Ned Gets Stood Up

Chapter Twenty-Three

Glancing at The Gregor, Sam looked at him as if he could possibly weigh in on the topic. "Look Ned, full offense to your Christmas, if the Christmas Walk is our first date, it'll be our last date." Ned laughed, holding The Gregor and Sam added, "Also, three's a crowd. This little gnome has got to go—"

A tall blonde girl sprang out from the corner of Sam's eye. "GOTCHA!" She shouted like this was a battlefield and her prey finally fell into her clutches. Sam's bones hit the ceiling of his body, baffled by two bodies coming at them. He was pushed to the side while two girls lunged at Ned. The tall blonde girl grabbed Ned's arms while a shorter girl with long black hair latched onto The Gregor.

"Hey! Careful!" Sam snapped. He jumped into the circle, pulling at the shorter girl's arms and finding it was like pulling at chains melded to wall.

It was the cheerleaders, of course.

"Hold on! hold on!" Ned begged. "You're gonna make me drop him!"

"Good! Drop him! He's ours." The tall one shouted. "You stole him from us!"

Ned grunted, fighting so much he was pink in the face. "It's for the common good! I'm going to bring him home!"

"Are you stupid? He belongs to the Chipmunks!"

"It's not fair you guys get to have all the magic!"

"Oh, what?" the other girl piled on. "You think your school deserves it more?"

"We don't want to give it to the Bulldogs either," Sam insisted, pathetically sweating for not contributing much at all.

"Don't bullshit us." The tall blonde had a scowl like blazing fire. "We saw your footballers park outside. You're here to hand him off."

Sam snapped a wide eyed worried look up at Ned. "Shit."

"We need to hide," Ned agreed, when everything got so much worse.

Breaking and crashing through the chatter and the Christmas music, Chad's voice carried farther than a tsunami. "NED FLOWERS! We're back, we're sober, and we're here to take that little guy with us."

Sam stepped to the side, staring through the tunnel of lights with a shivering rolling down his back. He could hear Chad telling the guys to spread out.

"Hide, hide, hide," Sam insisted, pushing everybody onto the forbidden grass, including the cheerleaders. They scurried behind a huge red sleigh pulled by mechanical glowing reindeer. He slammed his back into sleigh, already out breath. He could hear the football players barking orders, carrying their musk of axe body spray.

"We're on the same side," Ned tried to explain. "Those guys want to destroy The Gregor."

"Ssh!" Sam hissed, throwing his arm out to hold Ned and one of the girls back and away from prying eyes, but she didn't try to move his am. "They're gonna cover the entire walk at this rate."

Stretching his neck, Sam was only able to catch a glimpse of Chad walking by before he had to drop back down. His sigh came out as a shudder. Glancing at Ned, Ned was already smiling apologetically at him. Ned whispered, "Still wouldn't call this a date, huh? Might be a cool story one day."

Sam shook his head. "There's a little too much of everybody else for me to consider this a date. When we're going out Ned, it better just be between me and you."

#

NISHA

Staring at Sam, Nisha let those words sink in.

She hadn't thought about it like that before. Looking at Adison on the other side of Ned, she thought about all the people who had a say in where their relationship was in now.