Sam's Wonderful NaNo Thread (with cookies)

[Deleted]

This is my first shot at NaNo (and I'm really excited). I have written a long story before, but it falls short at a bit more than 40,000 words, so I've got that final 10,000 word stretch to overcome here.

This is what I have that I can reveal!

Setting: Suburbian town in the Northeast (the seasons change).

Main Characters:

James:
Age: 13
Height: Tallish
Weight: Medium
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Personality: Very witty and sarcastic, may come off as negative. He is liked for his sheer humor and ability to entertain. He's quite smart, although he lacks sensitivity.

Ally:
Age: 13
Height: Shortish
Weight: SMALL
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Personality: She is extremely nice and friendly, although not many people like her considering she isn't very outgoing. Her shyness shadows her likability factor and the craziness which comes out while she is with her friends.

Tyson (Ty):
Age: 13
Height: Pretty Darn Tall
Weight: Good for someone who's Pretty Darn Tall
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Dirty Blonde
Personality: He's a very happy-go-lucky kid, who, as James often finds annoying, is almost always optimistic. His positive outlook on things sways people in his direction, however, he can often get on people's nerves...

Redhead (Dan):
Age: 12
Height: Medium
Weight: Average
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Red
Personality: This 7th grader is really mean and discriminating when it comes to people. He enjoys bullying the weaker 8th graders and is delighted with his social status. Although he isn't too smart, he makes up for it with his constant verbal and physical attacks.

Kara:
Age: 13
Height: Tallish
Weight: Small
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Blonde
Personality: She is extremely shy, which often makes people overlook her beauty. The queen of the quiet, this inward 8th grader becomes the apple of James' eye, and, although she doesn't notice it, she is slowly falling for someone as well...

Dave:
Age: 13
Height: Tallish
Weight: Average-Heavy
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Personality: Normally quite shy, this muscular 8th grader creates trouble when he comes to back Redhead up as the bus bully. But, his appearance creates certain tensions between everybody, as more and more secrets are slowly brought to the forefront...

Plot: It's supposed to be a normal 8th grade year for James. He's a great student, he has his own group of friends; but, as he finds out, not even that can give you an easy way out of problems. As more deep, dark secrets are revealed, problems are created, and love sparks in the air, James can tell that he's going to be given a lot more than he asked for in this surprisingly normal tale of an 8th grade year.

Problems: MANY

I think that's about all I can give you guys! ;D

[Deleted]

TODAY IS November 1st! YAYYY!!!!!

[Craig]

Good luck Sam! ^_^ This is my first NaNo too.

[Deleted]

Thanks! *high fives and counts words*

1528! WOOHOO!

[Deleted]

Here it is! 1930 beautiful words!

SPOILER: Click to show

I was a normal kid. Or so I thought.
I thought I was a normal 8th grader, with normal friends and a normal family, going to a normal school in a normal suburban town in the Northeast.
Well, I was wrong.
But that would be called foreshadowing, and I wouldn’t like to do too much of that yet. That might just ruin the plot.
Either way, I went into the 8th grade thinking that things would always stay the same. I’d had the same group of friends since the beginning of middle school, and we had an unbreakable bond between us. None of the winds of time or sharp words of enemies could cut through it, no oozing acid emanating from restless tongues could burn through, and we couldn’t pull it apart. Strong as an Ironman, seriously. You have no idea how great friends I was with these guys.
Lunch time in week two of school, early September. We were all sitting at the same table, just the three of us, me and my little hooligans. Eating lunch like all normal 8th graders do (but why would we, of all people, be normal?), and talking.
“Have you guys ever seen the Lion King on Broadway?” Tyson asked. Tyson was a pretty tall kid, but thin, so that it didn’t make him look overpowering. He had sandy brown hair (Ally will argue with me that it was dirty blonde), and he had the lightest blue eyes I had ever seen. They weren’t gray though. Two very different colors on the spectrum.
Tyson was having this thing with Broadway at the beginning of 8th grade. He had seen this play called Wicked in the city, and fell in love with it. After that, he wanted to go to every Broadway show playing at every single theater. But, of course, that’s practically impossible to do every weekend, considering families have other things to do than go to Broadway plays. When Tyson got obsessed with something, he was heavy into it. Obsessed with monster trucks? He would go to every show. Obsessed with baseball? You’d see him at every Mets and Yankees game, if he had the choice.
“No. I’ve never even been to the city.” Ally smiled as she answered, the grin lighting up her freckled face. She was light-skinned, and had dark brown hair and even darker brown eyes. Although she was small, she was pretty strong, being able to beat most girls one grade above her in an arm wrestle.
Tyson became friends with me in 2nd grade. Ally became friends with me in 6th grade. They both seem pretty normal right? Normal conversations, normal thought processing, normal friendship. Good grades, good laughs, good times. What could possibly not be normal in these situations?
One can never tell.

~*~

Our bus was many things. Our bus was active, interesting, funny, alive. There are many adjectives I could use to describe bus #11, some that I don’t need to list here, but there is one adjective that just doesn’t fit. It will always be that one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that you can never jam in there, that will always be lying on its side in a desolate place on the other side of the box.
Our bus was anything but me.
Sure, I loved to have fun, be active, do all of that stuff, but it never rested. It never stopped to think; the people on it just kept going and going, throwing their acorns, making their jokes and slapping people around. The noise echoed off the glass windows and the seats were covered in marker. Clever remarks were halted by flying pieces of paper, and all the bus driver did was drive. It was like putting 40 kids of different ages and different sizes into a rectangular shaped box for about 15 minutes, and observing what they would do.
Well, it took no scientist to say that we would kill each other eventually.
But I did not belong there. That was for people who were violent and liked to have fun while hurting each other. It was not a place for intelligence, it was a place for instinct. And, although I’m sure every human has a little, instinct was not necessarily my strong point.
I normally sat next to or in front of Ally on the bus. The past two years hadn’t been so bad. We’d had some pretty insane 8th graders before us, but our group was not really all that crazy. There were only three of us, after all, and I was hoping for a peaceful year, where we could just talk instead of screaming and laughing our heads of while rocks flew up and down the aisle. That’s all I wanted! What was wrong with 15 minutes after the day is over to just wind down and relax, maybe complain a little and tell jokes. Who’s idea was it to just go wild and dance and punch each other in the guts? Well, whoever it was, I’m going to stick them on my bus and see how much they’d like it.
Actually, now that I think about it, they would like it.
There goes that idea.
One day I got on the bus. Ally was already there, but there was an open seat across from her, so I sat down there. Luckily, it was early, so the few moments of quiet reigned until someone with an outgoing aura got on. I looked over at Ally, who was reading an assignment, something that we got for social studies, and then looked back at the front of the bus.
It was really sunny, and the bus driver was lazily leaning over the wheel, waiting for all of his passengers to board. A 6th grader climbed on, taking a seat at the front of the bus. Maybe that day would be quiet. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a disaster like all of the other days.
But by the end of that bus ride, I was wishing it was like all of the other days.
On came Dan Keppler, a 7th grader I knew vaguely from my elementary school. He was wearing a green polo shirt, and he brushed his red hair to the side as he walked to the back of the bus. His freckles danced upon his face, making it seem as if he was moving even when he was still. His eyes sparkled with the sunlight in a way that I knew he was thinking about something. He stared at me for a little bit, and sat down in the seat right in front of me. I sighed, knowing that when another 8th grader got on they were going to force him out, and that was going to start a whole other fight. I hated watching fights. But you know what I hated more than watching in fights? Being in fights. But I’ll get to that later. Way later.
Just as I had predicted, another 8th grader, Chris, not exactly an enemy of mine, stepped onto the bus and glared Dan down. “What are you doing back there? 8th graders sit back there, buddy, you know that.” Chris was always extremely dramatic, but he could not walk the way he talked. A boy full of threats, he never had exactly what he said he had up his sleeve. But we all liked him for it. And even when he told a downright lie, we would pretend it was true, if only for a while.
“Well I want to sit here. Got anything to say about it?” I snorted. This kid was just about as dramatic as Chris. Maybe this would be interesting.
“Move!” the 8th grader grunted as he walked up to the redhead and shoved him. Dan pushed back, and soon they were in a fight. Not surprisingly, Dan was upholding himself pretty well, using his freckled arms to slowly move Chris back into the seat next to him. He sat down, breathing hard out of his nose, and looked away. “You got lucky this time, punk,” Chris said in his slightly high voice, crossing his arms and looking over as if he was about to stick out his tongue like a young kid, “but next time, you won’t be so lucky.”
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. Sometimes I wondered if Chris was like that on purpose to get a few laughs.
“Yeah, and what’s so funny?” Dan asked, turning his head and staring at me. Honestly, I was trying to hold my laughter in because the whole situation was funny, but I didn’t make a noise. Afraid that if I opened my mouth I would burst out laughing, I didn’t respond. I just looked into those icy blue eyes of his as he squinted them and furrowed his brow. “I asked you a question.”
“And he didn’t answer.”
Thank you, Ally.
“But what if I want him to answer?” he asked, standing up.
“And what if I don’t want to answer?” I demanded, standing up with him. I looked around, surprised that I was even wrapped up in this whole thing. I wasn’t normally one to argue so passionately, although I was pretty good at arguing, but he made me angry, for some reason. It was the way he thought he was so cool and better than everyone else, maybe, or the fact that he was able to push us around. I wanted to be left alone, and if I had to stand up for myself, then so it was. But I wasn’t going to take any crap from a 7th grader, that was for sure.
“Then this!” he said, and he spit in my face. I blushed immediately, as I realized that everyone else was watching, and wiped the saliva off my face. I reared back to punch him, only to realize that it would only cause trouble. Then I finally noticed that the bus was moving. In fact, it was pretty close to my stop.
“You idiot! That’s disgusting,” I told him, and shoved him back in his seat. “How disgusting is that?” I asked Ally, who shrugged in reply. “I would never spit at someone. That’s just way too disgusting. That’s just the worst it can get. The worst it can get!”
The worst it can get! If I had written that down in a diary, and went back into the diary I would have crossed those words out with the darkest pen possible. The worst it can get! No, it wasn’t the worst it could get. Of course, it could have been better…
But I hadn’t seen the worst of it. I hadn’t seen anything. Psychics wouldn’t have figured it, lie detectors wouldn’t have told me I was lying. I truly believed that that was the worst it could get, that my life couldn’t possibly be that bad if I had friends by my side. How could I have thought that making it through 8th grade was just a matter of shrugging it off and getting good grades, that the friends I had would be the only tools I needed for survival?
Whoever got that thought into my head needs to be put in that place someday. But then again, it could have been me who put that thought in my head. We won’t go there.
The worst it can get. I just wish those words would vanish, that I hadn’t jinxed myself. But it’s too late for that one.
The worst it can get.
I was so wrong.

[Deleted]

OKAY! My little state is having word wars with a few other states and I want some advice from the experienced: is it fun? I mean, will it be worth it in the long run? From what I can see, it's perfectly helpful extra motivation.

[Deleted]

Another 2090 words! Now I am technically 20 words ahead of schedule! GO SAM! Here's the next chapter for you guys to spit on read!

SPOILER: Click to show

Curiosity is a very important thing for humankind. It has lead scientists to discover the most amazing things, it has lead Americans far beyond the reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, and it has lead the world’s greatest philosophers to think up the most thoughtful ideas.
Curiosity also killed the cat. But we won’t go there.
Either way, if curiosity was so great, I wondered, then why did anyone care if I was nosy? Sure, I may have been a bit intrusive, but I just wanted to know a little bit of information? How much is that going to hurt, right?
Please don’t answer that. It’s rhetorical.
We were back at the lunch table, that huge huddle of Tyson, Ally and me. Just chowing away, minding our own business. Well, I wasn’t minding my own business, but that’s not necessarily the point. Or is it?
“Oh c’mon Tyson! It can’t be that bad! Just tell me! Please!”
That was me, badgering my best friend to tell me his deepest darkest secret. Of course he didn’t want to tell me, considering it was deep and dark, and other stuff like that, but I wanted to know. And I was his best friend, so didn’t I have a right to know?
Oh wait, don’t answer that one either.
“No! The reason it’s a secret is because I don’t want to tell anyone. Lay off it, okay? Just lay off!” He was clearly getting agitated by my persistence and constant nagging.
“What? Is it really that bad? It’s not like you’re gay or something!” I argued, slamming my arm down on the table. I really wanted to know this one. Tyson had never hidden anything from me before. New dog, oh that’s great, I’ll go over and see it. Yeah, my parents want to get a divorce right now, and they told me not to tell anyone, but I’m telling you anyway. My grandma died last night in her sleep. I don’t know how he could possibly have a secret that he needed to keep that badly. And from his best friend too. Why wouldn’t he just get it over with and tell me?
Okay, I really have to stop asking bad questions.
“Ooh, do you have a crush or something? I’d bet you have a crush! Actually, come to think of it, I’ve never had a crush. Ever. I think that my heart has no room for the feeling of love. Either way, crushes are so weird anyway. How could you be in love with someone? How could you like someone more than your best friend? Sometimes, I really don’t understand. And that thing where your heart starts beating really fast or something, because your nervous. Yeah, if I ever had a crush, I would just go straight out and tell her. Because I would have nothing to worry about. If she didn’t like me back, oh well, I would just have to move on. Love is so easy.” While I made my grand speech about love, Ally and Tyson looked at each other, like, at the same time they were thinking the same thing. It was almost as if they had some unknown telepathy and they were sending coded messages through their eyes. “What’s going on? I have the strange feeling I’m in the dark here. And you guys know that I just hate it when you leave me in the dark!”
“You may figure it out eventually,” said Tyson, reclining in his chair and sipping a bit from his water bottle, “but for now, just don’t worry about it. The more you think about it, the more you’ll want to know, and the more you want to know, the less we’ll want to tell you.”
I looked across the cafeteria, calming down a little bit. I was thinking now, and as I was, I realized that if the secret was so serious that Tyson wouldn’t tell me, after all of those amazingly serious secrets before, what was it? What was it that could make him shrivel back into his mind and put up a barricade so that no one could enter. Was he going to die? Was he really an orphan? Did he lie to me in some way? What was going on?
The more you think about it, the more you’ll want to know.
Tyson was right. I should have just laid off. But I couldn’t help just thinking about it for the rest of the day. Just thinking, and thinking, until my brain was lost in a world of fantasies.
And that’s when the bus hit me.
Oh wait, that sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? Okay, the bus didn’t actually hit me (like it ran me over so that my body = roadkill), but it came before I expected it too. Like, the end of the day came earlier I expected it too. And, you know what happens on the bus, right? Unless you didn’t read Chapter One, yes. And if you haven’t read Chapter One, I highly suggest you do.
I was really hoping that Redhead had only made a one time stand. You know, like, when people have a really bad day, normally it cheers them up to make someone else have a worse day. I really hoped the situation was like that, because I didn’t want some stupid little 7th grader continually bugging me on the bus. I already had a little brother to deal with when I got home, and a secret what I wanted to know the full details of. I had enough on my mind.
But, lo and behold, as I climbed onto the bus, Redhead was there, in the far back seat, waiting for me. “Hello, James,” he said, waving and plastering a fake smile on his face.
Oh, that’s right. I don’t think I ever told you. My name is James. Yes, James. No, you can not call me Jamie, and I am not British.
“Go ‘way,” I told him, hoping that he would listen. I was not in the mood to talk. I was too busy thinking.
Tell that to Dan Keppler.
“So, you going to talk with your girlfriend?” he asked, as I slumped into my seat, throwing my backpack against the wall. I cocked my head and looked at him confused-like, which I was, and he pointed to Ally.
“Oh, her? She’s my friend. Not my girlfriend. That would be…weird,” I told him, taking another look at Ally. Her, my girlfriend? That was just too weird for words. I mean, I had been her best friend for more than two years, and being girlfriend and boyfriend would get in the way of everything. Complicate things. Not to mention that I didn’t like her, and most likely she didn’t like me.
“Sure,” he said in disbelief.
Nothing to worry about. I had heard that one before.
“So, when you were smiling to each other, back at lunch,” I immediately started talking to Ally, as if Redhead wasn’t even there, “does that mean you know his secret? Because you had an awfully knowing smile on your face,”
“To tell you the truth, I have just about as much an idea as you do. We were smiling about something else, but that’s none of your business. Yet.”
“Another secret?” I asked in disbelief, raising my hands in frustration as the bus began to roll along the pavement, trees whipping past as it rushed down the road. The sounds of outside bounded in through an open window, as did the leaves that were torn off of a branch we barreled into.
“Another secret?” Redhead mocked me. “She’s definitely your girlfriend. You’re having some, like, talk to her.”
“The only reason you think she’s my girlfriend is because you can’t talk to girls,” I retorted, hoping to shove him off of my wagon. Not literally of course, just…well, I hope you get the point.
“Oh, that makes total sense. Total sense. I mean…guh…you don’t have a girlfriend because one thing. Because you don’t like girls. YOU like BOYS! Gay, gay, gay! James is gay! Because he doesn’t like girls and he’s a freakin’ idiot that is gay! What a gay kid! I mean, I can’t believe it!” Any voice more obnoxious I have yet to hear. I mean, this kid was singing it out, and it was like you couldn’t imagine. Not rocks grinding against each other (although it had the ear-piercing quality), nor was it so high-pitched it could be considered a screech. No, more like a bucket-load of crap, if you can roll that up and put it into voice for. It sounded like crap slopping along the road, or maybe when you step in dog crap the squishy sound it makes. Kind of like that.
But I really wasn’t paying attention to his voice. No, it was more what the voice was saying. “You think I’m gay? Ha, you shouldn’t be talking! Gay? What are you thinking, what is running through your head? You think you have this detector, and that if this boy is able to have a friend that’s a girl, he’s gay? Well, let me tell you, no girl would ever want to be your friend, because you’re a suckish friend.”
Ally laughed, and Redhead smiled. “Oh yeah? Well the only reason she’s your friend is because you’re GAY!”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” But it didn’t have to make sense, because it just was that way. If anything bad happened, or if something about you was bad, it was gay. It was just, like, a substitution of vocabulary or something, that gay was like this new synonym that had shoved its way into the English vocabulary. And it was just this huge insult to be called gay, to be called a faggot, to be called whatever. I mean, the fact was, our society was just repeating its segregation and elimination. First black people and then gay people.
And I was swept up in that wave like dust in a vacuum.
It never occurred to me as wrong, it occurred to me as the norm, and the norm was right, most of the time. So gay people were stupid faggots who were great in their own little world but had nothing to do with me (thankfully). And that big bully thought he could call me gay and get away with it without a fight? Now that was what made me gay. No, I was going to argue back and make sure that this stinking bully knew what he was talking about.
But I was wrong. I didn’t know what I was talking about myself. Still, it was fun to argue. Great entertainment at parties.
“Gay!” he screamed, and now everyone had stopped talking and stared to the back of the bus. Redhead really did have a loud voice, and that quality about it really did catch peoples’ attention. I was surprised, flustered, didn’t know what to say. Did most of these people actually believe the freckled freak and think I was gay?
“NOT GAY! You’re the one who’s gay, Dan. Now go away. Don’t bother me. Because you’re a new level of annoying, and your crappily small brain is going to be pumping gas for me someday. So sit down, and shut up!” I sat back down and turned around, secretly listening for any type of reaction that came from the rest of the bus. No doubt that Redhead was going to respond, but how? That was the question (although maybe rhetorical).
The whole bus resumed in its normal proceedings. People talked, people laughed, people screamed, people threw acorns. And for one second, no one was gay.
“Gaylord, you stupid faggot. Be glad this is your stop, you faggot stupid FAGGOT!”
I finally got off the bus. Ally followed me as we heard the words of Redhead slowly soften, walking down the steps and out the door.
“YOU ARE GAY! It’s only a matter of time until you come out! And when you do, I’m going to be standing right there! I’m going to be watching you, and standing right there, and screaming you’re a FAGGOT! You stupid idiot FAGGOT! I’m going to scream that and chuck rocks at you and everyone’s going to hate you! Because you’re a dumb FAGGOT! Who likes all those nerdy things and is into boys!” he screamed shallowly as the bus doors closed and he drove away. “FAGGOT!”
Man was I going to have a headache the next morning.

[Deleted]

2695 more words, and I'm going for 5k today, so only 2.3k to go.

SPOILER: Click to show

Change is like wind. At one moment, it can be up and running, just blowing through the town, through your hair, pushing stray newspapers and tumbleweeds across the ground. At another, it can be calm and collected, slowly pushing the leaves to and fro, lightly flying into your eyes, a cloud on a bright summer’s day. And sometimes, it’s just not there at all.
Change can happen really fast, or over a long period of time. But, either way, when change happens, it really blows people away. It’s almost always something really good or really bad. Like moving, or growing another inch, it can be an exciting way to refresh the spirit and bring new life to old situations. It is the chameleon going from green to brown, it is the rain clouds sweeping over the sky at a breakneck pace, it is the fish exiting the mouth of the stream into the ocean.
Change is the element of surprise.
There was still no change, however, in Tyson’s integrity. He refused to tell me that secret he was keeping up in that head of his. If only I could have cracked it open and pulled out all of the thoughts inside, then I would have been able to know sooner, to face it sooner. But he just wouldn’t budge.
“Come on! Please? It can’t be that bad! Just tell me and get it over with!” I begged as we walked through the halls of the school. I don’t think he was even paying attention anymore, as he just kept on walking down the hall, facing forward, carrying his books and striding in a robotic motion. Sure, he was aware of his surroundings, but he had a way of blocking me and my puny little voice out of his mind.
He sure must have been annoyed.
Either way, I was going to trick him into telling his secret. I didn’t care what my common sense told me, that it wasn’t going to work, probably, and that it wasn’t a good idea to know the secret in the first place. I was incredibly curious, a bit of a busybody, and concerned for my friend’s well being. Maybe it was more because of the first two items that I wanted to know the secret, but still, you’ve got to give me some credit here. It wasn’t like I was going to kill him or something. I just wanted to know the secret!
“Hey Tyson, I need help on a math problem,” I whispered to him during homeroom. It was really weird that year, because, instead of having homeroom early in the morning, our school held it right after lunch. I don’t know why they switched it; I was fine with having homeroom before school, a great time to get that last minute homework done. Either way, I was going to find a way to weasel that little secret out of his mouth, even if it took a fake interest in math.
I hated math. Math was my worst subject. So, it would be likely that Tyson, the math genius, would be called to attention as my helper for homework. “I need help with problem 15. Seriously, I don’t get it at all, and my teacher will kill me if I don’t do this one.” That was a white lie, because if we missed one problem on homework she didn’t really care. But it was all a disguise, and he was in a higher math level than me, with a different teacher, so he wouldn’t have known anyway.
“You need help with a math problem? You’ve never come to me for help before, except for that one with extra credit. I think something else is going on here.” I had to hand it to him, that Tyson really was a smart cookie. He was already suspicious of my actions, but I had to keep my guard up. Maybe, if I spun the right tale, he would believe me, and I would be free to proceed with my plan.
“Well, it’s really important. My grade, it’s a bit low, and she says that if she sees that I’m giving it a lot of effort, she’s going to raise it from a B- to a B. And you know my parents hate it when I’m not giving all my classes. Besides, math is the only thing that I have lower than an A- in, and anything that will up my grade helps.” A good lie, not too complicated, easy to remember. I was basically in.
“Okay, what is it?”
I’m in.
“Well, actually, it’s right here,” I said, opening my textbook to page 130. “Right here,” I pointed to problem 15, which was on that page. As Tyson read it over, I looked at him. I didn’t think it was a physical secret or anything, because he didn’t even look like he’d changed. He was still the same, tall, sandy brown-haired kid I’d known since 2nd grade. So his secret had to be mental. Or emotional maybe. A crush? I don’t know. The last time I knew of Tyson having a crush was last year, but the girl he was crushing on moved away.
“Oh, this one’s really simple. You just have to find the slope, and then plug in one of the coordinate pairs so you can find the y-intercept. You do know how to find slope, don’t you?”
I nodded in reply. Of course I knew how to find slope, and yes, it was true that I had done the problem already, so I had to play dumb. “I’m kind of bad at it though. Which one goes on top again? X or Y?” I asked, pulling out a pencil and another piece of paper so he could show me how to do the problem.
“Oh, Y goes on top. So, just find the slope, and then I’ll help you from there,” he instructed me, and I started to right. But, 8-3 wasn’t what was on my mind. I was intent on finding that secret, and I wasn’t going to give up because a measly little math problem was in my way.
“So, what is that secret of yours anyway? Maybe I, as a friend, could help you just like you’re helping me with this math problem,” I suggested, digging right in and leaping into the fray. I wanted to know, before homeroom ended, and, if possible, before I finished with my excuse of problem 15. Maybe he would help me.
“I’m not going to tell you. Math problems and secrets are totally different things, James. Think about it. If you had this huge secret you didn’t want to tell anyone, and your friend tried to convince you he would help you out with whatever it was, would you tell?” my friend asked, watching me as I subtracted, took out my calculator, and divided.
“Done!” I called, trying to move off subject. I set the pencil down and watched as he read my work.
“Yeah, that’s right. So, make the standard equation: y=m(x)+b. Yeah, like that. And then plug in one of the ordered pairs into y and x, and then you’ll be able to solve for b,” he said to me.
“Why can’t I help you? I think I’m a perfectly good friend for the job. It’s not like I’m just going to abandon you after you tell me the secret, get a megaphone, and scream it to the whole school. Is that the problem? You don’t think I can keep it?” I asked while simultaneously plugging one of the ordered pairs into y and x, just like he had told me to.
“No, it’s not a matter of trust, it’s just a matter of time. I have to wait until you’re more mature. You might, like, joke around or something. Or worse. Or maybe you’ll hate me for the rest of your life.” Tyson was really fantasizing now. Me, hate him? That was in his worst nightmares! Tyson would always be my best friend, and I would never hate him. Making fun of him was just something I did. I made fun of everybody, and I never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings.
“What? Mature? I’m not mature enough? You’re telling me I’m not mature, when you’re always the one who everyone’s getting annoyed at,” I whispered as I finished the problem. Solving for b was pretty easy, seeing as I had done the problem already, and Tyson nodded as he checked over my answer.
“That’s right, for both of the questions. You are definitely not mature enough to handle what’s about to be thrown at you. If I were to tell you the secret, that is, which I’m not going to. It’s not easy as this problem, James, it’s got lots of variables and things like that. Some of them can’t even be solved right now, I’ll just have to wait over time. And I don’t expect you to take this the right way, but I just can’t trust this one with you right now. You’re definitely still my friend, that’s for sure, but it’s really not that easy. It’s not that simple. I wish I could tell you, I wish I could tell certain people, but I can’t, because that would really ruin things. Ruin them and complicate them pretty badly.” He stared at me, his eyes twinkling with a lot of vigor, and I nodded understandingly.
Little did I know, I would be talking to him over the same topic that very same night.
I was on the phone. We were in a three way, Tyson, Ally and me. Sometimes we just randomly did that, called each other up on a three way and talked for hours. We always made each other laughed, gave each other advice on homework, surfed the internet and stuff like that. It was like having a study group, except we weren’t all physically there. We were there spiritually, and our voices would burst the bubble of silence more than every once and a while, but it was like privately doing stuff with your friends.
“And, Ally, you must be pretty happy about the good news,” Tyson said, as I pulled out a pencil and started on my English homework. I almost always did English first, because it was a nice way to ease into the homework schedule. I got about two hours a night, so I really needed something to slide into it, instead of jumping head-first.
“Good news? I want to hear!” I chirped excitedly as I opened my journal. We were doing this log, except it was as if we were the character. The character told us of every Tuesday he had, and we were supposed to create some of the time in between the Tuesdays. Reactions to events that happened in the book were welcome as well. And many things that were suggestions in the book were welcome to the journals we kept.
“Well, I have this crush, you see,” Ally started. She always had this crush on some weird boy. Sometimes I didn’t like the boy she was crushing on, and, if this was the case, she almost never told me until after it was over. But, she was telling me this now, which meant it must have been someone I was at least on good terms with. “And I heard this rumor. I heard this rumor that my crush likes me back.”
“Isn’t that great news?” Tyson asked, laughing in the background. I could tell he was laughing, because, even though he was covering up the phone with his gigantic hand, there was still a strange, breathy sound in the background. Of course, it was because I would try and find out who her crush was, just as I was trying to find out his secret, and it amused him greatly to see me irked by so many secrets being kept from me.
“Shut up Tyson. So, who is it, Ally?” I asked, good-naturedly so at least I’d have a chance of her telling me who it was.
“I can’t tell you. I really can’t. I’m sorry, but it would just complicate things too much.” She said, and I could hear a cat meowing in the background. Ally had the cutest cat named Flora, short for fluorescent (because they found her at night while she was playing with one of those glow-in-the-dark sticks from the fourth of July. But I wasn’t interested in the cat. I was interested in her crush.
“Come on. I’m not going to hate you for it. It’s not bad news, is it?” I asked, cupping my hand to the phone and sighing, just like I always did when those two hid something from me.
“It’s not that you’ll hate her for it,” Tyson reasoned, and he paused to take a breath, as if he was about to say something extremely important, “It’s more that it will just make things more complicated. It’s not just like, you know, the normal crush. It’s something that we can’t tell you.”
“I have a feeling that you’re just playing a joke on me,” I said, harrumphing in the background and crossing my arms secretly. “It’s like you do this thing, this game, or something, where you just randomly decide to hide your secrets from me, just to see how angry I’ll get, or something.”
“It’s really not that!” Ally argued, and I could still hear Tyson laughing in the background. He sure saw entertainment in my suffering. Some friend he was.
“Seriously, James, you can’t know.”
“Then give me clues then! Anything!” I pleaded. They both sighed into their phones simultaneously, giving it a strange effect.
“No! We can’t tell you!” Ally told me for what seemed the millionth time, although it really wasn’t.
I waited for a few seconds, just to see how they would react. Tyson was breathing kind of hard, as if he was doing something physically draining while talking on the phone. Ally’s end was silent, seeing as she was probably sitting on the couch and hanging out with her cat. Either way, I had lost all focus on the English homework and was completely distracted by the phone call.
“I’m hanging up,” Ally stated, completely bursting through the silence. Obviously, she didn’t want to talk about it more, as if it made her uncomfortable. She had never been uncomfortable talking about that stuff before.
But she did. She hung up.
“That is so weird. Do you think something’s wrong with her?” I asked Tyson, who was still on the other line, I could tell, by his hard breathing.
“She has to hide this from you. It would be the end of the world for her if you found out,” Tyson told me, whispering now, as if Ally was right by his side, listening to everything he was saying.
I thought about it for a second. What could be so bad that it would make her want to hide it from me so much. And how come it would shatter her world if I found out.
And then I realized. “No. Wait, I have a guess. I know this may sound really conceited and everything. I know, it could sound arrogant, and it’s a stupid first guess. But, oh crap, is it me?” I was hoping to God it wasn’t me, hoping to someone it wasn’t me. But that was the answer that made the most sense. I wanted Tyson to shake his head and give me a negative so that life could go on, so that time would be freed and seconds would flow again. I wanted that horrible second where I held my breath to just be over and I would sigh in relief.
Silence.
There was silence on the other end. And I knew what silence meant.
“Let’s just drop the subject, okay? Don’t talk about it. If she knows, her world goes down.”
And just like that, it was over.
“You’re serious? You aren’t serious. You’re just playing a trick on me, right? You have to be!”
Silence.
“Drop it.”
Silence.
I hung up.

[Deleted]

Sam, you're a good writer. I liked that first paragraph about change A LOT.

Congrats on 5k! I didn't get to read the full excerpt--but I skimmed and it's very interesting! Probably after I get done with my quota for the day I'll go through and read people's excerpts.

[Deleted]

Thanks so much Echo! I guess I've had a bit of experience with long works (I've written 40,000 words in a novella, not 50,000) so that might give me a bit of an advantage. But still, this is hard work. 6k left me extremely tired. Sometimes, mentally demanding things are more demanding than physical ones.

Either way, here's the final 3.1k of the day. Thanks to all of you participants in today's Word Wars, I was really able to plow through it!

SPOILER: Click to show

Night-time, when a shroud of black covers the sky and slowly puts people to sleep. When stars awaken and twinkle, shining their light on the world below like precious gems. When broken street lights flicker on and off as those late night drivers drive their soundless cars down the street. Fireplaces roar in the winter and coolers roar in the summer. But night-time is also a time for family, to hang around together and watch the baseball game, or play a nice, calm round of Yahtzee.
Night-time is also the time I had talks with mom. Whenever I needed some sort of advice, like, if something was bothering me, or if I needed help with homework, or if a new problem came up, it was always straight to mom. Although she wasn’t necessarily the smartest person (although she was incredibly smart), she was really good with things like that. Her history, her childhood, was ridden with problems she wished she knew how to solve. And the best thing she could possibly do was watch her children solve the same exact problems right before her eyes.
“Mom, we need to talk,” I said, sitting down on the red leather couch on an early October night. Our dog, Rosie, was with her, licking her hand with that small dog tongue. My mom sighed and flitted around her short red hair. She turned the TV, which was showcasing some strange comedian, off, and looked at me as I turned and faced her, bringing my legs up on the couch and laying them by her side. “There’s this kid, on my bus. He’s doing some very weird things to us, like yesterday. Yesterday, he just went too far.”
“Wait, slow down. Kid on your bus? Who is he?” My mom liked to know all the details; she couldn’t just sit down and listen to a story about a lion, she had to know what color it was, whether it was a boy or a girl, whether it had a spouse, and if it had a name. Everything mattered to her, which was sometime a good thing (though other times it wasn’t), and I was almost ready for this question.
“His name is Dan, but we nicknamed him Redhead, because he has red hair. Anyway, he’s in 7th grade, and he keeps bothering us. Normally it’s verbal, which is okay with me, because, you know, everyone gets verbally insulted once in a while. Made fun of, no big deal, I can ignore him. Except yesterday, he did something…unexpected,” I explained as Rosie got up and walked over to me. She was obviously coming over to say hi, but she was a little violent in liking my face, eventually going so far as to take a nip at my nose.
“What did he do?” Mom asked, bringing Rosie back after seeing that she was getting a bit too rough.
“He touched us,” I told her, “I mean really touched. Like, in the chest touched us.” I was imitating his motion, rubbing my chest with strong vigor and trying my best to recreate the disgusting and repulsive noises that erupted from his mouth. It was really hard to reenact, considering I was just appalled the first time it happened, but I had to so Mom could understand.
“He touched you? That’s gross!” she called, leaning forward. I could tell she was more interested now, in the bad way, because kids at that time were just less polite and well behaved. Each time I told her of something one of my friends did, she looked at me like I was insane, but I moved on.
“Yeah, I know. It was really disgusting. And he did it to Chris. Chris Furland, another kid on my bus, he’s an 8th grader too.”
“Well, then, I officially give you permission to hurt him.” When Mom wanted me to do something, she went right out and said it. Often times she would give me permission to do things, because she remembered the way things happened in her childhood and the way they were solved (or not). “If he ever touches you again, I want you to show him that he can’t do that to you.”
“But I’ll get in trouble,” I argued, looking down at the dog, who was now taken to licking her paws and the surface of the couch instead of one of the human owners.
“If you do get in trouble, I’ll talk to the principal,” Mom said, smiling softly and turning the TV back on. “Now, I don’t want you to worry about it too much, but definitely keep your guard up. That kid is trouble if he’s doing that to you. I don’t care if he’s a 7th grader or not, but you need to show him you are more powerful than him.”
I nodded. A new surge of adrenaline and hope rushed through my veins. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t wait to see Dan Keppler on the bus the next day, couldn’t wait until he laid a hand on me, because I wanted to show him who was boss. I wanted to show him I was boss.
The next day, the bus came.
Well, though it is true that the bus always comes, this time it was different. Because, as I was walking to the bus stop, I realized that Ally was going to be on the bus. And she liked me! There was always that chance that she was going to ask me out or something. It was so weird, because I knew that she had a crush on me, her best friend, but she didn’t know I knew. So she thought I was clueless, and I thought she was clueless. I didn’t think everything would be normal (though, technically, it would be), and I gulped when the bus bounded down the street and curved to a stop right in front of the stop.
I got on and Ally was sitting in the seat waiting for me and waving. I hesitantly waved back and sat down in the seat in front of her. “How are you this morning?” she asked politely, and I nodded and yawned simultaneously. The yawn was partly fake, because I didn’t really want to talk to her, and then I set my backpack down leaning against the wall.
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, would you mind if I…er…caught a wink on the bus?” I asked her, trying to be as nice as possible. She shrugged and nodded, inwardly wondering why I was acting a little strangely, and I set my head down on the backpack, bringing my legs in and curling up. While my eyes were closed, I imagined her leaning over and staring at me, blushing as she watched my chest rise and fall, my breathing thicken and a slow smile creep on to my face as I entered the dream world. My stomach churned as I thought I felt her deep brown eyes bare into my skull, watching my every move. I felt like a lab rat, constantly observed and studied, except this was different. This time I knew that I was being watched, instead of just living life and obliviously stumbling through it. I knew that I was being ogled by a secret admirer, that my best friend tried to hide her blushing face every time I turned my head. I almost threw up, but I had to hold it in, for her sake. She couldn’t know anything.
And finally, we got to school. The bus screeched to a stop, letting out a strong sigh from its exhaust pipe. I stood up, very ready to be off and thrown into the school day, and I hurried off the bus, not waiting for Ally to follow. She stared at me out the window (or so I thought), as I walked in through the school doors.
During homeroom (Ally not being there), I talked to Tyson about the problem. As I slid over to him, I saw him steal a furtive glance at my hands, to see if I had another excuse. They were bare, however, as I pulled the seat out and sat down right next to him. “What do I do? Every single moment she’s within ten feet of me I feel like she’s throwing some lovesick gaze at me, or something. It’s incredibly annoying, and it makes me sick to the stomach!”
“Now you know the consequences of being nosy,” Tyson lightly admonished me, as he put his hands down on the table. “So, what can I do about that? Maybe she is, but I highly doubt it. Really, there’s nothing you can do about her liking you; you’re just going to have to let it pass. She’ll stop eventually. Probably.”
“Probably? No, I can’t deal with this forever! How would you feel if your best friend was crushing on you?” I demanded of him, maybe a bit too loud, as people looked over, wondering what the heck was going on.
“I would just have to deal with it, just like you have to deal with it. Look, the best way to handle it would be to go talk to her. Maybe you can work something out. I know you can James, you care about people enough to understand.” Tyson was shaking his head and whispering to me, telling me what to do. Really, I was normally one to take advice from Tyson (considering he was very smart and wise and all that), but just this once I felt uncomfortable. This was something that had never even crossed my mind before: love. It really was something that was new to me, considering I had never had a crush on anyone before, and no one had a crush on me before (at least, not that I knew of), so what was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to know? I had to find out on my own, but how? Tyson knew. Ally knew. But I wasn’t ready to know. I still had some things to do, some innocence to relive. I couldn’t just dive into that horrible teenage world yet, I had to keep living the normal life up until high school. And why did it have to start so abruptly? Was it always like that?
“Listen to me, James. You’re going to have to talk to her eventually, so I suggest you do it now. Right now.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I hate to admit it, but I’d really feel awkward talking to her about that kind of thing. I don’t talk to her about that kind of thing. And you know I’m not sensitive at all. I might break her heart, or something,” I grumbled, putting my head down on the table. My hair kind of spread, the way it always did when I was underwater, and Tyson pat me on the back.
“The fact that you know this means you’re sensitive. You are aware that you’re dealing with a fragile subject, which means that I’m sure you’ll be able to maneuver around a conversation with her. Again, you’re going to have to do it sometime. You should do it very soon,” he warned me, taking a pencil out of his pencil case. “Here, why don’t you write down a few ideas on what to say. Then you might be a little more prepared,” he suggested, handing the yellow Ticonderoga to me.
“I don’t know. What if I’m not ready?” I asked.
“You’ll never be ready, James. You can’t be. You’re going to have to let her down gently, and I understand that that’s really hard, but you’re going to have to. This is your first time, and the first time is always the hardest time. But, trust me, if you aren’t so worried about it, and you just relax, it will come naturally.”
“Naturally?” I retorted, “Love does not come naturally for me! There’s, like, this barrier that blocks my love flow or something. You’re different, Tyson. You know all about love, you let it run free through your blood, and stuff. But me, no, I don’t. Never had a crush. I’m a bit separated from my family. I mean, I love you guys as friends, but I have no capacity in my heart to be able to do this yet. Can’t I just make it through without talking to her?” Tyson took a piece of paper out from his binder and slid that over to me as well, looking at me expectantly. Reluctantly I wrote a heading on the paper, excluding my name, and I looked back at him.
“Wasn’t it you that told me you wouldn’t be able to five minutes ago?” Tyson asked, taking out a pen of his own and beginning to write down on the paper. “There, see? You’re going to have to eventually, that’s the first piece of advice. Maybe that’ll help you in some way.”
“It won’t. I can’t do this,” I sobbed. I buried my head in my arms and just waited for time to pass. My eyes were closed, and I remembered that time on the bus when I was fake sleeping, dreaming about how Ally was just watching me, recording my every move in her mind, maybe wishing I would just rise up and look into her eyes, and tell her that I loved her. Ugh, what a nightmare! “Maybe I should. Maybe I have to,” I whispered to myself, taking my head out of my little cave and putting my hair back into its rightful place.
“Exactly. Now, what do you think would be a good idea to do in this kind of situation? Remember, I can’t map this whole thing out for you, you’re going to have to do some of it yourself. This is your decision, your little thing you have to accomplish. I know you can do it, you just need to realize that you can.” Tyson was always one for encouraging words, and he was spitting them out like a machine, making sure that every second I was backed up by a positive sentence or too. Half of me wanted to punch him and tell him to shut up and let me just wallow in my pity, but half of me knew he was right, and I smiled because of that half. Slowly, I picked up the pencil and set the tip down to the paper and got ready to write.
“Thanks for your help Tyson. I know I can’t do this without you,” I said, looking up at my friend. He was smiling, and his eyes were sparkling, glad that I was finally succumbing to his superior advice. He knew that he was right, but he had to know that I knew. Tyson was the master after all.
“You can do this without me, you just think you can’t. And, I’ll cut you some slack, it’s hard. But I’ll help you,” he said, trying to be comforting yet opposing me at the same time. He looked at the paper pensively, trying to come up with the right words to say. Not knowing what else to do, I followed his actions, racking my brains for the right words to say and the right encouragement to give. It was a slight problem. I couldn’t be too encouraging, or else she might get her hopes up, only to have them crushed by my words telling her that I didn’t like her back. But I also couldn’t be too harsh, because then she would be truly and sincerely hurt. I didn’t want either of those things to happen, so I secretly waited for Tyson to at least give me a hint and get me started on the right track.
“It’s hard, I know,” Tyson said, maybe more to himself than me. He really was trying to think of things. After all, Ally was his friend too, and there was no doubt he was trying to avoid hurting her badly as well. “You should definitely get straight down to the point. Write that down, get straight down to the point. Start off with something like, ‘I know that you have a crush on me,’ or something like that. Or maybe a little more subtle, because that is a bit harsh and grinding and all that.”
I followed his advice and wrote that down, staring at the words as soon as I lifted the pencil up. They all seemed like angels, just sprouting wings and glowing angels and rising up into the sky. I needed someone to save me, because this was definitely a situation I needed saving from. I looked back at Tyson, and then, realizing that he wanted me coming up with ideas as well, I looked down at the paper and thought again. “What if I told her that I would still be best friends with her. Is that a good idea?” I asked Tyson. It was like I needed his permission, like he was the one who told me what I could and couldn’t do. Maybe he was, because I was the one who thought I couldn’t do it on my own.
“Well, does it seem like a good idea to you?” he asked, an all-knowing smirk on his face. He looked at me as I looked down at the paper again, and then started tapping my pencil on the table.
“Well, yeah, I guess so,” I replied unsurely. My voice was almost wobbly as I wrote it down, because I was really nervous. My palms were sweating like crazy, and the pencil almost slipped from my grip as I wrote that piece of advice down. If anything went wrong, if I messed up in anyway, I could hurt my best friend and separate us forever.
“Good, now you realize that you can do this yourself,” Tyson said, and pat me on the back again. I secretly groaned in my head, still thinking that I wasn’t self-sufficient enough.
“Okay guys, it’s time to go,” our teacher told us, and immediately most of the students in homeroom stood up and gathered their books. The bell rang after that, and Tyson nodded my way.
“I’ll see you later. Just remember, the sooner, the better.”
I tried quickly to follow him, but he was out the door really fast. By the time I got out, all I could see over the massive crowd was his sandy brown hair.
The sooner the better. I was so nervous that my palms were sweaty and Tyson thought that I was better off to talk to her after school. Maybe he was right.
But the worst part was, maybe he wasn’t.

[Deleted]

HOORAY! It's only late morning over here and I've already finished half of my quota for the day. Here's Chapter Five, my 3.3k beauty!

SPOILER: Click to show

Sometimes, back in the day, and I mean way back in the day, villages had matchmakers. Matchmakers were simply old women who looked for blind logic and decided which boys would get married to which girls. Or at least that’s how they were portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof.
Either way, back then, you normally listened to the matchmaker. Sure, it was only advice, but that old, wise woman new best. If she said your daughter was fit to marry a man thirty years older than her, that’s what happened. The same goes vice-versa. Sometimes, she even made the right match (which was a pleasant surprise for the ones being matched) and people were very happy. Hooray!
Still, that’s not the point. The point is, that Tyson was like the advice-giver, like the matchmaker, in that he was telling me what to do with the whole Ally situation. He told me I should have talked to her right away, he said the sooner the better. But I didn’t know if that was such a good idea. So I had a choice to make. Should I have listened to the all-powerful, omniscient Tyson, who had a hand in everything to do with what I was dealing with, or should I have listened to my own heart, instincts, guts, that told me not to talk to her and to let the whole thing pass? Who was right? Actually, now that I think about it, he was probably right, considering he knew a lot about that stuff.
But I listened to what my own heart was telling me to do, thinking that it would lead me on my due course to the right answer. I decided to back off, considering I would probably hurt Ally’s feelings if I went right in and talked to her, and she would never find out that I found out, so I was basically safe. Right? Hopefully.
The next day on the bus, I was actually able to talk to her.
“You’ve been acting really weird lately, James,” she said, and I tried to stifle my thoughts of her knowing how I act, and immediately picking up on the fact that I was acting differently than the norm. I gulped, but managed to keep a perfectly legitimate facial expression, and shrugged.
“I don’t know. I think I’ve been really tired lately. A lot is going on,” I said, secretly regretting that those words had ever come out of my mouth. I was going to have to lie again, to be able to push myself through the bus ride without getting caught in a whole string of fibs. I thought that it would be easy, but every waking moment it seemed like I was deceiving someone, and that guilt that I was having from the whole thing was settling in a pile at the bottom of my stomach. Maybe Tyson was right about talking to her, because then at least I would be able to rid myself of all of those awkward abnormalities and butterflies zooming around in my stomach. But what if I made everything more awkward, what if I broke her heart and she sat in her room for hours, sobbing uncontrollably? Each time I thought about it, I bit my lip and moved on, plowing through life with each lie, some worse than others. Each time I thought about it, I knew what was at stake, and I knew that I had to keep that smile plastered on my face until I was ready, or until she was done. I felt that it was my only hope to be able to do that, to trek through the enemy land of love without fighting back. And that’s what I was going to do, because that’s what I set out to do. And I would never give up on my goal.
“Really? How come?” Ally asked, and then I tried to stifle thoughts of her heart welling up in sorrow, hoping that she could help her cherished loved one in some way. Was she really feeling like that? I had never had a crush, so I wouldn’t know. But all of those TV shows, where everyone idolized there crush, kept secret tabs on them, knew all about them…I shuddered in disgust.
“Um, well, my grade has been seriously dented in math. So, I stay up later to study for it, and that makes me really tired.” I yawned. As a matter of fact, I was quite tired, but that was because I was up all night thinking about my horrible situation, the one that had to be resolved really soon. There was Redhead too, but that problem was at the back of my mind. Really, I was up all night thinking up ways to avoid Ally, lies to tell, figuring out devious plots to get her to like someone else.
But it didn’t matter. Ally wouldn’t know. Ally would never know. That’s what I thought as the bus bulled into the school.
That day, we started our social studies project.
Doesn’t seem like such a big deal. You’re right. I didn’t care about a stupid social studies project, because, although I didn’t mind debating about the stupidity of English Parliament back in the day, or the amazingly violent tactics of the Colonists, I didn’t particularly enjoy doing research on the publication of various pamphlets and writing broadsides packed full of ancient English language and horrible allusions to Britain as the Colonist’s “parents.”
But, on the bright side, I was partners with Kara.
Compared to the rest of our class, Kara was a saint. See, my grade loved to argue about everything. You say something, you’ve got three people on your tail disagreeing with you or calling you racist, or something like that. But Kara was really shy. No one really noticed her, and she didn’t have a lot of friends (although the friends she had were very close knit, kind of like me). Little did I know she had a very colorful personality under that outer shell of shyness.
“So, what do you think our first political cartoon should be about?” I asked, as Kara and I sat down at a far away table. We had out an outline sheet, which told us what we should have had done by the project’s due date. Our teacher had suggested we start with a political cartoon the first day, just to ease into things, and do the broadsides a bit later. I didn’t mind; I was just happy I was partnered with one of the people who wasn’t extremely argumentative.
“I don’t know, maybe we should do one on this classroom,” she joked, flashing her teeth (which I had just noticed were pearly white) in a sly smile.
I grinned. “Yeah, that would be kind of funny wouldn’t it. We’d have, like, everyone calling each other racist and stuff. And then there would be that one black kid in the middle who’s like, ‘Hey, what the hell is this about?’”
Kara laughed. “Seriously, I swear, everyone thinks everyone else is racist in the school. I’m watching them, like, ‘What the heck do they think they’re doing?’”
“We should totally do the Stamp Act,” I said, kind of disrupting our conversation, “because I have this really funny idea. So, you know how there’s this whole thing about taxation without representation? Well, we could have these two British chaps, you know, ‘Hello Fred,’ ‘How you doing William?’ Then, we could have them sitting down discussing whether or not to put out the Stamp Act. In the middle would be this, like, dummy, or scarecrow or something, that is like the Colonists’ point of view, and then Fred goes, ‘So, what do you think, Bob?” like he’s one of the Colonists.”
Kara sat there thoughtfully, her blonde, curly hair tumbling down onto her shoulders. “Well, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. And then that other one, William, or whatever, he’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s speechless,’” she finished, laughing.
I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that would definitely work!” I said, beginning to draw the sketch of the whole comic. “Either way, I don’t know, I’m really tired right now.”
“Why?” she asked, playing with a little curl in her hair. I stopped to think for a second. I knew I wasn’t going to tell her, but the question was, how much should I? I mean, I really wanted to get the whole thing off my chest, and the fact that this shy, understanding person was right in front of me was just a really good way to unload. But did she really deserve to know? Did she want to know?
“One of my best friends has a crush on me, and I’ve been up all night trying to think up ways to avoid her, like, every single night. I have no idea what to do!” I whispered, trying not to let anyone else hear. If they did hear, it could have been disastrous.
“Oh, yeah, that’s kind of obvious. Ally’s been crushing on you since, I’d say, middle of 7th grade. You were really oblivious, because, you didn’t even notice and all. It was really kind of funny,” she said, closing her eyes in a friendly-type way. I sighed, glad that she kind of already knew, and then furrowed my brow upon the realization that Ally had had a crush on me for a really long time. How could I have not noticed? Then again, I didn’t know what love was, I reminded myself, so I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
“So I don’t know what to do,” I admitted, sighing and putting my elbows on the table and burying my head as well.
“I would go talk to her,” Kara suggested, and I grunted almost immediately after. We were going to have another Tyson conversation, where she was going to try and convince me to pull her to the side and talk to her. But I didn’t want to! What didn’t people get about that? How could people not know that I was uncomfortable with that kind of thing, that I was so bad with love and that I would trip up and mess everything around, turn it upside-down? Why didn’t people know that I couldn’t deal with that kind of pressure.
“I can’t. I fail at love.”
“Oh come on, James, you seem like a pretty caring person to me,” Kara encouraged me, letting go of one of her curls to punch me lightly in the arm. “You really care about your friends, anyone who observes you in the slightest can understand that. And if you care about her, you’ll be able to do just fine in a talk with her. I’m sure someone’s already told you that, probably your mom. Or maybe Tyson, considering he’s pretty good at that kind of stuff.” I smiled in my little hiding place between the elbows, rejoicing in her wisdom and knowledge.
“But I’m not going to. People don’t seem to understand that I have no love flow, that I can’t really seem to grasp the concept of love. If someone would finally just look at me and tell me that I’m not able to do this, I would be very happy.”
“Okay,” Kara said, shaking her head, “but I think you have capacity for love. Just you wait. You’ll find out sooner than you think.”
Yeah, maybe I’ll find it before I’m 50, sure, but for now, I’ve got other things to worry about. And, when it comes to the bus, I had Redhead to worry about.
Ally wasn’t going to be on the bus that day because she had something after school. I breathed a sigh of relief when I climbed onto the bus and sat down, half expecting to actually see her there, waving to me as I got on. Instead, Chris had taken the other back seat, and I sat there next to me. “Oh my God, my Social Studies teacher is insane,” Chris complained, fingering the zippers on his book bag. “He gave us this huge project. We have to write this whole report thing on 26 events, and it’s due in a month, which means we have to write a page a day on each Social Studies subject. You got to admit, James, that’s torture.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have your Social Studies teacher,” I gloated, and my little bragging happiness was cut short by a certain redhead plopping down in the seat in front of me.
“So, how are you boys doing today? Huh? What’s up?” he asked, tapping me on the shoulder. I flicked his hand off, but he just put it right back on, believing that he had full control of the situation. Well, I was going to show him he was wrong.
“Stop touching me, you freak!” I commanded, flicking the hand off again. He smiled, his freckles stretching a bit, and put his hand on my shoulder again. I threw it back at him, but no matter how much I tried, he kept putting his hand on my shoulder.
“I know you like it, James. You enjoy it,” he said, as he touched my chest. He began to rub it quite intimately, but then I through it into the bus seat with all my force, and he jerked it back, a little surprised that I would be willing to resort to such violent measures. As I said before, I hate fighting, and to find myself in the midst of one was something I didn’t like. But if I had to stand up for myself and my rights, then I was going to, even if I had to take a hit or two.
“Stop, don’t touch either of us. Or you’ll pay,” I threatened curling my right hand up into a fist.
“Then maybe your friend won’t feel the same,” he said, putting his hand on Chris’ chest and beginning to move it around. I grabbed out at his arm, and, before he could even get a word out edgewise, I pulled it back against the bus seat, so that it bent the wrong way. I could almost feel the pain coursing through his blood, and he closed his eyes, trying to stifle a sudden scream that was slowly urging its way out of his throat. He glared at me, trying his best to pull the arm away. Finally, after about seven seconds of me pulling his arm back, he managed to wriggle it out of its uncomfortable position, turning straight around and staring at me.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked, rubbing his arm, trying to hide the fact that I was able to inflict some sort of pain on it. “You a madman or something?”
“I said to not touch either of us, but maybe you didn’t hear me, so I had to get your attention,” I informed him, looking over at his arm. It was definitely red where I grabbed it, and there was probably still a little hurt left in the joint from taking so much abuse. He glared at me again, his blue eyes trying to freeze me in the same spot, and then he just stood up.
“Don’t think you can just go right and hurt me,” he warned me, and he reared back to punch me. I put my arms up in defense, instinctively, but he was too fast, he managed to clip me in the shoulder. It hurt a little, but I managed to shrug off the pain, looking him in the eye and standing up as well.
“Don’t think you can be the king of this bus. Because you aren’t. We are, and there’s nothing you can do about us. Say anything about us, and I don’t care, but you lay a single hand on me or him, and we’re going to teach you a little lesson of simple math,” I said, cracking my knuckles and sliding over to where Chris was sitting. I nodded to him and he nodded back, ready to overtake this kid and really hurt him. We’d had enough of his little jokes, now he was going to see who was really boss.
“Ha, yeah right. Touch, touch,” he sang as he poked the both of us in the chest.
“So Chris, let’s do a math problem. 1 7th grader is less than 2 8th graders, correct? And 4 fists is greater than 2. I think so, if I may say so. Or maybe I’m wrong?”
“No, you’re quite right, James. I believe that is correct.” We approached him slowly, cherishing each step. He didn’t falter, actually believing he could take both of us down. In truth, it was possible that he would deal severe damage to one of us on our own, but together, he wouldn’t be able to. As long as he was defending one side of him, he left another open, which the second 8th grader could easily target. As long as we kept separate, this one would be an easy target.
“Oh shut up, you freaking faggots. Just shut up,” he said, obviously annoyed by the fact that we were the ones trying to annoy him for a change. He growled as we grew closer, taking our steps and trying to make him scared. When it became completely obvious that he was not, we looked each other and shared a second of that secretive telepathy, the one where you know exactly what the other person is thinking.
We lunged at him.
We just outright lunged at him. Chris got in the first jab, a nice little bruiser to the face, and when Redhead decided to try and kick Chris in the shin, I gave the 7th grader a good dead-leg, kicking him right in the leg-pit. He cringed and sat down, trying to hide the fact that he was in pain. It manifested in his eyes, which had lost their gleeful sparkle and turned into those glaring, horrible, vengeful eyes, the ones that showed themselves when you were just ready to punch someone in the face. We sat down as well, knowing that we had taught him a lesson. There was no way he was ever going to bother us again. He was going to need more than two fists and a handful of determination, because he was facing two 8th graders, and he would never be able to defeat us both when united.
“You two are just idiots,” he said, trying at least to attack us emotionally while he was physically crippled. He put his backpack in front of him as a barrier, and, with a nice furtive glance, I saw his hand slowly rubbing a small bruise in his leg-pit. He was definitely hurt, he just hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it, that he was powerless to those he had just been dictating for all of those bus rides.
The sun was shining through the window, and I finally felt on top of something.
Ever since 8th grade had started, I finally felt like I was able to get something done, that I was able to accomplish something with relative. I was finally able to release my worry about something into the air, floating and floating until it hit the atmosphere. I was finally able to breathe that long sigh of relief that always comes with Christmas vacation.
And when the bus pulled to a stop, and Chris and I got up to get off, we secretly shook hands and slapped each other high-fives, because I knew he was thinking the same thing, and he knew I was thinking the same thing. So when we walked off, we could feel that heated and icy glare from Redhead, but for the first time we didn’t care. Because we were the kings.
We were the kings of bus #11.

[Deleted]

Another 3.3k chapter, and, technically, I'm done for the day. Here's chapter six!

SPOILER: Click to show

Kings are sometimes very fortunate to be kings. Sometimes, they get vast riches in the form of gold, or maybe they have lots of food, a big castle, lots of servants to do their work for them, all that good stuff. And sometimes kings are liked by the whole kingdom because of their amazing work with the peasants and the common people and the like. Because they’re such amazing kings.
But sometimes, kings aren’t so lucky. Sometimes their kingdoms are ridden with unsolvable problems that are just too hard to handle. Sometimes, kings are hated for their horrible decisions that bomb the economy or make them lose trust in their people. And sometimes, they’re just bad kings.
Yeah, remember how I said I was king about one hundred words ago? Well I was feeling like one of those really bad ones who everyone hates by the time I got to school the next day. Because the second I saw Ally, I was having second thoughts about my high status and all that, and I really thought that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it together.
But, I did make it all the way to lunch. And I also managed to totally change the subject back to an old friend of mine. Bet you can’t guess!
“Come on, Tyson! We are very open with you, so why can’t you be open with us?” I asked, egging him on while I took a bite out of my mayonnaise covered turkey sandwich. Of course I wanted to know the secret, or at least know something that would satisfy me until the end of the school day. Ally was there too, but I tried not to pay attention to her as I waited patiently for the answer to spring forth from Tyson’s mouth. But of course, he wouldn’t give.
“Maybe I’ll tell you later. In fact, you have to make me a promise if I’m going to tell you,” he told me, getting up and throwing a dirty napkin away.
”You have to make a promise. Actually, I will whisper it in your ear so no one else can hear and be surprised by the promise which I am about to make with you,” he rambled on as he got up and kneeled beside me, cupping his hands around my ear. “The only way you will ever hear my secret is if you talk to Ally and set everything straight. Otherwise, you will be under eternal torture because you will never know, and your heart will toss and turn at night as you think, in wonder, what that amazing secret is, and your brain will run all over the place, trying to figure it out. It will be all you think about; you will never get to sleep at night. So, why don’t you just make up with Ally and make everything right. Trust me, it will be better that way.”
He skipped back over to his seat jokingly, looking back at me and nodding. “That’s the only way you will ever hear my secret. Otherwise, it will be hidden in here forever,” he told me, poking his head to emphasize that the secret would never come out under my certain conditions.
I scowled at him. “That is so not fair. Isn’t that blackmail or something? Like you’re making me do something for that small a reward.”
“If it’s such a small reward, then why do you even care?” Tyson asked, smiling at his own wit. Well, that’s just great for him when he creates a hard situation for me, but I wasn’t buying it. There was going to be some way that I was going to find out Tyson’s secret, and I didn’t care what it was, I was going to weasel it out of him. If he could create a hard situation for me, I could do the same to him. All I needed to do was think about it and I was set. He would be paying me not to do anything to him by the time I was through.
Homeroom came faster than I expected. The lunch bell rang, signaling the end of our precious free time, and we all sauntered back to class, hoping to waste as much time as possible. I was walking right next to Tyson, making sure that he never left my side. “So, you have any problems that I could help you out with?” I asked, putting my hands in my pocket.
That’s when it first happened.
I saw curly golden hair in front of me, and my heart leapt, although for just a second. I didn’t know what it was or what it was supposed to be, I was only extremely surprised it happened. What was wrong with me? Why was I all of a sudden scared and excited, as if I was on some sort of roller coaster? The person in front of me turned the corner. I saw it was Kara, and thought that, now that I knew who it was, I would be better, but I got worse instead. My heart thumped and I was scared out of my mind. Panic attack? No, it wasn’t like that. I could tell it was totally natural, like, some sort of effect or something. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she saw me approach her. “You look a little pale. You need to go to the nurse?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine, right Tyson?”
Kara looked around, putting her finger to her chin. Her blue eyes sparkled. “Tyson? I don’t see him around anywhere,” she pointed out, opening her locker.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t with Tyson anymore; I had wandered off my normal path and to Kara. My eyes widened and I stepped back in shock. I was too confused to be embarrassed about my mistake, and I looked around. Kara was correct, Tyson was nowhere to be found. “Wow, I think I lost track of where I was going. I’ve got to go, but I guess I’ll see you later,” I bade her goodbye, and I trotted off into the hall. What was wrong with me? I didn’t know, but the feeling seemed strangely familiar, like I had watched someone else go through the exact same thing. I really thought I was sick or something, maybe extremely tired or half asleep. Why was I so nervous all of the sudden, like I was being chased by a wild animal? And on top of all of that, why was I so happy? It was like a combination of totally different feelings that dragged my heart in totally different directions, and strapped my stomach on one of those rides at an amusement park that goes up really fast, and then down even faster.
Either way, I had to find Tyson again, so I could bother him about his secret. “Tyson, Tyson, sorry I got separated from you. I know it was kind of weird, but I think I fell half asleep and walked in a different direction,” I explained to him, pulling out a chair and sitting down next to him.
“I don’t know, I think it’s more than that,” he said to me, smiling widely and shaking his head. “You just don’t know yet. Didn’t you ask me a question before? Like, something about a problem you had?”
“No, it’s a problem you have. Do you have any problems that I could possibly help you with, or something. Social? School? Family?” I asked, disregarding that comment that he had made earlier, although it would come into play way later.
“Um, yeah, I do actually. The social studies project is really hard, and the worst part is that my partner totally doesn’t pay attention in class. So it’s like I’m stuck doing this whole thing on my own, and he’s going to get half the credit,” Tyson said. He was hesitating a lot, which was strange for him, because he normally talked so smoothly, but that didn’t change the fact that I finally had something on him. Now I could put my plan in action, and he would be cornered. I would go out with the spoils, avoiding Ally and knowing Tyson’s big deep dark secret.
“Really? Well, maybe I’ll tell that person, and he’ll beat you up. I will tell him, unless you tell me your secret!” I threatened, holding my finger up as a sign of victory. I really thought I had won; I thought it was just that simple, that with a single flick of my wrist I could conjure up the best blackmail, and no one would be able to stop me. I would know everything about everyone, and there was nothing they could do to stop me.
Tyson laughed.
“You think that’s going to make me tell you my secret? Well, okay, you can tell my partner that, if you can figure out who it is.”
Whoops, I forgot about that part.
“darn,” I cursed under my breath, looking back at my friend. He was still smiling, glad that he had the chance to outsmart me once again. I think he found it amusing that I was so intent on figuring out his secret. Maybe he wasn’t telling it for more than one reason: because he didn’t want to, and because he thought it was funny to see me try and figure it out. Either way, I wasn’t going to stand for it.
“That’s not fair! How could you trick me like that? You put a blackmail on me, and, and, I put one on you! I’ll figure out who your partner is, I can ask everyone in the whole school, and then when I figure it out, they’ll beat you up!” I said, determined to try and prove him wrong somehow.
“But if they beat me up, I can’t do their work for them. They just think it’s a nice, easy A to be my partner; if they’re called a slacker, so be it. They still get an A.” Tyson said, shrugging. He was still giggling a little bit, an after effect of what he thought was the funniest thing in the 8th grade. No one outsmarted Tyson, because he was the man. He was tall and smart, and, even though he wasn’t the best person socially, he was really cool and really smart. So, if you tried to play a practical joke on him, he would have you figured out before you even started. I glared at him again, trying to get him to stop his obnoxious guffawing, but for some reason he found it incredibly funny that he had me trapped in a corner, and I was trying, though unsuccessfully, to trap him back.
“Whatever,” I grumbled, turning to the clock. It was basically time to go, so I gathered up my books and stood up, pushing my chair in behind me. The end of the day would come soon, and I would have another opportunity to talk to Ally, but I knew I wasn’t going to. That secret was going to be in the air for a long time, because I wasn’t going to talk to that girl for the life of me. A part of me knew I was going to screw up somehow, though I didn’t know exactly how it would happen. I could dream though, I could have nightmares about her running out and crying. And that was the exact last thing I wanted to happen. The exact last thing.
And then of course, there was the bus.
Which reminded me, I was king of bus #11.
I climbed on cheerily, sitting in the back seat. Ally was already there, like always, and Chris was in the seat next to her, so I sat down in front of Chris, trying to keep myself diagonal from Ally at all times. It was one of those bittersweet times, where I should have been reveling in the spoils of my victory, but I was instead kind of sad that I wasn’t talking to Ally. Sad? Why was I sad? I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing anything about it. It’s like watching your friend win a competition, only to know that the person running it cheated and let her win. It’s like making a loved one think someone, while knowing the opposite is true. And although both of us had to live in a lie, hers was definitely much worse than mine.
But I didn’t have much time to think about that, because Redhead climbed on the bus about a minute afterward. He still went on and sat right in front of Ally, and I smiled as he sat down, a little malicious smile, that said I rule over you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
And then I noticed he had brought a friend.
Although an absolute jerk and the mean person of the century, Redhead had managed to scrounge up a few 8th grade friends. I don’t know what they all did in their spare time (probably went around blowing down people’s houses, or something in that general category), but it sure wasn’t something that I wanted to be involved in.
Either way, I also knew the friend’s name. He was a really good football player (although I hate to admit that he was good at anything) named Dave, although I can’t remember his last name. Not a very memorable person, considering he didn’t talk very much. I had only heard his voice once or twice, ever, and, although I knew he wasn’t shy, I knew he wasn’t exactly outgoing either.
“As you can see, I brought along a friend of mine. His name is Dave,” Dan pointed out to us matter-of-factly, holding his hand out to the 8th grader. Dave was put under the spotlight and didn’t know what to do, so he just sat down, looking around nervously. He wasn’t very good in social situations, as I could tell and I just shrugged and figured that he wouldn’t change much. He wouldn’t want to get involved in anything big…would he?
“Anyway, that social studies project thing is bull,” Chris pointed out for the second time, continuing our conversation from yesterday. I knew what it was; sometimes people felt so strongly about something that they just kept talking about it over and over again, even when no one else wanted to talk about it. Apparently Chris felt very strongly about the social studies project, because he was sure talking about it a lot. It felt like every time I saw him we were talking about that stupid page he had to write that night on the Townshend Acts, or whatever. I shook my head.
“Well, I think there are bigger problems in the world than your social studies project. Maybe…world hunger, for example?”
Ally laughed. Now that I knew she liked me, I noticed that she was laughing at a lot of my jokes, even though they weren’t funny. It kind of annoyed me at first, and then reminded me of my tough situation. I looked down, blushing only the slightest bit. But then, Redhead was glaring so hard, he must have noticed, because then he said, “Oh, the boyfriend made a joke. That’s right, he’s not your boyfriend. He’s GAY.”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring Redhead. He’d called me gay a million times already, so it kind of just rolled off like a stray raindrop that falls on you when you’re walking outside. It was nothing to worry about, that was for sure. “Please don’t talk to us, your voice does internal damage to our ears,” I complained, looking back at Chris, about to continue with my explanation as to why his problems weren’t the biggest ones in the world.
“Oh, wow. That was such a good comeback,” Redhead taunted. I didn’t care, what did he not get about the fact that I didn’t care? Weren’t bullies supposed to slink off when they saw they weren’t getting any emotional effect out of their torture subjects? Not that I was being tortured, his voice was just incredibly obnoxious, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“La-la, we are playing a game called let’s not listen to Redhead,” I sang, and everyone shrugged and decided to play too. Whenever he said something, we just contradicted it with a comment along the lines of “Oh, I think the wind is blowing extra hard today, or, “Did you hear a strange voice? I don’t think it belongs to anyone on the bus.”
And then he went out and touched us, even knowing that the consequences were, he touched us. I turned around immediately, and Chris stood up. Ally didn’t know what was going on because she hadn’t been on the bus the day before, and kind of stood back, watching what was slowly unraveling. Redhead snickered, knowing that he had instilled a reaction, but we didn’t care. We were going to beat on him harder than we had before, because he needed to know that he wasn’t at the top of the food chain, that he wasn’t king of the forest. He needed to get that thought ingrained in his mind, or else he would have a lot of bruises by the time the month was over.
But then Dave stood up, and we realized that his monstrous size, paired with Dan’s incredibly annoying blows might be enough to hold the two of us off. It didn’t matter. I doubted, and I’d bet Chris doubted, that Dave would do anything once the fight got started. He was a well-tempered guy, and it took a lot of provoking to get him to talk even, so I wasn’t that worried about it. What was going to happen to us, he would pull out a knife and fling it at our heads, or maybe he would start to strangle us. No, he wouldn’t. He would just stand there, and, maybe take the liberty to laugh as he saw us beat up on Redhead.
So we walked forward, and Chris struck Redhead in the jaw. The 7th grader took a step back and started rubbing it, but we kept on raining the punches down on him. It was another moment of that powerful adrenaline rushing through our veins, the sheer joy of the ironic ending when the bully eventually goes down for the count.
But that lasted all of five seconds.
Dave stepped in and shoved us back, forcefully knocking us back into our respective seats. We were extremely surprised he did anything, and brushed ourselves off, recuperating fairly quickly. He had a concentrated look on his face, and it seemed like he was thinking about something more than he normally did. He was ready for another advance from the both of us, and Redhead stood kind of behind him, snickering. For all he cared, Dave could have killed us and he would have had the same exact snicker on his face. It was like that sneak attack that no one expected that finally won a battle. Redhead had planned the whole thing all along, and he had purposefully set us up, just so we would know that he was boss. But that wasn’t true, Dave was really boss, he was just stepping down and letting Redhead take his position.
We knew where we stood. Almost immediately after we stood up, we sat down again. There was no way we were going to defeat the humongous football player in a fight, so we just had to wait it out under Redhead’s rule. As soon as the bus rolled to a stop, we put our backpacks on and walked off the bus.
“That’s what you get for messing with me!” he yelled, and his voice carried pretty far. I grimaced and walked along anyway, trying to ignore those words.
But that kingship I had felt before, it had long since disappeared, only leaving worry in its place.

[Deleted]

Sam-sam! What's your NaNo name! I WANT TO ADD YOUU!

[Deleted]

Oooh, I'm psychopsam! I want to add you toooo!!! What's yours?

[Deleted]

sam said:

Oooh, I'm psychopsam! I want to add you toooo!!! What's yours?

I'm Vannaloo.