The only good part about gym was running laps. Strong leg muscles meant he could put a distance between himself and the jocks in his period without much effort. It also made him look cool to be able to do something without screwing up.
Of course it may have helped if he'd had something to eat during lunch rather than talk and stare at Sara. He'd skipped two meals now and was running on empty. Todd's metabolism was not liking him, and presently neither were his sides.
Groaning slightly at the cramps, Todd decided to slow down which allowed Matthews and his pal Bruce to catch up and pass him. Todd grumbled obscenities under his breath and much against his better judgement put on an extra burst of speed. His energy fizzled out halfway round the gym and he practically crawled the next lap.
Coach Sanders clicked his tongue at him as he passed for the final one. "You're usually better than this. Haven't been eating properly, have you?"
Todd grunted a negative, watching nearly everyone finish before him. Now it was down to him and Melvin Finkle, who was presently fumbling for his inhaler. Everyone else went to play basketball.
Focusing on breathing through his nose and watching the coach to make sure he didn't notice Todd cutting corners, the boy failed to see the basketball until it slammed into his head and knocked him off balance into the metal equipment locker. Stars burst across his vision and sent him to his knees. Todd heard Finkle's triumphant wheezing as the gangly boy passed him to the finish point but could see nothing through a haze of red.
"You... okay, Tolensky?" a familiar voice hesitantly inquired. Todd looked up blearily at Daniels who was hovering over him looking concerned and wary.
"Nnngh?"
"That ball hit you pretty hard. Not as hard as the cabinet though. Need a hand up, man?"
"No, Daniels, s'cool. You threw the ball?" Todd slurred.
"It was Graydon. Probably just an accident. Or not. They are jerks sometimes. I'm surprised you aren't bleeding."
Todd gingerly felt his head. No wetness to be had. There was only a tender spot that ached when he touched it. "Yeah, I'm fine." He struggled to his feet, ignoring the hand Evan offered only halfway - as if fearing it would be bitten off.
"Okay, man. Suit yourself."
"Come on, boy, let's keep playing!" Matthews called.
Evan scowled. "He calls me 'boy' again, he'll lose more teeth than game," he muttered and stalked back to the group. Coach Sanders, seeing what had happened, allowed Todd to sit on the bleachers for the rest of the period but made no move to talk to Graydon.
Todd found himself nearly dozing off when the bell rang. Todd leaped down off the bleachers, wished he hadn't at the resulting dizzy spell, and sprinted to the nearest water fountain to splash his face and rehydrate.
He had Art last, and it was an outdoor project to sketch anything they wanted. Todd clambered up one of the sheltering trees as soon as Mrs. Spindell's back was turned and spent the rest of the class filling his sketchbook with Sara doodles and eating as many moths and caterpillars as he could catch.

Todd was seldom on time for anything in his life - but some things deserved the effort. After leaving a note on Lance's jeep that he would find his own way home, Todd took off.
He was three minutes late for his meeting at the library before leaving the school and running in his present state did little to make up the distance. The librarian glared daggers at him as he ran up the stairs, just daring him to try that inside. Todd wisely decided to walk through the building at a normal rate. His eyes scanned the tables and found Sara, already with a pile of books and tapping her fingers to the soft music on the PA.(1)
"Sorry, yo," he gasped, setting his bag down and dropping his sketchpad on the table. "Ain't no excuse for bein' late, but it always happens to me." He eyed the clock. "How late am I anyway?"
Eight minutes. Aw damn. "Oh man, I'm sorry," he apologized again, dropping his gaze.

(1) I don't know if many libraries play music, but mine does. :P Usually it's Enya.

"From the looks of things, you couldn't help it," said Sara. "That's a nasty bruise you have there." She mirrored the mark, tracing invisible outlines against her own skin.
Inter-person touching was a thing she never quite understood the sub- implications of, so she tended to avoid it. Sara followed the simple rule, Touch as others touch you, and so far, no-one had.
"I have something in my medkit for that kind of thing. Are you allergic to iodine? Oh. Was it accident or design?"
"Hard to be sure," Todd grunted, unearthing a textbook from his own grungy bag. "Um. An' I ain't allergic to iodine." He knew that for certain, since either it or industrial-strength Dettol(1) were the panacea of the hour when it came to cuts and scrapes in the tenements. "Didn't know you could put that stuff on bruises."
Sara bought out a box and withdrew a tube. "Not the liquid, no. This is a gel. Pharmacists' don't carry it any more. You have to order the stuff. Lucky for me I have connections." She measured out a dose on her fingertip. "Gramma runs the company. Shh..." She made to ministrate, then paused, having no idea of the boy's personal-space rules. "May I?"
"Sure thing, yo. It ain't gonna sting or nuthin', right?"
"No stinging, I assure you," she almost laughed. "Though there is a slight risk of cramping in some muscles. You'll look absolutely horrid by dinnertime, but by tomorrow, there'll just be faint yellowing." Gently, afraid that she'd somehow hurt him, she applied the gel. Smooth, gentle circles, working it in and around.
"What happened to yo' hand?"
He noticed. Someone actually noticed and cared what happened to her. A statistical blip, she was certain. Perhaps it was smalltalk. "Oh, Vlad was in a bad mood. Demanded a blood sacrifice even after I bribed him."
"How in hell you bribe a harp?"
"Do you," Sara absently corrected. "I've found that Vlad is partial to the odd mothball in the base of his support column. I suppose it keeps the insects away from him. Wants to live forever or something." She shrugged. "Billie-Jo's all appearances. She's just happy with that glittery wax you can get cheap at the discount music dives. Quite vain, really."
"'Nother harp, right?"
"My home-practice one," said Sara. "Mother's already said it's never leaving the music room - except to go into storage when guests are over, of course." Her eyelid fluttered and she quelled it. Mention of her mother had been doing that, lately. She changed the subject. "There. All greased over. Try not to touch or scratch until it's soaked in."
"Sure you got it all?" he said, smiling. "Didn't miss no spots?"
"Any spots. No. I was sure to be thorough."
Todd muttered something that sounded remarkably like, "...damn."
"Pardon?"
"Oh. Um. I looked up some shi-uh... stuff on lizards an' reptiles. They only got one paragraph on chameleons in the whole chapter." He opened his book to show her, flipping the pages until he found the right zone.
"Considering that book also includes dinosaurs, I'm impressed they found space to mention them at all," said Sara, speed-reading upside- down wasn't all that much more difficult than doing it right-way up. When one practiced. "Evolutionarily speaking, they should rate about one sentence for the entire book." She paused. "Is 'evolutionarily' a proper word?"
"If it ain't yo' just made it one," said Todd. He flipped backwards for a second, checking the content. "Hey, you're pretty fast."
"When one's mother demands one's attention at random moments," said Sara. "One learns to read fast or not at all." Flutter, flutter went the eye. Sara held it shut with her bandaged hand and read over the paragraph still between Todd's webbed fingers. "Dissapointing, isn't it? The most fascinating land-dweller on the planet, and it gets such a remarkably uninformative paragraph."

Todd boggled for the fifth time in as many minutes. Okay. The chick can speed-read. She can speed-read upside-down. She plays the harp and names 'em. She buys total strangers lunch an' tries to heal them. An' she talks a lot like Big Blue(2), yo. What sort o' girl is she?
"Uh. Yeah," he said, reading it over again. He'd read it a billion times and knew that there was more to know about Chameleons other than that they had independant eyes and stretchy tongues... or that they changed colour according to their mood or the lighting. "Tell yo' th' truth... I don't usually hang here."
"I should think not. Fatal habit," Sara smirked.
Wait. That was a joke? "I mean hang out," he blushed. "Um. Er. What'd you find?"
"Someone's thesis that came here by mistake. Interesting for the exact makings of the colour cells. Several encyclopaedia in varying stages of out-of-date..." Sara opened one, and found a page with a hole in it. "Not to mention editing(3)..."
"Aw man, that sucks," said Todd on automatic. "Don't people think?"
"I've seen worse. Some rip out the entire page."
Todd winced. Not that he was particularly fond of reference books, but he'd needed them enough to appreciate them being both availlable and whole. "I know th' logic," he confessed. "It ain't theirs, so they don't care. It's just like rippin' a page outta th' phone book. Fo' one number. Jerks."
"It gets worse. The library's forbidden to replace, repair or investigate until twenty percent of the book is gone. Disgusting." She put aside that one and opened another. "More of the same. Native to Africa and Madagascar. Eats insects. And the rest is out of date."
Todd picked up a slim volume on the care and feeding of chameleons. "Says they like bein' warm," he suggested.
"Doesn't everybody?" said Sara. "I've always been something of a heat- hog, myself, but that's hardly any indicator of cold blood, is it?"
"That's what I keep tellin' everyone," Todd ranted. "Just 'cause I got trouble keepin' warm don't mean I need a hot rock or nuthin'. I just got core temperature problems, yo."
"Doesn't," corrected Sara.
"'Course, it'd help if we had heat, but that's another story..."
"Furnace on the blink?"
"Um." Todd remembered Fred's trouble taking her money. There was a subtle temptation to take her for everything she could give. On the other hand, his moral compas was pointing due Girl Here, so his usual instincts were a little muddled. "I don' like t' say, y'know?"
"You share a domicile with Freddy, don't you?" she said. She was checking her facts.
"Yyyyyyyyyeeeeaaahhh...?" Now his compass was wavering between Girl Here and Jealousy.
"Ah. Monetary trouble's cut off the heat. I can fix that."
"You what?"
Her smile lit up her face. Even when it was an evil one. "I have no qualms against playing Robin Hood. Care to join?" She gestured towards the school PC's and their internet access.
Todd's lower brain was thinking, Hm. Tight, cozy little cubicle. We could - y'know - bump up against her an' get snuggly... It waggled its eyebrows at him suggestively.
The fact that his lower brain even had eyebrows to waggle was so disturbing that he let it pass him right by. "Sure, yo. Show me yo' stuff."
Sara almost leaped over. Her lanky frame made for some pretty long strides.
Todd leaped into a chair next to her as she loaded up the Bayville Herald. "What's that fo'?"
"Seeing who's taken the largest, most unnecessary pay rise this week..."
Day-umn, yo! She wasn't kidding. He grinned. This was going to be fun to watch.

(1) Brand-name antiseptic stuff that smells heavily of pine and stings worse than blue fury. And yes, it is available in the States.
(2) Aka Beast, aka Hank McCoy.
(3) People in my Primary School used to do this. The fact that someone did it in High School speaks of someone of very low intellect.

Sara scrolled through the Business columns with one hand on the mouse and the other writing down figures on scratch paper without pausing to look at it. The last number she wrote produced an "Aha!" of triumph.
"I don't know who Mr. Bolivar Trask is, but he's about to pay some community service taxes."
Todd peered at the information. "Day-amn. That's a lot of zeroes. What does he do?"
"Who knows," Sara shrugged. "The other cash source would have been Xavier, but you told me to go there if I needed help. I don't think that would have set up a good impression, even if he'd never find out it was me."
"Oh, he'd find out. Telepath," Todd informed. Sara shuddered.
"Yeesh. You would have stopped me, right?"
"Of course, yo."
"Then it's settled. Trask shall now cover your bills at the wave of my magic wand." Sara waved no wand, but instead she swiveled the mouse on the pad with a flourish, clicked twice and began to type furiously.
What happened next was a dazzling array of windows, commands and random small beeping noises(1) that made Todd's eyes hurt if he tried to follow along.
He reached up to rub his eyes, lowered his hand and the screen was blank once more, save for one window. Sara was now scrolling down the billing index for electricity and gas. "Who would it be under?"
"Alvers, yo. Lance Alvers. He's the oldest."
"How old is he exactly?"
"Eighteen."
"Yikes. So the rumors that he's old enough to go to college and held back...?"
"True as Trish's implants."
Sara looked at him oddly. Todd wanted to slap himself. Then something surprising happened. Sara giggled.
Sara immediately blushed at the sound. You laugh too much, her mother's voice snapped. You sound like a cross between a chipmunk and a pig.
Her eye twitched yet again, but the giggles continued for a bit longer. "Sorry," she apologized simultaneously with Todd.
"I didn't mean to say that. Sorta slipped out," the boy mumbled, unsure whether she'd been laughing at him or at his joke. "Don't tell anyone?" The last thing he needed was Trish's posse of boytoys to smack him down for that remark.
"Don't worry. My lips are sealed," Sara promised and turned back to the computer.
"You won't get caught, will you?" Todd whispered.
"No. I'm telnetting - they'll never know it was me."
"Brilliant, yo," Todd told her. He had little enough idea of how and what she was doing, but he knew it was a good sixty miles above what he could do on his Frankenstein PC.(2) That and he just wanted to compliment her.
Her blushing was adorable.
"There," Sara said proudly, closing the window as soon as the transfer of funds to the Brotherhood billing account was complete. "Anything else you need paying for?"
Todd looked a bit embarrassed. "Eh... well, there's water. And Tabby's got phone bill this time. Which means it'll never get paid."
Sara felt a small twinge of something like jealousy. "Who's Tabby?"
"Oh, some chick who lives with us whenever we have money. She's away visiting her mother. Made the trip as soon as the lights went out and her turn for paying her keep came up."
"So, why don't you read her an ultimatum? Pay up or get out?" Like you're one to talk, Sara. You couldn't tell a dog to 'sit' without feeling guilty. Thus teased her inner consciousness.
Shut UP. She told it.
"Tabby's got a way with bombs," Todd muttered, rubbing at yet another phantom pain. This one happened to be on his tush. "They really really sting, yo."
"Sounds like you four need some sort of organized protest. I couldn't tell anyone off if my life depended on it, but well... you..."
Todd smiled, not offended. "I don't seem to have trouble with it?"
Sara blushed again.
"S'okay. I don't like bein' disrespected an' if the person's easy to deal with when riled, I got no trouble with lettin' 'em know where I stand. But... well..." Todd fidgeted. "One, Tabby's a girl. As in, she could cry rape whenever she wanted, and get us some seriously unwelcome attention. Most of us are runaways and tryin' to stick together with as little notice as possible. Even if they didn't find Pietro or Lance's DNA on her, we'd still be split up. Two, she's two- faced. Anyway you try to break it to her that she's a free-loader, she'll act like she's completely rational an' understanding, and then one of us will wake up in the morning with hair shaved off or scorch marks or a completely trashed room. You do not mess with Tabby. Messing with Lance is more sane."
"She sounds like fun," Sara murmured, bringing up the water bill.
There was a bit of a silence, broken only by the constant patter of keyboarding fingers.
"Sara?" Todd fidgeted.
"Yes, dear?"
"Um... Thank you. This really means a lot to me - I mean, us. Well, me too, if ya know what I mean." Okay, when Sara blushed, she was cute. Todd could feel his ears going red and believed himself to resemble a squashed turnip. "There uh... anything I can do for you? Really. Name it and it's done."
His voice was soft, a shyer quality than Sara had heard all day. He was serious. She looked over at him and his eyes mirrored the seriousness of his tone. They were very pretty... his eyes...

(1) Thank you Nutter! And sorry it took so long.
(2) From Nutter's fic about Kurt joining the Brotherhood... forget what it's called. Todd has this PC that he built from scraps of computers he found in the junkyard. Just thought I'd reference to it because I love the idea.

Sara fought the blush, she really did, but the rallying forces of natural rouge combined with unnaturally pale skin and threatened to take over most of her face, her ears, and at least half of what could charitably be called her chest.
"Uhm..." she managed, sounding highly intelligent. "It wasn't anything special," she babbled. "Anyone could do it. All one needs is a reasonable computer, internet access and a working knowledge of electronic security systems... It's nothing much."
"I thought it was awesome," said Todd.
"You're being kind," she murmured. "And -um- if you insist on some kind of deed-for-deed repayment... well... I'm sure I'll make a pest of myself in the fullness of time. You know. Irrelevant little questions..." She tore off a couple of post-it notes, and wrote a series of contacts on them. "Perhaps we could stay in touch?"
Todd looked startled. "Yo' givin' me yo' number?"
"I won't abuse the privalege of having yours," she assured. "If you choose to give it, of course. That's my home number, a direct line to my room. That's my cellular, my email and my varying IM contacts. I finally got everything down with one central manager. Something less of a pest, but only just. Oh, and my homepage if you feel like browsing by. I have a bulletin board."
"Yo, that's what I call online."
"I have trouble sleeping, so I keep running out of things to do." She shrugged. "Chatting online can help, but only for so long." Then she blushed anew, remembering why they were there. "I suppose we'd better get back to the books. We might find something of use..."
Todd pocketed her contact info and grabbed the spare post-it note. His presence online was as a lurker. Sure, he had an account on Deviantart, but since he posted indy work, nobody commented. All he had was that, his AIM contact, and the number for the boarding-house. Pretty slim pickings compared to Sara's haul.
Sara found it embaressing because she was online far more often than she technically should be. And she lied in order to do it.
Lying to your mother, said her Inner Mom. If only she knew, she'd give you the hell you deserve, you ungrateful brat...
Her eye fluttered again, spreading out into a facial tic.
"You sure yo' awright?"
"I'll be fine in a minute," she said, focussing on boxing the bad emotions away.

Todd watched her face change with alarm. One minute, she looked supremely disturbed about something... the next, she was as cold and emotionless as carved marble. Then she was back.
Her face was much better when she was at home in it.
They spent a cosy few minutes - subjectively speaking, since the clock whizzed through half an hour - exchanging laughable facts, before the librarian turfed them out.
"Oh my," breathed Sara. "Sunset already."
"It's pretty, isn't it?" he blurted. His stomach rumbled at him and he prayed she didn't hear.
"Majestic," said Sara. "If you want a snack, I know this delightful all-you-can-eat place. It's a little more -er- international than what you might be used to. I'm only thinking of it because it's the only place that serves bamboo worms..." She stopped. "Am I babbling?"
"Not even close," he soothed. "What's this about worms?"
"Bamboo worms. They're a delicacy in Hunan. Dad was up there years and years ago and I got a taste for the cuisine. They do western food, too, if you have a thing against edible insects."
"Yo, no problems, sugarlips," he said. Er. Should I have said the last thing out loud? "I eat bugs alla time."
"Oh yes. Of course. The -ah- relationship with amphibians."
"Toads, yo. You can say it. I'm coo'."
"Really? I thought your physique was more froggish, myself."
"Meh. But who's afraid o' frogs, yo?"
Sara measured her pace to match his. "Do we have to make people afraid of us?"
He shrugged. "Momma always said, if yo' can't get their respect, fear'd do just fine."
Sara gestured towards the parking lot. "Perhaps, but people rarely destroy what they respect."
The only vehicle left, besides some staff cars, was a degraded-looking thing that, because it had two wheels, had to be a bike. Todd tried to be polite about it. "I'm guessin' this is th' famous Eileen." What happened to it? Fred sit on it?
Sara knelt to undo the lock. "That's her. I only keep up this much security to stop people towing her as scrap. My compromise with mother--" flutter, flutter, went her eyelid, "--involved finding, purchasing, and maintaining my own vehicle so long as I did it wholly of myself. The minute we agreed, she cut me off without warning and locked all the house 'phones. I was temporarily destitute."
Hm. Nice woman. Todd thought she was past due some of that 'karmic realignment' that Sara billed Trask for. But how to teach her a lesson without hurting Sara? A problem for another day. "Hey, it's coo'. Got me a PC a lot like it. You know. F-O-R-D..."
"Found on rubbish dump, oh yes," Sara giggled. She freed her heap and put away the cable. "I should have asked, are you okay for meals? You barely touched lunch and you're looking awful peekid."
"Naw, I'm always this colour," he grinned. "I'm fine. Honest."
Sara offered him a choice of helmets. The dorky-looking purple one, or the bubble with little daisies on it.