The Barefoot Violinist

Rotten Day

"You're really hard to find, you know that?" Cory asked when he spotted Bennett coming out of the principal's office.

"You're probably looking in all the wrong places," Bennett responded with a brief smile.

"What were you doing in the principal's office?"

"Minding my own business." He retorted shortly, walking alongside Cory.

"You're always in a bad mood when you see me, I'm starting to take it personally." Cory joked.

"You should."

Well, this conversation was going nowhere fast, Cory thought. He'd wanted to spend a bit more time with Bennett at school to test a hunch, but so far things were not proceeding as planned.

"Does it have something to do with you staying away from school?" He threw a stone in the water.

"How do you know about that?" Bennett asked curiously.

"People talk." Cory shrugged his shoulders. "So, does it have anything to do with you playing the violin?" He prodded.

"Is there a reason for this interrogation or did you want to talk about the assignment?" Bennett countered. The less Cory knew of his life the better.

"Okay, okay. I'm only asking." Cory followed him for a while, then cleared his throat. "Em, where are we going exactly?"

"I was following you." Bennett came to a halt, frowning and irritated.

"Nope, I was following you." He responded. "I'd assumed that you knew where we were going?"

"You're dumb!" Bennett snapped, turning to walk away from Cory.

Cory stood with his hands loosely on his hips, watching Bennett's blond head disappear in the crowd. What did he expect? A warm, welcome and light exchange of banter? He sighed, he'd done this to himself. Shaking his head, he moved off smiling. Dumb, huh?

Later that day, Bennett shut the door to his locker, coming face-to-face with a grinning Victor.

"You'll never guess what mate?" He asked excitedly, almost ready to jump out of his skin.

"What?" Bennett was curious. No part of the school day ever had Victor as excited as this.

"I aced my project! Got an A for it. All thanks to you mate!" He clapped Bennett on the shoulder in excitement.

"I'm glad it worked out for you." He grinned at Victor who was bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"It worked out better than great mate. You're a genius!" He exclaimed. "Well, you already know that, so I suppose it's not saying much." He grumbled.

"It was only a science project, you make it sound like I broke the sound barrier." Bennett laughed.

"Just a science project?! Mate, they called it a masterful use of ... of, well I'm not really sure, but they loved it!" He placed his arm around Bennett's shoulders, "It couldn't get any better than that!" He sighed with a contented smile.

"Maybe next time you'll pay enough attention to what is being said in class." He countered with a grin.

"I'm a teenager," he shrugged his shoulders, "we do stupid things all the time. Anyway, I'm off to tell the others, want to come along?"

"I can't, I've got practice this afternoon." He raised his violin slightly.

"Okay, next time then?" Victor said in glee, running off in excitement.

Getting to his bike, he looked up at the grey sky, heavy with clouds. Humming to himself as he unlocked it, he hitched his violin case straps over his shoulders and got on his bike to leave. He hadn't gone more than a few metres when paddling without much success. Groaning in frustration, he got off to assess the damage.