Because of You (Because of You 1)

I shook my head, smiling a little. "I probably wouldn't either."

A brief silence fell, and while it was a comfortable silence, I felt like talking. "So, did you start that Egyptian project yet?" I asked him.

"No, I'm still procrastinating. Have you?"

I nodded my head. "Oh yeah. I have a couple really good books on it if you wanted to check them out. My mom pretty much had an entire library, and the public library was pretty picked through by the time I got there, so... you might be interested."

"You like to read?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I enthused. "More than I like to breathe."

Derek shook his head, smiling slightly. "That's crazy."

A small smile tugged at my lips. "I take it you share your father's view of books?"

"They're better off as movies? Hell yeah."

I couldn't imagine such a thought, but I kept that to myself. "Well, be that as it may, you're not going to be able to find a movie, so you can't cheat on this one. Besides, even if you could, everybody would be using that pharaoh. As many as there were, don't you think Mrs. Sawyer would find it funny if the whole class mysteriously picked the same one?"

"Probably, but there are too many, and too many with the same name, just different numbers at the end."

I smiled. "Yeah, like the Amenhoteps and the Thutmoses."

"Definitely," he agreed. "Which one are you doing your assignment on?"

This caused me to sigh. "Well, this was a hard decision. I was going to do my assignment on Amenhotep III, but then I decided to do it on Hatshepsut. How can I not? She's the only female leader to be buried in the Valley of the Kings."

"The what? Wow, you really do pay attention in class."

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head. "Why are you even in school?"

"You're a closet dork and a closet freak?"

I chuckled. "I guess so. It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for, Derek," I teased.

I didn't realize it, but we were already pulling onto my road. Oddly, I wasn't quite ready to go home, but I decided that was obviously because I enjoyed having someone to discuss my pharaoh assignment with, and my two friends didn't care. Steph knew less about Egypt than Derek did, and Andy would just sit there and visibly start thinking of something else when I would start talking about school assignments. Derek may be mocking me, but at least he was paying attention.

"Well, hey," I said as he pulled into my driveway. "If you want any pointers on that pharaoh assignment, I could definitely help you. I had been planning to do my assignment on Amenhotep III, and I just kind of changed my mind last minute, so I have quite a bit of information already pulled up about him. If you want my notes or anything, just let me know, I can make you a copy."

He nodded. "If you want to."

"I will," I said, nodding. "I think once you see it, maybe you'll share my excitement."

Derek chuckled a little, giving me a strange look.

"What?" I asked, smiling a little self-consciously.

He shook his head. "Nothing. Copy your notes, you can give them to me later."

"I will. You'll be able to write an interesting paper on him. Easily the four pages required."

"Okay," he said, nodding, still with the little smile on his face.

"Okay, I'm going now," I said, realizing I had been sitting in his car in my driveway, still rattling on about ancient Egyptians, which he probably couldn't care less about.

"I'll see you later," he said, offering a small wave as I shut the door and walked into my trailer, heading for my room to dig out my notes.

Once or twice, as I spent an hour going over notes and adding more, I stopped and asked myself why I was exerting so much effort to help Derek. Then I remembered how he had helped me out with the tire situation.