Properly

Chapter 11: Bottled Up

A few weeks after I met Benjamin's father is the worst way possible, we still talked in Ceramics, anime club, and dance club, but he told me that once we left dance club to avoid talking with him.

"Wait, what? Why?!" I exclaimed, wondering if I looked THAT gross after dancing.

"Its nothing personal! At least, with me. My dad said he doesn't like you..." He said with drooping ears.

"Oh. Oh, okay. For a second, I thought you didn't want to talk after club because I look really gross." I giggled out.

"No! I'd never stop talking with you because of that! My dad is just..., " Benjamin sighed and pouted, "He's just a big old fart who owns a mall..."

"A mall? Must be nice being rich..." I teased.

Benjamin giggled and said, "I know. I don't even know what rent is."

We laughed after that. Benjamin laughing because he acted like he was THAT level of rich, and me laughing because I've experienced what it was like missing rent on our house multiple times to the point where they threatened to evict us. Fun times.

Speaking of money and difference in social status, the school apparently didn't like us "hooligans" touching their marble desktops with our smudgy fingertips, Owen's programming teacher once said.

I felt intimidated by the midterms, mostly because it WAS up to the academy's high standards and that I wasn't smart enough to stay in the academy. That, and with my dad being so proud of me for being able to attend this school and getting better grades than I ever had made me anxious about everything.

Even so, I still had fun with Owen and Benjamin, even if they didn't see eye to eye on... treating each other with common courtesy. I actually played a few mobile games with Owen while dancing and watched anime with Benjamin. It was all good and I liked them, but whenever we all got together, I felt like the dad of the group trying to keep his two sons from fighting.

A shining example would be when we were having lunch at school and Benjamin said, "Zach, can we please eat somewhere else? It's... boring in here..."

Owen didn't like that, so he said, "Yeah, it smells like up-stuckness in here."

Benjamin's nose flared up and he said, "More like a spoiled brat breathing..."

They glared at each other until I grunted in my frustration and pushed Benjamin back down into his seat and jabbed my knuckles into Owen's forehead. I honestly felt as though I was a father babysitting two brothers who either each other's pizza or didn't let the other play a video game.

"Ow..." Owen rubbed the spot where I jabbed him.

"Come on. Can't we just eat? Especially you two? I'm trying to get thinner, and I can't do that if both of you are eating bacon wrapped sandwiches and chocolate milk with whip cream on top! Now sit down, let's eat, and... let's just eat!"

I grumbled and slumped back into my chair, poking fiddling with the blueberries in my yogurt. Benjamin was silent and crunched on his barbeque potato chips while Owen drank his energy drink with four espresso shots in it.

It was Thursday, the fourth week I was munching on granola bars instead of double chocolate bars and dancing a few times a week while doing my own little-improvised workout routine at home. The worst part was that I hardly looked different. I developed a habit of checking all my angles to see if all the effort I was putting was showing, but after this four weeks, I looked exactly the same.

I even complained about this to my dad. Turns out, he was also trying to lose weight. We'd be "work-out buddies" like he said.

"Dad, I don't feel like I'm losing anything. Like, at all. I'm eating the whole grain bread, choosing regular milk over chocolate, dancing for like two hours, "I gasped, " like twice or twice a week, and-"