21 Jump Street (Tom Hanson)

A.W.O.L.

"Excuse me, pardon me, coming through," I said as I squeezed through the line. Once I reached the boys, I tapped Tom's shoulder.

He turned around and his expression of confusion was quickly replaced with a soft smile. "Mick, what are you doing here?"

I smiled back at him. It's been about a month since we have officially started dating, and it's been lovely. Tom makes me so happy. Happier than I ever thought I could be.

Doug turned to face me too, and he was surprised to see me as well. "Hey, how's it going?"

I said bluntly, "Fuller thinks you're taking too long."

"I couldn't agree more," Doug said as we all turned to face the camera man. "I would rather be in the Russian Army marching across Siberia than take a picture in the yearbook."

"You guys got this, right?" I asked.

"I don't even know what we're supposed to get," Doug huffed.

"It shouldn't be this tedious," Tom pouted.

A dark haired guy in a plaid shirt walked up to the camera man with his name card. The camera man read the name as Bon Jone, but he corrected him to say Bon Joe-Vee.

Tom said, "he's digging it."

I asked, "is that Jack Weaver?"

"Yep," Tom said and popped the p.

We all watched as Jack posed for multiple pictures with ridiculous poses and facial expressions. It was like he was trying to test the limits of how far he could go without getting caught. He had dark short clean hair, and blue eyes so bright I could probably see them from a mile away.

Doug said, "he should have had a little more patience, they would have let him out of the Army on a section eight."

"What's that?" Tom asked as he chomped his gum.

"Is that code for a sex thing?" I joked.

"It's that thing that Klinger was always trying to get," Doug explained with a little chuckle he shared with Tom about my joke. Doug referenced one of their favorite television shows, M*A*S*H, where a character uses Section 8 to prove that he is mentally unfit for the service, just so he can avoid the army.

"Oh, right," Tom said as Jack kept posing for pictures. "Just be glad we didn't get some Ollie North wannabe. This is gonna be cake."

"If it's gonna be cake, why haven't you caught him yet?" I asked. The boys looked at me with annoyance and I put my hands up in surrender because I realized that my comment was a little uncalled for. "I'm just asking."

"Cake takes a while to bake," Tom reasoned.

"As if you could do any better. Tell me how you'd do my job better than me," Doug snapped.

I took a breath to let out my comeback but Tom interrupted me by saying, "don't answer that. Whatever comes out of your mouth is bound to be rude."

We watched together as Jack finally got up and jogged to the exit of the gymnasium where his friend was waiting for him. I could see the principal right behind them, and he eyed the two as they snuck off.

"Why don't we just get the guy, get this thing over with?" Doug asked impatiently.

"Okay," Tom said, "Fuller said quietly, though."

"Right," Doug said.

They didn't even have to look at each other to read each other's minds. They ran out of the line and began booking it out of the gymnasium, leaving me to play catch up.