The stupid life of the awkward people

Downspiral

Kurtis steadily slid across the ice, managing to just about walk. He hovered around the edge of the ice rink, with Martha clumsily trailing behind. It was like bambi on ice but twice as dangerous. At one point, Alice attempted to help Kurtis only to get her leg sliced. It's jones surprising she didn't bleed or get a full cut.

Kurtis decided to toughen up and move slightly away from the sides, giving a weak push on the walls and stumbling about two metres away from the edge. Martha could only watch from behind as his feet began to flick and slide on the ice, like a spider in water, before dropping on the ice right on his now wet bottom. She couldn't help but let out a stifled giggle.

"Oh shush, you can't do any better."

"I haven't fallen though."

Kurtis laughed at himself as he got back up, starting to skate a bit more steadily. He looked back to check on Martha, who cowardly lingered by the boundary. Linda casually skated past on her phone with Claudia following behind gracefully. Martha stared at them, envious of their grace, until she bumped into Kurtis and almost knocked him over. He almost slipped and for stability, quickly grabbed Martha by her shoulder. He immediately adjusted his already crappy balance and slipped onto his side, with Martha falling a second after. Jae watched from a safe distance away, laughing to herself. Something about watching people fall on ice is pretty adorable.

After a brief struggle for balance, Martha decided to take a break and sat behind the borders. Alice had been hanging out with Dennis and Fay.

Despite his somewhat stiff posture, Dennis was surprisingly skilled at ice skating. He actually has many talents. Not only is he skilled at art, he can sculpt, do hairdressing, cook and sew. There's not a single person that doesn't like him, a perfect boy.

Faye is quite close with Dennis. They both do Art together and walk the same way home. They're also in each other's instagram posts. It's surprising that nobody thinks they're dating.

Kurtis skated towards them with a smug grin, halting himself with a 360 spin followed by a graceful slip.

"Crap, ignore that." He quickly got up and dusted himself off as the group laughed.

"Where's Martha?" Erin asked as she moved towards the barrier.

"She took a break."

"And you left her alone?" Erin turned back to Kurtis suddenly.

"No, Jae's with her. Jeez, I'm not rude."

Erin simply gave him a look, as if he was a child who just claimed 1+1=11. "Really?"

Kurtis looked at her, somewhat offended. "I'm not rude!"

"Suuuuurrrre"

"I'm nicer than you."

"Now that's a stretch, there. You've called me unattractive."

"I already told you it was an accident and I apologised. You're not unattractive."

"Pffft, whatever." Erin shrugged and turned to Dennis, who was on his phone. "Watchya doin', bud?"

Dennis looked up from his phone with a sigh. "My cousins are coming from Algeria so I have to go home."

"What?" Erin has a disappointed look on her face as she looked up at Dennis. "Aw, so you need to go now?"

"Yeah. Bye Alice." He gave her a high five then gave a quick hug to Faye, which left Kurtis and Erin momentarily shocked. Erin quickly mouthed to Kurtis "WHAT THE FUU...?" While Kurtis shrugged, dumbfounded. He then walked over to shake Kurtis's hand.

"Wait, hold on." Kurtis reached into his jacket pocket and took out a £1 coin, handing it over to Dennis. "Go buy some pens."

"Thanks." He smiled slightly and took the coin before shaking his hand and leaving. Faye had already skated away by the time they were going to ask.

Meanwhile, Martha and Jae watched the others from behind the borders. Jae has bought a can of Arizona iced tea while Martha was scrolling through Twitter. Jae turned to her after taking a large gulp of the can.

"Are you gonna go back out?"

"Hm? Nah, I don't want to get my trousers wet again." Martha laughed softly, taking an earbud out to hear her more clearly. "Didn't you see me? I was like a toddler."

"You weren't that bad for someone who's never skated before." Jae said reassuringly before briefly jumping as she almost dropped her can. "Oh shoot- besides, you've got the others to help you, right?"

"Nah I'm fine here."

"Suit yourself." She shrugged before going back to drinking her drink, that is until she saw Kurtis fall into a near split, causing Jae to drop her near empty can as she laughed. They spent the remainder of the time sharing videos of them falling on the ice while Erin and Faye watched Kurtis in hopes of him falling again.

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The ice rink closed at 4pm. From there, they all went home, with Claudia, Linda and Faye heading towards Morden while Jae, Kurtis, Alice and Martha started heading towards Thornton Heath.

"So are we gonna talk about Fay hugging Dennis? I mean, I only got a high five so that's weird."

"It was very weird, what was that?"

Martha looked as the two discussed what happened. She then turned to Jae, who looked just as confused. They then proceeded to spend the rest of the journey talking about celebrities and movies.

Around 15 minutes later, Martha and Erin had split from Kurtis and Jae, heading to Mitcham. Jae moved next to Kurtis after waving them off and yawned. Kurtis turned from the window and sighed.

"So that was fun."

"Yeah. Aren't you hurt from all that falling?"

"Nah, I already have 45 year old back pains. This is nothing."

Jae chuckled lightly and moved some hair from her face. "Pretty sure that's unhealthy."

"Whaaaaat? Really? Didn't know that one(!)"

"Yeah that's the dementia setting in."

Kurtis let out an airy chuckle and yawned. "Yeah. So that was fun!"

"....ahh I see what you did there. Nice one."

The two carried on joking all the way to Croydon, where Kurtis got off to take the tram home. He dozed off on the tram and got woken up by the ticket inspector within 14 minutes. After another tedious 5 minutes of falling in and out of sleep, he got off and took the unusually long 5 minute walk home, being greeted by his sister.

"Where did you go?"

"A place."

"What place?"

"A placey place. I'm tired, please go away." He sighed as he walked past the 10 year old and fell into his bed. He took his phone out to find 5 Snapchat messages and 3 Instagram messages along with a tagged photo on both.

"...huh?" He opened the tagged photo and almost immediately slammed the iPhone 7 into his bed, inhaling through his teeth. The image was a photo of Kurtis with Martha, while skating, with a heart around the two. He sighed and groaned painfully. "Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh bruh."