#36 – Choices
Marco
In the end, I lost. I lost by approximately two feet, or a quarter of a second. Couldn't have possibly been any closer…but I lost. And a bet's a bet.
I'll give you the short version of what happened. Jake had to go out of town with his folks for the weekend. The other five of us met at the barn on Sunday afternoon, just to make sure everything was cool before Jake got home on Monday morning. You know, to make sure we had our stuff together, so Jake wouldn't freak out that the world would fall apart with him gone for two days.
The meeting started off fine. Nobody was arguing. I made one little comment about being the best morpher beside Cassie, and Rachel took exception to it. She made me a challenge – a "morphing triathlon."
"We sprint as humans from here to the woods," she'd proposed, looking so cocky it was almost comical. "Once we hit the tree line, we morph wolf. In wolf morph, we race to the stream by Ax's scoop. Once we touch water, we demorph and morph birds of prey. Then it's an aerial sprint back to the barn. The first one through the loft is the winner."
"Oh, you're so on," I'd said. My osprey morph was way faster than her big, clunky bald eagle. "What do you say…twenty bucks to the winner?"
She'd pondered that for a minute. "Nah, no money. There's got to be more at stake than that. I want to make sure I get your very best."
I'd grinned and shot a glance at Tobias, who was perched in the barn loft and watching us intently. "All right. If I win, you have to make out with me for thirty seconds. And you have to pretend to enjoy it."
Rachel shuddered and grimaced…but it was put-on. I think. "Fine," she agreed. "But if I win, you have to wear my Rob Thomas shirt to school on Monday and wear it all day. No jacket, nothing to cover it up. Do we have a deal?"
I knew the shirt she was talking about. It was a skin-tight, hot pink t-shirt cut for girls. No way I'd ever be able to live that down…but there was no way I could lose this race. "You're on."
Monday morning rolled around, and I was one of the first stops for the bus to school. It was pretty much empty when I got on. The bus driver gave me a look as I tried not to look self-conscious in the girl's shirt as I boarded the bus. The two girls already on the bus woke up all the way in order to laugh hysterically. I sighed, took my seat at the back, and prepared myself for a day full of stuff like that.
I was almost desensitized to the smart-assed comments and giggles and stares by the time the bus got to Jake's stop. He sleepily trudged to the back of the bus to take his usual seat beside me, but stopped short of sitting down when he saw what I was wearing. He stared for a moment before rolling his eyes and saying, "Do I even want to know?"
"Probably not," I replied moodily. "Bet with Rachel." That should have been all the explanation he needed.
He nodded, like he'd been expecting something of this magnitude or worse while he was away. "You have to wear that God-awful thing all day?" he asked, almost sympathetically.
"All day," I confirmed glumly.
He glanced around, and took a seat two rows up from me. He looked back and shrugged apologetically, like not sitting with me wasn't even his decision to make. Like it was a no-brainer.
I didn't hold it against him. I wouldn't have sat with him, either, if the situation were reversed. I just sighed heavily and said, "Sometimes I really, really regret the choices I make in my life."