Here I AAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

And you're probably wondering, "Starlight Amethyst! What have you been doing?!" Well, you see, I met Writer's Block one day and we started hanging out. Then two months later I discovered he sucked as a friend and I met Inspiration. I'm happy now. :D

But enough of my life story. On with the chapter!

Chapter Title: Dunce (D)

Pairing: Jack x Mary

Warning: SLIIIIIIGHT OOC. Just a little.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, dearies. If I did own Harvest Moon, I would be off making animes and mangas with my plot bunnies instead of crappy fanfiction. :(

Jack Foster had never been extraordinarily excellent at academics, nor at anything else he had to do in school.

Okay, that just doesn't cut it. He wasn't good at all.

So when he got that letter, he gave a little squeal of fear.

Okay, that doesn't cut it either. It was more like…

…He screamed like a girl.

And of course, Jack's famous "AAIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" reached the library, where Mary Taylor, resident librarian and best friend of resident idiot farmer, heard it.

And naturally, because she heard his cry for help and because she was his best friend, she (reluctantly) dropped everything and promptly went to see what was wrong.

When Mary got around to Jack's farm, she saw… well, you could say the farm could be in better shape. She sighed shyly at the disheveled farm, which, oddly, she could have sworn had been extraordinarily pristine this morning. No normal person could undo all that perfection in seven minutes and forty-nine seconds, right?

But then again, who said Jack Foster was normal?

Sadly, nobody. Because he wasn't.

Not in terms of maturity, anyway.

But Mary loved that about her best friend, the way his goofiness and childishness made her laugh and made her forget about the formalities and spiffiness she grew up with. With Jack, Mary wasn't Marianne Janice Berlitz-Taylor, but instead just plain Mary. With Jack, Mary was happy.

Well, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes he ticked her off. Sometimes he was a total idiot. Like now.

Right now, said idiot was running around like a headless chicken waving an impeccably pristine piece of paper around. Or at least, Mary was sure the paper was clean before Jack touched it. Now it was crumpled and mud-splattered.

"Jackson Justin Foster!" she called, almost indignantly. "Stop that idiosyncrasy this instant!"

Mary knew she was sometimes like a mother to Jack – despite the fact he was five months older than her – but who was counting? She was twenty-two, after all, and infinitely more mature than he was.

At her outburst, the brunette quieted down and slowly made his way to Mary, his head bent down. He looked so pitiful that Mary couldn't help but forgive him.

Almost.

Because at that moment, Jack dropped the puppy-dog eyes pose and started freaking out again. She groaned in exasperation. "Oh, Jack," she scoffed. "Give me that." With that, she snatched the paper away from him and read it.

Jack watched her as she read it, nail-bitingly waiting for her reaction. And he stood there, in agony, for the next two minutes and thirty-six seconds. And when two minutes and thirty-six seconds had passed and Mary had finished reading, she giggled.

"WHA-AT?" he whined.

"Jack!" she cried out between giggles. "This is a letter telling you to retake your second-grade math finals!"

Jack looked at her, dumbfounded. "Really? I thought it was a letter from the bank saying I seriously need to pay the four-year loan I have on my Porsche."

Mary blinked. "You have a Porsche?!"

"Well, yeah," he admitted. "It's at home in the city – I got it with a bank loan. I was supposed to pay the bank back four years ago."

"And you didn't?"

He giggled. "Of course I didn't. Why do you think I moved here, silly?"

Mary groaned. Deciding that this whole discussion was pointless, she held up the paper. "And this? It's a letter from your elementary school. Says you need to retake an exam you missed in two days and they only noticed now thanks to their computer system, yadda yadda…"

"…and if I fail the exam, I have to retake second grade all over again." Jack suddenly looked scared. "Mary!" he suddenly cried. "You're smart, right? You have to HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Mary covered her ears and sighed. "I never was good at multiplication!" Jack was wailing. "Or conjunctions! I suck at conjunctions! Mary, help MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Visions of a grown-up-sized, twenty-two-year-old Jack miserably sitting in a classroom filled with eager, noisy seven-year-olds and with a teacher probably younger than him flashed through Mary's head, and she giggled.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," she said vaguely. "All right, Jack, since you asked so nicely, I will help you."

"You really will?" He cried, his eyes dramatically huge and teary-eyed.

"Yes," she replied. "But you owe me."

THE NEXT DAY…

Mary slammed Math So Easy Even an Idiot Could Answer It: 2 shut in exasperation. "Jack," she said with forced cheeriness, "Will it kill you to answer the problem?"

"But it's two digit-times-two-digit multiplications!" Jack wailed. "How am I supposed to understand that?!"

Mary felt like screaming. If her parents wouldn't kill her and if Jack wasn't her best friend, she would have hit him with the thickest, heaviest, most hard-bound book she could find in the library.

"All right, Jack," she said, calming down, "Thirty-eight times twelve is?"

No answer.

"Is?" she pressed.

"Four hundred and seventy-six!" he announced proudly. She sighed in relief. Ladies and gentlemen, we may actually be making progress here. But then she noticed him peek at his back, and she leaped into action. Three seconds later she was holding an electronic calculator triumphantly in her hand. "Jack!"

"Like I said, I really don't understaaaaaaaand!" he cried.

"Then how on earth did you graduate from college with a BS in Agriculture?!" she gasped.

"Will Angelika here," he said sweetly, gingerly taking the calculator from Mary and cradling it in his arms. "Lili's been with me since Mommy took me to preschool."

This guy nicknames calculators? Mary cried silently. This was going to be a LONG day.

"So, how was it?"

Mary had no sooner said those words when she noticed how disgruntled Jack's face was as he marched into the library. "Terrible, huh?"

"You said it." Jack plopped himself onto a chair and groaned. "I swear by the Harvest Goddess, if I could just PASS the frickin' exam I would be the happiest man in Mineral Town."

Mary pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "It couldn't be that bad," she said softly. "I mean you're twenty-two. I'm sure you'll pass." She brightened. "When do you get the results?"

"Tomorrow," was the muffled reply.

"Well then," she said matter-of-factly, "We'll just have to wait."

When the exam results did come in, Mary was shocked. She'd taken Lili from him, how was this possible?!

Jack was shocked.

The whole of Mineral Town was shocked.

Even the Harvest Goddess was shocked. "Dang!" she wailed. "I thought I made that boy the most idiotic person on the face of the earth!"

Indeed. She had every right to be shocked. For stamped on the top of the first page were the two simple characters:

A+

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Jack burst into the library in a wave of song. "Thank you, Mary! Arigato! Danke! Merci! Sie riechen as toiletten!"

Mary smiled a "You're welcome," at him, not bothering to point out that the last one was (rather broken) German, not for "Thank you," but for 'You smell like toilets.'

"Well, gotta go, Mary," he said. "I have to proclaim my victory to the world!"

She grinned. "Oh, Jack!" she called. "One more thing…"

He swung around. "Yes?"

Suddenly, he frowned and she giggled as she placed on his head the yellow cone-shaped hat marked "DUNCE."

Yes, dears, I know it sucked. But please review, still? :( If you review you get a cookie!