Don't Believe Everything You Hear

"Hi Austin," I said quietly, as I answered the front door to see him standing there with his book and some paper in his hands. He didn't say anything back, he just walked into the house as I shut the door behind him. I actually did remember that we had to work on this project today.

"So did you remember to ask what drug or whatever we had to work on?" I asked him. He nodded. "Well what is it then?" I asked him.

"We get to write about the effects of alcohol on the human body." He said, faking excitement.

"Aren't we supposed to learn that in health, what's it matter in science?" I asked. He just shrugged. "Is alcohol even a drug?"

"Apparently it is," he laughed at me, patting me on the back. "And I thought you were smart," he said, poking me in the side.

"I am smart, but really, how am I supposed to know that?" I asked myself more than anything.

"I don't know, you're in health, you should know," he told me.

"Aren't you in health?" I asked him.

"I take it next semester," he told me, looking around the kitchen that we were sitting in.

"So what do we have to do for this report?" I asked.

"We have to write about the effects on the body,"

"No, like how do we format this?" I asked, rubbing then back of my neck, nervously. He smiled at me.

"We have to write two paragraphs and have a picture somewhere," he told me.

"I think we can do that," I sighed.

"Okay, so I was thinking…we do one paragraph about the mental effects and another about physical effects," he said. "And then we have the picture somewhere in there,"

"Okay, so, let's just make a list and then put it into paragraph form later," I said. He nodded in agreement.

"Let's do mental first," he said. I agreed with him this time. "Okay, so it causes unclear thinking," he said, writing it down.

"It may cause slurred speech," I said, and he wrote that down. "There aren't that many mental effects," I sighed.

"I can put some serious breaks on judgment!" he said loudly, throwing the pencil in the air.

"Nice," I laughed a bit. "Got anything else?" I asked.

"Large amounts may cause unconsciousness," he said in an interesting voice. "Possibly," he added.

"Okay, so I think that's all we're gonna get for that, so what about physical?" I said and asked. "It causes blurred vision…" I said, tapping my pencil against the kitchen counter.

"May cause vomiting," Austin said, bored and now looking up at the ceiling.

"What may cause vomiting?" Mrs. Cook said coming into the room.

"We're just working on our science project about the effects of alcohol," Austin said.

"Oh, isn't that what health is for?" she asked.

"That's what we thought," I mumbled.

"Okay, well would either of you want some sort of food?" she asked, peeking into the fridge.

"No thank you Mrs. Cook," Austin said. She just nodded and continued to ravage through the fridge. "Okay, so back to this project," he said spinning in the chair to face me.

"It can poison the liver," I said, taking a mental note. "It causes headaches and loss of body heat possibly,"

"Okay," Austin said as he finished writing, "It…I got nothing, I think we got jipped on this assignment," he mumbled.

"I agree," I said, staring at my dinky little pencil.

"So what do we do now?" he asked me.

"I don't know, we need a picture and we still probably need more information, and it's due in two days, so I think we're at a dead end here," I mumbled.

"How about this, you draw the picture, of alcohol or something, and then I'll go to the library and finish the research," he said.

"Okay," I mumbled.

************ FF>>Friday ************

"Austin!" I yelled as he entered the classroom in the morning. He just glared at me and walked over to his little group of friends. I was nervous because Austin said he was going to finish it up and I was hoping that he did. "Come on," I mumbled, hoping that he pulled through on this one.

The bell rang and everybody took their seats, including Austin, who still didn't say anything to me about the project. Or anything in general for that matter. He tends to keep to himself during class.

"Okay class," Mr. Marks said, getting up in front of the class, "Who finished their projects?" he asked. Austin raised his hand, so I rose mine with his. Most of the classes had their projects done, except for Caleb and that other girl that he works with. "Turman, you got lucky," Mr. Marks told him.

You could see all the strange looks on everybody's faces. "What do you mean?" Caleb asked.

"I mean that I don't feel like grading them, so you can just get rid of them," he said. Everybody groaned. "Fine, how about this, if you did do it, then you get ten points extra credit for effort," he said clapping. I rolled my eyes and threw my head down on the desk.

"Selena, head up," he told me. My head shot up and I looked at him as he gave me his 'I know everything' look, which was a pretty decent amount of creepy here.

"Sorry Mr. Marks," I sighed, looking out the infamous window. It's really just a window, but I love the view from out of this window so much, that I like to think that it's special in some way, as odd as that is.

"This is stupid," Austin said, chucking some papers around. One of the papers landed around me so I picked it up for him.

"Just calm down," I mumbled to him. I'm not sure if he heard me or not. "It's really not the end of the world, and at least we get something for the effort," I told him.

"Whatever," he said angrily and started to sulk for the rest of the class period.