Fallen Angels

Chapter 3- Hardly Ideal

~~~Start~~~

It wasn't until Felix had been ten or so minutes away from the house that he realised he had left a memory stick containing an important project on his desk in his hurry to leave and avoid his parents' conversation about is grades. Deciding that it wasn't worth trying to remember every slide from the presentation word for word once he was already in class, Felix chose to go back and pick it up.

Felix's room was quite big, it could comfortably fit his bed, wardrobe, bookshelves, desk, and various things he had collected over the years comfortably with plenty of room for people to use for walking around. As a child, Felix would come home from school and straight away would sit at his desk to do his homework, but these days it was cluttered up with far too many revision notes and books for it to be used. Felix opened his school bag, pulled out a thread of silver string, and put it down on the floor before beginning to dig through the piles of stuff on his desk.

Once he had finally found it, he attached it to the string and put it around his neck and ran out of the house again before one, or both of his parents had a chance to ask him what he was doing. Felix had exaggerated how late he had been before, he would have been able to make it to school while walking at a comfortable pace, but now if Felix wanted to arrive on time, he would have to walk faster than he would usually.

Twenty minutes later, Felix was stood outside the three-story school building, where his attention was grabbed by two other students in his year, one boy and one girl, who were also waiting outside the gates.

"Felix!" The girl shouted.

"We need to talk to you!" Added the boy. Felix walked towards them.

"What is it?" Felix asked.

"You know how I'm your best friend?" the boy started.

"You're not" Felix remarked under his breath.

"And how he's an idiot" The girl continued.

"That too, can I please join your team for that Biology presentation today?"

"Should I even ask what happened to yours?"

"You think he had one to begin with?"

"Shut up, Sky!"

"What? I'm not wrong!" Felix was used to his two friends, the twins Simon and Skylar, arguing. They disagreed over absolutely everything, including which one of them was the oldest, Simon was adamant that his mother has said it was him, but Skylar argued that she had been told the same thing and that she distinctly remembers being born and waiting for Simon, something Simon said is impossible. Despite their constant bickering the two twins were closer than any other duo in the school and always came to each-others aid claiming, 'Only I'm allowed to shove him' or 'I'm the only one allowed to call her an idiot'.

"Look" Simon explained "I thought I would be able to do the presentation all by myself, but I completely forgot about it until this morning and I haven't got anything. I know you'll have done something good, I promise if you let me put my name on at the end I will do all the talking if you want me to. Please! I don't want a detention, I've got to keep my clean record, so I look better than her" Felix rolled his eyes, Simon procrastinating on a homework project until the due date and then stealing from someone else was far from unheard of.

"Fine"

"Really? You're going to let him? This has got to be the third time this year, you're too kind Felix"

"Thank you! I promise I won't let you down. I owe you one, man. Hey, just so I have some warning, what's your project on?"

"'Stillbirth and Early Infant Mortality'" Felix said with no hesitation.

There was a sense of awkwardness in the air.

"Uh, are you sure you want to go with that?" Simon asked.

"Yeah... I would've thought that would be a bit of a... touchy subject for you, after all that's happened"

"I'm not ashamed of my brother and sister."

"I never said you were, I'm just saying that might not be the best topic for you to talk about"

"Why not? Surly of all the people in the class I'm the only one with the right to talk about it. I have got the most experience with it after all."

"If you're comfortable doing it then I won't stop you, I just think that-" Skylar started

"If you're happy doing it then I'll stand up and do it with you, and if you need to step down, then I'll be there to take over"

"Thanks Simon, but I think I'll be alright."

Biology came around faster than Felix had expected it to, with it being positioned at the third period of the day, but it seemed as if only minutes had passed before he was sat in his usual seat at the front of the lab, the memory stick clutched tightly in his hand. Simon, though sat next to Felix, was in a deep conversation with the girl sat behind him, while a group of rowdy boys at the back of the room had stolen a short boys glasses and were waving them high above his head taunting him; all while the teacher tried, to no avail, to get them to stop and settle down.

To distract from the noise of the rest of the class, Felix decided to get his presentation notes out of his bag and read over them again, refamiliarizing himself with them before he would be asked to read them out in front of the class. It was at least fifteen minutes before the teacher had been able to restore order in the class and the lesson could finally begin.

"So, over the weekend I asked you all to prepare a presentation based on the current topic of reproduction and child development. As a punishment for acting like fools and disturbing the class can you all come up and present first?" He asked the large group of boys at the back. Shocking no one, they had turned up with no plan or script and had babbled on about reproductive organs (Generally the female ones) for five minutes with very little scientific facts (And the ones they did give, Felix observed, were wrong).

"Right then, after that embarrassment, why don't we pick someone with something good to offer. Mr Dawson, could you come to the front of the class next please?" To say that Felix and the rest of the class hadn't been expecting this would be a lie. One thing they weren't expecting though, was Felix to have a partner, some of the more astute students may have guessed that Felix was only working with Simon out of sympathy, but the others (Most notable the boys at the back) found it much more enjoyable to blow this strange occurrence out of proportion.

"Didn't know you swung that way, Simon" One of them called.

"Thought you were busy chatting up Lisa" Said another.

"Felix on the other hand..."

"Well that shocks no one"

"But I thought he was dating that Jesse guy in the year above?"

"Enough" The teacher finally said, getting the boys to be quiet at last. Felix wasn't phased by what had been said, but Simon on the other hand looked as if he was about to murder someone. Despite this Felix's presentation went ok, Simon didn't honour his promise and left all the work to Felix, and at the end of it hadn't sat back down next to him, but had moved to sit next to Lisa, the girl he was talking to at the beginning of the lesson.

~~~End~~~