Note: This is a short chapter. Sorry. I did some revisions from the original. The verb tense was worse than it is now. I'm not 100% happy with it, but this is the 2nd attempt at revising it. Open Office crashed on me the last time I revised this chapter. :( Additionally, this chapter was actually my original first chapter.

** Chapter 4 **

--Thursday - 15-Feb-2007 07:00 --

"Brian!  It's seven o'clock!  Wake up or you will miss the bus for your field trip!" My mom shouts from the kitchen.

I blearily look at my alarm clock and confirm my Mom’s allegations. 

The delightful scent of bacon and pancakes cooking downstairs are like an intangible set of my Mom's fingers tugging on my nose and exposed ear to drag me out of bed. 

"Uhhhhgggg, brains...need more brains!" I mumble as I stagger around my room looking through the piles of clean, mostly clean, sorta clean and smelly dirty clothes to find a passable ensemble.  The Gap, Tommy Hilfiger et al are obviously wasted on my keen fashion sense. 

"Now, where did I put my clean underwear and socks that Mom washed the other day?  Not in this chair...hmmm...not on the dresser...inside the dresser?!?!  Who in the heck put them away?" 

Am I gross?  Not at all!  I do draw the line on having clean underwear and socks.  I mean, what is wrong with wearing the same jeans for a week or two?  T-Shirts, those can last for two days if you don't really exert yourself too much.  I am a geek, so not exerting myself is not a problem.  I think of it as being "environmentally friendly" by helping to reduce the impact that doing laundry has on our fragile ecosystem.  I tried that line of reasoning with my Mom once, but she laughed at my face and just said  word. GEO.  Okay, technically that is not a word, but you get the picture.

I glance at my PC. “Oh crap!  Whisper!  I wonder if she is still alive?”  If I could only login to GEO for a few minutes! 

I am pretty darn proud of my rig.  I pieced it together component by component.  I’m most proud of the motherboard and CPU though.  My electronics teacher had it donated to him.  The motherboard had a burned out capacitor and a few of the pins were bent and broken on the CPU. It took me a week of tinkering with it, but I managed to fix it!  My teacher couldn’t see how I could have done that without a high end microscopic soldering set, but he gave me an extra credit A and let me keep the board.  It turned out to be one of those new quad-core CPUs!  Score one for the geeks!

Where was I?

Oh yeah, If you can't tell, I am not a morning person, at all.  Mom's tricks to subliminally motivate my perpetually empty teenager stomach are just evil.  I swear that she has fan that she uses to blow the fresh cooked food smells directly into my room.  Maybe she vents the stove directly into the central duct work with a special "Brian's room" bypass system.  I don't know, but I would bet on the bones of my many broken alarm clocks that they wished my Mom would just use the already 100% effective working "Brian Wakeup System" instead of buying me more alarm clocks for me to break.

Slipping on my obviously mislabeled tennis shoes, cause, really...how many people really use "tennis shoes" to play tennis?   Crazy things to think about at 8 AM, but someone has to elevate the general level of consciousness these days, right?   I grab my book filled school backpack and stumble down the stairs to eat breakfast. 

Yes! I did all that other personal hygiene stuff already. I just didn't think you wanted to be bombarded with my insights on tooth brushing techniques or how many shakes before you are playing with it.  I hope not anyway, `cause that is just TMI.  Pssst...twice is the answer.

Did I take a shower?  Really?!?!  You think that is important to this story?  Okay...you asked for it.  No, I did not take a shower during that "hygiene" time and do you want to know why?  Well I will tell you why.  Lindsay Anne Peters, age 14, that is why.  I really am a "morning" shower person.  I love nothing more than a delightful hot shower first thing in the morning to get my day started.  That morning routine came to a bitter end the day my loving younger sister turned 13 and started noticing boys.  Yeah, she "turned" on me and my parents.  "Turned", you know, like the classical D&D clerical spell, "Turn Undead"!  She went from being a sweet yet loving brat that you loved to hate and who wouldn't leave you alone. To become a hot water stealing, bathroom hogging, conniving fashion victim who wanted nothing to do with you, ever. 

I can't really say that the last part is a bad thing, but I do sometimes miss her devotion to all things "big brother".  Nothing I have to say or do is important anymore and to use her words, "You're just a boy, you wouldn't understand" or a simple "You're so dumb!".  I once made the mistake of trying to tell her that wearing a short skirt to school as a bad idea, but that just got me an artful roll of the eyes followed by a “whatever”.  Hey, she’s my sister and she looked good in it.  Pretty even!  That thought just grosses me out as soon as it registers on my sleep deprived brain, so I change the gross thought to one of “concern for my sister’s well being”. 

Hey, It looked short to me and Mom thought so too. 

“Lindsay Anne Peters! You walk right back up those stairs and change that skirt!” My mom ordered.

“but Moooommm...” Lindsay wailed with a pleading look on the side of her face that Mom could see and a look of hateful scorn on the side I could see.  How she managed that I have no idea, but evil sister has mad facial expression skills.

She came downstairs a few minutes later wearing a much longer skirt of the exact same color.

“Much better Lindsay.” My mom said.

“...but it doesn't match my top as well.”

Needless to say, I was shocked to see her wearing the much shorter skirt once we got to school. However; that shock turned to a black eye for me when she ended up running up to me in the school hallway with tears in her eyes because some boy had lifted up her skirt.  Yes, I did the big brother thing and had a “talk” with the guy. I am not a complete jerk like my sister likes to think.

That is what led me to gain the full attention of Billy.  I knew he was the school bully, but I naively thought that we could work it out like two responsible teenagers. My bad.  On the plus side, that beating is what got my Mom and Dad to enroll me my Jujitsu class.  

Breakfast was wonderful!  Two eggs, sunny side up, thank you.  Four strips of thick cut bacon, yes please!  Four pancakes with real butter and lots of syrup, heaven!  You have got to have the extra syrup for the bacon.  Seriously, what planet are you from if you don’t try to get as much syrup as possible on your bacon?!?!  All of that artery clogging goodness is then chased by one extra large class of 2% milk.  It’s 2% because whole milk is bad for you and skim milk, well, you might as well just be drinking white colored water!  I inhaled my breakfast which is not only efficient from a time management perspective, but the technique has an added bonus of limiting conversation to simple yes and no responses.

 “Did you get all your homework done before you played your ‘game’ last night Brian?” My mom asks.

“Mmmmummm!”  I eloquently reply as I chew on big fork full of syrupy, buttery, yummy goodness.

“Did you remember to put your permission slip in your back back?”

“Nuuunnnn?”  I try to remember where I had put that permission form.  If I can’t find it, then I won’t be able to go to the DARPA science lab with my electronics class.

“I thought so. Here it is Brian. Put it in your back pack now please.”

My Mom is so sneaky!

Shovel, chew, chew, zip, stuff the guilty paper into said backpack of holding , zip!, chew some more then swallow. Do not forget the swallow part or get the order mixed up…bad things happen!

“Was good Mom!  Thanks for breakfast!” I follow that up by an artful mumbled redention of, “Love you!” and finish off with the always popular “Ciao!” or “Chow!” for you regular American English folks.  If I am feeling really generous, Mom gets a quick air kiss as I am walking out the door.  Lindsay?  She gets a gleeful, “Have a good day in Middle School little sis!”

That parting shot is followed by a wonderful, “MOOOMMM!” that gets cut off in mid scream as the door is closing. Oh the joys of tormenting the little brat when I can get away with it.

It didn't take me long to walk to the bus stop. It was only to the end of the block. I'm not “that” lazy.  My best friend, John and his girlfriend Lisa are just walking up while holding hands.  They make it a point to loudly kiss right in front of me and the entire world. 

“Ewww...get a room you two!” I say with mock indignation before I follow up with my simulated robot voice, “This is a PDA Free Zone.  Any further transgressions will not be tolerated!  Bzzzzt!”

“LOL” John says. 

Yes...he really did say “LOL”. 

“Brian, you're just jealous because I have a girlfriend!” John hugs Lisa tighter as she giggles.

“John, be nice please.” Lisa comes to my rescue. Then, she turns her patented mega watt smile my way. “Brian, we were just messing with you.” 

Wow, just wow.  Just the sight of her almost makes me forget what we were currently teasing each other about.  Short blond hair, blue eyes, perfect skin, long legs, athletic and very nice  ummm...you know.  She's so damn nice to everyone and not at all stuck up like most of the pretty girls at school.

You do not want to mess with her though.  Her last name is Rogers.  Yes, she is the daughter of Sensei Rogers and she has been learning martial arts since she could walk.  A few of the bitchier members of the Pretty Girls Club tried to get bossy with her at the start of the school year.  She just calmly told them that she didn’t have the time to waste with their drama.  The queen bitch of the group tried to slap Lisa.  Lisa destroyed her in the blink of an eye.  She kicks my butt in Jujitsu class too, but I find it hard to complain.  Sigh, if only I wasn’t such a geek.

“I know Lisa. If your loving boyfriend didn't need me to help him pass Mr. Anderson's Science class, I'd probably have to stop being his only friend.”  I say while trying to not melt into a puddle of goo under her friendly gaze.

John is the real deal and if he wasn't so modest, I'd probably hate his guts.  He has the looks, brains and money.  Okay, so he's not as much of a geek as I am when it comes to science and technology, but he is not slow at all.  Give him a business or money related question and stand back.  Why he's in a public school is beyond me, but his parents have some funny ideas about education. 

When I asked him, he said that this is what his Dad said, “We are not wasting money on some fancy private school. Your Mom and I both went to public schools, and look how successful we are!”  You know, the old, “When I was your age I had to walk ten miles to school each day and it was uphill, both ways!”

I won’t bore you with the full thirty minute bus ride. 

As usual, John and Lisa sit together while I end up jammed into the window by one of those friendly football players.  I know he’s friendly because he smiles at me as he mushes me against the window.

“I’m going to get you today, shrimp!”

“Fat chance Tom.  You know that my ninja like reflexes will just make you look like the lumbering and slow giant that you are, right?”  My false confidence earns me a friendly punch on my shoulder.  Well, friendly to him maybe.

“Ha! We’ll see.  Today will be the day!” He says just before he ignores me by looking through his football playbook.

I try not to rub my shoulder.