Verboten [lashton]

Chapter 3

Unlike Calum, Luke really, truly cared about how well he did in school. He completed all of his homework, focused on his grades and always participated in class. Unfortunately for him, his two best friends, Calum and Michael, had a very, very different attitude towards the whole school-and-work-until-you-die thing. Sometimes, it frustrated Luke to absolutely no end.

"Calum, seriously, let's just finish these maths problems, yeah?" Luke sighed with annoyance, tapping his pen steadily on the table. He wondered if anyone would notice if he quickly stabbed his friend in the neck with it.

Calum was staring off into the distance, chewing on the end of his pen, completely and utterly oblivious to the world around him. "Calum!" Luke hissed, kicking the back of his chair.

"Do you think stars still shine during the day? Like, I know they're still there, because they can't just disappear, but are they still glowing? Or do they just, like, shut off or something?" Calum mused, finally turning his head to look at Luke thoughtfully. Luke sat there staring at him with his mouth slack open, thinking that maybe it was time he found some new friends because obviously his current ones were absolute idiots.

"Are you actually stupid?" Luke stated after a moment's silence, not believing that this was actually happening. Calum looked genuinely curious.

"No, I'm being serious. So they do stay lit up? You haven't answered my question."

"See, Calum, the reason that children go to school and pay attention is so that they know these things," Luke said, talking much like he would if he was explaining something to a three year old. Calum rolled his eyes, continuing to stare out the window.

"Whatever. You suck. Sorry for asking," he grumbled, tapping his fingers on the desk just like Luke tapped his pen. Could they start a pen percussion group? Was that a thing? Surely, that couldn't already be a thing. But then again, since the creation of the universe, someone totally could've already thought--

"Luke, I thought you wanted to do work," Calum snickered, poking Luke with his pen and rolling his eyes. Luke blinked a few times, staring down at his textbook and workbook and trying to remember what he was supposed to be doing. Even though he usually paid attention in class and tried extremely hard to do well, he was distracted extremely easily. A bird would fly pass the window, the projector would start flashing, and that fly in the corner would really start to get on his nerves which meant he had to stare at it for five (or thirty) minutes until it went away. You could see the problem.

"Yeah, um, I do, where are we up to?" Luke muttered, flipping through his textbook pages mechanically, pretending to be focusing on the words when in reality his eyes were blurring over the pages, his mind elsewhere.

"You're up to question eleven. I'm up to question two. There's only three minutes of class left, so there's not much point finishing, really. You might as well stop now," Calum said, already closing his textbook and packing his things away. Luke frantically began to flip through the pages of his textbook and picked up the speed, determined to finish before the bell rang.

"No, oh my god, I think I have just this last question to do..." He scribbled down equations, pretending he had even the slightest idea of what he was doing, making most of it up as he went along. Within two minutes he had an answer written down; it wasn't the correct one, but it was an answer, and that was good enough for Luke.

He smiled in approval. "Done. No homework for me, lots for you," Luke bragged, packing away his things.

Calum scoffed. "I'm not doing this shit for homework," he said, almost like the idea of it was preposterous. "Come on, hurry up. I want to be first in the canteen line."