Your Princess is in Another Castle

7-4

Will had been surprised at how well the first day back at school had gone, his friends had accepted Lisa into the fold without too much fuss and he was glad of that. It had also been good to see Jason again and learn what he had been up to during his holidays to Florida. He hoped that today would go just as smoothly and that the lessons would be interesting, but he doubted that all of them would be. After a quick breakfast, he set off for school and was there in no time at all. There were a few other kids in the playground but none of his friends were there yet and so he stood by himself as he waited for them. He didn't have long to wait for Malcolm to turn up and he came right over to him.

"Hey man, how's it going?" Malcolm asked.

"Hey, not too bad, you?" Will asked in return.

"Same, you make a start on that homework?" Malcolm asked.

"That I did, the English one at least, not tackled the math one yet, hopefully, we won't get any more today, so I can get it done tonight" Will said.

"Wishful thinking, the teachers must hate us the amount of work they'll give us in the first week" Malcolm replied.

"True that but we haven't even reached high school yet, it's a lot worse there from what I've seen of Anna's workload," Will said.

"Will definitely not look forward to that but we still have a few months of this easy life" Malcolm replied doing air quotes for the last two words.

"You got that right, ah here comes Jason," Will said and sure enough Jason joined their group and after being greeted joined their conversation.

"The teachers must think they have to prepare us for high school with all the work they are giving us," Jason said.

"Maybe that's the idea behind it, we'll see if we get any more today" Will replied.

"That we will, at this rate we won't have any free time to hang out," Malcolm said.

"True enough and I have karate club tonight as well" Jason replied.

"They can't expect us to give up our extracurricular activities as they encourage us to do them," Will said.

"No, I expect they expect us to do them still and just have no social life at all, which is ok for some students but certainly not for us" Malcolm replied.

"To right, ah here come the others," Jason said as Greg and Arnold came into view and voiced their own opinions on the matter, Arnold was certainly the worst off, of them all as he still had to help in the shop a couple of nights a week and do everything else. Right then the bell rung, and they went into the first lesson of the day which was history. This was a true test of a student to see whether they had got enough sleep the night before as sometimes a few of them dozed off whilst the teacher rattled some facts at them about some historic time or another and they made notes. The teacher usually noticed this and would spring a question to the perpetrator about what he had just been saying to get no answer at all and the kid would then if he were looking get a telling off right there and if he were unlucky be made to serve detention over lunch that day. Will had dozed off a couple of times in this class but he was in a good state today, so he paid attention.

The first two lessons of the day passed relatively quickly and again they got some history homework to complete for next week, but it was an easy bit of reading and answering a few questions about what they had read. When break came Will went off to one side with Lisa whilst his friends chatted somewhere else.

"Man, all this homework we're getting means we won't have much free time to hang out with each other" Will said.

"I know what you mean, we've already had three pieces yesterday and we've got another today, it's like the teachers want to punish us for having a Christmas holiday" Lisa replied.

"But they get to enjoy that holiday as well, so it makes no sense," he said.

"True enough, well if we don't get to hang on a weeknight maybe we'll have to do something over the weekend if we get all our homework done" she replied.

"Or perhaps we can do it together and help each other out" Will suggested.

"That is an idea but I'd rather we do something fun on dates rather than just study dates, but we might have to resort to that at some point" she replied.

"Fair enough and you are right, I'd rather do something fun on dates as well," he said.

"We'll see where we're at with the pile of homework at the end of the week to see if we have time for one" she replied.

"Agreed," he said, and they carried on talking for the rest of the break and then returned to classes. The rest of the day played out like the day before but fortunately they didn't get any more homework to do and so when school finished Will focused his attention on getting the math homework completed and then the science one that they got the day before. This took him a couple hours, but he got them done and had an hour or two of free time in which he relaxed.