Eleven.

I couldn't take it anymore. Maybe it'll get clearer later, but right now I needed Christine around. I wasn't on no romance shit; I just missed her. I don't think I've been this bad before, mainly because she hasn't been not around this long.

Over summers, she'd go back down to be with her family down South, and she'd come back, accent sharper than ever, skin darker brown, a few pounds lighter. We'd write once or twice, but she'd usually call me when she got back to prep for the new school year. But this shit was different.

I mean, i was trying something BIG, you know? A fucking BOOK, yo. I mean, I'd never written a book. I didn't have a fucking journal, and I never put down more than a couple hundred words for some school project or another. I needed help, and while B was my boy, he was the kind of cat who would say that he wanted to be an engineer in college. Good at math, but cool enough not to be TOO nerdy. And saying he wanted to be an engineer got mad adults oohing and ahing over him. But he was at practice a lot nowadays, but I did happen to get some info from him.

Chris' dude was on the team, too, and I pushed B to give me the lowdown on this cat. I figured she wasn't giving me any information, so i need to find out for myself. B almost endangered himself when he casually mentioned that this "retrieval of information" might mean something more, but I had to threaten him with s messy and unexpected death if he made it bigger than it was. She was my friend, and I hadn't heard from her in a while. I knew she was alive, so it wasn't that kinda thing, but why in the fuck was she not talking to me? And she had switched shit around, so I couldn't even accidentally run into her in the hallway any more. I mean, what the FUCK?

B was a first year player,s o he had to go through some bullshit hazing thing so he'd "fit in." I figured that since he was a junior and he'd undoubtedly be starting this year, that they'd stop fucking with him, but I was wrong. What he could tell me about cat was little, and raised more questions than I got answers for.

They weren't sure where to put this dude. He was tall and gangly, and fast. We all figured he'd be an awesome wide receiver, but the kid had hands of stone. Absolute fucking stone. Couldn't catch shit. So they were trying to figure that out. The kid seemed to be embarrassed by the fact they all expected him to play wideout, so he kept quiet and slumped over when he talked. From what B could tell, he didn't talk a lot at all. B said he never mentioned Christine, or even having a girlfriend. Now, Chris wasn't lying about being with dude; that couldn't be. He'd have to say SOMETHING about having a girlfriend, wouldn't he?
Because the kid didn't talk a whole lot, B could only watch him and guess. And all I could do is digest what B told me and try to figure out if the kid's quietness covered up his thing with Chris, or he didn't talk to B because everyone knew he was my boy, or what the fuck was going on. The suspense was fucking killing me. I wanted to know how my friend felt, and I was hurt that she hadn;'t talked to me about any of this shit. I thought we was people! I decided to bite the bullet. I needed her help, and I needed her to be around to bounce ideas off of, to be around.

If someone accused me of liking her more than a friend, I might not even retaliate. Immediately, anyway. I wanted my friend back. I needed to know what the hell was going on. This shit wasn't logical at all.