"You look studious," Chris whispered over my shoulder.

Looking back at him appraisingly, I said, "Yes. That's because I'm working." Our English assignment was to pick a theme depicted in a short story that we had finished reading, and do a literary portfolio on it. We had to write poems about our topic and then analyze the main symbols in the poems.

"What are you writing?" he asked.

"A poem, dumb ass," I told him tersely.

"About what?"

"My theme."

"What's your theme?"

"Christopher," Mrs. Alders scolded harshly. "Are you keeping Toby from her work?"

"No, ma'am," he replied. "I was just asking her a question."

"Was he bothering you, Toby?" Mrs. Alders asked me.

"She's gonna stick up for him," someone whispered to their neighbor.

I shook my head. "He was only asking me a question, ma'am. I don't mind."

"Of course she doesn't," someone else muttered.

Mrs. Alders nodded solemnly and went back to marking papers. I turned back quickly and whispered, "Love."

"Huh?" Chris looked up at him, a distracted expression on his face.

Mrs. Alders stood up. "Christopher Chambers, out of your seat. I won't have you disrupting my class anymore. Let's go, mister."

"Mrs. Alders, he wasn't disrupting anything, I was just telling him what my theme was," I protested hurriedly. "All he said was 'Huh.'"

"Would you like to join Mr. Chambers, young lady?" she demanded.

"No," I snapped. "But I don't think that he should be in any trouble for saying 'huh!'"

Chris got to his feet obediently. "Enough, Toby," he murmured.

Her face flushed and angry, Mrs. Alders put her hands on her hips. "Are you quite through, Miss Tweten?"

"Yes, she is," Chris said, leading himself up the row on the way out the door.

"Bull," I cried. "That's not fair!"

Pandemonium had overcome my class by now. They all looked at Mrs. Alders eagerly, wondering how she would react to my outburst.

"Maybe they do things a little different where you come from, young lady," she said calmly. "But in my classroom, I do not tolerate disrespect from a student. I will not be spoken down to. You and your little friend are to head straight down to the principal's office. Hopefully for your sake, Mr. Kilgore will be more lenient with you than I would have been." My classmates were in awe.

Out in the hallway, Chris took me by the arm and shook me hard. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded.

"It was bullshit, Chambers," I told him. "Why should you have to put up with that crap? You're every bit as human as all those other preps, so why should you be punished for whispering? It's bullshit, and you know it. The way they treat you is wrong, and I'm sorry if you expect me to watch you get kicked out of every single fucking class!"

"Whatever, Toby," he sighed. "That's great that you feel like you need to be my little white knight. But you just fucked yourself over royally. Everyone's going to associate you with me, and I'm not the type that you want to be associated with."

"I'd rather die than be associated with any of those other pussies," I told him indignantly. "I don't get why you can't understand that I'm not ashamed to be your friend."

Chris and I sunk down into the overstuffed chairs outside the principal's office, waiting for the secretary to send us in. "I think you're a retard," he told me. "A seriously fucked up retard."

"Right back at ya," I grumbled. "Don't thank me or anything, you know, whatever."

"Thank you for what?" he shrilled suddenly. "Helping me help you fuck up your social life? You've got another three years of school, genius. With me as your friend, it's going to be three years of hell."

"You just contradicted yourself," I said.

"I did not." He paused. "What do you mean?"

"With you as my friend, I'll get through these three years of hell."