White box

Lunches

The problem with Amelie resolved itself. No one knew why, but she dropped out and moved to the countryside, Robbie returned to school, but he was kind of listless and didn't cause many problems, everyone figured it was due to the missing memories.

It looked like they had offered him to skip a year, but Robbie had refused, saying he remembered most school-stuff. For a change, he paid some attention to the classes, and the teachers even expressed the hope that Robbie would finish middle-school without red marks. Robbie was a year older than Marcus; he would be graduating. No plans to attend high school, though.

Bill had also returned to school in one piece, and they could continue flirting during lunch breaks, although-- now it was five of them--

"You all sure accepted me easily," even Bill was confused about how proactively Clem and Mats had set them up as a lunching group.

"If our alien likes you that much, you must be amusing," Clem said.

"Your alien might slip in some Wookie speech in the formulas," Marcus said, as the reason for the three (or more accurately Clem and Mats) popping in was them needing help with studying.

"Mercy, alien prince," Clem continued the act by trying to rank Marcus up for some reason-- in an accurate manner.

"No sane person wants to be an alien prince," Marcus replied somewhat in amusement. "You can't do what you want, and your brother is trying to eliminate competition."

"Don't tell me you also write stories," Mats noted, part-way listening as he was solving a maths problem himself.

"No way," Marcus replied.

"Hmm, I thought August Gold no.2 might make an entrance," Mats said in a teasing manner.

"Oh god," Clem groaned. "Don't even bring him up, my sister is in the Fanclub."

"Is she ok?" Bill asked, then continued seeing the confusion. "That White Box book is infamous for being found in rooms of suicide victims."

Hoo boy. Marcus couldn't add anything to that; Timothy had been one of those people.

"Ah--" a realization settled on Clem's face. "Nah, she quit that after the fifth page. She's a fan of the bestsellers, not the uh--"

"Critically acclaimed book with seven different awards," even Wilbert added in.

"You've read it?" Mats asked.

"I have," Wilbert admitted. "And so has Tim, we both wrote about it in our winter reviews thing."

"How do you know that?" Marcus asked. Timothy had written something like that, but those were private. There was no way Timothy would have written something like that if it was on public display and-- as far as the memories he had said - it was an embarrassing review at that.

"You'll be glad to know - miss Jenkins had me read your review as a reference," Wilbert said.

Before Marcus knew it, his hands were on his face. "Agh--" Why-- Miss Jenkins... that thing was meant to be burned. Timothy would commit a second suicide if he knew.

"Wow, just what sort of stuff was in it?" Clem sounded amazed.

"I'm curious as well," Bill said.

"I can't say with Tim looking so tortured," Wilbert said. He was probably the only decent one among the bunch.

Marcus straightened out, feeling glad it was not Mats who had read it.

"Think Miss Jenkins will share if we say we need a reference?" Clem asked.