Walk Through Hell

I missed a lot of school. Which meant I'd have a lot of school to make up. Not from my incident with stupidratbastard, just from the past few weeks.

I went back to school on Thursday. Same with Jake. I guess the good thing is that I got to miss Wednesday night at work. And tonight I don't have to work. I have band practice!

So I went through school. I got through gym, art, computer class, math class, even French class. Last period today is my free period with Jake. How am I supposed to act? I almost feel endebted to him.

"Hey." I threw down all my s.hit. "Umm, I never really got to thank you."

"Look, you don't need to."

"No, I probably yelled at you while you were trying to help me. And I wanna make it up to you, okay? So let's get this thing down getting along."

He looked at me a bit surprised. "Really?"

"Really. So you want the setting to be New York, New York, huh?"

"Yeah. I was thinking of modernizing it. Kind of typical, but whatever."

"Alright. So we could start off with Luciento, whose name will be Lucus, instead, and his best friend Trevor I guess at a private school. But it won't be their private school, because their's is a boys academy."

"Yeah," he agreed. "They'll be sneaking over to the girl's academy, which can be just over a brick wall, I guess. The girls can be in gym class, and he'll see Bianca there." I scribbled down our ideas. We got through quite a lot. Our Petruchio, or "Peter" will be played by the sort of mean new kid. Instead of Lucus convincing Peter though, "Kat's" dad convinces Peter's dad. A business wager was included.

Overall, it's going pretty good. I hate to admit this, but I was actually getting along with the prick.

We had made an agreement, though, that outside of working together, we were to remain the same as we usually were.

As the bell rang, I headed out to Austin's car. He picked me up for band practice.

"You know, you're almost 17. I'm sure your dad would just buy you a car."

"But then we wouldn't get to spend this quality time together!" I smiled at him.

He laughed. We pulled into his driveway. That's where band practice was today.

Lately we've been playing punk music. We don't have any horns, or else we'd be ska, because we're not too heavy. We have a few heavy songs, but just a few. The other two got there after picking up their instruments. We all helped set up the drum set. Christian had a ton of equipment. He had a normal sized drumset, but he had a ton of symbols, and was working for another bass drum and one more tom tom. Five pieces weren't doing it for him.

Practice lasted for three hours before Mike had to go to work. I filled in on guitar for another half hour, but by that time we were all tired, and I wasn't half as good as Mike when I was singing.

We packed up and I caught a ride home from Fitz. Once I got to my dad's house, I finished up my Calculus and some french. Boy, do I hate french. If I go to France right now, they wouldn't be able to understand a word I was saying. That's what everyone who get through French tells me.

I was done by seven, so I decided to outside. My dad had a pretty big backyard. In the back was an old swing set and the clubhouse we'd built together. He'd moved it to the back once I stopped playing with them. I climbed up onto a swing I'd flung around the top bar to make higher. The high one was always mine. The low one was for Jake. He would always just stand on his.

We would just swing for what felt like hours. It was probably only 15 minutes, looking back now.

We'd always swing after a game of cops and robbers. The club house was the Police headquarters, but under the club house was jail. Me and my dad had built it so I got to climb into it. I'd built a pulley system so I could lower things down to people on the ground.

Memories flashed through my head as I swung.

I started to slow without realizing it. I heard someone sit next to me. I knew it was Jake. We just sat in silence as I started to propel myself again. He looked at me and started to match what I was doing.

I jumped off and landed in the dirt, hurting my arm a bit. My ribs kinda hurt, too. But, I guess that can be expected.

I layed down in the grass. After a long leap [beating mine, I might add] he layed down next to me.

"Do you ever wish we were kids again? Or things were as simple as then? With boys hating girls and our parents dressing us and everyone just... not caring?" he asked me.

I turned my head to look at him. "I don't know about you, but I never want to go back to my mom dressing me." he laughed.

"Awe, what? You didn't like the cute little dresses she used to make you wear?"

I smiled at the thought. They were so ugly! I frowned, remembering who we both were.

"So... how are your grades?" he asked me.

"Good. My art grade is slipping of all things, how about yours?"

"Good enough for me to play football."

"Mm. Friends?" I asked.

"Fine, I guess. Me and Ricky and Ray are tight, Missy's still a bitch, that new one is adjusting to the fake life, and I don't care to remember anyone else's name at the moment." I laughed. "What about you?"

"Me? Meh, don't have any girl friends in the school anymore. I pretty much only talk to Mike and Chris. Nate, Alex, and Eric every once in a while. The others occasionally in the morning. Don't really talk to anyone else."

Silence. "You know your step-mom is burning holes in your window?"

I looked over. Sure enough, there she was, staring hard through the second story window with a smirk I could see from all the way back here.

"Well, best not get her hopes up," I said, sitting up.

"Awe, we could mess with her for a while," he repeated my action.

"Oh, yeah. I'm sure whichever clone you're dating right now would love that." He frowned, but this is where we're supposed to be. Hating eachother. It's a normal act of teenage-ness. That doesn't even make sense.

Whatever.

He mumbled something and took off. Well, sort of trudged off.

Jake's POV

I walked off, heading back into my yard. I hopped the wall separating our houses.

I don't understand why she distances herself. I'm trying to be nice to her. But she's always raging a cold war.

Well she can bring it on. Because I know stuff she doesn't.

An example, I know what's happening two weeks from now. Heh.