𓈊 A Poppy By Any Other Name

Act II

"You're late, Mr. Solidarity," Mr. Fletcher said as Jimmy walked through the door.

Jimmy chuckled nervously. "Sorry, I was helping a friend get to the nurse's office," he explained. It wasn't a lie if he just didn't tell the whole truth, right?

Mr. Fletcher sighed. "Do you have a pass?" Jimmy froze, an awkward smile on his face. "I'm assuming not," the teacher said, unamused. "Go sit down."

As soon as the words left the teacher's mouth, Jimmy was scurrying frantically to his seat.

"Your face is red," Grian, the certified nerd of the school according to Joel, whispered to Jimmy, grinning. Jimmy looked over at the other blonde boy and scowled in a sort of mirthful manner.

Grian was technically still in middle school, but his grades had always been outstanding, and at some point during the seventh grade he'd started taking classes at the high school, starting with going to the high school for accelerated algebra and chemistry. He stopped attending the middle school this year, and now he's in accelerated trigonometry, astronomy, AP world history, and the same Spanish 1 class as Jimmy. It was overly confusing to Jimmy how Grian had skipped two whole years of math and science, but he stopped trying to question it back in the first semester.

"Yeah?" Jimmy whispered back. "Well, at least my face isn't shoved in a textbook twenty-four seven."

Grian rolled his eyes. "I'm a year younger than you and I'm taking senior-level classes, and a college class," he remarked, and suddenly Jimmy was at a loss for words. Grinning truimphantly, Grian straightened his posture and turned his focus back to Mr. Fletcher.

"Who can tell me what conjugation is?" Mr. Fletcher asked, then immediately called on Grian as he was the only one who raised his hand. "Yes, Mr. Gotts?"

"Conjugation is when you change the form of a verb to match the subject," Grian answered, earning an eye roll from Jimmy.

Mr. Fletcher smiled. "Right on. Can you give me an example of conjugation?"

Grian nodded. "You can use the word 'walk' with the subject 'I' and say, 'I walk,' but it doesn't work with the subject 'she,' so we have to change 'walk' to 'walks,'" he explained. "That's conjugation."

"Very good!" He turned to the rest of the class. "Who here knows how many times he conjugate present-tense verbs in English?" he asked, very obvious trying his hardest to ignore Grian's raised hand.

Jimmy sighed and raised his own hand, and Mr. Fletcher was more than happy to call on him. "Twice," Jimmy answered plainly.

"Correct. Take a guess on how many times present-tense verbs on conjugated in Spanish."

Jimmy's brows knit together. "Uh... five times?" he surmised, and for a moment he thought he'd gotten it right going by the impressed look on his Spanish teacher's face.

Mr. Fletcher nodded. "Very close," he said. "In fact, if you're not including Spain, you're correct. In total, there are six different ways to conjugate present-tense verbs. Now, with verbs that end in 'ar'..."

Mr. Fletcher's words seemed to blur together as Jimmy's mind wandered back to earlier in the hallway, when Scott looked the happiest Jimmy had ever seen him, and he was kissing someone else. Jimmy would have felt selfish for thinking that he should've been the one kissing Scott if he didn't already dislike Scott's boyfriend.

"Guess I'll have to be Romeo, then."

Oh, I'll show you Romeo, Jimmy thought bitterly, though he must have said it out loud because Mr. Fletcher went quiet.