This Time Tomorrow

This Time Tomorrow: Chapter Three

I sputtered wordlessly for a second, then settled on punching him on the arm.

“Ouch!” he yelped, rubbing at the sore spot.

Mr. Reinheart looked delighted by the interruption.  “Mr. Palladino, how nice of you to volunteer.”

He held the whiteboard marker aloft in Odynn’s direction.  Putting on a strained smile, Odynn rose slowly from his seat, and when he manoeuvred around me he bent low and spoke loud enough for only me to hear.  “Just you wait, Parker, payback is going to be epic.”

“I think you mean ‘a bitch’, I supplied helpfully, not scared in the least at his threat.  “Payback is going to be a bitch.”  

“That too,” he murmured with a smirk and mussed my hair when he passed me.

Despite the universe working against me, lunch finally rolled around.  Mr. Reinheart was so impressed with Odynn’s ability to balance equations, he kept him up the front of the class and had him solve them all.  It was enough entertainment to keep my mind off the clock, especially when Odynn scowled at me each time he tried to make a run for our lab table and Mr. Reinheart called him back.

We ate outside; Murphy and Davis snagged a table on the fringe of the courtyard.  The sun beat down on Odynn and I as we left the cool shelter of the cafeteria and meandered our way through the throng of students taking advantage of the sweltering weather to lounge out on the sizzling concrete benches.  Some were even laying across the wooden tables with shades covering their eyes and t-shirts bunched up at their shoulders.

“I count twenty lobsters in the making,” I said as we reached Murphy and Davis, who were already well into the Friday special, butter chicken on rice.

Odynn cast me an amused stare.  “Really?  I got up to twenty-three.”

With skin that burned rather than tanned, Odynn made sure he sat in the shade of the hedge lining the edge of the school quad.  The dappled light that made it through the thick foliage was still enough to have him groaning about the heat - he was more in his element when the rest of us were freezing our asses off during winter and he was walking around in his usual jeans and a t-shirt.

We’d both grabbed a bowl of the Friday special, and as usual, by the time I got my wallet out Odynn had paid for us both.  

“You really need to stop doing this,” I said, taking the seat beside him.

“What’s that?” he asked, spearing a piece of chicken with his plastic fork.

“This,” I said, waving my own fork at my plate.  “You spend at least five bucks a day on my lunch.  That’s over twenty five a week.”

He shrugged, continuing to eat.

“I can pay for my own lunch,” I pressed, starting to get annoyed at his evasive tactics.  It was something he always did - just refused to keep a conversation going if it was something he didn’t want to discuss.

He swallowed another bite, and glanced over at me, his own agitation rising.  “Well, let me put it this way.  When you start letting me put gas in your car, maybe I’ll stop buying your food.”

I sighed in exasperation at the mention of another argument we had yet to resolve.  Because Vance and Alyssa went to East End, and Odynn and I went to West End, it just made sense for the four of us to car pool to and from school.  Odynn’s house wasn’t too far from mine, so it was no big deal for him and Vance to drive over every morning.

Since Odynn drove a motorcycle, my car had been chosen by default as our mode of transportation.  And not once had I let Odynn pay for gas.  Mainly because whether he was in the car or not, I’d still be making the same trip.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried to explain this to him, he was adamant that if I wasn’t going to allow him to put gas in my car, he’d pay me in other ways.