7) 'Don't Do Drugs, Kids' And Other Things Thijmen Doesn't Pay Attention To
Thijmen took Benjamin to the back of the school.
Yes, the back the school.
The Dutch sat down on a bench and took out a cigarette. He offered another to Ben with a smirk, knowing full well that he didn't smoke.
"N-no, thank you."
"Good choice," Thijmen replied, stuffing the pack back where it came from. As he lit the cigarette, Ben wondered what else Thijmen had hiding in the deep pockets of his jacket.
"Do you have a knife?" he blurted out.
"What?" Thijmen replied, a cloud of smoke erupting from his mouth. "Do you need one?"
Ben wrinkled his nose and waved the smoke away. "No, why would I need a knife?"
"I don't know. You're the one who asked."
"I was just... Never mind. Why did we go here?"
"Because I needed a smoke."
Benjamin made a face. Figures. Just when he'd decided to stop judging, Thijmen had come, incentivized him to skip class, taken him to one of the school's shadier areas and smoked. As if nothing. 'Don't judge' his butt. Nonetheless, Benjamin kept this to himself. Being the fantastic conversationalist he was, he replied with, "ah."
Being the amazing conversationalist Thijmen was, he let the chat drop and decided to focus on wrecking his lungs.
Benjamin picked at the grass beneath and idly plucked blades of it out. To think this had all started because he'd hit his head against the desk for absolutely no reason. Perhaps because of that and for absolutely no reason, he found himself skipping class with a thug at the back of the school. Who smoked, no less. Benjamin glanced at him from the corner of his eyes.
He wondered if he thought it made Thijmen look attractive. As in, sophisticated. Mature? There were probably a lot of girls who loved it when boys smoked a stick of pure toxin every now and then. And it didn't really look that bad. It looked pretty fancy, actually. The way he gracefully held the cigarette pinched between his fingers and brought it up to his lips to inhale the tobacco practically begged for eyes to be glued on him.
Benjamin flat-out stared, and he didn't realize he was doing it so shamelessly until Thijmen asked, without even looking at him, "What?"
"I'm not looking at you," Benjamin said.
"Of course you're not."
"I'm looking at the smoke."
Thijmen smirked. "Yeah, sure."
Stupid thug. "And at the huge pimple on your nose."
That wiped the smirk off. In a jarringly off-character moment, Thijmen put the cigarette down and grazed at his nose with his other hand. There was nothing, of course, but the reaction knocked Benjamin's cool—or lack thereof?—as much as he'd done to the Dutch guy. Oh, dear. Okay. He hadn't expected that.
"Where?" asked Thijmen.
Benjamin felt like digging his face into the ground, and he didn't even know why. Embarrassed by his own outburst, he shrugged and looked away. "N-never mind. Joke. I was joking."
He gave Thijmen a shy grin, but the latter just shot him a look.
He'd killed the moment. Benjamin had killed the moment. Stupid. So stupid—
Thijmen went back to smoking.
—or not.
A few moments of silence went by. It started to get awkward. At least, that's what Ben felt like. Thijmen took the last drag, before tossing the cigarette to the ground and crushing the remnants under his shoe.
"So, uh..." Ben started. "Why do you smoke?"
Thijmen shrugged. He didn't even say something like, "I don't know, I just did." He said nothing. He stared across the field of grass with a glassy look.
Had Benjamin hit a nerve?
So much for trying to make conversation. "Sorry," Benjamin mumbled, for no real reason, "So, uh... do you miss your family from the Netherlands?"
"Benjamin, shut up."
He shut his trap instantly. And this was exactly why he hung around the people he hung out with. No walking on eggshells. They'd say whatever they felt because they were whatever they felt. Crap. Okay. At the very least, he'd try to apologize again. Benjamin summoned courage for a good dozen minutes, then peeped, "So—"
"Sorry."
What. That was weird. The only logical explanation seemed to be a momentary disruption between the fabric of space-time, but Thijmen added, before Benjamin thought about it further, "Sorry for that. Just don't bring up the topic, all right?"
Benjamin stared at him, awed, then nodded.
"And stop staring."
"I'm not staring."
"Of course you're not," Thijmen smiled.
Back to routine it was.
One thing Ben didn't think of beforehand was that making the teacher think they went to the nurse but not actually going would cause some... complications.
Not only would the teacher find out. Somehow, parents always found out, as well.
And they were not happy.
This was the second time he'd found himself in the principal's office. The first had been just a couple weeks ago, when he'd been informed about the whole Adopt A Thijmen project. And alike the first time, the whole crew was there, Dutch guy included.
Benjamin's mother hyperventilated. "Jesus," she said under her breath, "This is... this is horrible. One moment it's detention. Next thing we know he'll be robbing banks with bank robbers."
Benjamin would be more annoyed if, admittedly, he hadn't grown used to his parents' overreactions. And, in his ma's case, redundancy.
"What's next? Drugs? Do you drug yourself, Benjamin? With what? Cough medicine?"
"Ma," Benjamin whined.
The principal cleared her throat. "We will have to discipline them accordingly. However, Mr. de Bruin will be sent away with a warning this time. It was to be expected that he would have some... slip-ups, so he's excused. For now."
Benjamin's mouth hung open. "Wait," he blurted out, "I-I get a detention, but he'll get to walk away as if nothing—"
"Don't talk back to the principal," warned his father.
"But—"
"Benjamin."
He shut up.
He looked over at Thijmen, expecting a smug smile, but he didn't seem to be interested in the conversation. He must be used to these talks. He probably got them on a daily basis where he came from.
Prejudices aside, Ben was simply just mad at him now. It was the delinquent's fault that he got a detention. Before he walked into his life, Ben never did anything illegal. And even if he was overreacting, it was okay. It was expected he'd have some slip-ups. Benjamin expected, if there was still justice in the world, for his parents to at least give him the same treatment as they'd give Thijmen.
If there was a plus side to this situation, it was the ride home being silent. Aside from his parents exchanging Meaningful Glances, there seemed to be no form of communication. Benjamin refused to look at Thijmen's direction. Thug. Stupid thug. Prior to this, Benjamin's worst offense at school had been wearing mismatched socks.
It wasn't until they reached their neighborhood that Ben's mother called out, "Ben?"
Mostly to avoid conflict, he replied, "Yes?"
"You're grounded."
Figures.
Nobody even acknowledged Thijmen's existence. Not when they walked in. Not when they headed to their rooms.
Were they not going to ground him? At all?
Now would be a good time to be allowed to swear. Swear till Ben's throat was burning.
It was not fair.
He tried to show the injustice of the world by locking himself in his room, but his dad forced him to go eat dinner, anyway.
Then again, he wasn't going to let his parents or the stupid criminal in their house ruin his chances of getting food. He was hungry and he was gonna eat, darn it. As if to punish him, or perhaps as some sick joke of life and existence and everything, they had lentil soup. Benjamin hated quite a few things, but nothing more than lentil soup. In fact, he'd rather reset his Skyrim file than voluntarily eat it, but as it turned out, with him grounded, there was no option but to.
"I don't feel well," he said, and was ignored.
Thijmen seemed to be one of those people that didn't care what he had, as long as it was edible. He drank down the whole thing with no complaint. Benjamin squirmed around in his seat, thinking of the grossest things he could so his face turned pale and he could gag without faking. Crushed bugs, used condoms, people drinking puke.
He broke out gagging.
"Benjamin," scolded his father, "Stop faking and eat your food."
Okay, now he couldn't even look at the soup without thinking of puke, and that only got him gagging again.
"There are starving kids in Singapore," said his mom, "Don't be ungrateful."
Why Singapore, out of all possible places?
"Ma," whined Benjamin. Now he really felt sick of the stomach.
Either way, this was embarrassing. Thijmen's presence only jacked this up to eleven. Benjamin reunited every last shred of raw determination and will, then looked at the soup. With every last shred of raw imagination and mind power, he pretended it was pizza.
"Singapore," said his father, meanwhile, "Has actually one of the strongest economies in the world. I don't think it was a good example, dearie."
"He got my point, though, didn't he? Look at Bennie. He's picking up the spoon now. I'm proud."
His mother wasn't helping.
"You could have said Zimbabwe," continued his father, as if nothing, "Or Niger, or Haiti."
"Or the polar bears," said Thijmen, "Those are also starving."
Ben's parents stared at him, shocked. Up until now, he had seldom ever spoken during the mealtimes, let alone without being spoken to first. Benjamin knew, then, that it was no use to tell his parents that Thijmen was just a giant troll and probably made fun of them in his head right now. Thug.
"Are they?" asked Benjamin II. Benjamin had seen that face before. It either meant he was mentally reviewing the polar bears' natural habitat or smelling something bad.
"Oh," chimed Thijmen, "They are. Did you know that, for every fish you eat, you take away one polar bear's meal?"
Benjamin scowled at him.
"That's terrible," blurted out Benjamin's mom.
"Horrible," continued Thijmen, with a completely straight face, having long since finished on his meal (and being the only one, as a matter of fact), "There was a saying, actually, back in the Netherlands. Wat je zegt ben je zelf, met je kop door de helft."
"Ohh, what does it mean?" asked Ben's mom, completely having forgotten the spoonful of lentil soup in her hand. The liquid slid off and splashed back into her bowl with a sound that almost made Ben want to puke again.
"If I told you, that would ruin the magic, wouldn't it?"
Benjamin's mother looked down at her lap. "I suppose it would."
"So when you make soup," Thijmen said and he suddenly reached for Ben's bowl, snatching it right from under his nose. He wiggled the spoon around and continued, "you have to let the pieces of fish, or any other food that's important to endangered species, really let the liquid absorb the flavor, so that you can use less."
What in heaven's sake was he doing? Ben stared at him with an open mouth.
"And when you're eating, of course you want to get as much of that meat flavor in your mouth as possible, so you take a piece in your mouth and then you put a lot of that liquid in your mouth, with that taste soaked in. So let's pretend the pieces of carrot are fish."
He spooned up a piece of carrot and then proceeded to take in three spoonfuls of the rest of the soup, until his cheeks were so round the soup would come bursting out if someone poked him in the face.
He swallowed the soup and "demonstrated" once again. Ben realized he'd emptied his entire bowl. There was no soup left for Ben.
Uh... what?
"Oh, that was very informative," Benjamin II said. "Maybe we should—"
"Don't actually put less meat in the food, though," added Thijmen, before placing the bowl back on the table before Benjamin. Benjamin, in his part, could only stare in sheer confusion.
"What—" he began, then squealed when Thijmen stomped on his foot.
Benjamin's mother nodded, awed. "How..." she began, "How do you know that? Survival methods? Are there starving kids in the Netherlands too?"
It clicked, for no real reason.
No soup.
Thijmen had sacrificed himself for... wait, had he? Or had he just been hungry? Benjamin stared at him, awed.
"Probably," was the Dutch guy's reply. "Like, in Spijkenisse."
Cue Ben's father looking like he was smelling something bad again.
"Uh-huh," said his mom.
Amidst the general confusion over the word, Ben tapped Thijmen's arm. When the Dutch guy turned to face him, Benjamin mouthed, 'thank you'.
It'd be mortifying if Thijmen had, in effect, done that out of hunger, but apparently that wasn't the case. In fact, he smiled in response. And winked.
Cue Benjamin flushing and adding himself into the chaos.