Whoooooooooaaaaaaaaaaa! I'm on a roll! I broke 40 reviews! You guys rock (does a dance). Know what? My dog is such a cat. He purrs. Weird.
"You're late, Rydinger."
"I know," Tony said to his history teacher. It was the hour before lunch, after which there would only be one more class.
"If I recall correctly, you're brother Jason was never late to my classes."
Tony just rolled his eyes and took a seat towards the back of the class. The history class had students from freshman to senior, so Tony thought himself very lucky to have his best friend in the class with him. It still boggled his mind that his brother and best friend had the same name.
"Hi Tony," a sophomore said as he walked by.
"Hi Lucy."
"Hey Dash!" It was lunch time for the sixth graders at the elementary school, and Dash had been looking for a place to sit.
"Huh?" Dash looked around to see who'd said his name. It was the super-tall boy Luke had warned him not to hang out around too much.
"Come sit with us!" the boy called to him, motioning to his table of friends. For a moment, Dash glanced at Luke's table.
"We don't bite," the boy joked. Dash sat down at the circular table with the tall boy and his friends. "I'm Mickey," the tall boy said, smiling broadly and sticking out a hand to shake. Dash took it. Then Mickey started to point to the others at the table. "This is Dodger, Jimmy, and Alice."
"Hi," Dash said for lack of a better thing to say.
Dodger just nodded, his hair falling into his eyes.
Jimmy said, "It's Jim," as he eyed Mickey as though this were a discussion they'd had before.
Alice giggled at Jim's remark for some reason and said to Dash, "Nice to meet ya!" thus revealing her far from perfect teeth.
Dash looked them all over in a glance. Mickey was very tall, as previously stated, with dark skin and straight black hair he kept cut short. Dodger reminded Dash of Violet not that long ago; baggy pants and shirt, curly silver-blonde hair he let grow out to cover his face… Jimmy or Jim or Jimbo or whatever had floppy brown hair and looked like a future T-Bird from the musical Grease. Alice looked shorter than even Dash, and her dark afro was pulled back into a tight ponytail so it all poofed out the back.
"So how'd you get moved up a grade?" Alice asked. Dodger shoved her a bit. "What!" she exclaimed.
"Be polite," he hissed.
"My mom," Dash answered Alice.
"How old are you?" Jim asked, sipping from an apple juice box.
"Eleven."
"Hey, you're the same age as me!" Alice beamed. This statement also felt like it had to do with a previous conversation.
"We give her a hard time about being younger than us," Mickey explained. "Guess we can't do that anymore!"
Dash felt a little out of place here. He was beginning to miss his friend Todd from last year.
Suddenly there was a bunch of snickers and guffaws from the table behind Dash. Dash looked behind him to see. It was Luke's table; it seemed that Luke had told a joke. He turned and looked at Dash and waved. Dash waved back. From where he was, he couldn't see the others at the table frowning at Luke and his buddies.
When Dash and the rest of the table turned back to their meals, Mickey asked him, "Why were you hanging around that guy all morning?"
It was true, Dash, Luke, and Luke's buddies had been pulling harmless pranks and had done their work together all morning long. Dash shrugged. "Why not?"
Mickey wasn't looking at Dash anymore, but instead stared down at his sandwich, or rather through his sandwich. "Because he's a self-absorbed jerk who doesn't have a single redeeming quality."
Dash wasn't a hundred percent sure what 'redeeming' meant, but he seemed to get the message that Mickey and Luke were not close. Neither were any of the rest of the guys at the table.
Dodger seemed to decide it was time to change the subject. "So you guys hear about the movie theater down by the high school?"
"Yep."
"You bet!"
Dash glanced around. "Uh, yeah."
"No, what happened?" Mickey asked, and Dash was glad the boy wasn't thinking about Luke anymore, though he wasn't sure why. Personally, he thought Luke was all right.
"You don't know? The Underminer, that's what happened!" Alice exclaimed.
"No way!"
"Very way," Jim said as he leaned back in his chair… and fell backwards over it.
"Were the Incredibles there?" Mickey asked. The way he was sitting in his seat made Dash think there was some reason in particular he wanted to know if the Incredibles were there.
"Yeah," Dodger said.
"Oh, that is so cool!" Mickey sighed as he watched Jimmy recover from his fall.
"I wonder what it's like being a super…" Alice wondered aloud.
"Probably not that different from being normal," Dash said before he could stop himself.
"You think?" Jim asked.
"Maybe a little different," Dash said, trying to recover.
"A little? It certainly beats being normal and boring!" Mickey exclaimed.
Dash wasn't liking where this conversation was going very much. "So what do you guys do for fun?"
"Like our hobbies or something?"
"Yeah, I guess."
The kids at the table seemed to smile. They also seemed to be thinking about the same thing.
"What?" Dash asked smiling.
"We," Jim said, "are runners."
"Really?" Dash said. This he could work with.
"Yep! You just wait until junior high! We'll show 'em how it's done, won't we!" Alice giggled. Dash already knew there weren't any school-sponsored sports in elementary school.
"That's cool!"
"You really think so?" Dodger asked.
"Yeah, I'm a runner too!"
"I like this kid more and more!" Alice yelled.
"Don't call me a kid, I'm the same age as you."
Alice shrugged and giggled.
"Just like Rapid Fire!" Mickey exclaimed as he pretended to punch out a villain. "You a Rapid Fire fan?" he asked Dash.
"You could say that."
"All right! I knew you were smart, never doubted it for a second!" Jim said.
"Dude, if he wasn't smart he wouldn't have been moved up a grade."
"You killed it, Dodger."
"Well excuse me!"
Helen was sitting at the family computer. Just sitting there, not doing anything in particular. She just stared at it. The blank, not-on screen stared right back. I shouldn't, she kept thinking, it wouldn't matter anyways. That's what she told herself, even as she turned on the computer and got on the internet. She went to the website of the home-decorating magazine. After a little searching, she came to the conclusion that the man she'd met at the grocery store had been honest. It said there on the screen in big, bold, red letters "Looking For New Faces!" Helen looked at the little business card next to the computer.
She turned off the computer. It didn't mean anything. She was happy where she was. She didn't need a job. She resumed her floor-sweeping.
Helen looked at Jack-Jack, asleep in his play pen. On the nearby counter was a stack of bills not yet paid…
Jack-Jack started to cry in his sleep.
He must be having a nightmare, Helen thought, putting down her broom and walking over to her son. It was when she was about there when something… new happened. Above Jack-Jack, a bunch of dark clouds appeared, floating just below the room's ceiling.
Krack, BOOM!
Rain and lightning. Go figure.
Definitely a bad dream.
The now wet phone began to ring, and Helen picked it up.
"Hello?" she yelled over the lightening that had nearly singed off her hair.
"My Gawd, Dahling, wat are you doing over thare?"
"Hi, E. Look this isn't a good time- WhOA!" Helen screamed, ducking as a huge stuffed panda suddenly feel from the 'sky.' What on earth…?
"Of course, of course, time es ov ze essence, Dahling! That is why you must come immediately! Bring ze daughter's suit you shredded!"
"No, I mean yes it is, ut, I mean-" Helen ducked as a stuffed giraffe fell from the 'sky.'
"Let's see now, let's see now. I'm busy today, need to put up wiz another Barbie doll who won't eat carbs. How's tomorrow at four?"
"Bash, ut, Mash, er, Dash has a dentist appointment! I mean Violet, I mean-" Helen screamed as many, many stuffed animals suddenly fell like rain from Jack-Jack's clouds, all landing in a heap on top of Helen. The rain stopped as Jack-Jack woke up, and Helen climbed out from under tons of stuffed creatures until her upper body was finally out of the avalanche.
"Wat are you doing over zare, Dahling? Are you all right?"
Helen blew some of her hair out of her face. "Peachy."
"All right, see you tomorrow at three, okay? Good bye!"
"Wait, you said four, wait E-!"
Edna had already hung up the phone. Helen looked from the phone to Jack-Jack, who sat giggling with his new toys. In her frustration, Helen really wanted to scream. But, because she didn't want Jack-Jack to start crying again, she instead settled for flopping over in the hill of stuffed animals while pretending there were no problems in the world.
Lunch time. Violet sat down at her lunch table with her cafeteria meal.
"You don't wanna be eating that," Kari said through a bite of her sandwich.
"Yes I do," Violet said as she raised the pizza to her mouth at the same time her stomach let out a very loud growl. She took a bite.
"Erk!"
"She told you not to eat it."
Violet forced it down. "Yuck! That is not pizza!" she exclaimed, pushing the plate away from her.
"You're right, it's rubber with expired tomato paste on it," Sarah said, poking the pizza with her fork.
"I'm gonna go get something from the vending machine, I'll be right back." Violet got up from the table and walked out of the cafeteria. Within a short while, she was in the commons where the vending machines were. Lunch time was the only time of day where you could find the commons empty of people.
Looking at her money, Vi went to the snack machine first and got a bag of chips. Next she went to the soda machine. However unseen by her, Tony walked into the commons from a hallway behind her. Tony freaked when he saw her. No matter how hard he tried, all day he could only think about all the crap Friday had brought him, and still he didn't feel up to facing Vi. So what did he do? He jumped into a recycling bin.
Violet finally decided on some Cherry Coke and put her money in. She hit the button, but nothing came. Tony hid lower in the bin as she started to hit the machine… and call it names.
"C'mon! All I want is a soda!"
You might be wondering why Tony didn't just leave the commons. Well he was pretty hungry, too, and the only way to the cafeteria was 'guarded' by Vi. All of a sudden, Tony's stomach let out a terrible growl loud enough for Violet to hear. However, a very large upper-classman sporting a football jacket was walking by and blocked Tony from Vi's view when she turned around to look. So she just turned back and kicked the soda machine.
"Ow!" she yelped, holding her foot. The football player changed course and stepped up next to the machine.
"Here, you do it like this," he said. He held down the Cherry Coke button and kicked the machine from the side. Five Cherry Cokes and a Sprite flew out of the machine. The football player helped himself to the Sprite and said, "That's a football team secret, so don't go tellin' anybody."
"'Kay, thanks," Vi said, grabbing a Coke for herself. Tony watched, petrified he might be seen, as he quietly climbed out of the recycling bin.
The football player (who had seen him watching Vi from the bin) picked up another soda from the ground. Tony suddenly realized what he was about to do, and he frantically started waving his arms around to try and keep him from saying anything. The football player didn't understand this behavior and looked at Tony like he was a chicken with the head of a horse, but still politely held the soda out towards him.
"You want one?" he asked.
Tony slapped a hand over his eyes, but the moment Vi turned around to see who football-dude was talking to, Tony struck a position so it looked as though he'd only just walked into the commons. "Sure, I'll take one."
The football player, who was weirded out by the freshman more and more, tossed the Cherry Coke to Tony. He immediately left the commons (with a new conversation starter for lunch with his friends). Tony opened the soda, and it exploded in his face.
Violet put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. "Hey Tony," she said, picking up her extra sodas. She walked over to him as he dried his face off as best he could with his sleeve.
"Hi Vi."
"Next time wait before you open a soda."
"I'll remember that."
"How was your weekend?"
"Great," Tony said, smiling almost guiltily. What do I do!
"That's good."
"Yeah! Brilliant!"
"What class do you have left?"
"Uh…" Tony's mind went blank. What's a class again? "Ask me again later, I can't think of it right now."
"Okay." Violet couldn't help feeling there was something on Tony's mind. He seemed very uncomfortable.
"So, that was… some movie Friday huh?" Tony said, laughing uneasily. Violet did the same.
"Yeah, amazing."
"Incredible." Tony mentally beat himself up. It was the slight flinch of Tony's face when he said it that made Vi uneasy.
"Yeah…"
Tony tried to recover. "W-what's really incredible is how you kept me from being squashed like a bug by those Robot Rats!" Tony again beat himself up. He was mixing up the fake memories and the real ones.
"I guess…"
"Hey, uh, well, how's your arm?" Tony asked.
Vi looked down at the bandage. "It's fine."
"When is your suit going to be fixed?" Tony gasped and slapped a hand over his mouth, all the while thinking one thing.
YOU IDIOT!
Voila. You know, I keep coming up with characters and putting them in here without even thinking about it. I should really keep better track of them. I think I wrote this chapter in a different style than usual. Weird huh? I didn't have pop-tarts recently, maybe that's why.
Review…?