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Well. This certainly isn't how he expected his life to go, is it?
Not that Phred was expecting much from it. He sort of expected it to just keep going the way it's been going; quiet and halfhearted, just like everything else he does. But then he woke up in an alien shuttle, and there was this whole thing... and now there's laser guns pointed at their desks. Lovely. In fact, this is the ideal situation for a 9 year old boy to be in.
...Catch the sarcasm there? He was never anywhere near as good at sarcasm as Phil.
He glances at Smiley, who's sat diagonally across from him. She's still smiling, although he's finding it hard to tell whether or not it's genuine. It is like her to smile through the worst of times, even if she has to force it onto her face. »She's living up to her name, I guess.«
He then turns over to Zack, who's sat to his right. This is probably the first time he's ever seen someone look more bored than him in a class, but he can't really say he blames him. Zack usually spends his free time muttering complaints about the cold, and now that he's at a more desirable (albeit feverish) temperature, he has nothing else to do but lay his head down.
Not to mention there's no schoolwork. None of them really like to do schoolwork--I mean, who does? But when he feels rested enough to not sleep, he usually does his schoolwork. By some sort of miracle, he's usually able to figure out what they're doing pretty quickly, so his grades manage to be alright.
But, when they're sat in a bunch of chairs with guns strapped to their heads, there's not much to do to ease their boredom other than... chat. It's not like Ms. Cophey can stop them.
"Hey, Zack," Phred calls out, tapping his pencil once, twice, thrice against his desk.
"What?" Zack pulls his head out of his arms just to half-glare at him. "I'm busy."
Phred cracks a smile. "Mhm, sure you are. I haven't gotten the chance to get to know you very well, y'know. Considering how you spent all of elementary through fake-highschool freezing your butt off."
Zack's brow furrows, but the way the corner of his mouth twitches upward is undeniable. "It's not exactly easy to converse with people when you're stuttering through every sentence."
Phred props himself up on one arm, turning to face Zack fully. "People live with stutters all the time, y'know. I mean, for all you knew, you could've just had a stutter." Zack rolls his eyes in response, looking away from him again.
Smiley chimes in, turning around in her chair to look at them. "And nothing's wrong with stuttering!"
Zack retorts, "There is when you can't talk. I'd stutter so bad I couldn't get a word out, so I just never spoke."
Phred nods. "I guess that makes sense. It's too bad, 'cause you've got a nice voice."
"What?"
"What?"
Phred and Zack stare each other down. Smiley, wisely, turns right back around.
Zack indiscreetly flips Phred off. In response, Phred blurts, "Geez, it was a compliment, you don't need to be so hotheaded about it!"
Zack thinks about it for a moment, then, after contemplating, he does it again. Ms. Cophey either doesn't notice or doesn't care.
"You're so rude," Phred taps his desk again with his pencil, tone neutral as ever. "Fine then, you can ask me a question. I probably won't have answers to most of them."
"Okay, here's one: Who the hell named you Phred with a PH?"
"...My mom? Who do you think named me, the nurse?" Phred smiles.
"Oh, you know what I meant! Why did she pick that?!"
"She wanted to be quirky," he deadpans. "She was going to name me Haleigh if I was a girl." He makes sure to really enunciate the eigh in that statement, and hears Smiley bite back a snicker.
"Ew. Your parents should be banned from naming children," Zack fidgets with the frayed ends of the scarf wrapped loosely around his neck.
"You have any better ideas?"
"No. I hate kids."
"But we are kids."
"I wasn't a kid. I was at least ten pre-crisis!"
"Still a kid." Phred is just messing with him at this point.
Zack inhales a deep breath, then stares off towards the window. "For someone as incompetent as yourself, you sure know how to piss a guy off."
Phred's easy grin only widens. "No, you're just easy to irritate." he glances towards the teacher, who literally couldn't be less interested in the conversation. It appears he, inexplicably, cares about not getting in trouble. "If Phil or Smiley had nearly as little bullshit tolerance as you, I wouldn't have any friends."
"I tolerate a lot of bull-crap!" Smiley cheers. "One time my brother shook up a can of soda and set it loose in my room while I was inside. Everything was sticky for, like, months!"
The two boys look at her, then exchange glances, coming to a mutual agreement about something. "I will never be ungrateful for not having siblings," Zack mutters.
Then, perhaps abruptly, Phil returns into the room, carrying a bucket full of water. He looks like he might topple over, but none of them can really offer any help right now, as much as Phred would've--ironically--loved to have something to do right now. At least it's an amusing sight, seeing this petite little young boy struggling with a bucket.
"Zack, I need a favor," Phil huffs out.
Zack sighs, "Alright. Hit me."
And, before they know it, Phil is perched on Zack's desk, dangling this bucket over the boy's flaming head. Zack is bent over in his seat, one hand on his knee and the other on the desk to balance himself. He's trying not to set off the newly implemented auto-scanning system of the school while also trying to make it a little easier for Phil.
"So why exactly are we using Zack as a stovetop?" Phred asks.
Phil smiles in that smug way he does when he's had a plan. Even now, with such limited resources, of course he's gonna find a way. He always does.
"You'll see."
Smiley and Phred watch on until Phil finally sets the bucket onto Zack's desk, only to... pour a handful of old coffee grounds into it.
"Seriously, Mr. Clean, what on Earth are you doing?" Zack frowns at the other boy.
"Have some faith in him," Smiley says. "He's saved us twice."
"Yeah, yeah, get over him already, dreamy-eyes," Zack flicks a pen at Smiley, who then glares at him as she catches it.
Without directly answering the question, Phil stirs the bucket then heats it over Zack's head for a minute longer before trotting over and placing it directly onto Ms. Cophey's desk. "For you."
They then watch as their teacher chugs a whole bucket full of coffee. »It cannot be that good,« Phred thinks. Then, in a burst of energy, Ms. Cophey's hand, carrying her ruler, suddenly begins to spin in circles that should not be physically possible for a human hand, essentially turning the room into a mutilation hazard. Not that that's any better than the other things currently going on within the room.
Phil saws something open with Ms. Cophey's newly acquired sawblade, with the utter precision of a high school student in a woodshop class. Then, without another word, he exits the room.
"...Have faith in him," Zack mocks.
"What is your beef with Smiley today?" Phred gestures wildly towards Smiley, who is sitting there... about as innocent as innocence gets.
"He just hates me," Smiley turns around to face them again. "I think he's just jealous."
"Jealous of WHAT?!" Zack cries.
"The fact that Phil looks at me like I'm all pretty and not you."
"That's your gender euphoria talking."
"I- no it's not!" Smiley sits up, appalled at the mere idea.
"I'm sure it is. Like how you were showing off to everybody when your mom let you get a dress. Besides, when did he ever look at you like that?" Phred muses.
"He said woah when he saw me with my hair," Smiley says, as though it's a foolproof piece of evidence. "And he said it looked nice."
"I mean, yeah, it's kinda hard not to woah when your friend just suddenly obtains a full head of hair." Phred leans back in his chair slightly, but not enough to topple over. "Though I'd have asked a few more questions. You say you just... found a can of hair spray in there? Not that I'd know, but I don't quite think hair spray works like that."
"It's alien hair spray!" Smiley exclaims. "It just sprays hair onto you! I'd show you if I still had it!"
"Alright. But, even with that--where did you get the hair tie? Those definitely don't just appear out of nowhere." Phred tugs a loose string on his sleeve. It's getting increasingly harder to tell if he's just trying to rile them up or if his questions are sincere.
"Oh, you clearly haven't seen my mom's couch cushions," Zack huffs. "You can find anything in there."
"It's alien magic! Nobody else is ever gonna believe we were abducted by aliens, but we gotta believe each other! What happened to friendship is magic?!"
"You watch My Little Pony?" Phred questions, turning his attention fully to her, only for her to immediately get defensive,
"It's a good show!"
"I-I'm not saying it isn't! I was just surprised--"
Tap-tap-tap-tap
The sound of Smiley bouncing her leg cuts him off. Phred sets his chair back down, leaning one arm against his desk. "...Seriously, though, you okay?"
"I need to move," she groans. "I need to mooooooove. The teachers always let me pace around. I can't pace like this. I'm gonna DIE. Everything is awful."
"That's not very optimistic of you," Phred quips.
"...I'm gonna die HAPPY. Everything is... mediocre." An effort was made, I guess. She starts to brush her hands through her hair, a recently unlocked stim. "Uhhhgh I hate alien inventions."
"What about your mystery hair spray?"
"...I hate most alien inventions." She glances once behind her. "Don't look at me like that. You know, back onto our earlier topic? You're totally jealous, Zack. You look at him the same way you look at Phred and I."
Zack whirls around so fast his own scarf whacks him in the face. He stares at her with genuine mortification in his eyes. "With platonic, irritated affection, yeah."
Smiley shakes her head. "Nooo, you've totally been giving Phred heart eyes since second grade."
"Ohhh, so you are into me," Phred jokes, leaning more against his arm.
Zack crumples up a paper he didn't even realize he had on his desk, his pale cheeks suspiciously pink. "Go die in a ditch, both of you." As he says this, the flame on his head, which I did Not forget about until now, flares up just slightly.
Phred adjusts to shape his hands into a heart for Zack. "I love you too."