Hi! Me again, on the same day! Wow! I told you I had a lot of it written. Welcome to kindergarten in less than 2K words. Also, I'm in high school and I don't remember how kindergarten works.
Stay safe, please review, and enjoy reading!
...
Logan was ready to learn on the first day of school. Terrified, but ready.
Then nothing happened.
Well, technically, lots of things happened. He committed three versions of the name game to memory, as well as the names of his teacher and classmates and locations of necessities such as fire extinguishers. He wrote out a copy of the weekly schedule for reference and pinned it to his wall. He was assigned a shelf for his backpack, a desk to sit at, a table where Thomas would eat lunch, a tray to turn in papers. Lots of things were sorted out and set up, and plenty of new people were met.
But nothing of substance was learned.
By the end of the day, Logan's door had swapped places with Patton's.
…
For the first week of kindergarten, Logan had nothing to do.
Then the teacher announced they were about to learn about the alphabet.
Thomas already knew the alphabet, Logan had made sure of it. He barely forgot letters anymore. No, what got Logan excited was that the teacher was telling them about it. One thing Logan had learned in his five or so years of existence was that knowledge was built on knowledge. Crawling came before walking, and walking before running. Therefore, if the teacher was telling the class about letters, that was only the first step: knowing them. The next steps would be reading and writing them, then reading and writing words and sentences and books! Logan could read, but that didn't mean Thomas could, it only made him more eager for his host to learn.
And learn he did. In the weeks to come, Thomas perfected the alphabet song and became better than ever at recognizing letters. Logan made sure he did it all the time. Letters were everywhere, from cereal boxes to street signs to T-shirts. The class started piecing them together and reading words, and the teacher handed out their first worksheet.
It was a single sheet of paper with three sections. The top section showed the letter A written out in capital and lowercase. The middle section had huge lines to write on, with the letter A in dotted lines for Thomas to trace over. The third and final section was blank lines to fill out without the dotted outlines. The teacher helped them write their names at the top of the page before they put it in their folders.
Thomas had been given his first homework assignment in his life.
Logan had never been happier.
He could barely sit still for the rest of class, as they practiced basic addition. By the time Thomas boarded the bus, Logan gave in to his excitement and emerged from his room to join the others in the common room for a game of The Floor Is Lava.
When he came out, he found his door at the end of the hallway. He didn't realize he was smiling until his mouth started to hurt.
Three games later, all of which Virgil won with his unmatched reflexes, Thomas was home and ready to fill out the worksheet. Logan was more than happy to help, but Patton stopped him from going back to his room. "We want to see you work," he explained. "This is a milestone! Kindergarten has so many of those," he added, almost to himself.
So Logan ended up sitting on the floor with the worksheet on the low table in the common room. He summoned a pencil from the mug in his room and set to work on the first row of dotted A's. He could feel Thomas copying his confident motions, tracing the graphite over the lines. Thomas was writing! He was writing, he was—
Doodling?
Yes. Doodling. That was a doodle of a dragon witch on the back of his homework.
Logan looked up to see Aeneas conjuring said dragon witch onto the couch. Patton was looking between them, seeming unsure of where to devote his attention. Virgil was staring at the dragon witch as it took shape, as if waiting to see how threatening it would be. Janus wasn't watching either of them, writing in that notebook of his; he'd been making acidic remarks since they'd been playing The Floor Is Lava, and Logan was willing to bet that he'd never stopped.
"What are you doing?"
Aeneas jumped, his creation melting away. Conjuring was significantly harder outside of the Imagination, so the interruption was enough to completely disrupt his project. Logan felt a slight pang of guilt at that, as it had been shaping up to be an impressive idea, but he didn't retract his complaint.
Aeneas looked down, sheepish. "Sorry, Logan. I know this is important and Thomas needs to focus on writing, but… do I have to?"
"Evidently."
"I don't know what that means."
"It means, you do have to focus on writing because if you conjure, Thomas gets distracted. That's what just happened. He started drawing instead of writing."
"Oh." Aeneas sat down on the couch. "Sorry, I just got bored. Carry on."
"Thank you."
Logan finished the first row, and before long, so did Thomas. The rest of the worksheet didn't take long. Thomas ran to show his mom the moment it was finished.
She smiled at him and ruffled his hair. "Aren't you clever?"
Logan beamed. So did Thomas. They didn't care what came next, how hard people said school would get. They would be fine. No, amazing.
They could do this.
…
I can't do this.
Logan threw the pencil down and stood up, hoping the extra height would give him the edge in the battle to come. "If you insist I help Thomas complete his homework in the common room, you could at least try to make this environment somewhat conducive to productivity."
Aeneas, Patton, and Virgil stared at him blankly. They turned to Janus, who was reading a book on snakes in the armchair. "You made Logan work out here, but you made out here a distracting environment," he translated. "I can speed up this argument by adding that Logan is correct that you three are idiots—well, two of you, not Virge—while also making sure Logan is aware that there really isn't a better place to play The Floor Is Lava, since in the Imagination, the floor actually is lava, so Virgil wouldn't play." He rolled his eyes and held his book up in front of his face.
Logan buried a groan of frustration. They'd had that argument four times by then, and they'd all gone just like that. In the end, the others had agreed to keep it down and either play a quieter board game, put on a movie, or watch Logan work. The last option, though it was the reason Logan had been told to come out of his room in the first place, only became less frequent.
Virgil mumbled something unintelligible from the top of the couch, pulling his hood down over his face. Aeneas wrung his hands. Patton offered a truce in the form of a cautious smile. "Sorry, kiddo, we'll try to be quieter."
"No, you won't," Logan countered. "This isn't the first time this has happened. Despite knowing I need relative quiet to get work done, you refuse to wait for me to finish. You asked me to come out so you could watch me work, but you clearly have no interest in doing so. Therefore, I will return to my room until the work is complete."
He left without another word, ignoring Patton when he called out after him.
…
Knocking at his door.
Logan had finished helping Thomas with his work, but he hadn't come out of his room. It had gone much more smoothly than before. Thomas was getting smarter every day. All thanks to me. He didn't need the others, obviously, so he went back to his model of the solar system.
"Kiddo?" Patton knocked again.
Well, Logan could be stubborn too. He set Jupiter in place and gave it a spin. It whirled like a top, then tumbled to the floor.
Logan picked it back up and tried again.
"Logan, I'm sorry about earlier. I really am. The others are, too, but Aeneas doesn't want to admit it and Virgil gets scared when you're mad, so I didn't make them come."
"I'm not mad." It slipped out before Logan could stop it. He knew he shouldn't care, he knew the misunderstanding made sense. But it did matter, and he was mad. Why couldn't the others just be patient? He'd get the work done sooner, and then they'd be able to play games with all four of them, five if anyone could get Janus to admit he had fun with them. But Logan wasn't about to tell them that his heart refused to obey his mind by admitting to his frustration. After all, if they knew, how could any of them take him seriously ever again?
"Well, I just wanted to let you know that dinner's ready," Patton said. "I made your favorite! Are you going to come down?"
Logan frowned to himself. On the one hand, he enjoyed the time to himself. The others were his family, but they could be overwhelmingly chaotic, and he wasn't sure he had the energy. Besides, if they got into another argument, he doubted he'd be able to reign in his temper, and he didn't want to hurt them.
But on the other hand, Patton's cooking was divine; the fact that Logan never skipped family dinners despite knowing that sides didn't have to eat was proof of that. On the other hand, Virgil was usually awake enough by dinner to pepper their conversations with his trademark witty insults. On the other hand, Janus often asked for his opinion on whatever he'd been reading, and their ensuing debates made Logan feel more alive than even Thomas learning did. On the other hand, Aeneas's boundless energy always made him smile despite himself.
On the other hand… Logan loved his family. And he didn't want to push them away over something so trivial.
Logan set the model Jupiter on his desk and opened the door.
Patton's smile chased away what little doubt lingered.
