Rogue – Chapter Three: Not in the Club
I ride through town on my bike, passing all the shops that are up and down main street. I pass the old theater that’s in dire need for repairs as the lettering is coming off reading shows for: Friday the 3th, and Muppets take Man. That last one sounds more of a horror movie than the first. I passed the ice cream shop and ring the bell for the two boys with cones stacked higher than they are tall. I must have startled them because one of them drops all four scoops on the ground. The other tries to lick into submission but winds up with brain freeze. I laugh and keep on. I stop outside the Johnny Riddles Burgers, Fries, and Shakes restaurant at the sight of Molly Gail. The prettiest girl to ever exist, with her strawberry blonde hair and adorable freckles decorating the bridge of her nose. She’s with her friends, but she looks up and notices me. I swallow as I find the nerves to take my hand from the handlebar and wave. Instead, I’m tackled to ground by my best friend, Aadam.
“Sean,” he helps me up. “What are you doing in the middle of the road? What if I was a car?”
There’s a screeching halt and we’re both brought to the ground as our buddy, Crosby, forgets how to brake and runs into us with his bike.
“Croz, get off.”
I grunt as I push him off. We all stand, and I meet Molly’s lavish green eyes as her and her friends are laughing at us. I let out a sigh, then a scream as I throw up my hands to Milo and Otis, the twins that were eating ice cream. I guess they got me back for scaring them. The gaggle of us are a commission of yelling and complaining when yellow pickup truck honks for us to get out of the road. We all get our bikes and ride.
We ride out of town, through the woods and pass Sudder’s Ridge that call Sudden Drop as it’s a hundred feet down into the pond below. We take an old dirt trail that leads to the edge of the river. There we set our bikes down at the roots of our treehouse. One by one, we climb inside. There waiting for us are Axel and his little brother Ryan.
“What took you guys so long? Sean said the meet was supposed to start thirty minutes ago?” Axel asks.
“I had to save Sean from being deer in the headlights because he was fawning over Molly Gail again.” Aadam jokes and I push him.
“Again? Dude, I told you. She’s out of your league. She probably has the hots for Trevor Mosher, he is the mayor’s son and captain of the football team opposite of your brother.”
“Hey Sean,” Crosby asks as he’s having difficulty fitting through the door in the floor. “Did I hear right last night? That your brother is a murderer?”
I sigh. “My brother is not a murderer. It was a misunderstanding.”
“Oh,” he finally gets pushed through by Milo and Otis. “Good, because we can’t have murderers in the club.”
“He’s not apart of the club anymore, remember? Left us for his cool high school friends.”
“Axel,” Ryan tugs at his brother’s pants leg. “Will you leave me for cool high school friends?”
“Yeah…” He answers and Aadam throws a ball at him, hitting his shoulder. “Ow! Not cool man. I was going to say, yeah, unless you guys all become cool too. Then we’ll stay together forever.”
“Nothing lasts forever.” I groan and Aadam bumps me.
“Dude, don’t be a downer. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
“Not if Michael kills us too.” Crosby replies while flipping through a comic book.
Aadam and I glare at him, but he pays us no attention. We could stare at him for hours and he’d never notice once he’s started flipping through the pages of a comic book. Axel shakes his head at him in disapproval before turning to me.
“Sean, why’d call for a meeting today? It’s Saturday morning, Voltron was on. You know I got to watch my super cool team up hero show.”
“Yeah, you’re so cool, Axel.” Aadam teases and Axel mocks him in return.
I sit down on a beanbag chair. “I called you all here today to discuss…potentially bending the no girl rule for the summer…”
The all gasp and become unreasonably outrageous.
“Why would we ever do that?”
Axel asks and I don’t meet his eyes. Milo sits beside me and turns my attention back on the others.
“Because I may have invited Molly to…hang…out?”
They all stare at me except for Crosby. Axel and Aadam exchange laughs.
“Yeah right, Sean. Like you’d have the nerve to do such a thing…”
“Let alone, actually utter words to Molly Gail. The girl you’ve had a crush on since the fifth grade.”
“Fourth…” I say under my breath. Our parents had taken us to the movies together, and I had a crush on her ever since.
“Sean!” I hear and I must be imagining her voice too. “Sean, are you up there.”
I’m not imagining. Everyone shuffles to the window. All except Crosby. There at the root of the tree next to our bikes is Molly and her two friends, Neve and Stephanie. The guys all turn away from the window to gape at me. Even Crosby lifts from his comic.
“Girls?”
Axel approaches me first. “You can’t be serious. In what realm did you actually find the words to even say hi to her?”
Aadam is beside him. “Let alone, invite her to our club house. There’re no girls alone. Period.”
“Don’t you think you’re, one, overreacting and two, reciting a rule we came up with when we were in diapers.”
“Ryan still wears diapers.” Axel admits and his little brother looks up to him and pouts.
“Guys it’s fine. We’re all men here. It’s about time that we grow up, act our age, and – ”
“Assume your positions!” Milo yells with a strainer on his head like a helmet.
“Battle stations!” Otis is carrying a pillow for a shield and a wooden sword.
“ – Completely overreact. Yeah, do that.”
Axel takes me by the shoulders. “Sean, you got us into this mess. You get us out of it by telling them to get lost.”
“I thought you were the cool one?”
“I am, but you’re in charge so…” He directs me to the door in the floor. “Charge.”
He pushes me and I almost tumble out of the treehouse. I find my footing and glare back at him before I begin to crawl down.
“Girls?”
I hear Crosby before I completely abandon the guys. I drop down and nearly land on my feet…before I fall over and scrap my knee on the roots. Neve and Stephanie laugh. Molly walks over to me.
“You okay?”
Words. Words. Words. Words.
“Yeah…I’m okay.” She helps me up.
“So, this is the infamous treehouse?”
“Yeah, built it with my brother.”
“The serial killer?” Molly gasps, and I groan because I can tell she’s making a joke.
“He’s not a killer. It was a misunderstanding.”
“That’s not what everyone else is saying.”
“I don’t care about what everyone else says. It’s not true.”
“Okay,” she kindly changes the subject. “So, you going to invite us up?”
“No!” I hear Crosby and look up to see him holding out a cross. “If you invite in then we’ll lose all our power!”
I roll my eyes. “She not a vampire, Crosby!”
I glance up at her.
“Right?”
She puts a finger to her glossy lip. “I don’t know. I’m told I’m a sucker for cute boys.”
Her eyes fall on me, and I feel every ounce of sweep leave my armpits. She leans in and I think she sucked the air out of the…air, head, can’t think.
“But you have nothing to worry about then.”
She giggles and I hear Neve and Stephanie laughing too.
“If we’re not invited then we’re going to head down to the pond for a dip.”
“Oh…”
“But you’re more than welcome to join.”
“Oh…!”
“Because that’s what being mature is all about.”
She says but more towards the rest of the guy in the treehouse than to me. They all coward like she grew wings or something. The girls turn to leave, and I call back up to the guys.
“We’re going to the pond, come on!” I go to grab my bike and see none of them are moving. “Unless you’re too chicken to swim with girls!”
They all glance at each other, and the I hear them all shuffle to get down the door.
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