Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The school was large, concrete, and intimidating. It wasn’t his first year at this school, not by far. But it was the first year that he felt himself hesitate before entering the doors. George thought that by his senior year, he would finally ‘fit’ somewhere. Maybe he would find a clique or a club, anything that made him feel like he belonged. Despite these hopes, he found himself gripping the straps of his backpack and swallowing his anxiety on the steps of the same old school. Alone.

George had lived in the same small, cramped town for the most recent years of his life. After his father passed away when he was eleven years old, George’s family had packed up their things and head for America, his British accent too thick and strong by that point to go away. For a while, his classmates were fascinated with him. An artifact from across the sea. That curiosity quickly faded and George realized that they didn’t actually like him, they liked where he came from. He watched this same cycle of curiosity repeat when a boy named Wilbur transferred to his school the next year. Similar accent, similar origins, the same stubborn curiosity of his peers. While George waited for the others to lose interest just as they did to him, that moment never happened. Wilbur was a natural with people, and those that met him rarely wanted to leave his side. They liked him. All of him. Not just what resided in Europe. This realization was detrimental to twelve-year-old George.

“What’s up, Gogy?” Wilbur, now seventeen, slapped George on the back and cooed the same nickname that he had used for George since middle school.

“Hey, Wilbur…” George replied with a sigh, caught slightly off guard by the hit from behind. Although he’d hate to admit it, George had been jealous of him for as long as he could remember. His height, his charismatic grin, the way he was aloof to how much people loved him. He didn’t know whether or not they stood as friends or just good acquaintances, but Wilbur always greeted him in the mornings regardless. Before he could begin any type of conversation, Wilbur was already out of sight, saying hello to anyone he passed in the hallway. George slumped his shoulders and continued on. His first class of the day was biology. Luckily that class was fairly close to the entrance of the school so-

“Welcome back, short stuff,” a familiar voice echoed in George’s mind as he felt his shoulder ram into the metal lockers on his right. Gripping his injured shoulder, George slowly raised his head to come face to face with his daily torment. The same cruel smile that he was sure would rot in hell one day. The green eyes of ridicule. These features belonged to a person who had been known for years under the nickname ‘Dream’. That name. A name that gleamed with reputation and egoism. Gritting his teeth, George said nothing. He had learned to keep quiet after one too many encounters with him.

“Aw, did we scare him too much? He won’t even say anything,” mocked Nick, the one person who was always glued to Dream’s side. Call him an accomplice if you’d like. Nick had leaned down to be eye level with George under his crumpled posture.

“I just need to get to class,” George said, trying to stay as quiet as he could. Dream looked down at him with judgement practically glowing in his eyes. He clicked his tongue and put his hands in the pocket of his lime green hoodie.

“Just so you know, we spoke to the teacher early about the seating plan. We know you lo~ove it when we sit behind you, so we pulled some strings,” Dream gave George a cruel wink and nudged Nick to tell him that they were leaving.

“See ya in class, Georgy,” Nick sang as he ruffled George’s hair with a bit more force than was necessary. George watched the two walk down the hall, the crowd moving out of their path as they went. Eventually, he regained his posture and found refuge in the nearest washroom to fix the hair that Nick had ruined. He stared at himself in the mirror and gripped the counter of the sink.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ he thought. ‘In front of everyone. That was humiliating. And not to mention…’ George loosened his grip and his eyes fell to his feet. Premonitions of his life every morning for the next year began to roll into his mind. The two of them sitting behind him could only mean that the worst was yet to come. Spitballs in his hair, stabbing his neck with mechanical pencils, singeing his hair with a lighter, putting dry ice down the back of his shirt, you name it. No matter how outlandish the punishment, George had to expect it. The rules slacked for the seniors, and this year, that was him. There was no way of knowing what the two devils were planning.

Dream and Nick arrived in biology late, to no one’s surprise. They sauntered into the classroom, expelling a cocky kind of confidence. The teacher merely scoffed at them. George shut his eyes and held his breath as they relaxed into their desks, Nick behind and to the right and Dream directly behind him. Wilbur, who sat two rows ahead of George, turned around and gave an enthusiastic wave to the two. George heard Dream snicker with a mocking tone that Wilbur was sure to not pick up on. Throughout the whole class, his mind swarmed with what-ifs and possible ways to avoid seeing them. Who was he kidding? No one escaped Dream’s gaze if he was looking for them.

To George’s surprise, neither of them bothered him until the very end of class. As he was getting up from his seat, George was met with a terrible, spine-chilling feeling. His back arched and his eyes widened.

“Oops”. A red stain began to spread throughout the back of George’s grey hoodie, and an empty solo cup in Dream’s hand fell to the floor. With the goal of discomfort and public humiliation, Dream had taken the cup that was originally filled with red Kool-Aid and poured it down the back of George’s hoodie. “It must’ve slipped out of my hand,” Dream gave a sad shrug in response to the teacher’s suspicious gaze.

“You… You…” George struggled with trying to remove the cold fabric from his back. As Dream snickered to himself, feeling successful, he failed to notice George turn around. “YOU GREEN BASTARD!”

George lunged at Dream, grasping at anything he could hold. Dream, caught off-guard, grabbed George’s wrists and both of them were pulled to the ground, clawing at each other. George was filled with a type of rage had never experienced before. Normally, he would’ve ended up trying to wash out the stain in the washroom or simply gone home. George ran. That’s something everyone knew. George. Always. Ran. But this time was different. He’d be damned if some teenage boy ruined the very hoodie that George’s father gave him a week before he passed. Tears stang his eyes at that moment. While he clawed and punched and kicked, he was not thinking about Dream or Nick or the years of public embarrassment he had endured. He thought about his dad.

When George came back to a reasonable state of mind, he was sitting in an office chair. His stained hoodie was resting folded in his arms and he wore an old shirt with the logo of his school on the chest. Spare clothes. Three chairs down from his sat Dream, arms crossed and facing the wall farthest away. No one spoke until his mother arrived, a cross look on her face. When George began to explain the situation in the car, he found himself unable to phrase a sentence. Instead, he broke down. Tears fell as he hiccuped and sobbed, small droplets being absorbed by the hoodie in his lap. His mother rested a hand on his back and, after looking at the crimson stain on the hoodie that she knew he cherished, she understood.

“We can get the stain out. I know a thing or two about laundry,” his mother gave a silent and weary chuckle. “I’m not mad. Not at all. But you still have to go to detention with that boy”.

... Detention?

Chapter Text

The next morning was groggy and slow-paced. George woke up with eyes swollen from crying the night before. He wasn’t aware of his attachment to that piece of clothing until it was ruined. Every fibre of his being told him to get out of going to school that morning. Skip, run away, fake sick. Anything that would get him out of it. But it was only the second day of school and he knew that his mum wouldn’t budge. 

He felt eyes on him the moment he walked onto school grounds. If they weren’t there to see the event yesterday, then they heard about it in detail. And he knew it. Panic bubbled inside of him like a science experiment gone wrong and he could feel his heart begin to race. In his mind, he crossed off the faces around him, removing the judgement that those eyes carried. 

“Morning, Gogy!” Wilbur said, snapping George out of his anxiety. The same firm pat on the back made him momentarily lose balance. “Did you end up getting that stain out of your hoodie?”. George bit his cheek in annoyance. That was the last thing he wanted to talk about this early in the morning. 

“Uh, not really,” he said reluctantly. Wilbur could tell that he might’ve crossed a line and gave George another hearty slap on the shoulder.

“Well, hey! Maybe you can convince your mum to get you a new one, right?” he grinned. George held back the urge to turn home at that very moment. He had to remind himself that Wilbur didn’t know and probably wouldn’t understand anyway. At that moment, George felt something hit his other shoulder. When he turned his head, he saw Dream walk briskly past him. George was surprised that Dream and Nick didn’t stop to push him into a locker or ruin his confidence for the day (although that was already taken care of). There wasn’t even a smirk on Dream’s face or a snicker between the two. In hindsight, maybe a hit on the shoulder wasn’t too bad. George could take that. 

Biology was eerily quiet that morning. The closest Dream got to bothering George was by kicking the back of his chair. But, just like the hit on the shoulder, he could handle that. He didn’t want to believe that maybe Dream was holding back until detention after school. That was a thought that he didn’t dare encourage. 

George’s true home in the school was the computer lab. The large, partly lit room filled wall to wall with tables of computers. The computer lab is where he spent the third and fifth period, right before lunch and at the end of the day. It was the one classroom that he didn’t feel constantly watched, not only by Dream and Nick but by the rest of his peers as well. He could spend hours upon hours coding at the same computer, fingers clacking away at the keys until they cramped. That’s what he wanted to do that day. If only he could pretend not to hear the bell that summoned him to his fate. When they asked him why he didn’t go to detention, he’d simply say that he didn’t notice class end. In a perfect world, that’s what he would’ve done. But this isn’t George’s ideal world.

The bell rang and George hesitantly pressed the power off button on his computer. The instructions he was given for detention were as follows: take a bucket and a sponge and wash the gym floor by hand until the one hour alarm goes off. Although the task wasn’t fun, it was better than sitting in a quiet room with Dream and hoping he’d walk out alive. He changed into his gym clothes in the changing room and opened the gym doors to find Dream waiting for him, bucket in hand. As soon as the door closed behind him, Dream dropped the bucket onto the floor along with a sponge. He made it clear without verbal communication that this was George’s task. He wasn’t going to help. In a way, George was slightly relieved. He would rather do it alone and not be bothered. 

Silence hung in the air. The only noise was the sound of George’s sponge against the floor. Dream had been sitting on the top row of the indoor bleachers, watching. George had almost forgotten that he was even there. Repetitive tasks always ended up in his mind wandering far, far away. George was thinking about possibilities for his next coding project when Dream abruptly broke the silence.

“Why did you fight back yesterday?” he asked. It took George a moment to register the fact that Dream had asked him a question and not just called him a belittling name. “You always run. So… why didn’t you?”. George stopped washing the floor for a moment and sat cross-legged on the floor, thinking. 

“W-why do you care?” George replied sounding a bit harsher than he meant. Dream was obviously taken back by his response.  

“It’s just a question, shrimp. Why are you avoiding it?” he scoffed. There was the belittling name. Dream hopped off the side of the bleachers, hands in the pockets of his gym shorts. His sneakers squeaked in the impact. 

“What if it’s personal?” George replied, turning away from Dream and shrugging. Dream didn’t like that answer much. 

“Why are you making it such a big fucking deal?”. With that, Dream lifted his sneaker and kicked over the bucket of muddy suds with enough force for the bucket to hit the wall. The crash of metal made George jump. That sort of reaction from George was usually amusing enough to Dream to make him laugh. But he wasn’t laughing this time. 

“Listen, I don’t know why you care so much. You never care. You’ve never asked me a question before”.

“Because you’ve never hit back before”. Silence fell between the two of them. Throughout the conversation, George hadn’t made eye contact with Dream. Even now, his head hung towards his lap. After a few minutes of neither of them saying anything, Dream spun around on his heel and walked out. He slammed the gym doors as he left. ‘What the hell was that…?’ George thought to himself while he went to collect the bucket. As he mopped up the mess that Dream had created, his eye caught something in the bleachers. A backpack. Dream’s… backpack?

Leaning the mop against the wall, George went to investigate. The bag was dark green with black accents and a silver water bottle strapped to the side. And something stuck out of it. As George climbed the bleachers, hopping over rows of seats, it became clear. It was the spine of a book. ‘A book?’ he thought. ‘I didn’t know this guy even knew how to read’. Normally, he would’ve left it. He knew going through other people’s things was incredibly disrespectful. But… maybe this one time was an exception. 

He pulled the book out of the green bag by the spine. He almost laughed to himself. It was a Percy Jackson novel. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. This tough guy reads fantasy books?” George mumbled to himself. He then noticed that the Percy Jackson novel wasn’t the only thing poking out of the bag. The next book that he took out of the bag didn’t have a title. George knew that he would be just as bad as Dream if he flipped through the unlabeled book, but he couldn’t help it. His stubborn curiosity got the better of him. 

The pages were filled with Dream’s handwriting. George would stop every couple of pages and skim what he had written. It was all stories. Creative writing. Anything from greek gods to stories of his childhood. In between the creative stories were grocery lists and poetry and ideas for songwriting. And to George’s surprise, it was all… good. Like, really good. He stopped to read a poem that was scrawled in an obvious hurry.

I dip myself in gasoline and kerosene

Like the wick of a pale candle

And I try to find any amount of

Self-acceptance within the face

Of a single match because

The only time I see myself clearly

Is when I am free-falling ash

George’s awe of Dream’s writing engulfed him so much that he failed to notice the gym door open. 

“What…” a voice spoke in shock behind him. George spun around, the journal clutched in his hands. Dream watched him with wide eyes. First filled with surprise and followed by intense anger, George watched the emotion in his face shift. Before he knew it, Dream was bounding up the bleachers with fury. 

“Stop, Dream! Let me explain!” George yelled as Dream tried to tear the journal from his fingers. The two of them pulled back and forth yelling at each other and kicking at their legs. “DREAM, PLEASE!” he screamed. The sound of ripping paper felt louder than anything else. With the loss of balance, Dream fell backwards down the bleachers, a handful of papers in his grasp. George stood with part of the journal in his hands. 

“Dream… I-I’m so sorry,” George gasped for air. It was only moments until Dream had him on the ground.

“What is WRONG WITH YOU?” he screamed between punches. The gym door swung open and two teachers ran to break up the fight. Both of them had tears in their eyes.

Chapter Text

“Another detention? Twice in the same week?”

George had been dreading the confrontation that he was due to have with his mum the whole walk home. He almost thought about tearing up the fluorescent pink detention slip and leaving it on the side of the road. But he knew he wasn’t like that. Not towards his mum, anyway. 

“I really didn’t mean it. It was just a case of miscommunication,” George slumped his shoulders and stared at the hardwood floor. He couldn’t look her in the eye, but he did hear the exasperated sigh escape her lips. 

“What would your dad say about this?”. George widened his eyes at the question. She rarely brought up his father in conversation, not verbally at least. It had been years since she had referenced him directly. Once she asked that question, it rang through George’s mind. What would his dad say? He could almost feel the looming presence form beside his mother. A growing shadow in the silhouette of a man. A void of life. An absence of space that expelled judgement and shame. What would his dad say? 

Somehow, he contorted the question in his mind until it wasn’t related to the detention slip at all. He eyed the stained hoodie that had been hanging off the arm of his desk chair for days. Still stained. Always will be. He grimaced.

***

The chair directly behind him was empty for the duration of the class. It was hard for George to believe that the journal incident from detention had really bothered Dream. Honestly, he never even considered that he might care for something, much less a diary filled with silly stories. That being said, George had never seen him like that before. The expression on his face. The grief in his eyes. Surely it was just an excuse to sock him in the jaw. Right…?

Most days, Dream and Nick sat at a table in the cafeteria that was reserved for the people that intimidated everyone else. Maybe you would call them jocks. Dream had earned his spot at the table for a number of reasons. He was good looking, he was confident, and he was the quarterback on the football team. Nick earned his right to sit at the table through affiliation. It would be wrong to separate childhood friends after all.

That day, while Nick could be seen at the table, Dream couldn’t be found. George couldn’t help but worry. Worry? That can’t be the right word…

“Hello~” Wilbur cooed, waving a hand in front of George’s face. George broke out of a trance with a jump.

“You keep staring at that table,” noted Niki, the German exchange student that had been staying with Wilbur and his family for the semester. George had admired her kindness and observational tendencies since he first met her. Despite the fact that she had no difficulty making new friends, she always chose to stick beside Wilbur and his younger brother, Tommy. Though, who can blame her?

“Oh, yeah. I just got distracted,” he replied. He pushed the food around on his tray absentmindedly. 

“Is something on your mind?” Niki asked, her head tilting to one side. 

“I bet it’s about all those detentions that you’ve been getting, yeah?” Wilbur leaned back and laughed before Niki shot him a glare. The look in her eyes screamed, ‘Not the time, Wil’. The joke didn’t bother George, mostly because he was right. Partly. 

The rest of the afternoon was a blur. He remembered walking through the halls to his different classes, though not the content. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to recall exactly what he did during these classes. The symptom of a preoccupied mind. At the ring of the last bell, George shot up out of his chair and marched out of the classroom with urgency. 'Surely, there’s no way that he’d show up at the end of the day just for detention', he thought. There’s no way. Somehow, the idea of Dream not showing up at detention almost came as a disappointment more than it did as a relief. 

George had been told where he was meant to be and what he was meant to do. Mr. Jameson’s class, classroom 133. They’d be cleaning. As he approached the door labelled ‘133’, he reached out to the doorknob with trembling fingers. As he opened the door, he caught sight of a green hoodie. There’s no way.

Dream sat at a desk in the far corner of the classroom, head leaning on his propped up hand. Opposing Dream was Mr. Jameson. 

“Welcome back, George. You two will be tidying up the place while I go do some photocopying in the office,” the teacher spoke with a harsh tone. As he approached the door about to make his exit, he turned and faced the two boys. 

“If there’s any roughhousing, I’ll be seeing you back here for the next month. Capiche?”. George nodded furiously. Dream did not react. The door closed.

***

They had both taken up separate tasks. George had been scrubbing desks with more intensity than required in an effort to distract himself. Dream had occupied the blackboard, clapping erasers together in a dust of white chalk. The silence for the past twenty minutes had been unbearable, and the stench of chemicals and chalk was not helping. 

Clap. Clap. 

Clap.

Dear God, those erasers are going to drive me insane. The rhythmic bashing of the felt had been pounding in George’s skull. Who even uses blackboards nowadays? 

Clap.

Maybe if I try and scrub the desks louder, it’ll tune out the sound of those erasers.

Clap.

“Hey, Dream,” George spoke after snapping. He needed to clear the silence, or at least stop the dreadful erasers. Dream stopped what he was doing, almost in surprise that George actually spoke. While he was relieved that the sound stopped, George hadn’t planned what he was going to say. The air felt heavy.

“Uhm… I guess you could say that we’re even now, right?” George said with a meek chuckle. Dream looked at him with a blank stare. Suddenly, the room felt a lot smaller and claustrophobia was settling in. Before Dream could hit the erasers together another time, George spoke once more.

“What’s your real name?”. It was the first thing he thought to blurt out. “It’s just that… everyone always calls you Dream. I don’t… I don’t think I actually know your real name”. 

Something glinted in Dream’s eye. His interest was peaked. For some reason, the look in his eye was almost concerning to George. 

“I’ll tell you,” he spoke for the first time that day, “if you can get this eraser out of my hand by the end of the hour”. A glance at the clock told him that there was still about half an hour left in detention. While that does seem like a fair amount of time, the odds were not in George’s favour. And he knew it.

Dream stood six inches over George and was built with the form of a football player, a good one at that. For reference, the only sports George played were in gym, the one class that he only got marks for his ‘good participation’. He was a coder, not an athlete. Dream was all of the things that he wasn’t able to be. 

“Alright. Challenge accepted”. Why did I just agree to that?? George swallowed his anxiety and took a stride towards the 6’2 boy. Oh lord. Dream let out a laugh out of pity.

In a sad attempt at grabbing the eraser, George jumped up and down like an excited child, his sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. He opened and closed his hands, reaching for something so far out of his grasp. Neither of them was aware of the fact that they were both chuckling. The small laughter grew into playful banter, something that would occur between friends. 

“I got it!” George cries as he moves forwards and mistakenly trips against a large metal cabinet. 

“Oh, shit,” is the last thing Dream says before George grabs his wrist and they both lose balance. A painful thud echoes in the classroom. 

They both groan in mild agony. When George opens his eyes, he becomes aware of the situation. He is laying on top of Dream’s chest, his nose inches away from Dream’s face. He could feel a warmth rise up inside his cheeks while he attempts to regain composure. 

“It was an accident. I’m so sorry”. Despite how strange the position is and how awkward the feeling became, he couldn’t help but stay where he was. Part of him didn’t want to get up. Before he could make an attempt to move, Dream breaks the silence. 

“Clay. My name is Clay”. George was so caught up in the fall that he didn’t notice when he grabbed the blackboard eraser. It had been in his clutches since they hit the floor. Had Dream’s eyes always been that green? Or… Clay’s eyes? 

“Uhm. That’s a really nice name,” George fumbled with his words. He pushed against the tiled floor and lifted himself back onto his feet, eraser in hand. 

“Thanks. I guess”. Dream turned down the hand that George offered him to get up. The clock told them that there were only a few minutes left in the hour and not a word was exchanged during that time. George couldn’t stop replaying the moment in his mind. The warmth of Dream’s chest. The colour of his eyes. It was strange to see the person who had tormented him for years in such a different light. Had he always been like that? Had his laugh always sounded like that? 

George watched the chalk dust float through streams of light that shone through the blinds. The classroom felt warmer than it did an hour ago.

Chapter Text

George fell backwards onto his bed, backpack slipping from his arm. He hadn’t spoken much on the car ride home from detention. Though he was glad that he and Dream didn’t get into a quarrel, something even stranger happened. It left him with a knotted feeling in his stomach. A feeling he couldn’t ignore.

He had been laying with his eyes glued to the ceiling for not even a minute when his phone buzzed from inside his pocket. George searched for it and lifted it in front of his face, the screen blinking on. A message from Wilbur was glowing on the lock screen.

Hey pal! Niki and I are throwing a party this Saturday - wanna come? 326 Crescent Drive @ 9:00pm. Be there or be ▢

The screen turned itself to black and George let his arm fall to his side. For a moment, he let his mind wander. He had never been invited to a party before, especially not Wilbur’s parties. He knew the kind of people that would show up. The athletes, the drinkers, the ones with all the top social connections. And that meant Dream.

George lifted himself into a cross-legged position on the bed, phone in his lap. He quickly typed a reply to Wilbur, which read, ‘Who is being invited?’. It was less than ten seconds after sending the message when three dots bounced up on Wilbur’s side of the screen. Wilbur must’ve been a fast typer because the dots were soon replaced with a paragraph. George took a deep breath and skimmed the list of names that he had been presented with. Dream wasn’t among them.

“That can’t be right,” George mumbled to himself. Once more, he went through the list, muttering each name to himself to make sure he didn’t skip over any of them. “Floris, Karl, Becca, Alex, Mark…”. Sure enough, Dream and Nick weren’t to be found. He could feel his muscles expel any pent up tension as a wave of relief washed over him. Thank god.

***

When George woke up, groggy and dazed, it was the next morning. He had fallen asleep in the clothes that he had worn to school after texting Wilbur for hours about the party. He couldn’t help but ask a variety of anxiety-driven questions. Concerns like if there would be drinking, how many people, what he should wear, so on and so forth. Wilbur had been successful at easing his worries. By the end of the night, Geroge was convinced. He was going to that party.

The trees outside his window had already started their shift into autumn. Leaves turned crisp in texture and colour, a soft ombre from branch to branch. It was enough to make George decide on walking to school that morning. Headphones in and hands in his jean pockets, he began to forget everything that had happened the previous day. The smell of chalk had become the musky-sweet smell of decaying leaves.

George’s brisk walk had gotten him to the school ten minutes early. The doors had yet to be unlocked, though he wasn’t complaining. It was the perfect morning to spend extra time in the sun. To his surprise, he wasn’t the only early student there that day. Wilbur and Niki stood at the top of the cement steps, smiling and waving upon George’s arrival. 

“Hey, Gogy!” Wilbur spoke with a grin, “I wanted to tell you how happy I am that you decided to come to the party tomorrow. It means a lot, man”. George could tell that Wilbur really meant it. Maybe he was the most aloof person that George knew, but it was nice to feel included. Maybe they were better friends than George originally thought. He couldn’t remember the last time that someone was happy to have him over.

“Thanks for the invite, Wil. Though, I’m still not so sure how to dress for it,” George chuckled at himself. Admittedly, he wasn’t the most stylish person. His wardrobe consisted of entirely blue jeans, crew neck shirts, and solid coloured hoodies. 

“Oh! Oh!” Niki chimed in, “I have an idea! You should come over tonight and we can help you pick an outfit! I’m sure you and Wilbur wear roughly the same size of clothes”. Wilbur grinned and nodded his head in response.

“I love that idea, Niki. Plus, you’d be able to get a feel for the place before the party. Make you more comfortable and everything”. George was stunned for a brief moment. The warmth he felt from the two people standing in front of him was astounding. Although it sounded sad, he had never been treated with this sort of kindness before. It almost made his eyes prickle with tears.

“I… I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to overstep my welcome”.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gogy!” Wilbur said, placing a hand on George’s shoulder. “We’d love to have you”. George beamed. He could feel his face warm up. A sudden gust of wind blew a handful of leaves off of the nearby trees.

***

The three had decided to walk home together after the last class of the day. All three of them had a spare during the last period, which saved them a walk home with Wilbur’s younger brother, Tommy. They loved him, but he had a tendency to interrupt people and wander off incessantly. 

Wilbur’s house was much larger than George’s, and he noticed that immediately. It was navy blue with white shutters and a grey and a well-kept lawn. Wilbur had mentioned that his father enjoyed gardening, but had failed to mention that he was a borderline professional at it. Rose bushes and groups of lilacs sprouted around the front porch and continued down the side of the driveway. 

“It’s beautiful,” George spoke in awe. George only lived with his mother since his sister moved out, so they didn’t have a need for a large house. This was a feeling that was foreign to him. From what he saw of the inside, it was equally as impressive as the outside. Wilbur’s room was painted a light brown with three different guitars lined up against one of the walls. 

“I didn’t know that you played,” George said, leaning down to examine one of the guitars.

“Oh, I love it! I’ll play you something later if you’d like,” Wilbur said, “but until then…”. The closet door swung open to reveal a rack of an assortment of clothes. Compared to George’s collection of jeans and hoodies, this was basically designer. Niki didn’t hesitate to get to work.

“This would work,” she spoke to herself as she began to lay clothes on the bed. George felt intimidated by the choices. Niki had already pulled out old sweaters and button-ups along with different jeans and pants. It almost made him dizzy.

“It’ll be good to get out of your comfort zone! And you never know… you might impress a girl in the crowd,” Wilbur nudged George with his elbow and winked. George smiled despite the fact that he couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what he really wanted. He had never impressed a girl before, nor had the desire to do so. Maybe the thought of it just scared him. Or maybe it was something else. 

Wilbur and Niki had sent George home with a grocery store bag filled with his new outfit. He held it close to his chest as he walked along the sidewalk. The sun was already going down. It was a little over 24 hours until the party and he felt more anxious than he did the night before. He trusted Wilbur and Niki. He knew that if he didn’t like the environment, he could always go home. But something else was biting the back of his mind.