When Freedom Calls

V

The rest of the weekend went by in a slow, boring blur.

Stacy wasn't able to video call or text me on Sunday. She hangs out at her dad's house every other Sunday, so my day was filled with homework and dozens of chapters of my current AP English novel, The Lord of the Flies. I avoided Sam, for obvious reasons, by eating from a stash under my bed. It was secret and plentiful, created for the purpose of being antisocial a long while ago. I lived off granola bars, canned fruit, wheat thins, and trail mix for a great deal of the day until my dad came home with a pizza for dinner. That's how simple my Sunday was. The arguing died down and nobody mentioned what had happened the night before. I fell asleep early that night.

"Maxwell! Wake up, would you?" The next morning, my dad's voice echoed through the halls and into my room, surprising me enough to throw me out of sleep-and off my bed.

Ignoring the pain on my rib cage, I stood up and speedily threw on a pair of jogging pants and a dark blue t-shirt.

"Coming, Dad!" I slipped on my sneakers, grabbed my backpack, and ran out the door with my dad trailing behind me.

(On Mondays and Thursdays my dad drops me off at school because his work schedule is different and requires him to get to his job later and leave his job later. He usually rushes us out of the house so that he can stop for breakfast at a fast food place, though, so on those two days a week I am early for school. The hallways aren't very full, and the gym only has a few early morning players in it, so the morning is somewhat peaceful.)

"See ya, Dad," I called out to him and waved before turning to head into the school building.

"Bye, Max," he answered.

Stacy had to always get up super early due to her mom having an early work shift, so she was sitting by her locker, as usual, with a novel. She seemed to have a new novel every other day, which I found funny.

"Yo, Stace," I exclaimed whilst jogging towards her locker, "How's it hangin'?"

She looked up from her book slowly with a surprised look on her face. "Can you beLEIVE THIS? Greg was TOTALLY out of Stephanie's league. I can not believe she fucking kissed him." She face palmed and mumbled on and on about how dumb the character had to have been. "You see this? My god."

I could tell she could hear me and I knew she was talking to me, but her fit of fangirling-ness had to be stopped momentarily.

"STACE!" I frantically waved my hands in front of her face. "Wake your ass up!"

"Bu-but, Stephanie..... Richard..... dumbass Greg......" she eventually shut the book and looked at me expectantly. "So what do you want exactly?"

"Well for starters, hello and welcome to Earth. I will be your tour guide. And secondly, I've got a question about our new....pals."

She raised and eyebrow at this. "Who? Oh do you mean your new boy toy?"

"You know who I meant, pigeon face. Anyways, my question was where do they go to school?  If they live so close to us why haven't I seen them around here?"

"That would be because they didn't go here before, dimwit."

"Oh. I see," I let that information settle in before realizing something. "Hold up, wait. What do you mean, before?"

She just giggled annoyingly. "Gwen told me yesterday that their old district shut down. They're moving to this school district and they'll be here later today."

The feeling I got when she said that made me nearly shit myself and laugh out loud at the same time. I had to refrain from slapping Stacy with a math book for not informing me of this. I should've worn my dark green muscle shirt! He obviously likes the color green! Or maybe my purple t-shirt. Dang it, Maxwell! Maxwell? Maxwell!-

"MAXWELL!!"

"Ah! What?! I know I should've worn purple!!!!"

"What the bloody fuck...?" My best friend looked at me like I had just spouted off the lyrics to a song from the eighties.

"Oh, hi Stacy."

"Dude, you just spaced the hell out. Did you eat breakfast?"

I racked my brain for memory of this extremely fast paced morning and came to the intelligent conclusion of, "Nah."

"Lame. Listen, I gotta get to class early today because my teacher needs help with our projects. Catch you in second period."

We fist bump.

"Cya then," I say to her blonde and red hair as it sways off into a different hallway.

~~~~

It was lunch when I began to freak out for real. During second period Stacy wouldn't refrain from reminding me about Elliot and Gwen coming to our school. She poked and prodded my sides whilst giggling her own ass off; she wrote notes to me and slipped them down the back of my sweater; she even doodled 'Max loves Ell' in the in the back of her science journal. Anything to remind me of the nervous wreck I was bound to be.

Lunch came directly after third period and was right before fourth period. Fourth period was the hour that Elliot would be signing into the school. My mind raced all throughout third period and started racing even faster when I looked at the clock near the end of lunch. It read 11:30. Ten minutes and I would be in fourth period. Ten minutes and Elliot would be standing in the office, turning in his papers.Ten minutes and a god would be walking through my school's dusty public hallways. Fuck.

************

Hey dudes, I finally updated this story and it only caused me to suffer through 5 different waves of writer's block. It's chill, though, because every chapter leads up to the best part in the book...... no spoilers;) Anyways, see you all later, m8s!