5 Things on John's mind last night before school started.

1. If Francis was going to go to football tryouts this year. Last year, he hadn't gone but showed up to the call-backs, and the coach decided it was fine. The reason Francis had gotten kicked off the team was because he stopped going to practices and the coach didn't particularly love putting a real shitty freshman player as their linebacker. John realized Francis didn't like football as much as he pretended to once Francis stopped caring wether he started or not. In eighth grade, Francis had cared a lot when John started instead of him. John remembered that day for a few reasons.

2. Was he going to try this year? John had heard a lot of people stopped trying in their Junior year. Apparently that was the year most kids really just stopped giving a fuck. In freshman and sophomore year, the kids would say they didn't care about their grades. Those same kids would then go home, and study real hard and do their homework because they didn't want anything lower than an eighty percent. John tended to get straight A's at his high school. Middle school had been rough though. Well, not the first few parts. In eighth grade, they changed how they graded things. It stressed the living hell out of thirteen year old John. That's when he also learned that he wrote way too much in his dialectical journals, and he could try a lot less and still get good grades. He thought that's probably around the time he started slacking off.

3. Did Francis remember the fight? Yeah, probably.

4. If John was going to have toast everyday like he did last year. His mom was currently a stay at home mom. So she made him toast every single morning. So he kept eating it. She was a stay at home mom because last year, his mom had gotten re-diagnosed with cancer. She had originally gotten diagnosed in his sixth grade year, but got remission in his eighth. Sophomore year, she got it again. John was hoping right now that she'd get remission in his senior year— Or sooner, if possible. He actually used to pray that she would get better. But he wasn't too sure about that kind of thing anymore for a few reasons.

5. John decided he'd eat toast everyday.

8 Things John thought about to go to sleep.

1. That one trick that his science teacher had taught him in sophomore year before they did end of the year state testing. It's the thing where you breathe in for eight seconds, hold it for four, and breathe out again for eight. His teacher said it helped people sleep and it also helped calm people down, so if they got scared or nervous during the test, to remember just to take some deep breaths. John hadn't done that during testing. He saw a couple of the girls do it though. The girls in his year really loved his science teacher. He could see why. His science teacher was an old lady, but incredibly nice. John still felt bad— only sort of— for being on his phone all the time in that class. It wasn't his fault she had the desk that had it so she couldn't see their laps.

2. Sheep. Then he wondered how that was supposed to help.

3. He remembered how it was supposed to help. Counting was supposed to make people tired. But it just made him mad because he slowly started making equations in his mind and progressively harder equations. He got frustrated that he couldn't do them properly.

4. Michael Scott going, 'I say, I say, I sit on you!'

5. That wasn't Michael Scott, that was..Klump something. But it was still Michael Scott, he just couldn't remember the name Michael had come up with for it.

6. Martha Manning's Brother John. John knew a lot of people named John. So the way they could tell the difference was with last names and because they called John Manning 'John' and they called John Laurens 'Jack'. John had let them call him Jack since his dad did anyway.

7. Why did his father call him Jack instead of John? Why isn't his full name Jonathon? Or Johnathon? He always liked the name Johnathon better than John or Jack, which was pretty silly. He used to lie and tell substitute teachers that his name was really Johnathon and that the office had just abbreviated his name on the roster. Francis would tell him, "Jack, you're being ridiculous." And John would shrug and tell him, "No one cares, Kinloch."

8. Francis Kinloch was a pretty silly name too.

4 Things his mother said to him that next morning.

1. "Good Morning, handsome." Eleanor (Johns mom) had said to him. John made a soft grunt and plopped in a chair in the dining room, which was just across the kitchen, with nothing separating the two rooms. He watched his mom put bread in the toaster. John yawned.

"I'm so tired."

2. "Did you stay up too late?" Eleanor repeated when John hadn't said anything the first time.

"Is eleven too late?" John asked her, scratching his chest.

Henry, his father, passed through the dining room, and tossed a collared shirt at him. "Shower first. Do you know when picture day is for you?"

"School hasn't even started yet," John complained.

"They gave you a calendar at registration." Henry pressed. The toaster popped, and Eleanor put it on a plate and handed it to John.

"Well, I lost it then."

3. "Today is Tuesday, the best day of the week, I hope you learn something because there's always a quiz!" Eleanor had been saying this to John since before he knew how to tie his shoes. He had slowly figured out that the quiz was at dinner, where she always asked what he had learned. God, he loved his mother.

4. "I love you, Jack."

5 Things Francis had said to him once they met up on campus.

1. "Your shirt is wrinkled. Did you iron that?" John hadn't.

2. "Cuff your jeans, Jesus Christ, John."

3. "It's not taking the Lords name in vain if you're being an asshole. And is Jesus even the Lord?" John was pretty sure Jesus wasn't the Lord. But it's always what his dad said.

4. "Meet me during your prep period?"

5. "Yes, we're still fucking."