaste at Tyler as he held his hand out impatiently.
"You've wasted enough of our time," he said. "Just hand it over. You're lucky I'm even letting you go."
Tyler pursed his lips and visibly refrained from snarking back when Derek elbowed him in the side.
"Bea," the teacher said, studying her permission slip closely with a squint in his eyes.
Her heart just about leapt out of her chest, and it seemed like all the students waited with bated breath to hear what he would say.
Without looking up, he held out his hand. "Money."
She deflated, and Derek's eyes widened as he turned to look at her. Tyler looked like someone had stolen his favorite toy as he groaned loudly beside them. "I… I don't have any," she admitted.
Their teacher looked up and raised an eyebrow at her, his lips pinched. He handed the paper back to her. "Well, that's unfortunate. Maybe next year you'll learn to be more responsible."
"But that's not fair!" Tyler exclaimed. "She got the stupid signature, didn't she?!"
"Not another word!" The teacher bellowed, pointing at him so close he almost touched the end Tyler's nose. "You know, I'm actually fond of you three. That's why this is so disappointing. I expected better of you." He paused, and the annoyance melted from his face as he turned to Bea. "I'm sorry, Bea. I tried to remind you guys every day to make sure you got the forms and money sorted out. I never thought I'd have to remind you more than once."
She looked down at the ground and shrugged, resisting the urge to point out that he couldn't be that sorry, if he wasn't allowing her to join anyway.
"Could we…" Derek spoke up. "Call her parents?"
The teacher seemed to consider it, but ultimately shook his head. "Not unless they can get here quick with the money. As in, in five minutes. We're already running behind."
Bea sighed.
"We have to try!" Derek pushed, and Tyler, perking up at the suggestion that all hope might not be lost, hurried to nod in agreement. "Come on," he urged, already tugging Bea towards their teacher's desk. "Might as well give it a shot!"
Their teacher went around the side of the desk to stand over the phone, motioning for Bea to come around and sit in the giant seat behind it. The cushions puffed out with a hiss as she sat in them, and she felt… weird seeing the classroom from this angle.
She glanced down at the various forms stacked around his desktop, and he quickly flipped a leather book shut to hide its pages from her view. His grade book.
But she could care less about that. Right now, she was feeling supremely self-conscious at the way every single person in the classroom focused their attention on their movements. Her face burned hotly and the teacher hesitated, noticing this. He turned back and told everyone to line up at the door.
Pulling out his walkie-talkie, it gave a little static feedback as he clicked a button to speak into it. "Hey, Cathy, mind running my students out to the front door when you get a chance? I have to help a student try and call her parent really quick."
There was short burst of feedback, and then a crackly voice answered. "On my way."
They waited another moment and the assistant principal appeared in the doorway again, lifting her arms like a traffic-cop to direct the line of students waiting by the door down the hall. Tyler was at the back of the line, and he only moved forward when Derek waved him on. "We'll catch up," he assured him. "Get us a good seat on the bus!"
Tyler lifted his hand in a mock-salute and took off after the end of the line, ducking away from the assistant principal's clucking, criticizing voice that followed after him for delaying them further even a second.
"Okay, Bea, so this is how you dial out…"
She could smell his cologne as he reached down and assisted her by pressing all the corresponding buttons—a series of numbers and weird looking buttons that lit up, all just to prepare to dial out of the school's internal phone system.
"It's ready," he told her. "Go ahead."
Bea could feel Derek watching her as she carefully dialed her home phone number. Their teacher crossed his arms and stood over them, waiting and watching just as closely. The line rang. And rang. And rang. With every ring, she slumped further and further into the chair.
"Hello!"
For a split second, she thought her mom had answered, and she nearly leapt out of her seat in her haste to respond, and Derek gripped anxiously at the armrests on her chair as he listened. "Mom! Hey, sorry to—"
"You've reached the Stilinski residence—"
"Hiiiii—" crooned her little brother's cheerful voice, and she could hear her mom laughing on the recording.
There was a rustle and then her mom was back on the phone. "We're not in right now, but if you leave us a—"
Bea gently placed the phone down on the receiver. She should have known her mom wouldn't answer. She could barely tell time from a clock these days, for crying out loud!
Bea carefully shook her bowed head, and their teacher looked genuinely apologetic as he told her that she'd have to go back to her seat and wait for the substitute they'd arranged to join her shortly. Since she was the only one who would apparently stay behind, he offered to let her pick a movie from the VCR cart.
"I think there's Home Alone and maybe Godzilla in there, unless Mr. Jones took that last one again. He's always holding that one hostage. Even so, I'm sure the sub wouldn't mind if you went to check with him if it's not here. Speaking of, let me just write a quick note for the teacher," he said, and then motioned at Derek. "You'd better head out if you want to grab a seat on the bus, Derek."
Bea swiveled around and sullenly passed around Derek, their shoulders brushing. "It's okay," she said to him. "It'll be fun. Maybe I'll even nap for a minute. I'll just pick something out to watch and—"
"Wait," Derek said, drawing her gaze for the first time. But he was looking at the teacher now. Bea felt something besides glum disappointment or burning humiliation stir in her chest for the first time all morning. "I'll stay."
"What?" Bea gaped.
Derek shrugged a shoulder, trying to look nonchalant about it. "Yeah, are you kidding me?" He said with a faint smile. "Godzilla? Who needs smelly old dinosaur bones when you can see that?"
"Hah!" Their teacher laughed. "I'm almost jealous, but don't tell the other kids. Derek, are you absolutely sure? Once we leave, we can't come back."
Bea shook her head frantically. "You don't have to—"
"I want to," Derek insisted. "Honest! I can always ask dad to take us some other time, Bea. Maybe this weekend, if he's not busy. We said we'd go together, right?"
But she was stunned. Floored, really. "But… Tyler is…"
"Tyler's not going to care," Derek assured her with a dry tone, rolling his eyes. "Trust me."
"But he…" She trailed off, her gaze flitting to the teacher. "He seemed pretty… fired up about it all, and…"
"He just likes to be the center of drama," Derek informed them with a laugh, earning a snort from the teacher. "Sure, he might be kind of annoyed with us at first, but the second they step off the bus and get inside the museum he'll totally forget all about it. He'll probably come back with a thousand stories and brag about it for weeks." Bea could picture all of those things happening, easily, and she hesitated. "Seriously, quit worrying about it! I'll just save this money and we can find some snacks at the vending machine or something."
Bea perked up at that, and the teacher beamed at them. "Cool. You guys will have fun."
And Derek grabbed her wrist and tugged her back over to the desks. "Come on, I want to show you this weird thing that Peter gave me last night…"
Bea hid a smile behind her hand as she let him pull her wherever he wanted, and as the teacher left them to their own devices she secretly thought that… Derek was a really great friend to have. The best, even.
And with that, it was official. Bea decided then and there that Derek was her best friend in the world, and swore to find some way to make this up to him.
(A/N): Please leave a review before you go!