A Book of Beau, Griffin Stagg

04 - Project Partners

North Denver, 1978

     Today is Wednesday. Half way done with the week. I was walking to school with Griffin again and we started talking about the new music stereo you can carry around!

     "Did you hear about the Walkman that's coming out next year? It sounds so cool!" I exclaimed.

     "I have. They sound amazing for school and stuff." Griffin replied.
"What song would you play first?"
"I would probably play something from Queen like Bohemian Rhapsody. You?"
"I would play Moonage Dream by David Bowie. It would be like I was in a movie!"

"That's a good one too."

We got into school and everything seemed to die down compared to yesterday. Sure there was still some whispering, but it isn't nearly as bad. As we walked into in English and sat in our seats, the bell rang. Mrs. Morris was already in her seat.

"Good morning class. We're halfway through our first full week of school. I let you pick your seats the first week, but today you're going to be moving your desks into groups of two and I'll be picking assigned seats."

The class groaned miserably, but moved their seats with the person next to them and Mrs Morris continued.

"Everyone stand up and move to the edge of the classroom. I'll be going around and showing you where your new seat is," she paused and moved to the first duo, "Michael and Jason, Esther and Alice, Christopher and Lydia."

And so on about 10 more times until she got to the last two names.

"And last but definitely not least, Y/n and Griffin."

I turn to look at him and I see he has the biggest grin I have ever seen him show. I smiled back even wider. Griffin and I moved to our new seats and Mrs. Morris started talking again.

"I hope you like your new seats because you're going to have these for the rest of the year. Continuing on with the lesson, we are going to be working on a project about a book of your choice and create a poster board on it. It should include a short summary, the theme, tone and mood, one of each literacy devices you can find and any other notes you have on the book. You can either work alone or with the person sitting next to you. This project will be due in a week. You may begin."

     Griffin and I both look at each other and start brainstorming about what book we should do. We didn't even need to ask if we wanted to be partners.

     "We both have read Carrie, but that might be a little too dark for school." I tried to brainstorm.
     "What if we do Invisible Cities? Both of us read and enjoyed it."
     "Sure. That sounds like a good plan. Do you still have the copy of it?"
     "No. I swapped it for a different one."
     "Okay. What if we run down to the library and grab a copy really quickly."
     "Okay. :)"

     Griffin and I got up from our seats and walked over to Mrs. Morris to ask her if we can go to the library. She said sure and gave us both a hall pass.

     We start waking down the quiet hall and head to the library. I heard some noise ahead of us and saw Angela and Christina waking in our direction to whatever class they were going to. I grabbed Griffin by the hand and dragged us behind some lockers. They passed after a couple minutes and I spun my head to look at Griffin. Our faces were inches apart and we were blushing madly.

     "I'm so sorry about that. I didn't want to—"
     "It's fine. Anything is better than being seen by them."

     We paused for a second and start laughing madly. This continued until we got to the library. Griffin and I were both too shy to ask where the book was, so we'd just find it on our own.