Can The Player PLAY The Player?

Point 29.

A.M

The classroom was dark, save for the video of our project.

I stood next to Zaid on the side, watching our and Maia's final work playing for the entire class. It took us a while to get it done with all the procrastinating we did, but it turned out to be a beautiful masterpiece. 

"I threw the basketball, not knowing where it was going. It was too bad that it hit the forehead of another little boy. I didn't feel bad when he started crying."

I could hear the sound of my voice playing out loud and part of me cringed as the little neighborhood boy that resembled Zaid started crying in the sandbox on the screen. "If it wasn't for his mom, he never would've came over to apologize," Zaid began to do his voiceover as mini-me, the best friend of the little boy playing Zaid, ran over with a pout and an ice pack. "He told me that he was sorry, but I knew he was secretly laughing inside. I glared at him as he helped me up, kissing my forehead so that I would stop whining."

Mini-me grabbed baby's Zaid's hand as they ran to go play, my mother in the background taking a picture of them together, putting proof to the actual picture that we had in the Aaron and Zaid scrapbook. My parents really knew we were gonna be close it seemed.

Then the moment changed into one when we were eight years old, helping Katrine plant in her garden. "Here, angel eyes!" Mini-me glared up from the pile of soil, wondering what baby Zaid wanted. "Here's a rose for you!" He thrust a red rose into the little one's hand, chuckling to himself. "Man, oh man, was I infatuated with him," Zaid's voiceover continued and the scene changed to me dumping a whole bunch of dug-up tulips on his head. "Heh, I guess I was too. I just showed it in a different way," I was laughing in my voiceover and Zaid nudged me, garnering a glare from me.

That asshole.

"You make me super happy," 13-year-old Zaid Brooks trotted up to a new mini-me in the video, much older, with a cup of my favorite tea. "I hope this will make you happy." He smiled to himself as my character scowled like he always did. "See, he looks so angry, but even I know he feels the same way." Zaid's voiceover was hitting me right in the heart, and I couldn't even look at him in real life. It was different when we actually did the project because I didn't have these intense feelings that I had now.

More scenarios started playing throughout the video, funny commentary from our voiceovers, and you could tell that we were having a good time doing this. The class started laughing at moments of our pranks: me shoving Zaid's head into a cake, him putting Pop Rocks on my pillow at night because he knew I drooled. Oh man, the list was endless, but so were we.

"So the moral of this freaking story is to never ever hit a kid in the head with a ball because he'll never leave you alone. I'm living proof of that." I snorted towards the end of the video, the actual version of us sitting next to each other, looking into each other's eyes: a picture captured by Maia. 

"Yeah, he says that, but deep down inside, he can't live without me either."

Then the video outro of Maia's favorite song, Boo'd Up, starting playing with pictures of us throughout our lifetime, signifying the project's end. The lyrics were cheesy, but we couldn't deny that what the singer was feeling, we were too.

"So yeah, that's it," I came to stand in front of the class, Zaid right next to me. It was super funny because I would be cursing him out right now to get away from me, as the class knew the routine. It was funny how things changed. "That was beautiful," Mrs. Neal clapped, tilting her head at us as her eyes said, 'what a way to tell your love story.' Oops, we might've did that. "That was well done."