FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 48

DARWIN

Thursday, April 12, 2018

The next few days ran together in a glut of white noise — most of my classes (except for Basic Drawing, where we were just continuously working on our midterm still life projects) had ceased their lessons and transformed into big review sessions or study periods where those of us who liked procrastinating could catch up on any missing assignments. And thank Arceus: I began to clean up some of the checklists in my planner during this free time, and by Thursday afternoon, I was feeling a little more upbeat about meeting approaching deadlines — it was like someone had loosened the academic noose around my neck.

That, or they took it off me and gave it to Thomas. He had a pretty rough week, and not just because I was giving him a hard time in our tutoring sessions and actually made him do work — it seemed the teachers were also bearing down on him about all the blanks they had for him in their gradebooks. By the sound of it, things were worse than I'd suspected for him — hell, he was two steps from a D in Pre-Cal.

Or so he claimed. Part of me wondered if he was just using the bad news as leverage over me.

"Goddamn, can you just give me the answer already?" he snapped Wednesday during study hall — we'd been in one of the rooms in the back of the library, where there was indeed a blackboard with sticks of chalk. I'd scribbled the quadratic formula on it, which he'd used on the extra credit assignment with only marginal success: he'd managed to figure out one problem, but had a hell of a time with the other nine. "It's due tomorrow," he'd continued. "I can learn this after I turn it in, Snowman, come on!"

And if that had been my first interaction with Thomas Ryans-Wade, the strain on his face might've actually guilt-tripped me into giving in. Unfortunately for him, I'd heard every variation of this refrain only two thousand times from him since freshman year, so he got no sympathy from me.

As a result, he was in a pissy mood on Thursday when we headed for Ms. Scales's biology classroom for our second Oceanic Conversation Club meeting. I'd expected him to bow out and sneak from the building with Riley and Patrick, but apparently he hadn't been finished complaining about all the mental gymnastics I'd put him through this week. So he actually found me and badgered me all the way to the classroom:

"F*ck me, Snowman, and f*ck you too: you know I dreamed about that crap last night?"

"The quadratic formula?"

"Yeah! I was..." His scowl deepened. "I was in that damn room in quarantine, and you were making me do five hundred problems."

"Making you?"

"You had a whip in your hand. Don't ask me why."

I went right past that, not sure I was liking the turn this conversation was going. "If it's in your dreams," I pointed out, "it's probably in your long-term memory. At least you'll know what to do when you see those problems on the test, right?"

"I can't take a flipping test in this state, Snowman. Do you even know what you've done to me? I think I need my head checked: I'm pretty sure I've got bleeding on the brain."

How the hell was this guy in high school if he couldn't even do a few math problems without getting a headache? "We've still got War Games 3 for Battle Mechanics."

He pinched his nose as we made a turn and headed down a set of stairs. "Is that harder than Pre-Cal?"

"Well, on this one, you have to write three paragraphs describing—"

He groaned. "Dammit, Snowman. Tell me to just take the L on this sh*t. The club meeting too. Go on, tell me." He rubbed at his eyes. "If you say it, I'd probably actually feel okay doing it."