Despicable Arrogance

Chapter 18: Bad Dog

Chapter 18: Bad Dog

I entered Pre-Calculus a whopping twenty minutes early and luckily, Mrs. Geoffrey was already in the classroom writing on the board. She smiled at me as she wrote the objectives. “Do you want to do me a favor?”

I nodded as I approached her desk. “Can you please staple these packets together?”

I looked down at the extremely large yet organized packets of paper. I nodded and grabbed the stapler, walking towards my desk and dropping my bag. A knock on the door pulled me out of my work and I glanced up to see Mrs. Geoffrey standing on a chair as she struggled to write at the top of the board. I smiled at her. “I’ll get it.”

She nodded at me as I got up and walked towards the door. Swinging it open, I wished I hadn't. “Grayson, I thought you forgot.”

“No, I didn’t forget,” Grayson replied to Mrs. G as he grinned at me. Walking past me, he strode towards her desk where she was now standing, searching through her papers until she came upon a packet with Grayson’s name on it. “Thank you.”

“I’m guessing you’ll be off then,” she replied before walking over towards the chair before turning around. “But you’re welcome to stay; I have some work that you can do.”

Please leave; please leave; don’t make things awkward; please leave. As if sensing my discomfort, Grayson smiled and shrugged. “Sure, I’ll stay. What do you need help with?”

“Well, you can start off by helping Audrey finish up those packets.” She motioned to me over her shoulder and I wanted to scream and dive out of the window.

Grayson nodded. “Okay.”

He grabbed a stapler and began walking over and plopping down in Samantha’s seat; he grabbed half of the papers. “Do you guys want to listen to music?”

Grayson nodded. “Sure.” Of course you would.

“Do you guys like John Legend?” she asked and we both shrugged. After a moments time, an unfamiliar song started playing and I continued to staple the papers.

He was humming along and I sighed, continuing to staple the packets. “Want to have a race?”

I turned to him with furrowed eyebrows. “What?”

“Let’s see who can staple the most packets,” he stated and I shrugged. “Loser has to walk the other person’s dog.”

I shrugged. “Have fun walking Tobias.”

“I won’t have to walk the little loaf, but if I did, he’d walk a foot before passing out from exhaustion. Finster is a runner, just so you know,” he winked before grabbing a packet in his hand and the stapler in his other. I did the same thing, shouting ‘go’ and stapling the packet.

I continued stapling packets until there was one packet left. Once he reached for it, I kicked his chair, causing him to lose his balance and fall. I grabbed the packet and stapled it before grinning widely at my finished pile of packets. Staring at me in disbelief, Grayson stood up from the floor. “You’re overly competitive and violent!”

I shrugged. “Am not, but I won,” I told him. He smirked before shrugging.

“Let’s count them up first before you say that you're the winner,” he replied, grabbing his pile of completed packets.

I grabbed mine and silently counted them. 16, not including the ones I stapled prior to our competition. Smirking, Grayson cleared his throat. “How many did you staple?”

“You say yours first,” I told him and he placed his pile onto the table.

“17,” he proudly admitted. I narrowed my eyes at him. “What about you?”