Linger

F O R T Y - N I N E

"Tom . . . Ben . . . Sasha . . . and . . . Madison."

I looked up at the sound of my name.

Ben's eyes met mine and I gave him a puzzled look.

"You'll be in group two."

"What's group two?" Tom raised his hand.

"The group after group one," Daniel replied with a chuckle as he stood at the front of the classroom.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and crossed my arms instead. "What are these groups for again?"

"Your senior projects. You'll be working as a team to put together a project on something that is meaningful to you and leaves a lasting impact even after you've graduated."

After spending the weekend with my head in clouds, reality came around in the form of Monday and free period today had become a senior meeting for whatever reason.

Which meant way too many of us were stuffed into Daniel's classroom as he went on about graduation requirements and apparently, some project now.

I suppose Daniel being our counselor was the only upside to this . . .

The downside was . . . well, everyone else.

"Can we, like, sit this one out?" Tom laughed as he took out a pack of gum.

Daniel knitted his eyebrows. "'Sit this one out'?"

Tom shrugged. "Yeah."

"You want to 'sit out' on an assignment?"

"We have games and stuff. Did you see our game this weekend?" he asked with a smack of his gum.

"I--"

"We won," Tom continued anyway. "Guess who scored the game-winning goal?"

"You mean the only goal?" one of the jocks corrected.

"Thomas, gum." Daniel stepped up to Tom, holding out a trash can.

Tom eyed it for a moment before looking up at Daniel. He held out his pack of gum toward him. "Want some?"

"I'll take it all, thank you very much." Daniel snatched it without missing a beat.

A chorus of 'ooooh's' broke out among the jocks as Daniel headed back to his desk.

"Hey, Mr. H." Tom called, causing Daniel to turn to him. "Enjoy."

"You can come back for it at the end of the day," Daniel told him, placing the pack in his desk drawer and shutting it. "Hopefully by then you'd have an idea about where to begin with your assignment."

"Fair." Tom shrugged, taking out another pack of gum and holding it out to us.

"Ugh." Sasha rolled her eyes at him, turning away.

"Want some, captain?" He held the pack out to Ben.

"I'm good, thanks." Ben crossed his arms.

"The time you spend working on this project will be documented and turned in with a final presentation for credit," Daniel told us as he wrote on the whiteboard.

"What?!" The entire class broke out into a chorus of groans.

"Mr. H." Tom raised his hand. "There's no way the four of us could work together, so there's absolutely no chance we'd even do a presentation." He gestured to Ben, Sasha, and I as we nodded along in agreement.

"Seems like you have a lot to sort out amongst yourselves then." Daniel gave us a small smile before moving on to assign the next group.

I groaned internally. He couldn't be serious.