Survival Of The Fittest

((Chris Carlson continued from What Goes Up...))

Chris slowly moved into the library. His head was starting to feel better, which was good. The ice pack was almost completely liquid now, and was starting to drip down his back. He hoped he wouldn't get any of the icy water on his books, especially since holding it on the back of his head was making his handy wet with a thick sheen of water.

He finally decided Screw it and figured he could get through the pain when he was only two hours from the end of the day. He took the wet plastic bag and promptly tossed it in the trash, wiping his hand on his jeans.

He was in the library with the rest of his English class to turn in their copies of The Catcher in the Rye for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Why his teacher was trying to jam a new novel in so close to the end of the year, he would never know. It would probably be on an even MORE compressed schedule than the last one, and he had to finish the tales of Holden Caulfield within a week.

Chris wasn't one for the so-called "Great American Literature", to be quite honest. He found The Scarlet Letter drowned in flowery language that made even the simplest symbolism difficult to translate, Into the Wild more of a documentary than literature, and Huckleberry Finn damn near unreadable (he decided then that he preferred Mark Twain's quotes to his writing). The Great Gatsby gave him a deep dislike of F. Scott Fitzgerald, finding his prose sometimes so simple as to make it difficult to properly understand the dialogue and his use of characters who were either flatter than a CD, annoying, dumb, or creepy. In fact, The Catcher in the Rye was by far the only American piece of literature he had been forced to read for class this year that he didn't hate or, as he did for Into the Wild, wonder why it was being touted as literature when it clearly was not, simply because Salinger wasn't so, as he once said, "pompous as to make his book twice as long with elaborate prose."

So Chris went in with another sigh as he got his latest novel that he had previously never planned to read. He knew vaguely that it was about a bunch of crazy dudes, and that's as far as his knowledge went. The class, as a sort of "graduation treat", was allowed to sit in the library and start reading their books for the rest of the period. Chris took a seat at a random table, which was filled by a few kids he didn't know beyond their names.

Chris sighed again. Worst. Novels. Ever.

Sitting at a table with Chris, sat Carla, for once trying to look intelligent with her glasses, balancing precariously on her nose, hair tied back in a bun and her black sweater that was just too small for her so it made her chest stand out even more. What was the point of hiding away her natural assets. Of course, the mini-skirt also ruined the plain Jane image that she was trying to put out, but Carla wasn't running for student of the year. Just trying to pass English would be enough.

The change of scenery for the class hadn't made it any easier and Carla was struggling to make it through the first few pages of the book that she had been given. Honestly, she knew there was a film of this! It had that old guy, Jack Nicohals or something. She had like totally watched alf of it once but then she had fallen alsleep. What a total snoozefest that was! A quick check on Amazon that night and she could get the main points of the book down quickly and easily. But for now, she had to look like she was trying. Which was where the brilliance of Carla's plan came into fruition. Within seconds, she had slipped her mobile out of her pocket and into her hands, thumbs hitting the keys as quietly as she could as the small black phone tried to access the Internet.

Unluckily, there was no signal access in the small library. Her normally smiling face contorted into a look of slight shock and annoyance and she dropped her mobile into her small bag by the side of her feet, the force of the small drop making the small bag fall onto its side and the several containers, boxes, bottles and books rolled out onto the floor.

"Shit!" she muttered loudly as she dove and scrambled around down to the floor to retrieve her possessions. The several bangles on her wrists clattered in protest at the sudden movement as she tried to get them all before someone stood on one. God, she needed to stop being such a klutz for five minutes! Scooping most of the items back into her bag, she noticed that her small compact mirror had rolled to where Chris was, a short distance away.

"Little help here?"

Chris had his book out and was about halfway through the second chapter when he began to doze off. Honestly, it wasn't his fault. He always got a good amount of sleep. It's just that now, he was absolutely bored to death. The library was pretty much silent except for the turning of pages and clacking of keyboards off on the other side. It didn't help that, as expected, he wasn't too into the book. At least he was an expert at sleeping in class; he could keep his head down with the book in his hands, and no one would be the wiser.

His fading consciousness was quickly interrupted by the clatter of a large amount of small items falling onto the floor. The sharp noise instantly caught his attention, and he looked over a few seats away. Carla, one of the girls from his class, had spilled the contents of her purse, being makeup, boxes, and books, all over the floor. She muttered "Shit," which Chris hoped the teachers hadn't caught, and made even more noise with the huge-ass bracelets she was wearing.

Carla looked up at him and said "Little help here?" pointing toward his feet. Chris looked down, and saw a small compact mirror that had rolled over to him. As always, pretty girls were his weakness. And Carla was extremely pretty. He said "Yeah, sure," and scooped up the mirror, leaning almost out of his chair to hand the mirror back to her. "Here you are."

It was at that moment the bell rang. His headache was going down, so it wasn't as shrill and painful as the last class was.

He slid his chair back, picking up his rather oversized backpack.

"Well, see you tomorrow, Carla," he said, and walked out.

((Chris Carlson continued in Roses Without Thorns