A/N: Hey. For the people who actually read past the first chapter, thank you. i promise it will get better. i really suck at beggining stories, so i'm sorry. But i promise i have a plt line i think is worth waiting for. lol you may not, because it hasnt been introduced yet, but i think within the next few chapters it will be...so maybe hang in there?

Two – How Bad Could It Be?

How bad could it be having Joey in all of my classes? Very bad. It was barely third period and he’d already caused some trouble. I didn’t think he was going to be this difficult and the teachers, knowing the situation, looked to me to keep him in line. That was bad too. Was I supposed to have control over Joey? Was I supposed to be able to keep him in line? Was I supposed to be able to keep him out of trouble? Apparently. And every time the teachers looked to me, he would glance back at me and smirk with a malevolent look in his eyes. He was enjoying this.

English was our third period. And Joey, apparently, thought the class was boring, and as dumb and overrated as it is, he began to make spit balls and spit them at the teacher, gathering the attention of half the classroom with out Mr. Bumble, the teacher, noticing. The girls were swooning over him and he would grin at them. The guys would laugh and they began to join in.

One of them finally hit Mr. Bumble’s shiny bald head. He stopped writing on the white board and simply stood there. Then he turned to face the class. His face was red and he looked like he was about to explode. He closed the Beowulf book and his eyes went directly to Joey. And then guess whom he went to? Me.

“Miss Erickson, are you not supposed to be helping Mr. Thomas here improve himself? Wouldn’t respect be an improvement? You’ve never been disrespectful so you should lend him some of your manners.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Bumble, I’ll try to keep him in line.”

He seemed satisfied so he turned back around and continued to write on him board. I turn my head to Joey was laughing and readying another spit ball. I grabbed the straw out of his hands and got out of my seat. I walked to the trashcan and glared at him as I threw it away. He frowned.

When class ended I was thankful because our next class was the one we shared with Gabe. Joey was sulking since I threw away his straw and ruined his fun and I was glad for silence and beautiful as he was he got on my nerves.

I now knew why he was called a jerk. I had been learning this whole day. He was mean, and selfish, he made rude comments and jokes, he insulted those around him and he was disrespectful to the teachers, he was conceited and didn’t give a shit about anyone. I was surprised he hadn’t gone off and run away from me, or start saying things about me since I wasn’t exactly letting him have his fun. But I figured it was because I was Gabe’s girl and he wouldn’t insult his best friends girlfriend.

All day I was thrown envious glances from other girls, oh if only they knew, I would trade places with them if I could. But I could understand their jealousy; honestly Gabe and Joey had to be the hottest guys in school. And I was dating one; the other I was being forced to baby sit. Which was much harder than most people would think.

He was like a five year old really. But he was more mischievous and used bigger words. Most people assumed drug addicts were dumb and their brain was too messed up to be actually put to good use, but Joey had a very ‘enhanced’ vocabulary. He was smart and witty and when someone said something offensive he didn’t even need a whole second to think of a comeback that had twice as much sting to it.

“Your girlfriend isn’t letting me have any fun.” Joey complained to Gabe in class. It was art so we pretty much got to do anything, talk, and listen to music as long as we were working on the project.

Gabe just shrugged, “What can I say, she is there to keep you in line, that’s what she’s doing.”

I smiled, I loved Gabe, he was always on my side. I felt his arms lock around my waist where I was standing. I was painting, and I may I add I was horrible at it. Joey was painting as well, and I was extremely jealous, because this, this person, was so good at everything.

“Wow,” Joey said peeking over at my painting. “I’m loving your artistic skills, what are you going for here?”

I pouted, and acted as though he was insulting me, but I really didn’t know what I was going for. There were strange shapes and colors everywhere and it didn’t really look like art, unless you liked really abstract stuff, I mean really abstract.

“It’s a Picasso, sort of thing.” I lied. He nodded and smirked with amusement, he could tell that I really had no idea what I was doing.

After art we had lunch, and I was glad for that because Gabe could keep the peace between Joey and I for a while longer. Not that it really helped, Gabe walked between us and we would lean forward to say something insulting or yell at each other.

But lunch ended to soon. An overly anxious Joey dragged me off to P.E; he was ready to show off more of his talents, this time as an athlete. I kissed Gabe on the cheek and grimaced as I was being pulled away, Gabe merely laughed at my misery.

“Ah, Joey. It’s good to have you back, you’re a great athlete.” Our P.E coach was saying. It was amazing to me, Joey; he could make some teachers gag at the sound of his name and others praised him so much it was annoying. Examples, our art teacher and now, our P.E teacher.

“Alright we’re going to split up into teams today.” The coach was saying, we were playing Rug ball in P.E and Joey seemed absolutely thrilled. I could only guess Joey was especially good at this game.

The coach chose captains. I was chosen for a captain and another girl named Melissa was, we were the only two girl captains. Then for the guys it was a boy named Michael, quite the cutie. Then it was Toni, and overly muscular football jock and then Joey was chosen as captain. There weren’t many girls in the class so each team got two girls, even the teams with girl captains.

For my team I choose my near and dear friends, Sarah, and Crystal. They were some of my closest friends since as long as I can remember, so of course they would be first to be chosen. For boys I chose, Ben, Alex, John and Tyler.

Now for those who don’t know the rules of Rug Ball, girls are huge helpers. While when boys scored by catching it in the end zone it was only one point and when they ran the ball in it was two points, just double the scores and you have the girl’s advantages.

My team was team Two. Joey was team Four and we just happened to be playing against them for our first game. But before we got to play team names were necessary. My team huddled up around me. I smiled, “So guys, what’s our name going to be?”

Numerous ideas were thrown in and rejected. But we had only one minute to think up a name and when the coach came to our team we still hadn’t decided and then Tyler yelled out, “The Brady Bunch!” we all looked at him, he smiled innocently, “we needed a name right? It was the first thing that came into my mind.”

Joey’s team name was probably worse than ours. “The Sesame Street Gangsters.” The girls on his team all swooned over him and called him brilliant for thinking up such an ‘awesome’ team name. I was surprised and hadn’t noticed that Joey was still wearing his hat even during P.E, I hadn’t seen him take it off before, maybe he was balding? No, it couldn’t be that cause I saw hair coming out from the back oh his hat. And then as if he read my mind, he lifted up his hat and flattened the black hair on his head.

He looked over at me and smiled. As we were heading out on to the playing field he came up behind me. “Are you ready to get beat?” he said. I had no doubt Joey was about to beat my team. I was horrible at this game. I had no hand eye coordination at all.

To my surprise by the end of the game I had scored once. While Sarah and Crystal scored about three each. The boy on our team were aggressive, but of course no match for Joey. Joey always seemed to be showing off, whether it was for praise or for a girl, he was always trying to prove that he was good enough, and that he was better than what was expected. He didn’t do this in class of course. Because everyday I had to tutor him, part of my job was making sure he was doing well in all his classes. And everyday I ended up giving him almost all the answers.

But anyways, as good as my team played (excluding me and my horrible coordination skills.) we lost to Joey. If I had better coordination we would have won. Well, probably not, but still we would have done better. But no one held the loss against me. I was thankful for that. Instead they laughed with me about it and playfully mocked me about when the ball hit my head.

.

.

It was close to midnight on Saturday. I had spent a whole day out with Gabe and then I had gone home to do homework. I just finished. I hadn’t seen Joey all day, and I was a bit worried about that. I was supposed to be with him practically all day everyday.

I changed into my pajamas. They weren’t anything fancy. Just a pair of work out shorts and a tank top that I hardly ever wore. I was about to crawl into bed when my phone rang. I was too lazy to look at the caller ID.

“Hello?” I said drowsily.

“Hey Amber. You sound tired.” I rubbed my eyes and yawned. It was Joey. Why was he calling me at midnight? If he was going to call someone at midnight why not some girl he could sleep with or even Gabe, just to hang with?

“Yeah. I am a bit.”

“Well that’s too bad. Wake up.”

“Joey. It’s twelve o’clock at night.”

“Technically, it’s morning. But anyways, come to my house.”

“What? Why the hell would I do that at midnight?”

“Jeez Amber, don’t get all defensive, it’s not like I’m going to rape you.” He said jokingly. I could hear the laughter in his voice.

“How do I know that?” I asked skeptically. He had succeeded in waking me. His voice always seemed to wake me up or put me on edge, not in a bad way though, just in a way that kind of wouldn’t let you be unaware of him being there. If that made sense. It was like impossible not to wake up when he talked, he was enthusiastic yet sounded bored at the same time. It was a peculiar thing.

“Well, if I did that I would be on Gabe’s bad side and I don’t want that. He my best friend.”

“Then why don’t you call him?”

“I did, he has to baby-sit.”

I had forgotten Gabe had siblings, though I didn’t really know why he had to baby sit. I mean his brother was fifteen years old, perfectly capable of spending one night alone.

“Oh.”

“So come over now.”

“What? No. How? I don’t want too.”

“Amber if you don’t come over here I’m going to light up a bowl of pot and break out the beer and have a party with all the other druggies in my neighborhood.”

Something in his tone of voice made me believe him. So I grabbed my jacket and slipped on my flip-flops. “Alright, fine. I’ll be there soon.”

“Bye.” He said. I could hear the grin in his voice.

I tiptoed out of my room and left a note on the fridge in the case of me not being back by morning. I didn’t want my mom to freak out like she did sometimes. She worried to much. The note just told her that Sarah called me early in the morning and asked me to go help her with a project. My mom always woke up at twelve on the weekends so it didn’t matter. I stuck it on the fridge and grabbed the bottle of pills from on top of it. I took two out and put them in a zip lock bag for the morning. I stuffed the bag in the pockets of my shorts.

My mom didn’t work on weekends and she never went anywhere either so I grabbed the keys to her car and left the house. I knew she wouldn’t mind, she never did as long as she didn’t need it. She sent me to do errands on weekends. Now, she isn’t lazy, she just works very hard during the week to support the two of us. My dad sends child support checks once a month, but its never much. It pays for my medicine and that’s about it.

The drive to Joey’s house wasn’t far. In fact we were in the same neighbor hood, but it was a big neighbor hood so it took about seven or eight minutes. There were no cars in the driveway so I parked my mom’s there. No lights were on so I wondered whether or not he had fallen asleep and I had snuck out for no reason. But as I walked up the driveway the door opened and Joey stood there a smile on his face waiting for me. Joey always smiled. As much as we didn’t get along sometimes, whenever he smiled I felt at peace. And that was bad. Because I shouldn’t feel that way about my boyfriends best friend. I didn’t want to be just another girl on Joey’s list of girl who he had made cheat on their boyfriends and I didn’t want to hurt Gabe, so I had to be careful, Joey certainly was a charmer.

To my surprise Joey was standing there with a big t-shirt on and Pj bottoms. I had expected to see him wearing the clothes he had worn all day, for him to have just gotten home from a party or something, but he wasn’t. He looked like he had been home all day and he was ready for bed, but just not tired.

“Hey.” He said.

“Give me all of your drugs.” Was the first thing I said when I got into his house. He had turned on the kitchen light and we were just standing there across from each other.

“What?”

“I’m serious Joey. Give me every drug you have in this house unless its prescription. I want your entire stock of weed; if you have speed or coke I want those too. I also want your cigarettes. And all alcohol will be disposed of.” I was serious. I held out my hand waiting for him. He was quiet for a moment. Then he motioned for me to follow him. Now I was surprised. I hadn’t expected him to just give everything to me, but he was. He took me up to his room and he started going through one of his dresser drawers.

“I don’t do speed or coke.” He said, I could tell he was being honest by the tone of voice. But he handed me a bag that contained, the drug I knew as weed. This was my first time being in possession of it. I’d seen it before, smelled it, never held a bag of it. He closed his dresser and grabbed a box off his dresser. He handed it to me and I saw the box said the name of a cigarette company.

“That’s all I have, but the alcohol is down in the fridge.” I followed him back to the kitchen and he grabbed the twelve pack of beer and followed me out to my car and put it in the trunk along with his other drugs that I had taken from him. Tomorrow I would have to call Mrs. Johnson.

“That’s everything?” I asked when we got back into his house. It wasn’t very cold outside, with it barely being September, but it was much warmer in Joey’s house.

He nodded in response. “There is nothing more Ma’am. You have cleaned me out.” I smiled. “Good. Now. Why the hell am I here?”

“Because I was bored.”

“Well, why not go to bed? I mean it’s twelve forty five.”

“To be honest? I have insomnia. Now, you are the only one to know that besides Gab, that is not related to me.”

“Wow, insomnia?” I asked a little surprised. I was almost tempted to tell him what I had. “So what do you do?” I asked. “You know, like all night long…”

He raised his eyebrows. And I got why. “No that way you sick-o.” he laughed lightly. “Well, normally, I kind of just hang out. But you know, infomercials, they get annoying after a while.” I laughed. “I know what you mean.”

We ended up making prank calls and watching movies. The prank calls were hilarious and Joey had to end up doing most of them because almost every time the person answered when I called I laughed thinking about what I planned on saying. But Joey was a pro at this. Somehow all guys were. My older brother Tom was good at it too.

Thinking about Tom I realized how much I missed him he was a few years older than me and when he graduated high school he went into the peace core. I had about four more months or so till he came back and started college.

“You look deep in thought.” Joey said making an observation. I snapped out of my thoughts and blushed. “Sorry. I was thinking about my brother.”

“Care to tell?” he asked. This was a different Joey. The Joey I had seen at school and with Gabe was always trying to impress someone or prove himself, but this one was calm and cool. He wasn’t a jerk, sure, he still made his side comments, but that’s who he was. This Joey was relaxed, he wasn’t trying. He was just sitting there, ready and willing to listen.

“Sure.” I said. I had nothing better to do and I assumed Joey didn’t plan on going to bed. So we sat at the kitchen table and he made me coffee. I glanced at the clock on the stove. It was three forty five in the morning. I yawned. “Good thing I made you coffee.” He said and set it down in front of me.

“Thanks.” I said and took a sip. I hadn’t told Joey how I liked my coffee and yet somehow it was just right. Better than when I made it myself. “This is great.” I said taking another sip. He chuckled. “I figured you liked coffee like that.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged. “I just know. I should work at a Starbucks huh?”

I laughed and nodded. “So tell me,” he said, “What were you so lost in thought about?”

I sighed and thought of my older brother. “I was thinking about my older brother. Tom.”

“Yeah? What about him?” Joey actually seemed interested in what I was saying, which was more than I could say he did for most others.

“Well, he graduated high school the year that I was going in. so you know, he’s about four and a half years older than me. But anyways. He decided before he went to college he wanted to join the peace core.” I looked away from my coffee and up at Joey who was watching me intently and ready to hear more. “And so.” I continued. “he went and I haven’t seen him since. I mean, I, I know he’s okay. Because like, we get letters and stuff, but, but I miss him you know?”

I was surprised at myself. I was talking comfortably around Joey. When I first met people, I was scared to make mistakes in my language and grammar, but once I get used to them I repeat words and don’t talk so formally, and it’d only been about two weeks or so and I was already talking comfortably around him. It’d taken a while with Gabe and with most of my other friends.

“I know.” He said, “I miss my brother too.”

“Where’s yours?” I asked. He pointed up. And I suddenly felt horrible for asking so carelessly. I didn’t know anything about Joey and that gesture, most of the time it meant they were gone….

“In Canada.” He said when he saw the look on my face. I slapped his hand. “You made me feel so bad for a second! You’re so mean!”

He laughed, and smiled, “Don’t take it so seriously.”

“Well usually when people point up like that they mean heaven!” I was practically yelling at him. He was laughing.

When I calmed down I looked around, and as late as it was to realize this, I had just realized that there was no one home with him. “Joey, where’s your family? Like parents?”

He shrugged and sipped his own coffee. “My parents travel. They leave me here alone cause I’m capable of handling myself.”

“Obviously. I mean you only got sent to a rehab center. Do your parents know that?” when I saw the look on his face I realized he was a sneaky little bastard. (Haha) I knew what he did. “You got your brother didn’t you? To like, take care of everything.”

He grinned and nodded. “When I was sentenced to rehab. I got my brother so they wouldn’t contact our parents. And he is a lawyer so he knows his stuff. He did something, I forgot, but he did something and I only had to be there until I convinced them I was capable of being clean. That only took a week, and then they got you to look after me. It’s just I didn’t think you would be so…”

“So what?” I was curious to hear his opinion of me. “Annoying.” He said. My jaw dropped. And I grabbed my keys off the table. I was going to leave. But he grabbed my wrist. “I’m kidding. Stay. What I meant to say is you’re very committed, and persistent. But not in a bad way.” He assured me. I sat back down and he smiled.

“You look tired.” He stated. I rolled my eyes. “I’m only being forced to stay awake all night by an insomniac.” We laughed and I took another sip of coffee. Joey was…fun to be around when he wasn’t trying to impress someone, when he wasn’t trying so hard. Maybe I could help he feel less obligated to prove himself. Maybe I could help him.