"Seasons" - Chapter 3
Woo! Third chapter's finally up. Enjoy, and more to come, although I might take a bit longer, since I'm still writing the 4th. Enjoy!
3
After geometry came the only class that Casey actually looked forward to in the day: study hall. This was mainly because unless you had homework to do or a test or a quiz to study for, you pretty much just sat there and talked. Casey entered the classroom with the other students, and heard a familiar voice call "Hey Case! Come sit with us!" Casey looked around the room for the source of the voice until he noticed none other than Shannon waving at him from the seats at back of the room. He got up from his desk and walked over to him, smiling and saying, "C'mon Casey, come and sit down with us!" Casey obliged and walked with Shannon, whose tail was wagging a bit, to a small cluster of desks pushed together. At this desk cluster sat Cyrus from geometry, a lynx in a Skinny Puppy shirt, a rather large bear who almost didn't fit in the desk, the striped hyena that Shannon was talking to on the bus that morning, and of course Shannon himself. Casey pulled a desk up to the cluster and sat down, dropping his bag on the floor next to him. "Hey guys, this is my friend Casey! Y'all mind if he sits with us?" The rest of the group responded with nods and words of approval. "Case, let me introduce you to my friends." Shannon pointed to the lynx. "That's Dasha, she can be kind of a bitch sometimes, so just tread carefully," he joked. The lynx playfully punched Shannon in the arm, smiling. "Nice to meetcha, Casey!" The bear was named Seth, who waved at Casey shyly, and the hyena in the Black Flag hoodie was Damien. "Casey, you've met Cyrus, or so I've heard?," Shannon inquired. Casey's ears perked up in mild surprise.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"Cyrus said that he knew you when you walked in."
Shannon then turned to the group and asked, "So.. what're your guys plans for the half-day tomorrow?" Now this was news to Casey. "Really? We have a half day tomorrow?" He was stunned. How couldn't he have heard of this wondrous event yet, why had nobody told him? Dasha, with her hands placed firmly behind her head, replied "Yup. Feels good, don't it?" And it did feel good. Anything to make the day shorter.
Just as soon as the group started talking about their plans for the weekend(Shannon and Damien planned to check out the record store in town, Cyrus planned to dye his hair a new color, Seth just flushed red and didn't say what he planned to do, and Dasha said that she "plans not to do shit."), the bell for the lunch period rang. Almost the entire class stood and/or jumped up in unison, aching to get out of their classrooms for a time. Casey got up and followed Shannon into the cafeteria and sat down across from him, the others soon joining them with their trays of food. Shannon looked at Casey, and said "Guess we should go get something to eat, huh?" The two got up and went through the line, got their food and sat back down. As Shannon started a conversation with Cyrus, Casey was able to catch himself staring at Shannon. "I've never really looked at him this closely," Casey thought. He couldn't help but stare at Shannon's eyes, which were his most noticeable feature. Casey soon was able to snap himself out of it, quickly staring down at his folded hands. What was the matter with him, staring at people like that, and at a boy no less! Casey had been doing that a lot lately, such as when he caught himself staring at a particularly cute otter in the boy's locker room during gym yesterday. He had to quickly change the subject over to something else, and fast. "So S-Shannon," Casey stammered. "What do you plan to get at the record store?" Shannon's focus immediately snapped towards him. "Well, I really don't know what I'm gonna get yet, but I'm sure I'll find out when I get there!" Casey breathed an internal sigh of relief, thinking Another bullet dodged. He went on to wonder what would've happened if Shannon had caught him staring. Would he have humiliated me in front of everyone?
No, that's not something Shannon would do.
Then again, you've never seen him angry, have you?
As Casey argued with himself back and forth in his head, the bell that signaled the end of lunch rang. The sudden noisy combination of the loud chatter of his classmates and the shrill, tinny din of the school bell startled him a bit, making him yowl before looking around red-faced to see if anybody heard.
He got up, grabbed his backpack, and walked to his last class for the day.