Chapter 2
Call Me Ungraceful
"Bacon and eggs."
"No way. Pancakes and cereal."
"What? No! Sand, just make bacon and eggs."
I rolled my eyes at my best friends. Today we had school, the last four months, actually. Charlie, Cale and I were going to graduate in just months. Wow, it seemed like yesterday when Charlie stopped drinking from his milk bottle...
Charlie came over to eat breakfast with Sara and me because he and his brother fought again. But this time, there were no injuries. Just Charlie coming in our house with no shoes on.
"You are both so lucky Metta is not here," I said. "She'd go ballistic again."
"Mommy and Marie are coming back tomorrow, Charlie, and I think it's best if you don't go here then," Sara said.
"Yeah, and since I won't be back here tomorrow, we'll have my choice of food. So, pancakes and cereal." Charlie smirked.
"No."
"Oh, c'mon! Pity the shoeless man!" Charlie grumbled.
"What happened to your shoes anyway?" I asked.
"Jonathan threw them in the pool," Charlie replied nonchalantly.
Sara burst out laughing. "I never thought brothers could hate each other that much."
Charlie and Jon didn't exactly have the best sibling-relationship. In fact, they disliked each other. They were best known as "The Jamieson Brothers" (yeah, they say the with emphasis). Both were popular, handsome, in the basketball team and had a lot of fan girls and admirers. The difference is, Charlie was the sweet, kind and straight-As achiever, while Jon was the 17-year-old bad boy and player.
Judging from Charlie's expression earlier when he went in, the argument this time was about Jon failing another test. I got so used to their fighting that I could already determine the cause by just looking at their expressions.
"Like I said before, hate's such a strong word..." Charlie shrugged. "Let's go with couldn't-get-along."
Even though Charlie and Jon "couldn't get along", I knew they secretly cared for each other. One good example was back when Jon was in the ninth grade. This girl, Amanda, went out with Jon. It was obvious that Jon really liked her. And with the reputation as a player, it's really rare for Jon to have genuine feelings for a girl. Then out of nowhere, this Amanda-chick dumped Jon by kissing Jon's best friend (well, ex-best friend) right in front of his face. I know, it's so cliché, the whole partner-cheating-with-best-friend thing. But Jon was really heart-broken and his drinking habits got worse. It seemed that Amanda just went out with Jon to get close to his best friend. That evil pancake...
Charlie and I noticed this and we decided to help. Well, I was almost hit by a bottle of beer on the head because the drunk Jon was startled with Charlie and I randomly appearing in his room. Almost because Charlie accidentally knocked Jon unconscious before the bottle could make an impact on my head. When Jon finally woke up, we made a plan to crash Amanda's party that Saturday night. It was pretty epic, seeing the girls and boys panicking with frogs hopping on their heads.
But it was even more epic to see "The Jamieson Brothers" showing up in the party, shirtless, wearing khaki shorts and sunglasses and screaming, "Save frogs before they become endangered!"
It was just so awesome to see the both of them teaming up to rid the world of partners-cheating-with-best-friends.
I took a look at the clock and gasped as I see that we only had ten minutes for breakfast. I grabbed the pancake mix and toss the cereal box to Charlie.
