My Best Friend's Brother

Academic Octathlon

The school formal was coming up and Aria was excited because the band was performing. They had been practicing for weeks, staying as late as they could to get it right. It was like most of their gigs, but they were very proud of their new music and wanted it to sound like it did in their heads. 

Robbie expressed how excited he was to hear the new songs and had gotten a new tie to match Aria’s dress. Aria had yet to talk to him about how often she hangouts with him since her talk with Lois a few weeks ago. Band practice had kept her busy and keeping up with her homework was a struggle itself, she was often tempted to throw away her homework and pretend she wasn’t given it.

She sat with her bandmates as they went over final details in the quad, each of them had a date. Jane was going with Mike, her boyfriend of little over a year, Maggie was going with a sweet girl from her science class. Tess and Emma were going with guys from French class, the guys happened to be close friends too.

Malcolm wouldn’t be able to attend the formal, he and a few other former Krelboynes were participating in an academic competition called Academic Octathlon. The boy genius often ranted about how Mr. Herkabe kept calling for emergency study sessions that took up all of his free time. Aria was grateful to have not been participating.

While Reese seemed to plan out just tricking his girlfriend, Alison, into not wanting to go. Alison wanted Reese to rent a limo and tux for the dance, having the whole night planned out in her head, and he didn’t want to spend a lot of money as he saved for a leather jacket. He had explained to Aria the other day that he was going to pick fights until she declared that she didn’t want to go at all.

Aria waved to the older boy as he walked past to get to his locker, both shared a smile before he disappeared from her sight. 

“What was that about?” Tess questions, 

“What are you talking about? It was just us acknowledging each other.” 

“You can’t really blame her for asking. I mean, before we left for New York you told us that you felt something for him.” Emma defended her sister.

Aria sighed, “I’ve got a boyfriend and the circumstances haven’t changed. He’s still Malcolm’s older brother and now he has a girlfriend.”

“What if things were different?” Maggie interjected, “What if he wasn’t Malcolm’s brother and you were both single, would you date him then?”

“I don’t know and this conversation feels disrespectful to Robbie.” 

“Then let’s change the subject. For example, how’s Lois doing?” Jane asked.

Aria was thankful for the change of subject. It wasn’t a secret that Malcolm and Reese were getting another sibling, but most dread the amount of trouble it would possibly cause as it got older.

“She’s doing okay. She can’t wait for the baby to be here though, she hates how swollen her feet are and how she goes to the bathroom every five minutes.”

The trouble that seemed to follow the boys wherever they went didn’t help either. Only a few more weeks until the baby was born and Aria couldn’t wait to meet the newest addition to the Wilkerson family. She and Lois were sure it was a girl but the others were sure it was another boy, Lois was bound to have gray hair within the next year if that’s true.

The bell rang and the girls were off to their next classes, the last ones of the day before they were free to go home. Aria’s last class was English, one of the few classes that she shared with Reese, her favorite subject and one of the only classes she could pass without Malcolm’s help.

She took her assigned seat next to Reese and began to pull out her work book when Reese leaned over, “Hey, do you have a paper and pen?”

“Yeah, one second,” Aria pulled an extra pen out of her bag and ripped a sheet of paper out of her notebook, “here.”