Chapter Text
Sidney knew Oliver was obsessed with lists, as much as he was with ice fishing and fundraisers. Oliver had lists about homework, future endeavours in fruit bar sales, his games that he needed to play over the next summer and his college choices. Sidney was pretty sure that he’d even wrote out a list of his lists and stuck it in the front of his notebook for school.
But this was ridiculous.
This particular one had three neat dot points, spaced apart pretty evenly. There was an empty fourth dot, awaiting eagerly to be filled. The title was simple, short and blunt. And creepy as all hell.
HENRY’S WEIRD THINGS
Sidney had managed to turn them both around and hugged the list to his chest, away from the prying eyes of the school students milling around before first bell. Best to keep this list out of view from clawing, ridiculing bullies like Mitch Bilsky.
His questioning of what, why and why again was just met with pointing, nodding and a way too cheery explanation of ‘I’ve noticed some weird things about Henry recently, so I wanted to write them down!’ Like that would make everything clear.
The first noticed point simply said: ‘Fell asleep in class.’ Not the best start.
Second one down stated: ‘Has new gum, won’t share it.’ Sidney raised his eyebrow at Oliver on this one.
The third one made him pause. It was underlined, clearly more important than the first two, and had Sidney giving more thought to this list than he’d previously done.
‘Saw him sneak out a class window at lunch.’
“So, whatcha think?” Oliver hadn’t backed down, a stubborn ray of sunshine and quirk that made Sidney want to be friends with him in the first place. He couldn’t fault him on that, on basically anything. Sidney had his own obsessive nature, But Oliver’s ran bone deep.
“Change the title.”