Chapter 10: 2018
A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in a little while! There isn't really an excuse, just lack of time…And for the overdramatic drumroll of this evening…I think I have finally figured out how to have a line (or a page breaker of some sort…) show up on the website! Yay! And if this doesn't work, I will have given up hope… Enjoy! Also, in like the fifth chapter, I talk about a Claire Kennish. Her name is now Ella, so you can just ignore the old name (I wouldn't have brought this up but I use the name Claire for one of John's friends so I didn't want any confusion)—I've updated this and the problem below on already; also, I've used the name Tony and the name Toby for the same person (whose name in now Tony), I'm so sorry for any confusion! Please, if there is ever any confusion in a chapter, please let me know as soon as you see it! So, besides those two things, voila!
"So as we were going through the rest of the year after John ran away, Amy and I came to an enlightening realization, right Ames?" Ricky asked as he smiled towards Amy and some other people that seemed to be sitting near John's friend's table. Why is Dad looking over at my friends? John sent a questioning look over to his best friend Tony; who just gave him an even bigger smile in return. Wait…oh. Oh Dear God. Please no. This whole thing is embarrassing as it is…as John tried to think of any other reason his friends would be smiling, his mother confirmed his suspicions.
"…so we have decided to let some of John's closest friends tell a part of the story. Tony, Jason, Matthew, Lewis," Amy said, giving them all her scariest—but also most funny—mother look she could muster, "please try not to embarrass him too much?"
The six friends, including Mina's two best friends Claire and Rose, gave each other a good smirk—something they had all learned from John—before Jason spoke: "Don't worry Ms. Underwood, we will definitely try to embarrass him as much as possible! I mean, it's his six best friends—well, it would be seven if a certain someone's girlfriend wanted to join our quest of total embarrassment," he glared at Mina.
"I get a whole year to myself! Just you guys wait, it will get pretty embarrassing. Sorry John." Mina was used to the harassment: ever since she had started dating John about two and a half years ago, she had gotten nothing but obnoxious comments from the friends she had since the first grade. "Oh, and by the way Mam, I would be more worried about Claire-bear and Rosey than the 'foolish foursome' over there," Mina said as she quoted John's nickname of his four best friends.
"Thanks for that Min—anyway, as I was saying: it's his six best friends telling a story from third grade. There is no possible way this could not be embarrassing," Jason finished as he turned back to Amy and Ricky, who merely laughed in reply.
"So, after that wonderful introduction," Matthew said sarcastically, "we give you John's most embarrassing story yet," Matthew put on his best Twilight Zone imitation, "how one man's—or boy in this case—clumsiness got him to get the girl of his dreams." The audience laughed, but the six remained solemn-faced.
"No, we are actually dead serious. You may have thought that this kid was actually like a super soccer jock with super hand-eye coordination or something, but you are actually dead, dead wrong," Claire answered with a hint of laughter in her voice. Oh dear God. This is going to be way, way worse than I thought it would be. Shit.
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John had been sitting in-between Lewis and Matthew with Claire was sitting in the row behind them in Matthew's car. Usually on Thursdays either John's mom or dad would drive the carpool into the City, but Emily had a doctor's appointment Amy had to take her to and Ricky had an early morning meeting. This meant, because he was usually the last one to be picked up, that he had to sit in the middle of the middle row. It's not that he doesn't love his two friends Lewis and Matthew that he carpools with, he just doesn't love that they have to have conversations about video games right across him. Why do they even play so many video games anyway? Mom says that it's bad for your brain and books are so much more interesting…usually, he would try to talk to Claire, but she seemed to be in a bad mood and his dad has told him many times never to bother a lady when she is in a bad mood: "Even if she's your wife. Just remember that John," his dad has told him on a number of occasions. And he would definitely not try to talk to Mrs. Katz or Jessica (Matthew's older sister); they both scared him just a little. So, he tried to read. However, if you are in desperate need of glasses and you get sick quite easily; reading on a bumpy thirty minute ride into the City isn't the most pleasurable experience.
After waiting on the Tunnel for an extra ten minutes, Mrs. Katz dropped everyone off at carpool a little late and yelled a number of things to various different children: "Do well on your math test Jess! Lewis, you're coming home with us afterschool! Hope you feel better Claire-bear! And John, don't forget your soccer stuff in the back!" All the younger children simply gave a nod in response and went off to find the rest of their friends. As their luck would have it, Mina and Tony were in the crowd of people who had just gotten off at the school's respective subway stop (they both live within a reasonable subway ride to school) with their soccer stuff in hand; Rose was just getting out of her car (Matthew, Lewis, Claire, and John all lived in Queens, while she lived in Brooklyn); and Jason was just arriving to school with the rest of his walking family. Once they realized they were all on the premise, the eight friends ran to their favorite meeting spot to walk into school, hand in hand.
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"Not to be a downer on this wonderful story," Mina said sarcastically, "but when does this story get any good? Because I remember a lot of interesting things happening in the third grade, but I really don't think mentioning where we all live and how we got to school is all that important." Mina finished with a triumphant tone to her voice.
"Kill me now, somebody, please! Nothing that embarrassing has even happened and I'm already cringing!"
"Oh don't worry Johnny; this story will get a whole lot better. Remember the April of this year? The playground: you, Mina?" Lewis asked, a huge smile taking over his features. After processing what his friend had just said, he began to bang his head on the table even more. Even Mina began to blush a fairly deep red, and Ricky and Amy gave each other a questioning look.
"John, is there something you never told us? Because I don't remember ever hearing about this…" Ricky asked.
"Just you wait Mr. Underwood, things are about to get quite interesting." Rose said with a giggle in her voice.
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The day continued with reading circles, math, social studies, music, lunch, and then—of course, the favorite part of any third grader's day—recess. On most days, the group of friends would usually either play a four vs. four game of soccer or four square with a ball from Ms. Lamont's classroom—the class the John, Tony, Claire, and Mina were in—but today they decided to climb the infamous tree on the "big-kid" part of the play ground. Only the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders were really allowed to play in that part of grounds, but no teacher ever checked to make sure that you were in fourth grade (in fact, that was part of what was so great about this part of the playground: there wasn't as much teacher supervision) and since the third and fourth graders had recess at the same time, the tree was hard to resist. Being the rebellious (in a third grader kind of way) group of friends that they were, they had climbed the tree a couple of times before and this, naturally, meant that there were specific rules to climbing the tree. Some of these rules included: not touching the second branch from the ground (it attracted a lot of attention), not stopping until you've reached the "appropriate place to stop" (which was really only about ten-twelve feet off the ground), and whoever is the last one to the top (if it was obvious that you were the last one) has to do a dare. This made climbing the tree fun, and the dares had never been anything completely uncalled for.
Usually, Claire and Mina would be more than happy to climb up "ruler's rock" as the tree was formally known by the students—in fact, they were usually the ones that got to the top first—but today, because Claire hadn't been feeling very well; she decided to sit this one out, Mina following in suit. However, to those that were going to climb the tree today, the rules of "climbing the mountain" still applied. On a normal day, the group would usually decide that the loser would have to go play one round of four-square at "loser's square" or have to go tell the teacher that they felt sick and pretend to throw up; but something different was in the air today.
"Ok, so I think that whoever doesn't get to the top has to kiss Mina." Tony said, looking at John sub-consciously before grinning at Mina.
"Ew no! I don't want to have to kiss Mina! She's my friend but I don't like her like that! That's gross!" Lewis said in his high pitched squeak.
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"Ok, I do not—or did not rather—have a squeaking voice Rose!" Lewis exclaimed in a tone that was even higher than Rose's.
"Oh, really? Look I may have a bit of a low voice, but you have always," Rose started.
"Always, ALWAYS," Claire continued.
"Had a high pitched voice," Jason, Tony, and Matthew finished. Lewis turned to John and Mina for help, but Mina just nodded in agreement and John was too embarrassed to even look up. I know what's about to happen. God, why didn't I tell my parents about this? They are going to be so, so, SO mad I didn't tell them!
"Ok fine, maybe it is a little," super squeak, "high pitched. Let's just get back to the story ok? We are getting to the good part…"
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"Yea, I don't want to have to kiss Mina either! I'm a girl and I just don't like Mina like that!" Rose added.
"Fine, how about this: if John makes it to the top last, he has to kiss Mina? Everyone happy with that?" Jason compromised. Everyone but Mina and John shook their head.
"Um, excuse me! I'm part of this 'so-called' deal too! And I don't want to kiss John!" Mina's voice sounded very unconvincing and to the un-knowing eye (and maybe to the knowing eye as well), it would have sounded like she almost wanted to kiss him.
"Mina, you have to do it. Claire isn't feeling very well but you just aren't climbing because you're chicken. So you have to pay the price. Actually, now that I've come to think of it, I say that we just make them do it anyway! I mean, we've climbed this tree like fifty times and this would be so much more entertaining!" Tony always seemed to be the kind of leader that was able to get people to follow him even if what he was saying was completely wrong; so, naturally, all the friends but Mina and John started to cheer for the two of them to kiss.
"Oh come on Min. It will only last like two seconds and the rest of those guys are just jerks anyway," John said in a comforting tone. From the sound of his voice alone, anyone would probably deduce that he didn't want to do this; but, if you were a good friend—the type of friend surrounding the two of them at that time—you would know that he's been wanting to kiss Mina for quite some time now. And, if you knew Mina, you would know that she felt the exact same way.
"Ok, we know that you want to say 'till death do us part', but we don't have time for that now; we have to get on with it!" Matthew said, pushing the two of them together. John fell forward into Mina and, although no one will ever really know why, the two of them kissed. A real, true, magical kiss.
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"Cute huh?" Claire finished.
"Yea, we all knew that the two of them were destined to be together. It was just meant to be!" Rose exclaimed.
"And even though they both ran back into the building to get some water to 'clean off their tongues' and swore to all of us that they were never speaking to each other, nor us again, we were all spending time together that afternoon at soccer practice," Tony added.
"But that car ride over to soccer..." Mina interjected and Ricky began to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Amy asked, genuinely curious.
"I remember driving the five of them over to soccer practice and it was just so…awkward, to say the least. I mean, I remember that both John and Mina seemed to be in a funk, I just couldn't figure out why. And Tony, Rose, and Jason were just having a ball with how much misery John and Min were in. I sort of just figured it was just nine year olds being nine year olds. But that story was actually quite entertaining. I always had thought that the two of you had done something early…" Ricky trailed off.
"I didn't! John, why didn't you tell me! I'm your mother!" Amy was about to begin on a long tangent when a few of John's friends stepped in.
"And that's all we have to say, thanks for listening to our wonderful story about how amazing John is!" Claire, Matthew, Lewis, and Tony all seemed to say in unison.
This seemed to shut his mother up, so John turned to Mina to say a few words: "This has to be one of the most embarrassing stories yet…"
"But just think, in a couple of years it will be your teenage years!" John began to sink his head back into the table, "and I know that at least my story will be worse than this one. I mean, you had some pretty embarrassing times in high school."
"Don't remind me…" This really is only going to get worse before it get's better, won't it?
And almost as if Mina could read his mind, she replied: "Yes."
A/N: Ok, so I realize that this one is a little shorter than the rest (these next couple are going to be a bit shorter just because they are sort of filler chapters..), but don't worry: I will try to make the next one longer! I just couldn't add that much to the story and I didn't want John's friends—oh what interesting characters they are—to drag on forever (trust me, if I let them have their way, they would have). Hope you enjoyed this and please, please, PLEASE REVIEW! Also, thank you to those that are reading Outtakes, it really means a lot to me! And if you haven't looked at it, I would definitely recommend it! :D
ALL OF JOHN'S FRIENDS ARE TELLING YOU TO REVIEW OR ELSE YOU WILL HAVE TO GO PLAY 'LOSER SQUARE!'