Your Princess is in Another Castle

8-1

The rest of the school week was very busy for Arnold as not only did the teachers give them several more homework assignments he had to help in the shop on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday after school which gave him less time to work on the homework. He also had the wrestling club after school on Wednesday to attend which meant that by the end of the week, he had a pile of homework to do over the weekend and little time to hang out with his friends. But he wouldn't complain at the workload and he knew his father needed the help in the shop to keep it running, hopefully he will hire someone to do that soon as he was making a steady profit with it to do so which would free up his time to work on his homework more. Brendan was also worth considering but he was a little too young yet to step up to help as he himself didn't start until he was 11 and that was several months in the future for Brendan. For the time being he just had to make do and see his friends at school and any time he got opportunity to. The shop that week was a little bit quieter because his dad had stopped having his sale on and people were back at work but still, they saw some business and some people came and picked up what they had ordered the week before. Arnold still found things to do to occupy his time and in the really quiet moments he would get his homework out to work on that.

As for school that week it had been very interesting, the lessons had all been on new topics and he finds them all great to study. The first lesson of sex ed had been an eye-opener as this was the lesson that was informing them about the changes that were going through their bodies as they went through puberty and what that all meant. It would teach them about going into the adult world and covered everything from safe sex and pregnancy to drugs and alcohol. A lot of the kids laughed at some of the terms the teach through around in the first lesson which was to introduce them to all these topics and tell them what they would be covering week by week and Arnold was one of them but he still would like to listen to more and to understand the changes he was going through.

Not only were the lessons interesting, so was free time as they had gone from a group of four friends to a group of six as Greg now hung out with them at every break and lunch but as he had occasionally done this before he wasn't much of an issue and made a good addition to their group. He certainly benefitted from having good friends now as they helped him understand some of the stuff said in class better and he wasn't such a loner or easy target for the bullies to mess with. Lisa the other person who now hung around them because of Will was a very different addition to the group. Getting a girl's opinion on stuff was interesting but it also meant that they had a lot of new conversations that they didn't expect to have about love and stuff. They also had a new enmity with Sarah and her group of girls because of Lisa but Arnold didn't really know why Sarah hated Lisa so much as she had dropped in the popularity rankings because of her friends going to join with Sarah and her joining their group. Arnold never really cared for this schoolyard politics and popularity contests between all the kids, he just wanted to have and have fun with his friends, and he didn't get why things had to be so complicated. He knew from his experience as the social outcast that he would never get on with everyone, but he hoped they would get past their hate or dislike of him to just be polite or ignore him and his friends and let them get on with it. Apart from the goons they never started anything with anyone and tried to be friendly with all the other kids and if there was a big game of tag or some sports-related thing going on in the park or the field at school they got involved with it.

Arnold tried to put that all out of his mind as he sat down at the table and made a start on his homework. He hoped to get most of it done that day and have tomorrow to hang out with his friends, but he had to crack on. Fortunately, he didn't need to help in the shop even though it was a Saturday and he usually did as his mama was now down there and giving his father a hand for a change. He was glad of this and settled in and got on with his homework.