𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚒𝚗'𝚝 𝚊 𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚙 𝚘𝚏 𝚋𝚊𝚍 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚍.

Chapter IX

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐗

Depleting Motivation
——————

School was getting on James' last nerve, for the first few weeks, he'd admit, he liked it; it wasn't that stressful and he and his teachers had mutual understandings.

Soon the weeks became longer and less tolerable, James was getting sick of waking up at seven thirty, leaving the apartment at eight, getting to school at eight twenty and sitting in classrooms for almost eight hours with only an hour break in the middle were he would inevitably go into a bathroom with a pop tart and loud ass music to ignore the couple going at it in the next stall over.

"James, can you answer this one?" Mr. Armstrong asked pointing at the black board.

That's right, the day had only just begun.

James lifted his head to take a glance at the equation. "No, I'm sorry." He muttered and put his head back down.

The room went silent, so silent you could hear a pin drop; that was until a group of girls stated giggling which lead to the whole room laughing—and if that wasn't enough the teacher also laughed; sure it was just a little bit but it made James close up on himself with every echo of their voices.

"Okay, then." The teacher continued. "Kody, how about you give it a try?"

The laughing stopped but the feeling of utter embarrassment held strong, for the rest of class James had his music turned up to full and his head on the desk.

April occasionally looked over at 'Jayson'; mostly out of curiosity but a little pity showed itself.

In the next class April told Casey about what had happened and at lunch they saw James clumsily going threw his locker and inevitably slamming it shut in anger previous to storming away; not even bothering to close the lock.

Obviously, April took advantage of the open lock and started snooping; not entirely giving up on her investigation into the poor boys life.

All while she was doing that James went to the auditorium, which was right next to the cafeteria, to hopefully relax before his drama class started.

He really couldn't deal with horny teenagers in the bathroom or loud groups of friends all in one room right now.

For the rest of the lunch period he sat on the stage, earbuds unplugged, and read threw his script twenty times over.

He ended up in that room for over two hours that day and was fully ready to either go home or jump off a building, alas, he still had English to attend to.

-

"Hey, April?" Donnie rushed to the girl as soon as she entered the lair with Casey. "Any new developments in your little mystery guy?" He asked.

"Not really, I searched his locker during lunch but found nothing useful." She shrugged and slouched down on the couch.

"Why?" Donnie asked a little concerned. "What happened?" He sat to the right of April while Casey took her left side.

"He was really acting unusual today and forgot to close his locker so I decided to snoop a little, it wasn't that bad." She said nonchalantly.