Of All People, You?

Gym victory

The rest of the night and morning went smoothly after the predicament with my mother, so I had plenty of room to WORRY ABOUT HAVING A FRIEND COME OVER TO MY HOUSE!

This news sent me into a nervous wreck, it kept me shaking and awake all night. This unhinged panic inside my mind prolonged all the way on the bus and into my first period class at school. I simply dreaded the thought of Arllo entering my home; his positive energy leaking everywhere, my mother wishing I was more like him, him growing closer and closer to me; I can not let that happen.

The bell suddenly chimed and with a sigh my body relaxed and my thoughts smiled at the sight of an empty chair next to me. Then a barge case in and, speaking if the devil, the red-headed beast stood panting out of breath.

The teacher glared at him tapping her foot impatiently. He huffed laughing, "I should...t-try out for track with all this...running I'm doing.." She just pointed to his seat next to me and he skipped over giddily, sitting down and grinning. "Morning' Logan! What a wonderful morning it is." I sighed.
"I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking you this but..", I took a deep  breath bracing myself, "..would you care to join my mother and I for dinner tonight?"
He gasped, biting his lip to hold in a squeal.
"YES! Oh wow this is gonna be fun! When should I come over?! Do you have any pets! What are we gonna eat? What are we gonna do after ?...." It was like I was talking to my mother.

His questions just went on and on, unfolding into something so unnecessarily long that I just gave up and waited for him to finish then spoke. "I am unsure what we are eating and what we might do. My family and I are Italian so there's a large possibility we are going to eat Italian food-"
"Oh wow! That's so cool that you're Italian! You don't sound Italian. Are you from Italy?" I grumbled at his stupid interruption and continued.

"I'm from the small Italian part of New York. My mother sounds Italian but I trained my vocal chords to behave differently cause I thinks it's more proper to sound this way. My mother also used to work in a Italian restaurant and-..." I stopped mid sentence getting distracted by Arllo reaching down into his bag, looking for something.

He said, "I'm sorry buddy Im just so hungry. And with you talking about your moms cooking just made me even more hungry." He rumbled around deeper into the bag then pulled out a orange sucker. Didn't really seem like food to me. I told him, "If you keep eating candy this early in the morning your teeth will start to decay and you'll get cavities." He wittily responded, "Well I already had a one tooth missing so cavities can't be any worse than that. I got this neat knockout.." he pointed to his fake tooth in place of the real one, it must've created the gap between his two front teeth.. "by falling off a tree branch about 15 feet up in the air. Boy was that a fall, lots of blood." I looked at him concerned.

"I'm telling you Fernsby, you won't enjoy it when dentist take sharp tools and dig and drill inside of your mouth. It will bring you immense pain."

"Oh wow! Will there be blood!? I just love the color of blood, it's such a beautiful shade of red." I stared at him, slightly afraid and placed my hand gently on his shoulder.

"You concern me Fernsby. You concern me."

He laughed at my response, that gap-tooth smile of his widening and his cheeks glowing. I also felt myself smile at the sight of my friend joyously chuckling. I liked the way his giddy laughter filled the air when he thought something I did was funny or when he told a corny joke and laughed at it himself.

I have to admit he was quite cute when he did it. And I got to hear a lot of his laugh too considering we not only have two classes together, but three! I found this out later that day in gym while I was dressing into my uniform.