Dresden was busy promoting The Slime Factory brand. At this point, he was pretty much in charge of marketing and given about 60% of the profits he generated.
At the moment, he was talking to some students from Stuyvescent to convince them to work for him. The scope of this project was slowly growing larger and larger beyond even his groups control.
Dresden's enthusiasm was unmatched, however his management style had left much to be desired. He kept no paperwork and although he calculated money quite well, his choice in friends were at best to say questionable.
Jeffrey heard whispers about school bullies and other bad rumors from some of the other students. Real third stall school restroom stories, some of them were even more insane than Chris Reylander's writing. In fiction it the events that happened had to be somewhat believable, reality didn't have to follow the same rules.
Samantha and Preston, grabbed him as they started to talk about it.
"We've got to stop Dresden", Jeffrey said to Preston.
Dresden was introduced to them by Preston after all.
"Maybe you should talk to him Jeffrey, he seems much closer to you know than me", Preston replied.
Jeffrey and Dresden started hanging out a lot more, but Jeffrey wasn't fully comfortable talking to him about such matters.
Then they both look toward Samantha.
"What makes you think he'll listen to me?", she asked the two of them.
Jeffrey and Preston looked at each other awkwardly.
"Rock, Paper, Scissors?", Preston asked.
"Rock, Paper, Scissors", Jeffrey agreed.
"Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!" they both chanted
Jeffrey threw out a rock and Preston threw out paper.
"Best out of three", Jeffrey tried again.
"Nuh uh, you're going to have to talk to Dresden", Preston replied.
Samantha as the arbiter and referee sided with Preston.
"You lost, Jeffrey. Plus how bad can it really be?", Samantha asked.
*BZZZT* *Bing*
The school bell rang and they all split up to head to class.
"See you guys at lunch", Jeffrey said glumly.
"See you at lunch", Preston said cheerfully making Jeffrey want to wipe that smile off of his face.
"Good luck Jeffrey, have a good day", Samantha said taking her leave as well.
Jeffrey headed to his first class wondering how to talk to Dresden. He started to take notes and coming up with ideas of what to say. The ideas didn't exactly come easy, especially since he still had to pay attention to class. His writing class they went over how to write a three body paragraph and crafting a thesis.
Recently they read some science fiction such as All summer in a day by Ray Bradburry and Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegurt Junior.
Their English teacher was slowly taking them down a list of sad fiction from Flowers for Algernon, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, to classics like Catcher in the Rye, Tangerine, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and The House on Mango Street.
If they had time, they might squeeze in some poetry by Robert Frost or Ruyard Kipling as well.
Jeffrey was thoroughly lost and left behind on the lecture of crafting the introduction paragraphs, hooks, comma usage, syntax, and the various conventions and mechanics that they'd have to adhere to.
By the end of class, the students left the classroom as a group looking like a bunch of zombified kids. Their eyes looked a little lost as each of them started heading to their next class.
Jeffrey could finally feel the sun on his skin slowly warming him up. It felt like he hadn't seen the sun in ages.
"Where was I, what happened', Jeffrey thought to himself. A whole hour of English passed by in the blink of an eye and the time it would be for Jeffrey to talk to Dresden got closer and closer.
As he walked to 2nd period P.E. Jeffrey spotted Dresden talking to some 10th graders in high school. He handed them a stack of cash bundled with a rubber band. It was a thick wad of ones and fives.
Jeffrey recalled Dresden handing the money over to Samantha and paying taxes. However it was at this point that he realized how much money they were actually making. Jeffrey was scared to look at the sheets of declared income. Hundreds and even thousands of dollars were showing up, the zeros looking very foreign to Jeffrey.
"Holy moly, how much money do we actually have?", Jeffrey started to sweat.
Dresden was wearing a pair of new sneakers and on his bag was a tamagochi keychain. Jeffrey didn't notice it at first, but Dresden seemed to be very different and a little distant from their original project members.
Jeffrey went to the locker rooms to change, slowly trying to reflect on these new realizations.