Story: Middle Part 20
[[Continuity Note: Alf just proposed his plan to the Alduses. They liked it.
I wrote this in bed last night before I fell asleep.]]
On Monday, Jessica and Alf were sitting in their usual spot, eating lunch. As usual, Alf's eyes were drawn toward the corner of the quadrangle where Damien was sitting his his new friends. Although, strictly speaking, they weren't new friends. Damien had always been friends with them, but it was always just him and Alf when it mattered.
On this occasion, Damien was proudly brandishing a new digital watch which displayed the time in three different cities, could go underwater twenty thousand leagues, and beeped the time in Morse code if you pressed a button. All entirely useless functions if you were Damien. He never traveled to different time zones, let along three separate cities. Damien could swim no better than the average Australian boy, and would never go twenty thousand leagues deep even in a submarine as he was afraid of sharks beyond reasonable measures. Not to mention the obvious reference to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, would probably have been lost on Damien. And the extent of Damien's knowledge of Morse code was that three short, two long, then another three short meant SMS. In an unforgivingly jealous moment, Alf noted that Damien probably couldn't split the series of dots and dashes into its corresponding letters.
This Alf related to Jessica. In her usual roundabout way, Jessica mentioned that he had a new PSP, too. A white one. If you want to know what that sounds like coming from Jessica, it's along the lines of: the bower bird has added a new colour to its bower. It was like code in itself.
One of Alf's thoughts only to be thought within the confines of his wardrobe was that Jessica did speak in code. Perhaps she was cursed that way. Or perhaps she was simply so worrried about people knowing what she thought that she scrambled them before they came out. Another wardrobe thought was how she managed to pass her classes. Obviously she would be okay in English, as all she'd write would be one gigantic metaphor or allegory, but he wondered how she did so well in her other subjects. Surely you needed practice at using the English language.
And Jessica did do well. She was known for winning the Principal's prize for dux of the year every year since she started at East Hills, unlike mediocre Alf. The following wardrobe thought was that she used magic. Or her parents did. He didn't think Jessica was capable of such unethical behaviour (unless she was hiding her true evilness behind bower bird code), but it was a completely different matter when applied to her parents. In fact, Alf wasn't certain if their ready acceptance of proposing his plan to the council was to pretend they'd thought of it themselves for greater glory, as much as they liked to pretend that their family wasn't really all that special.
None of these thoughts changed the fact that Alf was jealous of Damien. All the more when he noticed Alyssa Marx was part of Damien's little group, and sitting right next to him, listening intently to every word he said about his new game.
But with a turn of the head, Alf left his jealousy behind when he noticed Rock trying to sneak around the corner of one of the school buildings. He said a hasty farewell to Jessica who merely checked her own watch before she began drawing in a notebook.
"Rock!" he called as he ran, calling attention from half of the playground. If he'd taken a second to look, he would have noticed that Damien was wearing a look of jealousy similar to the one that Alf had been sporting earlier regarding the watch and the PSP.
Rock, in his usual fashion, pretended not to hear Alf and went about his business. In fact, since he'd been trying to sneak off school grounds at that moment, he adjusted his path to make it look as though he was headed toward a bathroom.
This wasn't the first time that Alf had tried to approach Rock since he'd proposed the truce to him. In fact, he'd been so disheartened that he'd ranted to Jessica. In fact, that was as close to a true argument with Jessica he'd had. She had told him, straight for once, that no matter what she'd tried, Rock still thought she was an idiot, so eventually she'd stopped trying and that he should too, because Rock was never going to learn that not everyone was out to get him. It seemed that nothing but Rock could cause otherwise happy Alduses to have complete personality rotations. And despite what Jessica thought, Alf was still determined to find out why.
[[And then I fell asleep.]]
posted by Cedric @ 6:08 pm
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