Becoming Flynn - a kissing booth fan fiction

Twelve

A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to post the next chapter - the end of year was crazy and I've needed a bit of time to recover from the festive period! For those of you who celebrate, I hope you had the chance to connect with your friends and family over the holidays. From now on I will be trying to post weekly on this story. I'm also working on an original story that I'm going through and editing now, so I hope to share it with you soon. Happy New Year!

Middle school is fine. Actually, it's way better than elementary school was. I like not having the same teacher for everything. My math teacher, Mr Rigby, gives me extra work, which sounds bad but at least it's not boring. It's not exactly hard, either, but it's definitely not as boring as fifth grade math was.

English is also better than last year. I'm in an advanced class which means I don't have to sit around waiting for people to finish their work so much. It does mean more homework, though. Right now I'm supposed to be writing a short story about a topic of my choosing. But I'm having trouble getting started. Creative writing's not really my thing.

I like reading books and writing book reports, but coming up with my own stories is hard. That's always been more Lee's thing. He's the one always making up stories and writing stupid skits. Well, him and Elle, obviously. It's not like those two ever do anything on their own. Wherever one is, the other's not far away. Probably lucky for Lee, because Elle calms down his crazy ideas a bit. Otherwise it would probably be all crazy, all the time with Lee. Elle brings Lee back to earth.

Thinking about Elle and Lee gives me an idea for my story. I start writing. It's about a boy who wants more than anything to fly. He finds a magic lamp and a genie pops out of it. The genie grants the boy his wish, but because he didn't ask specifically enough, the genie plays a trick and turns him into a helium balloon. The boy's friend quickly makes a wish, asking the genie to turn her into a piece of string tied to the balloon. The boy's brother grabs a hold of the string so they don't float away.

The brother keeps a hold of the string until he figures out how to ask the genie to turn them both back. The genie isn't happy about being outsmarted by the brother, but he grants the wish and the boy and his friend become people again. The only thing is, they don't remember what happened and don't believe the brother when he tries to tell them about it. The brother smashes the lamp so that nobody else can be tricked by the genie. The End. Well obviously I'll need to flesh it out, but I think it's a good outline for a short story.

What I'd like to be doing instead of writing the stupid story is playing football, which is also heaps better at middle school. We're still playing flag football, they won't let us start tackling in games until eighth grade. But we are getting taught how to tackle and block and practicing those skills in training. I'm fast and I have a good arm, so our coach thinks I might make a good quarterback in a couple of years. I told my dad and he now takes me to do extra throwing practice on the weekends.

Mom and Dad said I can go to football camp this summer, which is going to be awesome. Lee pitched a fit when he heard about it, so now he and Elle will be going to soccer camp at the same time. We'll still go to the beach house for the first part of summer, for Lee and Elle's birthday through to the Fourth of July weekend. After that though, we'll all go away and I won't see them for six weeks. Kind of sounds awesome, if you ask me.

Don't get me wrong, I like my brother, but he can be a bit annoying sometimes. Especially when I'm stuck with him 24 hours a day, like over the school break. Elle is fine, she's kind of funny, but I never really get to hang out with her without Lee being there, so she kind of becomes annoying by association. Plus, she's basically a little kid. She's short and kind of scrawny which probably makes her look even younger than she actually is.

The girls at my school, however, some of them are definitely not little kids. The eighth grade girls, especially. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but there's something about them that I find very interesting. Some of them look nice in their school uniforms. I kind of hate wearing the school uniform, but really, at least I don't have to think about what clothes to wear to school. White or blue shirt and grey shorts, check. It's a bit weird that the middle school has a uniform, but it's kind of joined to the high school, and that has a uniform, so I guess it makes sense.

I think Mom kind of hates the uniform, too. But maybe that's because she's already had to buy me new ones and we're only halfway through the school year. I grew over winter break. Like, a lot. I can't wait to go to the beach house in summer and see how much taller I am than I was last year. I'm pretty much the tallest in my grade now. I think Elliot might be just taller than me, maybe. He's my friend, though, so I don't really care.

I made a few new friends this year, and I still had some from my old school, too, but I wouldn't say that I have a proper best friend. Not since Ryan moved. He's been to my house for sleepovers and stuff, but it's not the same as being at school together all the time. I'm hoping his parents will let him come to the same football camp as me, at least then we can spend some of summer break together.

My friends and I did all go to the spring dance at school, which I thought would be kind of stupid, and it was, except for one thing. Or rather, one person. Becky Phillips. She's in seventh grade and I thought she was pretty. She has blue eyes and long blonde hair that's always in these braids that look like it must take ages to do each morning. But at the dance, she wasn't wearing the braids, she had her hair out and it was so long she probably could have nearly sat on it. It was all wavy like a mermaid's hair, and I told her that when I saw her in the hall outside the gym during the dance.

She smiled at me and told me that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Then she leaned in and kissed me on the lips. It was over really quickly and she ran back inside the gym. I didn't see her for the rest of the night, but at school the next Monday, she came over to me at lunch when I was sitting with my friend Aaron. She looked nervous, and I was too. She'd really just said hi when one of her friends came over, asking why she was talking to sixth graders. Aaron said it was because we had kissed at the dance and her friend laughed. Becky blushed and said that it wasn't true, that he was lying. 

Her friend laughed and dragged her away. I've never felt so embarrassed in all my life. Aaron asked me if I'd lied and I got pretty angry. I told him that Becky was the liar, not me. I'm not a liar, I wouldn't make something like that up. The last couple of weeks have been pretty crap at school. I'd only told a couple of my friends that Becky and I had kissed, but they had told some other kids and so people started saying crap behind my back. I've seen her a couple of times in the hall, but she won't look at me. 

Like I said, I used to think she was pretty, but now I just think she's a liar.

Honestly, I just want it to be summer again, so I can go to the beach house and forget all about it.