With every other option taken, Matthew made his way to Oskar's desk. For a moment, the baby-cheeked ginger glanced up, as though to acknowledge the black-haired boy's presence, before motioning to an empty seat to his right. Rather awkwardly, the 13-year-old shimmied his way over, brushing the seat a bit with his shirt to make sure there was no dust before carefully positioning himself into chair.
Their teacher, having seen that everyone had found a partner, began his annual monologue about the upcoming science fair. "Alright class, now that everyone's nice and settled, you will all have one month to plan and present your projects for the science fair. Whoever wins first prize will get a free pizza party in their honor for a day. I hope that motivates you all to do your best."
Matthew listened on with a bemused expression. He supposed that, under most circumstances, a pizza party was a decent way to motivate someone into action. Everyone liked pizza, especially when it was free. If his teacher was expecting quality, though, then he was either naive or engaging in copious amounts of wishful thinking. None of his classmates had any delusions that they somehow weren't going to goof around and do jack all until the literal 11th hour, and that was simple reality.
He sighed. Every day, Matthew missed the dedication and seriousness of his classmates from his year in Singapore.
At least he wouldn't be forced to do all the work this time. Oskar seemed nice, if a bit closed-in on himself, though he wasn't exactly one to talk. Granted, Matthew had no way to confirm whether that was the case. He never really talked to him all that much, as the only class their shared was science. Still, they shared enough in common that one look was all it took to form a mutual understand. Dork solidary may not have counted for a lot, but it was enough that he was willing to make this work. Maybe, for the first time, he'll finally have a friend to call his own!
...although, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. He had an annoying, nasally voice, and way too many freckles, and in general he was a weedy, pathetic waste of space. That's why everyone looked the other way whenever he passed by. That's why he was constantly taunted and jeered by a rotating cast of nameless face every day. Most of the time, there was no rhyme or reason for them to pick on him. They just did, and everyone went along with it, because that was his role in life - to be a pathetic waste of space for everyone to mock and move on.
He didn't want Oskar to be associated with someone consigned to the bottom of the social ladder like he was. No one deserved what he went through every day. Whether he himself deserved it was another question, but he knew for certain that Oscar didn't. Still, just having someone by his side, who didn't immediately want to call him a stringy fa**** or worse, was more than he ever could've expected.
~~~
The month flew by in a flash. Every afternoon, Oskar came over to Matthew's house to work on the project, and they both got immersed in working on their respective halves. They... may or may not have gone a bit too far in certain areas. His dad was a genius biochemist from a big shot laboratory who liked to sneak in specimens for further study when the others weren't looking. He and Oskar kind-of-sort-of used them as well in order to speed along certain processes.
It shouldn't be too much of a problem. Hopefully. As long as they got first-place, then this little bit of larceny should be more than worth it. Nobody else would be impressed, but it would be something to commemorate his friendship. (Matthew still couldn't believe it. For the first time in his life, there was someone he could look to and unironically can a friend. Mom would have been so proud of him.)
Before they knew it, it was the day of the science fair. As usual, the gym had been loaned out for about six rows worth of cardboard three-panel display boards of varying colors, each showcasing some experiment that had been hammered out over the course of, generously, a week. Most of them were the typical affair expected of a eighth grader, namely things like "Do plants grow more with nitrogen fertilizer or regular fertilizer?" or "Which kind of motor would make a skateboard go faster."
Matthew, meanwhile, had gone above and beyond this time thanks to his best friend. He had no idea Oskar was this good with machines, but it had done a lot to help with perfecting what had to be their first (and hopefully far from the last) masterpiece: arthrospira augeocorpus, or more colloquially, Manipu-teria.
Matthew couldn't help but beam with pride seeing these writhing spiral swarm all about inside the spherical device Oskar had constructed out of industrial-strength machine parts ordered straight off of eBay and Alibaba. Having a working fusion engine by itself would have been more than worthy of dominating the science fair, but the primary purpose was to power the incubator for these bad boys. They were a unique form of multicellular life that had been cultivated specifically to infect any organic lifeform that they came across, including humans. Then, using a remote control, these bacteria could be used to directly control the infected subjects, effectively hijacking their bodies to make them do whatever they wanted, all at the mere press of a button.
Matthew had even managed to find a way to make so that he could substantially enhance certain attributes of the infected hosts' bodies, such as strength or growth rate. This was admittedly more of a working draft than anything, as neither of them had the time to determine whether or not this particular function actually was safe before they had to scramble to put everything in the pickup truck. Nonetheless, if what they had wasn't enough, this would be their secret weapon to wow the judges and get a lifetime achievement award at least.
No, more than that: this would by their ticket to the big time. He and Oskar would finally be able to escape this dump and go shooting for the stars. With any luck, they'd be able to skip several grades and go straight to college, or better yet get opportunities to go straight the biggest and best engineering and research institutions in the world. No more getting looked down on and spat upon for being short and weak, no more cold, distant gazes, no more middle school. Their talents could be appreciated for what they were, without being denigrated or judged because of being short or scrawny or nasally or annoying. Out of everyone, Oskar had been the one to help Matthew realized this. He didn't need to think of himself as lesser anymore.
Oh, and getting to have a pizza party all to themselves was a nice bonus. Matthew was definitely going to demand as many mushrooms and olives as he could stuff into his mouth.
"You know." Matthew suddenly began. Oskar turned head to him questioningly, though he couldn't help but note the small smile that formed almost instinctively. "I couldn't have done this without you. So, uh... thank you."
The ginger's eyes widened a bit at that sudden proclamation. He turned away sheepishly, the stray bang over his left side covering his eye. "T-thanks. I'm... I'm glad I got to work with you."
"...yeah. Me too." The black-haired nerd would never forget the joy that blossomed in his I- you don't mind if we stick together after this, right?"
Oddly enough, Oskar hesitated for a split-second, puckering his face as though he were sucking on a super-sweet lollipop. "Well-"
"Top of the morning to you boys!" One of the judges had finally come over to their table, in all his cowboy-hat, brown leather-vest wearing glory. It made for a rather odd sight, considering that he had a thick German accent to go with his Texan apparel lingo. "Woo-wee, would you look at this? I've never seen a beaut' quite like this in all my years, I kin tell ya that. Mind sharing to us what exactly this little baby does?"
Oskar was quick to lead the introduction, just as he and the other nerd had agreed. "T-thank you, uh, Mr. Gose-Chemnitz. We-"
It was amazing just how quickly things went wrong after that. Really, Matthew should have figured something when an entire month passed by without life throwing him through the wringer out of nowhere. All that good karma had to come at a price, and it came in the form of Oskar's device suddenly exploding, sending the bacteria flying straight towards them.
When he looked back on everything, the explosion that happened was...
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