"I have one piece of advice for you today," I finally decided to talk to Jack when we were less than a block away from Beecher Prep.

"What is it?"

I stopped him and forced him to look at me. It wasn't really hard because I had little over a foot on him. He was just going into fifth grade while I was going into twelfth. "I know you actually don't want to do this. And that's fine. Just try not to be a huge-." I stopped myself right before I said the other thing. I wasn't allowed to curse in front of him. "Jerk."

"What were you going to say instead?" He suddenly was a lot more interested in what I'm saying.

"Nothing, that's not important. The point is, I know that Julian is not the nicest person in the world. Just try to make the new kid, August, feel welcome. And not like unwanted dirt, like I know Julian will do." By then, he wasn't even looking at me anymore. He was already walking again and I had to jog to catch up to him. "You got that Jack Asher Will?"

"Loud and clear Jada Allison Will." Both our first names started with J and both out middle names started with A for some reason. Dad had always told Jack that it's because it would make our initials JAW. And if he was calling for both of us, he could just call for JAWS. I still thought it was a coincident though.

We stopped again when we arrived at the front of the school. Beecher Prep School. I never went there. No, I was a public school kid, which meant that by fifth grade, there had been at least one kid smoking weed. And by seventh grade, someone had offered me weed brownies. But, Jack was on a scholarship there. Kind of surprising actually, his grades really weren't anything groundbreaking. But I knew he would stay an innocent little child for a while longer going there. If anybody mentioned drugs at this school, they'd probably be thrown out.

"I'll be back in an hour, have fun."

I watched Jack go into the front office. He was the first one to get there because then Charlotte passed by me. I only knew who she was because the year before I worked backstage for the school's production of "Oliver". Charlotte had been Oliver of course and didn't do half bad. Jack was in it too. He never took the theater arts elective but every year they'd "ask" a few other kids to be in their production for size. He was on a scholarship so he couldn't really say no. He was something not important. That's all I remembered.

Then a pretty nice car pulled up. Julian hopped out of the backseat onto the curb and passed me. Everything about him screamed trust fund. His parents were loaded; he went to Paris on a regular basis. I hate him. I had a pure unadulterated loathing for him.

Julian and Jack used to be friends. And by used to, I mean they were still "friends", it's just that Jack silently hated him. He purposely or unknowingly constantly made Jack feel really bad about himself. Maybe Jack could become friends with this new kid and leave his old friends behind.

I had an hour to kill and had nothing else to do. The school was not close to any place I wanted to go. I didn't know what else to do, so I decided to snoop around the school. Nothing would happen if I didn't get caught and even if I did get caught, I didn't go there and school was not in session. What was the worst that could happen?

As soon as I stepped into the main building I could already tell this wasn't like a public school. It still had classrooms, water fountains, lockers, and other stuff like all schools. But it was a lot cleaner. Not only because it's summer, but also because there wasn't any graffiti anywhere.

A few of the classroom doors were open. They were probably the ones Charlotte, Jack, and Julian would be showing to the new kid. I silently opened one of them and slipped in. I turned on the lights. On the front board, "Welcome to Fifth Grade History!" was written. And underneath that, "Ms. De Waal".

The class lists were left on the teacher's desk. For the fun of it, I went through the stacks of names to see if Jack had this class for history. First period: Samantha Belle…. Simon Duke…. Riley Frenburg…. Ben Morgan… Max Wagner. And nothing after that. Second period: Micah Chandler… Veronica Hargensen…. Ram Quimby… Kaia Zonik. No one with W last names. Third period: Julian Albans… Charlotte Cody, Read Danenbaum… Lydia Hathaway… Jonas Lynch… Noemi Webber… Jack Will. Found him. Unfortunately he was going to be stuck with Julian.

I moved all the papers back to where they were before I came in. I turned off the lights and slipped out of the classroom. I either had really good timing or horrible. Just as I entered the hallway I heard people coming down the stairs. It had to be them. It was good timing because I wouldn't be caught in the room with them. There was no place a five-nine seventeen year old could hide. But it was bad timing because unless I could get out of there. I'd be in the same situation as if I was in there.

I spotted a set of double-doors that lead to the outer courtyard. I sprinted out just as the four of them came down the stairs. Outside, I should have realized that I should give up and get off of school property. But I was just so curious. I just couldn't help it, especially when I saw "Beecher Auditorium" on the side of a smaller builder connected to the hallway I had just come from.

I checked the backstage door that I used whenever I worked backstage for their shows. On the side of the theater, there was a plaque. "Great Thanks to Melissa, Lucas, and Julian Albans!" No surprise there. That family poured money into the school.

For some odd reason the backstage door was actually unlocked. I stumbled around in the dark for a minute before I found the light switch. It was a lot creepier than I remembered. Probably because there weren't twenty-five little third, fourth, and fifth graders running around. Backstage and in the wings, there were still the sets from "Oliver!". I had used my non-existing art skills to paint pretty much all of them after school. Nothing to be really proud of.

I looked for the one painted backdrop for the Fagin's hideout. Something hilarious had happened the last rehearsal before their first show. I remembered it so well because Jack had been the reason there was a hole in the piece. Well, it really wasn't Jack's fault. Julian or some other kid accidentally or purposely pushed him, causing him to fall into the painting. It was done on a pretty thin paper and ripped instantly. He had felt so bad afterwards and cried for the rest of the rehearsal. Everything was fine, I just pushed a chair in front of it and pretended nothing was wrong.

I found it folded in the corner. Then I made my way out of the wings onto the main stage. It wasn't as big of a stage as the one at my school, but it was impressive for an elementary school. No one called Beecher Prep an elementary school. It was a "lower and middle" grade school. Really just because it sounded fancy.

The auditorium's house lights flickered on. Uh oh, they were there now.

"And this is where we put on plays, have orchestra, band, and choir concerts. Oh, and we have assemblies here."

Before I knew what was happening, Charlotte appeared in the aisle, dragging the new kid behind her. Jack followed them and Julian was nowhere to be seen. I was frozen for some reason, I didn't move, I just watched. Luckily, Charlotte was too wrapped up in her talking to notice me. The new kid was staring at the floor and so was Jack.

They moved closer to the stage. Jack looked up and saw me. He did a double take. I bet it was a pretty big surprise to see his older sister there. His face said it all. "What the heck are you doing here? Why? How? "

I mouthed, "Don't say anything. Just pretend like I'm not here."

"Okay," He said without sound.

Then the kid they were taking on the tour looked up. I could see why the school wanted him to make some friends before school started. His face wasn't what you'd call normal. But if he was a good person and not a total jerk like some people, he should have been fine. The other students should have been able to see pass his imperfect looks.

He was just as surprised as Jack was. He didn't say anything eithers but he reached over and tapped Jack on the shoulder. He looked up to and realized that someone else had noticed me.

"Get out," Jack said a little above a whisper.

I nodded and got myself off that stage as fast as I could. That was enough exploring for one day. I returned to where I had dropped him off earlier and waited. Not too long later, the kid and his mom passed me. He stared at me as he walked by, obviously he recognized me. Probably thought that I was some sort of creep, sneaking into schools. Then Charlotte, Julian, and Jack appeared from the front office.

Julian walked slower and fell behind the other two. Charlotte happily skipped passed me and climbed into a car waiting by. Jack came slower but faster than Julian.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"It was fine," He answered and we started walking. It was a twenty minute walk home and he probably didn't want to waste any time. "Julian wasn't being nice to August."

"What did he say?" Sometimes Jack just wouldn't talk to Mom and Dad about things going on in his life. Just last week, Mom figured out that he and Julian weren't friends anymore and Dad still didn't know. He would really only open up for me.

"He kept asking August if he was in a fire or something. And he was acting like August must have been stupid just because he had never been to real school. And when he told Julian that he was going to take the science elective, Julian… Never mind."

"Come on, you can tell me what he said. I promise I won't tell anyone unless it's really bad. If it makes you feel better, I've never told anyone anything you've told me." I nudged him.

"When August told Julian that he was going to be in the science elective he said it was only for the 'smartest kids' or something like that."

"Okay, that was rotten of him but…"

"Jada, you didn't let me finish," Jack said a little louder before he lowered his voice, "So I said that I was going to be taking that elective. And he laughed and said, 'Maybe the two of you could fail together'."

There it was. "Oh." I hugged him on impulse. He tried to escape from my clutches but I had a height and strength advantage. When I finally let go he looked around to make sure no one he might have known saw that. "Relax, there's no one in a five block radius."

We walked in silence for a little while longer. The next time Jack spoke, he had completely changed the subject, "So, what were you doing while I gave the tour?"

"I may or may not have been exploring the school," The look on my face gave away the fact that I totally was, "You won't tell Mom, will you?"

"With all the secrets you're keeping for me, it would practically be suicide if I told them about that," He paused then added, "Also, you do know that August saw you, right?"

"Yeah, what can you do?" I then remembered what I had found backstage and started to laugh, he looked at me like I was absolutely insane. "Remember that backdrop you broke last year during Oliver?"

"I thought you would have forgotten by now," Jack groaned. "And it wasn't even my fault. You saw Julian push me."

"Yeah, but I found it today and it's still funny."

We changed the subject to the new Star Wars movie coming out. We argued the rest of the way home on what we thought would happen in The Last Jedi. When we arrived at the bottom of our apartment building I asked what had been on my mind since Jack said that Julian had pushed him. He'd never admitted to that even though I saw it, he always said it was either an accident or he tripped by himself.

"Have you ever thought that Julian might be bullying you just a tad bit?"

"What? No! Jada, that's crazy. Julian might be kind of a bully to some other kids but not to me. He just isn't the nicest guy in the world. He's not bullying me. That's being overdramatic." He turned away from me and ran ahead.

"Yeah, okay, Jack. Sure."

So I recently read Wonder and saw the movie and I'm so in love with it right now. I just loved how Via was kind of there for Auggie and thought it would be great if Jack had one two. If you can't tell, he's my favorite character. I know that Jack technically has a younger brother, but I'm replacing him with an older sister. This story will be a combination of the book and movie and all the characters are how they looked in the movie. Cool? Cool.

Quote of the Day/Week/Month:

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. (Barbara Bush)