Jonatha walked out of his bedroom, having just had his world rocked by one of his fellow classmates. He felt positively overwhelmed by the news. What do I do? How can I make things right for Maddie? How does this change things for me? With hours to go before the game, his mind suddenly wasn't on cheer moves.
As Maddie walked downstairs, he spotted Zoe. "Hey, uh... Zoe?" his voice wavered. "Can I talk with you for a bit, too? I think it's important."
"What's it about?" she gruffly asked, confused why one of Jon's classmates wanted to talk to her.
Maddie looked around and saw Mikelle still in the family room. "I better tell you in private, Zoe."
Realizing this boy was insistent on talking to her, she sighed and got up. "Alright. Want to go in my room?" As the two walked away, the doorbell rang again. Jonatha opened it to find Jade.
"Oh hey, didn't expect to see you," Jonatha chuckled.
"Hey Jonatha... I wanted to talk to you about something."
"Now's not really a good time," Jonatha sighed. "I just found out that Maddie and I are related."
"What?" Jade tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"Here, come on in." Jade set down his bags and sat on the couch with Jonatha.
"What is all this with Maddie?"
"Well, uh... Turns out my mom had a fling with a secretary at her work before she met my dad. And he's my half-brother."
"What!?"
"And he got pregnant at Shan Jackson's party a while back."
"It's nice to have my suspicions confirmed that Shan's a bitch," Jade sighed. "But Maddie is gonna have to do something with this baby."
"And I'm too overwhelmed with what this means for me to help him..."
Jade put an arm around Jonatha. "Imagine how he feels. I don't know if he ever really got to know...your mom before. Imagine what he feels like he missed out on."
Jonatha nodded. "Maybe we can work something out. I think Maddie is just telling Zoe. She'll have an idea on what to do. Zoe always does."
Jade nodded, not really sure what he could say that could help the situation.
Jonatha shifted a bit before turning to Jade. "So, what was it that you wanted to talk about?"
"Oh, it's nothing," Jade replied. While it wasn't really nothing, he didn't want to add more to Jonatha's problems, so he decided to wait until things calmed down a bit before he talked to Jonatha.
