Fred was happy with his regular life. He had nice parents and was a freshman at Centennial High School. Yes, his life seemed a little 2-dimentional right now but he would soon get into some eccentric adventures. Fred was a fourteen year old boy with red hair and much more freckles then he could count. He had many friends but no one seemed to want to get any closer to him than that. He felt like an outlier. He was very friendly even though somehow something bad always happened to ruin it.
When he was in the seventh grade he had a friend that liked to cook. So, one day the friend asked Fred over to make cookies. Fred was ecstatic, naturally. When they were making the cookies, Fred couldn't quite make them into nice circular balls. His friend laughed and put them into the oven anyway. They were watching the cookies to see when they were done when the oven suddenly sparked and caught fire. Fred's friend grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the fire out immediately. The friend blamed Fred and told him to leave. Fred thought he multiplied the situation to something it wasn't and projected the blame onto Fred because he was scared.
That was just one incident of many. So, Fred learned to keep to himself mostly. His focus point was on school and his grades. He was in multiple honors classes because of it. His parents worried that he would be different then all the other kids if he continued to not have friends. They took Fred to church sometimes even though Fred was an atheist. They didn't mind that he was they just thought he could maybe meet some kids his own age that way. Fred did meet people his age but no one that seemed normal enough to be friends with.
Fred was alone for more than half of freshman year, that was, until he met Percy. Percy was a new kid that joined Fred's English class. Fred couldn't calculate what was so special about Percy but Fred definitely felt different around him. Percy was a short guy with short dark brown nearly black hair.
The first time Fred and Percy talked was a little awkward for the both of them. They were in English and Percy had dropped his pencil. It had rolled under Fred's desk nearly three fourths across the classroom. So, Percy walked over to Fred and said,
"Hey, uh, my pencil rolled under your desk. Can you get it?" Fred kind of froze for a few seconds before he finally realized he needed to react.
"Oh! Er, Yeah", He said as he handed Percy his pencil, "my name's Fred by the way." Percy looked at him as if deciding if he wanted to be friends with him. He finally put a symmetrical smile on his face before he said,
"I'm Percy, I just moved from New York. Pretty much diagonally across the US." Fred replied,
"Oh, that's cool I guess. Why'd you move?" Percy immediately looked sad and replied a little quietly,
"I have to go back to my desk now." Fred knew he had hit a sore subject and made a mental note to be careful what he says around his new friend Percy.
From that day forward Fred never truly felt alone again. His parents stopped worrying about him as much. Even though Fred was still incredibly awkward around Percy they became great friends.
During the summer on one of their sleepovers they really wanted to swim but neither had a pool. Percy suggested that they sneak in to his next door neighbors and use theirs. Fred knew that if they got caught they would be in a lot of trouble but he figured if they were careful then it wouldn't happen.
Percy said that his neighbors were gone on a vacation in Hawaii and there was no chance of them coming back for at least another week.
They waited until after dark then, they hopped the brick wall that divided the two backyards and jumped right in. Fred almost forgot that what they were doing was bad, he had such an adrenaline rush. After an hour or two they went back to Percy's Victorian house and they both fell asleep.
