Chapter: Have we Graduated Yet?

Yeah so we’re finally here.

Jed’s asleep.  He stayed at the library like for two days straight cramming for the placement test and then he had the freakout of all freakouts. Worse than Prom.

“I LOST MY HAT!”

“Dude. We can get you another hat…”

“It was my STUDY HAT! I lost my STUDY HAT and now I CAN’T REMEMBER ANYTHING! ANYTHING!  I can’t remember THERMODYNAMICS! I can’t remember SIM’S LAW!! -- DUB! I can’t remember THE RIGHT HAND SCREW RULE!!!!”

“Can’t help you there buddy, I prefer goofy style myself...”

“I can’t remember TRIGONOMETRY!  I can’t remember DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS!!!”

“Well, uh, maybe you won’t need it…”

Okay that was the wrong thing to say.  He’s freaking out so hard, man, it’s hard to get a word in.

Ally’s back from work. She looks at me and I’m like, ‘help’.  She shakes her head.  “Yo, JED. Math sucks.”

Ha, good one Ally.

Jed shuts up for thirty seconds.  “How can you SAY that?  Math does not suck!”

“Calculus sucks balls.”

Now Jed’s like, pissed.  “Ally! Calculus is very important!  It’s simkind’s way of precisely describing the universe we live in!”

Ally like, makes for the fridge. “And differential calculus is fucking USELESS.”

“Useless? USELESS?”  Now Jed is following her to the fridge.  “But…but…everything in the physical universe is governed by laws described by differential equations and differential calculus. EVERYTHING!”

“Not this refrigerator”, says Ally, grabbing a brew.

“Simton’s law of COOLING?  T (t) = T_e + (T₀ − T_e ) e ^{- kt}  ?   Try making a refrigerator that doesn’t obey THAT!”

“Ally’s law of cooling”, says Ally, and then she like chugs half the bottle.  “Cool ones are better than hot ones.”  She winks at me as she heads for the living room.  “Your turn”, she mouths to me so Jed can’t see.

“Hey Jed”, I like get in there before he starts up again.  “Let’s go check out the Whackamole at the arcade.”  Jed loves the Whackamole. Go figure.

So Jed freaking out wasn’t the worst thing.  The worst thing was, like, Bree and I got busted.

So like we’re packing and shit, right, cause it’s like, time to go.  Well.  Jed and Ally, they're all packed. They’re all done, so they go to the movies. Also, because Bree’s over again.  She’s been coming to town almost every day. Yes. Jed and Ally have seen lots of movies, ha.

So, Bree’s like in a hurry, because she has to go to a big llama meeting before school starts.  But she drove all the way from Midcentralburg anyway, just to 'help me pack', but really to…yeah.  Then, she's like in the shower, and I like, made waffles in the toaster.  So then she's like all, “YOU COOKED!”…and then we did it again, ha.  But then she showered again and then we had to eat like really fast. 

So now, I guess I should pack.  Over in the corner, Jed and I still like, have the basket that Bree brought us.  Jed wouldn’t let us get rid of it, but now it’s like, got to go.

Well, let’s start with this.  I pull the llama out of the basket. “We gotta pack this”, I say, but then, hey, llama. It’s got like a button on it.  A big, red, shiny button. Never noticed that before.

“Don’t play with the llama, Tair”, says Bree.  “It’s not a toy.”

“I wasn’t playing with it”, I say, and I toss it in the basket.

“Good”, she says.  Then she like, stretches, and says, “Well, gtg.”  She takes our plates in the kitchen.

Huh.  Cause it LOOKS like a toy.

Except there’s this shiny red button thing.

Like, what is that for?

So I push it.

But it doesn’t do anything, right?  I mean, it must do something.

So I push it again. Nope.

So I jiggle it. Nope.

So I like, push it and hold it.  Nope.

So I like - toss the llama back in the basket, cause Bree’s coming back.

“Some idiot keeps paging me, even though I’m not on call tonight”, she says.  “I had to shut the phone off.”  She smiles.  She’s all ready for work and shit.  She’s got war paint on and stuff under the costume.  Hot.  “Well this is it!  See you in Midcentralburg!”

Then she like makes for the door. No. Wrong.  “Hey”, I say. “Kissing.”

“Llama”, she says, wiggling the ears. “Working.  Bye-ee!”  But she doesn’t move very fast, ha.

“Kissing”, I say.  I’m almost caught up but she’s out the door.

“Working….” she says but she’s still moving slow.

“Kissing”, I say,  and so we do.

Yeah.

“Fraternizing!”

“Trista!  It’s, uh, it’s not what it looks –“

“I know fraternizing when I see it and that was fraternizing!  Not to mention mis-use of the Emergency Llama System!  I’ll have your ears for this!”

Yeah.

So now Bree’s like, “I’ll call YOU” and shit.

Yeah.

I’m so bummed, man, I’m like, may as well pack.  Then Jed and Ally come home, and they help me finish.  Also, Ally helps me drink a few brews, ha, so that helps.  

And then this morning, we’re about to get in the van, and Ally finds Jed’s hat, under the trampoline. 

“I owe you brew for LIFE” says Jed.

“Nah”, says Ally. 

“For LIFE” says Jed.

“Well…maybe one. When we get there”, says Ally.

Which we finally do.

When we get out of the van, Jed can’t say anything.  He just kind of giggles and then he hugs us.

That big freakout he had over the placement test? Yeah. He like won a big scholarship. For Temporal whatsits, ha.  But he was like, bummed at first because he didn’t get one of the three spots.  He got something called the “Wainwright Legacy Spot”.  At first he was like, “No, if it’s from my Grandpa I’m not taking it.”  But it wasn’t, the spot is like from some Project or something.  And it, like, comes with free rent for like, a house! 

So Ally and I are like, dude, some project wants to give you a house, TAKE THE HOUSE.

“Holy crap, Jed”, says Ally.  “This is what you get for your scholarship?  You can owe me another brew, little bro.”

Yeah.  Ally’s here in the house, too.  At first, she was gonna get her own apartment, but Jed was like, “You have to stay” and I was like, “What if he freaks out again” and Ally was like, “I guess someone needs to make sure you eat”.

Me?  I got into art.  Something called Art for the Artless.  Jed’s like, “Sorry dude, maybe we can get you into herbology later”.  Ally’s like, “Nah, art’s cool.  It’s one way you can stick it to THE MAN.”

 I’m like, whatever. Bree says there’s a beach.  And I like borrowed a few herb seeds from Jed’s Grandpa’s house, so there will also be herb, ha.  And Bree.

Uni is so gonna rock.