Yesterday's Gone: Season One

red three on top of the green one. “Can we talk about something else now?”
    “Man, you can’t let it get to you,” Jimmy said. “We may not understand what happened, but whatever went down, you can obviously do cooler shit than any of us can. Seriously, I’d love to have someone make me five years older.”
    “Jimmy! Don’t swear.”
    “Call me Jim and I won’t,” he winked at Paola, then turned to Luca. “Anyway, embarrassing stuff happens to everyone. That’s where confidence comes from. It’s how you deal with it. And given the current world population, you might just have a chance at being the most confident kid in the world. Now,” he dropped a red Draw Two, “would you like to hear about a time I was embarrassed? I’ve got about a billion.”
    Luca drew two cards and said, “Okay.”
    Paola played a red Skip, Luca played a red 7. Jimmy started talking.  
    “So this happened in 8th Grade Math. I had to go to the bathroom reaaaaal bad . And it wasn’t just draining pipe; I actually had to drop the boys at the pool, which I NEVER do at school if I can help it. My teacher, Mr. Mellakar was a real jerk, partly because I gave him attitude, but mostly because he was born that way. Sometimes he gave me detention for breathing, but whatever; I figured if I really had to go, I really had to go. So I raised my hand and asked, but he just shook his head and told me I could wait until lunch. But that wasn’t gonna fly because the turtle was already poking out of its shell.”
    “Ewww!” Paola made a face and Luca giggled. Everyone kept dropping cards and drawing new ones while Jimmy went on.
    “So he finished drawing a chalk cylinder on the board, then asked us to figure the area and when he went to his desk, I got up and quietly asked him again. I told him I had to release the hounds and that it wasn’t gonna wait until lunch.”
    “Did you actually say you had to release the hounds ?” Paola asked.  
    Jimmy laughed. “No, I think I probably said Number Two. Anyways, he finally said okay, but he was sort of a jerk about it and told me I’d better hurry. Like I can control how long a shi… um, poop takes. So, I ran to the bathroom but both stalls were taken. I had to do the crap dance for another five or six minutes, which felt like an hour. Finally, the stall opens and I run inside. I sat down and bombed the oval office, but it was coming out so fast, it was like I was making batter. Took a whole roll of toilet paper to clean myself, too.”
    “This is way, way too much information,” Paola said making an ill face. She put a green 9 on top of the red one.  
    Luca couldn’t stop giggling. He liked the way Jimmy talked, super fast and excited. Dog Vader padded his way into the room and barked. Luca wasn’t sure if Vader liked, or didn’t like, the poop story.
    Jimmy thought he played a yellow 6, but Paola said it was a 9, so he put down a green 7 instead. Luca put down a green 4.  
    Jimmy continued. “So I get back to class, but it’s like 20 minutes later. Soon as I walk in, Mr. Mellakar says, ‘So you’re FINALLY back!’ then asks me what took me so long. I mumbled that I had to go Number Two and he said, ‘I can’t hear you,’ then kept making me repeat it until everyone in class was laughing, including Amy Ensile, who I really, really wanted to ask to the end-of-the-year dance. But I couldn't even look her in the eye after that.”
    “Why?” Paola said. “Everyone poops.” She played a blue 4.
    “Yeah,” Jimmy said, “but not everyone gets laughed at in front of the entire class. I got called Lava Cake for the rest of that year and all summer. Only thing that saved me was high school, and doing some other stupid thing which earned me another nickname.” He put down a blue 2.
    “What name was that?” Paola asked.
    “Um, probably not a story for the kiddos.”
    Luca put down a Draw Four, then said, “Uno!”
    Paola grumbled from behind her smile, then drew four cards and gestured toward her mom, deep in discussion with Will, sitting at the bar. “What do you think they’re talking about?”  
    Jimmy looked at Luca’s face and the single card waving just below his mouth. Jimmy’s hand hovered over the deck, then returned to his own cards, where he pulled another blue 2 and set it on top.  
    “Not sure,” Jimmy said. “Probably how we’re going to get out of here, and where we’re gonna go next. You know, the stuff we don’t get to have an opinion