Treehouse

Lucas

"I know what you are going to say," Felecia sighs, eyelids drooping. "Summer is half way over and we are about to go into seventh grade so we should stop acting like best friends, right?"

Felicia throws a tennis ball against the wall, waits half a second for it to bounce off, and catches it.

"No, I'm not going to say that, well I mean yeah, but not that way." For some reason I can't say the right words; everything gets jumbled up and I just end up with this big bowl of word soup that pours out of me.

"Lucas, you say that every summer. Remember when we built this tree house? You made a pact when we first used the zip line that you'd never discriminate me because I was a girl." Felicia knows her facts, and I hate it.

I look at the zip line between our tree and the other. We had built the zip line so we could reach the oak we had our treehouse on. Our treehouse was amazing, it was fifteen feet off the ground, had a balcony, a living room, and a bathroom (port-a-potty). Every month of each summer they would make a new room, do repairs, of make furniture, everything was perfect, but the most important thing was that nothing was safe. The zipline was thirteen feet off the ground and it was just a rope, Felicia had brilliantly made the zip line only function with two people, to go up one person had to crank the rope until the other got up, then they would send down the rope. Then for the other to get up they had to switch the cables.

"But Felly, you know we can't do this this year, the basketball team wants me to join, and you know that you should go to your genius school, you know it. You are a high school college girl and you know our paths are much different. We need to split up," I try to reason.

"Lucas, I despise that name", Felicia huffs. "And don't try to get all cheesy with me here and give me garbage about 'different paths'. Why do you want to stop our friendship anyway? It's cowardly of you to run away from something like this."

The way she puts it stings. Its not my fault she is so smart and that I'm athletic.

"Oh, I'm sorry that I'm trying to stop you from getting teased," I shoot at her.

"Stop being so daft, it's just because of that girl you fancy," Felicia scoffs. Suddenly she looks like the time she realized I was the one who stole all her snacks. "It is, isn't it?! Isn't it?! You do like her, right? Don't you?" Her tone is accusatory, like it's a crime to like someone.