A COMEDY OF FEW KIDNAPPINGS

We suck!

We suck!

“I think we are going to the State Championship this year!”

All of the heads in the boy’s locker room whipped to face the freckled faced junior standing in the middle of the locker room in a pair of basketball shorts, whose face was quickly becoming red and contorted with a perplexed look replacing his previous enthusiastic demeanor.

A burst of abrupt laughter from all of the guys filled the locker room and the boy squirmed and shifted from one foot to another looking thoroughly confused and embarrassed. Andrew slowly looked away from the boy and scoffed mentally. Must be a new guy, he thought.

“Don’t worry, you’ll learn soon enough!” Andrew saw Reggie consoling the boy, patting his shoulders as though he pitied him, his body still shaking from the receding effects of the sudden outburst of laughter.

Highly unlikely! Andrew thought as he wore his tee-shirt and started wearing his shoes. If the disastrous practice session didn’t teach him anything, then the guy must be a numbskull. Andrew reminisced back to HIS first time in the basketball team. Was he this naïve too?

Nobody in the basketball team…hell, even the coach and the rest of the school had any illusions that they were any good. They were lucky if they even got through to the second round of the regional qualifiers and they knew that. Though once Andrew did have a dream of becoming a NBA player someday. It was one of the reasons why he wanted to join the basketball team. The others reasons were promptly in the following order- impress the ladies, get a nice grade in P.E and also because he did kinda liked playing basketball despite his inability of playing the sport well.

Remembering his reasons for joining the basketball team, Andrew laughed mentally. He WAS naïve indeed! In his defense, he did learn pretty quickly that though he’ll be getting good grades in P.E, the girls would be far from being impressed. How can they be anyway? Hardly anybody came to watch their games (which were few and far out), even when they were the home team! Nobody could blame them for not coming though. After all who would want to see their school team getting creamed?

He finished tying the laces of his shoes and got up and stood beside his buddy Mack, waiting for him to get ready. Mack Nett. His best friend since his kindergarten days. He has also been living next door to Andrew’s ever since he could remember. He would use the term BFF for him but he always thought that using abbreviated slangs like LOL and TTYL made him sound like an airhead chick. Also Andrew was bothered by the light use of the word forever. Nothing lasts forever and he would rather not use it lightly. Even if he absolutely had to use a term to describe his friendship with Mack, he would instead go for ‘best friends since forever’. BFSF. Hm…it did sound quite catchy to him. Maybe it could get popular too?

“Hey, did you get your History assignment done?”

Andrew suddenly remembered the insurmountable task he had in front of him. They were given the assignment a week back and it was due the day after tomorrow. Obviously, like him, his friend hadn’t gotten around to doing it too. He couldn’t blame him. He himself had been distracted while searching the web for information on World War-II and research had been reduced to just playing COD.

“Nah! Haven’t even started it yet. But I did borrow a book from the library. That reminds me; I think I left it in my locker. Wait for me in the parking lot, I’ll meet you there.”

“It’s OK. I’ll come with you. I have to get some things from my locker too.”

Their lockers were next to each other. As Andrew started raking through the mess in there to find the book, he chastised himself for the thousandth time for not cleaning the mess. He didn’t mind the clutter of unwanted substances as much as the stink. It was only after it started smelling like a sweaty shoe infested with foot fungus, did he even considered cleaning it. He suspected that something must have died in there but didn’t dare clean it himself if that was the case. He wondered if could hire cleaning services to do it for him…

“Heads up man, Andy’s coming this way!” his friend whisper yelled at him and started hurrying.

Andrew’s head snapped from his friend following the direction he was looking at so fast that his neck creaked. But he was more worried about the ‘pain in ass’ coming towards them than the pain in his neck. He saw Andrea bounding towards them and hoped that the hurricane pass them by. But Andrew’s wishes hardly did come true.

“Andrew, we need to talk”

Ah, the dreadful words of the devil herself! He wanted to do a lot of things, but talking to his ex really wasn’t one of them.

“I’ll wait for you in the parking lot dude.” Mack declared as he closed his locker and promptly walked away from them before Andrew could say anything. Most people may call it his politeness, giving his friend space to discuss his private matters. But in Andrew’s book, it definitely counted as treachery. It was times like this when Andrew considered dumping his ‘best friend’ for forever.

Seeing no other excuses for avoiding the horrifying conversation that he knew was about to come, he reluctantly turned to face the impatient brunette who kept tapping her foot as if she can’t wait to start their painful exchanges.