Chiron Academy

Chapter 25: Heart to Heart

Todd sighed in relief as he pulled the door to the meeting room closed behind him.

The meeting, all in all, had gone well. It certainly wasn't how Todd had hoped his first meeting as squad commander would go, but after that everything had been pretty painless. There had been the slight hitch with William bringing Wyatt as his vice, but hopefully, Todd had been able to smooth that over with everyone having the least amount of hurt feelings possible.

Now that he was finally away from the eyes of the squad captains, he could finally allow himself to relax. He felt like he'd been running on adrenaline since dinner, the specter of the meeting hanging over him like a weight. He'd lead meetings as a student body officer last year at school but he'd never gotten entirely used to it. And that was before he was leading meetings that included the top teen heroes in the country and the principal of the whole school, who had been personally appointed to run the program by the president of the United States.

He managed to pick the correct key out of the ten or so on the key ring Mr. Buckingham had given him into the lock on the door, locking the door room behind him.

Mr. Buckingham had said that since Todd was supposed to be a leader to the other kids, he should have enough autonomy to do things without having to ask a faculty member every time he wanted to do anything. He hadn't tried most of them yet, but the keys were supposed to get him into the gym, the cafeteria, the panic room, most of the notable places in the school.

Sliding the key ring back into his pocket, Todd started his trek towards Mr. Buckingham's office.

Now that his nervous energy was gone, it was a struggle just to put one foot in front of the other. He felt drained as he'd been through a full workout. All he really wanted right now was just to go to sleep but the principal had asked him to come to his office after the squad leaders meeting to talk about how it had gone. Luckily, the meeting room wasn't far from his office so it would be a thankfully short trip.

Before he made it very far however, To his surprise, he was greeted by Gary.

"Oh, hi Todd," the much smaller boy said. "How was your meeting?"

Todd was rather taken aback to find his roommate wandering the halls on the faculty side of the building. He was a little embarrassed that he hadn't noticed Gary's approach. Wyatt was always the more observant one, but Todd should have noticed something. He had been all alone in a hallway. Aside from the hum of the lights above them, Gary's approach was the only other sound in the empty passage. Todd really needed that nap.

"The meeting went okay," Todd said with a yawn. "We got through all of the points on the agenda and then we did a little Q and A at the end. I think we're going to be doing them once a week from now on. The faculty have a bunch of things to run by us, but I don't want to take up too much of everyone's time with endless meetings, so I figure it's a nice compromise."

"Hey," Gary responded with a shrug," at least being in a meeting is something to do. I finished all of my homework an hour ago and had nothing else to do so I'm just stuck just wandering the halls till bedtime."

"Well, you can always go hang out in the cafeteria," Todd started listing automatically. "They've started leaving it open after dinner. Or you could do something in the reception area; Mr. Buckingham said we should start encouraging people to use the space more as long as they can leave it clean when they're done. And we are going to start showing movies in the evenings sometime next week so we can-"

"Todd, it's fine," Gary said, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I'm okay. You don't have to fix anything for me. I'm not complaining."

Todd tiredly dragged his palm across his face.