I Painted A Picture (Jalex)

What A Shame

"You don't have to sit next to me if you don't want to," I told Jack as we got on the bus.

"I don't really have anyone else to sit by," he said with a smirk.

He did have a point.

I walked over to my usual spot, and let him get in first so he could have the window seat. "I'm not used to sitting with people," I said as I climbed in after him. "Usually, Rian is off with his other friend, CC. He has a good reason for that; he and CC don't have any classes together, and CC's in some sort of club that meets at lunch every day except Wednesday, so they hardly ever see each other. I would sit with them, but I tried to once and I didn't understand a word they were saying."

Jack laughed. "I had that happen once. I was at an audition and I was hanging around these two girls named Ashley and Melanie, I think. The audition was for the musical "Oliver". Ashley and Melanie had seen it, I hadn't. So they were talking about the plot, and Melanie asked me whether I liked Bet or Dodger better. I had no idea what she meant."

"Did you get in?"

"Yeah, I was in the ensemble." He smiled and paused for a moment. "Do you have any hobbies like that? Like, what's your thing?"

"My thing?"

"Yeah." Jack leaned back in his seat. "Everyone has one. Mine is, obviously, drama."

"Oh, I paint, " I stuttered.

"Oh, really?" He leaned forward again. "What kind of stuff do you paint?"

"Just, you know, whatever I can think of. I'll show you some of my paintings when we get to my house."

Jack nodded. "Cool. Hey, random question: do you have any siblings?"

"Not anymore."

He took the hint.

We made casual small talk for the rest of the bus ride to my place. Jack learned that I was born in the UK and moved here when I was six. I learned that Jack has seven pet lizards named Taffy, Looney, Buggy, Coffee, Bambi, Fluffy, and Aragorn.

"You're so much more interesting than me," I complained when he told me about the lizards.

"Chill, you're plenty interesting," he said. "I mean, you like Green Day, so you can't be that bad."

I smiled. The bus pulled up to my stop, and I nudged him. "This is where we get off."

As we made our way off the bus, Rian fell in behind Jack. "Hello again, Alex."

"Hey, Rian," I said. Jack just nodded at him.

The three of us walked the two blocks to my house, still making small talk for no real reason other than to pass time. I got out my house key the second we got on the path to my front door in the hopes I'd avoid spending too much time fumbling around in my pockets for it when we got to the porch.

I figured I should give Jack a mini-tour of my house, so while Rian got out his stuff on my dining room table, I showed Jack the living room, the bathroom, and the general direction of my bedroom. Just places that would be nice to know the location of.

Jack and I sat down next to Rian and got out our homework. I put on Warning, and we consumed ourselves in our work for the next hour or so, only looking up every so often to ask each other random questions like "What's the square root of 582?" or "What year did Shakespeare die again?"

We finished our homework at a very impressive speed, or at least Jack thought so. "Usually when I do my homework by myself, it takes at least twice as long," he commented, and I smirked.

Rian shrugged. "Time flies when you're having fun." He checked the clock over my oven. "Speaking of which, it's already four-thirty! I'll see you guys later." With that, he gathered up his stuff and left.

Jack looked at me, a bit stunned. "How is he going to get home?"

"Honestly," I said, "I don't know. He just kind of does."

We were alone now. I got up and pushed my chair in, and Jack followed. "We still need to talk," I said. "Let's go to my bedroom."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," said Jack.