SPINY'S POV

"Ah! NO!" Larry jumped out of his seat. The Wii Wheel with the remote went flying out of his hand and struck me in the face.

"Ouch! Would you watch it?"

"I didn't do nothing!" he exclaimed. I rubbed the spot on my face where the 6-inch black remote had struck me. I pointed at the King-sized bruise that was now forming. He tapped it with his claw. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes, it hurts!" I shouted. I slapped at his hand and knocked him off the bean bag. "Now, the next time would you please not throw the Wii Remote through the air when you lose a race?"

He crossed his arms and glared at me. "I wouldn't have lost and thrown the Remote if you hadn't hit me with a Blue Shell!"

I glared back at him. "Which wouldn't have been necessary if you hadn't fired three red shells at me, then knocked me off the track into the bottomless pit!"

"Well, why you two are busy arguing I'm in 1st place on Rainbow Road now and you're in 11th and 12th place respectively," Roger stated. We both looked at the TV screen and sure enough, Larry and I hadn't even crossed the starting line yet and were nearly a lap behind.

Larry pushed me off my bean bag and started accelerating. A few minutes later, I managed to get Mario in first place, with Roger in Yoshi finishing in 4th place and Larry in Bowser finishing in 2nd place.

Once we'd finished and waited for the next game to load I said to Roger, "So what do you want to do? We can order pizza, Chinese food, or something. Or we can go in the back and shoot some hoops."

"Sounds good," he said.

"Shoot hoops? How is that possible? Hoops don't fit in guns and I thought you used balls instead of baskets," Larry said.

I ignored his stupid comment (he didn't know any other kind to say) and said to Roger, "How about it? We can rent a movie."

"Sounds good."

After we finished three more rounds of Mario Kart, we went out back and started playing basketball. We'd been playing some one-on-one for about two hours before we finally stopped from exhaustion and sat on the ground next to the basketball hoop.

Kathy came out back (wearing a white tank top and small jean shorts, obviously with her hair in a double braid tieback) and gave us two tall glasses of lemonade. I was intending to be alone with Roger to try to entrap, I mean, uh, no! Talk with him. Just casually talk about how to win a girl's heart.

Really, I wasn't tricking him into anything. Well, anyways, Kathy sat down next to me (she and Patty have a sort-of crush on him which is not surprising considering that in between the two of them they have a crush on 1,350 guys) and I said to Roger. "Well, you sure haven't let up on your sporting skills."

"Well, I must admit that sports are my passion," he said.

Kathy leaned forward, placing her head in her hand. "Well, you should. You're in your school's soccer, basketball, swimming, and track teams." I rolled my eyes at that. Why is it that most teen girls are fascinated by athletes? I mean, I do a little bit of sports myself but I'm not a professional. I don't even keep track of scores! I just play for the fun of it.

Roger got a little flushed and said, "Well…I'm not that good. I guess it's just a way of clearing my mind. It's not easy being a fourteen-year-old sophomore. You get treated like you're less mature than others."

"Yeah, I can understand that. You have any…admirers?" I asked him.

"Mmm. Not that I know of as of now. I don't think so because high school girls always see us middle school guys as little boys, you know. They think we're less mature and we just spend time doing nothing except laughing milk out our noses, drooling over girls in bikinis or doing some other thing that expresses the male gender as degenerated."

"Well, in some ways age does relate to maturity. But not always. Seriously, I've seen girls in their late teens or early twenties acting like preteens. And I've seen preteens acting like they're in their early twenties."

"Yeah, I guess there are both ends of the extreme." He finished his lemonade and said to Kathy, "Thanks a lot for the lemonade, Kathy. It was really refreshing."

Kathy's cheeks turned pink and she said, "Your welcome, Roger. Is there anything else you'd like?"

Yeah, why don't you and Patty go double-dating with Richard and some other guy and stop trying to ruin our plan? I cleared my throat and stood up. "No, that'll be it. I think we'll be going inside now. I'll just order some pizza and breadsticks then I'll ask Robert to go rent a movie and after we shower we'll watch it in my room."

"All right. Patty and I will be in our room in case you want anything." She went back inside the Palace and Roger and I followed her after I finished my last drop of lemonade.

Once I'd ordered the pizza and sent Robert to rent a movie, Roger went to shower in the Guest Bathroom while I went in mine. After we came out, Robert returned with the movie (and no change, obviously) and we brought the pizza up to my room and played the movie.

"I sure hope you haven't got anything weird," said Larry.

"I happen to have good taste in movies." I narrowed my eyes at the jerk.

"Oh, yeah? What about the time you rented that satire movie about the maid who fell in love with the carpenter?"

"It had a good plot and lots of funny lines."

"Yeah, it was so avant-garde that I couldn't even understand the end credits."

Roger suddenly took an interest in the conversation. "Really? It was an avant-garde film?"

I nodded. "Sort of, in a way. Definitely not traditional Amarkian film."

"Do you know what that means?" Larry said to Roger. He shook his head. "Avant-garde is French for 'off-Broadway garbage.'"

Roger laughed at that. "That's a good one."

We sat back as the film started with ominous music. It was an Amarkian film from this same year. It's called If We Can Get In. It's based on a novel of the same name by a famous author called Joanna Briean. It's basically dystopian mixed with post-apocalyptic fiction and science fiction.

It tells the story through the eyes of a 16-year-old guy who faces a difficult challenge when solar storms literally cause all the electricity in the world to permanently go out and how to survive with little food, water, supplies and rising anarchy. And of course, there are plenty of action scenes, gangs of looters, and a girl who has managed to survived despite having an incapacity.

Anyways, while the movie was running, Roger got on Larry's bed (I made him go to the Guest Room) and I got under my covers and turned off the lights with only the glow of the TV illuminating the room.

I hadn't realized how late it was already was!

"So, you have a good time so far?" I asked Roger.

"Yeah, it's been great! Thanks, man!" he answered.

"Anytime, bro. That's what friends are for, right?"

"Right."

We watched the movie in silence, munching on pizza and garlic breadsticks.

After a while, I said in the most casual tone of voice I could manage, "You know what this movie reminds me of?"

"No, what?"

"That it doesn't take an apocalypse to find a perfect girl and make her fall for you."

He was quiet for a while, then said, "I guess it's sort of cliché in that genre. But I suppose you're right."

I allowed for a few more seconds of silence. I mean, you have to be subtle about things like these. Then I said, "Take Lilia and I. We did go through some embarrassing moments, but not hunger and thirst and sandstorms."

"Yeah, certainly not any life-threatening situations."

Well, this is certainly going well.