Edd brought the fresh bowl of popcorn into the living room. He noticed the movie was paused and Ed and Eddy looking at him quizzically.
"Everything alright, Double D?," Ed asked, very concerned. Eddy just gave him his usual look of cocked eyebrow suspicion.
"Everything is fine, gentlemen," he replied, grabbing the remote and unpausing the movie. "Shall we continue?"
The confidence in his voice was enough to reassure the other two Eds, but he was glad for the darkened room. He couldn't concentrate on the movie anymore. Princess' messages were still doing cartwheels in his mind and turning his stomach into knots. She had sent him a personal friend request. He was now attached fully to her good side. He wouldn't take it for granted. Her Facebook Fan Page had millions of followers. He was one of them. As was a good portion of the Peach Creek student body from what he could tell when he saw how many of his friends and classmates liked her page. It was the Mutual Friends and People You May Know tabs that struck him as odd. Kevin was on both lists. He and Kevin weren't Facebook friends. Being neighbors was enough for Edd. The Ed's childhood bully was friends with Princess. The world was small, but not that small. How in the world did Kevin know Princess?! He'd find out soon enough because he, too, was going to be at her house for lunch tomorrow.
Edd hadn't seen much of Kevin in the past year. A year older than The Eds and Jonny and three years older than Sarah and Jimmy, he had already left Peach Creek Jr High with Nazz and Rolf for the high school and would be a sophomore in the fast approaching school year. After the fiasco with Eddy's brother, Dominic, The Eds had reached a truce and a bit of camaraderie with the other kids in the cul-de-sac. Kevin would invite them to his BBQ pool parties and Nazz would invite them to her holiday parties. Things were going good with them all. Through these little get-togethers, and a few neighborly fly bys (they lived across the street from one another) Kevin and Edd had developed a bit of a friendship. They both were comic book and scifi fans, had fun tinkering with mechanics (Kevin was more into it then Double D, but Edd could follow along unlike most of their other friends), and Kevin was teaching him a bit about the sports he participated in. Edd would never actively participate in them like Kevin, but he enjoyed watching him play. Kevin had been trying to convince him to join the swim team and even manage the football and baseball teams. Edd's organizational skills would keep the teams in line and he could swim like a fish. A shark, even. It was incredible to watch Edd in the water. Eddy loved to run bets on how fast Double D could get from one end of any pool to the other, til Edd caught on. His athletic skills were not up for cheap money grabs. Thank God for the stock market.
Eddy and Kevin would still spar, but it was usually over video games and the occasional game of catch, touch football or pick up basketball game. At 5'5, Eddy was shorter than Edd, but was great on defense. Many movie and game nights gave all three Eds an unusual hand up on any game system. Being each others only company gave them plenty of time to practice. Ed gave Kevin a run for his daddy's candy factory money when it came to comic books. Knowing his closest friends were getting along with the cul-de-sac tough boy made it easier to get along with Kevin, since he and Kevin never really had much animosity towards one another in the first place. Sure, Edd was annoyingly smart, talked with such proper English as to warrant some of their English teachers to really contemplate if they were cut out for teaching or not and had Howie Mandel levels of germaphobia, but he was the smartest kid in the tricounty area (hello, free tutoring!), rarely ever got sick and really was a great guy. He'd always just get caught in the middle of Kevin and the rest of the cul-de-sac railing on The Eds because Eddy's scams would epically fail.
But what was Kevin's connection to Princess? Princess and Double D's friendship was tight. Their bonds were tied in pain, agape love and respect. Not to mention a love for the geeky, nerdy, techie side of teenage life. Princess had a grip on pop culture and social mores of teenagedom that Edd could never understand. He was a bit of an old soul. But her young soul, coupled with a gentle hand helped him grasp what little he could onto what his peers were like. If Kevin knew Princess, what did Kevin know about him?! Princess had sworn (they'd link their pinkies together and say, "Promises to keep, promises kept," before kissing each others pinky and then letting go. It was their way of sealing their bond and knowing the other would keep their mouth shut. Only way to break the promise is if things got life threatening. They would never do anything to lose the other like that.) to keep his secrets over the years, but Kevin was charming. Oh, so charming. Kevin had worn him down enough to actually sign up for the swim team tryouts in a few weeks. But he wouldn't tell him that. He was even (happily) wondering if Kevin was going to drag him to practice like he had jokingly threatened to at Kevin's last pool party he went to before he left for his European vacation. Sure the football and baseball teams needed a manager, but really, did they need him?! Would Princess spill his secrets to the charming Adonis that was Kevin Anthony Barr? He took some comfort in the fact that if Princess told his secrets, that she'd have to tell a few of her own. And that was not happening. The pain was too great.
Or so he thought. Her wounds were healing. She was ready to speak. And when she did, Peach Creek would never be the same.
