One day, I will be able to write sexy, charismatic men with glistening muscles that shine under the moonlight, but until then, enjoy your dorks. xD (And it figures that I shove in a new character. She's important later on, I swear!)
EDIT: And oh, there's another silly poll up. xD
Chapter 5, Part I
It was a sunny day, and Inartè hated it.
With the sun shining in the direction of the soccer team, it was almost impossible for him to get a decent shot in of them with his camera. Instead, he was reduced to taking pictures of dandelions in sullen silence. He didn’t even want to be here in the first place, but Josh had begged him – had begged in an annoying, nasally voice – and in the end, he had relented. For the stupidest thing in the world too, and that was even including the time he was seven and jumped off the roof of his house thinking that he could fly.
To put it simply, Inartè Black was babysitting a plant. The little bud was issued out in Josh’s Biology class – the one not taught by the wife of the devil – and apparently, Josh was supposed to carefully raise and nurture it every day for a week and a half.
“I have soccer practice afterschool today,” Josh told him this morning. “So I can’t take care of it.”
Inartè didn’t even spare him a glance from the History essay that he was trying to madly scribble out before their class began. “That’s what a locker’s for, genius. You have something that you want to keep safe?
You put it in your locker.”
“My locker?”
Josh sounded so scandalised that Inartè actually looked up, only to see him with the face of someone who had just confronted a brutal genocide instead of a suggestion to put things where they belong. “Yeah. Your locker. Please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your combo – we’ve only been in school for two and a half months.”
“
My locker?” Josh repeated, sounding just as scandalised as before. “And risk the death of my beloved plant that I have to ‘carefully raise and nurture every day for a week and a half’? The beloved bud of my heart? The botanic beauty of my soul? Are you
crazy?”
“Uh…” The pen in his hand dropped onto the table with a clatter. “That last question? I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking that.”
Josh stared at him. “Why? I’m not crazy.”
Inartè, being Josh’s friend, did consider how to put it tactfully. Then he figured tact would go right over the idiot’s head. “Yes. Yes you are. You have just wasted the last two minutes of my life asking me to babysit your plant.
Explain.”
“Is it so wrong to take an assignment seriously?”
“There’s a difference between taking something seriously and being
bat-s**t insane. Try again.”
“Look,” Josh said, with a spark of intelligence finally in his eyes. “Look. I need the marks to pass, alright? I’m at the borderline already so really can’t take any more risks. Especially with something as big as a project.”
“For the love of – just put in your locker!”
“No! No! No, you don’t even understand! I just learned yesterday that a plant has to see the sun as much as possible if I want it to grow properly! How can you even
suggest that I shut away in the darkness when it could be seeing over two hours of sunlight?” Inartè plugged his ears, but unlike with Mrs. Sharpain, it did nothing to block out Josh’s irritating voice.
“Josh, while it may not have penetrated your pea sized brain, it’s a ******** plant. Just drop it off somewhere outside when you go for soccer practice. And for the last time,
don’t call me Inny.” He turned back to his essay. Moron.
“Inartè,” Josh snapped, grabbing his arm and jerking it away from his still unfinished essay. Goddamn it, the bell was going to ring at any given moment, wasn’t it? “Leave it outside? Alone? Where any creepy crawly an – amfo – af –”
Inartè yanked his arm back. “The word you’re looking for is
aphids, and I really don’t care if you’re worried about your precious plant being left alone. Can you leave
me alone?”
“C’mon! Buddy! Pal! Just this once! Look, I know you hang out around us when we practice to take pictures anyways, so what’s the big deal? Mind you, I have a girlfriend so even though I am ridiculously good looking, don’t get any funny –”
Inartè made a gagging motion. Was there nothing that could get Josh to shut up?
“– Ideas, ‘cause I’m – wait no, that’s not what’s important here.” Josh took a deep breath and started jabbering again. “Okay, Inny, think of all the stuff I’ve done for you! Like that time I… oh wait that wasn’t me. Huh. Okay, okay, we’re friends, aren’t we? This is what friends do for each other, isn’t it? So just this once, just this once, can you –”
The bell rang. The pen Inartè was holding snapped in half. On one hand, he was almost done, and the teacher hadn’t arrived yet, but on the other hand,
Josh was still talking.
“Fine!” Inartè finally snarled and threw a piece of his broken pen in Josh’s direction. He looked at his ink stained finger. Eugh. “Fine, I’ll do it! Just please,
shut up already.”
Josh’s face lit up like a five year old in the face of his Christmas present. Not that Josh’s mentality was all that far off from a five year old in the first place. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Now
leave me alone.”
And that was how he was sitting here on one of the benches, bored out of his mind because his camera ran out of film five minutes back, and wondering from what happened this morning if he should start investing in ear plugs one day.
He watched the soccer ball bounce back and forth between each of the players disinterestedly until he spotted Mike dribbling with the ball. Right, Mike was on the team too. Though unlike Inartè, he didn’t think Mike told anybody yet about his sexual preference aside from him. Probably safer that way because he didn’t really want to think what the other people on the soccer team would do once they found out.
Mike then passed to Josh who did this extremely complicated footwork thing – well Inartè never claimed he was well educated on the whole soccer business – and passed it to someone else and then –
“Are you waiting for Sam to finish practice?”
He squawked and nearly toppled over (though not on Josh’s plant because god only knows how the teen would howl if he did) at the sudden remark. The speaker was a girl he didn’t recognize with short, bobbed hair and a skirt that was way too thin for late November weather.
He gave her a strange look. “Uh… should I be?”
She gave
him a strange look. “I am. Who else would anyone be waiting for?”
He felt a bit sorry for Sam if this was what he had to deal with all the time. “I’m waiting for Josh, actually. See that blond idiot over there trying to headlock someone? I’m watching his plant for him.”
“I’m going to be Sam’s girlfriend, you know,” she continued on, as if she had never heard him speak. “I’m not yet, but I will be. In time for the Valentine’s Dance. You’ll see.”
“Uh… huh. That’s great.” Inartè wondered if she carried a knife on her at all times like the stalkers in the slasher movies he watched. Why the hell was he always surrounded by freaks? “Yeah… um. Good luck with that.”
Two months later, his words would come back to bite him and bite him
hard.
Next section on the tenth page.
