Three Cheers for Sweethearts [Frerard AU]

PART III: Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10 – TRAFFIC REPORT

A/N: Hey where did all of my excessive commenters go I miss you guys and your reactions

In our notebooks we wrote about our own personal opinions on how the shows went, from the beginning of the process to the end, and what we learned about ourselves as performers. I wrote about hating it the whole way through, but to keep from making Mr. Burner sad or angry, I added that I learned how to deal with things I hated. Maybe that would be enough for credit.

We'd gotten an 88 percent on our skit itself, which was much higher than I'd hoped. We celebrated with high fives and then never speaking of it again. A perfect resolution in my book.

I sat in the back in Drawing and borrowed the colored pencils to finish up my drawing of Ray and me as superheroes. It was cute, but a little boring, and I had plenty of space left on the page. So to the right of my cartoon self, I sketched the outline of a third person.

I started to draw in Mikey's eyes, but I was forced to stop by the end of the day's bell. I liked not being quite done with the drawing – it was one of my favorites, even if not really my best. I wasn't ready to be done with it.

It was the first time in a while I had dreaded the continuing of the week. My week was nearing an end, but I still needed a time jump. Nothing horrible had happened yet. It was bound to as time went on, more and more likely with every second. 

My worrying wasn't in vain. Ready as I'd ever be, I returned to school on Thursday, but something was off.

The path to my locker was obscured by hundreds of pill bottles.

What?

I tried to ignore them, stepping over the little orange cylinders until I got to my locker. The janitor had tried so hard to paint over my locker, but it just wasn't happening. The words FAGS GO TO HELL were definitely still there, and the red was still bleeding through the new white paint, bringing out a sickly salmon color. I took my books to Chemistry and sat in front of Ray, remembering once again that he had something to talk to me about, but I pushed it aside yet again. "What's with the bottles in the hallway?" I asked him.

Ray raised his eyebrows. "You weren't here when it happened? Hunter unlocked his locker and all of those came pouring out. He keeps insisting they aren't his, but they're still trying to figure out how they got there. If someone stuffed all those in his locker, it had to be someone with his combination, which he says he's never told anyone. It's one biiiig mystery," he explained to me sarcastically. I nodded. I had a hunch, one that I wasn't going to share with him.

***

I sat through my classes, waiting until lunch, where I could ask my suspect if he knew what was going on. But he wasn't there.

"Where's Frank?" I asked Ray. He looked up at me, ready to spill his important gossip.

"Oh, things happened during fourth period. They brought both him and Hunter to the office during Phys Ed. What happened was some teachers barged into the gym in the middle of our soccer game and asked to see the two of them regarding – I kid you not, they called it this – The Pill Bottle Case. Had it not been such an intense moment where the whole place was dead silent, I might have laughed. Anyway, so they took them down to the office and everyone just kind of stared out the way they left, like the police were arresting them or something," he chuckled.

"Wow... so they think Frank did it?" Even though I myself thought it had been Frank, considering how set he had been on revenge yesterday, I was only just now realizing how unlikely it was. When would he have had the time to put them there? How did he know Hunter's combination? Or his locker number, for that matter? Where would Frank have gotten those bottles? "How serious are the consequences for something like that?"

He shrugged, like this whole thing was no big deal at all. "Not sure. I would guess detention; probably not more than that."

Wow, I thought to myself. Just wow.