Of Squirrels and Boys
an excerpt

A few minutes later, both Theo and Braxton arrived at the Courtyard. Usually, they took a seat by the large oak tree in the back right corner – nobody else tended to sit there as the grass was not properly grown, thus most of the floor was dirty. However, this was quickly remedied by an extremely collapsible sheet that Brax carried around in his backpack. They would sit, talk, sometimes eat, perhaps write, or just observe the natural scenery around them. The courtyard was rather large, about the size of four classrooms, and could sometimes seat hundreds of students.
When Theo and Braxton approached the Courtyard this time, however, they were met with an extremely foreign site.
“What are you doing here?” John Sneebly shot at them snobbishly. John had the highest FriendFinder score of anybody in the building, and claimed to be friends with most of the school’s population, though none of them reciprocated the gesture. All in all, he was considered the most popular kid in school.
Theo eyed him quizzically. “Hey John,” he said, and tried to walk in. John got up and blocked his path.
“What are you doing?” Theo asked rather indignantly, looking up at John’s towering figure. It would be useless to push his way through – he’d have many of John’s so-called-friends pulling him away in seconds.
“You’re a Nerd,” John said flatly. “And Nerds aren’t allowed here.”
“It’s true,” HappyMan 5655 said, and seemed to be shrugging. “Better improve your status, Theo. If you drop one more notch, the Populars are going to be allowed to punch you for fun.”
“Whatever,” Theo imitated the voice of an overly preppy girl and attempted to pass John one more time.
“Come on, John,” Theo said. “I just want to sit over by that oak tree. I won’t mess with you.”
John laughed, and began mimicking Theo’s voice. “He just wants to sit over by the oak tree. He just wants to sit over by the oak tree.”
Theo raised his eyebrows higher. Apparently, the intimidation wasn’t working.
“I’m sorry,” John said, wiping away his tears of laughter. “But I’ve got the most FriendFinder points. That means I’m the Boss. And you’re just a lowly Nerd. Go improve your status before you try coming here again.”
“Wait a minute,” Brax stepped forward. “Where’s the teacher?”
“Oh, itty-bitty Braxton wants to tell on me, does he?” John said to the crowd around him. “Is that what you want to do, itty-bitty Braxton?”
“No,” Brax shrugged. “I was just wondering. I’m allergic to latex, you see…”
No he’s not, Theo thought. Oh…I see…
“…and one of your friends had a latex balloon,” Brax continued. “I just wanted to ask a teacher to tell the hospital that I might be stopping by soon, and ask them to make a bed ready for me, with my favorite pillows, you know.”
A wicked grin played across John’s face.
“Allergic to latex, are you?” he grinned. “Well, I wouldn’t want to deny you a visit with your favorite pillows. Here you go, itty-bitty Brax!”
Brax forced his face to don an over exaggerated look of pure horror as he pretended to run towards the exit. Theo, playing along, ran with him, though blocked Brax’s exit at the last second with his foot. Braxton shot a momentary smile at Theo, and then crashed to the ground, landing in a way such that it sounded as if he had broken every bone in his body, while in reality, he was perfectly all right.
“Take this!” John shoved the balloon in his face.
“NOOO!” Brax screamed in a pitch that he thought John would associate with a boy having an allergic reaction. The balloon popped, and Brax was staring right into John’s face, unharmed.
“Huh?” John did a double-take, almost falling down. “Didn’t you…you…”
Brax shrugged. “I lied.”
And with that, he and Theo walked away. However, they stopped once they had gotten inside, and they looked back out at the courtyard. Instead of howling with laughter as many of the students normally would have, they gazed at Braxton with the hate of a thousand demons.
“They hate me just because the FriendFinder thinks I’m a nerd,” Brax said plainly.
“Me too,” Theo shrugged.
“John’s never been that mean to me before,” Brax confessed. “Sure, we’re not best buddies or anything, but if I was allergic to latex, he could have killed me!”
“How could this happen?” Theo stopped in the hallway, watching helplessly as another Popular beat up a particularly vulnerable Scumbag. Scumbags, according to FriendlyFace 4770, were one class lower than Nerds.
“Thanks,” Brax said sarcastically to his FriendFinder.
“We’re going to have to do something,” Brax said. “I faked the allergy because I wanted to see how far John would go, and how his friends would react when I humiliated him. Normally, I don’t think he would have tried to smother me with the balloon, and his friends would have laughed. This time, though, he could have killed me, and his friends were dead silent.”
Theo shrugged. “We could just stop wearing them. Then John and all of the other Populars won’t really know anything about us. We’ll just be regular people to them.”
“First of all,” Brax said, “it won’t work that way. This new update allows people with FriendFinders to gather information on and classify people without FriendFinders. Not only that, all of the people with the FriendFinders were still be either abusing others or abused by others, and judging from what we’ve seen today, it’s going to get very ugly.”
“What do you think we should do, then?” Theo inquired.
Braxton smiled.
“Why, we should crash the master database, of course.”