Behind the Curtain - Heathers

Freeze Your Brain

How was it only Wednesday? This week was dragging, then again, everything had started to drag recently. And lose its flavour, it was hard to enjoy flavourless food. And Dick's energy was practically gone most days. He honestly didn't know what was wrong with me, and even more worrying, he didn't really care.

"Dick, you need to get up for school," He heard Bruce the other side of his door and slowly got out of bed, his feet dragging across the floor as he got dressed and headed downstairs.

He ate a slice of toast, which tasted plain as most things these days, and headed down to the car so Alfred could take him and Jason in. The drive was silent, his eyes trying to close as he forced them to stay open, and finally, they arrived at the front gates.

"If you want boys, I can drop you off to rehearsals tonight if you stay here until four," Alfred said as they climbed out the car.

"Thanks, Alfie," Dick smiled at him and he drove off with a wave.

Jason immediately peeled away from Dick, still not wanting to be seen with his brother. They didn't know each other that well, but it still hurt that he won't even try to consider hanging out with him. Dick looked around the main courtyard to see if he could spot Barbara or Artemis, but no such luck on that front, so he just sat at a bench and did some light reading from his science revision guide.

"Hello, freak," He looked up at the sound of Jake's voice and put his book away.

"What do you want?" Dick asked in a dead tone, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

"You're brother's been stirring up some trouble," He said, "Fighting left, right and centre. Just thought you might like to know. Oh, and thought you might want this," And he punched Dick's arm, hard.

"Anything else whilst we're still here?" Dick asked, focusing on not rubbing his arm.

"Yeah, go back to the circus, freak," And he spat on him before walking away with his friends.

Dick wiped the spit off his face and rolled his eyes. He had expected Jason to have been in fights by now. I mean, you take a kid off the streets he's not going to have the best people skills or experiences. A bit like his favourite saying, you can take the boy out of the circus, but you can't take the circus out of the boy. Apart from circus would have to be replaced with streets of course.

"There you are," He looked back up as Barbara sat next to him, "I was wondering where you got to."

"Not gone far," He smirked, "That would involve effort, and I'm not feeling it."

"You've not been feeling it for a while," She said, "You sure this isn't your natural state?"

"Pretty certain," He replied and they settled into a comfortable silence, both just watching the world go by.

Eventually, the bell went for class and they headed their separate ways, Babs to English whilst Dick was off to Geography. It was good, you need Geography in your life, but it just wasn't Geography anymore. He couldn't tell you where countries were located (had he not taught himself ) but he could tell you the types of wave and how they form a coastline. It was mostly pointless.

"Sorry I'm late miss," And there's Artemis, as usual.

"Once more today and you'll be in detention again young lady," Miss Granger said as Arty took her seat next to Dick.

"Why are you late this time?" He asked as she got out her books and began to scribble down the notes he had already taken.

"Mum was still asleep so I sorted everything out for her so she wouldn't have to," She explained, "But she woke up just before I left and gave me a lecture about how it's her job to take care of me and not the other way around."