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Moving his hand up to his head, he plucked a fallen leaf out of his curls. Living in Smithfield had given him fresh air among many other things, but the amount of debris from trees that made its way into his hair was getting quite annoying.
There were other things he missed about the city. The bodegas, the ability to blend in, the…
Yeah, that was about it.
Bringing his fingers back up to his curls to make sure there was nothing else, a broken oak gall dropped into his soup, and he stared in disbelief as he watched it sink.
“Man..” He grumbled, getting the lid to the thermos and screwing it shut. At least he still had his apple.
“Jay!” A voice yelled, and he turned his head over to its direction, watching as Lloyd rushed over to the tree he was sitting at.
The blonde sat down, brimming with excitement as the older boy stared at him, quirking his eyebrow. “Are you skipping?”
Lloyd looked offended, a hand clutching his chest. “No! I have a free. Are you?”
“Same, but I thought you had..”
“Dropped it last week.”
“Oh,” Jay said, pushing his lunchbox off his lap to fully focus on the blonde. “What’s got you so worked up?”
“Okay,” He grinned, holding his hands in front of him before slinging off his backpack. “We need to pretend your dad isn’t Cliff.”
Sitting up, Jay smiled back before quickly adjusting himself to face the boy, hoping there wasn’t any dirty residue on the bottom of his jeans. “Okay. On the count of three?”
Lloyd nodded, and they began counting down, not able to stop the smiles forming on their faces.
“Guess what came in the mail this morning.” He whispered after they finished, like it was a secret.
“What?? Dude spill.” He whispered back, fiddling with his fingers to quell any outbursts of excitement.
The blonde moved to his backpack, unzipping the biggest zipper and looking back at Jay before pulling something out antagonizingly slow.
A flimsy novel was pulled out, and Jay gaped as he realized what it was.
“No. Way.”
“I know!! My mom did this radio contest for me so I’d get this!” He giggled, handing it over to Jay.
He moved his fingers over the sheen cover, his smile hurting the muscles in his cheeks. “Holy shit. They haven’t even released this!”
“I’m technically not supposed to show anybody else the pages but..” He began, waving off into the distance. “I figured you’re cool enough.”
Jay looked back up at him, lips forming into a grateful pout as he pushed his lunchbox further, colliding with his backpack. “Can we read it right now? The last one was a huge cliffhanger.”
“Duh.” Lloyd replied, moving his own stuff and finding a comfortable position next to Jay, half of the comic on his lap and the other on the blondes.
Taking a second to read off the contributor page, Jay pointed at a name. “They added a new artist.”
“They did?” He asked, and his eyes lit up at the name. “Oh my god. She worked on Fritz Donnegan and the Garlock Queen! She’s legendary.”
“Wait, that’s her?” Jay asked looking up from the book. “DIdn’t you mention seeing her at a con last year?”
“Yeah, dude.” He began, leaning back against the tree. “She said she’s in the works of trying to get into the franchise permanently. Said something about an upcoming movie.”
“Doesn’t she do CGI too?”
“Yes! I hope they get her in for the remake of the newer volumes. The CGI’s been lacking lately.”
“Do you remember in the last movie where the sludge monsters were very clearly copied and pasted?”
Lloyd barked out a laugh, and Jay started giggling too, preventing either of them from stopping. “Oh my god–” The blonde wheezed out, burying his face in his hands. “It looked so bad”
“Thankfully Fritz is a good actor. Saved the whole film”
“Yeah. For sure.” He agreed, fixing his shirt.
They stopped giggling, and Jay perked up. “Speaking of the new movie..”
Lloyd’s attention whipped away from the joke, completely zoning in on whatever Jay was about to say.
“They’re having Christina Fox play the new mission commander.”
“Holy crap.”
Jay nodded, moving his hands as he talked. “They’re giving her a bigger role than the comics do. She’s gonna go with Fritz to space, ‘n help him battle the imperium knights.”
“No way.” Lloyd gaped, grinning again. “I hated how they sidelined her in the 7th volume.”
“Right?” Jay replied, rolling his eyes in annoyance. “They switched the writers after that, right?”
“Yeah. I’m so glad the fanbase bullied them into fixing it. Classic ‘women can’t be good superiors’ move” The blonde began, sighing. “I remember when it came out, I got Nya to watch it with me.”
Giggling, Jay cocked his head to the side. “She must’ve gone on a tangent.”
“For good reason,” He sighed, shaking his head. “She literally wrote an email despite not knowing anything else.”
“Sounds like her,” Jay added, and the two grinned before reverting their attention back to the novel as Lloyd opened his mouth again.
“Ok, flip the page.”
“Wait!” Jay protested, looking up at the boy. “I wanna read the table of contents.”
Lloyd rolled his eyes, waiting for the other boy to finish. Eventually Jay flipped the page, and their eyes skimmed over art and dialogue.
“Beats any movie.”
“I dunno, their version of volumes 5-10 was pretty good.”
“Yeah, but only because it fit together chronologically better than the comics did.”
Jay nodded, and they turned their attention back to the comic. Pages were flipped, and sometimes Jay would accidentally flip two, earning him small flicks from the younger boy beside him.
Halfway through, the bell rang, and Lloyd sighed. “We didn’t even get to find out who’s mind controlling the aliens!”
Looking over his shoulder to see the staff completely miss them, he looked back at him with a grin. “We could skip.”
Lloyd took his own glance, eyes darting back between the doors and the comic. “We could skip.”
Jay turned another page, and the second bell became nothing but an afterthought. They could miss whatever weird game their gym teacher came up with– what was with the gym teachers here and making shit up?-- especially because they were playing some frankenstein game of kickball, baseball, and basketball.
It was seriously getting to a point.
“I hope he doesn’t mark us as absent,” Lloyd sighed, flipping another page.
Jay looked over, eyeing the blonde. “Mr. Kitchens doesn’t ever take attendance.”
“Wait, seriously?”
Laughing, he nodded. “I’ve skipped like– 5 classes already. He hasn’t marked me absent for one”
“What have you been doing? We only have gym every other day. School only started like, two weeks ago!” The blonde asked, tilting his head.
“Uh…” he trailed off, pursing his lips into a sheepish smile as green eyes connected the dots.
“Gross. I don’t wanna know.”
Laughing, he turned his gaze back to the book. “Point is, we’ll be fine.”
“We better be. My mom’ll freak if I miss a class.”
“Why don’t you just swipe the envelopes from the mail? Ya know, intercept the message?”
Lloyd sighed, shaking his head. “My mom made me sign up for the app that gives you immediate notifications. Every time I forget to turn in homework she totally blows up my phone.”
“Yikes,” He winced, and the blonde smiled. “It’s not too bad. It motivates me to get stuff done on time.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
The younger boy rolled his eyes, grinning before his face shifted to panic. He checked his watch, eyes darting back up to Jay. “We have to finish this! We only have 40 minutes to get through the other half,” he hissed, turning his focus back to the comic.
“Shit. Dude, lock in.”
Lloyd nodded, green eyes trained on the words and images portrayed as Fritz Donnegan shot an alien with his blaster. “I’m fuckin’ locked.”