How Green Becomes Wood

"Save up money for bail, I guess." Milo joked sardonically and followed the two of them into history class where he promptly tried to fade into the background and fought to stay awake as their teacher droned on. At least after this, he had his English class, which he already found himself really liking. It was small, the teacher didn't have the big lights on, and everyone in it seemed pretty... well... not like a lot of the high schoolers he had met. He just had to get through history, and then he had his best class, then lunch, and then the day was basically over.
 
At the end of history class - during which Xander did fall asleep in - the teacher handed around small slips of paper, distributing them randomly. Each paper had a name or subject and a date or dates, and she told them that she wanted each of them to make an informative poster about what was on their assigned slip of paper. She had the size of the poster written on the board, and the due date was Monday. They could put whatever they wanted on the poster as long as it was school-appropriate, and they would be graded based on the ease of gathering information from their poster as well as the amount of information. There were only two ways to truly fail: Not turn in anything at all, or turn in something completely inappropriate or completely full of misinformation. Other than that, they were free to be as creative as they liked.

Xander frowned at his piece of paper as they left the class. "The Defenestrations of Prague? What the heck?"

"Oh! I love that one!" Alec opened his paper and made a face. "The Salem Witch Trials. Lovely. Still, I guess it could have been worse. It could have been the Spanish Inquisition."

"What'd you get, Stitch?" Xander asked.
 
Milo didn't mind the thought of making a poster, but he feared the thought of it needing to be presented. The teacher hadn't said as much about it yet, but he knew it was coming. Teachers always made you present your poster.

Watching the teacher walk around with the paper stressed him out. He also hated not being able to choose. He hated the randomness. What if he got something he wouldn't like? What if it was boring?

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," Milo mumbled automatically, but then he unfolded his piece of paper and a small, genuine smile lit up his face, "Project Artichoke. That's awesome."
 
"Project what? Is that for like agriculture or something?" Xander asked uncertainly.

"No, it was something government or military, I think, right?" Alec asked Milo, digging through his memory and trying to recall anything about artichokes.
 
"It's the predecessor to MK Ultra," Milo replied, clearly familiar with this topic, "It's when the CIA was trying to figure out of they could get someone to be an assassin against their will."
 
"That seems kind of recent for a history teacher," Xander frowned while Alec blanched in horror. "If you want, I could get you in touch with our aunt. She's FBI, not CIA, but that'd lend some power to a poster with an FBI agent as a source, right?"
 
"Yeah, but I thought we'd actually get some real history before jumping into more modern stuff," Xander sighed. "Oh well. Anyway, here's your English class. See you for lunch."
 
"I bet probably they're having us do a bunch of different time periods to prime us for the year," Milo theorized, "Have fun in your class too. I guess I'll see you at lunch, probably."
 
Xander was less than interested in continuing to class, but he followed his brother to the classroom and put up with another session of boredom. He doubted they'd see Milo at lunch, but he wouldn't go looking for him. He figured that if Milo wanted to spend time with them, he would. No need to always go chasing after him.

Lunchtime finally came, and Alecand Xander were the first to claim their table with Peter not far behind.
 
Sloan joined them not too long after, in a much better mood than the day before, although after getting past the initial greetings, she still asked them, "Is it just me, or is this first week feeling a million years long?"
 
"It is not just you," Peter assured her, "and I do not feel ready for homework even though I feel ready to get on with things. I have to make a poster for one class, math homework estimated to take two hours, and a book to read in two weeks. How does anyone read a book in two weeks?"

"Sneaking reading time whenever they can," Alec smirked.
 
"I always divide how many pages the book is by how long I have to read it so I know how many pages I need to read each day," Sloan advised, "and then I try to read more than my daily requirement, so I finish it sooner. Sometimes you can find an audiobook of it, too, which helps get you through it more quickly. But I swear there must have been some change made by the schoolboard, all of the teachers are on one this year and are putting so much onto all of us."
 
"Not a bad idea," Peter agreed. "I'll do that."

"Is your poster for history?" Alec asked, and at Peter's nod, asked, "What did you get?"

"Sasanian Emperor Khosrow the First from 500 BC," Peter reported. "I've never heard of the fellow, but I looked it up while walking here, and apparently, he sacked a city, built a new and almost identical city in the same spot, and named it New Antioch and made the citizens of regular Antioch live there. Weird. What did you get for reading?"

"That's pretty cool," Alec said, impressed. "Same book as you, but I've already read it."

Xander grumbled quietly as he opened his lunch. "They make us read stupid stuff for school and then wonder why no one is reading anymore."

"Ignore him, he's grumpy today," Alec told Sloan. "What kind of math homework did you get?"

​

 
"Don't worry, I'm used to it," Sloan replied mildly, taking a sly sip of her water, "I actually like most of the books I've been assigned. They're not all books I might have picked up on my own, but if you have to read them anyway, you may as well try to enjoy them." She sat back, knowing how unlikely that was to have changed a single thing about Xander's grumpy mood, but sometimes it was fun to poke the bear, "My math homework isn't too bad yet. I'm in calculus this year, so I know it's going to ramp up, but it's only the third day, so we're starting relatively easy, as easy as calculus ever is, anyway. I like math, though."
 
Xander gave Sloan a grumpy look and rolled his eyes, muttering something about book lovers and mathy people before biting into his sandwich.

"That's a fantastic outlook!" Alec cheered her on. "I don't get math, not really, but I think I'm doing okay. It's not intuitive to me, but it's not awful."

"What's not awful?" Becky asked as she came to join them.

"Math," Peter told her. "I like math, and I believe I'm good at it, but boy does it eat up a lot of my day!"

"Ugh!" Becky threw back her head dramatically. "Math! Don't even get me started on math!"
 
"Once you know the equations, it's really just doing the same steps, and figuring out what the equation is feels like detective work. Especially in geometry when you're given a circle problem and you need to figure out the angles. I don't know. But if I wasn't forced to be completely committed to school, I don't know if I'd like it as much as I do. It's the sort of thing I had to kind of learn to love for my own sanity."
 
"I just can't with geometry," Becky said, making a face. "I've tried and tried and tried. My mom even got me a tutor for part of last year, but it just won't click! Ugh."

"Maybe you try too hard?" Alec offered, but he got a dirty look and decided to drop out of that conversation.

Peter sighed. "I get too impatient and cocky and start doing dumb mistakes like adding wrong or dropping a negative sign."
 
"I just put on some music and lock in," Sloan grinned, "You've gotta lock in. Also, have you tried--" She stopped herself from saying something, deciding the joke would be too grim. "Luckily, once you're in college, unless you're going into a maths heavy career, you need to take, like, maybe one math class, and then you never need to deal with it again. I like math, but I just need to take like... Statistics, and then I'm unfettered."
 
Peter brightened. "Now stats is fun! I love stats!"

"I'm not even sure I understand what stats is for or about or anything," Becky sighed.

"It's all about the details, and it's so fun to see people trying to pull one over on others by messing with stats. Like, I saw two line graphs side by side, and they were supposed to show how bad one thing was over the other, but they'd changed the numbers! The supposedly good one had five per point, and the bad one only had one per point, so of course it looked awful!"

"Ugh, whatever, I'm just glad I'll be free soon. Not as soon as lucky ducky Sloan, but soon," Becky sighed.
 
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