Teamwork

"Let's not be such responsible adults for once!"

"Miss Cardini?"

Julia's head snaps up from the page of the book in her hands to see the boy standing on the other side of the massive wooden desk, looking nervous as he holds out the quiz for her to take. "All done?"

The boy sighs. "I guess so."

"Well, here," she says, taking the paper from him and grabbing the green pen from the drawer on her left. "I'll go ahead and grade it for you now so you don't stress about it all weekend."

While she begins reading the short paragraph he'd written for the essay, he goes to the back of the room to retrieve his backpack, shoving his heavy American Literature book back into it before he throws it onto one shoulder and shuffles back up to the front of the room. She scans over the multiple choice answers before making her marks and writing his grade in the top right corner.

"How bad is it?" he asks hesitantly, making a pained face.

"You worry too much, Lucas," she chuckles, handing the paper back over to him and replacing the cap on her pen. "I had to take off a couple of points because you didn't thoroughly develop all the ideas you started with at the beginning the essay, but everything else was perfect, so you still got an A."

"I did?"

Lucas had been one of her favorite students since she first started teaching at the beginning of the school year because he listened intently, offered insightful opinions in class discussions, and never disrupted class like most of the other male students did. The flip side of that though was that he was always so disciplined that he stressed himself to death over even minor quizzes.

"Yes, just like always. I don't know why you worry yourself so much over these little things. All of these quizzes put together only make up twenty percent of your grade, and the lowest two quiz grades are dropped. You've gotten nearly perfect grades so far, so you can relax a little. You'll be fine."

"I can't afford to relax, Miss Cardini! I'm in ninth grade now. Everything I do from this point on matters. If I want to get into Harvard like every other man in my family, I've got to keep doing what I'm doing. I'll relax when I have my law degree." He reaches around to unzip his backpack so that he can shove the quiz inside it before looking back at her. "Now, is there any extra reading I should do before class on Monday?"

"Not besides the pages I already assigned the class."

"But is there any extra that I should do?"

"You want me to give you extra homework, Lucas? Okay, fine. Here it is: I want you to go home and forget about school, at least for part of the weekend. Leave your books alone, don't even take them out of your bag."

"But-"

"Procrastinate until Sunday like everyone else is going to do, for once. This is only October of your freshman year. You can't keep going like this for the next four years; you'll burn out. So your homework is to do something fun over the weekend and wait until Sunday to read the chapter."

"How are you going to know if I actually do that though?" he asks, like he's already planning on not doing what she said.

"Bring me proof," she shrugs. "A picture, a ticket stub, anything-- you can even write an essay about it if that'll make it feel more like homework, but you go do something fun or I'll give you a zero on your next quiz."

"No, please, you can't do that!"

"Then I guess you'll just have to complete that assignment this weekend, won't you?"

He rolls his eyes but lets out a heavy sigh. "Yeah, okay. I guess I could find something fun to do."

"Something fun that doesn't include anything educational. Just take a day or two and turn your brain off. Trust me, mental health days are important and you're going to have to learn how to take them every once in awhile, especially if you're planning on going to Harvard Law."

"Yeah," he nods. "You're right, I guess."

"Well, you've gotten your A and your homework for the weekend. So go on, get out of here. The last bell rang ten minutes ago."

She waits for him to shuffle out of the room before she rises from her comfy burgundy desk chair, smoothing out her dress before leaning down to grab her bag from the bottom drawer of her desk. There's a soft knock on the frame outside her classroom door as she's sliding the ungraded quizzes into her bag and when she looks up, she's met with the school's headmistress. Mrs. Buckley is a a petite but severe woman of sixty with a crisp black skirt suit and gray hair pulled back into a sleek, tight bun. She looks at Julia over the top of her wire rimmed glasses and gives up a small smile.

"That was a nice thing you just did for that boy."

"He's just so hard on himself," Julia says, sliding her the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. "He shouldn't miss out on being a teenager because he's so worried about the future."

"His father was just like him when he was here thirty years ago." Mrs. Buckley shakes her head and takes a step further into the room as Julia walked over to meet her at the door. "I just wanted to stop by and let you know that we had another parent volunteer last minute for the girls' field trip this weekend so you're freed from chaperone duty."

"Oh, okay, great!" Not that she doesn't love her students, but she wasn't particularly looking forward to getting up at 3:30 tomorrow morning to spend a four hour bus ride followed by a full twenty-four hour exploration of some of New York City's most educational attractions with a group of fourteen year old girls. Now, thanks to some student's poor mother volunteering last minute, she's getting her weekend back to relax, maybe grade some papers.

"The girls'll be disappointed, no doubt."

"They'll forget all about me once they get there," Julia laughs.

The older woman checks the chunky gold watch on her wrist before clearing her throat. "Well, I've got to go. Meeting with Brody Banford's parents. Again."

"Yikes," she mutters under her breath at the mention of the well known sophomore trouble maker with the extremely inattentive, borderline neglectful, parents. "Good luck with that."

"I need it," Mrs. Buckley sighs in return. "Enjoy your weekend, Miss Cardini."

"You too."

Once she and the headmistress part ways, Julia heads down the long hallway and past the front offices to the huge wooden main doors of the school. Being the newest teacher on campus, she doesn't have a very good parking spot so she has to walk all the way across the faculty lot to get to the little blue Mini Cooper her father bought her when she graduated from high school. The school isn't a long distance away from her apartment, but with the city traffic, it takes about twenty minutes to get home, and she's expecting her roommate Melissa to already be home from her work day as an assistant to the assistant of a U.S. Senator by then.

Surprisingly, she's the first one back so while she waits for her roommate to decide on what to eat for supper, she meanders her way into the bathroom to take a nice hot bubble bath. Her feet are killing her from wearing the painful but pretty nude heels all day and the last LUSH bath bomb in the set her mother had given her for her birthday is just begging to be used. She nearly falls asleep in the soothing warm water but the front door slamming shut jars her awake and she climbs out of the tub to go and greet her roommate.

Slipping the hot pink towel around her body, she swings the bathroom door open just in time to watch Melissa storm past her down the hall and into her bedroom, slamming that door shut too. Julia decides she must've had a difficult day at work so she leaves her alone and goes into the kitchen to pop a frozen pizza into the oven before making her way back to her bedroom to pull on some clean underwear and a oversize thermal that her ex boyfriend had left at the apartment before they broke up. She watches an old rerun of The Office while her food is cooking and after she eats, she puts in one of her favorite old 80s movies before stretching out on the sofa. Her eyes begin to feel heavy around 8:30 and even though it's a Friday night and it's still early, she gives into it, slipping easily into a dreamless sleep.

-

Julia Cardini thought she had it all figured out.

She has her shit together for the most part-- a cute apartment in the city, a stable job as a teacher, a sensible roommate to keep her in check, and a mother who was also a best friend. She lives simply. Monday through Friday from 7:45 until 4:00 she's on campus at Oakhurst Academy and Sundays are spent with her very small family at her grandmother's house in Bethesda. Any other time, she can be found either at the pilates studio three blocks from her apartment or at home with her roommate, doing laundry or cooking or watching netflix. In other words, her life is boring and predictable.

Despite having big plans to do something different and exciting and new with her now free Saturday, she ends up sleeping in and, once she and her roommate have cooked and eaten breakfast, it's almost noon. Melissa is in a much better mood after a good night's sleep, and the two girls spend the entire afternoon together just watching television and being disgustingly lazy. It's not until around 5:30 when Julia starts to get hungry again that she actually realizes she's wasted nearly all of her Saturday and she decides she has to do something with what's left of it.

"Hey Mel, we should go out tonight."

Melissa groans at the mere suggestion of actually getting off of the sofa and making herself presentable to go out in public somewhere. "Ah, Jules, do we have to? Doing nothing today has been so nice."

"That's the point. We haven't done anything today. And I'm starving and we don't have anything to cook because neither of us has been to the grocery store."

"We could call for take out," Melissa suggests.

"Come on, Mel, please? We never do anything fun!"

The older girl rolls her eyes at her roommate's exaggeration. "Yes, we do. We just went to that party last weekend, remember?"

"Uh, okay, first of all, that doesn't count as a party," Julia scoffs in return. "It was 90% old people and they didn't even have any alcohol except for that nasty ass wine!"

"That was a vintage bottle of Burgundy. It was worth thousands."

"Well then no wonder we only got one tiny little glass each. It was disgusting, by the way. I poured mine out in the plant by the door."

Melissa's eyes widen and her mouth drops open. "What the hell, Julia?! You can't pour 1958 Burgundy into a plant at a party like that! And that wasn't just any old plant, that was Senator Chandler's plant! You just dumped out his expensive vintage wine into his expensive foreign plant at his expensive fucking mansion!"

"It's not like he's ever gonna find out," Julia shrugs, already bored again just from remembering the fundraising party that the senator had hosted at his massive home on the outskirts of the city. "Come on, I just wanna get drunk."

"You can get drunk at home where you won't make bad decisions with strangers that you'll regret tomorrow," Melissa reasons, rolling her eyes.

"Mel, c'mon, let's not be such responsible adults for once!"

"I have to go to Philly tomorrow morning, Jules. I don't wanna be out til all hours of the night."

"I promise we won't stay out late! Just a drink or two!"

Melissa sighs in defeat. "God, you're not gonna quit, are you?"

"Nope," Julia grins, proud that her nagging is apparently effective.

"Ugh, fine!"

Julia cheers as her roommate begrudgingly rolls off the sofa to go take a shower and once she's stretched her legs out and gotten comfortable, she decides to take a quick power nap in preparation while she waits.
♠ ♠ ♠
Julia's outfit for the chapter.

Sorry this is was kind of boring but it was necessary to set up the next one!

I love the two nerds that are Latts and Willy and I noticed that there's hardly any fic out there about either of them so I took it upon myself to create some. Just as a PSA, in case you didn't already know, this will not be a slash story.

Please let me know what you guys think so far and spread the word!! Thank you <3

P.S. If you want to see photos of any of the characters that are or will be mentioned in this story, or if you want to see photos of Julia's apartment or even her car, you can find all of that here on my tumblr. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page :)