Always Forever

Moxie

Chapter 1

It was just another day of school. Jack skipped first period to smoke in the bathroom with his fellow greasers, Roger and Maurice. The redhead breathed out a cloud of smoke and ground up the previously used cigarette underneath his shoe. Now he could pretend to deal with the ever so annoying socs before he had to take another "rest stop".  Jack unlocked the main bathroom door and stepped out. Roger would probably ditch later and Maurice would follow either him or Roger. Evidentally as he walked through the corridors, the other boy followed as quickly as he could, looking stupid as ever.

The bell rang and out poured the smell of hormonal teenagers.  The leader of the geeks moseyed out the door and spotted the freckled boy's eyes. There was a glint in his eyes and he speed walked to chide his typical rebel lateness. Jack kept walking and pulled up his leather jacket's collar to his eyes, trying to avoid the slightly shorter blonde boy. As he brisked past the shorter boy followed. He turned to his classroom when they blonde finally stopped him.
"What is your problem?" Ralph exclaimed.

"What?" Jack responded

"Why do you always skip your classes? Don't you know that you'll never graduate?" Ralph scolded, Jack scoffed and sat in his seat. At times like this he wished that he just skipped the whole day and just wreaked havoc in the town. Ralph seemed to drone on and on about why he should attend all his classes and quit his "nasty" habit of smoking. But honestly what does he expect.

Ralph's voice muddled in Jack's thought. At this rate, I won't have to get married, I'll just keep getting told off by this goodie-two-shoes instead of a wife.

"Hey, are you even listening to me?"
     Jack snapped out of his thoughts. of course he wasn't listening, he didn't care what Ralph had to say. "Huh? oh, uh, yeah, something about my grades and smoking or whatever."

     Ralph frowned. "Rude."

     In all honesty, Jack would get up and leave right now if he weren't in the middle of class. Not that he cared about class, anyway; he would've skipped if it weren't for the complaints of the blonde boy next to him, who had a pout on his face and was resting his head against his hand. Jack finally realized that a teacher had been talking to the class; had they been talking that whole time? He still continued to refrain from listening, and only heard the teacher say something about passing back assignments. Jack made a mental note to hide his paper from the still-angry-looking boy at his side. Sure enough, papers were being passed back to each student individually.

     Jack sat closer to the back, so it was a while before the teacher arrived to him. A paper was handed to Ralph first. Jack glanced over at it out of curiosity; he noticed a large '100%' written in red at the top and rolled his eyes, looking away. A paper was then handed to him. He grabbed it and folded the sides so that nobody on either side of him would be able to see the grade he got. On the top of the page, in bright red marker, it read '15%-see me after class.' Jack scoffed under his breath. Like hell he'd see the teacher after class. Suddenly, Ralph gasped softly. Jack knew what that meant, and mentally cursed himself for not hiding his grade better. "A 15%?" Ralph sounded appalled, as if he'd never seen a grade so low.

     "Shut up! you don't gotta let the whole class know," Jack quickly snapped. Ralph seemed unfazed, but began to talk a bit quieter.

     "Do you just never do your work or something? this assignment was easy."

     "For you, I'm sure it was." Jack kept his eyes on his paper, examining everything that was marked off. He was lucky to get any points at all. Most of the page was blank of any sign of effort put into it, and a majority of the answers that Jack did fill out were incorrect. Only a couple answers had nothing marked off on them.

     "What do you mean, for me? It was an easy assignment. Look around, everyone got good grades, not just myself. You didn't even fill out most of the answers, so don't..."
Ralph's voice was lost in the air again. He continued talking, but Jack did not continue listening. He did, though, peer around at other assignments. Ralph was right, most people had gotten good grades. But who was Jack to care? He wasn't 'most people'. He let out a sigh and gazed at the clock; still over half the period left. Why couldn't Jack just leave? Why was it such a big deal? He knew he was hopeless in the long run, anyway, why should it matter if he were to leave now? It didn't matter whether he left in the middle of class, or in the middle of the day, or never attended school again, or attended every class every day without fail- he would still end up the same old hopeless Jack.

He still didn't care much, though. What was school other than a test of your memory or your ability to tolerate others' crap?
     "Merridew!" Ralph snapped. Jack finally payed him some attention. "stop dazing out while i'm trying to talk to you! it's disrespectful."

"If you're looking for a respectful person, I'm not really the one you should be talking to, sorry to say," Jack said casually with a hint of annoyance.

     "Then you'll need to learn some respect, won't you? Do you just get off on being a dick to people or do you secretly wish you weren't one?"

        Ouch.

     "Just let me be." Jack muttered shortly. Ralph tsked under his breath, expecting more than that. "Sorry for being a dick, if that's what you want me to say. I'm fine how I am, though. I know enough about respect to keep me going."

     "Fine. Okay." Ralph seemed bothered. Not like usual, he always seemed bothered with Jack, but in a different way. Right now he just seemed sick of everything. Jack could relate to that, for sure. He looked back up at the clock again. 32 minutes left. Jack groaned. The clock ticked. Jack spent a bit too long watching the hands cross over each number, wishing for them to move faster. After what felt like years of waiting (though it was probably only a couple minutes), he felt his eyes start to droop until they were entirely closed.

     'Hopefully a certain geek finds it in his best interest to keep his mouth shut about me sleeping in class,' Jack thought to himself. Maybe he could just fly under the radar and sleep through the rest of the period without being noticed. Maybe he could just sleep the rest of the day. Maybe...

     He opened his eyes. "Get up." Ralph said from beside him. Jack looked around and saw people packing up. Did he fall asleep? Did the period end that fast? It didn't even feel like he fell asleep in the first place. Finally, he muttered a weak "What?"

     "you fell asleep, for some reason. you're lucky i didn't rat you out. didn't feel like i had to, anyway." Ralph swing his heavy-looking backpack over his arm and didn't really look at Jack directly. Jack just nodded and started packing his minimal supplies up. "I take it you're not gonna see the teacher after school?"

     "Hell no." Ralph nodded in understanding.

     "You probably should, though." Ralph didn't say anything more on the matter. He began to turn away and walk out of the classroom.

"Don't skip your next class." Then he was gone.

     "Don't tell me what to do," Jack muttered after Ralph had left. He exited the classroom.

He began walking through the hallway like normal, stopping off in the bathroom for a minute to have a smoke. He needed that. No one caught him, luckily; if someone did, that would be another thing Jack would have to deal with.

     He exited the bathroom after a few minutes. If he took too long, he'd be late for his next class. He could probably just skip again.

     He didn't skip.

     The rest of the day seemed to go by as slowly as the first two periods, but, then again, every day went by that slow. Jack didn't see much of Ralph the rest of the day, save that minute at lunch when he and his other geek friends walked near where Jack was sitting. They didn't look at him. Thank God.

When the final bell rang to dismiss every student from school, Jack let out a sigh of relief. He walked quickly through the halls in an attempt to beat the inevitable after-school crowd. He was typically able to beat it just fine without having to deal with anyone noticing him. He was a bit hard not to notice, though; tall height, bright red hair, covered in freckles, and probably the edgiest outfit he could possibly find were parts of the reason. He stayed looking forward as he continued to speed walk through the hall (fast enough to get him to where he was going, but not fast enough to make him lose his cool).