Little Montgomery: A Station 19 Story

Chapter Ten: Bird Feeding

Hartley's POV:

I don't have any classes with Nick so as soon as the bell rings for lunch I walk to the hallway that Nick told me to meet him at. He's already there when I walk up.

Hartley: Hi.

Nick: Hey. I-uh-I've got a bag of birdseed for the birds. It's in my locker. Apparently bread crumbs are really unhealthy for them, so...

Hartley: That's really cool, that you know that, I mean, I would've never thought of that. Sorry, I'm rambling.

Nick: It's cute.

Hartley(laughing a little bit): Thanks. You're cute too. I mean- shoot, you didn't call me cute. Oh, well, I think you're cute.

Nick: Thank you. And for the record, I was calling you cute.

Hartley: Oh, well that's good because otherwise that would have been very embarrassing for me.

Nick: Nah, you could never be embarrassed, you seem so calm and collected.

Hartley: Oh really? You must not know my history with microwaves.

Nick(laughing): What could you have possibly done to a microwave?

Hartley: I blew up two of them. By accident, of course!

Nick(laughing): Okay, I'm really going to need a full story here.

Hartley: Okay, so basically for one of the times, I was probably about 7, and we had burritos for dinner the night before, and the leftovers were wrapped in tinfoil. So I woke up at like 4 AM for absolutely no reason, and I was really hungry and wanted to eat the rest of my burrito, so I put it in the microwave, in the tinfoil, and I saw the blue sparks and thought it was really pretty so I watched it blow up.

At this point we both burst out laughing to the point where I can barely finish telling him what happened.

Nick(laughing): Wait, so you saw sparks and kept watching instead of realizing that sparks lead to fire? Who does this happen to?

Hartley(laughing): I was seven!

Nick: I think that's the funniest thing I've ever heard.

Hartley: Let's just say there's a reason my brother is the firefighter and not me.

He looks at me for a second and we stare at each other. Eventually we start laughing again.

Hartley: I'm sure you did some embarrassing stuff when you were little too, tell me.

Nick: Nothing as bad as blowing up a microwave.

Hartley: Oh, that makes me think it's worse. Come on, spill.

Nick: Alright, alright. I'll tell you. I...

He pauses for a few seconds.

Hartley: Tell me!

Nick: I got stuck on the top of the play structure in kindergarten. For two hours.

Hartley: Well that was anticlimactic.

Nick: I got stuck by my belt loop. So it looked like I was hanging by my underwear.

Hartley(laughing): Ohhh, there it is! Oh my gosh, that's amazing! I wish I could have seen that. That is so much worse than my microwave story!

Nick(laughing): It is not!

Hartley: It really is.

We're still laughing about our embarrassing stories when the bell rings for the end of lunch.