A and D

A and D (10)

Aaron:

I walked across the quad, carrying my gym bag. A lot of people showed up tonight. They were expecting to see a good game. But I doubted it. There wouldn't be any thrill – that I was sure of.

I wasn't nervous at all. I guess it was because I know that the team we were up against tonight was not much of a threat. I mean, their school's name itself sounded comical. But despite that, we'd already played against them last year. Let's just say that we didn't break a sweat in that game.

More than a month had passed. I'd been busy with training. I needed to be in shape for the basketball season this year. The responsibility and pressure of being Captain was a bit hard when the games were getting closer each day. They got high expectations from me, which didn't help at all. I tried to keep my head in the game, though. That was all that mattered for now.

"Yo, Aaron! Wait up!"

I turned to see Luke running toward me, followed by Ethan.

"Yo." I nodded in greeting. When they caught up with me, we opened the entrance doors to the hallway of the school.

"There's a party at my place after the game," informed Ethan.

"There always is," snorted Luke.

"I bet you're confident that we'll win tonight," I told Ethan, smirking.

"Aren't you?" he asked cockily.

"Of course I am."

We stopped walking. I was about to open the door that lead to the locker room when Luke nudged me. I looked at him.

"What's she doing here?" asked Ethan, a little flabbergasted. He pointed at the opposite direction. I turned to see who he was pointing at. And I stared.

Dakota was walking towards us with Alyson. I blinked a couple of times to make sure I was seeing right... Yeap, she was really here.

This wasn't like her. She usually just went straight to the bleachers. Now that I think about it, she never ever goes near this side of the school. Well, it wasn't a mind-twister. It was obviously because of the "athletic people" that was always hanging out here.

"What are you doing here?" I asked when Dakota was close enough.

She stopped in front of me, raised an eyebrow, and pointed at herself.

"Editor-In-Chief, remember?"

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot that she got appointed to be the school paper's Editor-In-Chief. I remembered her telling me that she refused Mr. D's offer, not wanting to leave the Movie club since she was the one who formed it. But Mr. D told her that the school paper was going in the dumps and it needed someone like her, someone with an interesting kind of thinking. He noticed her potential in Creative Writing class, you see. However, she still refused. Again, it was because of the Movie club (Yup, she was stubborn). And so, Mr. D came up with the idea to put the club in charge of the movie reviews of the paper so that she'd be able to manage both. Dakota immediately agreed.

I had to say that I was proud of her. In a month, she made vast improvements. She changed the entire staff with her own club members, then she changed the name of the school paper from 'MVHS editorial' to 'The Stallion Press.' And instead of producing newspapers monthly, she made it weekly. She also didn't put any boring column in the paper – although, it contained a little too frank comments about the school and its students.

Since then, half the school had been reading it.

Anyway, I looked at Dakota questioningly.

"So?"