Hey. Hey! If you like this, you should definitely go read LeMoNsOuR's "My Name is Mr. Sir"! It's about Mr. Sir when he was a kid and it's HILARIOUS. So that's what you should go do! Because LeMoNsOuR was super awesome and mentioned my fic! Also because it's great! It's beautiful! (In every single way!)
I wrote this chapter once and then something happened and it died and I haven't written anything since. I had a little bit saved, but it's been so long since I messed with it that it disappeared from my Document Manager. But I think I'm going to try again. Review, you guys! It motivates me!
The full chapter title is "Fair Friends Weather Winds Whether The Weather Is Fair Or Not".
She was not the last person to finish digging. This was less a testament to her doubtful digging skills and more a testament to Jimmy's patience. For every shovelful of dirt she dug, he took one that was slightly smaller. For every drink she took, he took one that was slightly longer. Mr. Sir came twice more during the day, once with lunch and once more with the most refreshing water she'd ever tasted. Each time she thought he might be smiling at her but couldn't be sure enough to smile back. Instead she just looked down and went back to her hole.
Halfway through the day she'd reached into her pocket for the packet of cigarettes and realized that Mr. Sir hadn't given her any matches to light them with. She'd sighed and slipped them back into her pocket, only to pull them out again, along with a matchbook and a little note. "The Warden thinks of everything." From this moment on she had a profound respect for the woman, but a slight fear of her as well. If she could see the future, she could probably read minds.
Now the girl stood in the bottom of her completed hole, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun until it sunk behind an oddly shaped rock formation. Just like a thumb, she thought, and held her own up to compare.
"Pretty cool, huh?"
In the vast quietness of the nearly-empty desert his voice sounded small and and timid. It cracked on the last syllable and he blushed a bright pink. She tried not to smile in response. Jimmy was kind of pretty.
"Yeah." She had the strange fear that if she talked too loudly, if she broke the silence too much, the whole giant desert would come crashing down on her. She fought the urge to hold her breath to be quieter.
"D'you want help?" Jim asked, and the spell was broken. The girl let all her captured breath go; despite her best efforts it had trapped itself in her chest during her half-trance.
"Yeah," she said again, and then added, "Thanks." The two of them combined were practically illiterate.
She heaved her shovel up over the side of the hole, placing it with a muffled thump in the dirt, as Jim braced himself at the edge of the hole and held out a surprisingly clean hand. As the girl reached for the one hand she noticed he held a pair of gloves in the other. She settled her blistered palm in his calloused one, wincing but trying her best to hide the pain. With a grunt of "One- two- three-" he pulled the girl up to the edge of the hole, and there they stood for less than a moment, delicately balanced like some ornately designed desk ornament, before they fell back into the hole with a shared yell and flailing limbs.
There was another frozen moment at the bottom of the hole, a stunned silence before they could think to extricate themselves from one another's limbs. They stared blankly at one another in close quarters before springing apart as gracefully as they could manage. Jim stumbled into the wall of the hole before clawing his way up and out to sprawl on his back on the ground, and the girl flung herself across the hole to follow him but couldn't quite make it, her fingers slipping at the edge and dragging her blisters through the dirt so that her hands felt as if they were on fire. Jim grabbed her by the wrist and, with a mighty grunt, dragged her up, out of the hole, and over his lap to rest, breathless from their flight, in a heap. They stared at each other from their respective positions, wondering what the other might say.
And then they began to laugh. The girl army-crawled the rest of the way out of the hole and flopped next to Jim, who had fallen back onto his back with the force of his laughter. She gasped for breath as she laughed, trying not to inhale the dirt next to her face. As soon as their laughter began to abate they made eye contact and began to laugh all over again.
Finally they calmed down, their breathing the only sound in what seemed to be the whole desert. "We should probably head back before dinner starts," Jim said, not moving.
"Yeah," the girl replied, and then giggled, setting them off into a whole new fit of laughing.
From that moment on, they were friends.
They just barely had time to put their shovels away before they had to run to the mess hall for dinner. They tagged along at the back of the line, not saying anything to each other but feeling a sense of companionship anyway. Not that they could have heard anything had they spoken- the mess hall was one huge conversation, shouted at the top of each boy's lungs. If the desert would fall if its silence was broken, the girl was sure this building might collapse if there was ever a moment of silence within it. The line shuffled slowly along as boys collected trays and were served piles of unidentifiable slop in different colors. And bread. The bread was definitely a plus.
The girl tore pieces of the crust off with her teeth as Jimmy led her to the F tent table. The tin spoon and cup wobbled precariously as she wove through the hall and then rattled as she set her tray down on the table. The boys didn't have to bother to look up when she did so; they had been watching her since she'd walked in.
"So what'd you and your girlfriend do out there, huh? You sure were out there a long time!" A skinny, bespectacled boy spoke up, shaking his blonde hair out of his thin face and leering at the two of them. An older boy, one with a tanned face and wavy, dark hair, glanced at the blonde boy disapprovingly.
"Hey! Isn't anyone listening to me?" The pale boy from earlier in the day leaned forward to force his way into the conversation, his meager, dark beard making his face look even paler and more haggard.
"Hey, shut up, Sock," the shortest boy- Leprechaun, perhaps?- replied, turning a slightly cherubic face to look reproachfully at the boy who must be Socrates. "All you talk about is boobs, and while that's usually cool, no one really cares right now." There was a chorus of yeahs from the other boys, all except Jimmy and the dark-haired one.
"Hey, shut up, okay? All of you." All the boys at the table grew silent as the girl spoke. She inspected her food casually and then looked up to find them watching her closely. "Nothing happened. You're all dumb. Just talk about boobs or whatever. I don't care." She picked up her spoon and tasted the brownish pile of slop. It wasn't bad.
"Hey, Jimmy, why's your girlfriend such a bitch?" The blonde boy asked, making a face at her.
"Leave her alone, Specs. Leave them both alone." The older boy's voice was quiet, but the blonde boy- Spectacles, apparently- ducked his head and started shoveling food in his mouth.
The girl smiled at the dark-haired boy gratefully and prodded her food with her fork. She felt a bit queasy now, honestly, and wasn't sure if she was up to the green slop.
"I'm Jack." She glanced up at the boy, who was looking at her expectantly. She smiled again and tasted the yellowish slop tentatively. Definitely not eating that.
"Your girlfriend doesn't even have a name?" Specs had clearly been waiting for a chance to make another jibe.
"Shut up." Three voices spoke in tandem- Jack's dangerous, the girl's indignant, and Jimmy's pleading. Specs looked down again and began attacking his food.
"If she doesn't want to share, fine. She'll get a new name soon enough." Jack looked away and ate his food quietly, but the girl had the disconcerting feeling that he was disappointed in her. She glanced nervously around the table at her silent groupmates before resuming her meal wearily. This was going to be a long sentence to serve.