Just us- SBI adoption story (Just me and him book 2)

Chapter 83: friendship groups

Tubbo's POV:

I finished off my dinner and got ready for wheelchair BMX. I was hyped. Last session had been great and I'd been practicing my wheelies and enjoyed zooming down the front drive and slamming into the fence. Phil had told me off for that, but also promised to take me to the skate park when I was ready to do it by myself. I wasn't there yet, but it couldn't be long now.

Wilbur was supposed to be coming with us to watch but he'd come home from school in a bad mood. Phil had asked but he said no and I totally understood that in this house we respected people's decisions. I was a little upset because I'd really wanted him to come and see me and for us to spend some time together but it was what it was.

Phil and I were about to set off when Tommy asked to come. It was nice when Tommy asked for stuff. After having to guess what he wanted for so many years, it still made me emotional to hear him be able to ask for things. He'd had a good day at school apparently and when I saw him at lunch, he and Beau were killing themselves laughing and playing a board game. He had friends, that was cool too. (It was at the end of lunch, I had a free last and got there early just because.)

I hung out with my own friends at lunch. It's the not the first time, I have done it a couple times now on good days. They're allowed to come to the SEND department but I didn't really want them to be so I followed them to the space on the tennis courts where they hang out. I've been using my wheelchair a lot of the moment because missing a couple weeks of physio had had quite a big impact and the wheelchair BMX sessions had really developed my skills.

A teacher comes and picks me up and drops me off to all my lessons because apparently it's a safeguarding issue if I do it by myself. I find the whole thing stupid but Wilbur and Techno reminded me that in school's eyes, it was better to be careful than catch a court case.

But this time, it was a different learning support assistant to the normal one (who was sick) and she allowed one of my friends to ride in the elevator with me. My friends had a small fight over it but eventually chose. And so, stood next to a guy that honestly makes me feel like an elf whether I'm in my wheelchair or not, we waited the awkward minute in the elevator because it was stupidly old.

Then, he and I walked to the tennis courts together. Ranboo was cool. Being ridiculously tall made you automatically cool but he was cool for other reasons too. He likes video games like I do and we've played online together sometimes. My other friends like video games too. We all take computer science for GCSE and are in the same class which is kind of how I became friends with them.

They've known each other since year 7, but apparently they've only really become an actual friendship group since I joined in September. Aimsey is tiny, like even smaller than me but she's cool and welsh which we take the mick out of her for it. I mean we're quite the mix of accents all in all. Ranboo is american and we laugh about that. Guqqie is Irish and we talk about potatoes more often than we probably should. They think it's funny how I don't talk much because I'm probably the only one with a semi-normal accent in their eyes. But when I'm feeling funny, I play around with the text to speech app (which I downloaded mostly for Tommy's use, I don't feel like using it a lot and mostly send messages) and choose different accents.

Aimsey and Guqqie are kind of dating? I don't really know. Ranboo's been walking me through LGBT stuff a lot recently. It's never really been on my radar. Dad didn't talk about it and it wasn't really spoken about at my last school either. Phil and Kristin have mentioned it a couple times because they did this training course about it for foster parents and making fostering inclusive but I honestly feel stupid for asking most of the time.

I'm not being rude or homophobic, I just don't know about it. I'm still getting use to social media and everything that goes with that. And Ranboo's been explaining pronouns but being dyslexic and new to all of this has made it difficult. But I'm getting there, slowly. And there's rules with it, because we shouldn't use it in front of teachers or their parents in some cases and sometimes they change.