I can't believe I got detention.

The worst part is that I have to get this slip signed by a parent. I'm currently trying to figure out which parent would be less mad about it.

On the one hand, my dad would be glad I have friends to talk, but he'd be very disapproving about us talking in class. He wouldn't get mad, but he'll immediately snitch on me to mom and she'll flip.

On the other hand, I could possibly soften the blow when telling mom myself—by mentioning the fact that I got on the football team. She hates watching sports but she really wants to watch me playing it for some reason. Also, she's not a huge snitch.

"Are you worried about the detention?" Rosier asks, his gaze flicking downwards to my bottom. Chewing on is a habit I have whenever I'm feeling nervous or apprehensive about something. But it's perceptive of him to notice, seeing how he'd only known me for two days. And we've barely spoken to each other during that time.

"I'll have to get it signed. It's my first detention...and my parents are going to be disappointed."

"I'll sign it for you!" Finny exclaims, snatching the slip from me. "It's the least I can do after getting you in trouble."

I'm shocked at her blatant dishonesty. Ro seems to be too—he's staring at her with his mouth hanging open.

I balk. "That's like...forgery?"

"It's not like forgery, it IS forgery." Ro pauses for a moment and then adds, "Do it."

"How is it forgery?" Finny asks, scrawling a signature above the dotted line. I lean over to see that she has scrawled her own name in huge untidy letters.

Oh crap.

"It's supposed to be his parent's signature, you idiot," Ro exclaims, snatching it from her.

"How would I know what his parent's signature looks like?"

We both look at her, aghast. I rack my mind on how to explain this random signature to my parents' and get them to sign beside it.

"What?" she asks plaintively. "I signed my own slip like that too, it's fine."

"Just take my slip." Ro sighs, handing it to me.

"No, you can't show that one to your parents." I try to give it back but he tucks my original slip into his pocket.

"They won't mind," he insists. "You should go, your dads been waiting in the car a long while."

I turn to note that he is, in fact, here. I don't know how Rosier recognized him from all the other parents—it's not like they've met. But when I turn around to ask him Finny and he have both disappeared into thin air.

I shrug it off and make my way to the car, saying hi to my dad and making a spontaneous decision to wait till my mom gets home to sign the slip.

"So, do you know the name of your friend yet?" my dad asks as he drives us home.

"Ro," I quickly say, glad that Finny had been able to drag a name out of him.

"Ohh...is that a girl's name I hear?" Dad wiggles his brows and gives me a sideways look, preparing to annoy me.

"No, Rosier is a guy," I say, deciding not to mention Finny.

Dad would tease me mercilessly and I'd never hear the end of it. Finny seems really nice—and she's pretty and all—but I don't want him making assumptions. Everyone just makes assumptions, don't they? When a boy meets a girl?

I know he's kidding, and he's usually very funny. But it rubs me the wrong way sometimes when he assumes there's something romantic going on with a girl I just met.

When we get home, he drags me straight to the kitchen to eat some fruits before he let me go up to my room. He pulls a plate from the fridge of cut orange squares which look suspiciously like papayas.

"I don't eat papayas,' I remind him as he pushes me into a seat and traps me.

'They're mangoes,' he says, holding one near my mouth with an expression of sincerity. He waves it about till I let him feed it to me.

"They're papayas," I state, getting up from my seat. 

He looks at me in surprise and pops one into his mouth. "These are mangoes. Your mom cut them up before she left for work, but I saw them earlier and they were definitely mangoes."

He feeds me another bite and I realize that I've allowed myself to be fooled yet again.

"They're papayas, dad." I groan. "How can you not tell the difference?"

"I really tasted a mango. It must be a platter of mixed mangoes and papayas...you can try them all and figure out which ones are the mangoes," he adds hopefully.

'What? No!'

I go up to my room to start on homework, and I'm finishing up when mom gets home from work.

"How was school?" she asks, stepping through the doorway.

"I got on the football team."

"Wow! That's amazing...that was fast!" She stares at me a bit. "Are you good at football?"

"Well, no," I say, a bit miffed. "I kicked the ball backwards but it hit the goal somehow. It was such a fluke."

"But that's marvelous anyhow! I'm excited to see you play!"

I start chewing on my lip again. I hadn't expected to get on the team, and now I don't know how I'm going to keep up. I'm really bad at football.

"Don't worry sweetheart, you'll get good once you start practicing." Mom smiles kindly.

"Uh, maybe. Oh, by the way, um, I got a little late to class after tryouts and I got a detention. Could you sign it please?" I ramble, shoving the slip at her before she can ask any questions.

She takes her time reading it and I can see her mood deteriorating, eyebrows drawing together in a frown. "It says here that you were talking in class."

"Um, yes, but...it was about football."

Her lips tip back into a smile as she's reminded of my athletic prowess. To my relief she signs the slip and leaves, adding another word of congratulations on the way out.

________

A/n: y'all I made this thing of Andrew :>