Chapter 3

A Chapter by Chris

The next few months went by quickly after that incident. We both continued to play with each other at least every weekend and I quickly considered Jack as my best friend. When Halloween came along, we went trick-or-treating together. That year I had decided to dress up as Harry Potter while Jack wore a Scream costume. We walked around the entire town that night and by the time we were finished, both of us had two bags full of candy. We went back to my house to make a few exchanges. It didn't really matter too much though because I eventually got sick of eating all the candy after about a week or two (it always happened to me every year), and so I just gave him the rest of it. He didn't have any objections to it, of course.

It didn't feel like it was too much longer until winter rolled into town. When Christmas was just around the corner, Jack got an idea that we should buy each other gifts. I didn't protest to the idea, thinking that it would maybe be a little fun. Besides, it meant that I would get one more gift on the holiday.

On Christmas Eve, Jack came up to my house. We handed each other our gifts before we started to tear them open. Jack had given me a Harry Potter potion maker kit and I had given him two Bionicles figures. Both of us were happy with our gifts, but I think Jack probably enjoyed his gift a lot more because he liked Bionicles just as much as he did Pokémon. We spent at least half of the day playing with our new things.

“This is starting to get boring,” Jack stated about a few hours later. “Wanna go outside and do something?”

“Okay, let's go sledding,” I said.

Jack almost instantly agreed to this suggestion and we quickly cleaned up the things we got out to play with. After both of us spent about three minutes getting bundled up, we went out into my backyard. The snow was falling heavily from the sky, making it a bit hard to see without the snowflakes falling in our eyes. There was already a good few inches of it on the ground too, making it perfect for sledding.

I got the two sleds out of my garage. One of them was circular and yellow while the other one was purple and long enough to fit at least two people our size. I handed him the yellow one. It was a lot funner since it sometimes spun around as you went down the hill, but I figured I would let him go down on it a few times first.

We walked to the top of my hill. It wasn't as steep as the one in Jack's backyard, but mine was a lot safer. Jack's house sat at the bottom of his hill, so we always had a good chance of running into the house unless we angled our sleds right to where we had a longer path to go down. With mine though, there wasn't any obstacles because a large, open field laid just beyond the hill.

Every now and then we would switch sleds. I fell off the yellow one a few times when I went down the hill on it because I usually tipped too far backwards whenever the sled spun me around to where I ended up going down backwards. After a while, we decided to go down together in the purple sled a few times and by the time we did that, a good majority of the snow that had once been on the hill had been rubbed away.

Since there wasn't enough snow on the hill for us to sled anymore, Jack suggested that we should try to build a snowman; I agreed. We didn't bother climbing up the hill for the hundredth time, but instead went out into the field a little ways to where there was plenty of snow at our disposal. Jack said he would work on making the bottom part and so I decided to make the middle.

However, I wasn't able to do it right away. I had never built a snowman before and I didn't really take the time to realize how to gather the snow. Jack noticed this though and he showed me how to roll the snowball I first made on the ground so that the snow would accumulate on it. I started to do this while Jack waited by the one he made.

“Come on, hurry up,” he told me. “You're taking forever.”

“Hold your horses,” I said back as I continued to work on the middle part.

A couple seconds later, I felt something pelt my butt. I erected my posture from the bent position it was just in, a little confused, before I heard Jack burst into laughter from behind me. I turned around to look at him.

“Bulls-eye!” he shouted before laughing a little more.

I smirked as I bent down and gathered a bit of snow before shaping it into a ball. I launched it towards him, but the projectile missed its target by a good few inches. Jack taunted me for it before he threw another one at me. It hit me and some of it went down my shirt, which I yelled a little from because of it being so cold. Jack laughed some more as he started to run away. After I made another snowball, I quickly gave chase.

The snowball fight continued. Every time we managed to land a hit on one another, we quickly started to run away before we were hit again and started to chase the other person. We continued this for a while until Jack decided to change it up a little. I quickly threw a snowball at him as he ran straight for me. He let it hit him in the stomach before he closed in the distance between us and tackled me to the ground. Apparently he had a snowball in his hand too because as soon as we fell to the ground, I got a face full of snow. I sputtered a little and quickly wiped the cold substance off with my gloved hands while Jack laughed some.

“I win!” he cried victoriously before chuckling a little.

“Nuh-uh, you cheated!” I said, trying to make up some stupid excuse to keep myself from being the loser.

I finally finished clearing my eyes of the snow and opened them to see Jack staring down at me as he continued to lay on top of me. There was a sort of twinkle in his eyes, but I couldn't really tell what it was back then. Happiness? Christmas spirit? No, it was kind of a bit different than both of those things. A soft smile was on his face too, and I couldn't help but to smile back upon seeing it. The feelings that I had started to feel after that were a little odd to me; I had absolutely no idea what they were at the time.

They soon ended for the most part though when Jack rolled off of me to lay beside me in the somewhat thick blanket of snow. I looked towards him to see him staring up at the gray sky with the smile still plastered on his face. The snowfall had ceased now and it was probably late in the afternoon too. There was a few seconds of silence before Jack said,

“Today was fun. Hopefully we can get some more snow so we can do this again.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

There was another moment of silence.

“Hey, do you think we'll be friends forever?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said almost instantly. The question almost kind of surprised me. What kind of question was that? Of course we would be friends forever. Why wouldn't we?

“Good,” he replied a couple seconds later.

We didn't lay there for much longer. Mom shouted from the top of the hill saying that Jack's mother wanted him home so he can see his relatives that came to visit them for the holidays. Jack seemed to be a little reluctant to go, but after we went inside so he could get the present I gave him, we said bye to each other before he left.

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© 2008 Chris

Author's Note

Is the dialogue at the end okay, or is it too forced?

My Review

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Reviews

Eidolon Michael

The dialogue was fine(you ask that so much, is dialogue your weak point or something?). Just a small error that I saw: 'It hit me and some of it when down my shirt, which I yelled a little from because it was so cold' is a little akwardly worded and might make more sense if you made it 'It hit me and when down my shirt, causing me to yell from its biting frost' or something like that. It helps the story flow better if you put an action inside a description all at the same time. At least that's how I write, but to every man/woman his own, I say lol other than that, good chapter ^_^