Jared's Little Goof

3 - Snippets From a Time Between

A/N: The amazing music above is only what Drew is listening to for part of the chapter, not a mood for it. If it was the overtone, that would be kind of uncomfortable. Also, this feels like it's a shorter chapter because it's really just an 'it happened' day for everyone involved (in between, as the title says.) Lastly, if anyone actually reads this and notices a typo, please comment and I'll try my best to fix it! :(

I awoke in a panic. A cold sweat ran down my spine. Flipping over, I eyed my Hello Kitty alarm clock, a degrading pink carnation color and a past gag gift from Riley. It was half past six. If it had been a Monday, I would've been getting up later than usual, and—

Wait. It was Monday, the last day before the third member of our trio returned. I hoped she was having a good time right now, but I wouldn't know, because she hadn't messaged me since Saturday after I got home.

I was too behind schedule to text her again that morning.

Light shone through my silky beige curtains, and I yawned before throwing my cocoon of blankets off and standing up. I had a twin bed, with a pile of pillows littering the floor around it and sheets set askew. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand, leaped over a basket of laundry I had done the night prior and my old excuse for a laptop that was used only for schoolwork, swerved to the entrance of my bedroom, and then slid out into the hallway. Our floors were genuine cherry wood, my dad had made sure of that, and their glossy surface was easy to slip over.

The door to my parents' room was open, and inside I could see my father sitting in bed and reading. He gave me a peculiar look as I practically skated by, so I assume my hair probably resembled a nest, as that had been the source of many bizarre glances through the years. No matter, as it would soon go through the normal coercing of five separate brushes to be tamed.

I sprinted blindly to the nearest bathroom further down the hall, threw off my pajamas, almost dropped my phone in the toilet, and hurried into the shower.

〜❁〜❁〜❁〜

I sprinted through the main doors to the school, skidded through the hallways to my locker, and rushed to do the combination. I probably got some strange looks from people I passed by, almost all heading to their classes that started in roughly two minutes, but that was fine. Everything was fine.

My first hour was Honors Chemistry, one of the courses Jared and I shared throughout the day. He smiled at me from across the room from his desk in the back, near the lab counters, and I fleetingly returned it as I entered.  A few other students peered at me before I sat down near the front, but that's likely only because I did walked in roughly five seconds before the final bell that signaled the start of class rang.

I dragged a lab notebook out from my stack of materials, one of those annoying ones where you have to keep a divider between sets of pages because it's filled with copy paper. This made handing in notes a simple task, but trying not to have one line bleed through the entire book was also a major problem when using them.

Frankly, today's first period was very boring. We were going over the properties of different metals, and I had done the readings. I'm pretty sure that the only reason the teacher discussed these things in class at all was because almost no one took notes on them, and she saw what happened on tests later if we didn't. Oops.

The clock on the wall could only tick so fast, and most of the morning went by equally uneventful as the start. It was swelteringly hot in the school, and I could feel my pineapple shirt (just a white shirt with pineapple print, in case anyone was confused) beginning to stick to my sides. Luckily for me, I had gym class in the first semester. Jared wasn't so lucky, and neither would Riley be, once she returned and had to make up the aerobic activities she missed.