Our hill of stars

Chapter Fifteen- The Birthday Battle.

"I'll be right back," I say and go to where I normally sleep and set my present on my small dresser. My dad and mom were in there leaving me and my unexpected visitor to acquaint each other. 

"Alright," I say. I walk back into the kitchen and pull out the leftover waffles from this morning. I heat two waffles on a paper plate and slide the plate to Adrian while I sit down. 

"Thanks," he mumbled. "Why are you here?" I want to ask him so badly. I truly don't know, it's so weird to have an enemy right here in front of me. Now my enemy that was once my friend now wants to be my friend? That's confusing. I assume Adrian is attempting to be my friend since I will be tutoring him for quite some time. "Look, if you came here to shower me with gifts and kind words it's not going to work. I don't know what type of mind games you're playing now but I---"

"I'm not playing mind games, Chris!" He raises his voice at me making me feel awful that I accused him. "I'm trying...." he lowers his town and looks at me with sympathetic eyes. Who are you, Adrian Bonifacio? I think to myself, he's not the same scared little freshman I used to know. He's so much more. Why have I held such a grudge against him? "I'm trying, Chris. I can't fix what I've done in the past since it has already happened. I do want to be your friend and I thought by being mean to you I would somehow impress you. I don't know it's dumb, I'm sorry, I want to be your friend, I do. I was hoping that the present could be a peace offering to end the battle that I decided to start." 

"Oh," I say, that's all I can manage to get out. I saw it coming but it seems to be sudden, "Well, I also would like to put the battle behind us. Allies?" I extend a hand out to him jokingly. 

He reaches out his hand and shakes mine firmly. Then, there's a knock on the door, another visitor? Two times in a day? Wow, I feel special, hopefully, it's someone I'll be a little happier to see. I pull away from Adrian's arm and go to the door when I open it, I am somewhat surprised but it was expected. It's 1:30 p.m. by now, "Emery!" I say when I open the door. She leaps into my arms and gives me a huge hug.

"Happy Birthday," Emery says into my ear. She separates herself from my body and hands me a small box. 

"Thank you," I take the box and move to the side so she can come in. She slips inside and notices Adrian, she shoots me a look of suspicion. A look we both call, why is he here?  This look was commonly used when we saw people we didn't like such as Adrian. I shrug my shoulders at her and close the door. She sits down at the table across from Adrian, I go into my room and set the small box on top of the present Adrian gave me. I come back to the dining table and sit next to Emery. We all do some small talk and talk about random things, I can tell Emery's struggling because she didn't have much to say to him. 

Out of the blue Adrian stand up from the table. He looks like he's forgotten something. The time has been going by rather quickly. I look at the clock and see it was 5:30 p.m already. He says, "Oh shoot, I'm so sorry, I lost track of time. I have to go, thanks for dealing with me. Happy Birthday." Before I can get any words out of my mouth he shows himself out of the door and leaves. Emery looks over at me trying to process everything that happened. 

"He wants to be my friend." I say casually and shrug my shoulders,  "He brought me a gift." I look at her and chuckle a bit. She just smiles and shakes her head at me. I grab her chin with my hand and squish her face, she looks like a marshmallow. But adorable. I move her face towards mine with my hand and kiss her softly. She leans into the kiss and we finally pull away to breathe. 

"This was all I wanted for a birthday present," I say cheesily smirking at her. 

"Yeah, okay," she smiles brightly. "Open your present!" She says enthusiastically. 

"Okay, okay," I get up and walk into 'my room' and grab the small box she gave me. I come back out and sit on the couch and she comes to sit next to me. "It's wrapped so nicely," I chuckle since the box isn't wrapped one bit and there's just one strand of duct tape that's keeping the box shut. I peel the duct tape back to open it. In the box is a thing that looks like a watch but isn't. On the label it's called 'A bond touch bracelet' the bracelet was for two people. You use them when you are in the far distance of one another. You can send coded messages to each other. 

"I love it," I smile and take out the two bracelets. I grab her wrist lightly and wrap one of the bracelets around it. 

"I'm glad you like it, it's a gift for both of us." She laughs and puts the other bracelet on my wrist. The rest of the day flies by until it's 8:00 p.m. She looks over at the clock and she says, "Time truly does fly by when you're having fun." She smiles and kisses me on the forehead after she has stood up then she shows herself out. 

"Wait," I say calling after her. "I'm driving you home." 

She turns to look at me, "Fine," she says agreeing unwillingly. She wanted to walk but I wasn't gonna let her walk alone in the darkness of night. We get into my car and I drive her home. Once she gets inside safely I go back to my house. I completely forget about dinner or even opening Adrian's gift. I throw a blanket and pillow on the floor and let sleep take over my body. I fall asleep in an instance only hearing my parents whispering before I've gone into another world. 

I wake up to the nagging sound of my alarm for school, me and Adrian have our first session today. We planned it for right after school in the school library...we wanted our first place to be very simple and not hard to get to so we're doing it at the school. This is the earliest I've gotten up for school since the third grade, I get off the floor throwing the blankets and pillows back to their space. My dad was sleeping on the couch which I thought was odd but he must've let my mom have a more comforting night of rest. I go into 'my room' and walk quietly so I don't wake my parents. I get changed and notice the present box sitting on my dresser still nicely wrapped. I take the box and put it into my backpack. Before I left I hug my dad even though he's asleep, he won't be home when I come back and lord knows it will probably be another lifetime until I see him. I whisper "I love you, dad," to him. I know my dad won't hear me but it's probably better that he doesn't hear. I break away from the hug and head off to school.

 On my way to school I pick up Emery, we have an extremely boring day at school until lunch rolled around. Lunch usually was the most interesting part of our day so this was no surprise. Lunch was different today, Emery brought someone with us, usually, it's just me and her but she brought someone along. I didn't mind, the girl she brought was new to our school and seemed to get along with Emery well. Emery made a friend, she just moved here this weekend. Her name is Naava, she was the same age as me but older than me by two months. She moved here from Detriot, Michigan to Gert Town, New Orleans. That has to be a downsize in space, Detriot is 142.9 miles...Gert town is ¼ of that. At least Naava moved here, Gert Town is safer than 9% of the cities in Louisiana. In Gert Town, you have a 1 in 11 chance of becoming a victim of any crime.

 I'm glad Naava's parents choose to send her to Isidore Newman School, her family must have a good amount of money. Naava was good-looking, she's about 5 feet and 7 inches tall with tan olive skin, she has a pear-shaped body with eyes that are as green as emerald, her shoulders were broad yet she carried a beautiful heart-shaped face, her head was topped with natural wavy brunette hair that went to her shoulders, her face had freckles scattered around and she had dimples when she smiled. For her first day at Isidore Newman School, she wore a red figure-fitting polka-dot dress with black combat boots. Her style was odd to me but unique. Most of the lunch we asked Naava questions so we could get to know her better. She seemed to fit in with us very well, by the second half of lunch she was beginning to become more confident and comfortable around us. You could tell by the way she held her posture and the tone of voice she used. After our hour for lunch ended we drove back to school, the rest of the day flew by. Once the day ended I head completely forgot that I wasn't going straight home...I had more learning to do..no, not learning...teaching.