Friendship
Chapter
12: Crime and Punishment
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Notes: From Adam’s point of view.
“My best friend is back together with her boyfriend again, and it feels great. Too bad that I blew all my chances with Chrissie, otherwise everybody would be contempt right now.”
Adam and Cecilia were on garden-duty, after their little stunt at the game. Coach Bombay had forced them to plant several dozens off small plants in the flowerbeds around campus.
They were down on their knees in dirt, crawling around planting different plants. They were mostly goofing around, but Bombay came to check up on them every once in a while, so they tried to do their job as fast as they could, so he wouldn’t yell at them even more.
“So, I guess you’ve talked things trough now?” he assumed. “What are you going to do with the test?”
Cecilia sighed. “I guess I have to come clean. My parents will kill me. Fred said he could take the blame for it, but after all that has happened, I can’t let him do that.”
“Are you guys okay, though?”
“Yeah, I think so. He kissed me, not the other way around.”
“That is how you usually explain your kisses,” Adam pointed out.
“I’m being sincere this time, Banksie.” Cecilia slammed her shovel against something hard. “Another stupid pebble,” she moaned.
“I bet it’s the same one you threw away when we were planting over there,” he smiled, pointing to a place on the other side of the lawn.
“It’s not that pebble,” Cecilia growled. “It’s another one. I should know, I marked the other one with a pencil... stripe.”
Adam fell onto his back with laughter, and had to duck, to not get the pencil-marked pebble in his head.
“Damn,” Cecilia whined. “I hate this! My mom is the family-florist, not me. I hate flowers.”
“That’s why it’s called ‘punishment’.”
“Crime and punishment, huh? The irony, the irony. Hey, did you read that book in class?”
“I saw the movie, does that count?”
“Yeah,” Cecilia answered. “I hate this flower the most.”
Adam turned his head to see what she was referring too. She was holding a red flower in its roots, while she was dangling it back and forth.
“It’ll break,” he objected and tried to take it away from her.
“That’s the whole point,” she sneered and followed to flower with her eyes. “It deserves to die a horrible death. Look, I have cuts all over my hands! I hate flowers!”
Cecilia tossed the flower aside, causing someone to yell. “Oops,” she winced.
Coach Bombay sighed. “I see your working hard.”
“I am, coach,” Adam said honestly.
“Kiss-ass,” Cecilia coughed. Adam threw the watering can at her, and all the water inside came pouring at her jeans.
“Oops,” he smiled. “Honestly, I didn’t know there were any water left in it.”
Cecilia whined and growled for a while, when she was trying to save herself from the puddle of water.
“Are you two done?” Bombay asked. “I want to know when you think you’re done.”
“When these stupid plants stop mocking me, I’ll be done,” Cecilia muttered. “And when Adam stop bugging me all the time. Look what he did!”
“Who’s being the kiss-ass now, tattletale? Oh, I forgot, it’s in your genes to be a tattletale. Girl.”
Cecilia threw another plant at him, and howled angrily. “I’m never talking to you again, Adam Banks, if you don’t take that back.”
“What? You being a tattle-tale?”
“No, me having a girl-gene. I’ll hate you forever and ever if you don’t take it back.”
They were being so busy throwing plants and water at each other, that they didn’t even notice that Coach Bombay left.
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Notes: From Guy’s point of view.
Connie had told him to go help Adam and Cecilia with the gardening-work. Connie believed that it was Guy’s fault that Cecilia had fallen down the stairs.
It was probably just a thing she pulled to get him out of her room. She was busy with her homework, and he’d been bugging her.
He wasn’t sure if he should go out looking for the gardeners, but he decided to do that anyway, since they were the only ones around he could hang out with. He heard Cecilia’s shouting even before he had rounded the corner of the building. They were down behind the Varsity’s dorms, by the water.
“I do too believe that snails have feelings.”
What kind of twisted conversation had he stumbled upon?
“Well, I didn’t see that snail, excuse me.”
“You just smashed it, like you smash everything. Leave me alone!”
More screams, along with laughter.
Guy walked down the small hill, finding Adam and Cecilia in the middle of an argument. Adam had wrestled her down on the grass and was now dropping bits of soil into her face, while she was trying to defend herself.
“Working hard?” Guy asked. Adam looked up at him, with a huge grin on his face. Cecilia screamed angrily and shoved him away.
“Hey, Germaine. What’s up?”
“Nothing, just thought I’d see what you guys were up to. Not much, I see.”
“We’re extremely busy, aren’t we, Cee?”
Cecilia pushed some grass into his face as answer. Guy laughed. “Don’t need any help, then?”
“Nope,” Cecilia said between her teeth. “I’m managing this all by myself.”
“You can plant some flowers, if you’d like,” Adam smiled. “It’s not like we’re gonna do that, right Cee?”
Guy watched while his friends tried to kill each other.
“Plant flower, kill snails, just the same in Adam-world.” Cecilia snorted and tried to get some mud out of her mouth.
“And Cee here, she’s eating worms. She just love them, don’t you, Cee?”
Cecilia tried to stab him with the gardening tools. Guy was highly amused by their entertaining behavior.
“You guys should be given some kind of comedy show on TV,” he laughed. “You’re hilarious.”
Cecilia pushed Adam down to the ground with a victorious smile. “Ha!”
She looked pretty stupid, covered in dirt all over her clothes, and her jeans were wet, along with her hair. There were grass stains in her face, and there were mud falling out of her shirtsleeves.
Adam grinned. “What now, honey? Are ya gonna kill me?”
“Yeah,” she said enthusiastically. They rolled around on the lawn for another few minutes, until Adam pushed her away.
“Back to work, Cee. Bombay’ll kill us if we don’t get moving.”
Guy began to laugh when he saw the empty flower-boxes. There were plants all over the place, just not planted. They had been used as ammunition in the little garden-war.
“What the hell is going on here? Did I ask you two to dig a tunnel?” Coach Bombay came strolling down the hill, suspiciously looking at the scattered flowers all over the lawn. When he turned to face the two fighting gardeners, he just sighed even louder.
“I change my mind. You two look like you didn’t just dig a tunnel, you used your bare hands and feet to do it with. What happened?”
“Adam killed a snail!” Cecilia shouted and got on her feet.
“Did not,” yelled Adam, highly amused by their childish behavior. “Cecilia made me eat grass.”
“You didn’t have to swallow it!”
Adam opened his mouth to say something evil, but Cecilia pushed him to the ground, before he could. “If you say one word, regarding me and Fred, I’ll kill you!”
“You made me land on the rake,” he whined. “Move, you crazy girl.”
Coach Bombay grabbed them in their arms and began to shake them around, to get the mud off of them. Cecilia began to laugh.
“I don’t wanna plant any more flowers, coach. Please don’t make me.”
“The way I can see it, you haven’t been planting that much at all. Except from that piece of weed I think has started to grow on Banks’s shoulder.”
“Great, maybe we can smoke it.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Bombay threatened. “Now, go get washed off, and meet me by the utensil-shed. You can come too, Germaine.”
“What I’d do?” Guy whined, watching Bombay walk toward the dorms again
“You are now officially part of the gardening-group,” Cecilia exclaimed. “That means that you have to care for snails and try not to throw more then two plants per minute. ‘key?”
“’key,” Guy repeated.
“Maybe we should initiate you with our gardening-ritual?” Adam suggested.
“Yeah,” Cecilia grinned.
Guy already knew what he was facing, but he didn’t have time to react fast enough.
Ten minutes later, all of them went over to their dorms to change clothes and shower. Guy had never had so much mud inside his clothes before. It surprised him that he could walk at all.
Coach Bombay was waiting impatiently by the shed down behind the gym, about half an hour later. He watched them coming down over the lawn, pushing and shoving each other.
“When I said ‘wash off’, I didn’t mean change clothes and shower,” Bombay muttered. “I meant that you should brush the dirt away and meet me right away.”
“Oops,” Cecilia said happily. “We misunderstood, right Guy?”
“I could’ve been here earlier, if you two hadn’t tried to choke me with soil and grass.”
“That’s the true gardener-spirit,” Adam laughed. “Blame your fellow gardeners for the mess you made yourself.”
Bombay glared at them. “Now, since you couldn’t behave during the planting, I have another job for you.”
“I’d like to say, that I had nothing to do with what happened at the game,” Guy interrupted.
“Hush, Guy, you’re making him even more angry,” Cecilia giggled.
“That can’t possibly happen,” Bombay growled. “I want you to paint the diving tower out on the bridge. That way, you can fight as much as you want, even drown each other, without spending the school’s money by throwing away things.”
“Paint? I suck at painting,” Cecilia whined. “Can we use one of those roll-ons? They’re fun to work with,” she said in her next breath.
“You can use usual brushes, and if you don’t behave, I can give you q-tips instead.”
The three of them climbed over to the bridge and balanced over to the diving tower with the paint and the brushes.
“Let’s make a bet,” Cecilia shouted.
“About what?” Adam asked. He turned around and faced her.
“Who’ll fall into the water first.”
“You lose,” Guy laughed and shoved her aside. There was a loud splash, followed by a scream and laughter.
“Cee, you’re such a moron,” Adam laughed. Cecilia climbed up on the bridge again. “You honestly didn’t see that one coming?”
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked. He was standing on land on the other side of the water.
“We’re tormenting Cecilia,” Guy grinned.
“Okay, you have my permission to carry on,” Charlie replied. “Cee, can I talk to you?”
“Sure,” Cecilia growled and jumped into the water again, making both Guy and Charlie soaking wet. Adam had just ducked off.
“Thank you so much,” Charlie muttered. He helped Cecilia out of the water.
Guy looked over to the dorms. He wished Connie could come and help them. There couldn’t be anything more fun then to push her into the water.
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