John, wake up.

No, you do not wish to wake up. You do not want to leave you warm comfortable bed, but...

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Today is Friday and you have school, so you must get up, plus you would really like to keep your sense of hearing. You reluctantly sacrifice your arm to go and turn off that damned clock. The first try you ended up missing and accidentally knocked your glasses on the floor. Whoops. After three intense tries, you finally get it once you get frustrated enough and sweep it off your little end table.

You groan and lay there for a minute, staring up at the blurred ceiling as you debate over whether or not to go to school today. Psh yeah right. As if dad would let you skip a school day just because you were feeling too lazy.

You roll over to the side of your bed—a small shiver runs down your spine as you feel the cold sheets touch your skin—and reach down and grope various areas on the floor in search for your glasses. Once you find them, you slide the cold plastic on your face and begin to prepare yourself for your day.

Your outfit consists of plain jeans, a blue hoodie, and some normal tennis shoes. You put your ghost busters shirt on underneath your hoodie. You quickly brush your teeth and grab your backpack from your room before you steadily head down the stairs.

You find your dad standing over the stove with his silly 'Kiss the cook' apron on, you see him pour pancake mix onto the pan while you glance at the stack he has sitting next to him. He didn't seem to notice your presence though, so you muster up enough energy and try your best to sneak past him and snatch a pancake from the pile. You fail miserably. You run at your top speed to the stack, yank the off the top one, end up accidentally tipping over the pile, and dart out of the room thinking that you've succeeded. But you didn't. You ended up tripping over the corner of your couch on your way to the front door and fall to the ground, making a large thud. Your pancake, sadly, flew out of your hands and smacked the wall beside the door before finally landing on the floor.

"John?" Your dad calls out, taking a break from the demanding work of making pancakes and leans into the doorway to peak at you. "Are you alright?"

You instantly stand up and turn around fast enough to brace yourself for the flying breakfast food that was aimed at you. The pancake hits your chest and you waste no time on catching it before it falls.

"Imokaybyeloveyouhaveagoodday!" You shout, your voice raising slightly in pitch before collecting your things and darting out the door. You run down your neighborhood for a small amount of time, fear that your father will throw more pancakes at you, before steadying yourself to a walking pace. You sigh and tear a small chunk off your fluffy(well flattened) breakfast cake and pop it into your mouth as you swiftly walk to school. You notice that the sky is hidden underneath a blanket of grayish clouds, it's been like this for a few days. You hope that today isn't the day that it finally decides to rain, you didn't bring your umbrella.

You pass Rose's house on the way and almost do a double take when you see her emerge from it. She's wearing an old white shirt with some purple octopus on it(you never did understand what that thing was), a black skirt, and knee high white socks with her normal white shoes. You stop abruptly and turn around to greet her with less than half of your eaten pancake in your hand.

"Rose!" You shout excitedly with a mouth full of fluffy goodness as the blonde hurries over to you, throwing the strap to her black messenger bag over her arm.

"Hello, John." Rose says in that familiar calm voice as she comes to a stop to greet you, you notice that she looks a bit.... distraught..? You can't really tell because of that well placed mask that seems to hide most of her emotions. She gives you a small smile and nods to your nearly eaten pancake, "I see that someone has had a filling breakfast." she tries to hide her chuckle with her hand but fails miserably, you no long see any traces of uncertainty and let yourself smile.

"Hey I wash in a rush today!" You say, accidentally adding the "sh" sound with some of your words. You playfully hit Rose's shoulder when her chuckle turns into a laugh, she laughs a bit harder at that. You feel a wave of happiness wash over you when you hear Rose's laughter, even if it's short lived.

"Want some?" You offer, swallowing the remaining pieces while giving her a wide, toothy grin. She calms down and looks at your hand for a moment, then she looks back up to you and shakes her head.

"Though it is a generous offer, I'm afraid that I must decline." She said smoothing out her black skirt before giving her attention back to you. "I've already eaten breakfast."

You chuckle softly for a moment before speaking up again, "You think Jade would want any?"

"Oh, why I'm most definitely sure that she would want to eat the rest of your cold, flattened breakfast."

"Har har..." You deadpan(well try, a corner of your mouth twitches up a bit), rolling your eyes. You look at the depressing pancake and sigh, you've really had your fill of this thing and you just don't want to throw it down on the ground for ants to pick at, especially not in Rose's yard. You decide to hold onto it until you get to school, that is when you will say goodbye to this once marvelous pancake and release it into a nearby trash can.

"So Rose," You pipe up, "Are you finally going to walk to school for the first time in, what, two months?" you gasp with sarcasm practically oozing out of you. "Did your car break down?"

She makes a slightly annoyed face and adds an overdramatic roll of her eyes. You notice the corners of her mouth twitch up in the slightest, it would've gone unnoticed had you not been paying attention. "Ah yes, I should've expected these questions." She sighs, "No John, my car is not broken, in fact, I take such good care of it, that the only way it could possibly be damaged in the next month would be if someone totaled it." She says with a matter-of-fact, giving you a smug face.

You mimic Rose and roll your eyes dramatically. "Okay, yeah right. No offense but your car looks like it's about to roll over and die at any given time." You earn a soft punch from her as she scoffs at you.

"So," You giggle, "why have you just now decided to walk to school with me today? If it's not your car then what is it, hmmmm?" You raise your eyebrows and purse your lips.

You wish you hadn't said that.

You see Rose's smug face falter a bit as she quickly glances to her front door. She looks at you for a moment, thinking about whether or not to tell you. Eventually, she let's out a sigh and her lips turn into a small frown.

A wave of worry crashes onto you, you reach out and try to ask her what's wrong, but-

"John, can we go now?" Rose asks, walking up the sidewalk, she's not taking 'no' as an answer.

You stand there for a moment to glance at her house, nothing seems out of the ordinary on the outside.

"Rose, wait!" You say, breaking into a small jog to catch up with the somehow taller blonde. "What's wrong?"

She looks over at you for a moment, thinking, before she looks back ahead. That's not good. Rose always looks at you(or whoever) when she talks, the only time she doesn't is when it's something serious that concerns her.

"Rose..?" Your brows furrow with concern.

"John, it's nothing really." She begins, "It's just that... Let's just say that the person that I ride with isn't doing too well and that they want to go to school alone." Her hands find the strap of her bag and hold onto it as if her life depended on it.

"Rose."

"John, I really don't want to talk about it."

You pause for a moment before you speak. "Okay.. But Rose, you know that when something is bothering you, then you can always come and talk to me about it, okay?"

She looks at you and gives you a small smile.

"I know John, thank you."

You continue to walk as you somehow slip into tense silence, until Rose breaks it and finds an interesting topic to talk about. Did you know snails can sleep up to three years? Weird.

As Rose was explaining the hibernation patterns with snails, you see her little white car speed by, you probably would've noticed it much later had it not been for the honk. You were about to give Rose a questionable look until you see the car suddenly halt to a stop in the middle of the rode. The tinted window on the drivers side slowly disappears and a long thin arm covered in a red sleeve emerges from it. You see the pale hand wave at you two for a second before the owner of the arm decides to give you both the finger. It goes back into the car and you sneak Rose a questionable look before adverting your attention back to the car in time to see the arm back out the window, with a black notebook in it's hand. You notice Rose digging through her messenger bag for a moment before looking back up, as her hands were still buried in her bag. The arm bounces the notebook for a moment before tossing the book onto the sidewalk, they stretch their arm out so far that you got a little peak at their shoulder. The arm returns to the car and with a quick honk it speeds off.

You stand there gaping while Rose speed walks past you to retrieve the notebook. What just happened? You jog up to Rose, who now has the dirtied book in her hand. She opens the cover to find that it had been her literature notes. You both find a drawing—that is really bad—on the back of the front cover that is drawn in red ink. It has this poorly drawn guy with sunglasses handing some, equally as bad, girl a black notebook. The girl on the paper looks as if she's surprised, her hands are hovering over her horrid, mouth. The girl is probably supposed to be Rose seeing as the guy says, 'hears youre shit, rose.' The girl in the drawing '*gAsp*'s and says 'thank you my sweet knight!!!!!!'. You don't really want to look at this anymore, it gives you a headache as you try and figure out how Rose's other arm is attached to her body. You spot a note written with terrible handwriting at the bottom at the page and decide to focus on that.

Rose,
im not going to make this into sappy letter but you forgot to take your wizard porn book to school so me being the classy gentleman that i am i decided to bring you your holy book

-dave

p.s. dont forget your shit

pp.s. sorry for being a dick this morning

You finish reading the small note that was probably meant for Rose's eyes only, and give her a questionable look. You see her face soften and see her lips turn into a genuine smile.

You both walk in a comfortable silence on the way to school, as you try to think of any Dave's that Rose might know.