The Great Escape from Sixth Grade

Ok, so it hasn't happened yet, but this is the last sixth grade chapter. I don't know if I am moving to 7th or 8th grade next, but I am moving on. I think I summed up my plot keys for sixth enough that I can move on to major events later in our protaganist's life. Chapter 3 is a shorter chapter but I think it is just the right length for what I want here. It reveals a lot more about our main character's life and I feel that we need that by the third chapter. It doesn't reveal everything, but I am thinking we might come to a solid reason as to why Will has been transported back to the sixth grade, or maybe not. Word count at 7700 (what a nifty number).

Chapter 3

The next morning I left the room before Alan got up. At this point I knew he wouldn't listen to anything I said. What was I going to tell him, that I was from the future and I knew that he was going to get caught cheating on this test. Yeah, that would work. I thought of letting the teachers know he was going to cheat but that wasn't going to fix anything anyways. It was frustrating because I didn't know if I could even do anything to prevent this.
I sat alone at a table in the dining hall and ate pancakes by myself. This year I didn't really have many friends in the boarding program, I did originally, but I knew where some of these kids would lead me. Kekoa was going to get kicked out at the end of the semester for drugs and John was going to go with him. No reason to get involved with them, they were dicks anyways. Alan had a chance but those guys were going to fuck up their life no matter what.
When I came back with my second helping of pancakes Julia was sitting at my table.
“Hey, what's going on?” I asked sitting down slowly.
“Not much, think I can have one of your pancakes?”
“Yeah sure,” I was a bit confused, “so what are you doing here?” Every word coming out of my mouth felt awkward.
“My parents dropped me off early because they are going to court today,” Julia forked one of my pancakes. I tried to remember if I was supposed to know why her parents might be in court, but I couldn't think of anything.
“Why are they going to court?”
“They're getting divorced.”
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” I couldn't think of anything else to say. What do you say to that?
“No, they need to separate. They are driving me crazy,” I had forgotten that her parents had gotten divorced. I didn't know what to say so I just kept quite. Julia finished the pancake she had taken from me.
“Thanks, I'll see you in class,” she said and then got up and left. I sat there with a single pancake on my plate and thought about Julia. I'd say our relationship was complicated, but really it was just that we were casual friends. Not quite acquaintances any more, but not really friends. It went that way all the way through school till my senior year. We had ended up at the same college, so we kept in contact so that we'd at least have some reminder of home. But everything was always superficial. By my senior year in high school she knew about my crush but we never talked about, ever. It was just one of those things that was something that we didn't talk about. She didn't want to deal with it, and I didn't want to force it. I just never knew what to do, but now I had an idea of what I did wrong.
The rest of the day things went fairly normally for someone who is trapped in there own sixth grade body. Classes all went well, the science test proved especially easy. All in all it was a good day, no heavy homework, not that a sixth grader ever got a heavy homework load. It all went very smoothly. I got back to my room after the first round of study hall and just laid down in my bed. It was Friday so we only had one study hall. I waited for Alan to return but he didn't come back that evening. It worried me that I hadn't seen him. Maybe he had gotten caught. At 9 the dorm supervisor came around to make sure everyone was in there room. Even on the weekends we weren't allowed to stay up late. In rooms by 9 and lights out by 9:30, 10 on weekends.
“Hey Mr. Veral,” I said as he knocked and came into the room.
“How's it going Will?” He asked. Mr. Veral was one of my favorite teachers, or would be, I didn't have any classes from him yet. He was a fun guy to be around. He was overweight and had short red hair. Later when I was in high school he shaved his head and lost a lot of weight. Also his jolly spirit. It was really nice to see him again as one of my favorite teachers rather then a bitter not quite old man.
“It is going alright. I'm not sure where Alan is, so I'm sorry about that,” I said, I figured I'd hear about Alan's fate now.
“Oh didn't he tell you, he is off with,” Mr. Veral looked down at his clipboard where it listed all of the kids in the boarding program, “he is with Vinni.”
“Really, guess I got the room to myself this weekend.”
“That you do, don't cause too much trouble,” he said and left. Maybe he really had been planning a weekend trip with Vinni. I'd didn't think the two were really friends, but what did I know. Things were changing, or at least I thought they were. There were a lot of things that I couldn't remember that were happening now. Like the incident with Julia earlier. That never happened before, but I don't know how it changed things. I wanted to know how it did but I couldn't think into the future, I could only see one of the possible outcomes based on events that I had already changed. What else had changed that I hadn't noticed. Maybe I just set up Alan off on a worse path because he was hanging out with Vinni now.
And now I had my future to think about. What would I do with that. When I was in school I was always told I could do whatever I wanted to do. And I believed it, but I didn't live it. I had lived my life scared of doing the wrong thing. Scared of people hating me. Scared of what could go wrong with my life. And I was so scared that my life didn't turn out how I wanted it to at all. I had wanted to be on stage. Or be a novelist. Or maybe even own my own bookstore. But instead I had I got a second degree in math and took a job as accountant. I had always found the math to be easy so it seemed like a good idea. Minimal hassle in the work place.
Well it sucked. I was miserable in my job which made me constantly bitch about it when I wasn't working, which lead to no one caring to what I talked about since really I wasn't saying anything anyone cared about. It effect my life at home to the point where my first wife divorced me. I was such a sheep that I didn't even really care. If she didn't want to be with me then fuck her, let her go somewhere else. I wouldn't marry her this time anyways. Then I remarried by keeping my constant bitching about work down to a minimum, but eventually she saw through me and left me as well. I really had to question whether I believed in the whole concept of marriage. Divorced twice by 35, it wasn't a good sign.
After that I just tried one night stand type of deals, but I was too old to really pull it off. My job had aged me terribly. If I could have just stopped bitching about it and realized I could have quit I would have lead a much happier life. Whenever I would visit my brother and his wife we would have a good time, but eventually I would realize that they were happy and I was miserable. And that would just drive me further into depression. So I stopped visiting, and I stopped calling. I removed myself from everything just wishing I could do something, but not having the courage to even try.
It wasn't until Sunday afternoon came around that I saw Alan again.
“Fun weekend?” I asked as Alan set his stuff down in the room. Alan walked back and closed the door and then looked over at me.
“No, Vinni is a dick,” he said.
“Oh really, so why'd you go over?”
“He had some cool plans and stuff, but he just ended up being a jackass the entire time and making fun of me.”
“Well that sounds like Vinni.”
“Yeah,” Alan said as he started unpacking his bag. I watched him unpack for a minute before I spoke again.
“So how'd the test go?”
“Hmm? Oh the test,” Alan paused, “I'd say it went pretty well. By the way man thanks for helping me study for that thing, I'd have been toast with out our study session last night.”
“No problem man,” I debated saying the next part of my thought and then went on, “I almost thought that you were still going to try and cheat.”
“I was, but then I thought about what you said, and you were right. It wouldn't have been worth it, if I got caught and my Grandparents found out I'd be dead.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said remembering a possible future.