The Boy Down The Block

Chapter 2 - I'll Catch You

Upon Laurel’s recommendation, I had thrown on an old t-shirt, baggy nike sweatpants over my under armour compression shorts, and I threw my long, blonde hair up into a ponytail. I didn’t want it to look like I was trying too hard; after all, we were only going rock climbing.

Even though I was fourteen days into my summer vacation, I was still stuck on my sleeping schedule—so it was a piece of cake for me to wake up at six a.m. (after staying up for almost an hour between three and four a.m.), and be ready by seven. Laurel, of course, was still sleeping. But I needed to talk to her.

I grabbed a bag of sugar (my first choice would have been flour, but I didn’t need to get the white powder all over my clothes before meeting a cute guy), and stealthily dumped part of the bag into the Laurel’s pajama pants, and down her shirt. Carefully, I lined the back of her legs with it, and then poured the rest of its contents into her hair. Fortunately, she chose to abruptly become upright almost immediately after I had stepped a good three feet from her.

“RORY GET THEM OFF OF ME PLEASE,” she shouted. Laurel was terrified of anything that crawled.

I succeeded in controlling my laughter enough for to reply, “Great, now that you’re up, I need to talk to you.”

I heard Christopher running down the stairs, and once he was in the living room he shouted at Laurel to shut up. Laurel then proceeded to flip him off.

“I’m not cleaning this up,” he said.

“You know you’re going to, just go back to sleep,” I replied.

After I said that, he groggily walked back up the stairs, all the while Laurel was still shouting and was on the brink of tears. I walked over to soothe her, although I should have known it was coming. She punched me on the target bruise I had gotten from field hockey practice two days ago; it had already turned purple and blue in the middle, surrounded by a red and green circumference. It hurt like hell for her to do that, but I put up with it because I deserved it. I really shouldn't have scared her like that.

“Alright, we’re even, you may speak,” Laurel said.

“Do you think this is alright?” I turned in a circle for her to see, and she slapped my butt.

“You look fine, girlfriend,” she assured me.

“Thank you, darling,” I said.

She threw a bag of starlight peppermints at me, my favorite, and I unwrapped several then stuck them in my mouth. These were going to have to be my breakfast, Laurel and I ate all of the cereal last night, and I didn’t have time to make anything-- it was already seven fifty.

“GET GOING, I WONT LET YOU BE LATE!” Laurel literally pushed me out of the door without a second glance. 

I started down the sidewalk, the rock climbing gym was only a ten minutes’ walk from my house. I was about nine houses from mine, when I heard a, “Mom, I’ll be back soon, I’m going to the rock climbing gym.”

No, that can’t be Andrew. I would know, of course I would know. I know everybody who lives on this street. Many people went to the gym this early, right? I stuck in my head phones in, and resumed walking to Katy Perry’s new song, Roar.

Before I knew it, a blonde haired boy was walking out of his house, and started in the same direction I was going. It was Andrew.

He caught my eye and smirked, but kept walking, about ten paces in front of me. 

When he reached the front doors of the gym, he opened the door for me. I waited for him at the counter, and when it came to our payment, I handed him my twenty dollars.