It’d been a good two hours since he’d finished breakfast with an only slightly suspicious Harriet and after a rather sweltering bus ride down the first half of the lakepark lane, Ed was somewhat beginning to accept that he might just indeed have a system. If he ignored the fact that practically the entire bus was filled with what he was pretty sure was the usual rowdy highschoolers—that for some reason his system had labeled npcs—then the other fact that everyone had their names conveniently hovered over their heads like some sort of rpg was proof enough for him.
“Hey.” Ed had called to a tall guy in a jersey as he’d got on. “Jordan! Nice shot!”
He’d seen him knock a five point from the window so Ed felt pretty safe about the excuse.
When Jordan had turned in confusion at the compliment before being pulled away by his friends, Ed had all but confirmed to himself that whatever this was it was definitely real. Of course, after pulling this trick a couple more times just to make sure; if it wasn’t for the handful of weird stares he was getting now, he was starting to feel pretty confident about the whole system thing.
It was probably around the last stop and about when his, well, Ed wasn’t too sure if he’d call him a friend, but they had a few classes together and were on the same bus so after talking enough during the year Ed had taken to saving a spot for him, got on; Ed was just about ready for his final test.
“Manny!” Ed threw out his hand for a clasp. Manny returned it with a laugh and Ed pulled his backpack aside as he fell into the seat. “You know that guy in the back?”
“Hmm?” Manny said. His eyes were trained on a dreadlocked girl near the front so Ed windmilled his hands a little to catch his attention. When Manny tore his eyes away, he pointed back at the guy. “Oh what!” Manny chuckled, lightly punching his arm. “You finally down for that hook up?”
“What! No!” Ed flustered. His plan seemed to be very quickly falling apart. “I uh, just want to know who he is.”
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“Jeez man, I’m just play’n. Surprised you don’t know him.” Manny turned thoughtful. “Chase is one of the starters for the wildcats. They’ve been going pretty crazy this year. Argh.” He roughly thumped his head against the seat-back in front of them. “I still can’t believe Jamie scored with Liah. Fuuck man.”
The pair of girls that were in front of them had rather quickly turned around at the thump, poking their heads up from the seat back so they could exasperatedly stare down at where they’d undoubtedly concluded the thump had come from. Though, upon hearing the matter at hand, they very quickly turned to giggles.
“Wait.” The one on the left started solemnly. “You knew Liah?”
“No.” Manny stated demurely. His head was still slumped into the seat-back.
“Huh?” The one on the right said. It was here that Ed remembered he could just look at their names and realized the left was apparently Madison and the right was Pari. Pari frowned. “You said that like you knew her?”
“I wish.”
“You gotta admit they’re a good match though.” Pari pushed matter-a-factly.
“I know, don't remind me!” Manny moaned and he threw back his head. He had a very painful looking laugh thing plastered over his face.
As if it was some sort of que for something, Madison and Pari seemed to exchange a glance before all but whaling into him with a series of rapidfire questions that Manny was quite surprisingly able to keep up with despite his rather halfhearted sort of appearance.
Huh, well it appeared he wasn’t actually going to get to grill Manny for much info about Chase. As discreetly as he could possibly manage, Ed took a small peek back at the guy. He was still laughing with his friends, who now seemed to include Jordan for some reason, and of course, the little pink *charmed* status right off the top of his name tag was still, well, very much right there.