"Mommy

"Mommy!" I yelled, trying to catch up to my mom. She was so fast, and I wasn't. It was hard to keep up.

She walked up to Daddy's house. I hid behind a bush. I knew it wasn't safe to get near Mommy and Daddy. They always fought. After about half an hour, Mommy came out, holding Yamato's hand. I guess she's going to take us both to the bus.

"TK!" She called to me. "Where are you?"

I came out from behind the bush. I ran towards my brother and grabbed onto his hand. He held onto mine as tightly as I was holding his.

We walked for a long time. I saw a bunch of people running around. Yamato ran over to his friend Tai, and asked why he hadn't called. I didn't listen to their conversation. No point. I was still grabbing onto Yamato.

A girl who looked a little bitty bit like Tai walked over to me. "Hi! I'm Kamiya Hikari. What's your name?" She said.

"Takashi Takeru. But call me TK." I said, letting go of Yamato.

"Okay TK. You can call me Kari."

"Hi Kari."

"Is Yamato your brother?"

"Yeah. Is Tai yours? Tai is Yamato's best friend."

"Yup, Tai's my brother. And he talks about Yamato all the time."
"Yamato starts crying if he can't play with Tai all the time."

"That's weird. Wait a second, how come you know all this, if you don't live together?"

"We see each other."

"Oh." The bus pulled up, and we got on. I was real sleepy because I had to get up early. So as soon as I sat down, I fell asleep. I looked at Kari's face before I did, and I could tell she wasn't happy about not talking to me more.

When I woke up, we were at the school. It was exactly like Yamato had told me it would be. Yamato had warned me about a lot in the school, and given me advice. He said I should make friends quickly, and make sure they're popular friends.

I got off the bus, and the driver gave me a piece of paper. I was about to throw it on the floor, but one kid told me it would tell me who my teacher was. So I looked at it. It said, 'Ms. Schuyler.'

I found out Kari was in the same class as me. If she was popular, then I could follow Yamato's advice. "Hi kids." Ms. Schuyler said, when we got up to class. "Why don't the two of you go sit over there?" She pointed to one of the tables. I waited for Kari to sit down, then I did.

We waited for a while. Finally, everyone got to class "Okay…" Ms. Schuyler said. "We're going to have free time for the morning. After lunch, I'm going to have all of you practice counting, and writing the alphabet."

"Okay!" I got up, but I didn't know what to do, so I watched Kari. I saw she was at the blocks, so I went over to play. But then I tripped over a stray block. I fell right on her castle. I resisted the urge to cry.

"Oops, sorry Kari." I got up, and tried to put it back together.

"It's okay. It was stupid looking anyways. You can help me re-build it, and make it cooler." She said, smiling at me.

"Okay." We worked for around fifteen minutes. We had built the best castle I ever saw! A lot of kids seemed to think so to. A lot of kids were all crowded around it to get a look.

"Wow…" They said.

"Me and TK built it together!" Kari yelled.

"Yeah! If I hadn't ruined the first one, it would've looked stupid!" I said, and smiled happily at Kari. She wasn't even angry at me for ruining her first one!

Soon, everyone went away, off to play something else. But Kari and me did all kinds of stuff together, we drew pictures, we read this really weird book. Mostly Kari read it, because I don't even know most of the alphabet yet.

After a while, Ms. Schuyler told us to stop playing, it was time for lunch. We went downstairs. I ran over to stand next to Kari online, and we sat together during lunch.

I offered Kari a pudding snack I had. She didn't take it. Said she didn't like pudding. So I ate it myself. I kept offering her things from my lunch. I thought that might make it easier for us to be friends. And I thought it might be important to listen to Yamato on that. I've heard bad stories about people who don't have popular friends, and couldn't be popular on their own. That's what Yamato does. He gained his popularity through Sora and Tai.

Kari didn't want anything of mine. And she didn't offer anything of hers. That kind of hurt my feelings, because that must mean she didn't want to be friends as much as I did.

We went outside for recess. We ran towards the swings. But there was only one swing left. Yamato and Tai had the other one. They looked very funny. Yamato was sitting on Tai's lap, and they were talking.

So me and Kari decided to do the same thing. Kari was bigger then me, so she got on the swing, and I sat on her lap. It was fun. We both shouted hi to our brothers, but they didn't answer. I looked around, and I saw Yamato's friend Sora looking at them sadly.

Ms. Schuyler called us back to class. I ran up to class. Kari grabbed onto my hand. We sat down, and Ms. Schuyler handed out pieces of paper. "Write the alphabet. If you don't know it, come see me." I got up. I didn't know it. I was going to be embarrassed about not knowing it, but a lot of kids didn't. So I wasn't.

"TK!" Kari yelled. "Wait! I can show you the alphabet!"
"Oh?" I walked back to my seat. I defiantly would rather she show me then the teacher. "Okay, show me."

She grabbed her pencil, and started writing it out. "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J…" She said all the letters out loud. I didn't really get it, but I understood it was something that was just, true, no explanations.

We both finished real quick. Ms. Schuyler didn't get our papers for a long time.

After she finally did, she taught us all how to count to ten. It was pretty easy, because she had us repeat it over and over, until we couldn't forget.

"Okay…" Ms. Schuyler said. "I'm going to assign homework."

Everyone gasped. I couldn't believe it. No one could. "It's no big deal." Ms. Schuyler laughed. "All you have to do, is ask your mom or dad to listen to you count to ten."

A bunch of kids were whispering something, I couldn't hear what.

Ms. Schuyler had us pack our stuff up, and let us out in the yard. I ran around for a while, looking for my mommy. I couldn't find her, so I looked for Yamato. I knew Mommy should be here, she told me she would pick me up here. "Mommy? Yamato?"
I saw Yamato. But he was still talking to Tai. Sora stomped up to them. "How come you guys wont talk to me anymore? What did I do?" She yelled.

"Nothing." They said. They hugged her. She shoved them away.

"Get off…"

"Sora, what's wrong?" Yamato asked.

"You guys wont play with me anymore! You're only interested in each other! I though we were all best friends!"

"We are." Tai said. "But our friendship…meaning, mine and Yamato's, is kind of screwy lately, and we're trying not to mess it up. We're sorry if we're making you feel bad."

"I just want to play with you guys again."
Then I saw a very funny look on Tai's face. Looking at both my brother, and Sora, so longing. He looked so sad. I didn't understand. Then they all scattered. Sora ran to her mother, Tai ran to his mother and Kari, and Yamato ran to me. "Hi TK. D'you know where Mom is?"

"No." Then, as if on cue, Mommy came.

"Hi kids." She hugged us, and we hugged back. "Guess what?" She was smiling. "Yamato gets to stay with us for a week!"

Yamato stared up at her.

"You okay with that?" She asked. Yamato nodded. "Well, good then. Let's go home."
And so we walked home.