My Best Friend's Brother

Reese Cooks

Aria and Malcolm sat at the Wilkerson kitchen table doing homework when Hal came in and sat with them. “Hey. What are you doing there, kids?”

“I have to prove Kepler’s third law of planetary motion.” Malcolm replied casually. Hal paused and turned to Aria.

“I’m doing a comparison between the book and movie, The Outsiders.” Aria smiled. She really liked the book and movie, she was thinking about getting her dad to buy her the book and movie.

“What’s Dewey doing?” Hal asked.

“He’s coloring.”

“Well, I better get in there.” Hal stood and Reese suddenly came barging into the house.

“Dad, there’s this crazy guy chasing me. He’s saying I did some horrible things, but I couldn’t really understand him. I think he’s an escapee from the mental hospital.” There was a knock on the door and Reese stood up straight. “I didn’t hear anything.”

Hal opened the door and was greeted with one of their neighbors, as well as his son, his son’s hair was horribly shaven and the father was furious. “Hello, Hal.”

~~~

Aria was pleasantly surprised when Cynthia came up and handed her and the other four girls invitations. 

“What are these for?” Aria asked.

“I’m throwing a party and you five are invited.” She explained, “I was actually hoping you guys would perform.”

“Seriously?” Maggie smiled widely, all five girls were excited at the idea of performing for an actual crowd.

“Yeah, maybe you guys could perform a song or two before spending the rest of the time hanging out.”

“We’d love to!” Jane exclaimed and the other four quickly agreed.

“Great. We’ll sort out the details after school.” Cynthia smiled before she went back to passing out invitations, leaving the band to talk about what songs to play.

“Should we play a cover?” asked Emma, looking around the table.

“No way, we should play an original.” Tess disagreed.

“Why don’t we just do both? Cynthia said that we might be performing two songs anyway.” Maggie pointed out.

“Yeah, if we play two songs we’ll be prepared and we’ll choose one of the songs we’ve been working on during practice.” Aria nodded.

“What about the original? Has anyone written anything?” 

They were all silent as they looked at each other wondering if they were going to play an original or put another cover on the list. Aria hesitated before pulling out a notebook, flipping through the pages before stopping on a certain page.

“I still have to work on it but with your help we can get it done before the party.” The other four read of what she had and Tess began to tap on the table trying to find the right rhythm.

The five of them spent the rest of lunch finishing the song and they loved how it came out. Cynthia loved it too and all the girls had to do now was practice the songs. Malcolm wasn’t impressed with the idea of Cynthia having a party, he claimed it was because Krelboynes always have ‘Krelboyne parties’. Aria didn’t know what he meant by that but decided to ignore him so that he wouldn’t bring down her good mood.

~~~

A few days later Cynthia came back to where the girls were sitting, conversing about the party, and handed them slips of paper again.