Chapter Text
At lunch, a few hours after they first meet, Milo explains Murphy’s Law. “Anything that can go wrong,” He says, busily bandaging his own head, “will go wrong. That’s just Murphy’s Law!”
“And that’s like… that’s you.” Zack is perched on the edge of the table.
Melissa pulls him down. “Not safe, not when Milo’s around. Sit on a chair.”
“And don’t swing. That never ends well. The teachers weren’t joking about cracking your head open.” Milo chuckles. “But yeah, it’s me! It’s my family. Anything that can go wrong around us, will. It’s called Extreme Hereditary Murphy’s Law, officially.”
“That explains a lot.” Zack concedes.
———
Zack met Milo just one day ago, and things have been… interesting, to say the least. He sits beside Milo in class, doodling absently as the teacher explains a task. “You will be making small posters about a historical figure we have studied, which you can choose. For this assignment, you will be splitting into teams of three.”
Zack turns to Milo and Melissa, who have already began talking quietly to each other. “Can I work with you two?”
“Oh!” Milo swivels around in his chair. “Sorry, Zack. We’re so used to working together, I totally forgot that we had someone else to make up the three!”
“Welcome aboard.” Melissa grins, less widely. Zack thinks that Melissa is still suspicious of him, testing him, waiting to see if he will cut and run. “You can do the drawing.”
Zack notices that Milo and Melissa are putting a lot of effort into planning. “I’ll handle the factual stuff.” Melissa says. “Milo, you do the titles, subtitles and decorations. This is gonna be tough, guys, but we’ll get a good poster handed in by the end of class.”
“Tough?” Zack raises an eyebrow. “It’s a poster. And I know you know your stuff about this guy, so how tough can it be?”
Milo and Melissa look at each other and laugh. Zack frowns, feeling out of the loop.
They get to work on the poster. Zack begins very, very carefully sketching out the historical figure, copying a reference image from the book. “It’d be better to do that on a separate bit of paper.” Milo says. “Less likely to get damaged.”
“It’ll be fine.” Zack waves him off. Milo shrugs and leaves him to carry on.
Zack does notice, as he works, that Melissa is using separate pieces of paper. Melissa is writing down the facts, each on a new slip. She works fast, head down, eyes glinting with determination. Milo is writing titles and subtitles on the poster, also working fast.
Zack puts down his pencil to reach for another colour. Suddenly, he is splattered with ink. “Whoops!” Milo exclaims.
The pen Milo was writing with has exploded, splattering both him and Zack. More importantly, the poster is utterly covered. Everything is covered in huge spots of ink. “Oh, damn!” Zack exclaims. His drawing is ruined.
Milo is already reaching for a new poster, politely refraining from saying anything. Melissa does not refrain. “Not to say that we told you so…”
“But you told me so.” This time, Zack accepts the separate piece of paper. “I really should listen to you two more.”
“Yeah, you should.” Melissa teases. “We always do it this way, we know what we’re doing.”
“The work always gets ruined loads.” Milo says. “If we keep everything separate until the last minute, we won’t need to redo as much.”
So Zack restarts his drawing. They work peacefully in silence together… for all of five minutes. Milo’s chair cracks underneath him, jolting him forward into the table. The table shakes, knocking everything off of it.
Paper, pens, pencils… everything clatters to the floor. Zack yelps. Milo and Melissa just start picking everything up again. “Great, I’ve lost half of my stuff.” Melissa says.
“I wonder where it goes, when that happens?” Milo says.
“I think there’s a monster under the table, who eats stuff we drop.” Melissa jokes. They both laugh. “Oh, all of these pencils are broken.”
“All of them?!” Zack exclaims. “There were dozens of them!”
“All of them.” Milo hands him the pile of broken pencils, with a sheepish smile. “I’ll help you sharpen.”
As they sharpen, Zack looks around. Most of their classmates are making good progress on their posters- colourful decorations, mostly finished drawings, lots of facts. They have a poster with a title and two subtitles, a few crumpled slips of paper with facts, and a lot of broken pencils. “Ok. Maybe this is harder than I thought.”
“Murphy’s Law.” Milo says cheerfully. He winces as the sharpener in his hand snaps, and the blade slips across his palm. “Nothing is as easy as it looks!”
“Even sharpening, apparently.” Zack says dryly.
“Even sharpening.” Milo is still just as cheerfully, digging around in his backpack for a bandage.
Zack continues sketching, now onto colouring. His pencils still keep snapping in his hands, the lead breaking no matter how lightly he presses. He has never found drawing so difficult, never taken this long to finish anything.
Melissa holds up her slips of paper. “Done!” She says.
“And done.” Zack holds up the drawing. “You wanna stick it on?”
Milo glances at the clock. “Yeah, we’d better. You two do it, I’ll stand back.”
Milo steps away from the table as Melissa lays everything out and starts glueing. Zack helps her, watching Milo hanging around at the back of the classroom. “One time he did the glueing, and the glue ended up being stronger than it was supposed to be. They had to cut a massive chunk out of my hair.” Melissa explains, with a fond laugh.
“Oh.” Zack absently touches his hair, wincing at the thought. And then wincing when he realises that he has just made it sticky.
Almost all of the pieces are down now. Everything’s a bit messy, a bit haphazard, but it looks good. Detailed, well done. Milo and Melissa are both clearly smart, creative and competent.
And yet, when he looks around the room he sees that all of their classmates are done, and taking the last few minutes of the lesson to chill out. He sees that their classmates had to put in so much less effort than them, often for neater, less haphazard results.
He flips over the last piece and glues it on. Milo cheers. “We finished!”
“We still need to write our names on it.” Melissa reminds him.
Melissa and Zack both write their names without any hassle. But when Milo approaches to write his name, a freak breeze catches the poster, and sends it flying out of the window. “No!” Melissa exclaims. “Now we have nothing to hand in!”
“We have 6 and a half minutes.” Milo says. “We can get it!”
So before Zack can ask what is happening, Milo and Melissa have already taken off running. He sprints after them as they burst into the hallway and out of the nearest exit. “There!” Milo points.
They run down the hill, across the road, and down the street. “We’re not gonna catch it!” Zack yells. “Shouldn’t we just go back?!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it!” Milo reaches into his backpack and retrieves a fishing rod. He aims, and tosses the line towards the poster. The hook catches it, finally stopping it. Milo reels it back in, being careful as to not damage it further.
“Got you!” Milo untangles the poster from the fishing hook, and hands it to Melissa.
“Ok, we have one minute, let’s go!” Melissa starts running again. Zack runs after, wondering if all of this effort is really worth it.
They burst back into the classroom, and Melissa slams the crumpled, slightly mud stained, slightly damaged poster onto the teacher’s desk. “Done!”
The teacher sighs. “Well done, you three.”
Milo and Melissa high five, then turn to give Zack high fives. Zack turns to look down at their poster, still good even under the mess. “That was definitely not easy, at all.” He admits. “Is everything like this for you? So much harder than for everyone else?”
Milo nods. “Basically everything! Everything goes wrong for me, which makes easy stuff much more difficult. And it makes hard stuff much more difficult. The school has to give me a lot of accommodation just so I can actually do classwork and tests.”
“Damn, man, that sucks.”
Milo laughs him off. “It’s just Murphy’s Law. C’mon, we’re gonna miss the bus!” He grabs Zack’s hand and pulls him out of the classroom.
Given troubles with the stairs, the door, and the pavement, they miss the bus anyway. Getting from the classroom to the bus with five minutes to spare should have been easy… but Zack supposes that nothing, not even this, is easy for Milo Murphy.