[Games Club - Cards]
Barrett, who'd been grinning through the whole story, finally let out a large chuckle. "Yo, that's
golden." He set his hand down and glanced over, "Shame ya already smashed it to pieces, 'cause otherwise we could make a party outta droppin' it from the school roof."
Rifling through his hand, he tossed two cards into the pile. "Two eights," he said, and, stroking at a non-existent beard, added, "Now... how am I gonna answer my own question...?" He thought for a moment in silence, and then, as though remembering some painful memory, muttered, "... yeah, that'd be about right."
He flicked through his cards, his eyes gleaming. "Worst gift I ever received," he began,
"Were these headphones I got as a gift back in middle school, when my homeroom teacher made us do this gift exchange for Squidmas. You showed up with somethin' you could give, and every day someone would draw a name out of hat and give what they brought to that person."
"Well, this kid Kyle ended up drawin' my name from the pile. Apparently he'd missed the whole memo about the gift-givin' thing, 'cause he spent about ten minutes lookin' through his backpack tryin' to come up with somethin' to toss my way, and in the end he goes pullin' out these super slick, full-size headphones and handin' them off like they're a spare pencil or somethin'. Whole class stared at him like he'd gone crazy. You don't just
throw away stuff like that. But you also don't complain about it if it happens. So I took those headphones in stride, wore 'em all around the school - y'know, what you do if you score big."
At this point in the story, Barrett's smile fell into a frown. "As it turned out..." he continued, a hint of bitterness in his voice, "Kyle had a little quirk of takin' things that didn't belong to him. And those headphones I got
just so happened to be the property of the school's resident fightstarter. So when he and his crew went patrolin' the hallways lookin' for his missin' stuff, and saw me flauntin' them around like an idiot..."
He sneered. "It took me a little more than a week to recover. And a decade more to keep myself from wantin' to punch the face in of that punk Kyle every time I passed him."
For a moment, he paused, as though thinking about the whole ordeal - but usual grin returned promptly after. "In any case," he finished, "my crew and I ended up gettin' back at everyone later. So it worked out in the end, yeah?"
((
@ReedRGale @Aykorn: Ack, sorry for such a late reply! I've been swamped with projects the past few days. >.< ))
