remember when I knew

JAI PRICE

"DO YOU WANT us to take you home?" Reece asked him.

Jai Price nodded. Home. He needed home, his bead, Sha, mom. He needed home.

"Come on," John said, putting a hand on his back, and guiding him out.

"I'll go take your bag and your geography stuff to study for tomorrow's test," Lucas added.

Jai nodded. Bag. He'd forgotten about his bag.

He let his friends drag him away from school, people, hell. His eyes looked around him, focusing on things he saw.

That tree would look good in a drawing. With it's colours, a light blue, clouded sky, a warm sunlight illuminating the leaves in the back.

"Hey, it's O.K. now," Aiden told him.

It's O.K. now. You're alright. You're alright.

He kept repeating those words all the way home. There, he opened the door and walked to the couch where he crashed, not wanting to ever move again, his eyelids heavier and heavier.

"What do you want to listen to?" Reece questioned as he took his phone and connected it to the speaker.

"My playlist?"

The answer was Green Day's Basket Case.

"I suggest UNO," John proposed as he took the game, sitting next to him, smiling warmly.

"That game destroys friendships," Aiden warned he looked like he wanted to add something but he didn't.

What was he going to say? Something about Jai? Was there something he should know? Was it good? Bad?

John gave them their cards, and they played a little while until Lucas arrived, making more noise than an elephant would've. "What?" He gasped, "You started playing without me?"

"Yeah. It's actually funnier when no one's cheating," John replied.

"I wasn't cheating!"

"You so were. Who the heck gets four plus four and two plus two cards without cheating?"

"I was just incredibly skilled!"

"If anything, you were just lucky. UNO doesn't require any special skill."

"UNO is a game of probability, schemes and smart quick thinking," Aiden countered.

"How the hell did I chose my friends?" Reece complained.

Jai just smiled as he sat among them, listening to their arguing about whether UNO required skills or not.

"It doesn't, but if you're smart enough to plan when to put what, you get more chance of winning," John ended the debate.

"I still didn't cheat."

"What was that?"

Silence. Except for Cigarettes After Sex singing. "I'm giving you all my Giving you all my Giving you all my love".

"You and Azalea seem to hang out a lot with each other," Aiden then blurted out. "It's the second time I see you together, and you seemed to be rather... close."

Jai stared at his friend. Were they? Did Azalea think they were close as well? Or maybe it made her uncomfortable? But she was the one who came each time. But what if she was just being nice, what if she hated him?

"What? I say it's actually girl talk time," Aiden defended when John rolled his eyes.

Reece snorted. "You want to talk about that?"

Lucas brought his hands together, and did a weird, childish dance. "Yay! We're finally talking about Frigg and Aiden!"

"There is no 'Frigg and Aiden', we're just two strangers-not-so-strangers hating each other and showing it in a cruel war of slime and flour. And I was talking about Azalea and Jai."

Jai shrugged. "She just helped me with my panic attacks. She's good at it actually since she works at Sasha's school."

"Oooh! How's the Sasha doing?" Lucas asked.

Jai was grateful that they didn't try to invest further in the panic attacks. "Good I guess."

"I bet she misses my babysitting."

"I bet she doesn't," Jai immediately replied, thinking of Sha's horrified expression after Lucas burned the food, made her watch Game Of Thrones, and gave her the boy talk.

"I honestly hope you're not planning on having kids, Lucas," Reece commented. "If you do, may they rest in peace."

"Well you definitely need to find a cute, sweet, nice girl to soften your heart of ice," Lucas pouted.

"I bet ten dollars that's never going to happen," the black haired boy blankly said.

"You're on."

And when they left, Jai felt that he was lucky to have friends.

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A/N: Hiya! Happy Saturday! I love Saturdays because I'm Swedish, and I get sweets every Saturday since that's how it works in Sweden!It's called **Lördagsgodis** and Wiktionary says it's "used in conjunction with the common custom in Sweden to only allow children to eat candy on Saturdays".

AND QUESTION: what is the best adaptation of a book into a movie that you have seen?

I think the movie Matilda was actually really good. The book is still better, of course, but it's also a good movie.

AND: BIYA!