10 Boys Against A Project (Part 2)

<~*Chapter 8*~>

Scott realizes that he and Grayson are evenly matched on the swings, but he still tries to swing higher without flying off by accident. He laughs and cracks a few jokes, Grayson chuckles quietly still trying to swing faster than Scott.

Soon their playtime was over, as was their excited feelings. Although Scott was still quite nervous being around Grayson, he has to admit he's fun to be around. Throughout the years of knowing each other they never hung out as friends. Scott never even thought they would be friends, let alone soulmates.

But what the celestials decide is what it is, so Scott doesn't dwell on the soulmate thing anymore although he couldn't help but ask, "Did you purposely choose this place to have our talk?"

Scott has been wondering about this ever since Grayson asked him to have their talk, this park is the 'Soulmate Park' with it's very original name and meaning; it's where soulmates tend to go when they first discover they're bound by fate, and for random dates. It's a popular place and Scott doesn't know if Grayson decided this place on purpose or not.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Grayson asks cluelessly. Scott still doesn't know if the park just spaced from his mind or if he's playing dumb.

"This park, you moron." Scott says as he points to the fountain, where a very obvious stone heart lays in the center.

"Oh! Wait-" Grayson's face lights up, as if a lightbulb had turned on in his mind then he realizes everything and his face got dimmer, as if that lightbulb had entirely disappeared. "I forgot.."

"..." Scott can't help but stare at Grayson as if he were stupid and decides to change the subject, "Well whatever, why don't we head to your house now, to start this stupid project."

Grayson nods, "Alright. By the way," he looks around as if someone could be watching, "if my parents are home, don't say anything about this. I'll tell them eventually.."

"Okay, it's not like I'll go blabbing to everyone." Scott says quietly, but then he notices something's off with Grayson's expression. "Is everything okay?"

"Oh, yes. I won't tell anyone either, not until we can both work through everything." Then he smiles and leads Scott to his house.

The journey to Grayson's house wasn't far, maybe a fifteen minute walk, but to Scott it felt like an eternity. The two were in an awkward silence for almost the entire walk. At least that's what Scott felt, Grayson's expression was still strange but unreadable so Scott didn't know what to do.

When they finally made it to Grayson's front door, he let out a sigh of relief when he saw Grayson had forgotten whatever was making him act weird.

Grayson's parents weren't home when the boys walked inside but his older brother Leon was.

"Welcome home, Grayson-.." Leon starts as he walks to the entrance but he pauses when he sees Scott. "Scott?"

"Leon.. Hi." Scott says awkwardly smiling, and tossing in a small wave of his hand.

"You guys know each other?" Grayson asks with a raised eyebrow and a confused face, he looks back and forth until Leon answers.

"Uh, yes." Leon clears his throat, "we used to hang out a while back."

"It's been a while, how are you?" Scott asks in mild concern.

Scott's old friend group had all split up, due to an obvious reason that Scott hates thinking about; his time while being missing. Before that, Leon and Lucas had just discovered they were soulmates, ruining Scott's crush but he never held hatred for Leon or Lucas, even now after everything that went down, Scott only held his feelings of friendship towards them. Though, Leon may hold resentful feelings toward Scott..

"I'm doing well, and you, Scott?" Leon asks, Scott can tell he's only playing nice in front of Grayson though.

"Me too.." Scott says covering up his sadness.

After a moment of awkward silence between the three, Grayson decides to speak up, "Scott and I have a project to work on so we'll be in my room."

Scott forgot that Grayson is rich. Erebus currency is called 'tokens,' and the more popular people, such as the Kane pack where Grayson's from, are hard workers and make tons more tokens than a normal store clerk. Usually, people who work for the demon king are paid a lot because they're doing work behind the scenes of what everyone sees.

Scott can think of a few people who are openly known for working for the king. The Kane pack, first of all, and next there's Gabriela Archena. She's not known to have any relatives, she's even allowed to leave the walls due to her association with the Demon King. Her essence is 'vampire' and she's lived for over two hundred years, as the books say, she doesn't make public appearances that often. But the fact is, working for the demon king gives lots of tokens, the problem is no one knows why the people get more and lots of others question if shady business is going down in the nether.

Grayson's family's house is larger than the outside so Scott thinks there may be magic at play there. And past the living room there's a huge staircase leading to the second floor, and that's where Grayson takes Scott. Up the stairs and there are a lot of rooms but Grayson passes half until he makes it to one almost in the exact middle of the hallway. And when he opens the door, Scott feels a little disappointed, the room itself was bland but a little bigger than average. There were few furnishings but it at least looked like a room, plus it was clean and sparkly so Scott liked it. When Grayson led Scott in and closed the door, Scott noticed that on the back of the door there was a singular poster with 'Hyper Hurdle' written on it with a famous team with bright colors.

"Do you like hyper hurdle a lot?" Scott asks while looking at the poster.

"Oh, yes." Grayson says but he doesn't look very enthusiastic. Somehow Scott feels Grayson's mood has changed a lot now that he's away from school grounds.

"Is there something bothering you?" Scott asks calmly, Grayson looks into his eyes a little startled by the sudden question but he recovers quickly.

"Not really, today has been tiring though. Especially finding out about.." Grayson says awkwardly pointing between him and Scott.

Scott laughs a little, "I understand, if you're too tired we can always do this tomorrow."

"Nah, it's fine. Let's at least go over the project requirements." Grayson says grabbing the papers he put in his back pocket.

"Alright, time for work.." Scott sighs and Grayson reads through the papers out loud.

The instructions read:

"Prompt: You and your partner(s) will design a flyer to promote something meaningful in your lives.

The flyer must be school appropriate, and for children to be able to read. Which means no violence, drugs, weapons, harmful topics, sexual themes, ect.

Think about a meaningful topic like romance, sports, arts, clubs, foods, backgrounds (meaning heritage or history), cultures and or/essence cultures, ect.

Your flyer will take others to your presentation, which could be a cardboard stand, a slide presentation online, a book/pamphlet for others to read, a show of objects, an acted out play or presentation of your flyer, ect.

If help is needed, contact one of the senior teachers or office faculty to ask questions about your project.

This is to be completed within 1 week, extra time may be given, depending on your presentation method that you're using.

Hope you have fun,

Ereb High School Faculty and Staff

School Hours 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Office Contact: (***) *** - ***

Principal Contact: (***) *** - *** or ********@*****.***

Vice Principal Contact: (***) *** - *** or ********@*****.***

To find teacher contacts, visit the school website: erebhighschool.homepage.com"

"Well, what should we do?" Scott asks, thinking of all the options and what could be the best to do within a week.

"I don't know. We could talk about different essences as a slide presentation. I feel like that would be easy to finish within a week." Grayson says, then he appears to be deep in thought.

"Yeah, let's do that. It seems easy, but what which ones should we talk about?" Scott asks, also agreeing with the idea, Scott's eyes light up as he knows this is his specialty.

"Well, how many cultures do you know about?" Grayson asks curiously, seeming interested in Scott's sudden happy face.

"Hmm, I know a lot because I used to research different species and basically all cultures of different people throughout Erebus, then I have little knowledge of beyond the walls." Scott says with a small laugh.

Grayson laughs too, "well, I haven't really been interested in searching for that stuff but maybe this will be fun. I'll also do some extra researching on whatever we decide on, just in case."

"Alright," Scott says, laughing again. "What do you want to work on?"

"The more popular or most common essence users, like demons, ghouls, vampires, witches, banshees?" Grayson says, thinking of the more common ones around the town.

"Alright," Scott starts, "should we explain how they live and what they do? Like their power levels, friend groups, and how they live? Ooh!" Then he seemed to think of something else and added, "what if we talk about famous people? Such as.. Cyrus Grove! He's one of my favorite celebrities online."

"Sorry, I don't know who that is.." Grayson says scratching his neck, "you're probably going to need to explain a lot to me.."

"That's fine! I don't have anyone to share my knowledge with anyways." Scott chuckles quietly and then continues, "Well, we should have maybe 2-3 slides on each of the people. If we do all five of the ones you stated, we'll end with about 10-15 slides.. We need pictures and evidence.." Scott rambles on about everything they need to do while Grayson looked lost after the second sentence.

"And that should be it." Scott says, finishing his long tangent.

"Uh, maybe we should take it slow and think about one thing at a time." Grayson says, still processing what Scott just explained.

"Oh whoops," Scott says calming himself, "sorry about that, I really like to read and this stuff just happens to be extremely hard to find, challenging stuff is what I like most. I'm a little excited."

"No it's fine, just a lot to process at once," Grayson explains nicely, he smiles to show he's interested in what Scott's talking about.

Scott explained what they should do first, making it understandable and slow. They got to working, made small progress by 5 p.m. and decided to stop.

Scott had a lot of fun, more than he thought he would with someone he would've never thought to be a friend. It was also hard to find someone with the same interests as him, even if this is for a project Scott will take what he can get.

"So.. I guess I'll get going." Scott supposes after they put away the project materials and sat on Grayson's bed for like 5 minutes.

"Alright, it was fun today." Grayson states standing up and leading Scott out.

"Yeah, it was. And tomorrow, should I come over again?" Scott questions, knowing the answer was a 'yes' but he wants to make sure.

"Yep, we have a project to work on." Grayson says with a small laugh.

Scott laughs too, "I know, I was just making sure."

"I can wait outside the school and we can come back together, if you want?" Grayson asks.

"Alright," Scott says with a smile.

"Alright," Grayson says back with the same smile.

Grayson opens the front door to his house and Scott walks out waving his hand.

"See you tomorrow." Grayson says, Scott waves his hand super fast which makes Grayson laugh.

"See ya'." Scott yells as he walks off of Grayson's lawn and into his walk home.

.

.

.

"Scott, where have you been?" Melanie asks as her brother walks in looking happy.

She ruined his mood.

"With someone." Scott says, being very vague.

"Why didn't you say anything? You could have passed out again.." Melanie says, looking at Scott worriedly.

"I told you, I'm fine. And we immediately left the school so we could work on our project." Scott explains.

He's frustrated with his family, they seem to hate him one moment then try to actually be his family the next. He knows why now, because shadows have possessed them but the way they act still make him angry.

"Just tell someone where you're going next time.." Melanie says worriedly, walking up the stairs to her room with her head down.

"Okay, I will." Scott says as he follows her up, trying to ease her concern. "Don't worry too much, you'll get wrinkles like Seth."