71. Obsession
If boredom had a color, she thought, idly staring at the overweight teacher waving his hands and scribbling things on the blackboard, it'd be gray. Gray like the clouds up in the sky, like the tiled sidewalk across the street and the highrises in the distance. Even the park seemed gray somehow, with its leafless trees.
She looked down at her notebook, at the almost illegible notes she had taken. She frowned at them, looked up at the teacher and then randomly underlined one word. Then she moved her pen to the margin and jotted down a D.
She sighed, shifted in her seat and glanced sideways. Tucker was sitting next to her, seemingly in rapt attention, staring at the teacher. His hands were under the table, and from where she was sitting, she could clearly see the PDA he was holding. Judging by the way his fingers were moving he was playing some sort of game. Something was off though...
She snorted when she discovered Tucker's little deception. He had pictures of his eyes placed against the glass of his glasses, making it appear like he was watching the teacher, when in fact he was looking down at his PDA.
"Something funny, Miss Manson?" Mr Lancer asked.
She shook her head and looked down at her notes again, trying not to look at Tucker for fear of drawing attention to him. No doubt anybody taking a closer look at him would notice the slightly cross-eyed, unblinking and slightly grainy 'eyes' that were behind the glasses. Instead, she placed her pen next to the D and drew a curly a.
She tilted her head and resisted the urge to turn in her seat to look behind her, at the sleeping figure of her other best friend. His ability to sleep anywhere was legendary, and even Mr Lancer seemed to have given up trying to keep him awake. She remembered the last time when a teacher had tried to wake Danny had involved slapping a ruler on his table right next to his ears.
That had gotten his attention alright. He had jumped up into a fighting stance, and she could have sworn his eyes had glowed green, an enormous ectoblast already building up in his hands. Mr Faluca, slightly taken aback by his reaction, had quickly accepted his stuttered excuse and had let him out of the classroom. Later that day football practice was canceled due to a rather large crater in the middle of the football field.
An n appeared next to the a. And then, for good measure, another n.
She looked up at the clock hanging above the door. Fifteen minutes to go. Fifteen long, boring minutes. She stared at the hands for a while, but they seemed unmoving, so she let the clock be and turned her attention back to her notebook.
It just needed a y. She added it. Then she drew a circle around the word she just formed.
Wait. What was she doing? Was she writing her best friend's name, like some lovesick fangirl? Was she going to draw little hearts around his name, like she had seen Paulina do once for Phantom?
This time, she did turn in her seat, and looked at the black mop of hair sprawled out over his desk. She couldn't see his face, but she knew exactly what he would look like. Eyes closed, face stuck to the Formica of the table, mouth slightly open...
No. So not going there. Furiously, she looked at her notebook again and started to draw.
"What are you doing?" Danny hissed to Tucker, "She's gonna kill you!"
"Nothing," Tucker said, rummaging through Sam's backpack, "I just need her notes from English. She promised them to me earlier."
"I don't think she gave you permission to go through her stuff though," Danny said, looking nervously at the entrance to the cafeteria. Sure, he wasn't the one going through her things, but Sam would undoubtedly find a way to pin this on him, or at least name him an accomplice.
"Relax, dude," Tucker said, "You know how long girls take in the bathroom."
"Tucker, this is Sam. Not Paulina," Danny said.
"Same difference... oh my." Tucker stared down at something he had retrieved from the backpack.
"What?" When Tucker didn't react immediately, Danny reached over the table and punched his arm. "What?"
Tucker looked up and started grinning. "Man," he said, putting the notebook on the table for Danny to see, "She really likes you."
Danny blinked. Sam's scant notes, jotted down in a handwriting only legible to herself and her two best friends. In the margin, several times the name 'Danny', with circles around them and heavily underlined. And around the name, dozens of small skulls, and even a few skeletons, all staring down angrily at the name. Danny looked up at Tucker.
"You're kidding, right?"
