"I got something for you.", a young blond skinny boy, barely looking his 14 years of age, pulled up his bicycle next to his friend and started unannounced.
"Oh, great...", The victim, darker skinned, bespectacled, and perhaps bordering on chubby groaned. "Not to-"
"Shush! I gotta tell you!", the protests were cut off with a wave of the hand. "Get on the bike, Mack!"
Mack huffed. "I'd rather walk, Kyle."
"NO, SIT!", Was Kyle's immediate response.
Mack grumbled, but complied. The carrier on Kyle's bike wasn't very human friendly. It made his butt hurt. But at least the commute would be shorter, and so would the time he'd have to spend with Kyle.
"So, there's this girl in my class.", Kyle began his tale right as he started pedaling.
"Oh for GOD'S SA-"
"I'm not into her! Just, listen!", He talked over Mack again. "I've seen her around a lot and she's... weird. It's like, she always knows what's going to happen!"
Mack gave an exasperated sigh. "Like what?"
"Like... Like yesterday, at the field. She and her friend were watching us play football right?"
"Okay?", Mack braced himself as the bike was about to pass over a pothole.
"She made her friend move over mid game. And not five minutes later, someone shot the ball exactly where her friend used to sit!", Kyle was wide eyed and grinning, one hand on the bike handle and the other recreating the day's event in the vaguest forms it could procure.
Mack stared at him, blank eyed. "...I am going to hit you."
Kyle blinked. He only needed a quick glance to notice that Mack's fist was already balled up. "Nonono, We'll fall! Okay, okay, wrong example. She predicts the answer key to some of our tests beforehand. Her predictions are always right!.", He exclaimed.
"Really?", Mack replied flatly.
"Yeah!", Kyle grinned. "Well, except for that one time in Maths. And that other in History. And... Okay she gets MOST of the predictions right."
"Thought so.", Mack muttered under his breath.
"And- And last week she gave a girl some napkins before lunch, completely unprompted. But it turned out that the girl's lunch had spilled inside her bag and-"
"I bet your dream girl there spilled it herself."
"I AM NOT! INTERESTED!", Kyle defended himself. His sudden movement rattled the bike and made Mack hold onto the seat more tightly. "Anyway, yeah the girl didn't have to look around for napkins after that! And that's not all!"
"..."
"So I was about to eat a sandwich last week and she stopped me. Told me it had peanut butter in it."
"So?", Mack questioned Kyle's sanity.
"I hadn't told anyone in class about that! How did she know?!", Kyle let go of the handlebar altogether and turned to Mack to express his exasperation.
"You aren't handsome enough to be stalked, jackass.", Mack rolled his eyes. "Now grab the handle again before we fall!"
"I will NOT!", Kyle protested.
The bike began to lose its balance, as if protesting Kyle's protest, which made Kyle grab the handlebar again. He stopped the bike too for good measure.
"You are a bona-fide idiot.", Mack commented, hopping off of the back seat.
"Yeah? How?", Kyle glared in a challenge.
"You started creeping on a girl, that you don't even know the name of-", Mack pointed.
"I never said I didn't!"
"-That I'm a hundred percent sure you don't know the name of-", Mack corrected. Kyle could only grumble as a retort. "- because she pointed out that a sandwich contained something you were allergic to. And because she got lucky in her exams. And because she spilled some poor girl's lunch inside her bag. And because... What was the fourth one? Oh yeah! Because she MOVED HER GODDAMN SEAT WHILE WATCH A GAME!"
"No! She changed her frie-"
"THE. POINT. IS.", Mack interrupted. "You stalked a girl on the basis that you think she can see into the future."
"I-", Kyle lifted a finger, then promptly put it back down. "It sounds bad when you put it that way...?"
"Because it IS bad, you doofus!" Mack could not help but shake his head. He started walking down the street. "Now come on, we're going to be late!"
===
The phone dinged.
"I GOT THE PACKAGE!", a chat notification popped up on Claire's lockscreen.
Jerry's long awaited phone upgrade, finally at her doorstep. Claire smiled.
Her neighbors dog barked at a passerby, that flufferino.
Claire unlocked her phone and texted back. "Congrats! Pics!"
She had been doing her English assignment for the past couple of hours. She thought a small break wouldn't hurt right now, so she indulged in chatting with her friend.
"Wait lemme unpack.", Jerry promptly replied.
Claire moved her chair back from the table and sat on it cross-legged. It only took a couple of minutes for the barrage of images to start pouring in. Everything from the packaging to the components to every angle of the phone in every possible lighting condition Jerry could find were included.
It looked rather cute to Claire. She couldn't wait to see it in person in school the next day.
Her mother turned on the TV in the background.
"No, you monster! How dare you turn them all into metal! I will kill you!", It sounded some kind of action movie.
"They were my friends!", the movie continued.
Claire tuned the TV out and returned back to her chat.
"It looks so good! Gah!", She replied, browsing the the pictures with a grin on her face.
But Jerry didn't reply back immediately.
'Must be moving over to the new phone', Claire decided. Another couple of minutes of no replies further strengthened her conviction.
Claire decided she should get back to her assignment now. She could finish it quickly and then call Jerry. She could interrogate her all about that new device in detail afterwards.
And so she did. She pulled her chair back to the table, picked up her pen, opened up all of her reference materials and continued on writing. Half an hour she wrote, and she struggled. She continued to write for fifteen more minutes, and then decided her work was done.
Just then, her phone pinged.
"I broke it :(((", A message by Jerry. It was accompanied by a picture of her new phone, turned on, but with a large crack on the screen.
"It slipped out of my hand"
"After my last message"
"And I BROKE IT T-T", Three more messages followed in quick succession.
"Oh no...", Claire muttered.
"Oh no- I hope that-", Her reply was stopped midway by a yawn. She needed more stimulants to stay awake. She moved to rub the fatigue out of her eyes.
"No, you monster! How dare you turn them all into metal! I will kill you!", An all too familiar voice echoed through her door.
Claire quickly opened her eyes. She looked around.
She was on her chair, which was still pushed away from her table.
'Oh no...', A grave thought entered her mind.
"They were my friends!", The TV continued it's dramatic declaration of war outside.
Her phone pinged.
"OH MY GOD IT ALMOST SLIPPED OUT OF MY HAND!!! SO LUCKY IT SURVIVED AAAAH", A message by Jerry, with another picture of the phone, whose screen was as pristine as new, with no cracks visible.
Claire moved her chair back over to her desk and peered through her notebook. Just as she suspected, the last hour of her progress was missing.
She had moved an hour back in time, all because her friend decided to get 'lucky' and not drop her phone.
An hour of homework for the integrity of her best friend's phone. Would you consider that a fair trade?
"...Meh, I've had worse.", Claire mumbled, and started writing the assignment again.