Is This What You Always Want Me For?

Part 9

My lunches these days were spent a little differently. Instead of sitting in the library surrounded by masses of books, I now sat on the broken picnic table outside surrounded by masses of books. Spending almost every afternoon and night with Frank and the guys caused me to slightly fall behind on my work. It didn't help that I still had Frank's homework, dance and my job too. Well to be honest doing Frank's homework wasn't that hard. I would just do mine then copy most of my work onto his making sure to do slight adjustments so no teacher suspected cheating. But then Frank had classes I wasn't in. For instance, he took Relationships. Frank said he took it for the credit and an easy A, but the class was ridiculous. Last night I had planned, budgeted, and designed Frank's pretend wedding. It took me an hour, and precious hour that could have been spent on sleep or my own work. So here I was at lunch frantically finishing my Physics for next period.

"Vee," Gerard said from his usual spot on the ground next to Maria. "Put the books away. You're making my head hurt."

"Psh," I snorted. "Your head hurts?"

"Vee, give it a rest," Ray tried. "You're always doing homework."

I sighed and twisted around to four heads agreeing rapidly with Ray.

"C'mon guys," I said. "I have to a lot of work to do." No expression seemed to waver. "Don't you guys have homework to do?" I asked knowing full well only Frank could say no.

"Psh, I don't know," Mikey said being the first to answer.

I shook my head finally realizing what my teachers said about brilliant minds being put to waste. "I have an idea," I said cheerily. "Why don't you guys come to my house tonight and we can do homework."

A bunch of blank stares looked at me.

"Are you serious Vee?" Maria blurted. "It's Friday night."

"I know," I agreed. "But this way we can have our homework done and the rest of the weekend to do what we please." I smiled hoping at least one of them would catch the awesomeness of my plan.

Frank answered first. "I think we should go."

"What!" A chorus shot up.

"C'mon guys! Vee's right," he insisted.

I was shocked Frank was actually agreeing with me.

"Are you serious with this shit, Frankie?" Gerard asked.

"Yeah, c'mon guys."

Slowly I saw each head turn to agreement reluctantly. "Great!" I beamed.

........

I had already started my homework that night when everyone started to arrive. Frank, Ray and Mikey came first and watched TV for a bit while I worked. They said they would join me as soon as Gerard and Maria arrived. I agreed and decided to enforce later.

The mountain of books that surrounded me at the table were starting to dwindle down when Maria and Gerard finally knocked on the door.

Maria came trudging in with a clearly drunk Gerard behind her. He stumbled in being led by Maria. He would occasionally laugh or send up an invalid phrase that sent Maria laughing also.

I sighed and pushed back my chair. "What happened?" I asked walking over to the door.

"Well it's like this Vee," Gerard tried to explain. "We were coming to your house and we got lost." He laughed again as if it was a joke.

I heard the rest of the boys snickering behind me also. I looked to Maria hoping I would get some help, but she was laughing too.

"Psst Vee," Gerard was saying in a not so quiet voice. "I brought us some beverages." Then he proudly whipped out two big bottles of vodka.