Price Check On Monogamy

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Oh, I was raging. Apparently, I wouldn't find out what the hell was going on between Adam and Tawny, because Tawny wasn't telling anyone what the hell was going on. I'd woken up that late that morning, and I'd almost died running my ass to school, then I'd waited all day to have a second alone with Lexy.

For nothing.

Lexy sighed and leaned her head against her locker. "Look, she'll tell us when she's ready, and you know she will. Just... well, just leave it alone for now. Besides," Lexy's mood instantly dropped, and I knew exactly what was going to come out of her mouth next. "she probably just doesn't want to take away from Kip's shine. Thank God she isn't here today."

I sighed and leaned against the lockers. I couldn't help but smile. Lexy and Kip had been, as per usual, arguing lately, because Kip and Justin were arguing. Kip, the extreme person she was, couldn't keep it all contained-- to a point where, apparently, it had made her sick, because she was out today.

"Come on," I smiled, grabbing Lexy's arm. "Last class of the day. Social Studies, and we're done; let's go to the mall or something after."

Lexy smiled weakly, and we made our way slowly to class. "You aren't doing anything with him after school?" She asked when we'd sat down in class.

I shook my head. "Nah, he's sick; apparently, all that flying around yesterday messed with him. That's why I woke up late this morning, there was no one yelling at me to get my ass out of bed and go meet Tandem outside."

Lexy laughed, right as the bell rang. Our teacher, Ms. March, a rather eccentric newbie, stepped up, beaming. This was her first year teaching-- anywhere-- and she was always way too excited about... well, anything.

"Alright, class!" She said happily, "I've got some exciting news! There's going to be a project that we'll be working on; every group will be assigned a different section in World History-- we can discuss the topics later. BUT," oh, God, she was smiling so brightly that I thought I'd go blind. She was such a nice lady-- but seriously, how could she spend her life being so damned chipper? "The exciting part really comes with this-- this is going to be an across-the-board assignment!"

What?

Apparently, I wasn't the only person who had no idea what the hell was going on, because everyone in the class just stared blankly at our teacher. Ms. March, not to be discouraged, laughed brightly. "Oh, sillies! It's an assignment where the groups are set up among all my classes!"

Oh. Well, that really didn't sound all that exciting. Ms. March, however, was ready to have a heart attack over how amazing it was. "The Board of Education only chose two courses in the district to try this new approach on, and I'm one of them! Isn't that wonderful, children?"

No, it really didn't matter to us. But Ms. March was a good enough person that we all managed to smile wearily at her. Taking all the pathetic half-smiles as encouragement, Ms. March blazed brightly on:

"So! This is how we're going to do the partners. Everyone is going to pick a number, one to one hundred, and I'm going to place you with a person on this list who has the closest matching number! Ready?"

Ms. March bubbled through the entire class in no time, magically managing to mix all 92 of her students together into pairs of two.

Ms. March, ecstatic at the chance, apparently, to do something worthy of Board of Education attention, threw out her arms at the end of it all-- and managed to terrify most of us. "Make sure that you all look at your partners before you leave! I'll be expecting an idea for a topic tomorrow! I'll let you all go early; keep it a secret, okay, I need the time to plan everything for tomorrow!"

Well, no one was going to complain about that. Scraping chairs almost drowned Lexy out when she grabbed my arm and nodded toward the board. "Let's go see our partners."

Dragging my feet the whole way, we had to look over everyone's shoulders to see the board.

"You... you're partner's Jeremy." I sighed, relieved. At least we were on okay terms. "And... fuck, I have Adam."

I laughed sympathetically as Lexy stalked out of the room, dragging her feet the whole way. No one liked to worked with Adam-- not even Tawny, even though she liked to pretend that she did.

"To the mall?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Lexy rolled her eyes and nodded. "Yeah, we're out."

- - -

"Where's Kip?"

I stared blankly over the lip of my Taco Bell cup at Justin-- Kip's weird freshmen boyfriend. "Is there a reason why you're talking to me?" I asked, eyebrow raised. Question not answered, on account of I hate him. "Not only talking to me, but waiting until Lexy went to go grab her food to talk to me?"

Justin shifted awkwardly in front of me, like he was on trial. Jesus, by the way he was acting, you'd think I'd asked him to talk to me-- which is, of course, exactly what Lexy thought when she walked out and saw us talking.

"What are you doing here?" She asked stiffly, glancing at me. I shrugged; totally not my fault, he came here first.

Justin shifted again. "Look, I just wanna find Kip."

"Kip wasn't at school today." Lexy blinked at him, not sitting down. She hated him even more than I did-- enough to bypass the obvious questions and denials and get straight to the banishment from our table.

"You're her boyfriend, aren't you supposed to know?" I asked, biting down on my straw. As irritating as Kip could be sometimes-- especially around Justin-- she didn't deserve him being a shitty boyfriend. And Justin was always a shitty boyfriend.

Justin rolled his eyes. "She's skipping all my calls. We got into another fight."

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious," I mumbled.

Justin opened his mouth the say something else, but thought better of it-- turning on his heel, he was gone in a second. Lexy sighed and sat down.

"Did he seriously just come up to you and randomly ask where Kip was?" Lexy raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged.

"Yeah. Must've been a bad fight." Justin and Kip fought all the time, but Justin never talked to any of us, making him, though debatably, worse than Adam. He must have really fucked up to try and find her through us.

Before Lexy could say anything, her phone went off. Flipping it open, she mouthed at me, "Tawny", and answered brightly, "Hey, Tawny. Where are you? ... yeah... really?... yeah, we just saw him, he's being stupid... yeah, he was talking to us.... no, well, he was talking to Tiggy at first... tell her that it'll be alright... oh, okay, see you in a little bit... 'kay... bye."

Lexy hung up and dropped her head on the table. "Tawny and Kip are on their way here," she mumbled into the table. I laughed, though painfully. If Kip was out of her house and ready to spend the afternoon at the mall, she must have made up with Justin-- and now we were all supposed to just forget the fact that she was an atrociously huge bitch about seven hours ago.

Right on time, Kip came prancing up to the table as happily as could be, and Tawny-- much, much more subdued-- slunk into a seat next to me... and as far away from Kip as possible.

Kip didn't seem to mind, however-- and she wasted no time whatsoever in telling us the reason why she was happy. "Guess who's single?"

Unlike with Ms. March, no one even bothered faking smiles.

"Congrats, Kip," I said flatly. This wasn't going to last. It never did. Lexy didn't even bother saying anything; when Kip crashed and decided to go back to Justin, Lexy would be the person she called for advice, after all.

And, for the record: it really isn't that we hate Kip. It really isn't that we hate Kip. It's that she's overdramatic and, when it comes to Justin, usually incredibly out of control. When she gets like this, the best way to deal with it is to simply not deal with it. When she crashes, that's when I'm most useful. When she's manic? No one's useful.

"So," Tawny said abruptly, probably to cut Kip off before she could go into how much of an asshole Justin was, "Who did everyone get for March's project?"

Lexy groaned out loud, but caught herself half way through. Throwing me a side glance, she mumbled, "I, err, forgot to check."

Tawny was staring her down. There was no way in hell that was believable. "You got Adam," Tawny said blandly. "I checked."

"Jeremy," I said fast, to put an end to any impending comments-- from Lexy or Tawny. With whatever was going on with Adam and her going on, Tawny was probably not in the mood to defend him, but she'd still end up doing it; that's just how much of a good girlfriend Tawny was. And no one was in the mood to deal with that. Exempting maybe Kip.

"What project?" Kip asked, head tilted to look at the three of us. "I wasn't at school today, remember?"

Tawny nodded, apparently deciding to just let the Adam thing go. "We're getting group assignments for March's class, and it's pairs throughout all her classes. Kind of weird, but I think it's supposed to make us converse outside of class, and make sure we work individually, too. Turn mandatory-partner projects on their head, almost."

And that was Tawny: falling apart and still totally on top of things.

"Do you know who I got?" Kip asked, excited.

Tawny started chewing on her lip, probably trying to remember. "Because you were absent, I think... you got... Tandem, I'm pretty sure. He was absent today, too."

Kip smiled brightly and nudged my arm. "Awesome! I'll take good of him, Tiger!"

I laughed and shrugged. "I'm sure he can hold him own."

"I'm sure he can, too," Lexy mumbled under her breath. "Well... I think we should start heading home, shouldn't we? Kip, aren't you supposed to be sick?"

Kip groaned. "I don't wanna go home, but you're right, we should probably start heading back."

"Thank God," Tawny mumbled, soft enough that no one but me heard. I looked at her, eye brow raised, but she was already standing up, already walking away.

Sighing, I stood and shoved my hands in my pockets. What the hell was wrong with the world?