Entry 4 - School Life

"What!?" Seth flinched at the sound of Jole's voice, thankful no one else in the hall seemed to pay them any attention. Richter shushed him.

"Will you keep it down? It's not that bad."

"Not that bad?" Jole shot back, "How is this not bad? We're supposed to keep your dad's thing a secret. You told us that agency or whatever could be a problem."

"Could be. I meant the agency not Cross." Seth retorted.

"Same difference. What am I gonna tell my mom? 'Oh yeah, this guy is a secret agent monitoring Seth's dad. By the way, he's here to interrogate me about said dad being an alien monster.' How well do you think that would go?"

"Will you stop panicking?" Richter groaned, if a bit hypocritical.

"I'm not panicking." Jole said, clearly panicking. Seth tried not to roll his eyes. This was too much for a Monday morning. They had run into Jole at the entrance first thing in the morning and had told him to meet them by Seth's locker after first period. They had tried to call him over the weekend, but apparently, he had forgotten to charge it, and then was too busy to talk on Sunday. They figured the sooner they told him about Cross the better.

"He's already talked to me. Cross is chill, dude. Scary, but chill." Jole gave Richter an incredulous look.

"That doesn't help."

In hindsight, maybe they should have waited until after school.

"Seth?" It was a soft voice that got his attention. Ignoring his friends arguing, Seth looked behind himself to see Carlos' girlfriend Eve.

She had been dating Carlos for almost two years now, since almost the beginning of their freshman year. She was nice and Carlos was head over heels for her. He had been crushing on her since middle school.

"Have you seen Carlos? He was supposed to meet me first thing this morning."

"Did he say what he wanted to talk to you about?" Eve shook her head and Seth hummed, "Then I'm not sure. He never mentioned anything to me."

"Oh," Eve's face fell and Seth couldn't help but feel a little bad. She looked like a kicked puppy.

"We had a crazy weekend. He probably just forgot." Seth tried to reassure her. Unfortunately, he didn't anticipate Eve latching onto it, herworry clear on her face.

"Really? Is everything alright? What happened?" Seth felt his brain screech to a halt. While he was touched by her concern, her lack of understanding reminded him that Eve didn't know about his dad. Carlos would kill him if he let it slip to her. It wasn't Seth's place to pull Eve into this whole thing.

"Seth, c'mon. We're gonna be late." Richter said with just the right amount of urgency and even pulled on his shoulder to try and hurry him along. Seth gave Eve an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, Eve. I gotta go. Carlos should be in his second period by now, if you wanna ask him." Seth felt bad keeping the secret from Eve. He didn't think Carlos was being fair, but that was between Carlos and Eve, not him.

For her part, Eve didn't look upset or put out. Her look of gratitude made him feel more guilty.

"It's alright, but thank you Seth. I'll talk to Carlos later." With that Eve turned and made her way to class. Seth was pulled along by Richter to make their way to their next class. Unfortunately, Jole and Richter started back up again once they were out of earshot.

"Look, I told you he's not that bad-,"

"Cool. Great. What if it's not him that comes to my door?"

"I don't think he's going to just knock on your door, Jole."

"Fantastic. Then I guess getting abducted on the street is better?"

"Oh my god, dude, I swear-,"

Seth sighed. It was going to be a long day.

~~~~~~~~~~

"You look pensive." Carlos tried not to groan at the sound of Spencer.

"It's nothing."

"Don't seem like it," he said, and leaned against Carlos' desk. Carlos resisted the urge to poke his hip with his pencil.

"Just thinking."

"Obviously."

It's not that he didn't trust Spencer. He's known him just a bit longer than Seth has known Richter and Jole. However, unlike Richter and Jole, Spencer didn't know the truth about his dad.

He learned a long time ago half-truths worked best, he knew of Cross, but only as a family friend. It was one thing for someone to know about their dad by accident. On purpose was not advisable.

"Did something happen back home?" This was the other thing. Spencer was perceptive to the point he had to wonder just how much he actually knew.

"A little bit, but we talked it out."

The sound of the bell for class sounded and Spencer stood straight.

"I'll talk to you later, kay?" Carlos nodded. Then Spencer stopped and turned back to him.

"By the way, did you talk to Eve yet? Weren't you guys supposed to be planning a date soon?"

~~~~~~~~~~

It was lunch before Carlos was able to look for Eve. He ran through the hall. When he saw her as he turned the corner, sat on a bench picking at her sandwich, he felt relieved.

She looked up when he skidded to a stop in front of her.

"Eve, hey," he said between pants, as he attempted to catch his breath. She waited patiently and even offered him a water bottle. Always so sweet.

He took one final breath after he capped the bottle and slumped in the seat next to her. He tried to give her a smile, but was instead met with a pout.

"I didn't see you this morning."

"Sorry." He meant it. He'd had a crush on her practically since they moved here. He'd been over the moon when she accepted his confession to the point that Seth had threatened to feed his history essay to Bork.

He wanted to make her happy. He didn't want to mess things up after finally having a chance.

"Carlos?" Eve's voice dragged him from his thoughts. She looked concerned and carefully held his hand.

Her hand was grounding.

"By the way, we were supposed to figure out our next date night, right? What did you have in mind?" Eve smiled at him and his stomach fluttered. However, she said something else.

"Yeah, but before that," she hesitated, "Can I ask you something?" The question made his fluttering dull into a haze.

"I talked to Seth this morning. He said you guys had a lot happen this weekend. Is everything okay?"

Carlos felt his brain freeze for a moment -

"Did he say what happened?" she shook her head.

"No."

-Then breathed a mental sigh of relief.

"Nah. Just some things we didn't expect. It caused some stress. We got it figured out though."

It wasn't the full truth, but that wasn't something she needed to know yet. He didn't want to scare her. It felt good, however, to know she cared to ask, and that he could answer with any truth at all.

They stayed like that for a minute, basking in each other's presence. Their hands entwined. It was such a simple gesture, but it made his heart melt.

Then someone cleared their throat and both jumped.

"So, am I gonna be third-wheeling today?"

Honestly, he was like a second brother to him, but Carlos swore one of these days he was going to kick Spencer's ass.

"You're not a third-wheel, Spencer." Eve said and looked around Carlos to Spencer, who had sat down on the other end.

"I'm not worried about it." He said and pulled an orange out of his bag, "I got used to you guys being mushy a long time ago."

Eve snorted and Carlos rolled his eyes.

"I swear, you're worse than Seth sometimes."

"Don't tell him that. He'll take it as a challenge."

Carlos wanted to argue that, but knew better. While Spencer didn't hang around Seth all that often, the two got along like a house on fire. Especially at Carlos' expense. As if he could sense these thoughts, Spencer shot him a cheeky grin.

"Remember when we put glitter in your shampoo?"

"Screw off, man. It took me weeks to clean my hair out."

Eve laughed harder.

~~~~~~~~~~

By the time lunch ended, Carlos had relaxed.

A part of him still worried over Cross' intervention, but he knew there was little to be done about it now. Besides, his dad has only met Spencer a handful of times and hasn't met Eve once yet.

Maybe someday he would. In fact, that was very likely. However, the less people that knew the better. It was safer for them that way. Carlos loved his new life far too much to take the risk if he didn't have to.

That, and he feared what his dad would do upon meeting Eve. He loved his father, truly, he did. However, the less chance of his dad going onto some weird parental website for advice the better. He did not want to deal with the possibility of his dad trying to give Eve the shovel talk because 'that's what human parents do'.

"Will you stop worrying already!?"

"You're not worrying enough!"

The three of them stopped in their tracks. Carlos almost wanted to cry at the sight of Richter and Seth dragging off a hysteric Jole. It was then Seth caught Carlos' eye and gave him a sheepish grin before the two of them managed to pull Jole around the corner.

"Should we be concerned about that?" Spencer asked.

"Nope."