Like To Be You ✓

bonus #1

Thank you for 115K reads! <3

Note: This is a re-upload of the bonus I had previously published with a few edits. 

o-o-o

"Can't we play X-Box instead?" I ask Neil for the hundredth time that night. He stands next to me with a gigantic smile on his face, his arms trembling in excitement.

"Tomorrow, Ty." He tells me. "I promise."

Then he grabs me by the sleeve of my Nasa shirt(his fingers are so close to my skin) and pulls me towards the noisy house in front of us that blinks with flashy lights. Ahead, Amy Johnson stands beside the door, waiting for us.

"Come on!" She shouts.

"We're not even supposed to be in here!" I tell Neil again, for the two-hundredth time that night.

"Who said so?" He says, his eyes wide as he blinks at the masses of bodies in front of us.

"It's a high school party, Neil. High. School."

He lifts a shoulder in a careless shrug. "Two more months and we'll be in it."

Amy and her friends have already disappeared into the crowd, leaving the two of us hanging behind. I hold the back of Neil's shirt(my fingers are only a centimetre away from his skin) as he ventures deeper into this web of bodies, scared of losing him in this sea of strangers.

"This is awesome!" He shouts when we reach the dance floor, which consists of a shapeless periphery of floor on which half-drunk teenagers sway to their own beats.

"No, it isn't." I mumble to myself. I follow him to the kitchen, where it's relatively quieter and emptier. A girl, maybe three years older than us, turns to watch us as Neil reaches for a can of Mountain Dew from the fridge. She rolls her eyes and goes back to rummaging through the cupboard, probably looking for untouched, uninfected snacks.

Neil hands me a can of Sprite(his nail scratches my thumb accidentally, he apologises) and I down it quickly, thirsty as though this party saps the energy out of my body.

"Guess what I got." He tells me, wiggling his eyebrows. Condensation from the cold can drips down to his thumb and settles in the skin between it and his index finger.

"I don't know. UNO again?"

He makes a small screechy noise which tells me I've guessed right. My heart soars at the glee on his face.

"Pokémon UNO. Limited edition." He pats his back pocket, where a small square outline protrudes.

"What?" I say. A bit of Sprite goes down my windpipe, and I cough it out.

"C'mon." He tells me, thumping my back(my coughing gets worse) and turns towards the stairs, not before grabbing two more cans of soda.

We scoot to the corner of the staircase, me on the fourth step, him on the second, the cards between us on the third.

"Where did you get these from?" I ask, holding the slightly smaller cards with Pokémons printed at the corners.

"Dad's friend got them from Japan." He lays down a card. "UNO!"

I hold the three cards in my hands close to my chest, narrowing my eyes at him as I pick a card and slam it down theatrically. "Plus four."

He blows out an angry breath and glares at me, grudgingly reach for four cards.

My smug smile is wiped off when he somehow, impossibly, wins. We play and play and play, as people go up and down the stairs, stop to watch, comment, "Cool cards,", and until Raspberry Woods, a girl from our school whose name I pity, tells us to join them upstairs for a game.