"Are you serious? Are you really, willingly, going to help Mara with something?" Tweed asked Ethan in disbelief as they meandered to homeroom.
"Well, it wouldn't be directly helping her, but yes. I've realized that I have a passion for confetti and streamers," Ethan teased, but it wasn't in his usual light tone. Instead, it was shrouded with an air of sadness.
"Anything that helps Mara, even remotely, should be avoided like the plague. And, according to our friendship contract, you are not allowed to cohort with the enemy unless it's absolutely necessary," Tweed said, and for the first time since last night, he smiled.
"I don't think you want to avoid Mara. In fact, I think you want to-"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence," Tweed threatened, raising his Pop-Tart to threaten Ethan, holding it up in a menacing way. If a Pop-Tart could be considered a weapon, Ethan would be terrified. Since he knew that Tweed could make anything into a weapon, he stepped back slightly, causing Tweed's expression to grow cocky.
"That's what I thought," he boasted right as they ran into the very person they were talking about. Speak of the devil, thought Ethan.
"Hello, boys," Mara greeted them with a chipper tone and a big smile, resembling a bird in the wee hours of the morning when the sun just begins to peek through from beyond the horizon.
Tweed scowled at her. "What do you want?" he asked her in an attitude so different from the one he showed last night. Maybe it was some sort of pack they made, acting hostile to each other in public and secretly nice to each other in private.
All of a sudden, Mara shoved a clipboard with a piece of paper in front of Ethan's line of sight, and he scrunched his eyebrows up while studying it.
"What is this?" he asked her, eyeing the paper with four signatures in an interrogative manner.
"It's a petition to save Sol Bakery. I've already posted an article on my blog to get more signatures."
"With what money?" Ethan murmured. Although he appreciated her initiative, it was pointless. Without any source of income for Sol Bakery, the place was bound to close
"With city funds. We can legally petition to have the bakery, and the building, protected as a historical landmark," she said, clearly proud of the research she had done and the information she had procured overnight. When the boys were still silent, Mara sighed once more.
"I saw a town like ours have a few elementary school kids a few years back that stood in an arcade that they all loved as a protest when they wanted to demolish the building."
Ethan's ears perked up and he asked, "Did it work?"
She shyly smiled and scratched the back of her head. "No."
His face fell and resumed a disinterested look.
"But! I think our petition will work, as long as we gather enough support. So, who's with me?" she cried out like a Spartan warrior, but Ethan just made a face and turned away to go to class, Tweed following his lead.
"Wait! Guys!" Mara called after them, but neither of them turned back to look at her and slipped into Mr. Feld's class.
The next few periods passed by painstakingly slow, but finally, it was time for lunch. By the time Ethan and Tweed entered the lunchroom after a strenuous calculus lesson, they stopped cold in their tracks. They spotted a table decorated with colorful posters all around, labeled with 'Save Sol Bakery' atop them.
"She didn't," Tweed uttered in disbelief, groaning loudly.
"I believe she just did," Ethan said with amusement, mixed with annoyance. He joined the lunch line to grab what he hoped to be a chicken sandwich. As he thanked the lunch ladies, they all nodded scruffily as he moved to pay for his meal.
When he got out of the line, he scoured for Tweed's blonde head and wasn't too surprised once he found Tweed talking to Mara, the veins bulging out of his temples.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Tweed demanded, and Mara rolled her eyes, patting the seat beside her at the table. Tweed refused to sit and continued his tirade like a petulant child.
"We told you that we weren't going to help you."
"Who said I needed your help? I'm doing this on my own," Mara said with her arms crossed, giving an aloof expression and encouraging people to come to her table by offering them sweets from a large bowl. In groups of two or three, people flitted over and signed her petition for a handful of candy.
"But you... I..." Tweed was at a loss for words. Ethan resisted his better urges to take a video of this moment, the first time Tweed had ever been silent, and not on purpose. He was usually such a smooth talker that he had other people's tongues tied.
"How'd you put this all together in such a short time?" Ethan asked her. Usually, he would have been against this whole shenanigans like Tweed, but seeing his friend tongue-tied put him in a better mood. She smiled at him while he took a sip of water from his water bottle.
"My best friend helped me. I think you met Oliver the other day when you guys were setting up the streamers for the dance?"
Suddenly, all of the water that Ethan had taken into his mouth came gushing out, and he sputtered, coughing loudly at the mention of Oliver's name and the memories of their conversation.
"E, you good?" Tweed asked Ethan, who looked as if he had just seen a ghost. His face turned a deathly white, or as white as his skin could get.
"Yeah," he said after he managed to stop coughing and caught his breath. Once he glanced at the expressions of both Mara and Tweed, they had stopped paying attention to him and were bickering with one another.
"So how many signatures have you got, Miss I-can-do-everything-by-myself?" Tweed mocked, snatching the clipboard off the table before Mara, and he harked. "Only twelve signatures? How do you propose you're going to get one hundred signatures if only twelve people cared enough to sign?"
Mara's displeasure turned into a full-fledged frown as she took the clipboard back from him. "If you aren't going to help, then go," she threatened, pointing to the larger lunchroom in the general vicinity of where the boys usually sat. Tweed pursed his lips.
"Fine," he muttered and took himself to the table, plopping down, still seething with anger. Ethan sighed at his friend's childish behavior, but followed him and sat next to him. After a few moments of silence besides Tweed furiously tapping away at his phone, Ethan set down his chicken sandwich.
"I take it that this isn't the end?" Ethan asked, and Tweed only glanced up with a devilish grin.
"You would be right in that assumption. You're free after school today, right?" Tweed asked hopefully, and Ethan paused. Should he tell his friend about his plans?
"When am I ever too busy for your schemes?" Ethan asked, eliciting a nefarious grin from Tweed.
"Meet me in the student council room right after school. We have a proposal to make."
***
Once they were all gathered in the student council room, that is, the student body members minus Mara, Tweed cleared his throat, standing up from the seat he resumed once he entered, which was Mara's.
Ethan held his temples, preparing for the trainwreck that he was about to witness. He had tried to stop Tweed, but once the blonde-haired boy was on a path, it took nothing less than a wrecking ball to stop him.
"I have called this meeting today to propose something to you all, the same thing that our lovable dork Ethan had tried to propose."
"Why should we be interested in what you have to say? You aren't even in student council!" a girl with braces said, and most of them agreed with her, except Oliver and Ethan.
Ethan managed to snag a seat right beside Tweed at the table. Oliver had seated himself in the seat opposite, the one that he usually sat in during meetings. He gave Ethan a small smile and kind eyes, and Ethan focused his gaze on the pen before him, willing himself to disappear into nothingness.
"Well, you all came, even though I'm not really supposed to call meetings, right?" Tweed asked, and everyone was quiet as he continued on.
"Sol Bakery has been a historic relic in this town. Our mothers... Heck, even our grandparents have gone to the bakery since they were our age. It isn't fair that Mrs. Heifenmeir is closing. This bakery has so many memories for so many generations of people. And besides, it's a local business being run down by a large corporation. Shouldn't that mean something?" Tweed asked his audience. They all looked pensive until the girl with braces spoke up once more.
"He's right... My first kiss was in that bakery," she softly said, and Ethan frowned slightly. She was almost certainly a freshman... She's already had her first kiss?
"My parents met at the bakery," another person spoke up, this time a guy.
"I found out I was gay there," a voice in front of Ethan said. When he swiveled his head, Oliver's warm brown eyes caught his, and he caught undertones of sympathy as they held each other's gazes.
"So, does that mean we can count on you to start gaining money to keep Sol Bakery open?" Tweed asked, looking at Ethan with glee. Ethan gave his friend a small smile back, but guilt licked away at his expression. How did Tweed not feel any of that?
The girl with the braces beckoned the student council over to her, and after a few minutes of congregating, they turned back to Tweed.
"Deal. But only if you join the student council and run against Mara," the girl with the braces spoke clearly, and Tweed's eyes narrowed.
"You guys don't like Mara?" he asked with disbelief.
"She's the most annoyingly optimistic person we ever met. And she made fun of my braces one time," the girl said, subconsciously raising her fingers to her lips. Tweed looked at Ethan warily, and Ethan just shrugged in what told him that this decision was his call.
Ethan was out of his element here, especially with the guilt of knowing what they were doing to Mara and the boy opposite of him.
Across the table, Oliver interjected, "I think we should leave Mara as president."
The girl with braces rolled her eyes. "You're only saying that because you're friends. Tell me, what has Mara truly ever done for the good of this community and school? All we do is plan dances for causes that don't have anything to do with us."
Tweed was quiet, but straightened his body after a few moments of deliberation and acquiesced. The student council erupted into small conversations, and Tweed picked up the wooden gavel that Mara used and rapped it on the table twice.
"Meeting adjourned. I'll take over Mara's position."
When he received odd glares from the rest of them, he put down the gavel with a shrug.
"I've always wanted to do that," he explained, and the braces girl cleared her throat once more.
"I have another stipulation. Get rid of the gavel. It's horrible," she said, and Tweed gave a small smirk.
"Done deal. Shall we close on it the wild-west way?" he asked her, raising his hand and spitting on it, extending it to the girl. The girl gagged and pushed away from the table.
"That's disgusting. We'll divide our money-raising areas amongst ourselves," she spat out, glaring at Tweed's spit-covered hand. Tweed just shrugged and wiped his hand on his pants, turning to Ethan, but he was preoccupied with something else. Or rather, someone else.
"I heard that you asked Mara if you could join the party planning committee," Oliver said, smiling at Ethan. He felt as small as a mouse and nodded, giving a nervous laugh in hopes that it would calm his nerves.
"Yeah, turns out I have a real knack for streamer-passing," he attempted a crack at a joke and was grateful when Oliver laughed too.
"You weren't bad, kid. See you tomorrow?" he asked, and Ethan felt his emotions soar up, lighting up as bright as a Christmas tree. Tomorrow...
"Yeah," Ethan lamely finished as Oliver walked away, but inside, he felt as if he was on top of the world. He just talked to his... His...
"Ready to hit the road? We got some neighbors to bother," Tweed said, twirling his keys around his index finger with the key ring. Ethan nodded, and they began to walk to the doors to leave, a clipboard and envelope for money-collecting in Tweed's grasp.
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MWAHAHA! Next chapter up! What did you think of Tweed ignoring Mara's requests not to override her decision in the council? What do you think the repercussions will be? And Mara's signature clipboard? Do you think she'll get enough signatures to keep the bakery open?
Find out all of this and more, right here, in TDS! Love you all, and if you loved this chapter as much as I did, consider pressing that little star at the top. Peace!