Your Princess is in Another Castle

7-3

The last couple of days of the holiday saw Arnold help in the shop for most of them and that was too bad as he didn't really get a chance to relax before having to go back to the doldrums of school. But as the shop was quite busy for those days, he couldn't complain of being bored and they made a good amount of money with a lot of the customers ordering something from them. Father was really happy at how his sale had turned out as he got rid of some of his older stock and made enough money to get better material for new pieces and buy other things for his family.

The day came when school would recommence, and Arnold had mixed feelings about it as it meant that he would see his friends again and hopefully learn some cool stuff in lessons. It also meant that he would have to suffer through more tests and boring lessons as well, but you had to take the bad with the good. That morning he made sure to get his brothers up before his sisters so that they weren't late, and he could spend the time before class catching up with his friends. When he got to school, he spotted them as they were all gathered around Jason who was talking and they were all listening, he went over to them.

"Hey Jason, welcome back" Arnold said.

"Thanks man, it's good to be back, I was just telling these guys about my holiday" Jason replied.

"Carry on then," Arnold said.

"Like I was saying, the first couple days in Florida was boring, the adults hung around my grandad and talked about old times and I had listened through all of it. But after that it got better, especially when my cousins turned up and I had someone to play with and talk to close to my own age. We saw grandad several times throughout the rest of the holidays and he seemed really happy to see everyone and he gave me some money and this old toy for Christmas which was cool. The toys collectible according to my dad and will be worth a lot in the future. The rest of it I spent with my cousins getting into all sorts of trouble, but it was all good fun. I saw my uncle as well and he gave me a bunch of new joke shop pranks as a present which we shall use against the goons" Jason told them.

"Sounds like you had a decent time, we worried that you would be miserable when you came back especially as we had a snow day here and you missed out," Will said.

"It's true I would like to have been a part of that but after dreading going to see my grandad, it turned out ok and I had a whale of a time" Jason replied.

"You did miss the fight on the snow day with Harry but then again so did Will, we had to help from Greg here," Malcolm said.

"Good on you Greg, a pity I wasn't there I would have liked to try some of my new karate moves on them, but I guess I'll get to next time" Jason replied.

"Well I saw that Malcolm and Arnie needed help and as Arnie's been good to me for years I decided to step in" Greg said.

"I'm glad you did we would have come off a lot worse if you didn't" Arnold replied.

"Where was Will?" Jason asked.

"Hanging out with his girlfriend" Malcolm replied.

"She only became that afterward," Will said.

"I'm gone for two weeks and you get into a fight with Harry and Will gets a girlfriend, it's all gone to pot" Jason joked.

"That it has" Arnold replied.

"Well there's the bell, we best get to class," Will said as the bell went off and they headed in. the first ten minutes of class the teacher outline what they were going to be doing for the rest of the year and outlined their new timetable which included sex ed on a Wednesday with a teacher they hadn't been with yet. Then they got down to the first lesson which was English, and they started reading a new book.

The rest of the day saw the start of new stuff in each of their classes from calculus in maths to biology in science. During both breaks they caught up more with Jason as he went into further detail about his holiday and they told him all that had happened here during the same period of time. Lisa also sat with them at lunch and they welcomed her into their friendship group, and they didn't ever do any jokes at her expense. She changed the dynamic a little bit being the first girl amongst them, and they toned down their action-orientated conversations for her. She brought something else to the group though as she wasn't a gamer, but she did appreciate some of their favourite movies and told them about several more drama orientated movies that they hadn't watched but sparked their interest like The Breakfast Club.

When the day ended Arnold had several pieces of homework that he needed to do for the end of the week, and he had learned a great deal about Lisa. He was surprised at how well he hid his jealousy from the others and especially Will as he had liked Lisa from afar for ages and now she was off-limits. But he could hardly blame Will for getting there first and as he was much better at talking to girls and was a good guy, he couldn't fault her for getting with him. He spent some of that evening making a start on his homework. At dinner that night he told his family what had happened that day and how much homework he had already got on the first day.