Tyler's trembling from fear and anxiety by the time he rushes into Mr. Lassiter's room. He accidentally stepped on the back of someone's shoe in the hallway—one of those guys that hang with Pete Wentz, the flamboyant one with the large forehead, Bryan, or some shit like that. Anyways, Tyler accidentally stepped on Bryan's shoe since he decided to randomly stop in the middle of the hallway, turned around, and tried to grab at Tyler. Tyler managed to jump out of the way on time, but he didn't miss the string of threats that spewed from Bryan's mouth as he nearly ran to class.
Josh is already seated in his seat when Tyler drops himself clumsily into his seat, immediately putting his head in his arms as he tries to calm his uneven breathing.
He's okay enough after a few minutes, and he picks his head up from the desk. He can see Josh watching him from his peripheral, but Tyler just acts like he doesn't notice; he doesn't like to make eye contact with people he isn't comfortable with if it isn't necessary, and he's not exactly comfortable with Josh yet.
Class starts a couple minutes after that, and Mr. Lassiter slams the door shut again before going back to the front of the class.
"I believe that the homework from last class is due today," the teacher announces, resulting in half of the class either smacking their teeth or commenting on how they forgot about it while the other half pull their worksheets out of their bags. Tyler's part of the latter group, and Josh? He pulls out a worksheet, but it's completely blank of any pencil marks when Tyler glances to it.
"So, Tyler," Josh starts. "Can I borrow a pencil and your homework?"
Tyler knows good and well that giving Josh another pencil isn't the best of ideas, but one of Tyler's bad qualities is the inability to say no, and Tyler likes Josh and wants Josh to like him back, at least as a friend, and if giving Josh another pencil is what it takes, then he'll give him another pencil.
So Tyler gives him a pencil and his homework sheet, and Josh starts to copy down as many answers as he can without getting caught.
"I probably should've asked for this yesterday during Latin..." Tyler hears Josh mutter under his breath, and Tyler needs Josh to hurry up before Mr. Lassiter comes over to take their homework.
"Here, I'm done," Josh whispers as he gives the homework back to Tyler, and the smaller boy isn't even surprised when Josh keeps the pencil sitting on his desk. Now that he thinks of it, why does Josh always ask to borrow a pencil every day? Does he just throw them out or something when he's done? Shit, why can't he just give it back so Tyler can hold onto it for him?
Tyler's such a hypocrite for that; he's always losing his shit too.
But at least it's his shit he's losing and not someone else's, ooh, shots fired.
Mr. Lassiter finishes collecting all the papers, dropping them onto his desk before moving to the filing cabinet, grabbing a different stack of papers.
"You have a quiz!" Mr. Lassiter bellows, which startles Tyler, dropping the stack of papers onto Josh's desk. The class groans out in protest as Josh raises from his seat to pass out the quizzes.
Tyler reaches towards his bag to get a pencil—
Shit.
Tyler fucked up. He has to take the quiz with pen ink, because Mr. Lassiter doesn't provide pencils unless you have a quarter, and Tyler doesn't even have a penny on him, so he's instantly getting ten points off his quiz.
But the logarithms were easy last class, he's got this. He'll turn his inked quiz in and get a ninety in return. A ninety is still an A, so Zack won't care so much.
Then he looks down at his quiz, and he should've fucking studied this shit because he doesn't remember what he's supposed to do.
Tyler definitely fucked up.