War in Broadway High

5. Breakfast Club

Chapter 5: Breakfast club

JD.

Connor rolled a piece of paper into a tiny ball and gingerly threw it at the teacher, as if to check if he was truly passed out. The ball bounced off his face and fell while he snored. No response.

"Well, Mr. Washington is officially out," he declared with a smile.

"This school's a joke, and teachers are just clowns," Jeremy muttered.

"And popular kids are the whole circus," Connor said.

"I still can't believe none of them literally ever get in trouble for all the crap they do...but the one time we try to do something about it ourselves- well, here we are," Jeremy added, sharing in the unconformity -probably the first thing he'd ever had in common with someone like Connor.

"And it's the same in every school across this great land of the free," JD mused in his usual cynicism with a hint of dark humor, not looking up from his book.

"Well...maybe it doesn't have to be that way here," Veronica suddenly spoke, her gears almost visibly turning inside her head.

JD paid attention. He loved seeing her mind at work, she was utterly intriguing to him. He'd seen it all, over and over again, everything was the exact same in every school across every town across every state...except for her. She was the variable. A splash of color in an endlessly grey landscape. He'd never seen someone like her.

"Adults clearly can't handle it," she waved vaguely at Professor Washington to further prove her point. "I mean, they admitted it themselves, everything's about to be in shambles under their administration. But what we did Wednesday, all of us... that was good. We worked well together. We could save this place. Which means we should."

"Uh, have you forgotten where our little kumbaya brought us?" Connor signaled around them.

"But we did stop the fight," Evan said quietly, then quickly added: "sorry."

"He's right," Michael said with a small smile. "Like the Avengers. The vintage comics, not the movies of course. We need to team up, join forces, to destroy the evil and save everyone."

JD leaned back on his chair and put his feet up over the table, watching them curiously. It was like a rendition of a discount Breakfast Club. There was a spark building among them, small, but there it was. Resistance, a willingness to fight back. The rebel in him liked it. He just wasn't sure about the cause, and looked back at Veronica.

"What I don't get though is why you'd want to save this rotting totalitarian cesspool of the hegemonic swatch dogs, diet cokeheads and varsity Neanderthals. I say let it destroy itself, seems like natural selection to me."

Veronica was undeterred by his statement.

"It may be a cesspool, but it's our cesspool. And I don't intend to go down with it. We could use your help." She suddenly stared intensely at him, her big, bright doe eyes taking over his entire vision. And mind. "You don't have to care about the school, but..." she bit her lip, seeming a bit embarrassed by what she was about to say, "maybe if you care even a little bit about me?"

There was some color to her cheeks. JD was caught off ward. For once he didn't have any words, no sarcastic remarks or cool quotes, because he realized he did care about her. His eyes, always appearing a bit lost and disconnected, seemed to have found something to focus on- something to hold onto, someone to fight for. As if something was alive inside of him again. Maybe.

Veronica smoothed the creases of his black shirt, and left her hand resting there. She smiled looking up at him, hopeful.

"So, what do you say, Slurpee boy? You in?"