Kane expected to be called back into the abyss of Casey's head but when that didn't happen, he realized he would have to try to figure out how to do his assignments for him. Kane cursed that fool from the very depths of his being but that still wasn't enough to bring him back.
Thankfully, everything was written down in his planner so Kane had some idea of where he needed to start. There were some fairly straightforward assignments that he could probably pull off.
He got started on those first. Answering questions from reading assignments was easier than writing essays. He would never be able to do that convincingly.
Kane had hoped that would be the end of it but he ended up taking over every few days or so. That was how stressed poor, stupid Casey was. Kane really, really hated doing homework but he couldn't do anything that would cause Casey trouble. That went against Kane's directive.
So he shouldered the work he had never been prepared for and tried to leave and let Casey take the reins again at every given opportunity. Kane didn't want to be here if all he did was homework. That was not in his original job description!
Protecting Casey from physical threats or taking his pain for him was a lot easier than doing his homework. Kane would much rather be dealing with that. At least that was familiar.
Another stressful thing to deal with was getting texts from somebody named Vera on a semi-regular basis and having to use context clues from previous text conversations to respond. It seemed like she was teaching Casey how to restore antiques, which was totally random. How did that even happen?!
Kane had absolutely no idea what Casey had already learned so, annoyed, Kane ended up watching a bunch of instructional videos so he wouldn't seem completely unaware if he ever had to go to meet her himself. He could only use the excuse of having too much homework so many times. This was obviously important to Casey so Kane wasn't about to screw it up for him.
Kane couldn't fathom why it was until he couldn't get out of going over to the antiques shop for a lesson. Vera was a pretty girl. Kane wasn't sure what he had been imagining but it wasn't someone who looked like Snow White with longer hair.
Casey liked her, didn't he? That must be why he was doing something so random for her.
She couldn't possibly like him back. It made no sense that this girl would have gotten involved with him. He was a wimp. A loser. He couldn't handle the tiniest inconvenience without breaking down. What on earth did she see in him?
But Kane couldn't deny the evidence in front of him. Somehow, Casey had made himself a friend, if nothing else. She hadn't given any clear indication that they were dating.
Vera was very smiley, which was weird, but she might just be a smiley person. Patient too. If Kane wasn't doing something right—curse those insufficient tutorials!—she didn't give him a hard time about it. Simply showed him how it was supposed to be done like it wasn't a big deal.
She seemed to genuinely be enjoying teaching Casey, since she thought Kane was him, all this stuff. No one EVER enjoyed having that wimp around.
Kane didn't know what to think about this. It might be good for Casey not to be alone all the time but didn't people stress him out? Having a friend might make him stressed more often. Which could be part of the reason Kane was making an appearance more frequently.
Though that may be part of it, he was fairly sure it was mostly because of the ongoing issues with internship applications. He kept seeing the emails for them in Casey's inbox. Things did not seem to be going well.
That idiot. He would never get an internship if he kept falling apart every time he tried to talk to someone.
It would be convenient if Kane could do his interviews for him but it wasn't like he could schedule a time to come out. It happened at random.
Casey was completely helpless on his own. These days, Kane was starting to feel like he had to do everything for him. That might be what Kane was born to do but that didn't make it any less annoying.
He ended up going to all of Casey's classes the next day and taking notes as diligently as he could since Casey wouldn't remember being here and needed to know the information. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened so Kane knew the drill by now.
Afterward, he headed to the parking lot to try and track down the car. Not knowing where it was parked made this more difficult. He was still searching for it when the phone rang.
Casey's phone didn't ring very often. This was probably important. Kane could write down whatever information there was as soon as he got to the car. He picked it up and answered it with a casual hello, not recognizing the number.
"Is this Casey Parker?"
"Yes," Kane lied. It was Casey's phone number anyway.
"This is Sarah Everly from Orchard Books. I'm calling to set up a time for a phone interview regarding our internship position as an assistant editor."
This might be the perfect opportunity to help Kane's loser out! He hadn't thought a chance like this would fall directly into his lap but he had been looking up interview etiquette and whatnot in case something like this happened because of how often he had been coming out recently.
He would probably do a better job of it than anxious wreck like Casey. It didn't hurt to try. It wasn't like Casey would have been able to pass this thing on his own anyway.
"Actually, would it be possible to do it now? I have the time."