Ooooh drama in this chapter.
Make this jawn up like some Degrassi son.
Hope ya like it.
Chapter Thirteen: Wally's Secret Job
Wally had never felt heartache before. He would have rather fought every boy in Gallagher elementary than feel this way and see Kuki with this guy. At first, he was angry at Nigel, Abby, and Hoagie for egging him to going to the control room. It seemed extremely cruel of them to make it seem like it was a good surprise… But it turned out, they didn't even know. They thought it would be something else, of which they still refused to tell him even after the whole misunderstanding was resolved.
Christmas was long gone. Wally got a new skateboard, some action figures, new clothes. Hoagie gave him an expensive video game that wasn't even on the market yet, Nigel gave him these KND moon bounce sneakers that he could use for battle and for fun, Abby got him some CDs and a whole bag of butterscotch she had this elaborate, riveting story about how she had obtained.
Kuki gave him his present a day late. It wasn't a Rainbow Monkey this year, either—it was a scrapbook, him in each picture. She pasted in snapshots of everything from his sports games to KND ceremonies featuring him. On the last page, there was a photograph of him as Mr. Huggykins and her squeezing him to death; but he was actually smiling a little bit—only because he automatically smiles whenever someone is facing him with a camera. So, it just looked like he was enjoying her hug.
Funny.
She bought everyone else presents---even Danny, aka Numbuh 77, who she drooled over constantly---yet made Wally one. He paid this no mind, though. Wally tried very hard not to even think about her.
Now it was February. Valentine's day was in two weeks.
Danny and Kuki had been going out for over a month—a month and a half. It was like torture for Wally. Almost everyday they would be right in front of him exhibiting their relationship. His arm would be draped around her shoulder or she'd be laughing and hugging him and gazing at him happily. It came out of no where and just stayed, kind of like a random punishment. Wally still liked Kuki; maybe not as much as before. It was kind of as though he was putting his feelings on hiatus for a while. He would wait it out and watch in jealousy. Wally just hoped it wouldn't last too long.
The whole team—and Danny—were sitting in the middle of the food court at the mall.
The six of them were sitting at three tables. Nigel sat across from Hoagie, then Kuki sat across from Danny, then Wally sat across from Abby.
Wally hated this. He treasured the blessed moment he would leave this cruddy mall. Why did Danny always have to be here? Why couldn't Kuki just hang out with him somewhere else?
Obviously, Wally envied Danny with a passion. He was PERFECT: his hair was shaggy and feathery; his eyes were deep blue; he was tall, but not gawky; he was sickeningly polite and charming; he had some coordination when it came to physical activity; he wasn't an idiot, like Wally; he was just everything an eleven-year-old girl could dream of having. To Wally, it felt like they were opposites in that case.
There was one other thing about Danny. There was this fishy way about him…
And Wally saw it whenever he was around other girls. See, Wally didn't trust this guy with Kuki's heart for one millisecond. It was the way Danny's eyes would glint when they examined any girl, including Kuki, and the sugary, suave tone he put in his voice when he talked to the female population.
Wally glared over at him, his arms crossed over the chest of his orange hoodie. He was making Kuki laugh, but Wally was too angry to hear words, or anything but the constant mixture of voices in the background.
This was absolutely unbearable.
Wally stood and pushed in his chair.
"Where ya goin'?" Hoagie asked from a table beside theirs.
"C'mon," Wally mumbled and tugged Hoagie by the arm. "You too," he added to Nigel.
Hoagie grabbed his carton of fries, Nigel grabbed his root beer, and they were off. Wally completely ignored whatever Kuki called after him. Was it right to be mad at her? Yes. To Wally, it was as if she was doing this to him on purpose.
"Wally…" Nigel began.
"What?" Wally snapped.
"You're being so dramatic." He slurped some of his soda.
"What do you mean?" Wally continued in an agitated tone.
"I mean, with Kuki. And Danny."
Wally was silent for a moment. He was heating up, his face was becoming red.
"Yeah it's not like they're ever—" Hoagie began, but someone interrupted them.
"Hey, wait up, guys!"
Nevertheless, it was Danny, jogging up to them in his preppy clothes and all.
"Kuki and Abby decided to go look at girl stuff, so I just thought I'd catch up with you guys."
Wally rolled his eyes and continued walking as Hoagie and Nigel exchanged glass that said 'Here we go…'
Danny tilted his head inwardly and dashed up to Wally's side.
"So, uh, Numbuh Four," he said.
Wally continued looking on, hands in his pockets, ignoring him. Out of the corner of his eye, Wally saw him look back at Nigel and Hoagie in confusion.
"So, where we going?"
No response.
He continued walking beside Wally, with his hands in the pockets of his 30$ jeans.
This process repeated all day at the mall. Danny spoke to Wally, Wally ignored him or grumbled in response if the words spoken were worth it.
At one point, Hoagie pulled Wally aside into some toy store.
"Why can't you just try?" Hoagie whispered.
"Try what?" Wally said in the worn-out, distressed tone he had been using all day.
"Try to be nice to him?"
Wally rolled his eyes and shoved Hoagie out of his way. He didn't want to hear it and would walk home through the chilly air if it wasn't a mile down a busy highway.
He came out from the corner Hoagie herded him into to see Danny speaking to a girl Wally had never seen before.
Danny went to a private school, which is why Wally had never seen him before, or why Kuki had never seen him before and fallen in "love" with him.
The girl had blonde hair and a big hot pink pearl bracelet on to match her hot pink Hollister shirt and denim mini skirt. Wally was starting to think these brand name rich kids were real gay wads. They dressed like teenagers!
Wally pretended to be looking at some items on a shelf behind them, then moved some items away to peer through the little holes in the wall of it.
"So, what time tonight?" Danny was whispering.
"Eight,"
"What theater?"
"Regal."
"Perfect. See you there"
"Okay," the girl smiled sweetly. Danny did so in the same fashion.
They parted, as Danny walked up the row and Wally quickly scrambled to the end of his row. It would be suspicious if he stayed parallel to where Danny was speaking to the girl.
Wally stared hollowly at the back of a box, as he saw Danny walk right past his aisle up ahead.
Regal. Eight-o-clock.
Wally had a date.
Xxxx
They were all home from the mall, Wally laying on his side on the couch, all by himself. He stared into the TV as though he were a zombie, mind in the hands of the program.
That is, until someone plopped down at the end of his feet, awakening Wally from his trance.
Slowly, almost cautiously, Wally turned his head to see who it was that disturbed him. He saw Numbuh Three looking at the television wearily, as if she had a hard day or something.
"What?" she said softly and turned to him.
Wally continued to bore his eyes into her face, silently, face blank, almost comically. He wasn't doing it for any particular reason.
Numbuh Three seemed to have gotten taller lately. Only an inch or so…
And something else. Wally couldn't identify what it was at all, but it was different.
"What?" Kuki repeated.
"Did you get a haircut?"
"No…"
Right, because it wasn't her hair, even though at the moment it was tied up in a messy and adorable bun. Wally scanned her up and down, from her silky Rainbow Monkey pajama bottoms to her matching lavender rainbow monkey T-shirt. When he looked back up at her face again it was scrunched up in an estranged expression.
Wally narrowed his eyes and cocked his head calmly. This thought that there was something different had been in the back of his mind for a while now. He was just too mad before to look at her and find what it was.
Wait, when did he stop being mad at her for torturing his poor heart?
Oh, right… When Danny was talking to that girl and making what sounded like a secret date.
"Oh yeah, Kooks…" Wally said, eyes angling over to the TV again.
"What?" she asked for the third time.
There was something about Wally, too, that had changed. Kuki seemed to be the only one who knew it. He seemed calmer… and less headstrong. A lot less.
"At the mall today…" Should he tell her about the clues leading to the fact that her boyfriend may be cheating on her?
"Mm-hmm?"
"Oh, ahem, um, at the mall today, I saw this um… quarter on the ground," he lied, "and it said it was marked from.. err.." Wally wasn't too good at dates, "7…10… ninety… two…."
"1792?"
"Yeah! That one!"
"Oh." Kuki hugged her knees up to her chest and Wally bent up his knees to give her some more room.
Wally hadn't had a moment alone with Kuki ever since Danny came along. He realized this and thought he should savor it.
"So, you and your…um… and Danny hang out together a lot, eh?"
"Yeah." Kuki replied quietly. She seemed tired.
"Ya tired or somethin'?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Oh." Wally decided to be quiet for a while.
Even though he was mad at Kuki, he couldn't help but care for her somewhat. It came to be Wally's job to keep her okay; emotional, physical, mental-wise. Wally's job, not Danny's. That made him feel a bit important to her. This was Wally's secret job.
Wally glanced over at Kuki again, whose eyelids were slowly drooping. This was his chance to say it.
"Idon'ttrustthatDannyguy" Wally blurted out quickly, jolting up a little and looking hard into Kuki's half-open eyes.
She jolted upwards as well and furrowed her brow at him skeptically. "…What?"
"Danny. I don't like him." Wally stated curtly.
Kuki's violet eyes widened away from the iris's. "What do you mean?" she asked incrediculously.
"Look," Wally began in an abrupt manner, tilting his head inward and hardening his eye contact, "there's something weird about him that I don't trust and I don't think it's good at all."
Kuki looked at him, a little sore in the eyes. "Well," Kuki retorted in a mocking sugar-coated tone, "I don't see it, and honestly, Wally, I think you're jealous of him."
Wally's lips parted in dismay, but it looked like they parted from insult.
Sheila was right on the money.
"If there is one feeling I don't have about that sap it's jealousy," Wally shot, "so don't compliment yourself,"
With that, he hopped off the couch and started towards the door.
"Wait, Wally…" Kuki said, suddenly almost bashfully. There was only the audio from the television for a moment.
"What?" Wally snapped, back still to her.
"What makes you not trust him?"
Spinning around and gripping the armrest of the sofa, Numbuh Four said, "I'm just too blind from jealousy to realize what it is," in such a venomous, dry, sarcastic tone that he really sounded like he meant it.
Now Kuki's lips were parted as Wally left the room—but hers because of astonishment.
xxxx
Wally trotted in a suspicious fashion behind Danny and the girl he was speaking with earlier at the mall. The pair were walking down the hall inside the Regal to a theater. Wally didn't even purchase a ticket; he knew he was sly enough to follow them without the delay of standing in line at the booth. Plus, he didn't know what they were seeing.
Sure, it may have looked unusual that he was periodically ducking behind trash bins as he stalked. That was, if anyone had noticed him.
From what Wally saw, Danny had something with this girl—the same kind of something he had with Kuki. Wally's gut-feeling never did fail him; though it was inevitable that it had to do so one of these days.
Danny was definitely a ladies' man; despite he was only twelve (a year older than all of Sector V). That's what the subtle characteristic to him was; he flirted, even when he supposedly had a girl.
Wally followed the two into a theater, which was still illuminated from above. On the way in, Wally snatched a bucket of popcorn from an innocent kid a few grades below him. Then he went on in and seated himself three rows behind Danny and the blonde girl, in clear view of them.
More people began filling up the theater, then the room darkened until the only source of light was the screen. Still, Wally could decipher the back of his subjects' heads because of their blue outlines from the light hitting them.
For a while, Wally munched on his popcorn and studied the couple, completely unaware of the movie.
All they did was sit beside each other, both slouched down in their seats. After a time, once they were both sitting upright, Wally saw Danny's arm slowly make his way over around the girl's shoulders.
That was it. Danny was cheating. Wally's lips parted in astonishment and his eyes narrowed in hate and disbelief. How could Danny be doing this? How could he be getting away with it? With betraying Kuki?
Wally stuffed another handful of buttery popcorn in his mouth and chewed with his eyes almost growing red and the inside of his chest growing hot with rage.
Since he was so sick of this kid, he turned his attention over to the movie screen.
Wait, what was that?
Wally saw a movement out of the corner of his eye from Danny's direction, and immediately looked down to watch.
The girl, who was on Wally's left, leaned over and pecked Danny on the cheek.
Wally's face fell.
For some reason, it pained Wally that the girl didn't even know he was cheating.
Wally ate more popcorn. It was about the middle of the movie. He watched the rest through fiery eyes, watching the hell-bidden couple three rows away compulsively.
When the credits finally rolled and the lights above came back to life, Wally sat and watched Danny and the girl stand up.
There was this look Wally had, and could put on his face whenever he wanted. It was the most venomous, deathly, insulting, disgusting look he could put on his face. He gave it to people when he was absolutely furious; when he was in genuine rage and couldn't believe what he was seeing.
When Danny walked up the aisle (gripping his girl's hand) between the rows of seats in the theater, Wally wore that beady look on his face. Danny looked up, and his eyes grew wide in surprise and maybe even fright when he saw Wally's face.
Danny knew he was in a lot of trouble.
Xxxx
His hands were clenched in white-knuckled balls.
His teeth were clenched together so tight his gums were pulsing.
His eyes were red with fury, hate, anger.
Wally was ready to rip a head off.
He shoved open the door of the Regal forcefully, then the next one, and walked right up to Danny. He was leaning back against the wall of the building, hands pocketed, eyes on the ground.
"YOU'RE LUCKY I DON'T PUNCH YOUR FRICKIN' HEAD OFF YOUR BODY!" he screeched.
Danny sprung to life, and threw his arms over his face and curled his knee up to his chest to protect himself.
Wally grabbed the chest of Danny's purple polo shirt, and thrust him back to the wall.
Danny's jaw was actually trembling! "I-I…"
"You what?" Wally said through gritted teeth. "Who was that girl?"
"She…" Danny tried under Wally's glare and harsh expression, "She's my girlfriend, okay!" He tried to push Wally off of him, but Wally ran him right back into the same spot with a 'thump'.
"I thought Kuki was your girlfriend," Wally said through tight lips.
Danny was silent.
A car horn beeped from beside them.
"Busted." Wally whispered. He pulled Danny off the wall and pushed him towards the curb. He stumbled but didn't fall, glancing back fearfully and hastily opening the car door and hopping in the passengers seat.
Time for some well-deserved payback…