Note: In this story Never mind. Seriously. It makes no sense, so why try to explain it? My love to Kat, whose gift of the song "Wait" by K's Choice inspired this first foray into crackfic, and also to Mich, because her kid stories convinced me it could be done.

Grade 5

He was two weeks shy of ten when a third grader with a Power Rangers lunchbox hit the guy who always called him "Jap." He couldn't figure out why the kid had done it until he saw the kid's younger brother. The bus ride got a lot more interesting after that.

Grade 6

He was almost twelve when they came back from Japan and his mom told him that schools in California were for making friends, not learning things. So he started sixth grade a few months older than his new classmates instead of a few months younger than the old ones. He simmered and fumed until Hunter boarded the middle school bus at his usual stop and told him he'd been bumped up a year.

Their roles were suddenly reversed, with Cam becoming the ten-year-old's defender when bullies were a little too eager to prove their "maturity." He used his immediate status as teacher's pet to keep his friend out of trouble. He broke his own carefully guarded rule about cheating for one person and one person only, because homework was stupid but most of the kids in his class were stupider. Hunter wasn't stupid. He just had other things to do.

Grade 7

Hunter taught him to ride a motorbike over the summer, and they hung out at the track day after day. Hunter's brother was usually there with them, but he was okay. He was funny, he was pretty smart for a fourth-grader, and sometimes his cuteness factor got them extra ice cream at the truck. And his parents made him give Cam permission to use his bike when he wasn't there so he and Hunter could race.

When school started again, Cam got mad when he found out they were in different classes and complained to his mom. The next day he slid into the empty seat next to Hunter during homeroom and they smirked at each other. He made sure they both got very good grades the rest of the year.

Grade 8

He'd just had his fourteenth birthday when his best friend decided they should go to a school dance. He had absolutely zero interest in the activity, and he informed Hunter in no uncertain terms that the fact he had waited until he was twelve to discover girls was no reason to make Cam suffer with him. Hunter told him he was funny and made him go anyway. They spent most of the dance outside on the steps with the gym teacher and a couple of kids who'd brought a hackeysack.

He started helping out at his parents' dojo that spring. Hunter came by so often that he was allowed out on the floor without a uniform, and sometimes he joined a class in stretching, warming up, or cooling down if Cam was in charge of the beginning or the end. More often, though, he sat behind the desk and answered the phone by asking people to hold while Cam did administrative stuff, helped with setup or takedown for big events that kept Cam busy, and generally did free work that more than made up for his class time. Most importantly, Cam did get paid, and that made the afternoons they didn't spend at the dojo way more interesting.

Grade 9

In some ways, it was easier to make their classes match in high school. And in some ways it was harder, because Cam's teachers kept pushing him into advanced sections while Hunter was stuck in the standard track. But they were at least nominally allowed to choose their own classes, so the school administration stopped trying to split them up every other year.

They worked it out so they had study hall right after lunch, so they could go to first or second lunch depending on who they wanted to hang out with that day. Cam took a music class only because Hunter insisted, and in return he made Hunter take a semester of art so they could get into modeling the next year. He got pushed into advanced math and science, but they were okay for english and history.

Gym briefly foiled them when their last names meant that Hunter missed gym for health class the first quarter and Cam was supposed to miss it last quarter. At least until he pointed out to the gym teacher that tai chi was only offered last quarter, and he really wanted to take that, so couldn't he get health out of the way now? So they snickered their way through health for the first two months of the year, then felt much less smug when they returned to gym class just in time for the square-dancing unit.

Grade 10

He could have gotten his license that year. But he didn't have a car, he didn't really need one, and Hunter wouldn't be allowed into Driver's Ed until the following spring. So he didn't bother. He did bother with his own computer, though, especially when Hunter's family finally got one that could connect to the internet, and the trouble they got into for tying up the phone lines was so worth it.

The ratio of dojo to track time shifted when Hunter started winning races--which, Cam was surprised to learn, not only paid but paid well--and now they got into events free because Hunter was riding in them. He had a local sponsorship by the end of his sophomore year, and that meant more free stuff. They wore "Shockproof" t-shirts for twin day during School Spirit Week.

Cars turned out to be easier than everyone said they were, possibly because racing was harder than driving, or maybe because Hunter's parents lived near a big field that they were allowed to take the truck to whenever they wanted. As long as it was daylight, and they let Blake come, and they didn't hit anything. Hunter's brother was forbidden to be behind the wheel without an adult present, on pain of never being allowed to ride with them again, but Cam learned to drive a stick and Hunter learned how to climb out the window of a moving vehicle and miraculously none of them died.

Grade 11

He turned eighteen before it finally occurred to him that Hunter wouldn't be going to Cal Tech. They took the PSATs that fall, and Hunter might not be stupid but he wasn't academically brilliant either. He was going to college, he said. He never talked like he might not, like it was a matter of "if" rather than when, but neither did he talk about where he wanted to apply or when he was going to decide. So Cam looked into programs at the local university, found them to be satisfactory, and deliberately dampened his enthusiasm for the alternatives whenever the subject came up in conversation.

Hunter's family went away for the holidays for the first time since Cam had known them. He'd completely forgotten what it was like to be lonely until he saw the plane pulling away from gate C18 and he had to stand there on the other side of the windows and watch it taxi down the runway before fading into a speck of nothing against the sky. Twelve days before they came back. Twelve hours before Hunter would be anywhere near a phone, or, less likely, a computer. Twelve minutes before Cam remembered to turn away from the observation deck and make his way back downstairs so he could start home.

Spring break was a lot more fun. Hunter and Blake were going to some kind of motocross expo, alone, and Cam's parents let him go with them. They got to stay in a hotel and walk to the arena and watch TV as late as they wanted for three days straight. It was loud and free and full of greasy food and tacky souvenirs. School seemed a lot longer and more boring when they finally went back.

Grade 12

When he was nineteen he proofread Hunter's college application, told him he was staying close to home because of the money (the university had offered him a full scholarship while Cal Tech had only managed half) and because of the dojo (it was a family school and he was an only child), and made him choose a major before he started picking courses at random. Hunter whined and complained and mostly did what he was told. In return, he informed Cam, they were going to every end-of-the-year senior bash the school sponsored. Both of them.

Cam didn't realize how much of an issue this would turn out to be until the end of the year actually arrived. Hunter apparently considered anything with the word "senior" in the title to be part of the bargain, so they went to the Senior Lock-In, the Senior Skits (including rehearsals), and the Senior Bonfire (which was not school sponsored, but Cam didn't realize that until they were already there and beer started to circulate). They also participated in Senior Skip Day, went on the Senior Cruise, and of course, there was the Senior Prom. He tried, not very hard, to get out of this, but they were going as part of a group and Hunter had arranged it so there was nothing to do but dress up, dance, and pose for pictures.

That was the one year that Blake shared the high school with them. It was also the last year that Cam tried to sneak out of the Awards Assembly so he didn't have to keep going up on the stage. It was the first year he and Hunter swapped academic and motocross trophies to see if anyone would notice (they did) and the year they switched jobs for a day to see if anyone would complain (they didn't). It was the year they decorated their mortarboards for graduation, lost them in the chaos afterwards, and went out with both their families to celebrate.

Post Secondary

The next year was the one where they moved in together. College turned out to be a lot like the motocross expo all year long, except with less motocross and more TV. And when Hunter slapped a "Safe Zones" sticker on their door and a rainbow pin on his bag, their relationship suddenly got a lot more interesting.