About Last Night

Chapter 3

The next several hours afterwards, turned out to be just as Mordecai had predicted.

Rigby's studying habits were still not precisely focused as he hoped to be and was hardly even paying attention to any of the material at all.

Instead, he was constantly blank spacing out from time to time and began to get real super drowsy whenever Mordecai reads out some of the lecture notes and math problems to him. 

It wasn't until Mordecai then starts to look over at him from the textbook, and notices that he had fallen asleep, again!

"Dude! Wake up! Come on, we still need to go over this equation again." Mordecai urged while lightly shaking on Rigby's shoulder to get him up and going.

"Ugh. I can't help it, man. I'm so tired. Can't we just call it a night?" Rigby groaned with his eyes, barely opened and pink from rubbing it too much.

"I would suggest going to bed too at this point but you still have to go over this one last module for the unit and we only have just a few more pages left. So hold on for a few more minutes, Rigby. You can do this." Mordecai encouraged.

"You're right! I can do it!" Rigby exclaimed while attempting to pry out his eyelids open with his hands, to the point of stretching them out from his face and even tried to slap his cheeks a little to spark more energy in him for good measure.

"Okay. I'm ready." Rigby insisted as Mordecai went on ahead and asked to the next question.

"Alright next question. How do you find the vertex of the equation f(x) = (x + 4) to the 2nd power minus 3?" Mordecai read out right before Rigby immediately blurted out an answer out of the blue from his reckless nervousness, a minute later.

"Uh...is it 5?" Rigby guessed, automatically with a mixture of confusion and uneasiness in his mind.

He hates having to solve everything out so quickly and tries to find an simpler solution to his problems, including his school fiascos and the everyday messes that he makes in his life.

That is, until his chronic panic and anxiety attacks get the best out of him and blindsides the poor guy in an instant.

"No dude, you have to carry the 4 on over to the other side of the equation and then add the negative to it for the X portion while looking at the minus 3 from the outside part of the parenthesis as the answer to your Y section. Making (-4,-3) as your final coordinates." Mordecai explained.

"Ugh! See! I told you I was bad at this! This is just too hard!" Rigby complained with his hands up in the air out of frustration.

"Relax, Rigby. That was only one sample problem. I'm sure you'll be able get it next time. It's okay to make mistakes every now and then." Mordecai said patiently, hoping to calm down his friend a little from the stress.

"You don't get it, Mordecai! It's not just about one math problem. It's everything! The science, the history, and even the fine art classes for crying out loud! I just can't do this! You might as well fail me at this point because I'm not good enough to pass one class without messing everything up." Rigby said in an upsetting tone with his head lowered down in sadness.

"Don't say that. You just have to keep studying, that's all. You give it your best shot and if all else fails, you can always get back up and try again. I know you can do this." Mordecai insisted on with his encouragement, hoping to reassure him.

Instead however, it still didn't seem to help much and Rigby remained down in the dumps with his low self esteem, hanging over his mind.

"But what if I don't pass it and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, then what? I would only be just wasting your time. Plus, I'm sure that you have better plans to do than to be helping me with something so insignificant as a stupid math test." Rigby said quietly as Mordecai's face started to change expressions in a moment's notice.

His heart was sinking fast like an anchor that had fallen down to the bottom of the ocean.

He felt bad that Rigby was feeling this insecure and wanted to give him a hug to make him feel better.

To tell him that everything was going to be okay, no matter what.

But knowing how Rigby can get when it comes to having close personal contact with anyone, he realized that he'll have to try to find another way of cheering him up.

He thought about it for a moment, until a sudden idea clicked into his head.

"Hey listen, I know your birthday is tomorrow and all. But since you're having a rough time with your studies, recently. I'd thought that maybe I should just go on ahead and give you at least one present early." Mordecai said with small warm grin on his face, knowing for sure that this would make his day.

"Really?! Are you sure that I can open one now?" Rigby asked, his voice in a mix of stunned and excitement.

"For real, dude. Just wait right here, I'll go up and get it for you." Mordecai said while heading up towards the attic ladder to bring in the present.

"What is it?" Rigby asked, curiously.

"It's a surprise." Mordecai said with a wink before climbing inside the attic doorway.

After a few minutes went by, he came back down the ladder and walked back into the room with a blue and green wrapped present, shaped like a book in his hand.

"Here." Mordecai said before handing over the gift to him.

Rigby then, took it and ripped up the fragile pieces of thin wrapping paper until it revealed to be a brownish card stock bundle that was tied and secured neatly with small hook and band to keep it all held up together.

"What..." Rigby said with a unusual pause and expression that made it very unreadable to Mordecai.

He couldn't tell if Rigby wanted to chunk the gift or try to make fun of it, so he tried to explain why he created the homemade gift. 

"It's a scrapbook. I uh....decided to make one for you since my mom had kept a lot of photos of us when we were small children, growing up.  But to be honest, it was her idea and I thought that I could put some of these old pictures to good use." Mordecai said while rubbing his neck, embarrassed.

"Pfft. That right there, sounded really cheesy from the way you put it. But....for the most part, its still very genuine of you to do all that for me. So, thanks." Rigby said with a small thoughtful smile on his face.

"No problem." Mordecai replied, feeling relieved that Rigby had actually liked the gift.

"Do you think we'll still have time to look through all of it right now? I want to see how funny you look in high school." Rigby asked with a sense of poking fun at his friend in his tone.

"I don't know dude. It's getting kinda late. Maybe we should just wait until tomorrow and we'll both be able to look at it together after the party is over." Mordecai suggested with a small yawn in his tired voice.

"Sigh, fine. But this isn't going to stop me from laughing at you when I see the look on your face over these priceless memories." Rigby said, determined.

"Pssh. Whatever. I'm sure, I still didn't that much embarrassing moments in my life. Because as far as I know, you pretty much had way far worse luck than me when we were in school." Mordecai teased.

"Hmph. Hmph. We'll see about that.....Alright good night, Mordecai." Rigby said bluntly before climbing into his small twin bed from the right side of the room.

"Good night, Rigby." Mordecai said softly with a small laugh in his voice before getting into the second twin bed from the other side of the room.

It wasn't long before the two went into a peaceful deep sleep, with riveting dreams of their childhood circulating around their unconscious minds.