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Lake got an A on the quiz, as he had been forced to watch The Hunger Games with his twin sister once.
(Lake: XP +5)
The next day was Friday, but not much happened as the school week came to a close. On Friday night, Stanislaus and Jimmy went out to eat with their respective families, and happened to both end up at the same deli. Things quickly turned sour when Jimmy ordered an iced tea and decided to suck on the lemon that came with it, but the night ended on a sweeter note when both boys ordered chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
(Stanislaus: XP +1, Jimmy added as friend)
(Jimmy: XP +1, Stanislaus added as friend)
Xander rolled out of bed the next morning sore after taking a nasty fall while skateboarding the previous afternoon. He winced in pain as his scraped knee rubbed against the carpeted floor of his bedroom. “Crap!” the youngster exclaimed as he got himself up from the floor and began getting ready for the exciting day ahead. He started by showering (the hot water burned his knee, causing even more pain), then put on his favorite white Nike “SB Chronicles” T-shirt and a pair of blue shorts. He carefully slid a pad over his injured right knee and walked into the kitchen, where his brother Thomas was cooking up some potato hash and grits.
Thomas had a birthday—his sixteenth—coming up, and it was no secret that Thomas was expecting a big party. Xander knew that his dad had other plans, but refused to spill the beans to his older brother. Likewise, Thomas knew what their father was planning for Xander’s party that afternoon, but had kept his lips sealed for a week and wasn’t planning on ruining the surprise now.
Xander keeps saying “I like you” to me…I wonder if he means…
That’s it, I’ll take him aside and ask him at the party today.
Xander loaded up at breakfast, then went back to his room to brush his teeth and mess with his long, blonde hair, which he ultimately decided to wear messy that day. He then went back into the living room, where he and Thomas played video games for a couple hours until it was time to get ready to go down to the park.
The one thing Xander did know about the party was that he needed his skateboard, but that wouldn’t be a problem, as the park and the restaurant were so close by that Xander could skate all the way there if he wanted—and he had been begging his dad to let him ride down to the park alone, so riding there with his brother and father just behind him was a very appealing option to the floppy-haired twelve-year-old. Xander strapped on his helmet and the rest of his pads for the quick, ten-block cruise to the park.
When Xander got to the park, he was surprised to see that no one was there. Well, almost no one. There were a few guys hanging out who Xander thought looked familiar, and his dad went one by one introducing (and, in some cases, re-introducing) them to his youngest, starting with a couple of his friends and fellow skateboarders. “And this is Malcolm McCassy,” Mr. Woods said when he got to the end of the line. “The Malcolm McCassy?” a wide-eyed Xander gasped. “The very same. Pleasure to meet you, Xander,” the founder of well-known skate brand Ethika said as he extended his right hand. Xander stuck out his right hand, locked eyes with Mr. McCassy, grabbed hold of his (much larger) hand, and pumped it up and down twice before letting go.
A starstruck Xander wobbled over to his dad. “Dad, w-why are all these people here?”
“First of all, this isn’t everyone,” his dad replied, “and you’ll soon see why they’re here, when the guests show up.”
Xander shrugged and decided to just skate around the halfpipe for however long it took his guests to arrive. That turned out to be just under thirty minutes, as Thurgood showed up first.
“Stubbs! What’s up, dude?” Xander dismounted and walked over to his friend.
“So, uh, Xander, I was wondering…Uh, I mean, you keep saying that you “like” me, but, uh…”
Xander looked around to make sure no one else was listening, then looked back at Thurgood disgustedly. “Dude, *(censored)* no,” he blurted out. Thurgood lowered his head and started to walk away. “C’mon, dude, I didn’t mean it like that. I like you as a friend. You’re a funny guy. But I'm...I don't...not like that,” Xander explained. Thurgood smiled and perked back up.
Before long, other guests started showing up. There were about a dozen boys and half that many girls from Walker Grove, plus about ten of Xander’s other friends. At exactly two P.M., Mr. Woods gathered everyone together to introduce everyone and go over the party proceedings. “I see that many of you brought your own skateboards. If you wish, you can participate in either a free skate around the bowl, or you can take this chance to learn from some of the pros, like myself and a couple of my friends that I brought,” he told the assembled boys and girls. “At the end, everyone will get a chance to pick up some gifts, courtesy of Mr. McCassy—“ Mr. McCassy waved “—and then we’ll all load up in a bus and head to dinner. There might be an additional surprise after dinner,” he said.
The twenty-seven kids then all took off, simultaneously but in no less than five separate directions. Some headed toward the skatepark area, some headed toward the fields, some headed toward the picnic tables, others went up to thank Mr. Woods, and still others dashed toward the restrooms as if they had been holding it in the whole time.
In a nearby grassy area, a group of boys were attempting to start a game of hide-and-seek. A sixth-grader who Thurgood did not recognize was trying to round up enough to get a good game going, and Thurgood agreed to play. “Nose goes!” the boy said, and Thurgood was last to touch his nose and was declared “it”.
At the picnic tables, a group of eight kids—six girls and two boys—were talking loudly, although they were pretty far away from everyone else and no one could really hear them. One of the boys, Sam Gow, was known for being quite the flirt, and rumors had gone around that he had even slept with an eighth-grade girl once. Sam had initially denied these rumors, but a year after the rumor had begun circulating, he had learned to use it to his advantage (or so he thought), no longer downplaying but rather openly talking about his personal life. Most girls brushed him off, but this group was unlike most of the girls at Walker Grove. Sam went on and on about how hot he was, and finally one of the girls decided to challenge him. “If you’re so confident in how hot you look, why don’t you take your shirt off and let us girls judge for ourselves?” Caroline Little teased.
Johnny had grown thirsty, and decided to go get a drink from the water fountains by the restroom. As he turned the corner, he noticed a couple of older boys leaning against the wall, but ignored them. After he got a drink, however, the boys—there were actually three of them—blocked his path. They certainly weren’t there for Xander’s party, as they all looked to be at least 16 years old. “Hey!” Johnny shouted. One of the boys shushed Johnny, and the other two fumbled around to pick up a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of beer. “Your pick. Smoke a cigarette or drink the beer and we’ll let you go. Or else we’ll beat you up.”
Xander hugged his dad, grabbed his skateboard, and dashed over to the bowl, where a handful of kids were already skating—most of them freely skating, although one boy was discussing something with one of the pro skateboarders—and at least a dozen more were watching or getting ready to skate themselves. To Xander’s surprise, Jaxon Stills was neither skating nor warming up. He was instead laying in the grass, a striped tank top laying by his side and his blue shorts pulled down to show his Ethika waistband. The studs he usually took out when he was skating were still slotted in his ears, and a gray beanie cap was slung low, almost covering his eyes. “Jaxon,” Xander started, “what’s up?” Jaxon looked up. “Xander! Happy birthday, dude!” He giggled. “C’mon dude, I know you know it’s not my birthday. But seriously, what’s up? I expected to see you out there catching air, not flopped down in the grass!”
Thurgood covered his eyes and began to count. “One, two, three…” Everyone else ran off to find a hiding spot. “Twenty! Ready or not, here I come!” Five other kids were playing the game, and Thurgood quickly spied one of them still looking around for somewhere to hide. “Ha, gotcha!” he said as he tagged the boy, and the two of them went looking for everyone else. One boy was hiding behind a bush and was easily spotted. Another boy had hidden behind a tree. Then there were only two girls left.
Sam grinned and raised his arms, lifting the red T-shirt off of his body and over his head. Sam had been working on a six-pack for the better part of a year, and as the girls marveled about his abs, he started to get excited.
Johnny thought for a moment, then reached for the beer. The boy holding it lifted it higher, out of Johnny’s reach. “Oh, come on!” Johnny frustratedly yelled. “You gotta solve a riddle, kid,” the boy told Johnny. “Okay…” Johnny wasn’t very good with riddles, but these kids didn’t look like the type to think of anything very clever. “Okay. Here it is: What two things can you never eat for breakfast?”
Jaxon sighed and sat up. “I busted my board the other day,” he told Xander, “and I haven’t saved up enough to get a new one.” Xander shook his head. “That must suck.” Jaxon nodded. “Dude, you don’t know how bad it hurts to not be able to get out and skate with everyone else. But I’m still having fun watching and hanging out,” he told his friend. They fist-bumped, and Xander quickly shed his “Kanye for President” T-shirt and began skating.
The four boys split up in an attempt to cover more ground and hopefully find the two remaining hiders more easily. They had established a boundary, and the boys decided to each go to one corner of the boundary they had laid out and work inward from there. Thurgood quickly figured out that the two girls had to be hidden in his quadrant, as there simply wasn’t anywhere to have hidden in the other three. However, searching the entire area proved difficult due to the large amount of bushes and thorns scattered around the already gargantuan square of land. Thurgood called the other three boys over, and they searched the square together and finally found one of the two girls, hiding inside one of the rosebushes. The other girl told them that she had climbed up a tree and hidden on one of its branches. The six of them decided to play another game, and Thurgood remembered that he had brought a frisbee and went over to get it. When he reached the picnic table he had set it down on, he took a look around at the other picnic tables, and saw Sam Gow blush and run away.
“What’s going on?” he asked when he walked over to the picnic table. “He got…excited,” Caroline explained. “He wanted to show off his abs, and, well…” Thurgood understood. “I see. Do any of you want to play a game of ultimate frisbee? I promise it’ll be fun,” he told the seven remaining kids. Tyler Peterman immediately agreed to play, and five of the girls also accepted his invitation, with only Caroline deciding to go elsewhere—over to the skatepark to see what was going on over there.
“Oh, come on. That’s easy. The answer is lunch and dinner. Now let’s get this over with.” Johnny grinned and reached for the beer. “Hey! What’s going on back here?” Mr. Woods came around the corner on his way to the restroom. The tallest boy dropped the pack of cigarettes and ran off in some arbitrary direction, and the other two followed after him, leaving Mr. Woods alone with the frightened sixth-grader. Mr. Woods took the beer bottle from Johnny and tossed it in the trash, along with the cigarettes, then took Johnny back towards the park, reassuring him that the boys wouldn’t come back. Johnny decided to go over to the skatepark to check out what was going on.
By four o’clock, there were no less than a dozen kids skateboarding, and everyone else was watching on as several of the kids started a fun little competition—similar to a game of H-O-R-S-E in basketball, one kid would do a trick and everyone else would have to do the same or get a letter. They decided to spell out S-K-A-T-E, and there were nine competitors in total: Xander, Charlie Pickett, Tucker and Simon Simmons, and five kids from other schools, all sixth-graders: Jackson Long, Zack Byrd, Marcus Howland, Trent Thompson, and the lone girl in the competition, Monique Harris.
Most of the boys decided to go shirtless for the competition, although Charlie kept on his tie-dye tank top and Jackson wore a gray T-shirt. Monique also kept her Padres tee on. As everyone came over to form an audience, Mr. McCassy looked around and smiled when he saw that a couple of the boys in the competition were wearing his underwear, and observed that several of the boys in the crowd had also taken off their shirts and were wearing Ethikas as well.
Xander started off the competition with an easy trick, a simple drop-in from the top of a tall ramp. All of the others handled that one pretty easily, though Trent faltered a bit. Xander next tried a pivot fakie, which gave him a leg up on some of the competition as Simon, Zack, and Trent all failed to land the trick. Xander did a power ollie next. And on went the competition, until only five were left: Xander, Charlie, Jackson, Marcus, and Monique, with all the others having already picked up five letters and been eliminated. Jackson and Charlie were close to elimination with both boys spelling out S-K-A-T; Monique had three letters, and both Xander and Marcus were still perfect, Marcus having matched every one of Xander’s tricks even as they increased in difficulty.
The audience oohed and aahed as Xander landed a few more tricks. Marcus finally faltered, and both Jackson and Charlie were eliminated. Monique matched all of Xander’s tricks, though, and soon both she and Marcus had four letters, while Xander had finally slipped and messed up a couple.
Marcus next tried a McTwist, and when he and Monique failed, the audience eyed Xander intently to see what he would do. “For the win!” Jaxon shouted from the grass, and Xander smiled and flashed a thumbs-up. Xander was what they liked to call a “student of the game” as far as skateboarding went, and he had watched a lot of Mike McGill tapes and tried to emulate some of his most famous moves, such as the McTwist he was about to attempt.
Xander dropped in off the top of the ramp, and rolled toward the other side of the halfpipe, building momentum as he went. When he reached the top of the ramp on the other side, he attempted an inverted 540…
I can’t believe I landed that. It’s been two years since I first tried a McTwist and I’ve only landed it one other time out of probably a hundred attempts…
Mr. Woods got everyone’s attention. “In about thirty minutes, we’re going to all walk down to Culver’s together. It’s only a few blocks away. After dinner, we’ll come back here.”
Almost all of the kids did one of four things next: went to the bathroom, hung out for a few more minutes, waited to leave, or went over to get their stuff. The weather was great outside, with the temperature still hovering around 65 degrees. Many of the boys had removed their shirts for one reason or another, and many of them kept them off despite Mr. Woods’s attempts to get everyone to follow the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule that this particular Culver’s didn’t seem to care to enforce.
Mr. Woods told everyone they could order a kids’ meal with either a ButterBurger or chicken tenders plus fries and a drink. After he took everyone’s orders, and ordered himself, he came back to the seating area—the kids had spread themselves out across eight different tables—with twenty-seven drink cups in hand, giving one to each kid until he reached the last table. He and the other adults sat at their own table nearby, discussing something in hushed voices, presumably so the kids couldn’t hear what they were talking about.
Every kids’ meal came with one Scoopie Token, which could be saved up to get prizes, and one coupon for a free scoop of frozen custard. All but three kids—two of them lactose-intolerant, the other stuffed from her meal—took the restaurant up on this offer, and Mr. Woods passed around a piece of paper for everyone to write their orders on. As everyone ate their (delicious) small sundaes, all the adults, save for Mr. Woods, left to go back to the park to set up for the next surprise.
When everyone got back to the park, five tables were set up, with one box sitting on each. “Mr. McCassy has been generous enough to bring boxes full of gifts for each of you,” Mr. Woods told the twenty-six remaining kids (Sam Gow had called his mom and ridden home shortly after being embarrassed). “Everyone will get a drawstring bag and a pack of stickers. You’ll all get one pick out of the Mystery Box, which is full of Ethika underwear, and finally everyone will get either a pair of boardshorts or a bikini. After you go through the line, come back here so we can get ready for the next journey.”
The next journey was a trip to a nearby swimming pool, and after every kid had filled up their new bag with gifts, they loaded up in a rented bus to drive down to the pool. On the way there, everyone discussed what they had gotten out of the two “mystery boxes”. Each of the boxes represented a wide range of products, with the underwear ranging from cheaper solids to more expensive prints and performance fabrics and the swim gear being a total grab bag of various brands, styles, and sizes. Some kids traded around to get a size that would fit them or a style they preferred, but most were content with what they had gotten out of the boxes.
At the pool, everyone got a chance to change if they wanted, but about half of the kids decided to just swim in what they were already wearing. For about an hour, everyone splashed around and hung out in the pool, until it got too cold and too dark to swim any longer. At that point, kids started to slowly climb out of the pool, one by one, and make their way inside to dry off and wait for their parents to come pick them up. “In the end, everyone had fun, and isn’t that what matters?” Xander asked his dad as they watched the last of their guests depart.
(Thurgood: XP +5, Xander +10)
(Johnny: XP +5, Xander +10)
(Xander: XP +10)
(Matthew: XP +3, Xander +1)
(Cody: XP +3, Xander +1)
_________________
Olive - she/they // NAPOLI FOR MVP // post count doesn't matter
yeah that log's dead too- i mean on hiatus (yes that one too) (seriously all of them now lol) (haha unless...?)
"All people are good for something. The important thing is finding what." - Tom
BrewersFuzz wrote: PEDs wrote: i think we banned him cause he was an idiot glad i never got banned for that
Second Member of the 10,000 Post Cult
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