A couple of weeks passed without anything major happening. Mainly, Felix and Harper tried to stop whatever minor crime they saw when they were out and about. And that had been occurring on an increasing basis. Smiling, Felix walked to class, textbooks in hand.
His phone rang, the spacey ringtone easily identifying the call as belonging to Clarissa. "What's up?" he asked after fumbling the phone out of his pocket.
"Hey Felix! It's been so long since we've last spoken! How's class?" she asked, chipper as always.
Felix had to laugh at the absurd level of excitement. "It's going well. I'm even doing well in English, which is something that I never saw happening."
"Good, good," she said, pausing. "Listen, the company's sponsored an event at your college, if you'd be interested in attending. I'll be there as the representative of our mission, but the company wanted me to reach out to see if you'd like to help me out," she stressed the 'wanted' and the 'like.' So it wasn't a matter of whether Felix actually wanted to do a presentation or not, but that the company was being nice about forcing his hand.
"Any word from them about putting me on another mission next summer?" he asked, figuring that if they wanted something from him, they ought to have armed Clarissa with some information.
"I've been working at them for months, but no dice just yet. The people who run Green Dawn are something else entirely, I swear," Clarissa said apologetically. "Are you that opposed to public speaking?"
"Who isn't?" Felix retorted, which only got him a guffaw from the other end of the line.
"Me?" Clarissa answered. "Look, all you need to do is follow my lead. From the company's standpoint, they invested too much money in you for them to let go of you now."
Felix understood. These past three months had been something of a grace period, one in which he was free to do just about whatever he wanted. It was a great three months. "When is it?"
"Thursday, 3:00 P.M."
Felix bit back a curse. Professor Dietrich would not appreciate him missing class. "This Thursday, right?"
"Right. Sorry about the short notice, but I just figured this out today, myself."
Unlike Felix, Clarissa wasn't a procrastinator. If she had something to do, she'd do it as immediately as possible. She wouldn't have put off telling him about something he needed to be involved in unless she truly didn't know. These were corporate machinations all over again. He hadn't missed it.
"Alright, I'll be there. You can go ahead and tell the boss," Felix committed himself. He wasn't passing up another potential opportunity to be sent to space. If he angered the company too much, that avenue was closed to him forever.
Felix heard Clarissa breathe a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Felix. I'll see you Thursday at 3:00, then." She ended the call, leaving him with barely enough time to get to class if he sprinted. She really had a knack for terrible timing.
He stumbled into the English class as the professor began talking about the importance of dramatic irony, something that Felix took his word for. This whole English thing went way over his head. He walked to his seat, but someone waved him over: Thomas.
How had Felix never noticed that he was in his class? It took an exceptional lack of perception or an incredible degree of distraction to achieve that. He hoped it was just the latter, since this class had essentially just been a place to catch some extra shuteye after long nights in the city, whether those were spent with Harper, Miss Watanabe, or Ivan.
"Felix! Come on, dude," Thomas whisper-yelled, attracting the attention of the students closest to them. Fortunately, the professor was too caught-up in his lecture to care. Felix rushed to the seat next to Thomas, interested to hear what his former friend had to say.
"What's up, Thomas?" Felix asked in as neutral a tone as he could muster. Thomas' siding with Amanda had hurt him, and Felix wasn't sure he was ready to speak to the guy.
"I wanted to apologize," Thomas whispered over the din of the professor's voice. Running his hands through his short, curly hair, he continued, "It was wrong of me to just sit around and talk behind your back. I'm not sure how much of what Amanda said was true or not, but it still doesn't make it right."
Felix was taken aback. What was the cause of this? He didn't even need to ask; Thomas answered it himself.
"I accidentally turned on the news a while ago and saw that you were in the headlines for saving hostages. I looked into it, dude, and that wasn't the first time you saved people. It got me thinking that if I was helping to ridicule someone who genuinely helped people, then maybe I was on the wrong side of things," Thomas said, looking Felix in the eyes. Felix saw nothing short of honesty and regret in Thomas' dark eyes.
While Thomas had hurt him, that much was true, Felix didn't intend to turn down an honest apology. It seemed that Thomas really did want to make amends. "I won't say that it's okay, but I will forgive you. Let's put this in the past, yeah?"
Thomas nodded, a smile cracking his serious visage.
"Help me with my homework, though?" Felix asked, enjoying the surprise on Thomas' face. "I missed last class."
"Sure thing."
Felix grinned. Maybe things were looking up, even with the company breathing down his back.
As Thomas flipped his notebook to last class' notes, Felix hastily scribbled down whatever he thought was important. Garrett would fill in whatever gaps he was missing, probably. The class was easy enough, but something written in a different color caught his attention.
"We have an essay due?" Felix hissed.
"Yeah? It's been assigned to us for weeks," Thomas whispered back.
Oh boy did Felix curse now. He busted out every bit of foul language he knew and slumped in his seat. Forget about things looking up. This would take him all of this week's afternoons if he wanted it done by Friday. He buried his head in his hands and waited for this terrible class to be over.