Chapter 3: Complications
A/N- Hehe, now that everyone's FORGOTTEN about this story I can update again... okay, so I admit it... when I wrote Second Time Around I had no clue when high school hockey season starts, ends, or anything else, and assuming it's the same in Minnesota as at my school, I was completely and totally wrong. -_-' Bad Aqua, I know. Anyway, since I don't feel like rewriting half of Second Time Around, let's just say Eden Hall's hockey season ends in the middle of December and Thanksgiving was… ignored. *looks sheepish* Oh well… nobody's perfect -_-' But soccer season being so long was intentional creative license, for reasons to be determined in this chapter. ^_^ Adam's POV
*****
One more week until Christmas break.
One more week until Christmas break.
One more week until—
"Wake up!" Ken elbows me in the stomach.
I stop reciting my latest live-through-biology mantra and look up at Mrs. Madigan. Thankfully, she hasn't noticed that I'm staring off into space rather than at the chalkboard. "I am awake. More or less."
"I don't think she'll take more or less if she catches you."
He's probably right, so I decide not to go back to my mental chanting. But I do not want to actually listen to her droning on and on about opposable thumbs, and how humans are unique because we have them but other animals have them too. (That's all I got out of the first 10 minutes of this lecture.) Instead, I look down at my notebook, which I am ostensibly taking notes in.
There's one line at the top. "Humans are unique because we have opposable thumbs, just like other advanced primates." The rest of the page is dominated by a picture of several ducks decorating a Christmas tree. I hadn't even realized I was drawing. Ken glances at it and snickers.
I flip to the next page. For some reason, Mrs. Madigan thinks this deserves a glare. See, she doesn't even want us to take good notes! I give her my best innocent look and she goes back to talking about how great thumbs are. Y'know, I think we all get the point by now.
Well, except Russ, who's sleeping soundly in the front row. But she's pretty well given up yelling at him during class. Another day, another detention. Such is life.
Rather than take notes, I glance over at Ken's notebook. I swear he doesn't have to pay attention at all, he just files away the lectures in his head, to be retrieved at a later date... I don't know why I expected him to actually have notes.
Deck the halls with hockey pucks,
Quack quack quack quack quack, quack quack quack quack.
'Tis the season to be Ducks,
Quack quack quack quack quack, quack quack quack quack.
Don we now our pads and skates,
Quack quack quack, quack quack quack, quack quack quack...
I wonder if I dare ask what he's writing this for.
*****
Rat's last game is tonight. Personally, if I played soccer, I'd shoot or otherwise mortally wound anyone who expected me to be outside playing in the middle of December, even if this winter has been unusually warm so far. On the other hand, Rat insists the soccer players all love it. Something about how if it snows, they get to play inside.
It hasn't snowed, which means that I will be camping out on the bleachers in 35-degree weather to watch the Warriors whip or be whipped by none other than the Blake Bears. Julie is coming too, and Scooter mentioned that he might show up. I can only think of one reason that he'd say might when he knows Julie will be there.
Though I've never noticed Varsity at soccer games before...
I make it a point to get there early. The Warriors are out practicing, but they all look steamed, but there's an underlying nervousness to their movements. I don't see Rat anywhere.
"Adam!" Jay bolts over as soon as he sees me. Immediately I know I should be worried. He, like the rest of the universe, hardly ever calls me Adam. "Have you heard?"
I get a very sick feeling in my stomach, very much like someone just punched me. I don't want to hear. It's about Rat. It must be about Rat. Maybe they just put her back on the Inferno? No, Jay looks too upset. "What happened?"
He takes a deep breath. "Cole and Riley happened."
Oh God. "Rat?"
"Yeah." He shakes his head in disgust. "It's pretty bad..."
*****
On the way to the medical ward—haven't I been there enough this year already?—I run into Charlie. Literally. He was turned around waving to Linda, I was turned around talking to Jay (who was paying attention to me, rather than what was in front of us), and we were all running. Crash.
So now there's blood dripping down the side of my face from bashing it on the asphalt. Maybe it's a good thing we were headed over to the doctor anyway, but Charlie and Jay are quick to assure me it's not much of a cut. "Sorry," we all announce at the same time.
Charlie laughs sheepishly. "What's the rush?"
"Noth—" I snap my mouth shut. Charlie and I still aren't as close as before this year, but I'd say we're long past the point where everything he asks me gets a reflex 'no' answer. But between me spending time with Rat and Company and him spending time with Linda, we don't see each other enough for me to have quite broken the habit. "Okay, something. Riley plus Cole plus Rat equals—"
"Bad," he finishes. I was going to say roadkill rat, but I guess that was a bit tasteless anyway. "But I'd love to know how those goons are doing..."
We both look at Jay. I didn't even think of asking him about that. "She fought back, didn't she?"
"She hasn't been awake when I've gone to see her so I haven't gotten any details yet. I'm sure we'll hear it if she's awake now though, Rat likes telling war stories."
Charlie opts out of accompanying us. Something about how he didn't want to be intruding on anything, but that's a bit weird, because Jay's the one who asked him. It could just be because he's not as close to her.
Or it could be because he caught that 'nothing' I didn't cut off in time. Not unusual. He'll take it as a slight, sulk for a few days, and everything'll be good again. Happens all the time.
No worries.
*****
Rat looks like she's still asleep when we walk into her room, looks being the key word. We've hardly taken three steps towards the bed when she looks up and grins. "Heya, strangers." Her voice is a bit dazed, and there's a huge bruise running up the left side of her face.
I try to grin. "Not as strange as you..."
"I'm so glad you said that," she declares, staring at the ceiling. "I'd have to beat you up if you thought you were stranger than me, and I'm in no shape to be beating people up just now. Too many things broken." She winces, then goes back to grinning. "Though I think I got the better end of the deal."
"What happened?"
"Yeah, really, what happened?" Jay agrees. "Now that you're awake..."
"Rodents need their sleep you know," she shoots back, and returns to staring at the ceiling. "Probably my fault... Riley had to borrow some of Cole's clothes, I guess, cause whatever he was wearing today was not pink and about three sizes too big for him. All I said was nice shirt." She shrugs helplessly. "He got in a pretty good whack before I figured out I'd better start running. And next thing I know the goons are chasing me right out of the building... tried to lose 'em in the parking lot outside the auditorium, couldn't, so I tried going through the gardens."
"Why didn't you try for a classroom?" Jay inquires. I must admit I've been wondering the same thing myself.
She gives him a reproachful glare for a moment, then returns her gaze to the ceiling. "Because they're hockey players, Jay."
"Good point."
"So they're starting to catch up to me, so I run into the botany greenhouse and shut the door because I figure they'll have to open it and I can buy a little time. You know how the doors in there are, right?"
I've never taken botany and, from Jay's expression, he hasn't either. "No."
"Solid glass." She tears her eyes off the ceiling and smiles grimly. "I don't think Cole realized I'd shut it... he went right through, and of course he fell down, and Riley ran through the hole and couldn't stop in time and ran right over him."
Jay and I both crack up. Of course it seems likely that Cole would be severely injured, so it's probably not funny. But if he hadn't been trying to beat somebody up he'd be just fine. He's not going to get any sympathy from me.
"So what'd you do," Jay asks, "stand around watching?"
"No, I tried to bolt out the back door." She sighs. "There isn't a back door."
Before she can say anything else the doctor comes in. "Miss Griffian, good, you're awake, we'll need to—" He pauses when he catches sight of Jay and me. "I'm afraid you two will have to leave."
"Naturally." Jay rolls his eyes.
*****
Notice is a bit short for us to call a team meeting, or what we've started referring to as a Council of the Quacks. Sometimes even we wonder if we're too full of Duck enthusiasm... then we decide, no, probably not.
So Ken, Russ, Jesse, Julie, Scooter, and I all sit in Jesse and Scooter's room, discussing the latest development in our war with Varsity.
"Is this worth it?" Scooter mutters distractedly. "They beat someone up, so we piss them off some more so they'll beat someone else up?"
Right. I forgot to mention Scooter is trying to take the blame for Rat's current predicament. (Julie told her this. She got mad and said she was proud to claim the situation as a mess her big mouth got her into.)
"Hey, man." Jesse gives him a look that's part concern and part disbelief. "If you don't want us to keep this up we won't keep it up, but you ain't really plannin' on spendin' the rest of the year holed up in here cuz they pound ya when you leave, are ya?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Then we gotta show the rest of the Varsity cake-eaters that if they mess with you, they're gonna regret it."
"Mission status so far, extremely unaccomplished," Ken adds.
Scooter nods, but he still doesn't look convinced. "You guys are really set on this, aren't you?"
"Well, us winning the state championships and Varsity losing kind of got them off our case, but it's not like we're going to pass up an excuse to go after them... so... yeah, pretty much." I grin, but he doesn't grin back. "It's up to you Scooter. We're just trying to help."
He looks at Julie, and she nods encouragingly. She could be arguing his side, of course, but she's a Duck. She's already used to the whole fly-or-die-together thing. I think Scooter's still not quite over the fact that a bunch of Ducks are willing to help a Warrior, regardless of how nice that Warrior is.
I know the feeling.
Finally, he sighs and nods. "If anyone else gets hurt we call it off?"
"Fair enough," Jesse agrees.
"Okay, I give. What're we thinking about for the counterattack?"
I find it a little strange for us to be talking this way, now that I think about it. Like this is a war or something. ...Wait a minute. This is a war. Never mind.
Ken cocks his head. "We got together with Fox and Seth." Seth, nearest I can tell, is the Warrior Soccer counterpart of Fox. Ken and Russ got together with those two and nothing blew up? I'm impressed. "The Inferno's hopping mad and the Warriors are even more ticked. Riley and Cole both got two-week-long suspensions—worst punishment a varsity hockey player's had in the last 30 years in this place, by the way—but the soccer teams don't seem to think that's good enough. What do we think?"
"I think it's not good enough," Russ answers immediately.
"You don't count. Anyone else?"
After a few snickers at Russ's wounded expression, Julie speaks up. "I don't think they'll learn their lesson from that."
"Of course they won't. 'Suspension' for a hockey player means something totally different than 'suspension' for anyone else." Scooter frowns. "This isn't exactly the first time they've been suspended. Rick's dad makes sure they're well taken care of."
"Well there ya have it." Russ grins. "So, we gotta get a little serious here, and we definitely gotta not get caught. You all remember the ants, of course?"
"YES," Scooter and I answer as one. Everyone else laughs.
"Well, we found out from some kind sources in the science class that ants ain't the only bugs at this school. We don't wanna make this too serious though."
Russ stops and Ken takes over. "So Scooter... is anyone on Varsity allergic to bees?"
We can all see where this is heading.
Scooter considers this for a moment. I can tell he's spending more time deciding whether he wants to answer the question than actually figuring out the answer. "Nope. Well, nobody except me anyway."
Grin. "Excellent."
