Uncool Life of Phillip Cross - 1. Chapter 1: "The School Day Begins"

The question of ‘Who cared if it was a school night?’ was on Phillip Cross’s mind as he spent another night reading Harry Potter. He had managed to finish of his favorite book in the series, The Order of Phoenix. Even if he hated that Sirius had to die. However, his night had fun had come to an end when his father came a-knocking. He didn’t think that he had even been up that late. He had begun at eight. Yet when he was finished, it was light out. He just had to hope that School wouldn’t be terrible. After slipping the book back into the bookcase, he tiredly made his way to the bathroom and got himself ready for the day. Once he was finished, he headed downstairs to get some breakfast and hopefully wake himself up. He headed for where the cereals were and found his favorite one missing. Spotting it on the table, he headed over and was about to pour a bowl when he realized it was empty. Yet as he looked around, he saw someone eating some.

Phillip looked up at his older brother who shrugged.

“Sorry little man, guess I got the last of it.” Jamie replied.

“Typical.” Phillip muttered.

He wanted to groan loudly. Of course, just like normal, his older brother had gotten everything that he wanted. Jamie was one of the most popular freshman in his entire school, he had everyone almost begging for him to pay attention to him. From what he had heard, it was worst when he had been in middle school. The school that he had now had to struggle through. And when you head into a school where your brother has a reputation, life is a… Constant Struggle. Especially since he was nothing like his older brother. He had two friends and that was pretty much it. He definitely didn’t have girls wanting to date him or guys wanting to be him. He didn’t even really have an interest in dating. Though his brother seemed to be hinting that he would be getting girls by the buckets loads. He doubted it. Jamie got the cuteness of the family and in Phillip’s mind, he got the Meh-ness. He definitely couldn’t make a sneeze sound cute like his older brother seemed to be able to do. Seriously, he didn’t know how he was going to compete with someone he had heard being called a super cool blond angel with ice blue eyes and supermodel good looks.

He didn’t see it, but apparently others did.

Since he wasn’t able to have what he wanted for breakfast, and his nerves already ready to snap due to his older brother, he headed for the bread draw. He pulled out a couple of slices before putting them in the toaster. A few moments later, he had his own breakfast. Sitting down from his older brother, he watched in frustration as his older brother at the cereal almost tormentingly slow. When he felt the urge to shave his brother’s blond hair, he decided that maybe a lack of a sleep wasn’t a good thing.

As he looked up, he found his older brother staring at his t-shirt. “What?”

“Just wondering when you are going to change into what you’re wearing to school?” Jamie questioned.

“I’m dressed for school?” Phillip replied.

“You’re really going to wear that?” Jamie responded.

Phillip found himself nearly growling. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Dude, you are in middle school! Your Pikachu shirt is definitely not going to make you look cool.” Jamie supplied.

“Who the heck cares what shirt I wear?” Phillip bit.

Jamie grinned. “Girls man, girls.”

“Who cares about girls?” Phillip muttered.

Jamie shook his head in amusement slightly when he heard his younger brother’s mutter. He would learn soon enough. “You, soon enough dude. You will want them chasing after to you.”

“Why? So I can hit them with my Nerf gun?” Phillip questioned.

Jamie dead-panned.

“Yes, so you can hit them with your Nerf gun.” His voice filled with sarcasm.

As they tucked into their breakfast, Phillip was sure that he heard his older brother muttering that he was a giant nerd. He ignored his older brother since he didn’t really want to start any trouble since even to their mother; Jamie was a perfect angel. It was frustrating, but reality. Once he had finished eating his breakfast, he headed upstairs to grab his backpack and brush his teeth. He finished getting ready for school before heading down and exiting his house. Since his school wasn’t too far away from the house, he had decided to walk to school. He occasionally met up with his best friend, Buster.

Today wasn’t one of those days. Instead, he found himself running into someone else.

“Colin?” Phillip called.

When he noticed that someone from his school walking towards him. When he was sure that it was indeed Colin, the boy stopped at the corner of the block to wait for the other boy. Said boy blushed and looked up to see who had called his name. Moments later, he reached Phillip and stood there nervously. While he was shorter than most of their class, Colin was definitely one of the better looking boys in the school, even if he didn’t know it. Though he wore his hair a little weird since the front of the hair was a little longer than the rest, which he gelled to stand upwards. However, what he drew you in with was his big brown eyes that seemed to be full of life despite his shyness. It definitely drew the attention away from his slightly pointed ears which looked a little big on him. He also knew how to dress, with the boy wearing some blue jeans, a red t-shirt and a red and blue plaid button up which he kept unbuttoned.

When he reached the Phillip, Colin paused as well. “U-Um hi Phillip?” Colin blushed.

“Hey dude, what’s up?” Phillip smiled.

“Um, just walking to school.” Colin replied. Wondering why Phillip would even be talking to him since he didn’t do it at school, other than the occasional chat about what they were studying.

As he didn’t really have anyone else to walk to school with, since he hadn’t ran into his best friend yet. Phillip decided to see if he could walk to school with Colin so he would have some company. “Cool, mind if I walk with you?” Phillip asked.

“Um, well we are going to the same place aren’t we?” Colin replied. He wanted to bolt, but maybe he would finally make a friend if he agreed to do this.

Phillip grinned widely. “So that means you will walk with me? Awesome!”

“I guess.” Colin replied.

Phillip grinned once more before the boy’s slowly started heading towards their school, with the pair starting quietly at first before beginning to make some small talk. Since he knew that Colin was fairly shy, he started with asking Colin about school. Like what was his favourite subject, Music, and what was his least favourite subject was, Athletics. They continued on with his, with Phillip slowly getting to know Colin better, though the boy’s responses stayed fairly softy and hard to hear at times. But he seemed to get a little more confident by the time they reached the school grounds. When they arrived at the school, Colin used this as a reason to escape the awkwardness of hanging around someone and headed off to his locker. Phillip sighed slightly but started looking around for his best friend Buster. In comparison to Colin, Buster kept his hair tidy and always looked like he had gotten it brushed and styled on that day. While they had a similar eye color, Buster’s eyes didn’t show off like Colin’s with his eyes mostly looking like they were half-shut compared to Buster’s wide eyed look.

“Sup Buster-man!” Phillip grinned. Noticing that his best friend was with his next door neighbor, Phillip nodded towards Levi who responded with one in turn.

Buster rolled his eyes but grinned “Sup Philly Cheese-steak!”

“I so need to get a better nickname.” Phillip replied.

Buster smirked. “You just wished that you could have one that was as wicked as Buster-man!”

“Sure they do Buster Blaster!” Levi teased. “And seriously, Philly Cheese-steak?”

Phillip could only groan in response, the last one that he needed to know that was Levi Warner. While the kid wasn’t exactly a bully, the teen definitely lived up to his own nickname of ‘Red Devil’. Though for a while, he was known as the ‘Fart Prince of Winchester’. Since the red-haired boy, had ripped a large on in the middle of a class on the Royal Family. It had been hilarious then, well to the guys in the classroom.

“Oh shut it Fart Prince.” Phillip bit. Levi simply smirked in response, with the red-head boy nodding at both boys before heading off towards where his friends were hanging out by the front doors. Once Levi had been gone long enough, Phillip asked a question that got repeatedly regularly. “Why do you even hang out with him?”

“My sister and his brother are like dating or something.” Buster shrugged.

The brown-haired boy wasn’t really interested in getting information on his sister’s love life. The last thing he wanted, was to think about his older sister doing anything with a guy. Like Michael was a pretty cool guy but still, who wants to think about their sister making out or worse with some guy.

Phillip shivered as he got the same mental image of Michael lying on top of Izzy, making out. “Gross.”

“Totally.” Buster replied. In full agreement of his sister’s love life being considered ‘gross’.

In order to turn their thoughts away from Michael and Izzy, Buster and Phillip quickly got into their usually morning discussion. The events of the morning’s episode of Pokemon, with Phillip groaning about how annoying Serena was and that Brock should come back to kick her out of the group. Buster smirked and teased Phillip about just not wanting to see Serena and Ash kiss, which earns him his best friend’s tongue stuck out at him. It had become their morning routine ever since they had learnt the other watched Pokemon back in elementary school, with most of the talk back then being about Pikachu always being able to defeat Team Rocket and how cute Piplup was despite being owned by Dawn. It had even been a long running joke that they would go on the journey together, with Buster wanting Chimchar and Phillip quickly claiming Piplup for himself. While the grass type was cool, but they preferred Fire and Water. As their conversation slowly turned from Pokemon into discussing where they had left off in their game of Kingdom Hearts on the weekend, Phillip found that Buster had started to get quieter until he simply didn’t even response. When he once again didn’t get a response from his best friend, Phillip waved his hand in front of Buster’s face.

“Oi Dude! Are you even listening to me?”

He didn’t get a response.

He looked around before sighing when he finally noticed what had captured his friend’s attention. The arrival of their year’s class cool kids. A pair who radiated the same sense of coolness that apparently his brother did. Their names were Harvey and Franklyn and they both had model good looks, to the point that both had modelled for local supermarkets for a few months now. Franklyn had even landed a national campaign for some kid’s clothing line. While he didn’t have a crush on them like Buster, he did have to admit that he would kill to have Franklyn’s blue eyes which drove everyone crazy. Shaking his head, he looked back at Buster and noticed that his friend was staring at them intensely. Trying to remember every inch of their bodies, that or undress them with his mind. He decided that it was probably the latter.

When Phillip felt something land on his shorts, he looked down and saw a small drool stain.

“Ew, Dude! You drooled on me!” Phillip groaned.

“B-but look at them.” Buster replied. Phillip nearly rolled his eyes at the sound of want in his friend’s mouth. “Wonder if they play…”

“They don’t.”

“H-How do you know?” Buster demanded. He turned to face Phillip, with an expression on his face that clearly told his best friend that he had said that wrong thing.

Phillip shrugged. “Look at them, Harvey and Franklyn radiate coolness. There is no way they are going to play games like Pokemon or Yu-gi-oh.”

“They might! Or they might like.”

Phillip smirked slightly. “Dude, they won’t like Dungeons or Dragons either man, it would be way too dorky for them.”

“Come on man! Can’t you let me at least enjoy my fantasy for even a single moment?” Buster pouted.

While Buster loved his best friend like a brother, he hated the fact that Phillip always took the mockery out of him for his crushes. It wasn’t like Phillip wasn’t just as big of a dork. At least he didn’t put his Comic Books in specially designed protection sleeves to make sure they didn’t get ruined. He didn’t even bother reading them before he put them away. He was pretty sure that Phillip had to buy two of every comic book, one to keep and one to read. Because he always knew what was going on, despite him never opening on in front of him, unless they were one of Buster’s own.

Phillip grinned, amusement clear in eyes. “Nope.”

“Just because you haven’t hit puberty yet, doesn’t mean you need to pick on the people who have started noticing things.” Buster grinned.

“I just prefer not wasting my time on things I know I’m not going to get.” Phillip replied. He shrugged slightly while sticking out his tongue.

“Uh huh, which is why you play more golf than my grandfather.” Buster teases.

“Hey! At least I get things in a hole.” Phillip giggled.

Buster couldn’t hold back, and joined his best friends in giggles. “Yeah, but you just move to the next hole!”

“Well, the game would be boring if you just stuck to one hole.” Phillip continued. Their giggles getting louder and louder.

“Knowing you, you would just get yourself stuck in a sand trap.”

“Oi! I’ll have you know that I always land my balls on the green!” Phillip pouted.

“Oh and how do you manage that?” Buster giggled.

“It’s all about how you handle your club.” Phillip replied.

Their responding laughter was enough to bring out a teacher out of a nearby office to see what’s going on.

“Guys, what have we told you about being too loud.”

“Sorry!” Buster and Phillip grinned. “We were just discussing golf!”

The teacher shook his head in amusement. “Well try to keep your voices down before you find yourselves getting more than a birdie.”

Buster and Phillip could only look at each other and break out in giggles once more. As the teacher walked into his classroom, Phillip spied a little tattoo on the teacher’s arm in the shape of a C in a circle. He found himself a little curious about what it meant. The pair continued to make small talk until the bell finally went off, with the pair heading off to their home room which they managed to share. One of the very few sessions they actually shared together, outside of Lunch. But in the end, it was better than nothing and allowed them to at least spend some time together before they were split up and tortured with immature classmates and the presence of girls who only seemed to ever focus on what boy had the cutest ass or the latest trends in fashion or make-up. Franklyn always was at the top of the list, followed closely by Harvey. He was pretty sure that he was last on the list.

When they reached the classroom, they rushed to their normal seats. Second Row, Line Two and Three, right in the middle of the room so they could see the board and teacher easily. They had been in the first row for the first few days of school but the teasing about being teacher’s pets led them to moving back a row. It didn’t really help them. Yet they couldn’t move anymore as the teacher had made their seating choice permanent. Phillip gave Colin a grin when the shorter boy walked into the classroom with the shy boy smiling back before taking his seat in the front row corner seat, right near the window. He continued to watch Colin as the boy pulled out a small exercise book and seemed to start drawing something inside of it.

He was pulled away from watching Colin by both Buster getting his attention again with a funny joke that he had seen on his Facebook. Once again, their laughter had been cut short by the arrival of the teacher who quickly settled them down and got down to business. While he didn’t dislike the teacher they had for home room, he did have to admit that they weren’t overly personable. They did the role, read out the announcement before getting them to do silent reading for their next class unless something important had come for them to do. But Phillip at least had to admit that the teacher didn’t insult them or treat them negatively; it was more that he didn’t really want to run a home room this year and had been stuck with the job.

Minutes later, it was time for his first class. Phillip bid Buster goodbye since Buster would be staying in the classroom for his English class with the same teacher. While he headed off for his history class, with Mrs. Mosa. She was pretty cool for a history teacher, even if she did expect him to remember dates and names of people. Not one of his strong suits. Heck, he once didn’t remember Buster’s birthday until he arrived at his best friend’s party. That had been awkward. At least his mother had been on top of it and had made sure that he had a present to give his best friend. He just wished it was something a little cooler, than a shirt. Though at least Buster had pretended to like it when he opened it, with Phillip not overly shocked that he had never seen Buster wearing said shirt.

As he walked into the room, Phillip was a little confused to see most of his classmates standing around. “Come on in guys, but don’t get too settled as you may be moving around.” Mrs. Mosa stated.

Phillip looked around a little confusion at the ‘guys’ part, until he noticed that he was blocking the way for Colin and the boy standing behind him. Harvey. He blushed slightly and moved into the class quickly to let Colin and Harvey enter the room as well, how could he had forgotten that they were in this class. He followed Colin over to where two desks were pushed together and put their books down before turning their attention back to their teacher.

“Since you have all been complaining about having to learn dates and names lately, I thought we needed to a get a little more hands on with our history lessons.” Mrs. Mosa started. The class cheered for a moment, before calming down since she hadn’t told them how yet. “It’s time for a research project!”

The class groaned. While it wasn’t listening to her drone on about dates and time, it meant that they were going to have to do a lot of work and probably do up a project.

“Oh come on guys, it will be fun!” Mrs. Mosa attempted. “You are even going to get to work in pairs for this one!” This definitely made a few members of the class pick up, with some looking around to see if their friend’s would want to team up with them.

Mrs. Mosa smirked in response. “Don’t get too excited guys, I’ve already picked out who will be working with who”. The class and Phillip groaned slightly and started to wonder who the teacher would pair him up with. Though he found himself hoping that it would be Colin, so he could get to know the shy boy that he had walked to school with further. As she started reading down her list and more people started being paired up, Phillip began to get more nervous. “Phillip, you will be teaming up with,”

He looked up at his teacher nervously before feeling like blacking out when he heard the name being read out.

“Harvey.”

Phillip’s breath got heavier as he stared at his teacher in disbelief. How was he going to get any work done when he was paired up with one of the hottest boy in school? Let’s hope that Harvey knew something about History, or they were going to be stuffed. Buster was going to be so jealous of him, if he knew that he was going to be spending time working with Harvey. Though, he would have been far more jealous if he was paired up with both Harvey and Franklyn. His best friend definitely would have wanted to crash their assignment, even if he was in a different class.

Or time zone.

While Phillip attempted to get his breathing under control, he didn’t notice Mrs. Mosa walking around and handing out the assessment sheet which outlined what she wanted them to do. As she handed it to him, he looked down and started reading the options that they could study. None of them really standing out to him yet. However, Phillip’s nervousness only returned when he noticed that his assessment partner Harvey was walking towards him, with the tanned boy not looking overly thrilled about the partnership which Phillip guessing he wanted to be with one of his friends.

“So I guess we are partners for this thing.” Harvey stated.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Harvey merely shrugged before looking at his copy of the assignment sheet. “So which of these do you think that we should work on?”

“Um I’m not sure” Phillip responded. “Which do you think?”

“What about Pompeii? The song was pretty good, not great but good.” Harvey suggested.

“Um, I guess. I mean, it’s better than nothing and if we can’t find anything then we could always swap.” Phillip replied.

“Yeah, we could.” Harvey replied. With the tanned boy shrugging slightly. “So should we head to the library and get started on this?”

“Um, yeah.” Phillip gulped.

With Phillip in agreement, Harvey went off to speak with Mrs. Mosa about getting a pass to the library to start researching their topic. Mrs. Mosa was a little surprised that they weren’t just using the computers in the room but granted the request. Meanwhile, Phillip was a little nervous about spending some alone time with Harvey. Once the received the pass, Harvey grabbed his books before heading back over to Phillip.

“Let’s go.”

Phillip nodded and after grabbing his own books, the pair headed out of the classroom and headed for the library which was located nearly on the other side of the school. Which meant that they would be having some privacy from Mrs. Mosa, who would simply trust them to study while she looked after the rest of the class. The pair didn’t talk much on their walk to the library, with neither of the boy’s really knowing what to say to the other since they hadn’t really chatted before. As they walked into the library, Phillip found himself knowing why Harvey had wanted to come here. Sitting at one of the group tables with an exercise book wide open was Franklyn. Phillip was a little confused when he saw Harvey smirk at the other boy before he walked over there, with Phillip following awkwardly.

“See Franky, I told you I would get here.” Harvey smirked. Unknown to the boy following awkwardly, the pair had betted that Harvey wouldn’t be able to get out of another History class, since he had skipped a fair few lately due to his modelling gigs.

Franklyn rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you will get your coke at lunch.”

“You better.”

“Whatever.” Franklyn scoffed. Phillip felt butterflies fill his stomach, when Franklyn’s soft blue eyes settled on him. “So who’s this?”