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The Activity Club let the bright orange light of the mid afternoon sun push at their backs on the way home. the tentative groupwide truce they had just established made everything seem brighter and warmer, somehow, even down to the highly familiar pointless bickering and general goofing off that carried them to the natural splitting point, where they all turned off in different directions on their way home.
As max climbed the winding hill leading back to his 7-11 slash house, he took a break from catching his breath to look down at his Very unbroken arm (which graciously gave out a spiteful twinge at the attention) and realized that he was still going to need to explain this one to his dad. ah crap.
By the time max had plodded up the rest of the hill and fallen through the shop door with an automatic woosh, he had got his story straight. its very simple. he flipped miraculously very wrong and landed miraculously very hard on his one injured arm!
in gym class. during dodgeball.
could have happened to anyone!
His fathers voice comes enthusiastically drifting down the stairs at him. “ Hello Maxy Boy! how was escuelá? I was just beating your sister at chess!”
Max stepped onto the first of the medium old wooden stairs, which let out a token groan as he called back
“It was fine! took a dubious secret portal door shortcut to school! sprained my arm during dodgeball! discovered the true power of friendship within a club setting! uh, excetera..”
Max hears a crash, an indignant squawk, and then two pairs of feet pounding on the ceiling rushing over to the stairs. He looks up to see his father and sisters faces peering down at him over the railing.
His father looks vaugely worried and his sister looks wide eyed and excited.
“What happened????”
Max takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and admits: “I sprained it doing a sick flip during dodgeball...”
Zoey shrieks with the vindication only accessible to a long denied younger sibling winning a bet and jumps in celebration. her head metaphorically hits the ceiling. “I WON THE BET!!!! YOU OWE ME SIX DOLLARS MAXWELL!!!!!!”
Max lets out a terrible sigh and slumps over in place.
“I sure do Zoey.”
Dadwell pipes up, sounding a little worried
“ I thought they had banned dodgeball at mayview middle! Dont tell me that kids are putting rocks into the middle of the balls again....”
Max grimaces and internally shudders, a part of him figures his dad is close enough...
“No, no rocks in the balls. I was just unlucky... and uh, it is technically called hitball now..? I just didn’t really want to say that, on account of, um the name sounded stupid and its really just the same thing..”
max trails off into a mumble
“ AH, HITBALL!!! a fine sport.” His dad’s eyes snap open and shine with the forgotten school spirit of a former mayview sportsball player. “ WHYEVER DIDNT YOU SAY SO CHILD?”
Max lets out the last of his breath and finally moves, very long suffering and deflatedly, to start to climb up the rest of the stairs.
Zoey bends precariously over the railing and cheshire grins down “not as good at parkourrrrr as you thought huh Maxy Boy????”
Max is halfway through a disgruntled “dont call me that” when Zoey hits critical mass in her lean over the stairs railing, slips free with a paniced “WOH” and plummets straight down headfirst into max’s reflexively outstretched arms.
“AAAAAAHHH!!!!” having heroically broken her fall with both his normal arm, AND his very tender (feeling a little more broken by the minute) arm, he lets Zoey tumble down off of him, coming to rest dazedly upside down and distinctly unhurt onto the stairs.
Max hissgrowls through his gritted his teeth and dashes up the stairs, passing his father who shouts “ZOEYYYYYY!” and runs down to melodramatically cradle her head in his arms.
Max makes it almost all the way to the door to his room before his dad looks back up the stairway and asks “woah hey are you okay bud?? did Zoey getcha on the sore arm??”
On impulse and with the desperate determination of a 12 year old who wants nothing more than to be left alone to scream, Max manages to grit out an only marginally strangled “its fine!” and darts into the safety of his room. closing the door with only a moderate slam.
Once he’s finally inside he flops (carefully) onto his bed, tugs his hat down over his face, and squishes it into his eyes with his good (!!!!) arm, grabs his pillow and lets out an extremely long days worth of groan.