A short story I wrote for school.
Sometime around April, Ricky was playing basketball at school. During basketball, Ricky thought about one thing: sandwiches. Ricky loved them. Bologna, cheese, turkey, chicken salad, BLT, you name it. The only problem was that he thought about this during basketball, which took up too much of his mental capacities, causing him to lose most games and be ridiculed by the other serious basketball players in 9th grade. That was the problem with Middle/High School. High school took superiority over middle school in every way, and always stole most sixth graders’ food at lunch (among other things), including Ricky’s sandwich. His beloved sandwich was lost ever day, which was why his mom promised to start packing an extra sandwich in his dad’s lunch.
From that day on, when Ricky got home, he got to eat the extra sandwich from his dad’s lunchbox. This act ended his 12:30 suffering at school.
One fine Friday afternoon, Ricky’s dad needed to provide a contract to Farmer Brown for fresh bacon and eggs. One little chick whose mom had died hopped into the nice-smelling lunchbox of Ricky’s dad, hoping to find some food. Unfortunately for him, he found nothing but a plastic-wrapped sandwich. He tried to get out, but Ricky’s dad had zipped the lunchbox up after the chick got in. So, there he stayed, chirping and tweeting with all of his might. No one heard him because he was too little to make much noise at all.
When Ricky’s dad got home, Ricky couldn’t wait to eat the leftover sandwich in his dad’s lunchbox. He was about to open it, but something stopped him. He heard a faint chirping noise. Maybe the air conditioner was faulty again, but he put his ear to the lunchbox and, sure enough, the chirping was there, and louder. Ricky started carefully zipping open the top of the lunchbox until a yellow ball jumped out and landed on his head. Startled, Ricky stumbled backwards and scooped the ball of fluff off of his head. It was no ball of fluff; it was a little chick.
Ricky put it on the table, rushed off to the kitchen, and came back with some granola. He carefully put it on the table for the chick to eat. The chick nibbled at the granola hungrily, but the chunks were too big. Ricky went to get some waffle crumbs and this time the chick managed to gobble them up. Ricky went back to get more and more waffle crumbs and made a mental note that he would have to eat waffles every day to be able to feed the chick.
Soon, Ricky showed the chick to his parents who, to make a long story short, said “noâ€. Ricky’s urge to keep the chick was more than to eat the extra sandwich (but he ate the sandwich anyway) and was heartbroken. The next day, when Ricky’s dad went to work, he dropped the chick off at Farmer Brown’s farm. Ricky locked himself in his room for an hour, crying and beating on the bed.
Ricky’s birthday was tomorrow, on April 23rd, and Ricky wanted to go to an all-you-can-eat sandwich bar (who’d have guessed?), but he was still thinking about the chick, so much that at school, after being sent outside, that he banged his head on the wall across and stared at it until he was told to come back inside.
On Ricky’s birthday, which was on a Saturday, he invited all of his classmates at school, because he didn’t have any real friends. One of them was Farmer Brown’s son. First, they played a treasure hunt of Find the Sandwich, then played Bobbing for Sandwiches and blew up a sandwich piñata filled with plastic-wrapped sandwiches. When it was present time, most people gave Ricky Subway Gift Cards, but Farmer Brown’s son, Charlie, gave him a small parcel with holes poked in the top.
He curiously opened the lid and there was the same chick he had seen before. Ricky was shocked to see the same chick that was in the lunchbox and immediately rushed to his parents. At first they told him no, but then Ricky told them that it was a birthday present and they couldn’t possibly be mean enough to take away a birthday present. Ricky’s parents finally accepted, so long as Ricky took care of it, fed it, took it for walks… etc.
Ricky rushed back into the room to thank Charlie with his life and then rushed into the kitchen, announcing to his friends as he ran that the party was over. In the kitchen and with the chick in his hands, he ran over to the waffle maker, scooped up some crumbs with his hand, and fed them to the chick. It was that moment that Ricky, watching the chick gobble up the waffle crumbs, that Ricky dubbed the chick: Waffles. He also knew that they would be lifelong friends.
The next day, Ricky brought Waffles to school. Waffles, of course, had never been carried inside a backpack, so he was tweeting a lot. When he passed the 9th grade basketball court, the ninth graders looked at Ricky and one of them moaned “Hey, shrimp! Got a chicken in your backpack or what?†Ricky replied “Close enough†then immediately covered his mouth, wishing he hadn’t just said that. One of the ninth graders started running towards him, yelling “Well then, I’d better take a look! Ricky ran as fast as he could towards the nearest teacher, who prematurely stopped the ninth grader in his tracks. Ricky, cowering behind the teacher, could hear the 9th grader huffing and puffing and growling “You’re dead after school, shrimp.
During school, Ricky couldn’t focus. He managed to make Waffles stop tweeting, but he kept thinking about what had happened before school. Why did they care so much? Why did they suddenly hate him? Is this all a plot against me? It was too much. Ricky was spaced out for ¾ of the school day, until one particularly strict teacher, Mr. Alfred, literally knocked some sense into him. By then, school was almost over, Ricky had missed the instructions, and none of his friends were in the class, so Ricky almost fell asleep before the day was over.
By the time Ricky got out of school, he had forgotten what the 9th grader had promised him, so as soon as he walked past a blueberry bush, the 9th grader, whose name was Jorge, jumped on top of Ricky, pulled his backpack off, zipped it open, dumped out all of the books, grabbed Waffles, and threw him back into the blueberry bush.
Ricky was scraped, bruised, cut, and his ego was destroyed. Waffles was gone. He was stuck in the blueberry bush. Ricky couldn’t get him, and Waffles couldn’t get out, all because of Jorge. Suddenly, Ricky could feel steam coming out of his ears, but the 9th graders got off easier with the teachers and Ricky would get expelled if he physically assaulted Jorge, as well as get beat up. Ears still steaming, Ricky stomped to the bus, plopped himself on an empty seat, and whacked his head on the window the entire way to his house.
Once Ricky got home, he crumpled up his homework assignment and threw himself in bed, thinking about a way to non-physically get revenge on Jorge and get Waffles out of the bush. About nine blocks down from Ricky’s house, Jorge’s toilet-paper covered house lay. Jorge was sitting on his bed, grinning psychotically about what he had done to that shrimp (what was his name again?) at school. Meanwhile, in the blueberry bush at school lay Waffles. Waffles was shivering, but he had managed to pluck some smaller blueberries off of the bush to eat. He couldn’t sleep because of the uneven branches, but he eventually picked off enough blueberries to struggle his way out.
Waffles hopped away from the blueberry bush and managed to catch the last bus going home. When Waffles passed Jorge’s house (he recognized it by the toilet paper), he jumped off. The door was closed and locked, but Waffles saw an air conditioning shaft and jumped in it. After much fumbling around, Waffles fell out of the shaft and landed right on top of Jorge. Fortunately, Jorge was already asleep and Waffles climbed over to his ear. Waffles was nervous enough, but then Jorge shuffled in his bed and Waffles almost jumped. Waffles then gathered up all of his little chick spirits and tweeted as loud as he could in Jorge’s ear.
TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!
Jorge was too shocked for adjectives. He instantly rushed out the door, caught the next plane to South India, and moved there. Waffles then hopped on a nearby car and rode to Ricky’s house. He hopped in Ricky’s bed, and the next morning, when Ricky woke up, he was so glad to see Waffles that tears of joy streamed down his face.
That morning, when Ricky went to school, he was surprised not to get his daily “greeting†from Jorge. All through class, Ricky paid attention, but still wondered what had happened to Jorge (not that he wasn’t glad about it). At the end of the day, Ricky took Waffles out of his backpack to take him for a little stroll. Ricky was still wondering about Jorge, but he could have sworn that Waffles winked at him. “Oh well,†thought Ricky. “Why should I care that Jorge is gone? I still have Waffles†And when everyone was out of sight, Ricky picked up Waffles and hugged him. He finally had a true friend.
THE END