Author's Note: The picture on the side is of Rick. Don't forget to comment, vote, et cetera, please.
"Good morning, Nicholas," Dad said, his coffee in one hand as he turned the pancakes on the stove with the other. "Sleep well?"
I nodded as I smoothed the hair down on the right side of my part. This wasn't necessarily my first day at this school, seeing as how I went half of the day on Friday, but today was my first full day. I wanted to look charming and approachable.
Taking my seat at the kitchen table, I pulled out my phone and saw the text my mom sent me, just like the one she sent every single day that she was not home. 'Good morning, Sweetheart. I'll be home soon, and I love you.' I deleted the message and stuffed my phone back into my pocket. She should be home making sure that I had everything that I needed, but she wasn't. She was overseas, trying to secure a deal for her investment firm.
Rick slid into his chair across the table from me, looking like hell on legs. His hair was a brown mass of half-curls, half-waves, and he looked like he had thrown on anything in his wardrobe. He didn't have to get up as early as me, but Rick was the placeholder for Mom when she was gone.
I tried my hardest not to chuckle at how lost he looked with his head in his hands. "Morning, Rick," I said, clicking my tongue on the "ck."
He looked around for moment before he saw me across from him. He scowled and buried his head in his arms. "Nicholas, don't be ridiculous," he sang in a low voice. He was so far gone, I wasn't even sure if I wanted him behind the wheel to drive me to school.
I grabbed a pancake from the plate that Dad put between us, and biting my bottom lip to stop giggling, I put it on his head.
"Nick…" Dad started, but started to laugh when he realized how hilarious he looked.
"Pancake Head, eat so we can leave," I said.
"Huh?" He opened his eyes and looked upward, seeing the pancake dangling over his forehead. Without even thinking, his eyes turned to me, and he narrowed them. "I could use my temporary mom powers to ground you, you know that?" He pulled the pancake from his head and put it onto his plate. "Luckily, I washed my hair last night, so I'm all clear."
"Blaaah!" I shouted as Rick stuffed the entire pancake into his mouth and chewed way too slow for effect. "That's disgusting."
"Disgusting is my second middle name after awesome of course."
We ate although I almost puked a few times thinking of how Rick rolled all over his pillow, and Rick was a slobberer. I knew that from a few times of sleeping next to him and waking up with my face inches from a pond. He could have washed his hair three times yesterday, and that wouldn't change anything. He had eaten bacteria and nastiness on a pastry.
I got into the passenger seat and waited for Rick to get into the driver's seat. I closed my eyes after a few minutes, hoping to get some extra sleep, when I heard the unmistakable sound of balloons.
I turned and watched as Rick stuffed balloons covered in a white plastic cover into the back. He grinned and gave me a thumbs up before getting into the driver's seat and starting the car.
"What are those for?"
Rick shrugged, his lower lip sticking out. "Just for, uh, someone that I care about a lot."
I smiled and elbowed him. "I didn't know you had a girlfriend, Ricky. When can I meet her?"
He rolled his eyes as he looked out of the rear view mirror. "I don't have a girlfriend, Nick, and if I did, you'd be the first to meet her. I don't have to worry about you stealing her from me." He smiled with his tongue sticking between his two teeth.
That was the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life. Oh, how it made me laugh to have my brother make jokes about me being gay. Ha, ha. "Shut up, Rick! I could pretend that she is a guy… Ow!"
Rick smirked as he pulled his elbow away from my kind-of sore ribcage. "Never gonna happen, Little Bro. Shut your mouth and enjoy the ride."
For once in my life, or at least fourth, I did as Rick told and leaned back in my seat, watching the houses go by as well as the teenagers waiting for the bus at their respective stop. With Rick being on Mom duties indefinitely, I didn't have to worry about getting a ride to school with someone I was embarrassed of. Rick was cool… sometimes.
The car pulled into a parking spot in front of the school, cutting off when Rick withdrew the keys. We sat in companionable silence, or companionable when you had a brother like Rick, and watched the other kids get off of their buses and walk into the old building.
"Get out before they think we're pedophiles," Rick said as he opened his door.
I got out, tucking my satchel over my shoulder, and walked behind Rick into the school. It was busy with people running all over the place, probably trying to get to homeroom on time. I had no idea where my homeroom even was, and it dawned on me that I was fish out of water here.
Rick must have seen my expression because he grabbed my shoulder and led me through the crowd, not caring that he got dirty looks from people that he pushed out of the way. If there was one thing that I loved about Rick, it was his balls. No, not like that. I'm gay, but not for him. He's my brother, and he's disgusting. I mean his, you know, proverbial balls that people are always talking about? Rick has huge ones, proverbial balls, not that I know if he… Never mind.
The main office was empty except for a middle-aged woman I had met on Friday, but didn't have a chance to talk to. There were awards everywhere, which meant that this school was almost as serious about academics and athletics as my old school, and they were crazy, and I mean crazy, about being the best back there. I guess having gone to that school helped here.
"Hello?" Rick asked, standing over the woman's desk. I noticed a plaque that said "Secretary – Dawn Sommers".
"Ms. Sommers?" I asked, slightly unsure of whether to call her Mrs. or Ms.
She looked up from some papers and smiled. "Nicholas Cranston, correct?"
I nodded.
She stood up and smiled. "We met Friday. I was expecting you this morning." She looked to my left and saw Rick. "Who is this?"
"He's—"
Rick took her hand and shook it. "I'm Richard Cranston, Nicholas' older brother, and his acting guardian," he said in the same "Mr. Serious" voice he had used when he used meet my friends' parents. He just wanted people to take him seriously, which was funny because he wasn't the most serious in the world.
"It's nice that you choose to accompany him on his first official day, young man. Nicholas, you should be proud to have such a responsible sibling."
Responsible my ass. "Yes," I said, trying my hardest not to roll my eyes at Rick, "I'm thankful for having him as a, er, brother."
He patted me on the shoulder. "Aw, Bro, that's so nice."
I almost screamed for joy when he turned around to let me handle my school business myself. I was 17, but I wasn't a child. I could do things by myself like get my schedule and the forms that needed to be signed.
She handed me a yellow envelope labeled "Nicholas Cranston, 11th Grade" with my schedule stapled in front of it.
I ripped the schedule off and scanned the list to make sure that I had all of the same classes as before. Thankfully, this school didn't screw it up and everything was the same including the class order. The only difference was my homeroom which had been 245A before but was 245C this time. I grinned at her. "Wow, thank you guys so much. You even got the homeroom the same except for the last letter. This is just insane."
"We just wanted you to feel welcome, Nicholas."
"Please, you can call me Nick—"
"Nick, it's that guy!" Rick shouted.
I turned, but it was already too late because he was in the hallway, talking to someone. I could only see the back of the person's head, but something seemed familiar which was weird because I had never met any of these kids personally. Maybe he had been in one of my classes Friday or something, but I had only observed then.
Rick pointed over the boy's shoulder at me, and the boy turned, revealing his face. He was that guy that we had seen on the way home, the Eastern Europe boy. Why was Rick even pointing at me? What was he saying? Oh god, he was probably embarrassing me like, "That's my gay brother, and he's in denial, but he thinks you're hot."
I turned back around and put my face in my hands, wishing that this wasn't even happening on my first day of school.
A hand touched my shoulder and dragged me upward.
I turned around and saw that it was Rick.
"Come on, Nicky! I need to introduce you to that guy that you claim to not have thought was hot. You've got to see him up close!" He shouted as he dragged me out of the office and into the hallway.
I sighed as he tightened his grip on me, sensing that I was going to run for it if given the chance. The problem was that I thought guy was hot from afar, and if I were to see him up close, I would think he was even hotter. When I was around hot guys, bad things happened.
"Hey, Niels!" Rick shouted.
The hot guy turned around and smiled when he saw Rick. He walked past the kids, taller than most of them, and stopped in front of us. "Hello, Rick, is this the brother that you were telling me about?" he asked.
I averted my eyes to the floor, avoiding looking in his eyes, and let myself become deadweight in Rick's grasp. It was revenge for him doing that to me, but it was bad revenge since he benched 350, and I was probably, er, a third of that.
"Yes, this is Nicholas, but he goes by Nick. I call him Nicky sometimes, but that's cause were bros."
I felt the heat rushing to my cheeks. How could he tell him about the Nicky thing? That was between the two of us and Jake, my best friend who happened to be a few states away. I wish he could have moved with us, but no matter how much I begged, his parents declined. It was a great offer!
"We're close, you know? It's bros before hoes," he stopped, "or I should say bros before bros. No, that doesn't make sense. Yeah, he's cool."
I gave up dangling in grip like a rag doll and stood up, lifting my head to look at Niels. God, he was definitely hot up closer. He wasn't even hot; he was beautiful. I could cut ice with those cheek bones.
"He's cute, er," he paused as he made a weird motion with his hands, "I mean that's cute."
Rick gave him a look, his eyes narrowed slightly.
"I meant that's cute. You see, I wasn't raised to speak English, so I have issues with the translation from my native language, you see?" He smiled, and my heart almost melted, but Rick remained cold. "My parents came from Russia, and they taught me Ukrainian."
"I was right," I whispered.
The two of them looked at me, confused. "About what?" Niels asked.
"I, uh…" I was blaming Rick, but there I was making a fool of myself by myself! "I thought I heard an accent or something, yeah."
Niels grinned. "So, I'm sorry if I offended you," he said.
Rick smiled and patted him on the upper forearm. "It's cool, dude. You just make sure you take care of my brother." He paused. "In school, I mean, take care him." He patted us both again before he let my shoulder go, only to push me forward. "See you later, Nicky!"
I gripped onto the most solid thing which happened to be his shoulders. I was hanging on like a lemur or something that hung onto things and dangled awkwardly.
He grinned, chuckling softly. "Someone tripped," he said, lifting his eyebrows.
I felt my cheeks turning pink, so I pulled myself up away from his chest, which felt very, very, er, hard. "Sorry, my brother he's… my brother."
"I like him." What? Was he crazy or something? I should have known that he was too good to be true? Hot guys were usually the ones with issues.
"What?" I asked, laughing. "You like him?"
"He's quite funny," he said. "You're quite funny too. We should get to class. I'll show you to your homeroom, so your brother doesn't kill me."
I felt so weird walking next to him, a hot guy I had just officially met after creeping on him in a car with my brother. People moved out of the way for him like they would for a king. He was popular. I hadn't seen him with any outrageously beautiful people, but I knew.
We stopped in front of 245A and stood there for a few seconds. "Thanks for walking me here."
"It'd be stupid of me not to since, well, we're in the same homeroom."
I bit the inside of my lip to stop from squealing like a little girl. He was in my homeroom! Yes! I walked inside and handed the teacher my schedule.
She nodded. "Yes, I'm Mrs. Monroe, and I've been expecting you, Nicholas," she said in a creepy voice. Was she a witch or something?
I started at her for a few seconds. "You can call me, Nick," I said with a smile.
She cocked her head to the side, her brown bun flopping comically. "Can I call you Lah? If you were to pronounce your name the French way, then the last syllable would sound like 'lah'."
So she was the weird teacher that every grade had. I would get used to it, and it was pretty awesome to have a teacher that wasn't as serious as my last homeroom teacher, Mr. Denisof. He was absolutely terrible.
"Yeah, sure."
Mrs. Monroe gave me a closed-mouth smile. "There is an empty seat over there behind the girl with the short black hair."
I nodded and turned around, the smile disappearing from my face. What was that? I took a seat behind the girl, putting the yellow envelope on the desk. Around me, everyone was talking to someone, or doing homework that they probably should have done last night. Don't worry. In a few days, that would be me.
The girl turned around, resting her arm on the back of the chair. She had chin-length hair and a serious face. I don't really know how a face is serious, but hers just was, okay? "I'm Shelley Mason, the class president," she said, holding out her other hand toward me.
I took her hand and shook it. It was thankfully soft. I hated rough or dry hands. "That's a good sign then."
"How?" she asked as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
"It means that you're a good person. People don't just vote anyone for class president in 11th grade anymore. You have to be pretty smart, and a good leader. My best friend Jake was class president at my last school, and he was kind of a goof-ball, but he got the job done." I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I must be boring you," I said.
Shelley grinned, revealing braces. "It's fine. You're interesting, and you have good fashion sense. I'm making it my job to be your personal chauffeur for the day. I mean, it does come with the job, the whole showing people around thing, so it works out that you seem cool."
She turned around as Mrs. Monroe made her way to the front of the classroom. "Hello, everyone. Before we start with our normal schedule, I want to introduce you to a new student Nicholas Cranston." She pointed over to me and made a stand up gesture. "Introduce yourself to the class."
You know in pre-school or kindergarten when you have "show and tell", and you have to say something about yourself as you show off your object? It felt exactly like that except we were all in 11th grade. For one second, I thought that chick was cool, and now, she was making me stand up in front of strangers!
I stood up, taking my satchel off. "I'm Nick Cranston, and I'm obviously new here. I'm from Portland, Maine and went to Portland High School. I live there my entire life, but moved here because my brother Rick goes to MIT. My father works for this International business thing, and my mother is an architectural engineer so she's always gone. I mean she's never even seen our house here, so when she gets back, I bet she'll end up back in Maine."
A few people laughed.
"Also, I was treasurer at my last school," I said before I sat down to applause. Really, I didn't know what for because I just told them about my life, which was nothing special.
"Yes, so everyone try to make him feel welcome. There's two minutes till homeroom so Troy," she pointed to the guy in the row next to me, "finish up your homework."
Shelley turned around. "I think I should have been the first person that knew that you were treasurer," she said.
"It wasn't a big deal. I just needed something to say, so I wouldn't sit down awkwardly. I was probably terrible since Jake appointed me because of us being best friends."
One thing that I learned about Shelley was that she kept her word. Somehow, we had all of the same classes except one, Photography, which made her give me a questioning look when I told her. Really, I didn't see the big deal about taking Photography. It was fun. Anyway, she walked me to every single one of my classes up until lunch when she was nowhere to be found.
I stood outside the cafeteria, rocking back and forth on my heels as I waited for her.
Some girl wearing a trapeze dress that seemed out of place in school stopped when she noticed me. "Hey, you're that new kid, right?" she asked, speaking extremely fast.
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm Nick."
"I'm Tara, and Shelley sent me for you. Come with me." She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the cafeteria, telling the kids she cut in front of in the lunch line to move. For such a small girl, she was fierce. Near the front of the line, she stopped cutting kids. "I'm vice-president of the student body, by the way."
"Cool," I replied. "Where is Shelley anyway?"
"She's doing her duties as president of the student body. Anyway," she said, quickly and suspiciously changing the subject, "you're sitting with us for the rest of the school year. I'll show you our table." She grabbed my arm again and pulled me along the line.
I hadn't even noticed that she had grabbed two trays and piled with them chicken salad. "Don't I have to pay for lunch?"
"That's taken care of. Move, you jock!" she shouted at some beefy kid. "So there's twenty dollars in your account from the bill that Shelly pick-pocketed you earlier," she sat our trays down at a table exactly in the middle of the cafeteria, "so don't worry about paying her back since it's your money. Now, sit."
I sat down next to Tara, feeling a little overwhelmed. Even though she was probably a few inches shorter, she somehow felt bigger. It was the same with Shelley except that she was only an inch shorter than me, but made me feel a foot shorter than her. Maybe it was the stilettos that she was wearing. I glanced under the table and saw that Tara was wearing them too except the heels were smaller. Napoleon, that's who the two of them reminded me of; both were short and demanding.
I grabbed my fork to stab into my salad, but Tara snatched it away from me. "What?"
"Wait for Shelley… oh, here she comes. Go ahead."
I huffed, rolling my eyes, as I picked up the fork and was just taking my first bite when Shelley sat down across from me.
"Hello, Tara. Hello, Nick," she said, smiling. She placed her bag on the table, and watched as I ate. If that wasn't creepy, then I didn't know what was.
"Nick, can I ask you something?" she asked.
I swallowed and nodded. "Sure."
She leaned in way too close. "Are you gay?"
Thank the lord or whatever entity up there that I had swallowed sooner because I would have choked if I hadn't. "W-what?"
"Just answer the question… You are, aren't you. You're gay!"
I held my finger in front of my mouth and shushed her. "Quiet or someone will—"
"Hey!" a voice shouted from behind me.
I recognized that voice. I turned. "Hey, Niels." Please tell me that he hadn't heard that.
"Bourne, you know my Nick then?" Shelley asked. Since when was I her Nick?
"Yes, Shelley, I know him," he said rolling those gorgeous chocolate eyes of his. God, what I would give to have a chance to swim in those pools of cho—
"Are you okay?" Niels asked, his eyebrows creased in confusion. He had definitely caught me staring.
"Y-yeah, I'm fine."
"He was admiring that Romanesque face of yours, Bourne," Shelley said.
I turned to gape at her. I gave her the "what the hell" eyes and bared my teeth at her.
Niels chuckled. "Shelley, you're so funny." I almost jumped when he touched my shoulder. "I'll see you later, okay?"
When he left, I brought my fist down on the table, rattling Tara and I's trays. I guess the years of horsing around with a brother who is a brick house pays off. "What the hell what that for?"
She reached over and took a piece of chicken from my salad, popping it in her mouth. "I was telling him the truth. When I like someone, I tell them. I don't understand why everyone wastes time beating around the bush. Just ask him out, so he can reject you gently and save you the time from staring at him while he looks somewhere else."
"So, he's straight then?" I asked. I was crossing my fingers under the table, hoping that somehow he was gay.
"He's straighter than a plank, Nick. He dates girls, kisses girls, and probably even has sex with girls. Don't take his affection the wrong way either," she said, pointing her finger at me. "He was raised in a European household, so he's bound to get kind of touchy. I'm just telling you. Ask him on a date or something and wait for him to give you sad eyes and tell you that he likes girls."
I looked down at my food and sighed. I wasn't even hungry anymore. "It's not like I'm the one who does the asking out anyway. I'm the one who gets asked out," I said.
I was the feminine one, the opposite of the agressor. It had always been that way, even when I was still dating girls—which nothing at all happened with.
"Then pigs shall fly, Nicholas. Pigs shall fly when you are asked out by Erik Niels Bourne."
So his real first name was Erik. That was cute, not that my opinion mattered. I sighed. "I'm already giving up, Shelley."