Deviating from the Norm (A "Freaks and Geeks" Fanfic)

Chapter 7 - No good deed... (Part 1)

The next day, as I laid on my bed at home in the late afternoon, I tried to figure out exactly how I was going to get the flimsy identification cards back to my friends. My options were fairly limited, and I was being indecisive, so I flipped through each card in the stack to keep myself mindlessly entertained in the meantime.

I couldn't stop laughing at the ID from Howie Gelfand that Ken kept. It absolutely looked nothing like him. It was obvious the bouncers knew it was a fake when they let him in the bar, but I really had no idea just how bad it was until I took a good look at it. It was a Canadian driver's license and, while I had never seen a legit one before, there was one glaring mistake that stuck out like a sore thumb for me. When I was younger, my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Birling, had set up a twelve week pen-pal exchange between our class and a class of the same grade in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. It was actually a lot of fun and, even though we never made any sort of correspondence after the twelve weeks, I will never forget how happy I was when writing to my pen-pal, Noah, or the excitement I felt when Mrs. Birling handed us our reply letters each week. The one thing our teacher was adamant about- to make the experience even more personal and significant to our growing brains, she made sure we addressed the enveloped we put out letters in every week, citing the name of or pen-pal and the address of the school (though now I am almost certain that she shipped them all together in a big envelope). It was the first time I ever learned to write an address that wasn't my own, and I can still remember it to this day. Unlike addresses in the US that end with a zip code, Canadian addresses had a postal code, which was the same idea, but instead of a set of numbers, it was a six-character alphanumeric combination, and that was what stuck out about Gelfand's fake- it had not only a non-existent postal code on it, but one that didn't make any sense if you knew what you were looking at. 'THN 3H5' was simply not alphanumeric.

I thumbed through the rest, quite impressed by the quality of the fakes that Lindsay, Nick and Daniel had bought. They were good. They were damn good... even if the price was over the top. I had briefly considered asking who their guy was, because I would definitely need a new ID when mine expired and these looked completely legitimate, but then I remembered how none of them wanted to talk about the experience at all and I thought better of it.

Kim's was the last in the pile, and I glanced over it for probably longer than I should have, easily spotting the differences in the photo on the ID from my friend's face. The cheeks were flat and not round, the strong chin and big, beautiful eyes were not present, but the hair, nose and lips being near identical spoke to them being related. Simply put, while there was a staggering similarity between them from a quick glance, Kim was much prettier than her cousin, Erica.

I sighed loudly as I came to my conclusion on Kim's fake ID, finally willing to admit to myself that I was growing way, way too interested in my best friend. She was, without a shred of a doubt, completely off-limits. Her boyfriend was one of my close friends, for crying out loud, and we tinkered with our cars together nearly every weekend. I would have to be absolutely mental to even think of pushing my friendship with Kim passed anything platonic.

One thing was for certain- I needed to get my mind off her ASAP. I shot up off my bed and grabbed my car keys from my dresser, readying myself to head out to a friend's house, surprise 'em with their fake ID and maybe just hang out for a while.

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Just how much of a mess is my life right now? I criticized and mulled in my head as I drove down the road, answering myself just a moment later. Well, it's such a mess that I chose to drive around to my friends' houses on a Saturday to hand deliver their fake IDs back to them instead of waiting until Monday like any sane person would. Now you're hoping that maybe one of them will want to bum around with you for a while, just so you can set your head straight about your best friend! That's that kind of mess you got yourself into, jackass!