Children's Draft

Chapter 15 (Part Two)

(Clayton's PoV)

    "Some Christmas this is turning out to be," I mumbled.

    Logan shivered. "Yeah, I wish this building had a heater."

    Normally, the winter weather here was at least somewhat bearable, but ever since this morning it had been bitterly cold.

    Justin looked at the thermometer on the wall. "It's about 18 degrees," he observed. "Although a proper thermometer would read about negative 7.8 degrees since China uses Celsius to measure temperature."

    "I hate you so much for doing that in your head," I muttered.

    "It's actually a simple conversion," he interjected.

    "I don't care how cold it is, I just care that it's cold," I snapped. "Like I don't get it! Why can't we just take the global warming in Antarctica and bring it here! It's not like they want it!"

    Justin sighed. "That's not..." but he didn't even have enough motivation to finish his thought.

    "We need a fire," Trevor said between chattering teeth.

    Tristan gave a laugh, which was cut short by a shallow breath of cold air. "Like any of us could start one."

    "I could," Gavin said simply.

    Our entire group turned to him in shock.

    "What? I used to be a boy scout," he explained.

    "So then you can make us one, right?" Trevor asked.

    Gavin's face fell slightly. "Well, I could get one started, but we would need kindling to keep it going."

    We all sighed. Just when we had a glimmer of hope, it was snatched away. Before I could open my mouth to complain, a thought occurred to me.

    "I know exactly what to use!" I exclaimed, already racing toward my bed. Underneath it was an abandoned package. I dusted a few cobwebs off of the sides as I pulled it out. I opened up the cardboard box to reveal the perfect kindling: math homework.

    "Clayton, you're supposed to turn that in," Justin reminded me. "You can't burn--"

    "Justin." I cut him off. "Look at my face."

    He gave me a deadpan expression.

    "I need you to physically see how much I don't care."

    Gavin came over to me and examined my pile of homework. "This is perfect," he muttered through a mixture of awe and stifled laughter. "There's gotta be at least a hundred pages of this stuff." He grabbed a stack of Chapter 11: Constructing inscribed circles. "Come on, let's take this outside."

    "Why can't we start it in here?" I asked.

    Gavin sighed and put his hand on my shoulder. "Clayton," he said in all seriousness, "we would burn the place down." Under his breath he added. "You had a really good idea, but maybe quit while you're ahead."

I clicked my tongue. "Right."

    Tristan laughed as he crumpled up some of the papers. "Thank god for math--for the sole reason of getting to burn it."

    Landon shrugged. "I doubt it's that much colder outside than in here anyway. Why not?"

    Justin folded his arms. "I still don't approve of this. After all," but his chattering teeth hindered him from finishing his original sentence. "But I'll go grab some water to put it out in case things get out of hand."