don't you be a meanie

Daisy: So homecoming was, as suspected, lame. No one can do a disco-themed dance without all of the outfits looking like they came from a costume catalogue and there were WAY too many blonde afros and like...isn't that kind of offensive? Whatever, I'm just looking forward to Halloween at this point.

@riniboogie? What. A. Weirdo. She’s the most like, obvious person I’ve ever met, there’s nothing mysterious and cool and badass about her at all. She’s like... way too lame for me to want to talk to, and she smells like dog poop and she looks like a mop that got into a fight with a spiderweb that got into a fight with a donkey butt. If she were a household object she’d be a broken refrigerator handle. I wish she’d never speak to me ever again in my whole life. I spend a lot of time online writing posts about how her and her band suck and I hate them.

“So…I’ve got like 200 bucks in these cute little colorful chips,” Daisy rolled the gambling chip in her finger with a grin as she looked up at the wall of prizes. “What should I get?” she shouted over the music. 

Beau had wasted all of his gambling chips already. He got too excited and threw them at the dealer and hoped for the best, only to be met with his colorful chips being swept away from him every time. He was excited to see that Daisy was having better luck than him, and bounced on the balls of his feet, trying to get a better view of the prizes. “Hmmm.... If I were you, I’d wanna get a light up necklace, but I’m not you. So uh... maybe close your eyes and spin in circles and then point at something, and choose whatever you point at?”

“So you mean to tell me that they get a prom makeup but we don’t get a morp one?” Moss shrugged, tossing back a fake martini in its glass. “Like, sure we’re invited to this one, but the whole point was to get an anti-prom! Can we at least get a video game-themed spirit day for homecoming or something?”

“Dude, we could totally throw some kind of other party instead of morp! Don’t let it get you down,” Beau said, although he was hardly even looking at Moss. His eyes were the size of saucers as he glanced around at all the lights and colors and sounds of the welcome back block party. “Forget spirit day, we’d still have to sit in classes and stuff. We should really go big with it. Like, plan an off campus day where we uh...” Beau trailed off, carried away with excitement, his words coming out faster than his brain could work. “Well, I don’t know what we’d do yet, but it’s gonna be awesome, we got this! We’re upperclassmen now, we rule the world!” 

Moss sighed at his friend’s justification. “You know, man…you do you. And hey, maybe this’ll work out and you guys’ll have a bunch of those gross little spider babies,” he teased, adjusting his mask. Cocking a brow, Moss chuckled toward Beau. “Thanks, but I think I’m good. Besides, wouldn’t want to cramp your style – cause you’re right, I’d totally steal her, and I wouldn’t want to do that. For you and for me. But hey! Maybe I can find some girl who’s having a ‘Galentine’s’ or whatever.” 

Have you seen how many marriages have failed? Like, there have been so many different weddings that have been cancelled. Literally someone flew off on the back of the dragon, and then the guy she ran away with left! Like, I get that my parents have a great love story and blah blah blah, but I haven’t seen a lot of “love conquests” work out here in Walt.  As great as that sounds, I’m not big on the whole romance novel thing. But if you were to write it, I’d totally be willing to be your editor. 

So it’s finally come to my attention that I have like..no friends. Which ordinarily isn’t that troubling since who even has the time. But since I’m actually going to be here for Spring Break this year, I guess I do? What are other teens into outside of Tiktok, those Animals crossing, and fortnight?  Arson?

I’LL BE YOUR FRIEND! I recognize that you said other words and I swear I’ll acknowledge them later because I’m full of ideas on how to have fun, but like... those ideas are better if we’re having fun together, so what do you say? BRAND NEW BESTIES? Or at least on the path to maybe being besties? I’m volunteering as tribute, don’t shoot me with an arrow here or something, I don’t wanna die! Although you COULD light me on fire, as long as we’re near a lake, I can jump in and save myself and you could get your arson fix, it would be awesome.

Considering Weston Maldette is the match maker, I’m sure that  whoever I get matched up with is not going to be my soulmate. I’m more of an observer than a partier. Wallflower, if you would. I doubt I’ll be missed when my date gets pulled away by someone who’s been secretly in love with them since they were children. I’ll probably get what I need to know, and then leave and work on the edits of my novel.

Why did you say that like it’s a cuss word or something? Wes is dope, and so is his wifey, I’d love it if he found me something even half as cool as what he’s got! Maybe you and your date can observe stuff together! Maybe your date’ll be like Nancy Drew but a boy! Nanco Brew! Yeah, that’s it, that’ll be perfect for you, you can be like dance detectives together! That’s super specific though, Jo, and would make a sick book! You should write it after you finish the book you’re working on now. And can I be the main character? Can you write a girl who’s secretly in love with me? Or a guy, I’m super not picky! And then when you write them can we find a magic friend to like, spell them out of the pages of the book and I can live happily ever after and it’ll be all your doing and then I’ll build a library and name it after you? God, my life is gonna be so cool, thanks Jo, it’s all thanks to you!

“Do whatever you want, bro,” Quinn replied through a mouthful of party snacks. “Either way you’re serenading a sack of bugs. Not that Rini isn’t cool or anything, but like…her insides are bugs. That’s so wild.” 

Beau nodded his head enthusiastically. It was wild! Totally wild, and he wanted to ask like a kajillion questions. That might be rude, though; his dad probably wouldn’t have approved, so he’d been trying not to talk Rini’s ear off since the second they’d arrived. “Do you think when she burps bugs come out? Or like what about when she cries? Do bugs crawl out of her eyes instead of tears? God, could there be a cooler date? I’m the luckiest dude in the universe!”

“Dude…It’s Rini. Why would you wanna hug that?” Moss furrowed his brow with a scowl. “But you do you – having a buggy date is better than getting stood up.” He pointed to himself to indicate why he was here, hanging out with his buddy, instead of romancing some girl on the dance floor. Like, there’s no way she could’ve known she was paired with him when she decided to ditch, but Moss couldn’t believe that some girl would deprive herself of being his date! 

Beau’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion at Moss’s question. “Her last name’s a dance party, she’s cute and a rockstar, and she’s not dumb and afraid of bugs because she is bugs, what’s not to like?” Beau asked, his smile coming back as he listed all the things he was pumped about when it came to his date. “Sucks about your date, though! Do you want to hang out with us? Just don’t make her like you better than she likes me, then I’d have to pee in your shoes or something to get even.”

“Anyone seen my date? Blue hair, blue pin? I’ve been looking everywhere for her.” He hadn’t, really, but figured he and Hollie were bound to run into each other at some point. He’d only rigged the matchmaker to match the two of them because he saw she’d been paired with a major jerk. But that didn’t mean he had to go around looking for her like a lost puppy. They’d find their ways to each other eventually.

“Blue hair? Sweeeeeeeeet!” Beau exclaimed, excited to hear about all the cool dates other people were on. His was still cooler, though -- what beat going out with a girl who was sometimes a bag of bugs? That was epic! “Do you want help finding her? You could get on my shoulders, then you’d be able to see the whole crowd!”

Full disclosure for whomever I may get paired up with: I did this for research purposes only, and I apologize in advance to how not into this whole thing I am.

Joooooo! Why are you like this? You’re into research, and you’re researching the dance, so by like... math or whatever, you legally have to be into the dance part of things too!

Ha! Be careful what you ask for. If I hadn’t vowed not to use my magic while this barrier is down to preserve the foundation of this town that my mother built Walt upon, I’d entertain this idea just to see you regret it immediately after. 

Wow, dude, you have so much willpower! I guess it’s a good thing that you’re the one with magic and not me, I probably would have had a field day. Like... literally a field day, can you imagine how cool it would be to play crab soccer if you could be actual crabs while you did it? But yeah, oh well! I wonder which part of a clock would have been the weirdest. I bet I would have had tick tock sounds stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

I’m sure Rini would absolutely murder me if I ambushed the stage. #SheScaryDawg. But I’m into that basketball thing! Maybe a band made up of random objects, one of which being a basketball. 

Real talk, bro, do we think Rini’s scarier as a bag of bugs or as a real human girl? I kinda think it’s the bugs, they’re small but like they could crawl everywhere. You can’t always see them coming! That would be sweet, though! What if we got a diving board in on it or something? I love the springy sound they make when you stand on the end for forever thinking long and hard about whether you should actually do a flip off the end or not, and then you finally do it and you don’t have enough air and the back-flop splash noise is rad, too.