Not What We Expected

22: Stupid But Kind Lad

Ant, Joanna and Scooby are all walking together to meet up Dec outside his school. And after they have picked up Dec they will all meet Clara and her dog in the park. They planned it yesterday (or it was more Ant who decided it), after Dec had had a sleep in his bed and he felt they both tomorrow needed to do something else than thinking about how horrible life could be.

For some reason it just makes Ant so calm to watch Dec playing around with his Scooby. Or he says 'for some reason'... Ant knows why and it's because he sees that Dec always relaxes and is very happy when he's running around screaming "Fetch!". When Ant sees that his friend is alright, rather then when his friend tells him is but lies, it makes Ant feel very good inside.

"By the way, how's the history assignment going for you?", Joanna asks him, they're just kind of small talking.

"Quite well, I'm almost done."

"Suspected that.", she says and the smile says 'nerd'.

"And yours?"

"Nah... Good would be an exaggeration. It's very, very boring, can't you write it for me?", she laughs.

"For my life, I really can't understand why you and Dec hate history so much-"

"And we can't understand why you love it."

"Because it's interesting! I mean imagine-", Ant is about to say something about how important the French Revolution was for the human rights (that's always his classic example), but before he has done that, has his eyes spotted a certain person he just has to take care of first... "Joanna, please hold Scooby for a second?", the tonality makes it to a question but already after he has said her name has he given her the leach.

"Alexander?", Ant runs up to him and when Alex turns around Ant just can't stop himself from slapping him hard over his left cheek.

"What the fuck, what's wrong with you?!", Alex exclaims and Ant gets a quite hard punch in return against his chest.

"The question is more what's wrong with you?", Ant asks rhetorically when he has got back his breath, "How could you ever treat another human being like that?!", then he tries to aim for Alex's face with his fist, but he misses with an inch and instead a burning pain spreads out over his own face when Alex's fist hits his eye.

"Lads?! Stop it!", Joanna screams and separates the boys by dragging Ant away from Alex and then standing between them. "What are you doing!?"

"Ask Anthony, he started it, I don't know, I thought we were friends?"

"If that's ever been true, that was before you humiliated, betrayed and broke one of my closest friend's heart!", Ant screams and tries to get Joanna to move so he can get his revenge, but unfortunately (or fortunately) she stops him.

"Who cares- it seems like not even he cares! In fact if I wanted him back, I suspect I could get him back by just apologising a few times. That guy's got no self-respect at all, Dec's a real piece of shit.",

"You- no, I'm not saying it. Come on Ant, we're better than this!", Joanna grabs his arm, "Way better than this, let's get going!"

Ant wants to scream at Alex, wants to scream out all the bad words he knows but Joanna gives him a glance that makes him keep his mouth shut, and maybe that's for the best... Ant's normally never like this. He's calm, words before hands and he knows that a raised voice won't make a message get easier into the receiver's brain. It's often quite the opposite. But no one calls Dec that. And no one treats him like that and is allowed to think that it in any way was acceptable. No one mistreats anyone Ant loves and gets away with it!