Chapter 99: mixtapes

As class ended most of the kids headed out. Jeffrey stayed at his seat lost in thought.

"Website needs faq...", Jeffrey made some mental notes.

He started to head out the door and collided with a classmate.

"Oops, sorry", Jeffrey apologized for bumping into them.

a stack of cds and cartridges fell out of his backpack. Yugioh cards, lollipops, pokemon cards, his bag was like that of a loot goblin or an NPC in a video game.

The guy Jeffrey collided with stood up and started picking up the things he dropped with his friends. Jeffrey went to help them out since it was partially his fault.

"Woah what's all this?", Jeffrey asked.

"Just some things we do on the internet", the kid's friend replied.

Jeffrey remembered the stack of the Sony CD's and DVD's his Dad bought at the Frys store.

"Hey do you guys need any help. I do internet stuff as well!", Jeffrey offered.

They finished picking up everything.

"uhh... maybe", one of the kids friends said.

"What's your name", they asked.

Jeffrey patted off the dirt on his pants and stuck out his hand, "My name's Jeffrey. what's yours?"

The three girls shook his hand, "My name is Lucy, that's Mika, and her name's Finana."

On their bags were some embroidered logos and rainbow plastic string keychains and bracelets. "Butterfly Dunham Crafts"

Jeffrey pulled out 3 jars of art slime and said to them, "Nice to meet you three. I think we do similar things"

They each grabbed a jar of slime.

"So you're a part of the Slime factory group!", Mika said recognizing him.

"Most of the boys were organized by someone and selling them in the other schools", Lucy remarked.

They all started walking together, they seemed to be headed in the same direction for their next class.

"uh... yeah that's us?", Jeffrey said with a light laugh.

"So what have you guys been up to? That internet stuff you guys have look pretty complicated?", Jeffrey asked.

Finana, Mika and Lucy looked at each other before nodding their heads in agreement.

"We make and sell music. Mika's mom hobby is producing and mixing music", they explained.

They talked for a little bit before exchanging phone numbers and emails. Jeffrey was curious to see some of the things they've already made. From the looks of it, they probably had their own sort of online website as well.

Jeffrey sighed, social media really wasn't his strong point. However if there was a place to start, he was going to have to check facebook, pinterest, and tumblr. It's been a while since he last returned to those sites.

Soon Jeffrey walked into his next class, "Oh sho-".

Before he could finish the thought he could sense a quiet angry glare coming from the teacher. He was late for Mr. Co's class. He was so distracted talking to the group of girls, he forgot which class he was coming in late for.

The rest of the history class stared at him as well.

Jeffrey swallowed in fear of what was coming next. He quietly walked to his seat, the open seat all the way at the other side of the classroom.

As he did so he had to walk in front off and past the podium ("Lecturn" as Mr. co called it) before sitting down. The whole class was stopped to stare at him.

Mr. Co was on a critical question slide as kids resumed taking notes and answering the question.

Jeffrey tried as best he could to pull out his notebook and pencil all the while Mr. Co's sharp gaze watched him before returning to his presentation. In his hand was a clicker for the projector. It was a small round and black remote that could change slides and had a laser pointer.

Mr. Co then quietly resumed using the laser pointer to continue the class.

For Jeffrey however, he could feel his face heating up. His face was hot from the embarrassment as he desperately tried to pay attention and take notes. Not even the cool air conditioning of the classroom helped. It didn't help that the book he was reading, the Bartimeous Trilogy would occasionally pop into his head at the worst of time distracting him from class.

He had stopped on a particularly action heavy passage before stopping and the mystery of what happened next ate at him. The title of the book was "The Amulet of Samarkand" and the demon was...

Jeffrey's mind soon returned to the classroom, where everyone's hand was raised except for him.

Mr. Co had asked a question and Jeffrey was entirely blanked out when he asked.

"Ahem, the question I asked was. If everyone raised their hand we won't have a pop quiz, since everyone was paying attention. However in order to reward those who paid attention in class, it looks like we'll have to give out a pop quiz", Mr. Co explained.

"I did give your class a chance, second period history got an extra credit assignment instead"

Mr. Co walked to his bucket of rewards and punishments. It was his idea of incentivizing students to pay attention to class. It worked very well, doctor appointments were rescheduled and anything except for sick days and other school trips and assignments, Mr. Co class had the highest attendance rate of any other class in the school.

Mr. Co also graded on a weighed curve, so if your attendance was poor your grade suffered greatly. If you're attendance was high, you were at least guaranteed a B/B+. There were no easy A's in his class.

Mr. Co's history class was pretty much a high school course in a middle school setting. High standards, difficult tests, and lots of essays to write.

One last thing, Mr. Co was also related to Finana. She was his Dad's friend, Uncle or something. So Jeffrey knew this meant nothing good for him and his future endeavors.

In class, he could feel the stares of the 25 other kids stabbing into him. Small slips of paper were being passed back as they had to answer 3 pop quiz questions.

"Q #1:Farming tools were found in the fertile cresent during the Neolithic revolution. Name three civilizations, languages and landmarks that were made during this time."

Jeffrey roughly wrote down, "Akkad, Ziggurats, Sumeria"

"MCQ #2: The pleistocene epoch and the quanternary period is roughly about how many years ago?"

A. ####

B. >>>>

C. ^^^

...etc

Jeffrey circled B, eliminating D as unreasonable he had a 33% chance of getting the question right.

Then the short essay question. Short essay questions were always the worst, especially since for pop quizzes they only had 7 minutes to complete it. Jeffrey had a little over 3 minutes to fill out an answer and write his name at the top.

The sounds of kids pencils writing down their answer was the only thing that could be heard in the classroom.

The loud flipping over of papers could be heard as there wasn't enough space on the front. Some kids directly pulled out a sheet of paper from their notebook and used the class stapler for more space.

"30 seconds", Mr. Co announced. He stood at the podium like a military drill instructor. Thankfully today he wasn't wearing his sunglasses, but for whatever reason he did keep a pair of aviators at his desk.