Raven
After the rest of the class divides itself into groups Ms. Flores releases us to work on our projects. Garfield pushes an empty desk next to mine and then another, before taking a seat. Richard joins us, but he walks slow as if he didn't raise his hand by himself. Why is he so reluctant, he's the one who volunteered? There are other kids in the class who would work with Richard if he wanted them to, he'd done plenty of projects with other kids. Ms. Flores usually has to assign me to a group if she lets us pick and then I end up doing all the work. Garfield is being stupid for some reason and wants to work with us, so this should be easier. I don't know why he picked me or why he keeps bugging me lately, but I might as well take advantage of it. It's a dumb project anyway and I don't need extra credit. If he's too annoying I'll just ignore him.
"Great, now that we're all here." Garfield says as Richard finally sits down. "If you guys don't mind, can we pick candy canes?"
"Why?" Richard asks.
"Because... I like them?" Garfield says, but it sounds like a lie.
"Is this because," Richard starts to say.
"Yes." Garfield interrupts him. I look at both of them, but neither one explains.
"Sure," Richard says. They look at me and I nod because I don't really care. I sense amusement from Richard and a mixture of joy and upset from Garfield. Is he annoyed or upset by whatever Richard was going to say?
"Cool, now that, that's decided should we do a poster, a diorama or a performance piece?" Garfield asks reading the paper. Why is he so excited about this? Group projects suck and we're already done with exams. This is just a waste of time.
"Poster is easier," Richard says in a tone that suggests he's thinking the same thing.
"Awe, I was really hoping," Garfield pauses mid-sentence and his eyes go wide, his mouth turns into a fine line. He gets up and runs out into the hall. Richard gets up to and leaves without saying anything. Woohoo. Great way to start a group project. I look at Ms. Flores, but she's talking to the group in the corner, if she noticed, she doesn't care.
Garfield and Richard come back, but by then we're spending the last hour of class watching a holiday movie. She'll give us more time to work on our project tomorrow in the library. When class is over, I head upstairs and instead of grabbing the book I've been working on, I go to the holiday section of the shelves and see if I can find anything about candy canes. I pull all the Christmas books off the shelf and sit on the floor with them. There are about ten, more than any other holiday.
The door opens and Garfield and Richard come in. Richard goes to the computers without a word like always and Garfield comes over to me in the shelves. He sits down without an invitation and picks up the book on top of the stack, a cookie cookbook which will probably not have any useful information, but he flips through it anyway.
"Sorry about class," he says, but he doesn't explain what happened. He just flips through the book. I grab it out of his hands and replace it with the next one in the stack. This one is visual holiday encyclopedia, much more likely to have information. I thought he might get mad, but he smiles. I go through the rest of the stack, but it's useless. Just cookbooks and stories about Santa Clause who we all already know isn't real. I skim the Santa stories for anything related to Candy Canes though, just running through the text and pausing at any mentions. I'm halfway through the second when Richard comes over with some papers.
"I printed these. Those books are a waste of time." He hands the stack to Garfield. I scoot closer and take a look. They're encyclopedia pages and other bits, all the information we'll need. I stand up and start reshelving the books.
"Thanks man!" Garfield grins.
"We can just make a poster in class tomorrow and be done with it." Richard says. I nod in agreement.
"But posters are boring, no one even looks at them." Garfield pouts.
"You picked candy canes, what more could we do than a poster?" Richard is annoyed. We both look at Garfield and wait for an actual suggestion. More than a poster, is not a suggestion. It's a complaint. If he wants us to do more work, he better have a good idea.
"This is my first time getting to work on a project with friends. I want to do something cool," he says. "Maybe we could..." he trails off and starts making a weird face. He bites his lower lip and his eyes start to bulge before he sprints away from the shelves and out of the library.
"Not again," Richard scoffs. He leaves too. Friends?