Original Stories Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ When Dreams Fade ❯ Secrets ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Author’s Note: Okay. Let’s see if I can update twice in one day, since I’m “on a roll,” as they say. The last chapter was pathetically short. -.-; Sorry.

Hana, Nikolas, and I walked back to our seats. I’m sure we were all thinking about Erik and what could possibly have happened. “His brother said that he wasn’t there?” I asked Hana, just to verify.

“He said that he went to school this morning. He said that I probably just missed him or something.” Hana shrugged. “He really didn’t seem to consider the option that Erik was ditching school or anything like that.”

“That’s kind of weird,” I said as Mr. Dran walked to the front of the classroom. He gestured for the class to stand up. Of course, our class was not made up of the brightest people, and most of them were talking, so only a handful actually stood up. Those of us who did stood patiently with Mr. Dran, waiting for the others to realize what was going on.

After three minutes, Mr. Dran cleared his throat. Half the class was still sitting. Only a few of them looked up now and stood quickly. The rest continued chattering away like squirrels. Mr. Dran rolled his eyes and walked back to his desk, where he took out about twenty detention slips.

“Ouch.” Hana winced. “Does he really want to be stuck with these idiots for thirty minutes after school?” She shook her head. “It’s a punishment for him, not them.”

Mr. Dran paused for a moment. Apparently he had thought of the same thing Hana had. “Anyone who does not stand up now will receive a detention,” he said finally. Half of the remaining kids stood. The other ten continued talking. Mr. Dran sighed. “Fine. Have it your way.” He began to write out detentions.

Hana rolled her eyes. “Stupid kids. They’re holding us back, you know. God, I hate stupid people.” She walked past me to three girls who were giggling in their seats in the soprano section. “Hey, do you guys want a detention?” she demanded.

“Fuck off,” one of the girls said, waving her hand. “I don’t care.”

Hana looked back at me and then back to the girls. “Do you want to be responsible for the failure of this choir at adjudication?” she asked. Adjudication, for those who do not know, is a judging that high school choirs go through. It’s not hard to get a good score, unless your choir is made up of idiots like this.

“I honestly could care less,” another girl said.

That’s my pet peeve, to be honest. People who say “I could care less.” It’s “I couldn’t care less.” If you could care less, that means you actually do care a bit. If you couldn’t care less, then you obviously don’t care at all. Why people get that confused, I’ll never know, but it will irk me until the day I die.

So, of course, that was where I stepped in. “You couldn’t care less, you mean,” I said. The girl looked confused.

“No,” she said finally. “I could care less.”

“Well, then, you care. So please, stand up so that the choir does not do poorly at adjudication.” I pulled Hana away. “Now, let’s let Mr. Dran do his job and punish the bad children, okay?”

“Fine.” Hana sighed and followed me back to our places. “Let’s stop by Erik’s after school,” she whispered suddenly.

“You know where he lives?” I asked. I’d never been to his house before.He never invited me over or anything. I had been to Hana’s and Nikolas’s houses, though.

“No…I thought you did.” Hana sighed. “Maybe Niko knows…”

The bell rang for lunch. Mr. Dran had never gotten enough people to stand and shut up to sing. In the back of my mind I realized that Hana and I were equally responsible for that–the talking, I mean. Still, we weren’t at risk for a detention.

We waited for Niko to catch up with us and head to lunch. Hana turned to him as we walked toward the cafeteria. “Niko, have you been to Erik’s house?”

Erik frowned. “No. I almost did, once...my dad was going to take him home when he stayed at my house once, but he made us drop him off at the edge of the road so he could walk home instead.”

“That’s weird,” I said. “What’s wrong with his house?” I wondered aloud.

“More like…” Hana stopped walking for a minute. Nikolas and I turned around.

“Huh?” Nikolas asked. “More like what?”

“Oh…” Hana shook her head and continued walking. “Nothing. I just had a weird thought. Let’s go to lunch.”

Nikolas and I followed her, but not before giving each other a troubled glance. “What’s going on?” I whispered to him. He shook his head.

“No idea. This is Hana we’re talking about. She’s weird.” We entered the cafeteria and Hana threw her lunch on our table.

“I’ll be back.” She ran into the bathroom carrying her purse. I looked at Nikolas, who took a seat across from me.

“She’s calling Erik,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

“She has a cell phone?” he asked.

“Yeah, she got it from her stepmom last month.” I sighed. “Are you sure you have no idea where Erik is, if he isn’t here and he’s not home?”

“No…maybe we should get him a cell phone,” Nikolas suggested. “Although, knowing him, he’d probably forget about it and never answer it anyway.” He started to take out his lunch. “You could go in the bathroom and see if she’s really calling him, you know.”

“Yeah. But she’s apparently doing this for a reason, right? I mean, hiding whatever she’s doing. Or maybe she had to go to the bathroom.”

Nikolas shrugged. “I guess she’ll tell us when she gets back.” He took a bite out of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “You know, Erik’s brother might just not have know that he stayed home.”

“Yeah, you could be right,” I admitted. I took out a bag of Doritos and began eating them. “Hey, my birthday is in two weeks. Think you’d want to come to my party?” I asked.

“Are you serious? Of course I’ll go.” Nikolas smiled. “Will your sister be there?”

“Yeah.” I rolled my eyes. “You realize that you don’t stand a chance with her, right? Since she’s married?” Ever since Nikolas had met my sister in tenth grade, he had been sort of lusting after. Really, it was creepy and slightly disgusting. My sister was twenty-four, seven years older than I was at the time.

“Yeah, I know. Still.” Nikolas laughed and finished his sandwich. He looked toward the bathroom. “She’s still in there,” he said.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I ate a few more Doritos and closed the bag. “So…I think it’s obvious she’s not just using the bathroom,” I decided.

“Well, unless she actually takes this long. Maybe there’s a line. Isn’t there usually a line for the girls’ bathroom?” Nikolas asked, taking a sip of his Coke.

“Not really, no. We try to avoid using the restrooms, especially the ones in the cafeteria. They’re really nasty.” I poked Nikolas in the arm. “Hey. Do you have your calculus homework with you?”

“Yeah…” Nikolas pulled his calculus book out of his bookbag and handed it to me. “The homework is in the book.”

“I thought you were organized. Wow.” I opened the book and was attacked by paper. “How did you get this much crammed in this book in one and a half days? We only started school yesterday!”

“It’s mostly blank notebook paper,” Nikolas said. He shrugged. “Can I see the answers to your history classwork?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I pulled out my history notebook and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. We sat there for a few moments copying each other’s work. Finally, Hana returned to our table and sat down.

“You’ve got five minutes to eat,” I told her, not looking up.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I see you guys are cheating again.”

“It’s not cheating,” Nikolas told her.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re using our resources.” Nikolas laughed.

Hana rolled her eyes. “It’s cheating. Are you going to finish that?” Hana asked, pointing to Nikolas’s Coke.

“No, go ahead,” he said, turning his paper over.

“God, you’re horrible. People are starving around the world, and–“

“And a drink is going to help? They’re starving, not dying of thirst. Get off my back, woman,” Nikolas said.

Hana growled at him. “I’ll get you.”

“Yay.” Nikolas put his pencil down and slid my notebook back to me. “Now, if I could get you to write my English paper for me…”

“Not a chance,” I said, handing him his calculus book. “I could help you with it…”

“Yeah, I thought not,” he said, putting his book away. The bell rang. “Back to class, then? Hana, did you finish eating?”

“Almoth,” she said, her mouth full. She swallowed what was in her mouth and chugged the rest of Nikolas’s Coke. “Now I am,” she said, happily tossing her trash into the garbage can.

“How do you eat that much? You’re so tiny,” Nikolas asked, staring at her.

“Magic. Yeah, we’re going to Erik’s after school, by the way,” she told us as we left th cafeteria.

“We don’t know where he lives,” I reminded her.

Hana grinned and waved a piece of paper over her head. “But I do! I got directions!” She giggled and folded the paper up, placing it in her purse as she spun in a circle in front of us. “I’ve got a golden ticket, I’ve got a golden twinkle in my eye,” she sang.

“Not that that is actually a ticket,” I mumbled.

“Or golden,” Nikolas added.

“Shut up.” Hana scrunched her face up and grabbed one of each of our hands, leading us down the hallway. “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz!”

So, after school that day, we set off down the yellow brick road…well, gray, paved road…to see the wizard, or rather, Erik. I wondered what we’d find there. What secrets could Erik possibly be hiding from us, whom he considered his best friends? I wish I didn’t know, but if I didn’t, well…he might be dead.