Two and Three

How Long it Takes to Leave a Place, Bruh

"C'mon Mike!" Abbie yelled back toward the concert band director's office. "Hurry up before we leave without you!"

"Yeah yeah," his voice came back muffled and  distant, like he was talking from inside a jar.

Abbie gave a meanful look to Lisha, Tony, and Ian before making her way back to the office to find out what on earth could possibly be keeping her boyfriend away from a long night of food and nothing in particular.

"Don't you two stay in there too long!" Tony called, which got a laugh out of both Lisha and Ian.

Abbie scoffed but otherwise didn't acknowledge him as she stepped into the office to find Michael having a staring contest with a turtle on the band director's computer monitor.

"I'm going to ask this once," she sighed as she went to go beside him. "What the Hell are you doing?"

"I dropped a screwdriver behind the monitor," he mumbled and craned his neck, making Abbie realize that he wasn't having a stare off with the computer, so much as trying to look around it. "I can't find it," he muttered.

"And what were you even doing with the screwdrivers?" Abbie asked, noting the school's case of thirty-two tiny, phyllis and flat head screwdrivers, lying open on the desk next to a beat up alto sax and a pile of blank sheet music.

"One of the screws came out of my clarinet this morning," Mike mumbled as he ducked his head to get a better look under the computer. "Sax section decided simultaneously that all their instruments were broken and I couldn't get to the case before the late bell rang."

"Ah," she nodded nonchalantly. That seemed reasonable enough, other than... "How did a screwdriver even fall behind the monitor in the first place?"

Michael froze, then looked up sheepishly. "The screw wouldn't go in so I flung it across the room?"

Abbie crossed her arms at him and shook her head in sly disbelief. "Just blame the saxes and say it wasn't there when you used them. C'mon we gotta go. Ian wants pie and he's getting annoying. "

He sighed and straightened his back. "Okay, let's go," he nodded for her to get out of the room so he could shut off the lights, and close the door.

"Oh there you are!" Tony yelled as soon as he saw them walk out of the office. Abbie rolled her eyes as that annoying smirk curled up his lips. "I was beginning to think you guys had forgotten about us."

Michael smiled and laid an arm over her shoulder affectionately. "Us? Nah. We'd never forget -- for too long, just maybe a couple hours or so."

"Oh I bet you would," Tony grinned like a Cheshire cat -- something that Abbie was beginning to find oddly disturbing.

She looked between the drumline member and the drum major and decided that the two of them were having some sort of bro-pact moment. As far as she knew, the first rule in the Code to Girlfriend-ness was not to interrupt the bro moment, and if you had to interrupt the bro moment, do it with a gun.

Abbie shrugged out from under Michael's arm, not bothering to check the look on his face as she sauntered over to the door where she left her rifle leaning. With her back to the others, who were still laughing at cracked innuendoes, she flipped the rifle up into her hands with her foot and whipped around so she was facing the others (all the while trying and failing to keep the shock off her face at her sudden improved hand-eye coordination). "I'm done with you people --"

"That wasn't what you were saying that night in the practice room," Mike interjected, now mirroring Tony's cat grin.

"OHHHHHHH! HELLS YEAH, BRAH!" Ian whooped and held up his hand for a high five, for which Michael immediately complied.

Abbie sighed and flipped the rifle in her hands so that she was holding it like a baseball bat. "Okay, who wants to get bashed first?"

"Abbie...." Lisha approached her slowly with her hands raised above her head. The tenor of her voice flowed up and over the guard girl until it almost seem like she was being blanketed in her friend's voice. Lisha tended to have that effect on people. "It doesn't have to be this way.  There are other options, and I want to help you, but you need. To put. The gun. Down."

Lisha wasn't the only one who spent too much of what little free time she had, watching Criminal Minds. "Get back!" Abbie yelled and waved guard rifle at them. "Get back now or, or --" her head whipped around nervously as she tried to find a relavent threat. Upon failing, she tried the next best thing and pointed what would have been the bad end of her gun -- if it were actually a gun -- at the back of Michael's head. "Get back or I'll blow his brains out!"

"Abbie, I thought you loved me," Micheal whimpered like there was actually a gun to the back of his head.

"I do love you, baby," Abbie replied with a sickly sweetness that almost had her laughing her head off. This was too fake. Someone had to end this soon before she ran out of things to say and just kept repeating, 'get back!' "But love doesn't conquer all."

There was a long stretch of silence as everyone tried to figure out what to say. Finally, Ian, the trumpet player spoke up. "I'm hungry."

"Me too," Abbie admitted and slung the rifle over her shoulder so she could carry it.  "We're taking a good long time getting ourselves out of this place."

"But you guys do have to admit that was pretty, damn cool," Lisha laughed as she grabbed her windbreaker and got the door for them.

"We should be in drama club," Ian added with a laugh.

"Screw that," Tony corrected as he danced his way out the door and into the dark parking lot. "We are the drama club."