Rivals

Tension

I promised that I wouldn't do any drugs as I stepped out of the car, with Ivy's weed-vape in my oversized sweater pocket. She drove away and we made our way into the darkness where a group of people were gathered. We soon found Hailee and Hannah, their shirts already written on. After signing each others shirts and getting GRAD 2019 written across us, we started to walk around the giant group of people. It was around 9:30, and Ivy's mom was coming to get us again just after 11.

"Hey it's Cole," Hannah said, looking at someone walking past us. "Cole!" she called as he walked away. "Cole McMillan!"

He turned around and saw us, walking our way again.

"Hey, Hannah! Oh and Ivy too! Hey all of you!" he said, smiling and looking around at all of us.

"Hey let me sign your shirt," he said to Hannah, then going around and signing everyone in our group, also getting signs in return. 

He didn't notice me, and I didn't call out to him because I felt weird about it; and I wasn't high enough yet. I decided not to drink, because I didn't want to be hung over when I went to school the next day, so I was only smoking. Ivy and Hannah were doing the same. 

Various people came up to us and asked to sign our shirts, one by one exchanging signatures and making small talk with everyone in the group. One of the most memorable moments of the night was my old friend Ted Schreiber, from elementary school. I signed his shirt, and he wrote on mine. A lot on mine. Eventually I turned around.

"Your name is 3 letters, what the hell are you writing?" I asked as he scribbled on my shoulder.

"One..... Second....." he said as he wrote. Once he finished, he stared and admired his work.

"What did you write," I asked, turning to look at him.

He went to say it and covered his mouth laughing.

"What is it?!" I asked, almost laughing but also terrified.

"I wrote Leifblower," he said, breaking all composure and bursting out laughing.

"YOU DID NOT," I screamed.

This is the moment in a movie where there would be a freeze frame, during with the narrator would explain some inside joke, or have a flashback of some sort.

When I was in grade 6 I became invested in the longest relationship of my childhood. It was 9 months  after Leif Kepler asked me out, and we were in grade 7, that I called him away from his group of friends in the school field to tell him:

"I'm breaking up with you."

It was the hardest thing I'd faced since spelling the word jet "G E T" in front of my entire school. The worst part is that I was ten. That shit is cute when you're 4 it's not cute when a 10 year old does it it's just stupid.

Anyways, it was because of my long yet completely unemotional relationship with Leif that I coined the nickname "Leifblower" for reasons that I'm assuming you can imagine, although it was all based on a lie.

And here I was now, frozen mid-scream at Ted Schreiber for bringing back a terrible secret I had about my relationship and a false rumor that still embarrasses me to this day. And Leif was here, too; I saw him shotgun a beer earlier, and now he was laying face up on the pavement. I was almost worried for a minute until he brought a vape up to his mouth.

Ted ran away into the crowd of people and I lost him, turning back to my friends. A group of people had huddled around Leif and were seeing if he was okay, his friend was freaking out. He was okay.

"What just happened?" Ivy asked.

"Yeah what was that?" Hailee asked, too.

"He wrote Leifblower on my back."