Summary: Hell, yes - I was always up for a dare! It got us both in detention, and yet, it also got me a new friend. A friend I knew I'd have a lot of fun with. - Little JB-and-JJ one-shot on how their friendship could have started ...

A/N: I hope I got the characters right …

Disclaimer: Just the usual; only borrowing the characters, and so on and so on …

XXX

School sucks.

Always did, always will.

There are just a few things making it a little more bearable; pulling stupid pranks, spending lunch hours sitting out in the summer sun, and most importantly: spending time with friends.

I found my best and most long-lasting friendship when I was eight years old, sitting in the sun, opening my lunch package to see what Dad made for me. It wasn't anything special, usually, but at the age of eight I seemed to always feel like I was starving, so I didn't really mind too much as long as it was edible.

It was a warm day for late September. I was sitting alone at one of the tables outside. Every now and then, I liked a little peace and quiet with my lunch so I'd ditched the kids I usually hung out with during lunch hours to have a moment to myself. However, that didn't last long; I'd just started chewing on my sandwich when a boy my age plopped into the seat next to me.

"Hey," he said.

At first I was annoyed at the disturbance but my curiosity prevailed. "Hey ..."

He bent over to see what I was eating. "Whatya got?"

I knew him, his name was JJ Maybank. Well, that was the name he was known by. I didn't know his full name and I suspected that most of the other kids in our year didn't, either.

I picked up the box with the food in it and held it so that he could see what was in it. "Nothing out of the ordinary," I told him.

And it wasn't, indeed. Apart from the sandwich, I had a boiled egg that had gone cold (I disliked boiled eggs, especially when they were cold, but Dad always forgot) and some tomatoes. Those little ones that you can pop into your mouth in whole.

For some curious reason, the tomatoes had aroused JJ's interest. He pointed a finger at them. "What are those?" he asked me.

"Tomatoes." What a dumb question. "Never seen tomatoes?"

"Not this kind." He shrugged. "Not like my old man ever buys fresh food."

"Well, my Dad breeds those. On the porch. First year he succeeded."

He gave me a curious look. "What's so complicated about breeding tomatoes?"

I chuckled. "Dunno. Probably always forgot to water them 'coz he's busy in his study all the time… besides, if it was easy wouldn't everyone be doing it?"

"S'pose so."

JJ was still looking at the tomatoes so I pushed the box over to him. "You can have some. Since you obviously didn't bring a lunch of your own."

He looked at me, then at the box and back at me. "Not like I didn't have a lunch of my own," he said. "I just already ate it all before school started."

"Yeah, whatever," I replied with a shrug. "I've had enough of those tomatoes to last a lifetime. You can have them all, if you want."

I grabbed the lot of them out of the box and put them on the table, right in front of JJ. He eyed them for a moment, before popping one in his mouth, cautiously.

"Like them?"

"Had worse," he responded.

He didn't say thank you and I didn't mind. Quite honestly, I was happy that I got rid of them. JJ, however, devoured them rather quickly. He was either very hungry or interested because he'd never tried them before. Come to think of it, I hadn't ever seen him bring a lunch of his own so both options seemed possible from my point of view.

We had been in the same year since first grade but hadn't spoken much to each other until now. He was always surrounded by other kids, never to be seen by himself. I thought that it was probably mainly because he was the one who pulled the wildest pranks or because he could easily be talked into a harebrained dare. He held the image of being fun to be around as long as you stayed on his good side. When provoked, however, he was said to be able to deal out rather nasty punches, even though he wasn't exactly one of the bigger boys in our year.

"So, you're John B," he said suddenly into the silence that had settled between us while we'd been eating.

I cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah. So?"

"What's the B stand for?" he asked me.

"Booker."

JJ snickered. "John Booker Routledge? Were your parents high when they named you?"

"No," I said curtly, feeling defensive. "Why's it so funny?

He shrugged. „Dunno. Just wasn't expecting it, I guess. Anyway, dude, don't make such a fuss - I wasn't meaning to offend you."

"What about you?"

"Well, my parents definitely were high when they named me, that's for sure."

"I meant what's it stand for, JJ?"

He grinned, leaning back in his seat and pointing back and forth between himself and me. "Well, you and I got one name in common. Guess which, if ya like."

"Oh," I said. Funny - I hadn't thought of that. "What about the other J?"

He looked at me, quietly for a moment, then broke into another snicker. It was contagious, I had to laugh as well. "Don't go saying you don't know."

"Fine." He lifted his hands. "I won't say it."

I stared at him, mouth hanging open. "You really don't know?"

"Told ya. My parents were most likely high when they put down my name. Probably lost my birth certificate the moment they'd signed it, for all I know." It was a tad overdramatic, I thought, but it surely went well as a story to entertain. And maybe it wasn't anything but that - a story he'd made up. Wasn't the first harebrained story he'd told, I gathered from what I'd heard about him. However, his expression didn't give anything away as he added, "doesn't matter anyway, no one's ever called me any other name but JJ, so why bother?"

I nodded.

We sat in silence for a moment. Then JJ turned to look at me again. "Listen, John B. Are you up for a challenge?"

"Challenge?"

"Yeah."

"Let's hear it," I said, curiously. I was always up for a challenge.

"Well, I got this bet going on, and I need a little help to pull it off," JJ explained, scratching the back of his head.

"What bet?"

"Mattie Miller dared me to hang upside down from the tree in the middle of the school yard. I need someone to help me get up."

"Why the hell would you do that just because Mattie asked you to?"

He shrugged. "Because it's fun. It pisses the teachers off. I dunno - isn't that enough of a reason?"

My eyes wandered over to the tree he was talking about. I could see it very well from where I was sitting. It was tall, with one of the lower branches growing almost parallel to the ground. Perfect for hanging upside down if not it had been a good eight feet above the ground. Too high to climb without assistance and rather nasty to fall down from, especially when falling head first.

I considered the request for a moment. "Why are you asking me of all people?"

"Well -" JJ hesitated, then explained, "several reasons, actually; for one I figured you're not a pussy that might try talking me out of it. Second, you're best in gym classes, so you're probably up to it - oh, and also, you're neutral, as in not on Mattie's side. He said he'd give me five dollars for it. So I guess his buddies would not help me, would they?"

"Five dollars?"

"I'll share."

Phew! I blew a strand of hair out of my face, that was falling over my eyes annoyingly. Then I faced JJ, wondering what to do. I was up for the fun of it, but still - just for five bucks?

But then I thought it was a challenge and I wanted to partake. Getting JJ up couldn't be undoable if he wasn't about to mess up. I eyed him closely, head to foot. He was about my height, maybe even a little smaller, and slighter than one might think given the tough-guy image he liked to preserve among the kids at school. "Let's consider for a moment that I'm doing it, just how am I going to get you up there?"

He waved it off. "Easy. I'll just have to stand on your shoulders for a moment to grab a hold of the branch. That'll be it. Think you can lift me?"

"Well, if you think you can get up on my shoulders, consider me in." I stood up, putting my empty lunch box into my backpack. "Just for the record, I don't think that five dollars are worth the trouble, but it does piss off the teachers, so - hell, yeah, let's go!"

"Five bucks are five bucks, though," JJ muttered, coming after me.

I had no intention of making him share the reward, figuring that he might need the money more than I did. For my age, I had a pretty good idea of how the world worked and that money was the one thing that made it go round. And I figured that there was probably a reason that JJ never brought any lunch to school, and most likely it wasn't because he ate it all before school every day.

I briefly wondered if it was worth a try to get Mattie to increase the reward, but I also knew that it was unlikely he'd agree.

The tree we were talking about was in the middle of the schoolyard. It had been tried to climb before, but after a boy had broken his leg, falling down some years back, more often than not a teacher was hovering nearby to interfere with any attempts. Not at this moment, though - but we would have to be quick.

When the other kids saw us walking straight towards the tree, quite a few of them came to look what we were up to, drawing even more attention to us. Thankfully there was still no teacher in sight.

"Okay, good, now put your hands together," said JJ as we reached the trunk. "And stand with your back against the tree." He straightened his shoulders and shifted his weight from side to side a couple of times, getting ready to climb.

I stood with my back against the tree trunk, and held my hands waist high, fingers interlocked. I bent my knees a little bit so JJ could put his foot into my hands. He was quite agile, I knew that from PE classes. With enviable ease, he pushed himself upwards, first gripping my shoulders for a second to gain his balance and, as I pushed him a little further up, he held onto the tree, one foot now on my shoulder.

When he was finally standing upright, both feet planted safely on my shoulders, he reached up to grab the branch and before I knew it his weight was lifted off me and he pulled himself up onto the branch. Seconds later he was hanging upside down, giving me the thumbs up.

His face had disappeared into his t-shirt, which had slipped down, exposing his torso. I noticed that his skin bore a lot of faded bruises all over, and I thought to myself that he must really be looking for chances to get into fights with other kids. Outside of school, though - because fights at school didn't happen that often - not often enough to explain the amount of bruising he bore anyway (it wasn't much later that I found out where most of the bruises did really come from).

Many other students had gathered around us, some of which were cheering and whistling, others were staring up, disapprovingly.

"He's going to fall down on his head, and then that's gonna be it," Pope Heyward said, standing next to me, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

I shot him a quick glance. We weren't close friends at the time, but he was a decent guy, always ready to let me copy his homework whenever I needed it.

"You're being quite negative here, Pope," I told him. "How about I bet you that I can do it, too? Would you give me five dollars for it?"

"The hell I will."

"I would," said a girl's voice behind me. It was Kiara Carrera. She was grinning at me, her long curly hair framing her face as she turned to look up the branch, where JJ was still dangling from. "Can't help you up, though."

Kiara's offer had sparked my ambition to climb up myself, and I was turning towards the crowd, wondering if anybody was ready to help me. The money still wasn't the main driver for me but I was curious if I could do it just as easily and as gracefully as JJ.

But of course it never got to that as the teachers had finally taken notice of the crowd of students surrounding the tree and they were coming at us already, yelling for JJ to come down and asking questions on who had helped him get up.

Since it was strictly forbidden to climb the tree due to the aforementioned accident (that had resulted in a broken bone), it got us both in detention that afternoon. But it also got me two dollars out of the five that Mattie Miller had given to JJ for winning the bet (he insisted that I take the money).

And it got me a new friend. And I figured that he and I were likely to have a lot of fun together.

Up until now he never disappointed me in this regard.

XXX

A/N: I hope you liked it :) I'd love a comment, if you'd like to read more.

Please keep in mind that this was written from a German perspective, and also I've tried to write eight-year-olds, an age that is very very far away from me at this point of my life. I hope it all made sense …

I would love a beta reader for this and other OBX stories I've written or have in mind. So if anyone's willing to help, do let me know! Thanks!