Sides

“BEEP!” the scoreboard rang loud at the end of the first half. I was furious. I hadn't played a single second of the game and I was angry about it.
One of my teammates, Emmett Plew came over to me and mocked me, saying, ”Ha, Chris! You suck! Go home! You won’t play anyway!”. I almost turned around and beat the crap out of him, but, being a civil person, I gained my composure, and without a curse word, walked away.

On the way home from the game, I talked to my parents in the car about it. They were both furious about it too, but all that they could do was to talk to the coach on the phone that night. My dad did, but I knew wouldn't help me.

At lunch the next day, Emmett was sitting at the other side of my table with the jocks, talking about how good he was at basketball and making up things that I had done that I hadn't done. Meanwhile, I was sitting at the other side of the table, as far as I could possibly get from him and his jerk friends. I sat at lunch with my nerd friends Jolly, Mitchell, and Alan. They respected me for who I was and didn't make fun of me ever in a mean way. We were joking around about Asian parents and “A+”s when Emmett called me over.
“What!” I yelled over to him.
“Why did you air ball five layups last night?”
“Where do get all of this crap?” I asked, laughing. He turned and whispered something to his friend. I didn't care. Turning around back to my nerd friends, I laughed and said,”He is a complete idiot.” They all agreed wholeheartedly and we laughed about it.

At basketball practice the next night I got there fifteen minutes late because I had baseball practice right before, which was the sport that was most important to me. I was lucky because I got there while the team was in the middle of the practice and they were listening to the coach talk about our offense, so they could not make any comments. But after practice Emmett found me and asked,”Where were you during the beginning of practice?”. When I replied that I had been at pitching lessons, he laughed because he thought that he was a better pitcher than me. I just turned away, knowing that I was a lot better than him.

I showed up to the next practice on time, surprising Emmett, and during the practice I played very well, making my coaches happy and me happy as well. I also was very happy with the practice because I thought that it would get me more playing time in the next game and I was very pleased that I trucked Emmett a couple of times during our scrimmage, making him angry, which made me happy.

At lunch the day after that practice, Emmett just sat at the table with a couple of large bruises scattered on his body, he glared at me for a long time, making me very uncomfortable for most of the lunch period until I yelled,”What do you want? You've been staring at me all period! I know that I am beautiful, but you’re really creeping me out!”. He once again turned to his friend, said something. I was beginning to get really curious about what they were saying, but I let it go once more, as I had homework that I needed to do.

At the next game, I was excited to be there and I was confident that I would get a lot of playing time because the other kid that also played my position was not there. I was indeed correct, I did play for most of the game, but I wondered if I would actually continue to play this much, or if it just luck because the other player that played my position wasn't there. Emmett came up to me after the game saying how happy he was that I played more than one minute of the game, but I decided that it wasn't worth fighting over and hurried my pace to leave.

Once again I talked to my parents in the car and we were all happy that I played a fair amount, but they agreed with me that I probably just played as much as I did because there was no one else at the game to play my position. My dad reminded me that I could change my amount of playing time if I practiced, but I didn't have time for that and anyway, I would prefer to practice for baseball.

At lunch on the next day, Emmett whispered again to his friend. My curiosity was peaked. I wanted so bad to ask him what it was he was whispering but I knew that was exactly what he wanted, so I restrained myself. I asked my friends what they thought that he was whispering. We came up with all kinds of crazy, funny things that he could be whispering that made me laugh and forget about the actuality of the situation.

At the next basketball game, Emmett was handing out invitations. He gave one to me. I was awestruck that he actually gave me an invitation that was to his birthday party. Looking around, I noticed that everyone’s invitations looked slightly different from mine. I blamed it on my bad eyesight.

The next day in the halls, during passing, my friend Jolly came up to me and showed me an invitation that said on it that said:

Please do not tell Chris that this birthday party is a fake.
Thanks,
Emmett Plew

I gasped. One of the kids on my basketball team must’ve dropped his invitation to Emmett’s party and there was no actual party, just a trick to fool me! This was why all of the other invitations looked different from mine - they were!

So at lunch that day, Emmett whispered to his friend once more, but this time I wasn't curious, I knew why. He then asked, “Are you coming to my party?” His friend giggled, quickly silenced by Emmett.
“NO!” I yelled in his face, concealing that I knew that the party was a fake. “Why would I ever want to come to your party?” He and his friend frowned.
“Whatever, your loss,” he replied. He was doing a bad job concealing the disappointment on his face that the little prank wasn't going to happen. I then turned around to my real friends and gave them all high-fives.
“He really deserved that,”I told them. We all agreed and laughed about his expression.