That's Just The Price I Pay

Once class ended, I quickly stuffed the papers into my binder, and my binder into my book bag. I couldn't wait to leave this class and head over to my study hall, where I would end up leaving to go do something music related. That is, unless I decided to do some work that was due eventually to lighten my workload when I got home, but I really didn't feel up for more work. But it wasn't like I was wasting my time away, I would be doing something productive either way.

I said bye to Alex as he went in the opposite direction to his next class, which I'm pretty sure was English. I headed to my designated room for study hall, and groaned inwardly as I thought of the idea of sitting there, alone and bored, for a good 40 minutes. But then again, I figured I'd just try to find a way to get out of study hall once again to go. Working on schoolwork now seemed like a task I was dreading, so I was hoping I could somehow get out of it all.

"I can go to the music rooms, right?" I walked up to the study hall teacher. She looked up from an essay she was grading.

"Normally you could Zack, but we're on lockdown today. You have to stay here."

"What?"

"I'm sorry. You're not allowed in the halls during class today. A fight broke out last period, and so that's how it has to be."

I sighed, "It's fine, thank you." I walked back to my seat, and rested my chin in my hand. Of course today would be the day I'm stuck in the study hall I don't have with anybody. It couldn't be that bad though, it's only a little over a half hour. Then I would be off to class with Jack and Lily.

To be honest, that was part of the reason I couldn't focus on any actual work when I was stuck in study hall. Nothing could distract me from music, but my mind would often wander from schoolwork. I thought about seeing Lily the next period, and then felt a bit embarrassed. She was supposed to just be my friend, but I couldn't help but have stronger feelings for her. When we were all hanging out together, she was a great, fun friend, and went right along with anything going on. I was just happy becoming her friend had been easier than I thought it would have been at first.

But then my phone buzzed in my pocket, pulling me out of my thoughts. I checked it, hiding it underneath the desk, and saw it was Jack.

Hey, you did the history hw right?

I shook my head at the text, but Jack was Jack. He did what he wanted, and that sometimes meant neglecting his homework. But I had his back, I never minded helping him out.

Yeah, you need it?

Can you meet me out in the hall by the bathrooms?

Sure.

I got up to go ask the teacher, and shoved my phone back into my pocket. As I walked from the back of the class to the front, I noticed that about a good half of the kids were either texting, sleeping, or doodling, while the other half was actually doing work.

"I can go to the bathroom right?" I asked as I approached the desk once again. My teacher, Ms. Meyers, glanced up at me, then looked back down at what she was grading again.

"Sure. Just go, don't worry about a pass right now. Make sure you don't get caught though, I don't need to get reprimanded for this." She scoffed, shaking her head and marking a red "X" next to somebody's answer.

I said "thank you" and walked out of the room. I had brought the assignment up with me, but kept it in my hand below the surface of the desk where she couldn't see. After all, it would have looked a bit odd if I had went back to my seat to get out a sheet of paper, and then head to the bathroom with it. As cool as I knew Ms. Meyers was, I figured she wouldn't really approve of me heading out into the halls to meet a friend for homework. But this little "bathroom break" would also give me a chance to leave the class, even though study hall just started about ten minutes ago.

I stood around outside the bathroom, looking around for a sign of Jack. But instead of coming from the front or the sides of me, he came from behind, out of the bathroom.

"Sorry, I asked to meet here for a reason. You can only hold so much in your bladder." Jack stated matter-of-factly.

I laughed, "Don't we all know it. But here's the homework, it's not so bad. Hand it in for me next class, don't bother giving it back."

"Thanks. Do I really have to go back to class though? It's so damn boring. I've resorted to looking through suggestive pictures on my phone to keep me awake."

"Yeah, because if I have to suffer through classes you do too." I ignored his last statement, and just chuckled. He shook his head and began to walk back to class. I shook my own, and began to walk back to study hall.

"Do either of you understand what we have to do at all?" Lily asked in frustration as she looked from Jack to me. She was holding up a sheet of paper with our obligations on it, and seemed to have trouble understanding whatever was written.

"Let me see it." She held out the paper for me to take, and I quickly read it over.

"It wants us to do a presentation, or something. Trying to advertise the benefits and stuff about things like alcohol, drugs, anything harmful really. What didn't you get?"

She rolled her dark brown eyes, "The fact that they want us to promote things we're supposed to be against. It's health class, why would they want us to tell everyone the benefits of, I don't know, things like herpes!"

"Herpes isn't a joke, that shit stays on your dick for life!" Jack said, taking the paper for him to now read.

Lily laughed, finally breaking through her frustration, "Jack, I seriously love you to death." He took her in a tight hug.

"You should love me! I can't think of why you wouldn't."

I laughed quietly to myself about it. I seriously loved my friends to death. But as much as I loved them, we had split off into groups for health class about 20 minutes ago, and we had a little under 20 minutes left to figure out where we were going with this project. Our teacher had said we could choose our own groups, and he didn't care about number as long as it didn't go past 5 people. He'd end up moving us all around if he saw we weren't working well, and I was a bit worried. Between Jack's jokes, and Lily's over-thinking, I wasn't sure if we'd ever get anywhere, and I sure as hell didn't want to be moved into another group.

I took the paper back from Jack, "Alright, well I guess it's just a sarcastic assignment or something. If we were a tobacco company, we could tell them all about the 'benefits' of smoking. We'd be trying to convince them to buy our product while telling them all the negatives, I guess. Does it make sense to you yet?"

"Makes sense to me." Jack said shrugging. I looked back to Lily, and could tell that she was really trying to make sense of it. When she finally looked up into my eyes, I looked back down to the paper.

"I guess so. I still don't really like it, but I mean we have to do it. Do you have any idea for what we can do it on? What harmful thing are we going to be promoting?" Part of her mouth curved up in a slight evil smile.

I tapped the circular table in thought, while Jack sat and looked around. Lily seemed to be doodling things, and some of her hair fell out into her face, but she ignored it and continued to ink her paper.

"How about pot or something?" I spoke up.

"Everyone does that." Jack said. Lily nodded in agreement.

"Alcohol and partying?" She said scrunching her face up.

"Once again, everybody does that."

We sat there for a few more seconds until Jack contributed an idea, "Let's just do something like 'take steroids, it makes only certain parts of you bigger', or 'huffing paint's fun, affordable, and sort of legal', because I can't really think of anything that's not a typical situation."

Lily shrugged, "That's not so bad. I don't think anyone's ever really thought of steroids before. But then again I like the huffing idea, even though I don't think anyone's done that in ages. Well, maybe they have."

I nodded, "To be honest, I'm good with either of them. Maybe we should stick to drugs that get you high, because I wouldn't be that surprised if there were certain people in our class who rely on steroids. And if they do, I think they'd want to wring our necks. And they probably could."

"Alright then. But, I'm just saying I'd be off the hook because I'm a girl. Zack, you're pretty fit I guess, I don't think they'd get you too bad. It's just Jack we'd have to worry about." She over-exaggerated her frown.

"Then again if they're on steroids they could probably do quite a bit of damage." I responded. She shrugged and opened her notebook to a new piece of paper.

"Okay..." she said writing our names across the top, and what we decided on, "So what are we doing, an informative poster? And this is due...2 classes from now?" We nodded. Now we were getting somewhere.

"If you guys want I'm sure my mom won't mind if you come over to work on this. Maybe she'll cook something special if you stay for dinner. So you should stay. She hasn't made dessert in a while too, I'm pretty sure she'd make something good."

"Sounds like a plan." Lily smiled widely, looking from Jack, to me, then back at her paper.

After our teacher came around to check to make sure we had a general idea of what we were going to do, we spent the rest of class talking. I listened to Jack and Lily talk about plans for the weekend, for the most part. There wasn't much going on, I knew that much. He had no idea what he was doing yet, and figure he'd take it as it comes, while she had plans with her family and her boyfriend for Saturday and Sunday. Even tonight, she had something special planned for her and her boyfriend. It wasn't so surprising though-it was a Friday night. It was impossible to ever hang out with her; she was always busy doing something else. Weekends were devoted to her boyfriend, or track. My own plans were nonexistent. I figured I'd be either sitting at home, or hanging out with Jack if he had nothing to do too. Maybe Alex and Rian would come hang out too, I don't doubt they would if they had no previous plans. I just started to get excited about the end of the day, because then it would be the weekend. I could use a little break and some nice weather this weekend.