Paper Hearts (Phan)

174 days

Classes proved to be easier to keep up with than I thought. There was significantly less homework than my old school, which apparently was more than the previous years were given at Seacoast according to PJ, who was probably taking the more difficult classes for the first time; but that's none of my business.

Dan was continuously exhausted by the extended unit over the loneliest whale, which he had complained more than once was stupid and had gone on far too long. I wasn't complaining though, but it was probably because I hadn't taken the class before and found the overlapping units pretty cool.

"I thought you'd taken the class year?"

"I did, but she decided to extend the discussion of the failure of a whale this year, and it's stupid because we should be about a quarter of the way through the life of an autotrophic species in the open ocean which is much more interesting in my opinion." He scowled and adjusted the backpack straps on his shoulder. There were a couple kids around us who looked back towards our direction and nearly made eye contact, obviously confused on whatever the autotrophs in the ocean were doing by themselves and why it was so interesting.

"Did you have to write an essay on it? The lonely whale, I mean." I asked and he nodded disapprovingly, wildly shaking his head so his hair ended up in a crazy position.

"It was 5 pages of nightmare fuel."

PJ seconded what had been said and so did Cat, who was finally filling out the thesis box for the rough draft she didn't finish due to finding Dan hiding a couple more 6-packs behind 4 year old expired crisps. 'Disappointing', they told him, 'we told you to stop with this shit like a billion times already.' And in response, Dan sneezed 8 consecutive times in a row and hugged his knees to his chest while pulling a blanket over himself like a cave cover. He later got sick in the bathroom, and Chris said he'd contracted the 24 hour flu which actually lasted 72 hours. We'd thought he played it up when we were around but it turned out he actually got really really sick and he completely crushed PJ's suspicions like they'd been shoved under a hydraulic press. On a side note, watching various objects being crushed under a hydraulic press is very satisfying.

"I'm gonna head back to my room and start this paper, because I actually have priorities that don't include shoving as many hot cheetos up my nose as I possibly can. See y'all later." Cat waved goodbye and set off back to the dorm complex. The reason she'd mention the Cheetos was due to walking on PJ and I last night, where I cheered him on as he stuffed a 27th Cheeto up his nose, apparently beating the Seacoast record of 24.

"Well I've written about 2 sentences, so I'm gonna go finish that; and Cat, 27 has to be like a world record or something!" PJ announced and took off to catch up to Cat, leaving Dan and I alone in the middle of the school yard.

I turned to Dan, who stared blankly up to me with those warm tea coloured eyes. "You got any of that essay to finish up?"

"The entire thing."

"I take it you want to go start it?"

Dan thought about it for a moment, lips pursed together in thought before nodding and stalling the walk back to his semi-apartment with me. He kept rambling on about how insignificant and boring it was to stretch out the monotonous unit trying to use deduction skills to figure out whether the whale was truly alone, the possible parents of it had unknowingly created a hybrid, or how it had changed its pitch to sound so low. Not that it bothered me; I could listen to him talk all day, no creep intended. I told him it was probably just looking for someone just like it, and he nodded slowly in thought before crossing his arms and stopping. And then I noticed we were back at the semi-apartments, and our glory walk was over.

"I'm tired of lonely whales," he glowered and shoved his shoulder against the door to his room so that it swung open and he collapsed onto the carpet "it can't just change its tune and reunite with normal whale beings, can it?"