The 5th Grade Musical Performance. That’s a really long thing to say, so I’ll just shorten it to the… Musical. Well, now it sounds dorky.
If you remember all the way back to the fifth chapter of Book I, you’d remember I talked about my classes. That’s… why I named that chapter ‘Classes’. Wow, it’s almost like the name of the chapter has to do with the content of the chapter!
Uh, besides just those classes, I also talked about the electives we took. The special classes, or the non-core classes. It was P.E., Art, Library, and the one that’s the main focus of this chapter, Fine Arts.
Fine Arts (again) is a mix between theater and choir- the musical class. You get to put on plays or sing, just like… what you’d expect. But there’s more to it than just dancing to songs. At least for this year.
At the very start of the year, our teacher announced that the fifth graders were going to be doing two big projects. The first of which would be self-made choreography to the entirety of a specific song (more on that in a second), and a huge musical performance for the parents, which is the more important one. I’ll talk about the second one for the second third of this chapter, because… that’s the important part, and the dumb choreography stuff is you know what i mean
So, for the choreography thing, the teacher announced what song we were going to dance to around January-ish. Ooh, time-travel time (wait that’s called a flashback not time travel- never mind. It’s about maybe late March-ish now). The song was none other than ‘Drag Me Down’ by One Direction. It was a pretty popular song that I had never listened to before.
Of course the teacher played the song for us, and then she explained the full lengths of the project: we would split up into two groups.
Now, normally, this would normally just be boys v. girls, like everything. And that’s what it was. But this time it felt like it was abnormal. Mainly cause I was questioning why I was doing it.
Obviously the boys v. girls aspect made it so that the boys would want to win and so would the girls, but it’s not very effective when there’s not a lot of interesting rivals on the opposite team.
Basically what I’m saying is (you’ve already figured it out) I want to have a choreography-off against a rival of mine. Namely… Caitlyn. Well, even Anna would do, but fighting against Caitlyn seems so natural. And, uh, maybe if I let her win, she’ll forgive me and I won’t actually have to figure out a way to apologize to her?
Shit that’s right I need to figure out how to do that
And yes if you’ve noticed I’m starting to transition from a weeny beanie baby and am starting to use ACTUAL curse words like ‘shit’, and, and, uh
Well that’s it so far but it’s better than just being able to say ‘hell’ all the time.
I’m saying I don’t have a drive for this whole thing. There’s no reason to try for this choreo. Sure, I learned it, and… well, actually, more than that. I was the, uh, leader, for the choreo. Mostly cause I was the only one who knew all the dance moves. Mostly cause I made most of them (I did just use a lot of the moves pop stars use in their music videos, but I’m sure no one cared). I… maybe I should pursue a career in musical theater THIS IS A JOKE I WILL NEVER DO THAT AND IF I DO I OWE YOU 50 DOLLARS HOW DOES THAT SOUND OKAY GOOD NO ONE LIKES MUSICAL THEATER
Uhhh so yeah that was super cool totally yeah
When we finished our choreography, we performed it for the other group. I think ours was better than theirs, namely because I liked my own choreo I made up.
I even accidentally ran through some of it during recess, even after the choreo-off (I’m calling it that now) was like a week done.
I did some of the jumps and twirls, and then finished spinning to see a certain girl standing, watching me dance.
“Wow, Becky, is that your choreography?”
Caitlyn was standing right in front of me. I froze, dropped my hands and knees down, and stood like a robot.
“No, I was… stretching.”
“Oh, for Infection again, right? Yeah, you’re obviously dancing.”
Shoot how does she remember that
“Fine, whatever. Yeah, it’s my choreo. I was standing in front, so, like, I tried to memorize it, and it sometimes kinda comes out of me at random times.”
“It… comes out of you…?”
“Yes.”
“I- okay, but for three minutes straight?”
I was under-exaggerating earlier. I was running through my entire choreo because I felt like it. I even brought out my phone to play music from it. It’s a good song (despite being the most repetitive thing ever- I think that’s why the Fine Arts teacher chose the song, so that we could just do the same choreo multiple times- actually I think that’s exactly why), you should listen to it. No, I don’t like boy bands. That’s not for a while. Er, I mean, no, I don’t like boy bands.
“Shut up. At least my choreo is better than yours.”
“Uh, not if you call that ‘dancing’.”
She smiled and laughed. I made a frustrated face at her.
“That’s not funny. I was just repping through it, if you really want me to perform the whole thing, then I will and I’ll prove that mine is better.”
“Alright, then do it.”
“Uh, wait, only if you do it too?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Sure, Becky, just do your dance.”
I just challenged Caitlyn to another contest. I’m so smart.
I put on my performance. I once again got my phone to play the music, and I ran through the choreography that time pretty well, if I could say for myself. I was impressed by myself, I could say. Until Caitlyn said this:
“That sucked, Becky.”
“Excuse me?”
“It sucked.”
“How?”
“It just did. Here, watch this.”
Still bewildered by her sudden insult of my (probably) amazing performance of a dance, she started her own choreography. She got her own phone out, and I waited for her to press the play button, but first she took a non-moving detour. She looked around, and made some kind of head nod or something. I figured it was just a really weird choreography movement. I’m sure it didn’t matter.
whoa guess what thats irony right there ooh super cool
Caitlyn started the actual choreography. The start looked very plain, more generic than my own choreo. I felt confident. Until the song got to the main melody.
Caitlyn once again turned her head and nodded it. After the random head movement, a second figure started running up at high speed and joined in on the dance. The figure, a person now that I’ve realized, added an effect to the dance by leaping into the air, which made it look very majestic (for a… One Direction choreography.). And then I figured out who the person was.
“ANNA?!”
Duh.
“Ha, Becky, bet you can’t do that!”
She had added to the choreo; made it look… a whole lot better. I was… a little mad, I guess you could say.
“Shut up, go- go annoy someone else!”
She laughed a lot. She must’ve been very happy to see me mad. Their performance, especially with Anna jumping and whatever she did, it was a lot better than… sorry, guys, I have to admit it. Their choreo got boosted so much that I admit it. Their choreo was better than mine.
“Fine, good job.”
“Aww, thanks, Becky.”
Caitlyn stepped in.
“Shut up. This won’t happen next time.”
“Uh, next time?”
“The big performance thing?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s in like, three months, right?”
“Yeah, my class is gonna have the best performance.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. I’d bet money on it.”
“You’d bet… that’s what you would bet on it? You wouldn’t want to bet anything else?”
I looked at Caitlyn. Looked over at Anna. She stared at me blankly. I looked at Caitlyn. I still didn’t get what else I would want to offer to her.
“No, there’s nothing else I would want to do.”
“Uh, okay. So, what, three dollars?”
“No, like, five.”
“Big difference.”
“So, what, gonna take the bet?”
I was excited to win five dollars.
“I, uh… sure, Becky.”
She sounded like she wasn’t interested. Eh, I’ll probably win and get five free dollars, nothing else to really think about.
Well, how do you even win a bet for singing? We aren’t graded, and it’s not like parents cheering louder… oh, maybe if we see how loud our parents cheer we can figure out who won the bet. Duh.
After our (very dumb) choreography project, the teacher said that all of that dancing was to help us prepare for our second project, which started around March, like I slightly hinted at a while ago. I don’t know if she was actually trying to prepare us for this Musical, but either way, I started to get very excited for it.
We spent a long time practicing for it, even taking time out of our regular electives to practice (so we basically didn’t have P.E. and stuff like that for a couple of weeks.). It was a performance of six songs that we had to perform, so, what’d you expect? The Fine Arts Teacher really must’ve wanted us to do well on this, huh? Hey, reminds me, I actually really like the Fine Arts teacher- she was my 1st grade teacher and transferred to Fine Arts because… she could… uh, she must’ve wanted us to do well on this, huh?
Not only were we normally spending a lot of time practicing as a group, but… I also did a lot of my own practicing. I, uh… printed out the lyrics for each song and started memorizing them. Uh. So, the songs, huh?
The first song was ‘We Got the Beat’, by the Go-go’s. It would be the first song we would perform, so I’d say it was a pretty good warmup song. So it would be a great way to start our performance, at least in my opinion. Wait I should explain the theme shoul
The theme was ‘Back to the 80’s’. We would only be singing and dancing to popular 80’s songs, such as… We Got the Beat. Okay glad i got that cleared up
The second song was ‘Beat It’, by Michael Jackson.
Two things.
One. Why did we do Beat It over Thriller?
Maybe the Fine Arts teacher liked Beat It over Thriller? But what would’ve been cooler for a parent to see, their kid doing weird dancing, or their kid doing weird dancing WITH their arms raised in the air? That’s right, the weird dancing one. Wauit
Okay, second thing. You know how the lyrics go? Not the ‘beat it, beat it, no one wants’- not that part. The part right after. The ‘Showin’ how funky and’-
Funky? Really, Jackson? You know your accent- have you even listened to your own song?
Sorry. Listen to the song- that part in specificity. His accent or maybe the way he just said it made it sound like- well, we were kids, and maybe we just heard it wrong, but when he sang the word, it sounded like the, uh…
I probably can’t get away with saying ‘The F-Word’ in this book.
That sucks. I’ll say it later.
Anyway, so, yeah, as a fifth grader, I somehow knew what ‘The F-Word’ was, so whenever I (and the rest of the fifth grade) heard the song, it always sounded… not like ‘funky’.
Okay, listen to the song. It makes more sense- you’re making this hard to explain
I- let me- I pronounced the word correctly. I did not ruin the performance by screaming curse words. Other kids… also didn’t. Cause they didn’t know the lyrics, cause they didn’t… memorize the lyrics.
Okay. Again, I’ll say a lot of curse words later. You have no idea how sad I am right now.
The third song was ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, by Bon Jovi. Is it Jon Bovi? Honestly, I forget. Whatever, you can look it up if you care.
Don’t worry, I know you didn’t look it up. It doesn’t matter.
If you don’t know the song, ever heard someone sing ‘Squidward on a Chair’? That one viral YouTub- fine, ever heard ‘Mayonnaise on an Escalator’? The other viral- okay. I’m gonna move on.
The fourth song was probably the song I knew the most. I should re-say that. The only song I knew.
Eye of the Tiger. Yeah, popular 80’s song, what’d you expect? It has ‘Tiger’ in the name, do you know how cool a tiger is to a fifth grader? It’s STILL cool, too! Tigers are awesome! Cats are awesome!
Next was the fifth song. My class’s song.
Before I explain these last two songs, I’ll have to explain what’s going on here. There are six classes in the grade. There are six songs. Each class gets a song. One song to perform.
I’ll just explain the whole thing now, don’t feel like explaining anything twice.
The way this musical works is each class goes up on the stage, to perform their song. But that doesn’t mean everyone else just stops and watches, that would’ve been confusing (cause I earlier mentioned I memorized ALL the songs. And yes, I did actually memorize them all.). The stage doesn’t imply the literal stage- we are doing the performance in the P.E. room, or the auditorium for the knowledgeable people. The auditorium has a little stage on one side of the room, and that’s where the ‘main class’ performs their song, and the other classes are on ‘floor level’. We stay together in our classes, in little packs against the wall. We rotate after each song, making a circle-pattern thing. So, the first class does the gogo thing up on the stage, and then we rotate- the kids on the stage jump off and move on, and the second class, the jackson family, jumps on the stage. While this is happening, the other classes cycle around the auditorium, and still dance and sing along to songs too. Does that make sense?
Just kidding I don’t care if it makes sense to you screw you if it doesn’t make sense you just suck at interpreation or whatever the word oh its interpretation
So my class is the fifth class. We would be on the stage during the fourth stage. It was pretty cool- they did a little interlude between each song, like a mini skit about kids… having fun, or whatever, and then they say their song name and it ties into the skit- I actually was part of my class’s skit, and I was a pretty important- never mind, I’ll talk about that later. I’m supposed to be talking about the music.
Okay, back to… literally the same thing, my class was performing…
‘How Will I Know’, by Whitney Houston.
Yeah.
‘Oh my God, a love song? And HE got it?’
Of course I got the love song (wait living on a prayer is a love song isnt it).
Never mind. Uh, song six. It’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, by Journey. The last song to end it off, so we kids… never… stop believing? I guess it’s pretty cool? Whatever, I don’t know. What I did find out was which song Caitlyn was performing. Er, shoot, it’s in the same paragraph as the sixth song, I guess that ruins the surprise.
“Becky, what song’re you singing?”
Caitlyn walked up to me. We completely forgot to define the full rules to the bet, such as what songs we were singing, so this might be a good chance to finish that.
I looked at her dreadfully before saying my answer with a dead voice.
“How Will I Kn-”
She burst out laughing.
“HAHAHA! YOUR CLASS IS DOING THAT SONG?”
She continued laughing.
“Can you- can you shut up?”
“Okay, okay, fine, Becky… That’s hilarious, that means you have to do the dance up on the stage-”
“I know, I know! Your class is doing Don’t Stop Believing, right?”
“Uh, yeah, how’d you know?”
“Well, you see-”
I proceeded to explain how I knew the name of her teacher and how the order of which class got which song was based off of the last name of the teacher, in alphabetical order, and how her teacher, who’s last name was {Still don’t feel like looking up the actual name}, it would mean she would go last.
“You could’ve just said ‘alphabetical order’.”
Shoot.
“Shut up. Didn’t care or feel like it.”
“Becky, you’re dumb.”
Ugh like I cared. Just cause you’re a little cut- I meant ugly.
Just cause you’re a little ugly doesn’t mean you get to act like you know everything.
That makes sense.
“You’re dumb. You’re probably not even in your class’s skit.”
“I am. Wait, does that mean you’re in yours?”
“Uh, duh?”
She burst out laughing again.
“Pfft- wait, so-”
“Yeah, yeah. I have to act about the-”
“Ooh, do you have to like someone?”
“I- yeah, I have to talk about who I like or something.”
She looked at me. And burst out laughing.
“Pfft- wow, who are you talking about?”
“Definitely not you, duh.”
“Oh, wow, thanks, Becky,”
she said. I just used four commas in a single sentence. Nice.
“If I had your lines, I wouldn’t be talking about you either.”
Oh no, how terrible
“Thank god. I would not want to… be your boyfriend.
“I would never want to be your girlfriend.”
“I would hate ever being near you.”
“I would hate ever talking to you.”
She stopped talking. I took a step back. We both laughed.
“Don’t mess up on the performance.”
“You neither, Becky.”
She’s gonna mess up. I know it.
I walked away.
So, my part in the skit, huh? What’s that about?
“Alan, you’ll be lead actor. Got it?”
“Uh, okay?”
She- just pu- me- what?
It’s fine. I basically was just complaining about losing in a video game. I’m actually very great at video games- I have a lot and have played many you don’t care at all
Okay, I got a cool part. But… being the lead actor… I’d have to introduce the song by… complaining about my… love life? Isn’t that pretty funny?
No it isn’t.
I won’t spoil what it is about until the actual performance, so, uh, get ready for that?
Alright, bet.
So before the performance started, I said I memorized the lyrics. I, again, wasn’t kidding. But that wasn’t the only thing I started practicing on my own.
I also started to attempt to watch the choreography the Fine Arts teacher posted a video of on YouTube.
I… didn’t learn any of it from that. It was quick, it wasn’t a guide, it just showed off the choreography for every song in fast repetition. But, I still learned a couple of moves.
This is important in 2 sentences. So, when we finally started learning the choreography after our teacher finished attempting to teach children songs, it went excellent. Since I had a baseline knowledge of the moves, I felt like I was doing slightly better than the other people around me. And I’m assuming because of this was why I was chosen to be the lead actor.
I swear none of this leads up to anything. Me being lead actor does not mean anything.
You know, technically, it was entirely my fault that I got put in that position. I deserved that. Like, in a bad way. See, I mentioned that the skit had to do with the song. Meaning… the skit my class was doing was about love. Meaning… I’d have to act about love.
I already think of someone enough, I don’t need another person. Wai-
It’s time. We’ve been practicing for months, and now it’s the second to last week of school. Yeah, we have almost no weeks left. Scary, isn’t it?
Okay. we got it. Get it because it’s like we got the beat
“Do you have your lines memorized, Becky?”
“I had them memorized a month ago, Caitlyn.”
“Sure you did.”
“Ugh, whatever.”
caitlyns just super super super super super annoying
“Don’t mess up, either.”
“Alright, Becky.”
The performance started. I walked in the room with my… outfit. The guys were required to wear pure black clothes - a black shirt, shorts, black shoes and socks, just, black everything. Even black sk- never mind. Alright, bet.
The girls- the girls. They were wearing clothes, too.
Holy shit no way
Orange clothes, green clothes. Pink clothes. Yellow clothes. Highlighter clothes, sparkly clothes, extravagant clothes, shiny clothes,
Yeah they were wearing neon clothes. You know, neon pink and green and the other colors. They wore dresses, and bows, and scrunchies on their arms and hair- they were even wearing gloves. They were very bright.
And the guys were just wearing black. Wonder if that’s saying anything about society or anything.
The theme ‘Back to the 80’s’ really popped off with the costume design, huh? I’m sure all the guys were… emo… and all the girls… blinded people… when they walked into rooms before the 21st century.
So I walked in, and everyone else was pretty much also already there or also getting there. We started setting up soon after. Or, well, we started getting into position. Thirty kids up on the stage, and the rest of the class around the auditorium. We were near the wall, and all of the parents were sitting on metal foldable chairs in the middle of the auditorium. I really hope me re-describing the layout doesn’t just make it more confusing. But it makes sense to me so if it doesn’t to you you’re just… incredibly stupid
The lights dimmed. Black coats and shiny neon were scattered through the room. And then suddenly the beat started. And everyone started dancing.
The Gogo’s really were a great choice to start the performance, as the exciting and peppy feel of the song riled everyone up. The choreo was decent, mostly jumping up and down (the song is literally only about kids having a great time), but I nailed it. It was easy. Like I said, mostly jumping up and down. And then the song finished.
Next song. One down, some to go.
Everyone stood up and looked down. Hair accessories fell off some people’s hair and a lot of dropping to the floor happened.
The weird sound started playing and everyone rose their head. As the guitar started strumming, everyone started moving to the beat.
Ever notice that beat it sounds like beating your mea
So two songs down, four to go. Third song is about to start. The Living on a Prayer song. It went by pretty quickly. A lot of cracked notes could be heard on the last part of the song when kids tried to sing above the octave. Heh. Oh, and you remember Troy? The outdoorsy kid? He’s playing drums. He, uh, is playing the drums in the song. It didn’t really make sense to me, but… eh, I’ll just go with it. So, yeah, he obviously made percussion for baNO HE MADE TRUMPET
I don’t really know what’s going on anymore. I’m just gonna move on to the tiger song
Cat song done super cool my song actually start time please
Yeah the tiger song was fun we just punched air and kicked the air… the entire time. Yeah. Not much to say
MY SONG TIME LETS GO
My class rotated to the stage. Most of the people got behind the curtains and brought out a few random objects that were serving as props. But there were three girls who got on the other side of the stage, with Emily Matters at the front. She was the lead girl actor. She most probably doesn’t matter, she’s just someone I remember. She definitely won’t have any importance. But she is one of the popular kids, so…
Wait lead girl actor
Right I was only the lead GUY actor
That ruins everything. Whatever.
Uh, yeah, I got on the stage. Along with a two kids I knew, like Finn and Matthew (remember either of them? No? It does not matter for shit. Nothing matters in this story.), and we waited for the girls to start their segment of the skit.
It was something about how they were having a sleepover together and were prank calling people, until eventually one of the girls asks the lead girl, Emily, to call her crush. She thinks about it for a second before giggling and picking up the phone. She immediately started laughing and put the phone down, presumable just crank calling the number.
Then it’s the guy’s turn. At the start to our segment, I was holding a paper video game controller, mashing buttons while staring at a nonexistent TV.
“Aw man, the Koopa Troopa got me!”
Mario. I was playing mario. Great games, by the way. But I apparently died to the second most basic enemy. Nice.
After I died, Troy told me the phone was ringing.
It wasn’t. It was a paper phone. It couldn’t make a ringing sound-
I picked it up anyway. No sound came out. Again, obviously, it was a paper phone-
“Aw, dang it! Just another crank caller. This time she just laughed. And now I’m all out of lives!”
We need to get real lives.
Troy and Matthew said a few lines, and then one of them told me that I should just get a girlfriend instead of playing video games all the time.
Yeah.
They made fifth graders say that line. Directly to me. Wow. Thanks, Fine Arts teacher.
“I mean, the girl I like probably doesn’t like me.”
That was my line. I said it slowly. I said it with emotion. I said it loudly.
They told me I should call her, but I said this:
“I have, but I just can’t, I’m too shy. I mean, how will I know if she really likes me?”
Cue the music.
Yeah, that’s the skit. Girls are having a sleepover and prank call people, and the guys play video games and talk about girlfriends.
It was pretty (funny) creative, having the last line of each skit tie into the name of the song. And because I was the lead (male) actor, I got to say the final line, too. Cool.
Anyway, the music started, and I got to my position, along with the other random people from my class. We made three lines, and I got in the back (cause I was tall). We got our props, which were the phones from earlier, and did our little dances.
I’m not gonna describe the choreo. We did a lot of arm sways and side slides. You know, to represent how love sways from side to side?
I thought that was good… Uh, we also did a lot of hip bouncing- that’s not what I meant. I meant we stood in place and kinda moved our hips up and down, I- okay this isn’t working
We started to get to the more ‘hardcore’ part of the choreo, with jumping and stuff. Since I was in the very back, I was really close to the wall, and I kinda… twisted my foot on the fabric that was hanging down with the sign saying ‘Running it Back to the 80’s’. I didn’t make the sign fall, of course, but it caused me to lose my balance.
“OW!”
I fell. I heard some people’s laughter, especially a certain girl’s loud chuckle from far away. How did I hear it? Maybe I was just trying to emphasize that someone special was laughing at me and I’ll be mad about that later.
Ahem. I got back up and finished the song. I could tell a lot of people were tired, such as myself, because I was sweating a lot. From singing a lot, from dancing a lot, from acting super stupid when I fell, you know how it is.
We got into our last position. The lights went off. All the kids that weren’t on the stage grabbed an item from the boxes that were scattered throughout the auditorium and got into position. The skit started.
“Guys, school’s almost over!”
That was Caitlyn’s line. I laughed a bit. She did NOT have a very big part in the skit, it seems like. The rest of the skit was pretty not important, but it was something about how even though school’s ending we can’t stop believing in ourselves, I think?
This chapter is a mess. Sucks to suck.
The music started. I saw everyone in the room flick the switch that was on the object we all grabbed, and they turned on. They were... the fat glow sticks. You know, the ones that are all foamy? As in made of styrofoam?
The last song was pretty cool. Sure, the choreo was dumb, at least for the people not on the stage, all we had to do was was wave the stick back and forth. I don’t know. It was boring. The song was cool, I meant. Yeah so the whole thing finished and the Fine Arts teacher started crying and it was super cool and everything
I- I’m gonna move on. WHAT THERES MORE BESIDES THE MUSIC PART yeah the after-performance stuff
While I was waiting for my mom to finish talking to the other parents, I aimlessly walked around. I danced a little because background music was playing, but didn’t do any more than that. Apparently most of my friends had left the school already, so I was left to do nothing. While I waited, I decided to pull out a piece of paper.
It was the lyrics for the One Direction song from earlier. I liked how the One Direction song sounded, but didn’t like the lyrics. I thought it was weird because all the lyrics were completely unrelated, like how they sing about fire in the first verse and water in the second. Hold on- water? That’s pretty cool- reminds me of… 4th grade… when I had…
I grabbed another piece of paper that was lying around and found a pencil. I started writing. I wrote down every single word that was related to water I knew, such as water (duh), wet (literally no difference), and starfish (I don’t know I started writing the names of aquatic animals down). I then implemented them into the song.
The first verse was ‘I’ve got fire for a heart’. It makes sense, fire is used to describe passion, which is a trait people recognize often match with the heart. It is used a lot in novels and movies and songs or whatever. It’s a cool metaphor.
So I decided to change the lyrics to ‘I’ve got water for a heart’. That… doesn’t make sense. Why would I change- That doesn’t- there isn’t even a metaphor there. What am I thinking? Why am I changing even more lyrics to- WHAT THE HELL KIND OF LYRIC IS ‘I’VE GOT NO FISH BEHIND ME’ DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE WHAT ARE YOU DOIN-
“Hey, Becky.”
Huh?
“Caitlyn? Why’re you still here?”
“My mom’s crying and my dad is talking to literally every other parent here. Why’re you here, Becky?”
“My mom is doing the same as your dad and my dad is probably asleep in one of the chairs.”
“Nice. Whatcha…. Got there?”
“Nothing!”
I slipped the pieces of paper behind my back. That didn’t stop her. She spun around and ran behind my back, attempting to grab it.
She missed, because I pulled it back and stepped behind me. She then made a full head-front dash into me, which caused me to fall backward and the lyrics to fall out of my hand.
“No!”
I fell on the ground as I saw her pick it up.
“Leave it on the ground!”
“Is this… Drag me Down?”
Wish I could drag the paper back down…
“No, it’s… Drown me Now.”
HAHAHAHA I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE I CALLED IT THAT
“Did you make a… parody of the lyrics?”
“...kinda.”
“That’s pretty cool. You like writing, Becky?”
“Yeah, I guess. I thought you knew that.”
“Yeah. And you also… like songs?”
“Not really.”127Please respect copyright.PENANALsk3zsnezs
127Please respect copyright.PENANAdvgC4hGVoZ
“What about your performance? I saw you… doing some fancy stuff we weren’t taught.”
Ugh. She meant when I fell over.
“Can you shut up? That was on accident. Also, why’d you start laughing when I said my lines?”
“Cause they were so stupid! And then Anna said that you were talking about m- I mean, never mind.”
Talking about her? What does Anna mean, I’d be talking about her?
“Uh… okay…”
“Yeah…”
I hope she wasn’t talking about that. Uhh time to move on
“Haha, this music’s pretty good, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s all 80’s music.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, that’s kinda the theme of the whole thing.”
“You didn’t have to be smart, Becky.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Know what would be funny?”
“What?”
“If a love song started playing.”
“Uh, yeah, Becky. That’s weird.”
That was weird. That was weird. Why did I say that? I don’t even know why- huh? What’s that sound?
…
The song changed to… a romance song.
“Becky it’s Careless Whisper!”
“Oh my god”
“Wow, Becky, you were right on point.”
“I guess… I’m just a genius!”
“no becky your like the dumbest person i know”
“That’s just quite rude, actually.”
“Whatever, Becky- oh! I won the competition, right?”
Okay, maybe they clapped louder for their class. Maybe it was just cause it was the ending.
I won’t admit that though.
“No, of course not?”
“Uh, yeah, we did?”
“Ugh, fine.”
I picked up my phone and felt around in my pocket. It took me forever to find the dollar in my pocket, because my phone crumpled it up, but I found five dollars and handed it to her. My hand slipped and it held onto hers.
“Sorry.”
She didn’t shake my hand off, but I quickly pulled it away. She took the money, but didn’t say anything. She cleared her throat, though.
“Um…”
“Uh…”
“Becky, know what would be funny?”
I swear if another coincidence happens I’m gonna punch her
“What?”
“If you apologized.”
No.
That doesn’t count.
“What?”
“If you apologized, I said.”
“No, I… uh…”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at me. Her wide eyes widened even more. She didn’t blink. I blinked a lot before looking down.
Apologize?
I still have to do that?
I
Um
Okay
Phew… um… lets go
“Caitlyn?”
She kept looking at me.
“I’m… sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yes, Caitlyn. I’m sorry for telling you to go to hell.”
She looked at me again. Like she was previously. And looked away, sighing.
“Thanks, Becky. It’s okay. I was… just kidding, I don’t care too much.”
“I- okay.”
I heard someone screaming my name. My dad had woken up and was yelling at me to hurry over so we could go home.
“Um, I- goodnight.”
“Bye.”
“See you later?”
“Sure, Becky.”
What… just happened?
I apologized, right?
Why was she so… disappointed? Or sad? Wait was she mad oh no please oh no i cant handle female anger im allergic to that
Okay, it’s fine, I’ll just ask her… later.
Or maybe I’ll ask Anna.
Or I won’t.
I dunno. I have one big chance left. For it to be climactic. It would be weird to randomly ask Anna for some help on a random day in recess. But since we have a big thing coming up
Big thing? What big thing? Oh, graduation? Ha! Wait.
I’m graduating. I’m going to middle school soon. I’m not ready for that. Well, at least that’s not for a while. However, I’m not ready for a different thing. The, uh, Caitlyn thing. Right. Uh, I’ll need to think about this. I hope I’m not overthinking this. Whatever. I’ll tell you later.127Please respect copyright.PENANAvBxHAbopdB