Alia
McCarr was never my favorite person, but neither was Hana Merisse, and I never
left her side. Maybe I should have at some point, but I grew to rely on her for
making sure I didn’t die or do something so stupid it was worse than death.
Stupid things included going rock climbing without ropes when I had never so
much as climbed a playground rock wall, skipping class to ask the principal if
we could fire my math teacher, and stacking trampolines on top of each other to
create an amusement park across the street from Town Hall. If it weren’t for
Hana, I wouldn’t be telling this story, so I guess something good came out of
being her most faithful comrade.
Anyway, on that fateful day in late
June, I was developing yet another stupid idea. Alia was on the phone,
screaming about rope ladders and blocks of cement, and Hana’s brother, Mickey,
was complaining from the other room about how we wouldn’t take Alia off
speakerphone.
“Yare, you can’t do this. It’s even
stupider than when you made bombs in the basement,” Hana whispered into my ear.
“You’re just going to make a mess, and it won’t solve anything.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong, Hana,”
I whispered back as Alia screeched something about Native American bungalows,
“it won’t make a mess.”
“How, Yare? How?”
“Listen, I got this under control. I
promise we won’t use rope ladders.”
“Actually, I think the rope ladders are
the only good part of the plan.”
I shot a wicked smile in Hana’s
direction. She rolled her eyes.
“Are you even listening to me?” Alia’s
voice boomed through the room.
“Yeah, yeah, I am. But, listen, can we
not use the rope ladders?”
“WHAT!?”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was just
thinking it’s a little over excessive, but, hey. We can keep ‘em if you like.”
“Good,” She sounded satisfied. “Now, we
need to decide what color to paint the wall once it’s dried.”
“What? You’re painting the wall? Why
didn’t I know about this?” Hana demanded.
“Um, I don’t know, maybe because you
weren’t listening?” Alia’s voice
crackled through the speakers.
“Oh, yeah, Hana, seriously?” I sounded
angry, but Hana had spent enough time with me to know that my eyes were
glinting with a joking amusement.
Hana gave me a grin.
“Sorry, Yare. I’ll listen more closely
next time.”
“Umm, hello? What about me?” Alia said,
because, being on the phone, couldn’t see our joke.
“I’m sorry to you, too, Alia,” Hana
said, not breaking eye contact with me.
I was beaming from ear to ear. “Yeah,
she’s sorry, Alia.”
~to be continued~
I wrote this for school the other day when we had a "personal prompt" for our online journals. We were allowed to write at least seven sentences of whatever we wanted, and I chose to write this.
