Life Begins After Twelve.

This is a story about a boy and his best friend. Pretty simple. Possibly boring (you think). Well that might be, but one thing is story is, it's peculiar. Now nothing was overly peculiar about this boy, he's your average 12 year old, just starting high school, likes chess, is a bit shy, and has braces. Yep, your typical kid. Well as you probably guessed, it was his best friend that adds the peculiar element to this tale. Now, like your best friend, he's got a face, two hands and what not. I mean it's not like he's one of those freak of nature people with like eleven toes, or a second nose, or anything of the sort. But he did like leather, which is a bit of an odd thing for someone starting high school (but not in a fetish kinda way, he had no choice, why?, well if you keep reading you shall find out in the next sentence). This is because Billy's best friend was, a wrist-watch.

Now, many wonder how he could have such an attachment to a mere wrist-watch. As many of you just go out and buy one very couple of years or so. But not Billy. He has owned this wrist-watch since he was born. Another oddity of the story?? (you ponder...). Well yes, and no. As how Billy came to own this watch was moreso due to the stupidity of a relative, as opposed to his own oddities. Good old Uncle Tom. Well there's half of his problem, as Tom is a rather dopey sounding name. But it was the other half of the problem that created this situation. As Tom had gifturightous, a rare condition found in just 1 person out of the entire world's population. Unfortunately it was Tom. And because of this condition, Tom had no good judgement about gifts. Just to properly explain the extent of the problem, last christmas he got grandma's & Sally's (his niece) presents from the adult store, mum's present from the hardware store, and dad's present from the homewares store. And so as i'm sure you have figured, it was Uncle Tom that bought that wrist-watch for Billy as a birth present. As you could imagine it sent the family up in uproar, as why you would buy a wrist-watch for a baby, they simply couldn't understand. But Tom just smiled, as out of the corner of his eye, he could see Billy playing with the wrist-watch.

Billy took every good care of this wrist-watch. Every year on his birthday he would take it into the watch-guy Willy's store, to get the battery changed, so that it never stopped. Willy, who could see that Billy loved this watch very much, would also give it an extra special clean each year too. The wrist-watch only left Billy's arm for three reasons, 1) to get the battery changed each year, 2) when Billy took a bath each night and 3) when he would sit it on his bedside table before he went to sleep each night. And this is almost where our story begins, As Billy carefully laid his beloved wrist-watch on the bedside table as his mother tucked him into bed. (The story was supposed to start here, but on later thinking i thought it would be stupid to start a story with Billy going to bed, then sleeping for ten hours... way to grab the readers attention...).

The following morning Billy woke up when his mother was drawing his curtains. Billy rolled onto his side, looked out the window and sighed. He sighed for two reasons, firstly cause it was raining really really heavily (so heavily that there was almost as many raindrops as there were men flocking to see Pamela Anderson signing copies of "baywatch: when we used to be stars" edition, but not quite as many, there were more men...) and secondly because today was Billy's first day at high school. Now Billy wasn't very good at meeting new people (as was stated in the first paragraph when i said that he was "a bit shy"), as all through primary school it was just Billy and his wrist-watch, and now high school is just a bigger land mass with twice as many people to try and ignore. That thought made Billy feel blue. He finally decided to roll out of bed some minutes later, he put on his wrist-watch, and went down stairs for some breakfast. After a moderately tasty (half cold eggs, chewy bacon and cereal) breakfast, Billy gathered his books and headed out the door to school.

Billy opened his umbrella, as it was still heavily raining, looked at the time of his wrist-watch (it read 8:15), and Billy thought to himself, "hog-diggity-dang, im going to be on time this morning" (pun not included), as he walked out the front gate and down the lane to school. As Billy was turning off Toad rd. onto Feet st. he saw a girl across the road struggling with her umbrella, as a huge gust of wind came down and swept up her umbrella into the sky, Mary Poppins style (only without the person attached, much to this little girl's dismay). And so this poor little girl stood on the sidewalk with an umbrella, getting completely soaked, looked around and quickly spotted Billy standing across the road, wearing the same uniform. Realizing the desperation of her situation, she ran over to Billy and asked if she could share his umbrella the rest of the way to school. Billy suddenly got all nervous and shuddery, and quickly offered her a spare umbrella he had in his bag. Without waiting for her answer, he quickly dived into his bag to look for it. And wa-la, he pulled out and umbrella and handed to her without even glancing at her wet white shirt (that's how much of a gentleman he was, oh how his mother raised him well...). The girl gave Billy a slightly nervous, sideways look as she took the umbrella and thanked him for his help. And with that they both went their separate ways to school.

As Billy arrived at school, he checked his wrist-watch again (this time it read 8:20) (no pun included there either), and Billy thought to himself, "wow, i can't believe i made it in five minutes..." as he brushed the odd bit of water off the face of his wrist-watch. And with that he quickly proceeded to his form room to get out of the pouring rain that seemed to be getting heavier.

Billy walked into a rather small cosy room in the food studies block. He could smell the wofting smells of muffins coming from down the hall. He slowly walked into the room of about 20 other quiet and nervous looking people, and found a seat by himself. The boy who came in after him however was very loud and did not seemed troubled at all by the thought of starting high school. He struted into the class room, and pushed Billy off his chair, while loudly stating that he wanted to sit there. Billy who was a nervous wreck and not looking for any trouble, quickly scampered in the other direction in desperate look for a seat, any seat. And he found one. Unlike any other seat he had ever sat in before. As there was someone right beside him. Billy slowly turned his head to look who he had sat next to, and it was that same girl that he saw this morning, she gave him a wry smile of comfort, as she had seen what happened, but quickly drew her attention to the front as the teacher had walked in. But Billy barely noticed, all he could think about was the look that girl gave him, it made him feel like there was a museum's collection of butterflies in his stomach. But after almost missing his name in roll call, he looked at his wrist-watch (to check the time, go figure) and got stuck into his work.

Before long it came to lunchtime, and because of the heavy rain the teacher requested that they eat their lunch in the covered areas just outside of the classroom. And so the class filed outside, Billy included, and they all sat down on the seats and proceeded with their various lunches. Billy looked down at his wrist-watch again, it was exactly 12 o'clock, when he noticed that the second hand was no longer moving, Billy began to panic, as he started playing around with the buttons on his watch trying fruitlessly to get it to work again. The large, loud kid (the one that pushed him off the chair earlier) noticed that Billy had a rather spiffy looking wrist-watch. So he marched over to where Billy was sitting and demanded to have a look at it. Billy, recognising the kid from before, quickly refused, and went back to trying to get it to work. The large kid, obviously not used to being rejected, grabbed the wrist-watch off Billy's wrist, using so much force that he couldn't keep his balance, and slipped over as it was a rather wet day. And because of the force of the fall, he was unable to keep a good grip on the wrist-watch, and so it went flying up in the air. Billy, who was overly upset about these events, made a dash to grab the wrist-watch before it hit the ground, but he tripped over the large kid, as he too fell to the ground, and all he could do was watch helplessly as his beloved wrist-watch flew through the air and into the rain. For Billy, time just seemed to stop (like in those matrix movies), as if it were slow-mo, as the wrist-watch performed it's final spin, before it collided with the concrete, the glass on its face shattering on impact, the sound of it hitting the ground seemed to echo in Billy's mind, as he watched it bounce along the concrete and into the drain.

Quickly realizing the gravity of the situation, Billy briskly got to his feet, and ran until his legs collapsed. About half an hour later, the girl Billy sat next to, eventually found him to return his umbrella. She found him curled up in a corner, near the change rooms, crying with his head in his knees. She slowly walked towards him, with the umbrella in her hand, when she stepped on a burger wrapper. Billy slowly glanced up to see who was there, and he saw the girl, he slowly lowered his head back into his knees, realizing that a girl had seen him crying. She continued to walk towards him, and instead of just returning the umbrella and leaving as she had planned, she went and sat next to Billy. And there they sat for the remainder of lunch, not uttering a word. Eventually she turned to him and said, "by the way, it's 12:45, so we better be getting back to class", as she hopped up. Billy slowly glanced up at her, wondering way she was still standing there, when he saw that she was offering him a hand up. And for the first time in his life, Billy took her hand, and even though he was soaked to the bone, and stone cold, he felt an odd warmness inside. When he finally stood up, Billy turned to her and stuttered, "oh, I'm Billy...", in the smallest voice he could manage. The girl turned to him and smiled, "and I'm Lilly, it's very nice to meet you Billy", as they turned to walk back up to class. All of a sudden the rain stopped, and the sun started to poke it's face through the clouds for the first time today. Lilly quickly turned around to face Billy, remembering why she was looking for him in the first place, and handed him back his umbrella, "looks like I won't be needing this anymore."

And that's the story of how my nephew found his new best friend. And no, not the writers nephew, as this is a fictional story, my nephew. As you probably figured i am Uncle Tom, and it has been my pleasure to be your narrator today. But i must be off now as i got a vegetarians birthday to attend... i hope they like what i got them... it's a famous Australian barbecue... called the steak-eater...