Twenty Four Seven || Adam Park

ten

I could hardly focus on a thing Mr. Henderson was saying this morning when I settled into my desk at school. I used my right arm to block Adam from my vision because of after dinner, I don't know if I honestly could face him... Not after my grandmother talked badly about me so much and for no reason at all. I swallowed hard as I looked at my burnt hand. It was still red – starting to blister a little, but didn't look as bad as it did the first day.

I sighed when a familiar little folded white sheet of paper slid onto my desk. I stared it for probably five minutes before I finally unfolded it to read Adam's message.

Does your grandmother always talk about you like that?

I should have known he was going to ask about that. He seemed to be more observant that I liked. I decided to pretend that I didn't know what he was talking about – only because I really didn't want to talk about it... Not right now anyways.

What do you mean?

I folded the note back up and then passed it back. It only took him a few minutes to scribble his message back.

She kept blaming everything on you... saying you were a delinquent which I hardly think is true. Besides from what you did to Bulk and Skull, they deserved that lol.

I cracked half a smile when I thought about squirting the glue in Bulk's face. He did deserve it.

I guess she just got the wrong impression of me... we never really met until now.

I watched as Adam opened the note and then started writing back. My stomach started to bubble as I ran all the possibilities of what he was writing back could be. I don't even know why I was lying to him because he seemed to genuinely want to know the answers to these things and it made me a terrible person for not telling him the truth.

What do you mean you never really met until now?

My head was starting to hurt just thinking about it so I decided that it would be best to just talk to him about it when I was ready... and in person.

Can we talk about this some other time?

Adam started to pass the note back and then quickly stopped when Mr. Henderson walked down the aisle and glared at us both, "Since you both like to pass notes back and forth in my class – I doubt you are retaining any of the information that you should be learning... You both can write a 20-page paper on the chemical properties in chapter 7 of your textbooks. You have one week to complete it and it will could towards twenty-five percent of your participation grade. Next time I catch you passing notes, I will make you share it with the class."

"Sorry Mr. Henderson." We both said.

He walked back to the front of the room and resumed his lesson. Great, just another thing that would get me in trouble. Figuring out how to work on this project with him was going to be a whole different story because my grandmother was never going to allow me to ever leave the house again so I might as well go and tell Mr. Henderson just to fail me now.

After detention, she was parked outside waiting to pick me up. She must have gotten off early – or, Mr. Henderson had called her and told her about the note passing between Adam and I. That was just my luck and I swallowed hard as I reached for the door handle. I slowly released a breath as I buckled my seat belt in and tried my hardest not to look in my grandmother's direction.

"I got a call from Mr. Henderson today." She said as she started driving. Of course she did. "He informed me that you and that young boy Adam have a project to work on together."

"Yeah, we have to write a paper." I cleared my throat.

"I've already called his grandmother and spoke with her about it. You can go over there for an hour each day until the assignment is complete and I will be checking it over to make sure you're doing your work properly. If I find out you're just fooling around, you're going to regret it." She warned me.