Me and my friends Mark, Sara, Ava, and Alan were sitting at the Roubini's dining table, eating lunch at Ramona Roubini's birthday party. The guests went inside the little room with tables to eat, after playing in the freezing, but sunny Winton Park.
"I just had an idea!" Sara finally broke the depressing (and awkward!) silence at the table. "We could do a buddy cup boy-girl duo challenge in this park next Saturday!"
If you don't know, buddy cup is a challenge where you have to get with a group of people (in this case it's two opposite-gender people!) and enter a buddy cup contest with other 11-year olds.
"That sounds like fun." Ava said. "Your sister let you?"
"Well, my sister agreed on two conditions," Sara responded. "The first condition is that it has to be a double-buddy, so any other buddy pair can join if they'd like."
"What's the next condition?" Alan asks.
"I have to buddy up with someone my sister already knows really well." Sara replied. "So, maybe if I buddy up with Riley..." She motioned to me. I nearly choked on my slice of cake.
"Yeah, right, Riley hates these games." Mark scoffed.
"Well, he'll enjoy it if we all help each other, and not abandon the team!" Sara assured. "Remember the crab incident in second grade?"
We all think about the time when we all stole crabs from each other and took teamwork for granted. I shudder.
Sara turned to Ava and Alan.
"Will you please, please, PLEASE do the double-buddy with me and Riley?" Sara asked Ava and Alan. Now it was Alan's turn to actually choke on his slice of cake. Ava patted him continuously on the back. I caught him smiling a little bit, but I don't think he was smiling about choking on dessert, but he was smiling about going with us to the double buddy.
But Mark on the other hand...Well, he seemed like he was going to explode, and not of excitement.
"You've got to be joking!" Mark fumed. He looked like he was going to cream me. "Ya'll are seriously doing this little double-buddy thing without me!?" Then he started to look up to the ceiling and-pray. Just then, the heavens answered. And by the heavens-I mean the party room door.
My desk partner, Frankie Banks, just walked through the automatic door, and by that, I mean she probably just figured out how to operate it. Her eyes landed on Sara first, with a furious glare, then her eyes moved again, to side-eye me. Finally, she glanced at Mark, grinning with excitement.
"Frankie!?" I ask, surprised to see her.
"Funny you should ask, Riley. It's Francis now." She said, just looking at Mark. Mark froze like an ice sculpture. "My house had a power outage for the last hour, until I could finally see this invitation Ramona emailed me. And I checked Mark's groupchat..."
"Welp..." Sara made a face. "That's...creepy..."
"Okay! But-" Frankie's- I mean Francis' voice started to rise like she was about to storm out. "Can Mark and I go to the double-buddy with y'all?"
"Well, then it would be a triple buddy." Ava corrected.
"I'm not insane!" Frankie pointed at Ava. "The more the merrier!"
ns216.73.217.115da2
and then Add to home screen.