Social Recast: all right. i had this thing, to write a cliché story, with my own funk. and since i'm a horrible person and haven't been here in FOREVER, i decided to post it, even though it's not that good. i've had really bad writer's block, but i hope to be back for some time. i hope you like it, it took like three hours to make perfect. it's a strange sense of humor, sorry if it's offensive! lmao. Enjoy (: reviews are LOVED

Curvy Focus Points

“If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends, make it last forever--” the notes blaring out of the living room suddenly stopped and the knock on the door grew louder.

“Jake! Yo, unlock the door, dude.” A voice outside yelled, pounding on the door.

Looking down at his outfit, Jake ran up the stairs, “Rachel, go get the door,” he yelped, running past his older sister’s door and into his room. Rolling her eyes, Rachel laughed, “Only for you kid.”

Throwing off his previous outfit, Jake pulled a pair of shorts off his floor and pulled them up. Then came a navy blue wrestling shirt. “Clean enough,” he made a face and heard the door shut below him.

“Jake!” the voice from behind the door yelled.

Walking out of his room, Jake threw the cloths he just took off in his sister’s room and rustled his hair. Anything to please you he thought when a look-a-like turned the corner.

Standing across from Jake was a skinny, but still built, teenage boy with semi-shaggy copper hair. The only difference was the green eyes, contrasted from the blue.

“Hey, bro,” the new kid smiled, holding his hand out.

Taking the hand and brotherly hugging his best friend, Jake greeted him back, “Hey, Kyle. Wasn’t expecting you.”

“Yeah, I almost didn’t get it. You sister…” Kyle paused to look left then right, “She’s crazy, I heard one of her chick songs blaring down there.”

“What was that, Kyle, dearest?” Rachel appeared at the top of the staircase and Rachel’s lean figure leaned against the wall, her long dark hair draping over her gray-blue eyes.

Kyle froze and didn’t have the courage to turn around. “He said he loved those songs you always play on the radio,” Jake cracked, turning his friend around and dragging him away.

“What this time?” Rachel whispered as Jake went by, “I don’t listen to that crap.” She watched the two leave, but not before she gave her youngest brother see the disappoval deep in her eyes.

“Bye, Rach.” Slipping a pair of Nike’s on, Jake left, Kyle by his side, them cracking jokes about random things having to do with big hair, eyeliner, the occasional emo kid, and the color pink. Not salmon, but pink, because salmon is all right.

“I’m a runner, Kyle, not a baller,” Jake said, a few minutes later, when Kyle had driven to the park and pulled up beside the basketball court.

Before pushing the door open, Kyle reached in the back seat and grabbed a bright orange ball. “That’s what you think, I’ve seen you shoot up threes like there’s no tomorrow.”

Jake watched Kyle get out before he stumbled out of the car. It was a metal death trap! “I wrestle for a reason. Do you seeing me running across a court like a cat chasing a laser light?”

“Hey,” Kyle snapped, entering the metal cage, . friendly, really won’t hurt anything, b-ball court (it lies, it hurts a lot.) “You said you were a runner. You never classified.”

“Running back, sprinter, hurdler…wrestler.”

“Wrestling has nothing to do with running,” Kyle complained his usual argument for wanting Jake to switch sports around. It took two years convincing him to play football rather cross country. And baseball and basketball were still out. “At least b-ball has a little running.”

“Not changing. Basket is a bunch of monkeys dribbling a ball. Real hard. Wrestling is about endurance, strength, strategy.”

Kyle pretended to gag. “What’s sprinting?”

“Fun, duh.”

They played a few one-on-one games with each other, Jake lost three times, and Kyle two. But, Jake the racing jock refused to change his love of running.

School was the same way, with the same heartless boys who cared little of the rest of the world and only about themselves and their closet ‘bros’. The emo kids were laughed at, the fat girls ridiculed, and the nerds poked at. Nothing new to Jake or Kyle; like always Jake watched with his head down and Kyle poked and chuckled.

One day, a Wednesday, Kyle came up to Jake with a serious look on his face. “Can I ask you something, J.T.?”

Sweaty palms and nervous glances was his only answer for a few minutes. “S-sure.” He finally said, opening his locker.

“Am I a jerk?” he asked bluntly.

“Erm…” hesitant, Jake didn’t know how to answer and please. “Define jerk.”

“I am?” the brunette’s green eyes looked hurt, like he’d just been stabbed with a rusty spoon: it didn’t hurt much, but the after feel would remain for a few hours.

“In the leanest meaning of the word,” J.T. clarified, hoping Kyle wouldn’t start an argument over it.

“It kinda makes me want to cry.”

“Fer real, yo?” the sweaty palms and nervous glances stopped as Kyle continued to talk, but then, Jake felt bad.

Blinking like the sun was trying to attack his face, Kyle raised both his eyebrows, “Fer real, yo? Really, Jake? Fer real?” Laughing hysterically, Kyle lost all sense of direction. “I can’t believe you said that with such a straight face!”

“You were the one crying,” Jake mumbled throwing his bag on the ground and shoving a pencil in his pocket; he was about to close the locker when a loud doong made him jump. Kyle had hit his head.

Not bothering to help his friend Jake walked away. The few others in the hallway stared. “Idiot…”

Later that day, Kyle swung a chair around the lunch table and edged really close to Jake; only an inch away from his face, Kyle’s nose was about to touch his friends’. “So, I have a question.”

Jake narrowed his eyes, shoot a string of daggers at his emerald-eyes friend, “Is it national MAKE KYLE CRY BECAUSE JAKE HAS REALLY CRAPPY ANSWER’S DAY?”

“No,” Kyle said flatly, as half the basketball team and a third of the wrestlers watched their ‘moment’. “It’s nation KYLE HAS AMAZING QUESTIONS, SO J.T. HAS TO ANSWER THEM ALL BECAUSE HE’S THE REASON KYLE ALWAYS CRIES.” Kyle stammered on.

“Fer real?” Jake asked, his fork full of green beans half way to his mouth. “Repeat that.”

“Can’t,” moving his face inward, Kyle stole the beans, making a grotest face as he chewed, “gross. Anyways, as for my question.”

“What’s with Kyle today?” one of the wrestler’s, Cody, asked no one in particular. The group of boys all looked in his direction, then at the creepy two, then back at Cody. In unison, they shrugged.

“What?” Jake’s voice was bitter (and not like the bitter sweet chocolate that melts in your mouth and is super good, but bitter like a sour patch kid, before you get to the middle part).

Offended, Kyle turned the other way, trying to start a conversation with the other boys, who were still half afraid of what he might ask them on the long-named national day.

A few minutes later, Jake slammer his empty fork down, for it was still half way to his mouth. “What, Kyle, what?” Kyle ignored him.

“So guys, remember that party last Friday--”

Kyle turned around, smacking the cell phone out of Jake‘s hands. “Hey, that’s a bad J.T. And since you put it that way, I’ll ask you.

“…Can I shoot you with a BB gun?”

Then the bell rang.

“Idiot.” Jake smiled to himself, picking up his phone. He stood up and took his tray to the trash and left the cafeteria, Kyle close to his heels.

Friday came, and Kyle was still full of the querky questions, and Jake was ready for everyone. His answers became quicker and his eyes brightened each time a new question was asked.

“Can I have a turn to ask a question?” Jake asked a few minutes before final bell was about to ring.

Eager, Kyle answered: “Sure.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh?” the confused Kyle inquired.

Jake shrugged off the nervous feeling he hadn’t felt in a few days and continued on. “You’ve been acting weird lately, not yourself. Tell me what’s wrong?”

Kyle was frozen for a second, unsure of what to say. “N-Nothing, dude.”

Standing up, Jake listened to the bell ding and he was ready for practice. “Whatever.”

Practice. Wrestling season was about to begin and he’d been lifting and away from Kyle so long that he was glad for the constant questions, but deep down, he knew something was wrong with him.

Running was the basic conditioning for wrestlers. And Jake ran hard, he was a runner, not a hyper-active cat.

“Thomas, what’s the dilemma?” The rounded couch went on with drills, but his eyes never left Jake’s lacking form and speed.

“Nothing Coach,” he huffed, trying to move his legs faster.

The practice was long and hard, but it was over, eventually (like a three hour movie that sucks. You never expected to be so bored watching a batman flick, but there you were, falling asleep twenty minutes in). Not wanting to socialize, Jake grabbed his duffle bag and went out to his car, no shower, no conversation.

Unlocking the door, Jake tried to get the door opened, but it was jammed. “Dammit!” he said in frustration.

“You have to jiggle it, bro,” Kyle laughed from behind him.

Startled by the random voice, Jake jumped three feet in the air and spun around. “Maybe you should be a ballerina!” laughing at the face, spin combination, Kyle held out his hand.

“Ha-ha,” J.T. answered sarcastically, taking the hand.

“I’m going to tell you what’s up… My parents are freaking out over something, and it’s taking a toll on me.” He whispered. The rest of the story came easy under the setting sun. Jake tried his best to help, and he thought he had, until Kyle brought up his problems.

“So, what’s with the snazzy looks and twitching?”

“What?” Jake pretended to be unaware of his nervous habits, but after the story, he couldn’t lie to his best friend.

“Dude, bro, just tell me.” Kyle urged.

“I’m…” A tension as thick as an ice cube entered the atmosphere. There was no cutting it with a knife, you’d need a hacksaw. After ten, twenty minutes, Jake was trying not to count, afterall, it felt like just a few seconds to debate the truth, the right, the wrong, and his friendship.

“I’m not… so straight. I run the around the track for a reason in which it isn’t straight, but curvy.” He began to explain, his blue eyes twinkling with soon-to-be tears. “And, you’re in the middle of the track. The focus point of orbit.” Jake was shaking and his palms were sweating worse than they ever had before.

Silence. Night was about there, and the other wrestlers were gone. The two of them stared at each other a long while before someone had the guts to say anything else.

“So…” Kyle’s green eyes widened as he took in his friend’s words, “You’re… like you’re like in love with me? Like in a gay way?”

Flushing bright red, Jake folded his arms across his chest, to protect his heart, maybe, and nodded. “Kinda like that…”

There was a long silence after that (the kind of silence that came when you‘re confronted by the police on something you‘re really guilty for but denied it, so you feel bad and they stare you down in silence until you tell the truth). Neither of them knew what to say, or how to say it, so they stood, uneasy and twitching for about twenty minutes.

Taking in a deep breath, Kyle forced a smile on his face, “That’s… nice, I guess.”

Shock and bewilderment dripped from Jake’s pallid face. “You you’re ju-just oh-oh-kay with that?” he stuttered, unwrapping his arms.

Kyle held his hand out, ready for a hug, “Oh sure.”

“You’re not going to beat me up? Like the other kids would have?”

Shocked, Kyle laughed a cruel and sarcastic laugh. “Of course.” His expression took a 180 and all the amusement disappeared. “Queer,” he sneered, his extended arm plowing Jake straight in the face.

Months later (long, lingering months) Jake went to his sister’s room. He stared in the closet for some time before he grabbed a pair of her shoes, flared jeans, and school spirit shirt: the same outfit he’d worn months before.

“I’m a jock, going to a school full of homo-haters, so why not face them; shoot ‘em down with the BB gun,” he laughed, pulling the shirt over his head. “Kyle can pretend, but he’s never going to hide the truth.” With a streak of eyeliner, Jake was out the door, ready for his education.

THE END.