How Green Becomes Wood

"It was fantastic! That means her first word can't be far behind. I wonder what she'll say first? I hope it's not one of our names and it's something random," Alec mused.

Xander shrugged. "I'm not... unhappy about it. It's cool."
 
"It'll probably be whatever she's taught to say for Mom," Milo said with a shrug, "That's what a lot of babies say first. But mine was apparently bird." He looked at Xander again and with a little shrug said, "It's okay if you don't really care, I think. Parents always care, but babies do a million new things. It's hard to care about all of them."
 
"Bird is a good first word. I'm not sure what ours was," Alec admitted.

Xander glanced at Milo, a little surprised but grateful at his statement. He looked away and dug out his notebook. "Thanks."

The last students hurried in including the extra-large footballer. He was sporting a black eye and a bruised cheek. He wandered to the back of the class and sat himself down in the seat next to Alec. Alec looked at him with a mixture of confused trepidation and glanced at Xander. Xander looked at the footballer, who seemed to be steadfastly ignoring them, and shrugged to Alec. He didn't know what this was about.
 
"My dad thought it was really funny, so he talked about it a lot," Milo replied, only giving a slight nod to acknowledge Xander's thanks, "He told me lots of stories about when I was a baby."

When the large football player sat down next to them, he toom a quick look over and then turned sharply away, not knowing what to do with either the change in seating order or this person apparently choosing to be near them.
 
Class started and moved along at a decent clip. Other than the footballer passing a stack of handouts to Alec when the teacher had them pass some papers around, he did not acknowledge them. They were merely sitting near each other. That was it. Alec focused on class and quickly forgot the new guy was even there. Xander remembered and kept one eye on him, but apparently, he didn't need to. The other guy didn't cause any trouble, though the teacher did have to get stern with a couple of rowdy boys sitting in front of them.

Class ended, and the footballer got up first and headed out without so much as a backward glance. Xander waited for Alec to finish gathering his stuff before getting up to move on to their next class.
 
Milo stood up slowly and followed them out, "...Was that weird, or was that normal?" He asked, looking down at the floor, "He didn't really do or say anything, but. I don't know. There was yesterday, and now he's sitting with us."
 
"I'm beginning to think weird is the new normal and normal is weird," Xander grumbled.

Alec shrugged. "We were low on seats by the time he came in. Maybe he just really didn't want to sit closer to the front. Where are we going next? Which class?"
 
"That's true... Then I don't know why other people changed up their seating arrangements. I hate when people do that, the place you sit on the first day of class is where you stay, that's how it goes." Milo replied, stressed by the little change purely because it was a little change, "We have history next. Then I have English, I don't know what you have after that."
 
"At least it wasn't your seat," Alec said cheerfully. Then added, "But it is annoying, yes. But I guess not everyone likes their seat on the first day, so they try to get a better seat on the next day until everything shakes out."

"Yay. History. I wonder what we're going to be memorizing today," Xander grumbled.
 
"We have a syllabus, you can just look," Milo said, "It's the third day of school, so I don't want to make too harsh an assumption, but I am worried we could just read our textbook in our own time and get an identical educational experience as being in class. Maybe it'll pick up. I like when schools do interactive activities."
 
Xander stared at Milo, and before he could stop himself, he said, "You like interactive activities?"

"What kind of activities were you thinking of?" Alec asked curiously. "I'm sure it will pick up pretty quickly."
 
"I don't like talking to people," Milo replied with a little shrug, "but one time they made us pretend to be like... Shirtwaist Factory workers, and they had us pretend to work an assembly line, and I thought it was cool. My teacher didn't warn us, we just showed up, she sorted us by sex, and first we drew a shirtwaist shirt all on our own, and then we did it by an assembly line. We also did a pretend Ellis Island thing, where we had to follow these steps to get through to the United States. I like when school is gamified."
 
"Sounds tedious and even more annoying than regular school," Xander grumbled.

"I think that sounds like amazing fun!" Alec grinned. "Things like that do happen around here sometimes, but not often. Apparently, it slows down our projected speed getting through the curriculum or something like that."
 
"I like when things are a bit tedious," Milo murmured, walking with them to history, "I think it's stupid to rush learning. Doing interactive stuff helps you learn better, because you actually understand it and you have to be more engaged than if you were just barely listening."
 
"Says the guy who skipped most of his classes by his own admission," Xander pointed out. "I just don't get why we have to do all this stuff. School is nothing more than a production facility for people, anyway, unless you're going to some kind of private school where they do cool stuff. Here, it just feels like playing silly games."

Alec leaned closer to Milo and whispered, "The last three times we did an interactive thing, he got into serious trouble for a different thing each time. He's got a bad association with them, which is too bad, because I think you're right."
 
"I skipped class because I either was too behind to get caught up or because I had already been taught the information already," Milo replied with mild indignance, "If it was content I didn't already know and wasn't predicated upon a bunch of stuff I had already missed, I showed up, at least most of the time. It's not that I thought school was a waste, it's just... difficult when every school has different standards."

Leaning over to Alec, Milo whispered back, "I don't know how he always manages to find trouble."
 
Xander fell into quiet grumbling, clearly not satisfied with Milo's answer, but not really wanting to continue the discussion as he marched off to his next class.

"It's his finest honed skill," Alec sighed, rolling his eyes skyward in a long-suffering look. "I don't know what to do with him sometimes. I really don't."
 
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