The Side Character Club (TSCC)

Ice Cream Should Help Us Un-Stupid

"Okay, this is plain stupid," I say, slamming the papers we so precariously wrote on the table.

We basically thought inside the box, outside the box, and thought the box to figure out how to present evidence that our enemy is supernatural. Of course, without revealing we're supernatural.

"Stupid doesn't even describe the bounds of this. In fact, no word could possibly describe how dumb we are because our brains are literally empty." Harper pinches her thumbs to her other fingers and expressively shifts them to a sudden stop, emphasizing the word empty. "All the things we wasted our time doing in English won't help us now."

"Well," Lucas starts, or tries to, because whatever he says, we're going to approve of, because Lucas-charm is working its way across us. Or more like a heavy dose of charisma and his side effect working its charm on us. "The best cure to supreme stupidity is supreme ice cream." He points his index finger in the air like he's trying to give an air of wisdom, and we all pause before bursting out laughing.

"Little bro, that is probably the most quotable thing you have said in your whole life!" Alessa laughs a bit too hard, and narrowly saves herself from falling off the couch she was sitting on, gripping on the armrest for dear life.

"Sure," Lucas says, stifling a laugh.

Gale clears her throat, and we all snap our heads to her. "I think the most quotable thing he said was actually 'our innocence never existed' - " Gale gets cut off, because Lucas wraps a hand around her mouth.

Everyone raises an eyebrow, and I smirk slightly. "Care for some context?"

Lucas winks at me, "I could care less about context, Cass." He unwraps his hand from Gale's mouth, hanging his arm around her shoulders, ready to wrap his hand around her mouth again if it's ever deemed necessary.

Cali clears her throat, just like Gale did a few minutes ago, and blinks at us. "I thought we were going to get ice cream?"

We blink back at her.

"Well, If you guys aren't getting ice cream, more for me!" She flips a dagger in the air and catches it, opening the door telepathically with a sly smile as she slips out smoothly. We all stare at each other, because what else would you do in that kind of situation?

After like a few seconds of complete stupefied silence, we all start going Planet of Apes, going crazy trying to get out the door, prying it open as we shove each other outside.

The trio's (Alessa, Cali, and Lucas's) mom sticks her head out from the kitchen, used to our teenage craziness. "Stay safe!" We kind of nod and hope she can see it, falling like dominos as the overstuffed door makes us squeeze out and lose our balance.

Cali is halfway down the block, but we can still hear the imaginary chingling of coins in our brains.

She turns and stops, calling out to us.

"Hurry up!" Lucas raises his eyebrow and walks faster toward her.

The poor people on the street start to have nosebleeds, and then quickly bring out that spare napkin they have just for this purpose, and then start chasing him with... love may be the wrong word, but, love in their eyes. His mood dampens, because I can feel his side effects loosening on me a bit, and he starts running as they chase him.

"Ahhhh!!! Why am I so cursed??????"

Gale runs up to catch up, fighting through the crowd, but I stay and walk at a slow pace.

"Maybe because it isn't a curse?" Gale shouts across the crowd.

Lucas runs into the ice cream store, and the owner quickly locks the door, having known us for a while and knowing we prefer to eat in peace. That and that we always eat enough ice cream to make him rich. I walk, and Gale and I somehow get to the front of the crowd, Alan and CJ acting like dividers and shoving them away for us.

The owner unlocks the door for one second, and with skills sharpened by practice, closes it and locks it as soon as we get through.

"Okay," Lucas says, shoveling strawberry ice cream into his mouth a few minutes later.

"Let's think. I think we can bring the note thingy as evidence, and maybe they can investigate the fire more? I seriously think that a droid finally manifested and went a bit cuckoo." Alessa taps the pen back and forth, each side hitting the table with a satisfying clicky noise.

CJ shakes his head, "Okie, look, simple as this: we play on their superstitions."

We all gasp and then choke on air, "Wait, but how?"

CJ looks up into the air and thinks inside the box, outside the box, and thinks the box and comes up with: "I actually don't really know. Oh, and Cali, why couldn't you just rewind time?"

Cali and Lucas start staring at each other, probably talking telepathically, and then Cali breaks away, finally looking at CJ. She starts to fiddle with her jacket buttons uncomfortably, a little nervous from being on the spot.

"I tried to, but I couldn't go back long enough. I'm sorry. I tried, I really tried..." She chokes on her words a bit, and Alessa hugs her with one arm. Cali looks up and musters a half-smile. "Oh, and you know there is a superstition that supernatural beings dwell in fire and take only one sacrifice into their domain?" She taps the table in thought, and we all think about the numerous superstitions Westborough has.

"Wait, she's right," I say, eating a bit more of my rocky road ice cream. "We can say that they started the fire, and left that note. I already removed the fingerprints and put it back at the scene with Alessa before, so they saw it already. We could use that as evidence."

Finally happy with making progress, we nod at each other, and Gale drinks her vanilla smoothie, hands in her pockets, as Lucas takes a straw out of his own smoothie and into her smoothie, drinking it.

"Now we just wait until they call a town meeting."

***A/N***

No idea what was going through my mind when I wrote this, so anyways.

That was fun???  Kind of???  Oh and yes, I actually do use the phrase "inside the box, outside the box, and thought the box" to describe my english program, which is basically like guessing what the person who made the program....

anyways cya,

writingshare123

Total Word Count: 1073

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