This is a story about the boy who my universe revolves around.
The part about my universe revolving around him is completely coincidental- I didn't choose that, and he didn't actually intend to have this effect on me. It just happened when he start...
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Andrew slinks toward us, scowling. Lloyd and I are waiting on the other side of the school parking lot, planning to figure out where to go from here now that we can't undermine Exander through Andrew. Exander didn't fold like he did last time, and both Thaniel and Mr. McNelson told him off.
"We'll have to be careful about using Andrew, now," Lloyd murmurs to me while Andrew is still out of earshot. "Thaniel isn't an idiot."
I sigh. "We'll have to be careful regardless. But yes, you have a point. He could figure it out."
"And then we'd be screwed."
Andrew reaches us and I level him with a look. "Well, that went terribly."
"Really?" he asks sarcastically, giving me a mild glower. "Thaniel and Mr. McNelson called me out." He sighs aggressively. "So, what now?"
"We're giving up," I tell him flatly. "Mr. McNelson said to deal with whatever problems you have with Exander outside the classroom, so attacking him at the convenient time is out. And any other time, we'd have to make sure Thaniel isn't anywhere near, and keep it low-key enough that Exander doesn't mention it to him. It's more trouble than it's worth."
"So we just let him hijack the show?!"
"We just have to hope that he got the message. If he does something really ridiculous again, we might be able to get away with checking him one more time."
"But until then, we're just giving up."
"Yes. Problem?" I raise an eyebrow at him as he crosses his arms. He glowers, but doesn't try and argue more.
"Fine." He storms off. I watch him go, then look to Lloyd.
"It would be too suspicious to have someone else take Andrew's place."
He looks surprised. "We're actually giving up? That's not like you. I thought you were just saying that to get rid of him."
"I was. But we can't use the same strategy again. Too specific. We need to come up with something else. Ideally something that won't fail."
Lloyd snorts. "That would be nice. Alright, so we're coming up with a new plan. We'll need something different enough that it'll work, and on the outside it won't seem related to what happened with Andrew."
"And it'll stop Exander."
"Right. That's a good place to start. How can we stop Exander from hijacking the show?"
I consider that. "Verbally attacking him whenever he tries something new worked once, but that seems like a one-time thing."
"Yeah. He did say that he'd put himself last to volunteer if Andrew wanted a specific volunteering job, so maybe if we get people to take all the jobs Exander could take?"
