Click

When I got to Marcy’s house, she opened the door and practically yanked my arm out of its socket in the process of dragging me upstairs into her room. I had expected to see Jared on the way up but according to Marcy, he was out with some friends. For those two months that I hadn’t seen him, this would be the first time since then. I had only been informed of his sudden change because Marcy’s mom sat me down and showed me pictures, gushing about how proud she was to have her big boy all grown up. Marcy chucked my bag in the corner of her room and plopped down on her bed.

“So, you and Blade seem to be getting awfully friendly,” she said, winking. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I didn’t say that,” I objected, sitting beside her and rolling my eyes. “I just said that he wasn’t my favourite person in the world. That doesn’t mean I dislike him or anything. The guy hasn’t talked to me once and I’ve been in at least one of his classes ever since grade four. What the hell is that even about?”

“Maybe he likes you,” she replied, shrugging and falling back on her bed. She reached up behind her, grabbed a throw pillow and chucked it at the back of my head when I wasn’t paying attention.

I mumbled an “ow”, even though throw pillows didn’t do shit to hurt someone, but it was an impulse reply.

“You know, maybe you should ask him out after all,” Marcy said. “I mean, you two know a lot about each other, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s the worst that could happen? You two know the other one so well; it’s like you’ve been friends since you were born. And it’s not as if you have trouble getting along or finding something to talk about whenever you’re together. Your first date would be like a fifteenth date—it would be so easy.”

“Well, yeah but . . . it would also be like a fifteenth date,” I pointed out. She paused.

“Oh, another good point,” she said, sitting up. “By that time, you’re like . . . committed, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “Look Marcy, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no time soon will anything be happening between Blade and I,” I said, smiling and standing up. “Besides, he’s dating Amanda.”

“Ugh, technicality,” she mumbled in disgusted, pushing herself onto her feet and stretching her arms out. “All right, fine, whatever. Right now, we shouldn’t be concentrating on that. We should be discussing what we’re going to do about our monster prank.”

This was like a tradition at the Brown household. Whenever Marcy had relatives over that were close to our age, Kayti, her and I would pull some kind of prank on them and usually get one back. We were mostly on the receiving end of the pranks because a majority of these pranks were created by boys—who seemed to have a clear knowledge of girls’ weak points when it came to things that would gross us out, scare the crap out of us, or just, in general, make us scream.

“Oh! I forgot to ask you, have you thought about what I asked you to do?” Marcy asked, turning to face me with hope in her eyes. I sighed.

“I don’t know, Marcy,” I mumbled. “I mean, this is a big thing, you know? I could get in a lot of shit. Not only for trying to pull a fast one on a teacher, but also trying to trick him into giving him the answers to his test. That’s cheating. I could get suspended.”

“Come on, Chris. I need to pass this test!” she exclaimed in dire need, grabbing onto my shoulders and shaking me rapidly back and forth.

“Just get him to tutor you. Mr. Griffin’s a good guy. He’ll understand. Don’t make me seduce him.”

“He hates me! He’ll never agree to it! Come on, please! I’ll owe you big!”

“You bet your ass you will,” I murmured, shaking my head and sighing.

“Chris, please!” she wailed at the top of her lungs, which caused her mother to yell, “what’s going on up there?!” from downstairs but no one replied to her. “He loves you! When you were in his class in grade ten, you were like his mathematic marvel or something! You could ask him or anything and he’d do it in a heartbeat!”

I groaned and ran my fingers through my hair. “I have a few rules,” I said strictly, pointing an accusing finger in her face—which lit up completely the minute she heard me say those words.

“Does that mean you’ll do it?!”

“If you agree to follow these rules,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest and narrowing my eyes at her. She nodded frantically as her approval. She was lucky I was even agreeing to it with rules.

“One; never ask me to do this to another teacher again,” I began. “Two; if you do pass this test and you get cold feet, thinking you’ll fail the next one, you can’t come asking me to seduce him a second time. And by the way, if you fail this test, even if I do successfully steal the answers for you, than I’m going to disown you as a friend. Three; next time you need help on a test, you’re getting tutored. Got it?”

Marcy shrieked in glee and pounced on me, nearly knocking me off me feet and right back onto the bed in the process—luckily though, I managed to stay planted to the floor. After about two or three minutes of continuously telling Marcy not to thank me yet—not to mention trying to get her off of me since she was clinging for dear life to my hair and my shoulders—I managed to pry her away and she began brainstorming ideas on how we could prank Jared and Ian. I went downstairs to get Ginger Ale for Marcy and I and when I opened the cupboards and took out two glasses, I was snapped out of my daze—that I hadn’t even realized I was in—by a deep voice.

“Christabelle Hawthorn,” the unidentified male said from behind me. “Is that you?”

I whirled around, dropped the glasses on the floor, causing them to smash at my feet. There, right in front of me, stood Jared Brown himself, in all of his Abercrombie God-like glory. His smile was even more breath-taking than I remembered, and his laugh was like he was sent straight from heaven. I wasn’t sure if he was just laughing since it had been so long since we’d seen each other—even though it wasn’t all that long anyway but when two people were as close and Jared and I were, it seemed like a lifetime—or because he was amused that I was so shocked to actually break dishes in his kitchen.

Jared actually knew me longer than Marcy and I knew each other. He had babysat me when I was eleven because he was extremely mature, responsible and well-mannered for a fourteen year old. Eventually, he had to bring Marcy along with him, and that’s how she and I met each other. She was like my safety net in grade seven when Shane ditched me but either way, our friendship was thanks to Jared.

“Jared!” I wailed in shock, even though it wasn’t that shocking. After all, I knew he’d be home, but I just wish he hadn’t seen me at my worst. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to re-brush my windblown hair, and I’m pretty sure any makeup that I was wearing—which really wasn’t much because I wasn’t a big makeup fan but nevertheless, I wore some—was completely gone. Not only that, but I just broke a dish in his kitchen.

He grinned. “Hey there. Need help with that?” he asked, nodding to my foot. I looked down and noticed that my big toe was now bleeding. I hadn’t even realized it since I was too concentrated on the epitome of all hot college guys right in front of me.

I didn’t know why, but it was like I was back in the classroom with Blade when he was asking me if he could sit next to me. I was completely speechless. I just stood there opening and closing my mouth like some kind of weird, exotic fish. That is, until Marcy came bounding down the stairs, shoved Jared out of her way and demanded to know where the Ginger Ale was and why it was taking me so long to get it.

“Jeez! What happened to your foot?!” she hollered, covering her eyes with her hand. “Clean it up! For the love of God, clean it up!” Another one of Marcy’s habits was to over-exaggerate on the little things, like a small cut from glass on my foot. I didn’t even feel a thing and yet she was making it a bigger deal than I was.

I grabbed a wash cloth, soaked it in water and cleaned up my foot while Jared gathered the pieces of glass off the floor and threw them in the trash.

“There. I’m all better. Happy?” I asked her, slipping on a Band-Aid. She uncovered her eyes and nodded.

“Good. Now, Jared, where’s Ian?” she asked, turning to her brother as her face filled with hope. She was practically beaming. It wouldn’t have made it any more obvious that she was totally in love with Jared’s best friend if she held up a sign saying “I Heart Ian MacGregor” over her head and waved it around.

“He’s in the driveway. He’s getting the groceries that you so violently forced him and I to buy for you and Chris,” he said, leaning back on the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. I glanced at him for a moment and he caught me looking, winked, and then turned back to his little sister.

“Whatever. At least you guys listened for once,” she grumbled, feigning her obvious thanks to Jared. She hated admitting that he was a nice guy because as they grew up, they were growing apart and they were always fighting or arguing now. They used to be the best of friends, until high school that is.

Before I could open my mouth to bring some topic to the table that had nothing to do with Ian or how I would most likely accidentally blurt out that I thought Jared was gorgeous—which was sure to happen sometime tonight—Marcy grabbed my arm and yanked me through the doorway.

“We’ll be upstairs if you need us!” she called down to Jared, pulling me back to her room and slamming her door behind us.



While Marcy argued with herself about the best prank ever to pull on Ian and Jared, I spent that time lying on the floor with my feet up against her bed, texting with Nathaniel. When I told him about the situation with Jared, he seemed to think the whole breaking-a-glass-because-of-him and the fact that I couldn’t form a full sentence—let alone a single word—was fairly amusing.

You’ve got another boy in your life, huh? Damn, that’s depressing.

It is?

Well, yeah; for me.

Lol, why would it be depressing for you?

More competition. I thought we went over this ;)

Haha. Well I gotta go, your teasing me is getting harder and harder to handle. Besides, it looks like Marcy’s come up with a master plan to get back at her brother. Ttyl.

Seeya.

Every time that our conversation would end with “Seeya” or “see you later” or anything relative to actually seeing people in person, I couldn’t help but feel sad. There was no way I was ever going to meet him because even if we did plan it, my dad would slaughter Nathaniel and then take a jackhammer to my computer so that there would be no further communication even Nathaniel somehow managed to survive my dad’s surprise attack-and-maul.

“Chris!” Marcy yelled.

“Yeah?”

“What’s with you? You’ve been staring at my ceiling for like three minutes now. I’ve been calling your name but you haven’t said anything,” she said, peeking her head over the bed and placing her chin on her two folded hands. “I thought you were dead for a minute.”

“Well, I’m not. What’s up?” I asked her, sitting up and leaning back on my hands.

“I’ve got the perfect idea for a prank,” she said, grinning slyly. “I’m going to need your help.”

“This doesn’t involve me seducing another guy for your benefit, does it?” I asked her. She shook her head.

“No,” she replied, climbing off her bed and heading toward her door while talking to me over her shoulder. “This includes a bucket, Ian and Jared being asleep, and a lot of freezing cold water.”