Dear Jonah

Grade 1 / Letter 1

Six year old Jonah Skarsgard sits on the brick wall near the courtyard, he occasionally watches the other kids playing basketball and wonders why he's never really tried the sport. Until he looks back down at his Gameboy and gets entranced all over again by Pokemon Silver, and he understands again. Pokemon is way better than throwing a stupid ball around, especially when he does that in P.E. anyway, right?
He giggles to himself as he swings his feet, catching a shiny Eevee, and it's made his entire day. Not a thing could possibly go wrong now.
When he gets home, he fully intends on showing his mom, Jen, the second he gets into her car, and as soon as his dad, David, is home from work, he'll excitedly show him too and he'll beam at how proud of him they are, all because he caught a shiny Eevee.
Then he'll pour through his collection of pokemon cards and double check to see if he has a shiny Eevee card, because if he does, he'll take one of his star stickers and stick it next to the card, marking that he owns it in the game and in the trading cards.
After that, he'll do his Junie B. Jones reading and his worksheet of practice sentences for Mrs. Wilson, and he'll eat dinner, watch some cartoons and spend the rest of his time playing more Pokemon until it's time to go to bed.

An absolutely perfect day.
Until he's hit in the face with a basketball. He catches it before it can make it back to them.
He glares down at the students playing, "Hey!" He shouts, bitter and upset now. Now his day is completely ruined.
"Sorry!" A couple of the kids shout back. Jonah throws the ball back at them hard, making sure to hit one of them.
"You're all STUPID!" He shouts, "You ruined everything!"

Luca picks his basketball back up and looks at him, first noticing that he's never seen this kid around before. He looks at his friend who got hit back and giggles. "This kid can throw a ball!" he says to him and helps him up before looking back at Jonah.

"I'm really sorry." he says, getting overly panicked. He hates when anybody dislikes him and has had anxiety issues from a very young age. "I really am, that wasn't on purpose." he looks up after his hasty apology, noticing all of his friends already heading back to the classroom. He excuses himself and follows them in, going to his seat and stuffing his bag under his chair.
It's 10 more minutes until the agony of being stuck in a stuffy classroom sets in and he notices the boy from outside in his room.

Their teacher starts assigning partners for their reading project and puts Luca and Jonah together.

Luca races over to Jonah's table and sits right next to him. "Hi! Sorry about that again. I'm Luca!" he says with a mix of anxiety and excitement in his tone.

Jonah sits neatly at his table, organizing his Pokemon pencils in order from most favorite to least favorite, Pikachu being first for the sole factor that he thinks Pikachu is one of the all time cutest Pokemon to ever exist. Then Eevee, then Charizard.
He looks over at Luca with a little frown.
"Hi Luca, my name is Jonah Tyler Skarsgard." He introduces himself politely, the way that his religious parents taught him to.
He pushes his blonde hair out of his face and looks Luca up and down.
"You don't look like a meanie. Are you mean? Because if you're mean, I don't wanna be friends with you." He says rather bluntly, "But if you're nice you can sit with me. If you're nice, I might even show you my Pokemon game. I just caught a shiny Eevee, you know. I really did, and then you and your stupid friends thumped me with a basketball and now I'm not excited anymore. But you didn't throw it so I guess it's okay."

Luca's face goes blank, knowing very well that he was the one who threw it. "I'm not a meanie! My mom always tells me I'm the best boy." he pouts and crosses his arms, looking at Jonah's pokemon pencils.
"I have cool stuff too!" he says, and pulls out his Adventure Time school supplies including his bright yellow Jake notebook, his bubblegum pencils, and his Beemo lunch box out of his green backpack, meant to look just like Finns. "You can use my lady rainicorn highlighters too." he smiles and looks down at the packet that's been placed in front of them. He starts trying to read it but easily gets bored and starts drawing on their assignment instead.
"Look, Jonah! I can draw a very cute dog." he says as he totally defaces their project with scribbles, somewhat resembling animals.