Hi, I’m Jake Weiland. It’s my thirteenth birthday, and Uncle Tony gave me the best gift ever… a guitar! Can you believe it? I am going to practice like crazy and some day I’ll have a band and we’ll be famous and play in countries all over the world. My cousin Milo said that he is gonna ask his dad for a drum set for his birthday. He plays percussion in school, but it’s not the same as playing rock music drums.

Milo and I have always been close. Our dads are brothers, but they’re really different. Uncle Tony has a pizza place, Tony’s — real original, right? He serves the best pizza in town, and he says that when I turn 14 he’ll hire me to bus tables and wash dishes, and he’ll show me how to make the pizza. Milo too. My dad is a politician, and my mom is the head of a charity that delivers meals to homeless people in New York City, where we live.

Milo is the smart one. I do okay, but Milo gets straight A’s without even trying. He isn’t all nerdy, and he doesn’t have glasses. School is just something he’s good at. He really likes technology, though. He wants to be a filmmaker when he grows up. Not one of the camera guys, but the guy who looks at all the pieces of the film and fits them together into a good story. The one who figures out what shot looks the best, and which take is better on the punchline. He likes to play around with making videos on his computer, and wants to start his own YouTube channel.

My other best friend is Hay Franklin. His full name is Haywood Millard Franklin, but don’t tell him I told you. He’s embarrassed about his middle name- his dad’s a history buff. Hay is a really good person. He’s honest and nice to teachers, but he loves to joke around too. He has a practical joke streak to rival Hermes. Hay is totally jealous of my guitar. He made me promise to let him use it too so he can learn how to play. He wants to impress “the ladies” but I don’t know what ladies he’s talking about. He has never asked a girl out in his life.

Not that I have either. There’s this one girl I kinda think likes me, Gigi. Sometimes I catch her staring at me, but then she looks away and I’m not sure if she was looking at me or someone else. She’s pretty, but if she won’t even look me in the eyes then nothing will ever come of it. This other girl, Sarah? She’s lots of fun and makes fun of teachers when they can’t hear her, and I like that. But she’s always hanging out with other girls, and I think she might actually be a lesbian. I just don’t have luck with girls yet.

One day, I’ll be cool. Not fake, “I’m a football player so I’m popular by default” cool, but for real. I’ll be that anti-popular guy who plays lead guitar in a band kind of cool. And Milo will play drums, and Hay will be second guitar, and we’ll find someone else who plays bass. And we’ll just all be musician-cool. And we’ll all work at Tony’s and have hot girlfriends, and when my dad is actually home long enough to talk to me and he asks me if I’m going into politics like him, I’ll tell him that I don’t need to go to college because my band is going to make it big… and then after we make a few million dollars, we’ll fade out of the spotlight and Milo can go do his movie thing, and Hay will probably become a police officer or something and I will…

Well, I really haven’t thought about it. Maybe since Milo will be out in Hollywood, maybe I’ll go back to Tony’s and he can groom me to take over the restaurant when he is old enough to retire. I don’t think I’d mind making pizza for the rest of my life. I could come up with new kinds, and figure out new things to put on it. Like doing shredded carrots and boiled egg pieces in the Spring and calling it the Easter Bunny Special. Doesn’t that sound fun? I don’t know if it would actually taste good, but I would like to try it.

Anyway, yeah. So that’s me. Is that good, Milo? For practice only, you can’t put this online. Swear it’s not going online, because if it does I’ll report your account until it gets closed down. Ha ha ha. Don’t test me, I’ll do it. I’ll have Hay report it too, since it has his middle name….

This is an exercise written as part of NaNoWarmUp, a personal writing challenge in October to write 25,000 words as preparation for writing 50,000 words in November. This year I’m using the daily writing goal of 800 words to write ABOUT my Cassandra story from the point of view of other characters. In November, I hope to be prepared to start writing a new first draft of Cursed from Cassandra’s point of view, a more complete story after figuring out how other characters perceive Cassandra, her prophecies, and the Trojan War.