Free I Rize by S.T. Anthony Page B

for—true love. You and Mickey are too adorable together, and it makes me want to throw up every time.
    Mickey held the mouse clicker over the stop button, unable to look at Adny in the video. “Junior, is this some sick, twisted joke?”
    Junior ignored his complaints and pushed his hand out of the way. “Shut up and watch.”
    I will never forget the first day you and Mickey met. We were sitting on the edge of the water watching kids play with their parents. Darla and Piper were playing a game near quick man’s sand.
    Do you remember when we were little kids playing on the beach and that old, creepy looking man with the one eye missing came up to us? He warned us to stay away because he said he lost an eye playing in the area. I remember I was too scared to go back to the beach for two weeks. We were so stupid and naïve to believe anything. Piper’s foot got stuck and the pressure from the water was pulling it deeper in. The sand kept seeping down, creating a hole, which sucked her foot in deeper.
    When I came up, Mickey was already pulling her out. He held her in his hands and had the biggest smile on his face when he saw you. The next five minutes seemed more like five hours of someone torturing me by gluing my eyes open and forcing me to watch the longest chick flick ever. Everyone knows I hate chick flicks with a passion.
    You looked at him. He looked at you. You looked back at him. He looked back at you.
    From there, the rest is history. I wanted to throw up then and even more now because you guys are two peas in a freaking pod.
    Junior glanced over at Mickey.
    So far, from what I’ve seen, Mickey is crazy in a good way. Don’t get it confused with Madison’s crazy, because she is just plain scary crazy. Mickey’s type of crazy is humorous and random.
    Mickey glanced back over at Junior.
    As you know, Mickey is in my art class. The teacher is so mean, and I, along with the rest of the class didn’t even care to learn her name. Everyone just calls her ‘the teacher.’ All she knows how to do is to yell and spit everywhere. She can’t even draw! We were required to draw a cup, and her example was all lopsided and looked like a dead walrus.
    Don’t ask me how or why.
    Mickey smiled while Adny spoke about art class. “I remember hating her class so much, but you made it better.”
    Mickey sat at my table, and he also knew how I hated saying the ‘B’ word. As we painted that darn cup, he kept singing a rap song, which was blasting through his cheap headphones. There was so much cussing in it.
    Not my cup of tea.
    I gently tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to turn it down. And this is where the conversation went from normal to Mickey’s normal.
    ‘Adny, say bitch.’
    I told him no.
    ‘Why?’
    I explained to him that it didn’t sound normal coming out of my mouth.
    He asked me to say it a different way. ‘Well, say baitch.’
    ‘Baitch?’ I responded back.
    I remember chuckling when he snapped his fingers in the air as if he had just won a million dollars. I will never in a million years forget the words that came from his mouth. ‘That is my way of saying it. You go girl. Your baitch virginity has been broken, and you have finally crossed to the dark side.’
    Those were his exact words. Nothing shocks me regarding Mickey anymore.
    I playfully hit his arm and we laughed together. For the rest of the class, we joked about the weird antics of ‘the teacher.’ Mickey is crazy and weird, but he’s perfect for you.
    Junior stopped the video for a moment. “What happened to the funny, caring Mickey I fell in love with?”
    Mickey looked away from the laptop and said, “I don’t know anymore.” Rubbing under his puffy eyes did not prevent tears from flowing.
    I’m sure you will want to throw up over Jace and my perfect love story one day. Believe me—it will be even more sickening to hear about than yours. I can’t get the boy off my freaking mind. Since the pep rally last week, I