Chapter Text
His book bag was already digging into his shoulders.
“Why don’t you introduce yourself to the class?”
Shikamaru could only stare at the pig brains that casually sat on the steel plates of each table. “Shikamaru.”
“Where are you from? What do you like to do? Things like that,” the teacher prompted.
It was as if the brains were looking directly at him. Compared to his middle school, this high school seemed to be prestigious. “I’m from out of town. I came here because this is the top school in the district,” he lifted his shoulders, feeling the weight of his textbooks and notebooks compressing his spine.
The class watched him, waiting for him to add onto the story. Not a student made a sound which made being at the front of the class even worse. He just wanted to sit more than anything, so he began to pick the class apart to get an idea of where exactly he would stay for the rest of the academic year.
“Well, we’re happy to have you join us this year. You came just in time…”
The class was almost filled to the brim which wasn’t saying much considering that there were only twenty seats max and… nineteen students, he counted.
“Fall festivities are just around the corner…”
He found a seat towards the back center of the class where one tray of cured pig brain sat centered.
“We’re gonna have costume contests, pumpkin competitions, hay day, and a field trip to the corn maze. I’m sure your classmates will fill you in.”
It was the only seat, but he didn’t want to take it. Shikamaru didn’t turn his head wherever his eyes traveled, allowing him to subtly examine one student in particular. Well, as far down as the black desk would allow him to. Each table was built to hold the work of two students, and from the looks of it, he should trust his gut and avoid sitting next to the boy that sat alone. No matter how Shikamaru looked at the lone student, he could tell he was odd.
“Why don’t you sit over by Neji? There’s a free stool right next to him.”
Right off, he knew exactly where she wanted to seat him. She said so as if she was begging for someone to be the boy’s partner. Still, Shikamaru was reluctant to move from the teacher’s desk. Perhaps it was the way the student stood with his hands joined before his body. Maybe it was his ability to stand impossibly still. Shikamaru couldn’t tell him apart from the skeletal model that hung by the door of the lab. Either way, he found himself wandering towards the back of the class and through the relatively few tables that felt like a sea’s length.
The boy looked like a ghost. His hair was dark. It shone like obsidian and like the rest of his body, its perfection seemed to be inanimate. The pale boy did not give Shikamaru even a glance even as he settled with a creak into the stool.
Shikamaru returned the favor and sat his bag against the floor. His elbows met the cold table top and, already, he found himself looking for a window to distract himself.
“Alright, I’m sure you’ve all noticed the brains in front of you,” the teacher began. One girl even gagged, rousing parts of the class through laughter. The teacher paused in her roam and eyed the girl who took it upon herself to disrupt her instruction. “Everyone in here had a signed copy of the parent permission slip, so I hope you have fun dissecting the items listed in chalk on your tables.” She continued her roam up and down the aisles of tables and past her newest student. “As the list says, you are to sever the medulla, reticular formation and extract the pituitary gland. It should be fairly simple since everyone decided against my more specific extraction suggestions,” she cleared her throat, “at the department meeting, that is, so this should not take very long. It’s a very basic, basic operation. You have the rest of class to cut away to your heart’s desire. Good luck, you have thirty minutes.”
Shikamaru waited on the woman to sit at her desk before acknowledging the plate that sat diagonally from him. Luckily, his apparent lab partner took immediate action in handling the plate.
A hand was raised somewhere in the class of students.
“Yes?” The teacher asked after violently blowing her nose.
“Is this a joint project?”
She swallowed her coffee, “mh, yes, yes it is, but if you feel like you’re doing more work than your partner, then points will be deducted from their final grade.”
Of course, he had to participate. Only, he never did this sort of thing at his old school. They were lucky to have enough computers to do a cartoon dissection on a website that resembled a drag and drop dress-up game. He read over the list in chalk and decided he knew none of those words. He was, after all, in an upscale school district. “What do you want me to do?” Shikamaru finally asked,
“Nothing.”
Shikamaru’s chin met his palm, “I’ll fail if I do nothing.”
Nevertheless the ill-colored boy performed the operation with precision.
Shikamaru raised a brow before shutting his eyes. It was his first day, surely the lab grade wouldn’t be counted against him.
“An ‘F’?!” His mother shouted. He had been hesitant to unpack once he got home. As a matter of fact, he had been hesitant to board the bus just to come home. “What do you mean? You just got there, Shikamaru!”
“I don’t know, blame my partner.”
“No, I blame you for not doing anything about it.”
“What do you mean?” Shikamaru responded as he sorted through his book bag that sat against the kitchen floor. “I asked what he wanted me to do and he said nothing, so I didn’t do anything.” He pulled his room temperature sandwich from his back pouch and tossed it into the trash can. “He didn’t really let me do anything.” He visited the stove where chicken fried in breadcrumbs on the stove. He didn’t see the use in talking about it now, besides he could hardly hear over the sizzling grease and microwave fan.
“Then go back and talk to your teacher, Shikamaru.”
The boy shrugged as he used tongs to flip the frying chicken breasts for his distracted mother.
“Shikamaru, help yourself. I can’t keep standing up for you over things like this.”
He sat the tongs against a spoon rest and recalled how he had been lucky to unenroll after his mother took matters into her own hands by directing empty threats to the school’s principal. “You really don’t have to, you know. I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, well you say that every time you plan on letting something go, Shikamaru and that’s why you came home with a crimson lip months ago. You let people walk all over you and then swear that it doesn’t get under your skin. I mean, you never even told me until it was too late!”
He continued to open the fridge where nothing was readily available to eat without cooking first. “Because it doesn’t get under my skin.”
“And that’s another thing, I’m done buying snacks.”
He shut the fridge and dropped his head, keeping his hand around the refrigerator handle. “Why?”
“You need to start eating full meals, sweetheart. You’ve gotten tiny.”
Shikamaru looked at himself in the accent mirror that hung against the wall.
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” she reiterated.
“Yeah, baby fat. Mom, I’m fourteen.”
She turned the stove top off and rested the chicken breasts against a glass dish covered in paper towels. “Yeah, a fourteen-year old tooth pick.”
