Neo Chronicles
Episode 16: This is Stupid
Table of Contents
Today's really turned out to be a horrible day. Just got assigned some chemistry report I gotta do that's due in about a week, got to read some boring story about I don't even know what, chances are, I won't have any time to play that new Assassin game that came out, and to top it all off, this punk Noah is still feeding me his bullcrap.
“Look Kai,” he says. Still calling me Kai even though he knows that's not my name. If he's not gonna use my first name, he could at least use my other three. Jamal, Quinton, Hezekiah, Michaels, it don't matter. But Kai isn't it. Don't give me a nick name.
“I promise you, I'll fix this,” he says. “You and Octavia will be set up as soon as I see her.”
“Get to class,” I tell him. It takes everything in me not to slam his head into the nearby lockers. My hands by my side all clenched up ready to deck him, but I gotta stay cool.
Still can't believe he did that to me though. Thought there was some unwritten rule about people not moving in on other people's girls, especially when you got a girl already. Hate that loser.
He says something stupid and corny as he scurries off like the rat he is, and I'm left with nothing better to do but head to Algebra.
Yay me.
Ms. Donald is probably the most boring teacher I've ever had in my life. To top it all off, she's horrible at the whole teaching part, too. If this wasn't so easy to begin with, I'd have no idea about anything she was tryna say. But it's all straight forward. Find the X, tell what it is. Graph it. Anyone with half a brain could get it, and the people that don't—well, with a better teacher they'd get it.
She stops lecturing about the thing not even half way through and pretty much says “use the rest of the class as a study hall.” To most of the people in here, that either means pull out their handheld games and go ham, get in their own groups and talk about whatever nonsense they usually talk about in their free time, or just sit off and daydream. I guarantee you studying is the last thing on their minds.
I can't blame 'em though. There's really not much work to be done. Sure, we could work on the homework she assigned, but she doesn't really grade it, so there's no point. And with the junk being so easy, there's no sense in pretending to study over it.
But forty minutes is a long time to just sit here being bored.
I'm still buggin' out about that guy. Stupid Noah. Stupid, stupid Noah.
See, I had a plan. This whole high school thing, I had it planned out to the T. I did my homework on the subject. The school part would be just like how it was in middle school. Show up to class. No need to do that skipping thing, because that's for losers. The social aspect of it all would be pretty confined to just the school thing until I get old enough to get my license and car, but until then, I'd break away from the losers I knew growing up, form my own click, get a girl to rock with who was cool, and fly through this thing like a boss.
But for some reason, the old losers you hung out with don't wanna get dropped, so you have folks like Noah gettin' in the way with everything. So now I'm without a girl, without a crew, and stuck with the lames.
Speaking of lame, this pink haired white girl who hangs out with that stupid kid decides it'd be cool to walk up and take the empty desk next to me.
“Hey, remember me?” she asks.
“Yeah, I do.” I try to be nice. I really got no beef with her, so there's no malice here. If she goes on about that stupid Jabari mess though, I'm done.
“I thought I had a class with you. My name's Lynn. You're Jamal, right?”
“That's me.”
“Well, alright. Let's knock out this homework real quick.”
“You need help with it?”
“Oh no, I just thought it'd be good to get it outta the way as soon as possible, y'know? Free up some time for these other classes.”
“Oh, you mean being a good student. Alright, I can get down with that.”
So we spend about the next ten to fifteen minutes running through this easy stuff like nothing. I'm practically doin' it in my sleep. The answers are straight forward. Like terms, distributive property, FOIL, order of operation, blah blah blah. Then about—what—a third of the way through, it gets stupid.
What is this? Find the measure of the angle? Ms. Donald didn't go over this crap, did she? It's under the extra credit section, so I'm about ready to just pack it up and call it a day, but I see Lynn still at it, so I get to thinkin—might as well learn somethin' new.
I ask her about it, and apparently she has a handle on it. She says this is more or less algebra introducing us to some trigo—somethin' somethin'. We're still using algebra to find the angle, but since its an angle we're finding, we gotta use stuff like sine, cosine, and tangent. As soon as she says those words, it all clicks in my brain.
I remember something a while back in class talking about it. SOHCAHTOA—I think—Yeah, that's it. Ms. Donald barely touched on that, but she did mention it. Opposite, hypotenuse, adjacent, yeah I remember that. Okay, now it makes sense.
Doesn't take me more than ten minutes to finish the rest of the problems. If I had a calculator, it'da been five, but for some reason, this school thinks calculators are bad for math classes. Stupid rule for a stupid reason. I'll never understand.
With that out of the way, I expect Lynn to head back to her corner of the class and leave me to think about how stupid Noah is, but that doesn't work out. She stays around, decides it'd be cool to have some small talk to pass the time. Still got a little under thirty minutes in class, so I might as well go with it.
I can tell she's not really into the whole social interaction thing, because there are a lot of awkward pauses. She'll ask a basic, super open ended question like, “Did you see that game the other night?”
“What game?”
“Um, I don't know.”
And then just stop. It's stupid. It's really stupid and awkward, and I kinda feel bad for her doing it.
But hey, she's making an effort, and I can't just leave her hanging like that. She was cool enough to help me, I'll be cool enough to be—well—me, because I am cool.
“So what kind of music do you like?” I ask. That's a good question. Everyone listens to something. She's bound to have an answer for that.
“Not much of anything, really.”
Or not. “Nothing at all? You don't have a player? Don't listen to the airwaves? How about something from TV?”
“TV? Ha, that's funny.”
“Don't have one? I remember what that was like. It wasn't because we were poor or anything, but for the longest, my dad didn't bother having anything in the house. Said something about it turning people lazy. My mom finally convinced him otherwise though, so it's all good.”
See, this small talk thing isn't so bad. She's engaged. I'm engaged. That awkward, shy and dopey look she just had went away. This is good. That is until it gets bad.
“Alright, Jamal—it's been on my mind for the longest. Last week, we actually fought demons. How in the world are you dealing with that? Everyone seems to be back to normal like it wasn't anything weird, but it was. That was not normal. I just—I don't know—”
“Let me stop you right there.” I knew she was gonna go on about that sooner or later. “I'm gettin' by by not thinking about it. That whole mess didn't happen. Me and Noah were fighting. Your friend jumped in for no reason, it got blown up. The police came. They let us off with a warning. That's it. There was no spiritual possession, no portals, no demons, no nonsense.”
“How can you say that? Just outright reject it? We almost died. You don't forget something like that.”
“I'm half way convinced that the cops slipped us something that made us hallucinate the whole thing so they could charge us for drug possession.”
“You know that's bull.”
“Yeah I know, but it makes just as much sense as what really happened, but what can you do? I'm not tellin' my folks about it, cuz they'll think I'm crazy or on drugs. Jabari wised up and figured out that the whole situation wasn't for us and let us on our way, so it's not like we'll ever get caught up in it again.”
“Knowing what we know about it though—what if Jabari screws up? He was talking like he was the only one who could stop the world from ending. If he doesn't, and the world ends—what then?”
“Then the world ends. Not much to it than that. We'll probably be dead, so we won't notice much of anything.”
“That doesn't scare you? It scares the sh** out of me, and Chris was goin' on about how Darius has been missing for the longest and thinks that it may be because of those demons.”
“How does that make any sense? They're just gonna pick one kid outta the whole world and hold him captive? You're smart enough to know that ain't true.”
“We don't know that. We can't know that. Not unless we actually find out ourselves. What if Darius isn't the only one? Not everyone showed up for class today. They could've been affected too. It falls on us to set this right, because we're the only ones who've been exposed to it.”
“Hold up right there. No. No. No. And uh—no. Ain't nothin' fallen on us to do nothin'. I'm done with that junk. It's behind me. It's behind you. Jabari's gone. We're through.”
And with that, she shuts up for a moment. I'm hoping that it got through to her, but something tells me that it didn't. Can't believe she's actually considering this. Hanging out with Jabari was not fun in the slightest. We had no ties to him whatsoever. Barely teenagers, and we were supposed to help save the world. No sense at all.
Still, the girl tries to convince me. She sees the guilt/responsibility thing ain't workin', so she tries to somehow make it out to be like an adventure. Goin' on like how it'd be a nice way to relieve stress. Go out on an adventure. Get away from the world.
“Are you crazy?” She has to be. Only a crazy person would talk like that. And only a crazy person would keep talking like that.
I keep telling her no over and over, but she's just not getting it. It's not sinking in, which kinda scares me. It scares me because I think the only way to get her to shut up about it is to buckle down and say yes. Even if I don't mean it, that's the only answer she's looking to hear.
So I do.
Episode 16: This is Stupid
Table of Contents
Today's really turned out to be a horrible day. Just got assigned some chemistry report I gotta do that's due in about a week, got to read some boring story about I don't even know what, chances are, I won't have any time to play that new Assassin game that came out, and to top it all off, this punk Noah is still feeding me his bullcrap.
“Look Kai,” he says. Still calling me Kai even though he knows that's not my name. If he's not gonna use my first name, he could at least use my other three. Jamal, Quinton, Hezekiah, Michaels, it don't matter. But Kai isn't it. Don't give me a nick name.
“I promise you, I'll fix this,” he says. “You and Octavia will be set up as soon as I see her.”
“Get to class,” I tell him. It takes everything in me not to slam his head into the nearby lockers. My hands by my side all clenched up ready to deck him, but I gotta stay cool.
Still can't believe he did that to me though. Thought there was some unwritten rule about people not moving in on other people's girls, especially when you got a girl already. Hate that loser.
He says something stupid and corny as he scurries off like the rat he is, and I'm left with nothing better to do but head to Algebra.
Yay me.
Ms. Donald is probably the most boring teacher I've ever had in my life. To top it all off, she's horrible at the whole teaching part, too. If this wasn't so easy to begin with, I'd have no idea about anything she was tryna say. But it's all straight forward. Find the X, tell what it is. Graph it. Anyone with half a brain could get it, and the people that don't—well, with a better teacher they'd get it.
She stops lecturing about the thing not even half way through and pretty much says “use the rest of the class as a study hall.” To most of the people in here, that either means pull out their handheld games and go ham, get in their own groups and talk about whatever nonsense they usually talk about in their free time, or just sit off and daydream. I guarantee you studying is the last thing on their minds.
I can't blame 'em though. There's really not much work to be done. Sure, we could work on the homework she assigned, but she doesn't really grade it, so there's no point. And with the junk being so easy, there's no sense in pretending to study over it.
But forty minutes is a long time to just sit here being bored.
I'm still buggin' out about that guy. Stupid Noah. Stupid, stupid Noah.
See, I had a plan. This whole high school thing, I had it planned out to the T. I did my homework on the subject. The school part would be just like how it was in middle school. Show up to class. No need to do that skipping thing, because that's for losers. The social aspect of it all would be pretty confined to just the school thing until I get old enough to get my license and car, but until then, I'd break away from the losers I knew growing up, form my own click, get a girl to rock with who was cool, and fly through this thing like a boss.
But for some reason, the old losers you hung out with don't wanna get dropped, so you have folks like Noah gettin' in the way with everything. So now I'm without a girl, without a crew, and stuck with the lames.
Speaking of lame, this pink haired white girl who hangs out with that stupid kid decides it'd be cool to walk up and take the empty desk next to me.
“Hey, remember me?” she asks.
“Yeah, I do.” I try to be nice. I really got no beef with her, so there's no malice here. If she goes on about that stupid Jabari mess though, I'm done.
“I thought I had a class with you. My name's Lynn. You're Jamal, right?”
“That's me.”
“Well, alright. Let's knock out this homework real quick.”
“You need help with it?”
“Oh no, I just thought it'd be good to get it outta the way as soon as possible, y'know? Free up some time for these other classes.”
“Oh, you mean being a good student. Alright, I can get down with that.”
So we spend about the next ten to fifteen minutes running through this easy stuff like nothing. I'm practically doin' it in my sleep. The answers are straight forward. Like terms, distributive property, FOIL, order of operation, blah blah blah. Then about—what—a third of the way through, it gets stupid.
What is this? Find the measure of the angle? Ms. Donald didn't go over this crap, did she? It's under the extra credit section, so I'm about ready to just pack it up and call it a day, but I see Lynn still at it, so I get to thinkin—might as well learn somethin' new.
I ask her about it, and apparently she has a handle on it. She says this is more or less algebra introducing us to some trigo—somethin' somethin'. We're still using algebra to find the angle, but since its an angle we're finding, we gotta use stuff like sine, cosine, and tangent. As soon as she says those words, it all clicks in my brain.
I remember something a while back in class talking about it. SOHCAHTOA—I think—Yeah, that's it. Ms. Donald barely touched on that, but she did mention it. Opposite, hypotenuse, adjacent, yeah I remember that. Okay, now it makes sense.
Doesn't take me more than ten minutes to finish the rest of the problems. If I had a calculator, it'da been five, but for some reason, this school thinks calculators are bad for math classes. Stupid rule for a stupid reason. I'll never understand.
With that out of the way, I expect Lynn to head back to her corner of the class and leave me to think about how stupid Noah is, but that doesn't work out. She stays around, decides it'd be cool to have some small talk to pass the time. Still got a little under thirty minutes in class, so I might as well go with it.
I can tell she's not really into the whole social interaction thing, because there are a lot of awkward pauses. She'll ask a basic, super open ended question like, “Did you see that game the other night?”
“What game?”
“Um, I don't know.”
And then just stop. It's stupid. It's really stupid and awkward, and I kinda feel bad for her doing it.
But hey, she's making an effort, and I can't just leave her hanging like that. She was cool enough to help me, I'll be cool enough to be—well—me, because I am cool.
“So what kind of music do you like?” I ask. That's a good question. Everyone listens to something. She's bound to have an answer for that.
“Not much of anything, really.”
Or not. “Nothing at all? You don't have a player? Don't listen to the airwaves? How about something from TV?”
“TV? Ha, that's funny.”
“Don't have one? I remember what that was like. It wasn't because we were poor or anything, but for the longest, my dad didn't bother having anything in the house. Said something about it turning people lazy. My mom finally convinced him otherwise though, so it's all good.”
See, this small talk thing isn't so bad. She's engaged. I'm engaged. That awkward, shy and dopey look she just had went away. This is good. That is until it gets bad.
“Alright, Jamal—it's been on my mind for the longest. Last week, we actually fought demons. How in the world are you dealing with that? Everyone seems to be back to normal like it wasn't anything weird, but it was. That was not normal. I just—I don't know—”
“Let me stop you right there.” I knew she was gonna go on about that sooner or later. “I'm gettin' by by not thinking about it. That whole mess didn't happen. Me and Noah were fighting. Your friend jumped in for no reason, it got blown up. The police came. They let us off with a warning. That's it. There was no spiritual possession, no portals, no demons, no nonsense.”
“How can you say that? Just outright reject it? We almost died. You don't forget something like that.”
“I'm half way convinced that the cops slipped us something that made us hallucinate the whole thing so they could charge us for drug possession.”
“You know that's bull.”
“Yeah I know, but it makes just as much sense as what really happened, but what can you do? I'm not tellin' my folks about it, cuz they'll think I'm crazy or on drugs. Jabari wised up and figured out that the whole situation wasn't for us and let us on our way, so it's not like we'll ever get caught up in it again.”
“Knowing what we know about it though—what if Jabari screws up? He was talking like he was the only one who could stop the world from ending. If he doesn't, and the world ends—what then?”
“Then the world ends. Not much to it than that. We'll probably be dead, so we won't notice much of anything.”
“That doesn't scare you? It scares the sh** out of me, and Chris was goin' on about how Darius has been missing for the longest and thinks that it may be because of those demons.”
“How does that make any sense? They're just gonna pick one kid outta the whole world and hold him captive? You're smart enough to know that ain't true.”
“We don't know that. We can't know that. Not unless we actually find out ourselves. What if Darius isn't the only one? Not everyone showed up for class today. They could've been affected too. It falls on us to set this right, because we're the only ones who've been exposed to it.”
“Hold up right there. No. No. No. And uh—no. Ain't nothin' fallen on us to do nothin'. I'm done with that junk. It's behind me. It's behind you. Jabari's gone. We're through.”
And with that, she shuts up for a moment. I'm hoping that it got through to her, but something tells me that it didn't. Can't believe she's actually considering this. Hanging out with Jabari was not fun in the slightest. We had no ties to him whatsoever. Barely teenagers, and we were supposed to help save the world. No sense at all.
Still, the girl tries to convince me. She sees the guilt/responsibility thing ain't workin', so she tries to somehow make it out to be like an adventure. Goin' on like how it'd be a nice way to relieve stress. Go out on an adventure. Get away from the world.
“Are you crazy?” She has to be. Only a crazy person would talk like that. And only a crazy person would keep talking like that.
I keep telling her no over and over, but she's just not getting it. It's not sinking in, which kinda scares me. It scares me because I think the only way to get her to shut up about it is to buckle down and say yes. Even if I don't mean it, that's the only answer she's looking to hear.
So I do.
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