1 Two weeks
Samuel stared at the clock in far corner of the classroom. Only thirty minutes left to go. Thirty minutes and one day down with only a handful left until summer was in full swing.
He twirled a strand of auburn hair between his fingers and absently tapped his pencil against his notebook. Doodles and indiscernible scribbles filled the white-lined paper instead of lecture notes. Samuel usually tried harder to pay attention in class and take meaningful notes to ensure his success during the last days before finals.
Recently, however, his mind often wandered to places farther away than the four-walled school classroom. Even the monotone droning of the elderly man who served as that year's math teacher couldn't bring Samuel back to the present. Who cared about math when very seen he probably wouldn't even be able to go to college and apply all the useless skills he'd spent half of his life learning in public school?
While all his peers would be running off to waste their lives away for the summer, Samuel would be getting ready to face an entirely different fate. Two weeks... that would be the only amount of summer that he would be getting the chance to enjoy.
"Hellooooooooooo earth to airhead." Something hard colliding into the back of Samuel's head broke him free from his thoughts.
"What the hell, Roger?" Samuel rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head and laid his harshest glare on the tall back-haired jock. Roger offered a visibly unapologetic smile as he shrugged his shoulders.
"I tried calling your name three different times, but you didn't seem to pay attention. Drastic situations call for drastic measures." Samuel huffed, just noticing that the rest of the class had already left. Of course, his friend would wait for no one else to be around to yell at him for his antics.
"Drastic situations? Last I checked, there hasn't been anything interesting, let alone drastic, going on around here that justifies this." Samuel picked up the ball from the floor before Roger could. Knowing the dumb jock, he would have just smacked him with it again anyways.
"Sammy-boy, how could you." Roger feigned hurt as both his hands came up to cover his heart.
"You can't possibly mean to tell me that you forgot about the party we planned for your leaving?" The theatrics earned him a roll of the eyes from Samuel as he stood up from his seat.
"We didn't plan anything." The aburn-haired but a high level of emphasis on 'we'. He paused briefly to pick up his backpack before continuing.
"I do remember you decided to plan a party with all your plans and decided to invite me at the last minute." Samuel would've bet all the money in his wallet that their mutual friend Claire made Roger invite him. After all, Roger had always been hopeless in caring gestures if they didn't involve sports.
"What are you talking about, nerd? I planned this party for you." Samuel hoped that he'd have been able to leave Roger behind. That failed, however as the jock caught up to him as he exited the classroom.
"Why can't you just say 'thank you so much Roger' instead of grumbling?" Roger put his friend in a half-headlock, causing Samuel to stumble over his feet.
"Oy. Would you get off, you oversized jock? The day I thank you for anything will never come. The moment I do that, your head will become bigger than it already is." Samuel laughed as he elbowed his friend in the ribs in a feeble attempt to push him away.
Roger refused however as he continued to press his friend for gratitude, pulling him closer as he began to ruffle his hair.
Samuel hide the lump forming in the back of his throat behind another round of laughter as the two friends almost bumped into a set of lockers which helped to break them up effectively. God. As much as Roger annoyed him, Samuel knew that he was going to miss the everyday bickering between him and his unusual friend.
No way in two weeks time would there be any way that the two of them would be able to stay in touch. Not with what Samuel had waiting for him at the start of the summer.
