Hey, everyone! It's good to finally be back after not updating for soooooooo loooooooong!!!!!!!! So sorry for the absence, but I haven't had a lot of time to update my stories for a while. Thank God for winter break, though. So yeah, here's the next chapter:
“You seem a bit off today. Everything okay?” Fern and I were in gym class. Whenever our class plays basketball, I’m a team captain. And whenever I’m team captain, I always chose Fern, Fleet and Rusty. None of them were very good at sports, and Fern and Fleet did limp a bit when they walked, but they were amazingly fast when they ran.
“What? Oh, yeah, uh-huh, sure…” I trailed off, not really sure what she had been asking me in the first place.
“Diana? Are you even listening to me? Diana? Diana!”
I jumped. “What? Oh, sorry, Fern. Can you repeat that for me?”
She rolled her eyes. “What is up with you today? You’ve been acting so weird!”
Me? Weird? “What makes you say that?”
We were doing laps around the gym. As we ran around, she counted off all the ways I’d been acting ‘weird’ today. “You seem really spacey, you know? Like you can’t help but not pay attention. Like something’s on your mind that you can’t stop thinking about. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine, Fern. Seriously. You know if something was wrong, I would tell you.”
“Okay then….” She followed my line of vision, and gasped. “Fleetwood! Fleetwood? Fleetwood? Are you serious, Diana? My brother?”
“What about your brother?” I snapped. I felt my face turn red. She looked at me expectantly. “What? Oh, come on, Fern! Are you kidding me? Me and Fleet? Man, that’s a scary image!” Fleet? And me? Together? No way!
“Okay then….” Her voice trailed off. “You’re staring.”
“What? No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are.”
“Yes I am what?”
“Staring!”
“I am not!”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Urgh! I’m gonna go talk to him!”
“What for?”
“Those cheerleaders he’s talking to are really starting to get on my nerves!”
I stomped across the gym to the other side, where Fleet was in the process of flirting with two members of the cheerleading squad. Man, I despise cheerleaders.
The two he was talking to were especially irritating. One was a gorgeous, shapely blonde. And when I say shapely, I mean shapely. And her friend wasn’t any better. The one on Fleet’s other side was a bouncy redhead, brushing her long, flowing locks from her face as she laughed. Blondie held out an apple to him. I found myself thinking, He takes that apple and I’ll shove it up his nose.
So of course he swallows half the thing in one bite.
I watched as he turned to Blondie and said something to her. I assume whatever he said was funny, because she started cracking up like she hadn’t even heard of humor until then.
He had his back to Redhead as he continued to joke around with Blondie. I saw Redhead reach into her skirt pocket and pull out a black Sharpie marker. Suddenly, my vision flickered, and the Sharpie turned into a bronze dagger, then back to a Sharpie again. What the heck? My vision went screwy again—dagger, Sharpie, dagger, Sharpie, dagger. She drew back her arm, positioned it as if to sta—NO!
I launched myself at Fleet, throwing my body on top of his. We landed on the gymnasium floor with an oomph.
“Di….Diana? What was that?” Fleet sat up, rubbing his head.
“That redheaded girl! She had a knife! She…. She was going to…” I trailed off. Where was she? Where were either of them? Blondie and Redhead had disappeared, as if they had never been in the room at all.
“You…. You mean Vicki?”
“Oh, so that’s her name? Vicki?” I snapped. Fleet put his hands up, as if in surrender.
“What’s with the attitude?” I rolled my eyes.
“Oh, don’t you lecture me about my attitude, Fleetwood Cabillo! You were almost stabbed in the back by a cheerleader who just randomly disappears, and you’re going to try to lecture me on my attitude? Are you joking me?”
He put a finger to my lips. “Okay, Di. Calm down, alright? Just tell me what happened, slowly, okay?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and sighed. “Okay, I came over to talk to you, and I saw you talking to those two cheerleaders. I saw you turn to the blonde one and start joking around. Then the redhead pulled out a bronze knife…. well, actually, she pulled out a Sharpie, which turned into a knife. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true!”
Fleet thought for a moment, then heaved a great sigh. “I know you’re telling the truth, Di. I just wish…. I just wish you didn’t have to find out like this….”
“Find out what?”
“Listen, Di, you’re not normal. You’re not even entirely human. You see, you’re—“
“Diana! Fleetwood! Are you guys—oh, sorry. Were we interrupting something?” Fern and Rusty came running up to us. Interrupting something? What?
That’s when I realized I was sitting on the floor in Fleet’s lap. I blushed, rising to my feet. Fleet did the same.
“C’mon guys, we gotta go.” Fleet started to pull me across the gym floor.
“What? Where are we going?”
Fern turned to me. “We’re going someplace where all of your questions will be answered.” Okay, cliché horror movie much?
“How are we gonna get out of here? It’s not like they’re just gonna let us walk through the doors of the school.” Thank you, Rusty.
Fleet rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the Board of Ed. is so gonna be able to stop us.”
Rusty and I were led down the hall into an empty classroom. We all walked to the other side of the room, to the open windows. “Nice going, guys. How do you plan on climbing down windows that have metal bars over them?” I snickered.
Fleet and Fern said nothing. Instead, they began—no joke—eating the metal bars. You know, eating? Chew, chew, swallow? Yeah, that’s what they did with the bars over the window. Even in my surprise, I still giggled nervously as Rusty’s eye began to twitch in shock. I leaned in close to him, whispering so the twins couldn’t hear, “What are you thinking?”
“She’s so cute when she’s eating metal grating.”
Rusty and Fern? Aw, how sweet!
He’s right, though. You’d think watching a guy eat metal would be an immediate turn-off…. you’d be wrong. Not that I think of Fleet that way. At all.
The twins turned to us again. “That better?” Fern asked Rusty, eyebrow arched. He nodded wordlessly. It was actually pretty fun to watch his eyes expand to the size of dinner plates as his crush slipped through the window and down to the sidewalk below. She spread her arms wide and called up, “C’mon Rusty! I’ll catch ya!”
Just when I didn’t think his eyes could get wider, I was proved wrong. “You….. catch me? Are you sure?” I rolled my eyes.
“Stop being so prejudiced and jump,” I poked him in the back. His slight frame slipped easily through the framing of the window, and Rusty landed safely in Fern’s arms.
“Guess I’m up,” Fleet gave me a grin, making a big show of climbing through the window and landing on his feet on the ground. “Your go, Di!” he shouted up at me.
Suddenly I heard shouts coming down the hallway. Shoot. Teachers. I knew I was in huge trouble if I stayed, but what awaited me, should I choose to go? I looked down below at Fleet’s expectant face. I had less than a second to make my decision.
I plunged feet-first down through the window. I was caught in Fleet’s strong, sinewy arms. He pulled me around so I was on his back. I had my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms around his neck. We took off down the street, away from the school.
“Where are we going?” I had to shout so the wind wouldn’t carry my words away.
“Half-Blood Hill!” Fleet called back to me. Half-Blood Hill? Well, whoever that was, I got three words for them. Bring. It. On.
