[ C H A N C E S ]

❛ making lives better ❜

          WHEN WE REACHED THE meeting spot everyone gathered in their groups, boys on one side, girls on the another. "Oh, right, my hair," Jack huffs.

"Uh... looks awesome in the wind!" he tries to cover up the mistake as he shook his locks. Jack and Ellie walk up to each other, they were saying a bunch of things that nobody but themselves could hear. Jack leans into Ellie.

"Oh, Jackie, you flirt! Of course, I'll walk to the bridge with you so we can be alone!" Jack exclaims making sure everyone was looking, Jack grabs onto Ellie's hand and starts walking towards the bridge, everyone follows, a bunch of mutters was coming here and there.

Jack starts stomping back towards us, he gives me a face like 'i'll tell you later' kind of face. Jack stomps through the group looking down the entire time, but not before linking arms with me and whispering "Please, stay over tonight!" I couldn't say no even if this was Jack in Ellie's body so I nod.

"Wait! El, Amber, you're leaving?" Mack asks.

"Yeah. She's gotta get home before midnight, otherwise, her dress is gonna turn back into a leotard!" Aspen jokes.

"Okay, normally I wouldn't call a girl out, but you know what? Come at me, gymnasty!" Jack brings his hands up.

"Uh-oh, girl fight! My money's on you, tracksuit," Porter yells.

"Thanks, Porty," Jack nods.

I slowly push his hands down before I speak "Really, Aspen?! Just 'cause you're new and you may think you're all that, doesn't mean you actually are. You're just a plain old bully, that finds join in hurting other people," I could see around people nodding at my statement.

"You deal with her, she's your ex-BFF, not mine!" Aspen pushes Sassy in front of her so she could talk to Jack.

"Ellie, don't be such a guy about this, okay? You wanna be friends again like you asked before? 'K, we're friends. Good?" Sassy complains. I send her a glare. I couldn't believe she would just say something like that to her friend of so many years.

"Are you kidding? You don't know anything about friendship, Sassy. All it took was for someone shinier to come to town and you dropped El— me like yesterday's garbage. You know, I guess I should thank Aspen. It's because of her that you showed your true colors. And speaking of true colors..." Jack scoffs. Jack goes towards Aspen and rips off her hat, her hair was a bunch of colors and crazy too!

"Freak just keeps getting freakier!" Ellie and I yell remembering what Aspen had said about Jack's incident at that one practice.

Aspen screams as everyone kept laughing "Ellie, are you okay? I've never seen you do something like that before," Mack states, I nod agreeing with what Mack had said because I don't even think Jack would do such a thing. Suddenly, lights appear with a horn honking loudly. Someone had walked out the car.

"Jack! Jack Malloy! Where are you?" a figure approaches the front of the car, Ellie had walked forward.

"'Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom!' Thomas Jefferson," Jack's dad says.

"Seriously?" Jack whispers as he walks towards Ellie, dragging me with him.

Everyone follows "Don't do it," Jack whispers to Ellie, I guess she was about to cry, she looked back at us.

"Don't you do it," Jack reminds him once again. Ellie then looks back at Jack's dad and walks towards him.

"What are you... No, no, no. Boys don't cry!" he exclaims, I lower my head feeling sorry for not only Ellie losing Sassy as a friend and many other things but also Jack's father now probably thinks his son is weak for showing signs of emotions, especially since after their mother died...

"It's a-allergies. Sand in my eyes, Coach," Ellie wipes the tears off her face.

"They don't cry," Jack's dad exclaims once again before returning to the car. We all stand there not really knowing what to do. Jack grabs onto me and starts dragging me back to her house.

—

Jack opens the door to Ellie's house to have only slammed it behind me "Oh hey, El-bell, how was the party?" Ellie's mom asks but Jack stomps his way back to the room, I sit down with Ellie's mom and talk about how Ellie wants me to sleepover since she's going through a lot right now. I had already texted my brothers that I was staying over and they were fine with it. Good thing I already had some items of clothing at Ellie's house from previous sleepovers.

I run up the stairs to make sure Jack was okay, but he stayed silent most of the time. He was sat on the end Ellie's bed, I go and sit beside him. He rests his head on my shoulder and we kind of just sat there in silence, thinking about what just happened. I had left Jack alone to be with his thoughts since I need to shower and change so I could be ready for tomorrows meet. As I finished, I was about to walk in but heard "Ah, she can't lose them both. I'm such a doofus," I walk in to see Jack looking down at the photo of Ellie and Sassy.

As I was finishing up some things, Jack had told me a plan from Ellie for tomorrow that we needed to work on tonight. "You're crazy!" I say before getting up and walked towards the door.

"But it might work," I wink, then we were off to Covey Sportsplex.

"So, one more time. You made your phones into magic wands and shazamed your souls into each others' bodies?" Owen questions.

"Do I gotta burp 'The Pledge of Allegiance' again to prove it?" then Jack starts burping "I pledge allegiance," I look at him with a disgusted face.

"Okay, okay, I'm convinced. And you're sure this is the way to get back?" Owen asks.

"It's the last way we can think of to make each others' lives better. Do you really think we can get our bodies to cooperate?" Jack asks.

"It's in our muscles, believe me. When I ran this morning, I was able to tap into your body's power. You can do the same with mine," Ellie explains.

"I don't know," Jack says unsure of the situation.

"Here, watch," Ellie says as she kicks Jack's leg to have him land the splits perfectly.

"Okay then," Jack sighs.

"All I've gotta do is teach you the gymnastics routine, and you teach me the hockey rules!" Ellie explains.

"Let's go," Owen says, unlocking the door that leads to the Covey Sportsplex.

We first start off with teaching Jack, Ellie's routine. Owen grabs a box of ribbons and other items. Jack pulls one out, harshly too. Ellie takes it from her and taught her how it was supposed to look like. It was gonna be a long night trying to teach Jack, Ellie's routine. Ellie then shows Jack to throw the ribbon and catch it but he threw it way too far. Jack eventually starts getting the hang of the routine.

We then went to the hockey rink. I was in the stands watching Ellie try to get the hang of hockey as both Owen and Jack helped her. She was currently trying to take the puck away from her opponent which she is currently really sucking at it. With enough tries, Ellie finally got the puck! "Woo!!" I cheer from the stands as they started fooling around a little every time Ellie got the puck. Jack also taught her to shoot and she did pretty well too.