Dawn Hollow

XIX

The last hour and a half came and went pretty quickly, or at least that's what it felt like. Then again, Joseph never really felt the passage of time when he went to his acting class. It would come and go so quickly each day. Time was never in his favor, but it didn't bother him so much.

The boy sat his backpack down against the high lab chairs in the dusty musk of the woodwork shop. The few teacher's assistants in the room with individual projects or pieces were already hard at work, painting, cutting, sanding, and assembling as they waited for class to start. Woodwork wasn't technically required, but it was an excellent way to fill the time until graduation.

And still, it made him feel more like himself to pour blood, sweat, and tears into a project such as woodwork. A sense of empowerment that he hadn't really felt doing anything else besides here.

In his space-out daze, he was awoken by the phantom pain of someone's eyes beaming into his skin. The hot burn was directed from the doorway. He noticed the pupils of Kane peeking at him from the hallway just outside. Joseph was quick to smile and wave at him, which eventually brought the forest boy inside. "Hi again! Sorry for staring at you. I just knew my next class was with you, and I wasn't sure if this was the wood shop or not."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I get worse stares from people, but at least you're a friendly face," He reassured him. "By the way, I wanted to apologize again for Noah's actions this afternoon. He's never usually like this, I mean, he isn't the biggest fan of new people, but even this is extreme for him."

"It's alright, I get it," Kane paused in debate, "I-I'm not like, stepping on any toes, right? But, like, PJ and Noah aren't...a thing, right?"

"Oh god no! Never have been either. Noah's just a little overprotective of him, which, as you know, has sort of led to PJ not having much of a life of his own lately."

"Yeah...I feel kind of bad about that."

"Me too, but, de toekomst is een boek met zeven sloten."

"What is that?" Kane blurted to Joseph's comment, "That language, what is it?"

"Dutch. We were born in Holland before our parents moved all of us overseas in second grade."

"That's so cool! My mom is Welsh, and she was over here for 29 years before she lost her accent. How have you kept your tongue intact?"

"Our parents don't speak super good English, so at home, it's mostly Dutch. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure we would've lost our tongue years ago." They finished their conversation just in time for the bell to ring out and for Noah to run in at the last minute, being the final person before the teacher shut the door.

The baseball player threw his stuff at his chair next to his brother, not very enthused about the person across from him. "Alright, good afternoon, students! I know this is the final class of the day, and we're tired, but we're not gonna let that tiredness get the best of us and have our fingers get too close to the saw blades...again," The teacher clapped his hands together with an exhausted smile flashing on his lips. "Right, this week we'll be working on a new project. It's pretty simple; a birdhouse. You know I grade harshly for finely detailed projects, so keep those splinters fine and those brushstrokes smooth, yes?"

Everyone around the room dismissed themselves, pulling out iPods for music listening and scratch paper to create their birdhouses for blueprints. Joseph pulled out his binder of lined paper and handed it to Kane along with a pencil before passing out a sheet to his brother as well. "So, Kane, have you ever done woodwork before?" Noah eyed him like a threat.

"No, actually. I never really have. But I have built my own little home in the woods that I've lived in safely for 2 years so, how much different could it be?" He scoffed in return. Kane looked at the sheet in front of him, turning nearly the same color as the piece of paper.