My Ex-Boyfriend From Kindergarten

Chapter 17: A Red Flag

This is yet to be edited.

“I don’t think scoring 94 out of 128 would get us first place,” Nairobi said after the trial quiz bee. “I really have to study my reviewer.”

“Hey, like I said, don’t pressure yourself. Let’s just do our best and have fun,” Cairo told her.

“How about you help a teammate out and tell me how you got ALL your questions right?” Nairobi said with an almost skeptical tone.

“Well, for me… It helps when I…” he looked at me, “Take a walk once in a while,” he smiled.

Whoa! Was he giving me a hint? Did he actually notice the questions Mr. de la Vega asked?

“Right,” Nairobi said. “And a little inspiration doesn’t hurt, too, does it?” she teased after noticing that Cairo was looking at me.

“I think the problem is you have too much inspiration,” I teased her back.

“Sure,” she rolled her eyes. “Maybe we can continue this discussion on the walk home,” she fired back.

I had to spend my lunchtime finishing up my painting. Nairobi decided to spend hers studying her reviewer in the library. While working on the painting, I kept thinking about the way Sunny would smile when I gave it to him. It inspired me to make the painting as great as possible.

A few minutes before lunch ended, I was able to finish my painting. But I wasn’t going to give it to Sunny right away. I mean, like, where would he put it? I decided to give it to him after class so that he wouldn’t worry about carrying it around school. And, also… maybe… I didn’t want our classmates to give the whole thing a completely different meaning.

The day went by quickly. Before I knew it, it was P.E. again. Thankfully, we weren’t about to have a part two of the basketball activity. Instead, Ms. Guinto prepared a sort of game for us.

“I’ve hidden thirty flags all over the school. If you find three flags, you’ll get 95. Two flags equal to 90. One flag will earn you a grade of 85. But if you don’t find a single flag, you’ll fail this activity,” she said. “Now, among those thirty flags I’ve hidden, there’s one with a star on it. If you find that one, you’ll get 100,” she added.

She made us line up in the gym. “Ready… Set… Go!” Some of us ran outside to start looking. But others stayed behind to look around in the gym. Nairobi and I decided to pair up and search for four flags, two for each of us. We inspected the plant pots in the hallways in the second floor and found two flags. She held on to her first flag and so did I. We needed to find two more.

As we continued to search, I eventually lost her. She tended to make quick inspections and then move on right away. She was going for easy finds. However, my plan was to carefully inspect every area where a flag could be hidden. So, as she kept moving forward and I kept staying behind to continue my inspections, we lost each other.

My careful inspections became fruitless. I went down to the playground with still only one flag in my hand. I looked around the trees and the bushes. But I didn’t find any flags. So it was either Ms. Guinto had hidden the flags in very sneaky places or my classmates had found the flags hidden in the places where I was just starting to look.