Burn it Down

~Tyler's POV~

Megan was nice, cute, but not my type. I thought she'd be perfect for Luke though. He had texted me and said that they had all their classes together with the exception of 4th and 5th period. She had a doubleblock study hall, and we had our doubleblock shop class.

When Luke came in, his face was swollen and red around his eye. I wondered if he'd end up with a black eye. Probably not, but it was still painful you could tell.

"What the fuck happened to you?" I asked.

Luke looked at me and you could tell he was still fuming about it. "Some jocks slammed me into Megan and we crashed into the lockers. I hit my head on the corner."

God I hated those assholes. We never interfered with them, but they constantly wanted something out of it. I always made comments to Luke about how one day they'd get it.

"Yeah, they'll get it." He said. "But how embarrassing is it that the first day you meet a cute girl you get slammed into a locker. It's emasculating."

"Did she care?" I asked him.

"Not in a bad way. I think she was more concerned that I was going to live. She was like legitimately freaking out that I might end up having brain damage." He laughed and hung his stuff up on the coat rack and began getting his stuff and tools to continue this stupid bird house we were building.

"Then I wouldn't be worrying about her. She cooler than we even thought?" I asked, getting out my birdhouse and tools, ignoring the business of everyone else.

"She's pretty cool, man." Luke sounded distant, but he had begun working. We loved this class because we were the coolest people in it and no one fucked with us. I just couldn't tell what the tone in his voice was, and I had known him for years. "She's nice and pretty cute. Smart. For geometry she ended up having to help me. Not used to that." He looked at me and smiled then looked back to his birdhouse.

I hadn't seen him like this before but it was nice. I was taller so people tended to fuck with me less, but Luke, he was bulkier which all the jocks took as an invitation to fight. Luke had tried to fight back, don't get me wrong, but he just got it worse for trying. So it was nice to see that someone for once, no matter how little they knew each other, was on his side and making him happy.

We had so few friends at all, I was glad we could add another to our small group. Aside from me and Luke there were only a handful of us. Maybe in our group of friends we had 3 more? Perhaps Megan can get more of us too. We needed more people to occupy our time and thoughts and energy. We needed a diversion. Seriously, we did.

We started building little pipe bombs. We'd set them off after school while no one was home and we'd laugh and laugh. That was our distraction, and perhaps we could have used something far less destructive than that, although they were fun to make and detonate.

My hands worked busily on this birdhouse. Nailing the small nails into the roof to keep it attached then sealing it with glue. I didn't have to do both of these things but I did simply because I liked to make sure I didn't miss anything. I didn't want water rotting out the inside of my birdhouse. Perhaps I am a thorough person.

Luke and I continued working in silence for the most part except when Luke would ask if I was interested in doing anything after school. I wasn't sure I told him. I had been slacking off on my homework and my parents were riding my ass about it, so I had to do it. Two days, I said.

"Just give me two days, man." I told him. "Let me get my parents of my ass."

"Okay." Luke said, nearly carefree.

I expected more of a fight from him, but if I didn't get it, hey, that was a welcome change.