In Between Two Alphas

Chapter 27

Nate was sitting at our usual spot and I hurriedly made my way to my desk.

“It feels good to be back,” Nate said, as I took a seat in the desk next to his.

“Sure…” I said, outstretching the word for added sarcasm.

“Even though we were only absent Thursday and Friday, it felt like more,” Nate replied, staring off into space.

I thought about it for a moment, and agreed with him.

“So, how’d it go with the dictator yesterday?” Nate asked me.

The teacher had given us a handout to work on, but most of the students were on their own conversations. Hardly anyone was discussing the worksheet.

“The dictator?” I asked Nate, as I took out a pencil from my book bag.

“Well, he’s a dick and has a tator brain. I assumed you knew I was talking about Layton,” Nate replied with a grin.

I started cracking up. The teacher noticed we were getting rowdy and looked ready to scowl us, but Layton walked into the room just as we were about to get scolded.

Seeing him made me laugh even harder. When Nate turned to the door and noticed Layton, he started laughing along with me.

“Nate, Cassidy, settle down or I’m going to separate you two,” the teacher warned us.

She was walking towards Layton, asking him why he was so late. I was relieved the same thing hadn’t happened to me.  

I tried to stop laughing, but couldn’t. Trying not to laugh was only making it worse and my eyes were getting watery from holding it in.

“Cucumbers, pineapple, potato chips, hot sauce, pancakes, honey mustard, cheese burgers,” Nate started naming.

I stopped laughing and stared at him weirdly.

“What are you doing?” I asked, while scrunching up my nose.

“Saying random things shuts people up, or makes them stop laughing,” he replied, shrugging.

“You are so weird,” I said, although I did chuckle at his randomness.

Layton sat down on my other side, which was his usual seat.

He kept staring at me, and I tried really hard not to glace his way. While he angled his body in my direction, I simply turned to face Nate.

“You didn’t tell me how it went with tator,” Nate said with a teasing smile.

I laughed at his name for Layton, but still slapped his arm.

“Stop that,” I told him.

“What? I’m not doing anything,” he shrugged, innocently.

“Whatever, it went fine,” I replied.

I started working on the handout, which wasn’t all that hard. Nate asked if he could burrow my paper to ‘compare’ answers. I had already noticed that he had not done any of the problems. Layton worked on his sheet quietly, even though he was never one to be talking.

Five minutes before the bell, the teacher picked up the work and gave us free time. Mostly everyone had given themselves free time since class had started, but the teacher wasn’t aware of that.

As soon as the bell rang, I got up and headed for the door. Nate was next to me and Layton caught up to us.

“I’ll walk you to your next class,” Layton stated.