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Next to me, Coop sighed and said, “So, if we go Saturday night, are you going to have a freak that we’re not done with our project by Monday morning, even if it isn’t due until a week from Friday?”
Picking up one of the chocolate stuffed croissants, I flipped him off then took a bite of it. Jake snickered.
“Hey,” Coop said before taking a sip of his crème. “I’m just saying. You get that little frown right here… when you think we’re behind, even when we’re a week ahead.”
Flicking my fingers at him, I said, “Hush.” After licking the chocolate off those fingers, I made notes in the spiral-bound. Escape Room. Budapest Express.The Death of Ivan Illyvich.Under that, I wrote the wordsuppliesand underlined it.
“Don’t worry about that,” Coop said, leaning close and tapping the line. “I’ll take care of those. After you see the escape room, you come up with the clues, then we’ll compare. I know you’ve got a full schedule, so I can put most of that together and I’ll send you photos or you can, you know, just come over. But we’ll get it done.”
Don’t worry. Yeah, that would happen. But I added the notes to my list. That was one project locked down.
Archie leaned back in his seat, pulling apart one of the chocolate croissants. “I think we should get together every Friday after school. We’ll get dinner before the game, go over whatever the assignments were for the week in government and economics, and knock those out. Then I’ll take you to the game, if you wanna go.”
“What if we don’t have assignments that week?” Really, based on what Mr. Brewbaker had said during his intro lecture that morning, nearly everything we did would be in class, at least for government. Mr. Anderson handled economics and this semester that would only be Tuesday and Thursday, but still.
“There’s bound to be something,” Archie said with a shrug. “We can always do drills on terminology. The AP exams for Government and Economics are both big on understanding the basic terms for everything. We always need to eat.”
If I said yes to that, then I was also stuck going to the games. And every single Friday? I frowned, then flipped to my phone and did a count of the Fridays for the semester.
“You work Wednesdays and Thursdays,” Archie said, building a case. “Mondays are probably going to end up being this, all of us grabbing coffee after school and going over study schedules and whatever new projects we have. I might need some help for Advanced Robotics…”
I snorted.
“… it could happen,” Archie argued. “Jake and I already have to build a robot this semester. You could help us tweak it.”
“Oh, so now I’m invited to Friday dinners?” Jake asked, his tone sarcastic.
“No,” Archie said with a grin. “Not even. You have games pretty much every Friday between now and the holidays, so you’ll just have to wait until next semester.”
“Ass,” Jake muttered, and Coop just shook his head.
“Look, I’m not saying yes to every Friday,” I finally said. “I know I have zero social life, but that could change, and I like to do other things and, sorry guys, that doesn’t mean going to every football game.”
I’d sooner be dipped in honey and rolled through fire ants.
“It’s fine, Frankie,” Bubba said almost immediately. “But you’re coming to the first game for sure, right?”
I didn’t groan or make the face I wanted to make, but I did sigh. “I won’t miss it. I’ll be right there and hopefully I can figure out when to cheer.”
They all laughed, only I wasn’t joking. Maybe I should bite the bullet and actually check out a book on football. I was probably the only person in the whole state who really didn’t see the point of that game. Still, I wanted Jake and Bubba to do great, and maybe I could be a tad more supportive.
Maybe.
Ugh.
After writing down the notation for Friday check-ins and possible homework dinners with Archie, I looked at Bubba. “How much time are you going to need for calculus?”
“All of it?” He raised his eyebrows.
“You’re not bad at math,” I reminded him. If anything, he was damn good at it. Yet every year he insisted I go over the work with him, broke down every line, and make sure he hadn’t missed anything. I got it, I was paranoid about my grades, too. But Bubba had never seemed that focused on them. Not until the last couple of years, and maybe that was why.
“I’d feel better about it if you could help.” That was the crux.
“Okay, we didn’t get homework today, but we do have to go over all the practice questions in the first two chapters by Wednesday.” Ms. Dillard said we wouldn’t get their first actual homework until Thursday. “So, why don’t you do chapter one, I’ll do chapter two. We can meet up tomorrow after school. I’ll go over yours and you go over mine. Whatever either of us doesn’t understand, the other one explains.”
“Works for me. Right after school? I don’t have practice until Wednesday afternoon.”
“Yeah, we can come back here or…”
