Second Monday

Literary fiction enthusiast with a passion for science and speculative fiction, real-word technological advancement, and the psychological bounds of memory. Read and vote for my story "Second Monday" ... [+]

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Joshua.

He likes me, but I don’t like him because his fingers are always cheesy. He pulls up his socks too high and is always breaking bones.

When he was in a body-cast I used him as a coat hanger. Another time, I found my school picture in his geometry box. It was the one I had given to Mr. Hero at the beginning of the year, it even said so on the back, so I knew he was one of those stealers.

But I guess I didn’t mind. It’s not like I talk to him. There’s things to do, like sit in the soft part of the grass behind the baseball diamond. Mom always gets mad when I get green patches. But that’s okay because I like them and think they’re sort of nice.

The other day I brought my dog there. He and I are partners in crime. We always get up to no good, like running as fast as we can around the water that smells bad near the highway. Sometimes, when he runs, I imagine I’m him since he’s so much faster than me. I think dogs like speed. That’s why they get so happy when they stick their faces out the window.

One time, this man came up to me and asked if he could buy him, actually. For fifty dollars he said he would like to buy my dog. I think it’s pretty strange since we were standing in a catwalk between the houses. I think that’s a bad place to offer to buy someone’s dog. There’s not a good omen around it. So I said no because I already loved my dog more than money. I’m pretty mature at my age. That’s why I always get such good marks at school, even though Mr. Hero says I’m a social butterfly.

Mr. Hero is a very smart man who teaches our class all kinds of things. Like how to be responsible for our environment. That’s why every second Monday he makes us clean our lockers, our desks, the back tables, and sometimes even the floor. He says it’s very important to keep a clean space so that our minds can try and absorb information better. I don’t know if it works, but every time we have to clean all kinds of yucky things come out of the woodwork. On this one day, the whole class got an extra 20 minutes of recess because a kid hadn’t been cleaning out his desk, and we found a mushy green orange with chunky chocolate milk spilled all over it. The smell reeked really bad.

That was about three second-Monday’s ago. Today is also a second-Monday. So I was looking into people’s lockers and I got over to this boy named James’ locker, right beside cheesy Joshua’s. James told me to get away from them since I had a bad case of the cooties. I told him they were freckles, but he didn’t even believe me at all. Then he gave me the meanest glare which made me a little scared. I almost ran away from them quick when I noticed wriggling at the bottom of Joshua’s locker.

I saw and it was worms. I was so grossed out, but then I remembered to be brave since I knew the worms wouldn’t hurt me. I knew that because one time this girl I had never met before and I made friends during a rainstorm. After the storm was gone we found a broken ice cream pail and collected all the worms we could find. Then we decided to count them. One two three. But guess what that little girl did? She pulled open the back of my overalls and dumped all those muddy worms down my pants! They wiggled every way you can think of, and not even all of them came out when I stood up and did a shake. I even accidentally stepped on one. It didn’t hurt at all. And it was kind of fun to goosh it between my toes.

When I saw the worms that the boys had, I was really excited and I wanted to tell on them, but I maintained my composure and promised I wouldn’t tell if they gave me a Pokémon card. The only problem is, they didn’t even have any they wanted to give me. So instead I came up with a brilliant idea that I learned from a movie I’d seen on TV. It’s called Truth or Dare. When they heard my idea, they said that would be okay. I asked them, Truth or Dare? And they said Dare. So I looked around real fast and saw this bottle that was bright blue coloured. It was the one all the kids fought over since it had a spraying kind of nozzle that made cleaning a lot easier. But last week Randy broke the handle so no one really wanted it anymore I guess.

I thought of all those things in under five seconds flat. Then I told them they would have to drink every last drop, and after pretend that the liquid had turned them into zombies. I counted down one two three go, and cheesy Joshua went first. He lifted the broken part off the top and started making gross gulping noises. But it was only for a second! Right away he stopped drinking. He probably didn’t even get any, for real. Instead he just went right to being a zombie. In his act, he spilled the bottle on the desk and started making these groaning sounds and I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t because Joshua was being such a good actor. Even his eyes looked like they were zombie eyes since they were kind of rolling around.

I looked at James’ eyes to see if he would play along with the zombie dare or be a chicken, and when I saw him his eyes were very big. And there was less colour to him. I turned and told Joshua he could stop acting like a zombie since no one was having fun, but he didn’t even stop.

I think Joshua is a very dramatic person now. I think maybe he got obsessed with his talent. He fell down and was shaking, and wouldn’t even get up. I told him it was very funny, but that I wasn’t impressed at all. Then I told him that since it was almost quarter past two that I was going to get in line early for recess without him. When Mr. Hero took Joshua to the principal’s office for his antics, I wouldn’t even look at him in his droopy, cheesy face.

That recess was pretty fun today. I played four-square with Tiffany and some other kids, and almost stayed in the King’s square the whole time. I only missed a bounce when I got distracted by some sirens going by. But by that time, I was bored of the whole game anyway.
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