[7] Mixing Turtles & Porcupines

"Please sit next to your group/partner and after you introduce yourselves to each other I will give you further instructions."

The room bustles with noise as everyone stands and searches for their co-mentor.

Everyone stands... except me.

I am not going to be the one to walk over to Jack. He's going to have to come over to me. I had my game face on. This was serious.

I stay seated, my leg bouncing as I stare at a spot on my desk in order to avoid making eye contact with him.

I feel a presence behind me. This presence unnerves me. The low rumble of the presence clearing its throat causes my ears to twitch in reaction to the noise.

My fists clench under my desk, clutching tightly onto the fabric of my pants. I feel a cascade of goosebumps fall over my skin and my pores start to sweat.

The presence leans over. I feel hot breath fan over my ear.

"Hi, Spencer."

He says it in a low whisper.

I jump a little in my seat, startled.

Jack chuckles. "Scared?" he asks.

Without waiting for an answer, he moves away from me, his hand brushing over my shoulder slightly as he reaches for the seat next to me. He pulls it out and sits down.

It takes me a second to regain my composure. When I do, I fill with red-hot anger. I grit my teeth.

"Hello, Jack," I say with malice, not giving him the satisfaction of replying to his rude question.

This is a competition. If we weren't friends before, we definitely aren't now.

Jack surprises me by mumbling, "Thank god we don't have to introduce ourselves and shake hands and all that crap." He continues, explaining, "Since we already know each other."

Then he brings his guard back up and crosses his arms tightly. "Cause I don't really feel like talking."

I scoff. "We don't know each other." I almost roll my eyes at the thought.

"...You know my coffee order though," he points out with an arrogant smirk.

I huff out a frustrated sigh. "That's irrelevant. And even if it was relevant, it only further proves my point that we don't know each other because that's me knowing you." I lean back with crossed arms, "You don't know me."

He turns toward me with an accusatory glare. "Well, that's your fault."

The anger boils furiously in me. "My fault?!"

He raises his voice. "Yeah! You and your unfriendly glares."

I let out a humorless laugh. "You got a lot of nerve, look at who's talking."

"What did I do?"

"Oh really. The angry boy that storms off randomly doesn't know why he's not seen as approachable," I joke, my words dripping in sarcasm.

He just stares at me with this weird look on his face. It makes me angry.

"Go ahead," I wave my hand, "Feign innocence."

He spits out between clenched teeth, "I'm. Not."

"Oh come on. You've never been anything but rude to me. You know what you did. You're a football player for gosh sake."

"So you do know about me." He has a satisfied smirk on his face, but it quickly turns into an angry snarl as he inhales sharply. "And how does being a football player have anything to do this?"

"It has everything to do with this."

He scoffs and shakes his head, "I thought you of all people would be above the stereotypes, but I guess not."

"What do you mean: me of all people?"

"Well, you..." he seems at a loss for words. "You-you're..."

"I'm what? Not popular like you? A nerd?"

Jack interrupts me, "No. I was going to say you're-"

But I never get to find out what he was going to say because Mrs. Aspen has started talking again, silencing the classroom into a quiet obedience.

She starts walking down the aisles of desks. "Right now I am bringing around information on your assigned freshmen. Their name, Grade Point Average, classes they are taking, likes, dislikes, and activities they're involved in."

Sensing the uncomfortableness in the room, Mrs. Aspen reassures, "Don't worry, it's not creepy stuff. We had them fill out a form and gathered a bit of information from their teachers. No spying was involved. ...Most likely."

An uneasy chuckle escapes from most mouths in the room.

Her heels click near us and she slides a paper onto my desk. I pick it up and look down at the page in front of me.

Hmm. So here's our freshman.

His name is Max Thorton.

Thorton... the name sounds familiar to me, but I just can't place where I've heard it before. Oh well. Seems like an okay kid from what I've read so far.

Mrs. Aspen has finished passing everything out and is now sitting back down at her desk.

"Read those over and to start out just write down your observations about the kid based on what we provided you," she says with the dismissive wave of her hand, already focusing intently on her computer screen.

Jack shifts his position awkwardly next to me. He is getting uncomfortably close to me, craning his neck to read our shared piece of paper. I guess it is my fault though. I'm keeping the paper in front of me, making him shuffle close to me to see it, making him work for it. I'm never going to give him the easy way out.

I like being in power. I like being in control of Jack.

I realize we have to record our observations so I retrieve my notebook and mechanical pencil (I hate the regular kind because the point always gets dull and using wood pencils that have to be loudly sharpened every 10 minutes makes absolutely no logical sense) from my bag. I flip my notebook open to a new page.

I glance down at Max's profile.

I start writing a list:

1. Not really involved in many activities

2. Great at Math

3. Not so great in English

Jack waves his hand angrily. "Why do we have to put this kid in a box? This is so stupid. Not to mention, demeaning."

"If you have any observations that I could actually write down that would be of use to us, please let me know," I stipulate with annoyance, yet I actually agree with him.

Just as I about run out of patience with the activity, almost as much as Jack, I'm interupted by Mrs. Aspen barking at us to stop.

"Now that you know more about your kid, come up with topics to discuss with them, following the outline I provided you."

I look at my desk and notice that she has passed around the outlines like she said. I must not have noticed in my distracted and frustrated state.

"You will come up with at least ten questions to ask them. Ten fully formed questions. Don't be basic. Look at their interests and dig deeper. I will be collecting these and grading them," she says threateningly.

Noticing the shock on student's faces she continues with vigor, "Anything to do with this mentor program that happens under my instruction will be graded in the college and career readiness skills portion of your grade book."

Someone raises their hand, she just glares at them.

"It does have an impact on your GPA. The district has decided that just like any other required course, if you fail this, you fail senior year."

They lower their hand slowly, embarassed.

"...So don't mess this up."

The room is still quiet.

"Stop staring! Get to work!"

>>

"...We could ask him what his favorite place to eat is?" Jack suggests.

"Okay." I write it down.

To my surprise and absolute bewilderment, Jack is actually putting in an effort.

"Oh! We could ask him if he likes cars or if he heard the news about the new models of Tesla's self-driving car!"

I'm taken aback by Jack's enthusiasm but I try to not show it, though, because I don't want him to put up his walls again. Guarded Jack is not exactly an ideal partner to work with. Or an ideal upperclassman mentor friend to some scared kid.

"Yeah, we could ask him what he thinks about their new sonar and radar processing software or something," I suggest, attempting to only display mild interest.

Now Jack's the one taken aback, but he doesn't really attempt to disguise it.

"...You follow their tech releases?"

"Yeah, of course. Anyone that likes that type of stuff would," I mutter dismissively. I can't help but to continue, pointing out, "They would want to be just as blown away as I was when it was released that the new self-driving car's processing power was increased by 40x."

Jack nods in eager agreement.

"40 times!" I repeat in disbelief.

He scoots his chair closer.

"I know! Also, like... ultrasonic sensors? Sounds like it came from Doctor Who or Star Trek or something. But no, it's real."

"Sounds like something I would see in those shows as a kid and wish was real, just like those characters." I chuckle a bit thinking about those strange obsessive phases of my youth.

Jack makes a thoughtful humming noise. "If they were actually real and I ever met any of them, I'd just want to know about the science and mechanisms behind their technology."

"Yeah, that's what always kept me watching. I would never have stuck with a show like Doctor Who for so many seasons if I hadn't been so intrigued by the explanations provided for happenings in the universe. They might've been made up, but they had just enough truth or logical sense behind them to keep 10-year-old me sufficiently entertained."

"Huh. That's kind of how it was for me as well. To me, it seemed like a puzzle to solve. I was always trying to figure out the solution before the actual characters."

"I would do the same! I'll admit, they sometimes make the characters a little slow to figure it out on purpose in order to give watchers the satisfaction of thinking they're smarter.

"Still fun though," he says, shrugging his shoulders.

"It's been so long-" he says with a sigh. He has a dazed, far-off look on his face.

I look up at him with a raised brow, egging him on.

Jack tenses. "I can't remember the last time I ...watched an episode from one of those shows," he states curtly with a stiff posture that basically screams that we touched a sensitive subject somehow.

I have a feeling he was going to say something else, but it's too late now. There's no way I have the time to coax it out of him.

Or the compassion to do so.

I shouldn't have the compassion to do so.

I hate him. He's tiring to be around; it's like I'm walking on eggshells! He can't hold a conversation without getting angry and his stupid walls are always up, reminding me that he's a porcupine while I'm a turtle.

Porcupines and turtles don't mix.

Jack and I don't mix.

End of story.

Come on, Spencer.

Game face: on.

I return to the outline in front of me, writing down our list of topics and questions for Max. Jack stares off into space. We stay like that until the bell rings.

The second it does, Jack storms off and disappears, while I'm stuck putting away my notebook and pencil in my bag and turning in our outline to Mrs. Aspen.

Who seems to have successfully compelled everyone to stay with her death glare.

Everyone... except Jack.

"I will meet you all down in the lunchroom when lunch starts. You and your co-mentor will be sitting with your assigned freshman during lunch today. I will be patrolling the whole lunch period to observe your interactions!" she shouts that last part, the eagerness to be on time to second block becoming more powerful than the fear of her wrath, causing students to seep out into the hallway, inviting a roar of noise into the room.

I wait another 30 seconds, hoping to catch Mrs. Aspen alone. I pretend to stuggle with the buckles and straps on my backpack; which, in all honesty, isn't that hard to do.

Once I exhaust that excuse for staying late I stand up and try to put on my game face.

It falters, though, as my eyes fall upon the sight of Mrs. Aspen struggling to clean up the mess left behind by students, similar to the disaster left in the wake of a tsunami.

If that tsunami was made of energy drinks and paper instead of water. Guilt tugging at my heart and sympathy filling me, I forget my game face and focus on collecting the outlines other students were too lazy to actually turn in so they just abandoned them on the floor or a random desk.

When I see the small appreciative smile Mrs. Aspen gives me as I hand her the outlines I collected, all thoughts of confronting her and demanding a new co-mentor disappear.

The stress is still evident on her forehead. I realize that although Mrs. Aspen is not normal, she's still a teacher.

"Sorry us teenagers are so awful," I sympathize.

She looks like she's about to say something, but I cut her off, joking, "I really wish I could say that not all of us are, but the amount of litter in this room says otherwise."

We both chuckle a little.

Her gaze seems distant and she mutters, "It's worth it in the end." It's like she's trying to convince herself just as much as me.

She takes a clears her throat, snapping back to reality.

"Now get out of here, otherwise you might be late to class and just prove that teenagers are all horrible delinquents."

I laugh and she has a little twinkle in her eye, despite the scowl covering her face.

She seems overworked. As I walk out the door I kick myself for even considering asking more of her. She already does enough as a teacher. I don't need to add to that. Also, if she accepted every request to change partners, the whole mentor program would go to crap because people would keep changing partners until they were with their friend.

By the time I'm rounding the corner to my next class, Spanish 4 with Mr. Sanchez, I have officially concluded that I can handle Jack. I've been reminded that millions of people have to deal with way worse challenges every day, so I should be able to toughen up and deal with Jack on my own.

No matter how absolutely annoying it may be.

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AN: I couldn't find a good place to end this chapter but it was getting really long (it's 2,500+ words, longer than any of my other chapters by far) so I stopped it here.

Oh and btw, I didn't make up the Tesla stuff, here's a link to their info on their latest self-driving car:

https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

SO, I'm really curious to hear what you guys think:

What do you think Max will (or should) be like? Shy or confident?

How good is Jack with kids?

Once again, this is relatively unedited, but I will proofread it and revise once I've eaten a proper meal lol

Love,

Leah