This choice: Alex, 14-years-old, his best friend next door • Go Back... Running to his room and jumping on the bed, Tom clutched the wand tightly, thinking about all the possibilities it could bring. Even though he had been a teenager for two years, he hadn't become jaded or sullen yet (like some of his classmates had). He let his imagination fully run away with thoughts of him and his friends going from skinny kids to musclebound hunks; the idea that the wand could be a fake didn't even cross his mind.
Before he could drift off into his fantasy, he looked out his bedroom window and saw his best friend and next-door neighbor Alex outside, mowing the grass in his yard. The light-brown-skinned Hispanic boy sang along to the song he was listening to on his iPod as he pushed his ancient, rusting jalopy of a mower. The sticky heat of the day had forced him to take off his t-shirt, and that combined with the substantial effort he had to exert to push the old mower around the yard caused his slender body to glisten with sweat, dripping down his smooth chest and flat stomach to the waistline of his long black cargo shorts that hung below his knees. His black hair, normally spiked up several inches high, had been matted down by his sweat and the humidity in the air, and every so often he had to blow it out of his eyes.
Both Tom and Alex were exactly the same age; they had been born on the same day at the same hospital in adjacent rooms. Their parents, after meeting there, found that they really enjoyed spending time together as a group, so Tom's family eventually moved next door to Alex's, when the boys were a little over two years old. From that point, Tom and Alex's friendship grew into a thing of legend. The boys couldn't remember a time when they didn't see each other practically every day.
There wasn't anything Tom wouldn't do for Alex. When they were nine years old, they were hiking in the wooded mountains that overlooked their town when they came face-to-face with an angry mountain lion. They both panicked and started to run, but in the confusion Tom got his foot tangled in a mangled tree limb. Instead of abandoning his friend, Alex rushed to his side and helped him free, getting swiped by the mountain lion's paw in the process. Luckily, the two boys escaped with their lives, but Alex had to spend a week in the hospital, and to this day still had the scars in his chest from where the claws had sunk in. Tom never forgot Alex's sacrifice and bravery, and swore that, for the rest of his life, he would do whatever he could to repay his friend for saving him.
As they grew up, their paths diverged a little, but they wouldn't let that destroy their friendship. This year, the school district had assigned them to high schools on opposite ends of the county, so they started calling or texting each other on breaks and lunches. Their interests started to split, too. Tom became more obsessed with sports, watching UFC matches on TV, going to the closest NFL team's home games whenever he could, and even trying out for (and barely making) his school's wrestling team. Alex took a decidedly different approach, becoming more involved in music and technology, teaching himself guitar and occasionally recording and mixing songs on his computer. Recently, Tom had also started to suspect that Alex might be not quite on the same page as him as far as interest in girls was concerned, but that didn't matter. Alex was still his absolute best friend, and Tom would accept and support him, whatever happened.
Thinking everything over, Tom realized that the only person he wanted to show the wand to, at least at first, was Alex. He knew his friend would get a kick out of it, and he could just imagine the two of them walking down the streets, getting stunned and awed looks from everyone in town. Excited, Tom temporarily dropped the wand and bounded out of bed and stuck his head out the window. "Hey, Alex!!" he yelled. His friend, however, couldn't hear him over the sound of the lawn mower roaring combined with the music blaring in his ears. "ALLLEEEXXXXX!!!" Tom screamed at the top of his lungs, but that didn't get his attention either. Tom waved his arms wildly, trying to catch Alex's eye, without any luck. Frustrated, Tom turned back to his room, trying to decide how to best get his friend's attention. As he saw all the junk lying in the floor of his room, his eyes fell on the wand he had left on the bed, and a smile formed on his lips.  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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