The Afterlife

Chapter 3

Over the next few months, Eric and I didn't really give a second thought to what Mia had been talking about.

          We had lots of tests, (Eric surprisingly did well in his science) and we were too busy studying. I had gotten over 86% on all of them, and I was pretty happy.

         My mom's stomach got bigger and bigger and she was going to go to her ultrasound soon.

Eric's little brother, Mike, and my little sister were both ten, and they too, knew each other since they were born. But recently, every time Mike walked into the room, or Christina walked into the room, they would both blush a deep red.

Eric and I thought this was very funny and cute.

We walked into the cafeteria, and just as we got a table,  Mia sat right beside Eric and stared at him, batting her eyelashes.

He gave me a look that obviously said,'Help!' but I just grinned at him.

He looked furious after that.

 “What?” I asked Eric as we went into our classroom for socials. He still looked mad.

“She seems nice enough.”

“Yeah, I appreciate that, but maybe I don't want her breathing down my neck constantly.” he whispered.

Just then, Mia sat down at the desk next to him and smiled.

I tried very hard to hold my childish laughter in.

I sat beside Eric, like I always did, and I saw Mia slightly frown.

“What's wrong?” I asked her.

She sighed. “Well, you always seem to sit next to Eric and he doesn't look like he minds. Don't lie to me. Is there something going on between the two of you?”

“What?!” me and Eric said together.

“Of course there isn't!” I laughed, “He's my best friend since I was born, that would be way too weird!”

“Yeah.” Eric interjected. But then a second later, he looked as though he had said the wrong thing.

“Oh thank god!” Mia said happily. “That means I can give you this!” she handed Eric a folded up piece of paper.

He tried to hide the fact that it was kind of stupid of her to give him a note when she was talking to him anyways. But, again, Eric was too nice.

Eric unfolded the piece of paper under his desk, and appeared to be reading it. Then he quickly folded it up again, and gave an obvious forced smile towards Mia. Kind of like a wince.

Mr. Langston, our socials teacher, started to ramble on about  the Ancient Greeks.

                                                                        *         *           *

After school, Eric and I walked up the hill towards our street.

I had asked what the note said, but he said he'd show me at his house.

We made it to his home and he unlocked the door. I always liked Eric's house; it was nice and homey, bright, and for some reason it always smelt like freshly baked cookies.

We past Mike and he was sitting doing his homework.

"Do you need any help?" I asked.

Mike shook his head and put his hand over something  on the top of his page.

Eric saw this and tickled him. Mike brought both his hands up to stop Eric, and I quickly glanced at what he was hiding.

'U looove C.C!!' it read.

It was in pen and Mike had obviously tried to cross it out. Hmmm. C.C.

I think I had an idea who that was.

Eric and I headed up to his bedroom and I sat on his desk in the corner.

“Okay, so here.....you can read it” he said, flattening the piece of paper and handing it to me.

“Dear Eric,” it read, “4 the past few years, I had secretly admired u. I mean, ur cute, funny, amazing, sporty,etc,. I always thought u didn't like me, but I decided 2 b positive. Will u be my bf??????????

 Check yes or no.”

Seriously. This wasn't texting, couldn't she write real words?

At the bottom of the page there were two boxes. One big one with a 'Y' the other with a 'N', the 'N' looking much smaller and unappealing than the 'Y'.

“Oh..” I said, and I looked up at Eric.

“Yeah. And I have no idea what to do. I mean she's nice and all but I don't see her that way. I want to say no but I really don't want to hurt her feelings!!”

“Oh, so that's why when we told her there wasn't anything going on between us, you suddenly looked alarmed.” I said.

 “Wait a minute.” Eric said. “What if we do tell her we're together? Then she might leave me alone, and would understand.”

I thought about this. “Yeah... maybe. But wouldn't she be hurt even more because we didn't " tell her" today?” I personally didn't like his idea.

“Good point” Eric said.

“Yeah, so maybe when you check 'no' you can write a short letter to her back saying something like 'I'm flattered but I see you only as a friend right now, and you're really nice, blah blah blah.'”

Eric agreed, and scribbled something down, folded it up and tucked it in his back pack.

After we finished our homework, I went home.

I opened the front door and my mom and dad were standing there, smiling ear to ear like they had done the day they told me she was pregnant. At that exact moment, Christy walked into the room too.

“It's a boy!” my mom said happily, gently patting her stomach.

My heart jumped.

“Really??!!” I ran over to the three of them and we had a big group hug.

We all wanted a little boy, Christy was grinning, and I could see she was excited by the idea that she would be the middle child and would have a little brother to look after.

My dad also looked very pleased by the fact that he wouldn't be the only male in the family as well.

“We have about a month to go,” he said happily, “Then after a few years, the two of us can go to all the places you two girls didn't want to go to.”

Me and Chrissy glanced at each other and smiled.

It wasn't our fault that we didn't want to go to sweaty hockey arenas far away.

We ate a nice dinner, and we were all thinking of names for our baby boy.

Christy thought of “Lucky” which made us all laughed.

She said it was for dad because he was the only male in the family.

My mom was thinking 'Tal' or 'John'  but my dad wanted a 'Kyle'.

I didn't really think of anything special, and told my family he wasn't going to be born for another

month so we had tons of time.

Christy was predicting that our little brother would be very smart and become a scientist, and my mom was proud of this idea.

I wondered what it would be like, growing up with him.

When he was a pre-teen, perhaps a skateboarder, and he would come to my wedding in a suit but holding his long-board under his arm.

Or when me and Christy will give him advice on how to be polite around girls.

At that moment I just realized how excited I really was.