Fighting to go on

Chapter 4

            “Don’t worry about it. Thank you for asking me to join your group. You’re right in thinking that most people are too afraid to ask me to join them.”

            “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not most people then,” I replied without thinking. Then my eyes widened and I slapped a hand over my mouth. I couldn’t believe that I had just answered him like that.

            Amusement was evident in his eyes as he nodded. “Yeah, good thing.”

            When I looked at Sarah again, I was surprised to see her smiling a little. I gave her a questioning look, but she just shook her head at me. I heard a chair scraping across the ground from my other side, and a moment later, Ryan had placed his chair in front of my desk. Sarah also moved closer, although she was cautious about moving to closer to Ryan.

            “Okay, so we need to set up a schedule for meeting after school to work on this. I mean, we can work during some lunches as well, but that won’t really give us a lot of time,” Ryan said, when neither Sarah nor I spoke up.

            I pressed my fingers to my eyes briefly. “Well, I work at the library after school on Monday and Thursday, so I can’t do those two days. Other then that, I should be okay for any other day.”

            “I babysit on Wednesday and Thursday, but I’m free other days,” Sarah said.

            “And I work at the garage on Monday nights and sometimes Sundays. So we have Tuesday’s and Friday’s open, considering I don’t think any of us really wants to do this on the weekends.” Ryan said.

            “Not particularly, but we may have to add in some Saturday’s when it gets closer to needing to be done.” I said as I took out a piece of paper. I quickly wrote down our schedule, with a question mark after the word Saturday. “Now, where are we going to meet?”

            “Not my house,” Sarah said quickly. “I have two younger brothers that are little terrors. We won’t get anything done there.”

            “My mom works on Tuesday nights, so we can go to my place then,” Ryan said. “Friday nights will be a little iffy though. My mom works every other one. She won’t mind us being there when she is, but she’s the kind of mom that will be constantly asking us if we need anything.”

            I smiled a little when he talked about his mom. You could hear the affection he had for her in his voice. My smile dropped when they both turned to look at me expectantly though. Crap, what was I supposed to say? “We can do some Fridays at my place,” I said, thinking fast. Jason was almost never home on the weekends, especially Friday nights. “My brother might be around, but he’ll leave us alone.”

            “Okay, well we can use my place for this Friday. We can pick a play and start from there,” Ryan said.

            We both nodded and then the bell rang. I grabbed my stuff and hurried to my next class. It went by quickly, and then it was time for lunch.

            Charlie met me at our lockers, and so did Sarah. I introduced them to each other and we all headed to the cafeteria. I had made lunches for myself and Charlie today, so we went to a table right away and sat down.

            “How was your morning Charlie?” I asked.

            “Boring. I thought high school was going to be more fun,” he complained.

            I chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll get more interesting eventually.” I started to eat my sandwich, before I remembered about the project. “Oh, we’re doing a project in English, and Sarah and I are paired with Ryan.  We have to do a lot of it after school, so Tuesdays and Fridays we’ll be working at Ryan’s. But we might have to do some Friday’s at our place.”