✷The Bet✷

1998

Heavy little footsteps sounded in the quite street of Kales, followed by a loud bawling. “Teresa, wait up!” Jacob ran after her, his face red afrom laughing so hard. Teresa was his best friend, but only in his heart. There was no denying how much she hated him, he just didn’t know why. He choose not to. Nine years old Jacob did the best he could to show her he liked her, but she always ended up getting her feelings hurt. Teresa has always been a cry baby, and at times he finds that really annoying, and at the same time entertaining.

From afar he heard his younger brother catching up with them “Did you have to do that?” His six years ago little face plastered in fury, as a threw a punch in his brother's shoulder.

Jacob’s find his brain filled up with fuzzy unexplainable was to redeem himself, not that he needed to do so. He wanted to explain the reasons behind putting a huge disastrous stop to Teresa tea party, really he did, but words wouldn’t come. He hated his stutter. Putting a few sand into her teapot wasn't a bad idea.

Jacob just needed something to keep him busy, since the day wasn't going anywhere smoothly. In other words the day was boring. And nothing seems more entertaining than the sight of young Teresa's distress.

Girls like crying. And girls like Teresa looked rather cute when bawling their eyes out.

“Ugh!” Gideon stomped the ground with his foot. “Now she won’t even want to play house with me!”

“Why will she play house with you?” Jacob asked, crossinging his arms around his chest with a grumpy look “She doesn’t even like you like that. She likes girls.” He concluded rolling his eyes at his last statement.

Jacob at least knew that much — girls didn’t like boys. They liked men, and he was well on his way to being a man. In fact, he had just found a hair on his chin. He’d most likely be shaving by the end of the week. He puffed up his chest and scowled at his brother.

“Oh yeah? Well, she hates you.” Gideon stuck out his tongue. “She told me so, plus…” He shoved his hands into his pockets and took a deep breath. “I’m gonna marry her.”

He gave his brother a horrified look. “You are not!”

“I am!”

“No!” Jacob pushed his brother to the ground. “I’m older. She’s going to marry me.”

Gideon stuck out his tongue then brushed the dirt off his pants. “Wanna make a bet?”

“Yeah!” Jacob sneered. “I do. Whoever marry Teresa get to wish on anything!”

“Fine!” Gideon yelled.

"Let write up a contract to that. It'll make it more real and serious." Jacob suggested, with a sinister smirk on his face.

"Race you to the house." Both boys ran back through the white picket fence dividing their house from Teresa's house.

As usual Jacob got in first before Gideon. "See? I'm more stronger and girls like strong boys." Jacob couldn't help himself from pointing that out, which only made Gideon's face red in annoyance.

Quickly Jacob wrote down the words, in which he and Gideon signed with their thumb stained with tomato paste.

Immediately Jacob thinks about the thing Teresa loved, thinks like princess stories, and gowns. She would talk about how girls are supposed to be treated like princesses, and boys are supposed to be princes.

But how was he supposed to be a prince when there were no dragons to slay?

How could he prove himself when there were no monsters?

Good thing he was the smartest kid in his class. He knew just what to do. All he had to do was cause the trouble and then save her from it.

First, he set her doll on fire, but that didn’t work out as planned. In fact, the doll was now sitting in the garbage can. How was it his fault that the fire extinguisher didn’t work?

Next, he put a snake in her sleeping bag. When she woke up screaming, he rushed to her side to grab the snake but then couldn’t find it! Gideon ratted him out, and Teresa was so angry she cried.

In one last final attempt to impress her, he tied her shoelaces together so she would fall, and then knelt down on his knees to help her.

But she was so mad she slapped his hands away, threw off her shoes, and ran away crying.

Girls.

He would never understand them.

After all, he was trying to help her every time.

And every time she just pushed him away more.

Which meant only one thing. In order to win the bet, he would just have to try harder. And he knew just how to do it.