Too Scared To Say Something Sooner - TMD [Mainly Chadam]

Chapter 5: Captain Duck; The Mother Of The Team

Charlie

Finding Adam this morning had more or less freaked me out. I was almost glad that it had happened before, because at least I knew what to do.

After the annual school assembly and many 'You okay?'s later, Adam and I parted ways for first period.

I had Literature and he had French. Oddly enough, first and third period were the only classes we didn't have together. That was probably because I signed up for Spanish while Adam went for French, resulting in him having Literature third and me first.

I double-checked my schedule for the room number to the classroom. '233' it read next to 'Literature' and the name of the teacher, Ms. Holton.

I wandered kind of aimlessly in the halls for a minute or two before running into Goldberg.

"Hey, Charlie!" He greeted with his usual easy-going grin.

"Hey, Goldberg." I said back with a smile and a nod. "What class d'you got first?"

"Literature. You?"

"Same. You know how to get there?"

"Nope, but we're at..." he glanced up at the nearest plaque. "239, so it can't be far."

"Yeah," I agreed. He wasn't wrong. Down the hall, first door to the right, was 233, Literature. We walked in the class just as the bell rang.

There were mostly kids I recognized but hadn't talked to much from last year, but I spotted Averman in the middle of the far right row and Linda two seats left of him. I made a beeline for one of the two empty seats between them, Goldberg following.

I took the seat next to Linda, offering a smile and she waved back. We had a quick conversation, the usual how are you's and good, you's. Nothing meaningful since we hadn't talked much over the summer since we broke up.

Though, it wasn't really a break up, per se. She had figured out I liked Adam -before I even did- and confronted me about it. We talked and decided to just be friends.

It surprisingly wasn't awkward talking to her again. She was still Linda, one of the few people I actually liked at this school. Talking to her had always been easy. Thinking about it now, it was probably how she found out about my crush on Adam.

I knew I'd be getting questions about our whole interaction from the Ducks later at lunch. They knew we broke up and were friends, but not so much that we were still kinda close.

I was broken out of my thoughts and my conversation when a short woman at the front of the class called for attention. "Hello, class," she smiled, her kind blue eyes shining. "I'm Ms. Holton, your Literature teacher."

She definitely was not what I was expecting.

Ms. Holton looked like she was fresh out of college. She wore light-washed jeans, a black leather jacket, and a Queen t-shirt with a pair of combat boots. The brown hair that framed her face was cut to her shoulders and a small thin braid hung on one side with a feather woven into it.

"Today's class will be nothing gravely special. I'm just going to go over some basic rules, which you guys should already be familiar with, and then we'll play a game. Sound good?" A chorus of yeah's rang out and Ms. Holton smiled, starting class.