His Jersey

S E V E N

Grayson Lake

"Guys, please don't look at me like that. The past year's students loved this project despite the research they had to do." Mrs. Landford sits on the edge of her desk and stares at all of our unamused faces. Mrs. Landford is a great and funny teacher, but this project sounds boring and long, so I'm not happy.

I've always hated history. I receive my worst grades in this class because it's hard for me to connect different historical events to each other, at least, that's what my last teacher told me.

Four dioramas sit on her desk from the past year's students as examples for us.

"Take a rubric and pass it back. The project should take you two days at most, but I'm giving you all a week. Since we're almost a month into school, I wanted to do this project to review a little of what you learned last year." She looks around the class, half the students have their heads on their desks. I see Paul. I hope he's my partner, he's the only person I know in this class.

"Okay well," she sighs, "I'm going to assign you a time period. You guys need to research or use your old notes in order to make a diorama of your date. No Wikipedia. Then, you and your partner will type up a 500-word minimum report about why you included what in your diorama." The girl in front of me hands me the papers, and I take one before turning around to hand it to the next girl.

Andy Summers raises his hand.

"Yes, Andrew?" Mrs. Landford asks.

"Are you picking partners?" He asks. Please say yes. I am one of the few juniors in here even though it is a senior class. Andrew glances at me and raises his eyebrow suggestively, although, I don't know what he's trying to suggest.

"Yup." A few guys groan. I do a little happy dance and glance at the clock. The bell is about to ring, so I pack up my binders and wait for her to mention partners. She goes down the list and I patiently wait for my name to be announced.

"Paul Coleman," please pick me, "and Andy Summers. You guys have the 1950s" Damn. Now I'm going to have to work with some senior who probably will make me do all the work. She continues down the list and more people start to close their binders to leave.

"Grayson Lake and Jocelyn Richards. You guys have the 1920s." I look at Jocelyn to see her in a deep conversation with the other senior girls. I wonder if she even heard her name.

The bell goes off. I stand up and walk down the rows of desks to Jocelyn, past all the kids rushing to get out of here.

"Hey. When's your free period?" I ask. If we have the same one, we can work on it at school.

"Um, why?" She grabs her binders and purse off the chair and walks with me towards the door.

"We're partners." I say slowly.

She chuckles, "oh sorry, I wasn't listening. My free period is 6th." I frown.

"We're gonna have to meet after school." Jocelyn nods and writes down her number on a pink sticky note for me.

"Text me after cheer practice and we'll talk about where to meet." She hands me the sticky note. "I gotta go to my next class upstairs, see ya!" Jocelyn says. She gives me a big smile and jogs down the hall in her pink sandals. At least, she's nice.

---

"Mom, can I take the car to go to this girl's house? We have a project to work on." Mom stirs the noodles in the boiling water and turns around to face me.

"Yeah sure, keys are on the counter. I thought you had work tonight?" Mom washes her hands and starts forming the raw meat into meatballs.

I shake my head no, "I did, but I called Julio to explain I wanted to get this project done now instead the end of the week. Peyton is covering for me." Mom nods and goes to hug me.