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It had not been Merroth's intention to make anything of the fact he remembered Carlisle from daycare. It was hard to forget that long, shiny, raven-black hair and the ridiculous red halo. Merroth, on the other hand, looked so distinctly average, and the meeting between them had been so brief, that Merroth doubted Carlisle would remember him with the any clarity of thought. Merroth's own memories of Carlisle amounted to "no artistic skill, cement for brains."

Which partly explained Merroth's very vivid imaginary relationship with Carlisle.

In Merroth's head, Carlisle was the village idiot, a boy so dumb he thought having the memory of a goldfish was a good thing. A boy who could not tell the different between polite and condescending, who didn't know how to do anything, someone who drew the laughter and derision of the whole school. Every time Merroth saw Carlisle at school he thought of something rude and derogatory to say to the boy. Mommy dress you again today, Carlisle? Would you like to jump off the roof, Carlisle? or, Did you s**t in your pants again, Carlisle?

There might have been some truth to all these imaginings, but Merroth was oblivious to it. He avoided Carlisle like the plague. He worried that if he did get to know anything real about the boy, it would destroy his carefully-crafted mental image, an image he clung to out of desperation to avoid the reality of the situation. Maybe Carlisle was dumb as a post, maybe people laughed at Carlisle, Merroth did not know. All he knew was that people laughed at him.

He hadn't known you were supposed to latch the bathroom stall, didn't known how to use a pencil sharpener or even that a pencil should be sharpened, forgot to zip his backpack and had everything inside fall out when he stood up, which only made him cross and angry and snapping at the hands that tried to help him. He wanted to not need help, to know everything, but he could only figure things out alone by observation, and standing to the side avoiding and watching everyone just marked him as a target by those sorts of children who targeted people. Groups of giggling girls, boys who roughhoused together, bullies. He had, if nothing else, proved to be a very scrappy opponent in his one physical run-in, thanks mostly to the misguided love of Nerys and Black. But that didn't stop people from resenting him for pushing them away while he figured things out.

Any time anyone said anything that implied Merroth was less than perfect and all-knowing, Merroth mentally flipped an insult at Carlisle. Sure, he was a few steps behind the other children in dealing with the intricacies of schoolwork and classrooms and public buildings, but at least he wasn't s**t-for-brains Carlisle, who was so stupid if you pushed him down the stairs, he'd thank you for helping him get there faster. So long as Merroth never bothered to learn anything more about Carlisle, he could continue to believe that his assertions might very well be right.

What he had not counted on was a particular torture unique to the classroom. Group projects. When the words "You'll be working with Carlisle" came out of the teacher's mouth all Merroth could do was gape. This was not happening.

There wasn't even a flicker of acknowledgment from Merroth. He stood up, his chair honking noisily as it slid across the floor, and announced to the room: "I refuse!"

There was a moment in which the only noise was the teacher's marker squeaking on the whiteboard. Then she sighed. Sometimes she thought Merroth (and his father) lived to make her life difficult. It wasn't that Boston was overly-involved in Merroth's schooling, just that every time she tried to make Merroth stay after for detention she got an earful. That man had weird morals. "Please take your seat, this assignment is not optional."

Merroth wasn't budging, well aware everyone in class was staring at him and not caring. They were always staring at that boy who refused to play games with them and participate in their cliques. Merroth knew what they were all thinking, could practically taste their thoughts on his tongue, but he didn't care. Not Carlisle. Anyone but Carlisle. He needed that bizarre little mental construction he had based on Carlisle. "I am not working with that degenerate!" he protested, pointing at Carlisle. Half the class probably didn't know what a degenerate was. Points for vocabulary if nothing else.

The teacher turned to the whiteboard a moment to compose herself where the students could not see her. Then she addressed Merroth, "If you refuse to complete the assignment with the partner I have assigned to you, I will be forced to give you an F, and this project is worth ten percent of your final grade."

She saw that she had him, saw it in the way Merroth cowed when he considered his grade point average. If there was one thing she had learned in dealing with Merroth so far, he didn't care one bit about propriety or people, but he was madly in love with his numbers, and he wanted nothing more than perfection on every assignment. It was a little sad to see that sort of thing in so young a child.

Merroth sat back down, miserable and showing it all over his face as he scowled at his desk. The teacher went back to writing the topics available up on the board.

Merroth's head whipped about and he focused his scowl on Carlisle, happy to deliver. There was intense fury in his gaze. "You," he hissed, not too loudly so the teacher wouldn't yell at him again, "do not get to ******** with my grade point average. You will just sit there like the whoreson you are." Ever since he had learned the meaning of Generys's favorite insult, Merroth loved to say it. It sounded quaint and rough, like Generys. You could taste the sandy seasalt of the word when you said it.

"'Cause she clearly dresses you," glowered Merroth, but this was a bit of a strange insult given that Merroth personally had a tendency to overdress without any input from his mother. He smirked and leered at Carlisle. "You still suckle at her teat?" He rapped his knuckles on the desk, a quick drumbeat of happy excitement at being able to run his mouth for a change.

"History, as in you are," intoned Merroth. When he was younger, he had not enjoyed the fact that Carlisle was oblivious to the taunting, but now that he was older he found he appreciated it a lot more. He was beginning to think his mental imaginings of Carlisle might actually pale in comparison to the awesome lameness that was the real thing. "I think you mean I have to pick a topic." He crossed his arms and sat back in his seat, daring Carlisle to challenge him.

"Pbbbbbbbt," went Merroth. Simple mathematics were in their favor. There were way more topics on the board than pairs of children, for just that reason. Besides, when it came to famous historical figures, the only bad topic would be one with obscure sources, and even that wouldn't stop Merroth from crafting what he was sure would be an award-winning report.

Maybe, if he had understood the words "group presentation," Merroth would have felt a little differently about the matter. He was familiar with the individual terms, but this was his first assignment which would involve getting in front of the class and making an oral report, and Merroth had no idea that it was coming.

"You can pick," Merroth said to Carlisle, "and I'll let you know if you picked a good one or not." Just one more way of controlling Carlisle, while at the same time making Carlisle think maybe he was being given some bit of respect and responsibility.

The response was immediate. "Pff, lame," decreed Merroth, rolling his eyes. Eleanor Roosevelt could have been his favorite person in all of history and he would still have responded the same just to try and demean Carlisle. "How could you look at that list of names and pick the stupidest of them all?" This was a lie, because the stupidest by far was Amelia Earhart, but she had already been picked (predictably) by a pair of girls who thought being lost over the Pacific was an actual achievement.

Merroth stuck his hand up in the air. "We want to pick!" he called to the teacher, not waiting for her to call on him. The teacher only sighed, "Yes Merroth?" in the interests of not having him start some sort of a scene inside her classroom. Merroth pointed at the board. "We'll take that one."

For a brief moment, there was a hope, however small, that perhaps Merroth had been swayed by Carlisle's argument. "Which?" asked the teacher, since pointing at something across the room was hardly being specific. Merroth smirked.

"That one. William One."