A Day Off

Happy Zevie Day!

It was the week before finals, everyone was stressed and our band room was deserted. Kevin and Nelson were still home, they over-slept because of the two hours sleep they got studying together for a pre-exam in their biology class. Kacey was probably still at home as well, rushing to put on the last few touches of make-up. However the person I was really worried about was Stevie. I didn't see her all weekend and when I tried calling her she didn't respond. I stare at my watch, school didn't start for another twenty minutes a perfect amount of time to finish my study guide for Spanish. I barely got started before the door slams open, Stevie comes stumbling with tons of books and miscellaneous papers on top and inside them.

"Why does school require books?" She groans. I laugh and ask,

"Where else would you find the information you need to learn?"

"The internet," she responds while dropping all her books to the ground with a huge thud. She lets out a small sigh and stares at the large pile. "Ugh, I feel like I'm being suffocated by useless knowledge," she attempts to blow a strand of hair from her face but just comes back down. Her hair was a mess but she still looked beautiful as always.

"That's apart of the amazing high school experience," I joked.

"Zander, I'm serious! I hate this place," she drops to the couch, head tilted back.

"Stevie, we all do," I say.

"I know, I just want to escape. Just for one day," she explains. I didn't know what to say, school was about to start so I figured we would just stay there in silence until the bell rung. But Stevie had a different idea, her head popped up and she said, "Let's do it."

"Huh?"

"Lets just leave," she suggests.

"What? You mean like skip?" I ask, shocked.

"Why not?" She responded, with excitement on her face.

"Um, here's an idea, we would get into so much trouble," I protest.

"Not if we pretend to be our parents and call in sick," she tells me.

"Stevie, it's the week before finals. It's crucial to be at school, we might miss something," I say. Part of me was confused. Yes, Stevie was a little careless at times but she's not someone that would just ditch school.

"It's just one day. Sure, it'll be a little hard to make everything up but I mean, when was the last time we just stopped worrying about school and had fun?" She asks.

"Saturday night," I state. She glares at me and I don't try to defend myself.

"You're telling me you've never wanted to just escape from school. Just once," she says with a softer look on her face.

"Well the thought has crossed my mind," I admit.

"Awesome, so let's do it," she jumps up off the couch expecting me to follow. I stay on the couch while she grabs her backpack and turns back around, "Are you coming or not?" I figured one day couldn't hurt and it was Stevie, maybe I could finally tell her how I feel.

"So what exactly are we gonna do today?" I ask her as I throw both of our backpacks behind me in the backseat of my car.

"I guess I didn't really think that part through," she tells me. "You got any ideas?" I laugh and shake my head.

"Um, we could go see a movie," I suggest. She again glares at me and I realize how lame I sound.

"Oh! How 'bout we go to the park?" She says, excitement reappearing on her face. I love that look, she looks happy. I nod and started the engine.

"Do you still have that soccer ball in your car?" She asks. I smile, remembering the last time we played with it.

"You mean the one that you kicked onto the top of Nelson's house and Kevin broke two bones while trying to retrieve it?" I laugh.

"Hey, it was his hand and he was lucky he didn't break anything else," she defends.

"Yeah, I still I have it. You wanna play?" I ask stealing a quick glance at her before turning my head back on the road.

"Well, I was thinking we could make a bet," she responds. I give her an eager look so she continues. "Loser has to make winner lunch."

"You're on!" I tell her. We finally get to the park and head to the back of my trunk, I easily find the soccer ball under a pile of blankets. I hold it out to Stevie and she instantly steals it, running off to a large open space of grass.

"Hey, you can't start yet," I call, quickly following behind her. We played for an entire hour. I thought the game would be a breeze, I would easily score goals and let her score of few herself. But I forgot Stevie could actually play soccer, and she was good. Better than me.

"Are you done yet? Cus I'm pretty sure I won," She said coming back from retrieving the ball I kicked out of bounds.

"What does Queen Stevie want for lunch?" I sigh. She smirks then pretends to go into deep thought.

"Queen Stevie would like pizza," she responds. I wipe the sweat off of my forehead and groan.

"Can't I just buy you pizza?"

"A deal's a deal," she says. "We can go to my house though, both of my parents are at work." We find our way back to the car, we joke about how we luckily didn't break any bones from the soccer ball. Once we get inside the car Stevie cranks up the radio. The music was the only sound during the ride to her house, except for the few seconds I thought I heard Stevie humming along. We stop in front of her house and my cellphone rings, it's Kevin. I show Stevie and when I'm about to answer it she takes the phone from me and turns it off.

"It's probably not important," she tells me. I doubt she's right though, why else would Kevin call me during school? "We did not skip school just to worry about it more," she makes a point. We head inside, straight for the kitchen. I began making the dough, Stevie just sits and watches.

"Gosh, I'm starving," she complains sitting at a nearby stool. I love that, when she complains about being hungry. Unlike most girls, she doesn't care how she looks, if she wants food she wants food. And how she stays fit is a mystery to me, it's probably all the soccer she plays.

"You know, if you helped me the food would be done faster," I tell her. She rolls her eyes and says,

"Hey, me helping wasn't apart of the bet."

"Well at least get us some drinks," I say. She grumbles but gets up, she grabs two cans of soda from the fridge and when she's about to walk passed me I take the opportunity to throw some flour in her face. She pauses to realize what I just did.

"Zander!" She yells, shaking the can in her hand and before I could react she opens the tab pointed at me and sprays Coke all over my face and shirt. I stare at her, considering my options.

"This is war!" I declare and scoop up pizza sauce in a spoon, chucking it at her while she takes the other can of Coke and dumps it on my head. The war was more like a battle, it only lasted a few minutes before we both realized the mess we made. We sat on the tiled floor staring at the cheese sprinkled all over and the sauce running down the cabinets. Somewhere in the mix we decided to put the pizza in the oven before it got ruined in the fight. The timer goes off and I take it out.

"So um, I guess we can clean up after we eat," she suggests getting up off the floor and grabbing some plates.

"Sounds good to me," I laugh. I put the pizza on the plates and set them at the table, Stevie walks by and shakes her head.

"Not here," she says. I give her a confused look and she motions me upstairs. I take the plates and she leads me to her room.

"You want to eat in your room?" I ask.

"No stupid," she replies. She takes an old fleece blanket off of her bed and opens up her window. She waves her hand at me to come with her. Before I knew it she had me climbing outside the window and setting the blanket on top of the roof.

"You come here often?" I joke.

"Haha," she sarcastically replies. The roof view wasn't much, just a few houses and a lot of trees. But the quietness was amazing, all you could hear were a few birds chirping off in the distance. "I come up here when I need to be alone, away from people, noise, school. And just think."

"Do you ever come up to think about me?" I ask. She smiles at me taking it as a joke, even though I was being serious.

"Zander, you're my best friend. What would I need to think about?" She asks. I don't answer, instead I say,

"You know I have a place like this. I mean, it's just a bench at my grandparents lake house but I go there to escape reality as well." I turn to look at her, she was listening intently so I continue. "I think about you all the time," I admit.

"What do mean?" she asks. I take a deep sigh, this is it.

"Oh come on, everybody in their right mind knows you're amazing," I answer. She gives me a half smile. That's all I get? I basically just praised her and I get a half smile? I divert my attention to a blue house a few streets ahead of us.

"Well I guess you're pretty amazing yourself," she says. I didn't entire know how to respond to that but it meant the world to me.

"Wow, a compliment? From Stevie Baskara?" I laugh. She giggles and turns back to the view in front of us.

"This has been the best day of my life," she says. I smile and she looks back at me. I respond in agreement by leaning down and kissing her, a stronger kiss than I'm used to but it was perfect. We come apart but our eyes stay on each other's.

"Let's get some ice cream," she all of a sudden says.

"Okay, but this time I'm gonna buy it."

A/N

Sorry if there's a few mistakes. I kind of just wanted to quickly put this up for Zevie Day so again sorry.

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