fried dough doesn't fix everything

I sit in the lobby for hours, listening to my ipod, playing Angry Birds and Temple Run, reading boring fashion magazines, thinking that this is seriously the longest day of my life. Kendall and the guys are recording a song today and they promised it would take four hours tops.

I know Gustavo can be a butt-head sometimes, but come on. Let the guys live a little. It's been a lot longer than four hours.

I was told I could go to the carnival down at the beach if I don't get into any trouble while they're gone. Mom spent longer than needed to go grocery shopping. At first I thought she got lost in the produce section, but she came back with a bunch of new make up supplies that she totally could have bought some other time.

And right when I thought she was going to interact with me, she says she has plans to go to the new breakfast bar down the street with Tyler's mom for brunch.

Brunch is overrated. And she's been gone for a lot longer than she needs to be. Typical parent. Ditching me because she knows about the deal Kendall and I made and wants no part in it.

I let out a miserable huff, slouching on the lobby seat. I toss the magazine back on the table. There was nothing interesting in it, just clothes. I feel a presence beside me. Looking up, I see it's Mr. Bitters and my gaze shifts back down.

"What do you want?" I ask lamely.

He replied prominently. "You've been sitting in that same seat for hours. I'm sure my lobby isn't that entertaining, so why are you here and why haven't you left yet?"

"Well it's great to see you too, Mr. Bitters," I say, glaring at him. "Go away now. I'm busy."

"Doing what?" I can tell he's getting irritated with my sass. I can't help it. I'm sassy.

"Stuff. I'm just passing time, okay. I'm waiting for the guys to come back from work and take me to the carnival."

"Oh, I see. But why are you just sitting here? There's the park, the pool, your apartment. Anywhere I'm not."

I stand up slowly. "Dude, Kendall told me that if I got in any form of trouble, I wouldn't be allowed to go to the carnival, that's why I'm just sitting here. But what's your problem?"

"I'm just in a bad mood today, sorry. I tried online dating and let me be the first to say E Harmony doesn't work like the commercials say." He storms off, probably from embarrassment since I notice his face turning various shades of pink.

I shake off his bad attitude and notice Kendall enter the lobby, followed by Carlos, James, and Logan. They all have apologetic expressions plastered on their faces. I would smack them off if I could reach.

"Talk," I say, gritting my teeth, before they can even blink.

Kendall lowers himself to my height. "Okay, listen. I'm so so so sorry we're late, baby sister. Gustavo was being extra tough today, but guess what? We can go to the carnival now! So put on your smile and let's go." He flashes a cheesy, desperate smile.

"Don't you wanna hear about my day, big brother?" I cross my arms.

"Not if you got into any trouble."

"I didn't. I sat in this lobby for five hours doing nothing while you and your backwards friends sang songs into a microphone being reprimanded by a plump music dictator. I'd rather be in your shoes any day. At least I would have done something productive," I sigh. "Let's go. You're forgiven."

I look up at Logan, James, and Carlos. Smiles spread across their faces and they high five each other, saying how excited they are for the carnival. They wouldn't be going if I didn't want to go in the first place.

We arrive at the carnival thirty minutes later. As we approach the warm, white sand filled with hundreds of people walking around, Kendall takes a hold of my arm.

He leans down a bit. "You have your cell phone on you, right?"

"Yes," I say, shaking him off and walking in the other direction. I walk towards the smoothie cart and look behind me for the guys. They're already gone. I smile to myself and buy a smoothie. I walk around for a while sipping it quickly. Strawberry flavor is my favorite. I guzzle it down and it eventually is empty, but I still hold on to it, munching on the end of the bright red straw. I think about going on the pirate ship ride set up to my left. Or maybe the ferris wheel on the other side of the carnival.

I begin walking towards the ferris wheel, but I stop short when I see him.

Alex.

He's nearly five feet of perfect, I swear. His brown hair tousled at the top, his chocolate eyes always glowing... The boy makes me melt. I've never said one word to him, though, but he's new to the Palm Woods and I have a huge crush on him.

"What's his name?"

I jump slightly and turn around to see James licking an orange popsicle, watching me curiously. My heart rate slows back down and I smack the popsicle out of his hand.

He looks at it hit the ground and then back at me. He's wearing an irritated frown. "Hey! That was a really good popsicle."

"Good. I'm glad."

"Did I scare you?" he asks.

"No, I jump all the time when someone appears behind me from nowhere because it's fun," I say with obvious sarcasm. He looks offended, but brushes it off.

"So, what's his name?"

I glance away awkwardly. "Whose name?"

"His." He points in the direction I was staring at. Where Alex is. I grab his hand and push it down as quickly as I can, before Alex notices James pointing at him.

"Don't point at him!" I yell.

"Fine, but tell me his name. You like him, don't you?" James is smiling now. It's irritating.

I sigh. "His name's Alex. And, yes, I kind of like him, okay. There are more important things to discuss like... like why you haven't managed to grab a date here yet."

"I'm still looking," he replied. "Anyway, if you like him, go talk to him."

"No."

"Yes. Go."

"No."

"Come on, Katie. You're going to talk to him today." He starts pushing me towards him. I want to talk to him, but I'm growing more nervous as James pushes me over. He gives me one final shove and I accidentally bump right into Alex.

I turn and stare at James with the best death glare I can manage. Then I look back at Alex and apologize, my nervousness increasing greatly. "Sorry..."

"It's cool," he smiles at me. I try to smile back, but I think I look like I'm in pain.

There's a moment of awkward silence and I suddenly see James in the distance giving me thumbs up. I try my best to ignore him. "I'm Katie," I say happily. "I've seen you around the Palm Woods. I live there."

"Alex," he nods. "I've seen you there too."

He's holding a light smirk and I suddenly feel less nervous. I think that there may actually be a chance he likes me back.

"Want to go on the ferris wheel together?" I ask, my palms growing sweaty.

He doesn't answer right away and all nerves that had left are back. Oh god, I'm such an idiot.

He shakes his head. "Nah. I don't want to."

"Oh. That's totally cool. Yeah, me either." I play it off as if him rejecting me is nothing. I feel torn apart inside, but maybe he'd rather do something else with me instead. Maybe he just has a severe fear of heights. "Want to go on the pirate ship ride?"

He shakes his head again. "Look, Katie, you're cool so don't take this the wrong way, but... I don't like you."

I stare at him dumbfounded, feeling like a total loser. "Oh." And then some other guys come up behind him and grab his shoulder.

"Yo, Alex, I found these mad hot chicks over by the volley ball court. Come on, man. Let's ask 'em to go on the ferris wheel with us so we can drop the moves on 'em." I notice his pants seem to be falling off. Unless he just finds happiness in wearing his jeans around his knees.

"Yeah, let's go," his other friend pipes in.

Alex looks at his friends, then at me, and then back at his friends. I can't read his expression as I stand there with my arms crossed. He doesn't seem sorry, though. He runs off with his two friends and I find the nearest bench and plop down miserably, tossing my empty smoothie in the nearest trash barrel. This day seriously could not get worse.

I stare at my hands until I feel the sun being blocked and I look up to see who is shadowing over me. It's James. He seems sympathetic.

"Go away," I say. An overwhelming feeling takes over me and I begin to feel as if my current heart break is all his fault as opposed to Alex's fault. James is the one who told me to talk to him. I never would have otherwise.

He doesn't listen to me. Instead he sits beside me. "Katie, what happened?"

Turns out he was too far away to hear what we were saying. I wish he heard the entire ordeal so I don't have to relive it by explaining. I roll my eyes. "Seriously, dude, just walk away."

I feel him staring. "No, I'm not gonna walk away. Just tell me why you're so upset. What did that kid say to you?"

"Nothing, okay?"

"It obviously wasn't-"

I cut him off mid sentence because I can't hold it in any longer. "He rejected me, all right! Are you happy now? You're the one who told me to go talk to him and I did and now I feel like an imbecile!" I go quiet suddenly and sulk against the back of the wooden bench.

He sighs. "I'm sorry. I didn't know he was going to be a jerk."

"Me either. He rejected me and left with his friends to talk to other girls." I look up at James vulnerably. Thankfully I was more angry than sad, because the last thing I would want to do is cry.

He's looking down at me intently. "How can I make you feel better? Want me to buy you some fried dough?"

I nod, though I doubt fried dough will magically make me forget what just happened.

We sit at a round, plastic lunch table. It's not clean, but it was the only one available. He gets fried dough for the both of us and I notice we both put on an insane amount of cinnamon. I inwardly chuckle at that even though there's nothing funny about it. I figure I'm just trying to not hate him because I know he had good intentions when he told me to talk to Alex.

We throw away the plates and move to the shade of a carnival ride that looks dangerous.

"Do you feel better now?" He flashes a cheesy smile. I raise my eye brows and tilt my head.

"You bought me fried dough. As amazing as it was, fried dough isn't going to fix all of the world's problems. Or mine."

He sighs deeply. "Well, I feel kind of terrible for giving you bad advice..."

"Good," I say, maybe a bit too harshly.

He looks at me sadly and I cave in. I can't take his upset glare. "I'll feel better if you go on the ferris wheel with me!" I admit.

A smile grows on his face. "Okay, let's head on over to the ferris wheel."

We walk side by side to the ferris wheel and get in the medium sized line. We talk about the band's new upcoming music, how nice the weather has been, why blue cheese isn't actually blue and then lone behold... Alex and his two idiot friends with three girls around my age walk up behind us. Alex doesn't notice me. I'm almost thankful for that, but then he does see me.

The girls he and his friends are with look my age, maybe a little older, and they're wearing next to nothing with more make up on than my mom just bought earlier today. James sees me shift on my feet uncomfortably and looks in the direction I'm awkwardly staring at.

And just when I think Alex can't be anymore of a jerk, he says something. It makes me want to hit him. Hard. "Who's this, Katie? Your new boyfriend? He's like a million years older than you. I knew you were desperate, but wow. I didn't know you were that desperate." His friends laugh obnoxiously.

My hands roll into fists at my sides. It takes all I have to not punch all of them. I look up at James and he looks... more angry than I've ever seen him before.

"Hey!" he shouts at Alex. "What makes you think you can talk to her that way? What makes you think you can talk to anyone that way?" Yes, he's very mad.

"Dude, lay off. Take a joke," Alex replies rudely.

"Um, actually, I can take a joke when it's actually a joke and not just some little punk being rude to someone I care about."

I can't help but blush when he says this.

Then Alex laughs. "Okay, whatever. Some people in this world are just way too sensitive. Thank god I didn't say yes to going on the ferris wheel with her. She's probably overly sensitive too."

"I'm not overly sensitive. I'm a girl. With feelings. In fact, everybody has feelings. You're just too much of an idiot to realize that. And you're right. Thank god you didn't go on the ferris wheel with me, because I would have pushed you off," I say, suddenly feeling much better.

James smiles. "And by the way, Katie is too good for you. Any guy would be lucky to have her. It sucks to be dumb, doesn't it?" But before Alex gets a chance to reply, the lady in uniform tells us to get on. We do, but not before hearing their little posse talk as we turn away.

"You know that guy's from Big Time Rush, right?" One of the girls says astounded.

"That dumb boy band my little sister is obsessed with?" Alex asks slowly.

"Yeah," one of his friends says.

"Oh..."

"Dumb?" We hear the girls shout from shock. Then we hear Alex let out a painful cry and I can only hope they kicked him with enough force to give him a nice, big bruise to remind him of his stupidity.

James and I give each other a little fist bump as we get settled into the cart. We start going up and I look at him, breaking into a smile.

"Thanks," I say, "for what you said down there."

"You're welcome. I was just stating the truth."

I laugh and scoot closer to him. I can't help but notice how it's growing darker and darker out by the minute. I hope Kendall doesn't text me any time soon and say it's time to head out. I don't wanna leave yet. I'm finally starting to enjoy the carnival and I haven't gone on any of the rides yet.

I hesitantly lean my head on James. To my surprise, he wraps an arm around me. I feel content.

"You know, I feel completely better," I tell him happily.

When we're stuck at the top, I panic for a minute. But then he reassures me the ride's not broken. And soon he's singing Cover Girl to me and we're laughing all the way down. We go on a ton of rides after that and play a bunch of games. He wins me a giant teddy bear with a red and white striped bow tie. When he handed it to me, I hugged him so tightly I'm sure he couldn't breathe for a second.

I get a text from Kendall and he says to meet near the trash barrel by the parking lot at nine o'clock. We arrive there a few minutes late, but we explain that we were making sure we played all the games here. We don't mention Alex or all the rude things he said. Or the fact that he got what he deserved.

And then Logan is saying he saw me and James at the very top of the ferris wheel. I smile at the memory. And I notice James smile too.

"I saw you guys playing that water shooting game. You looked like you were having a ton of fun," Carlos adds. "But, James, why were hanging out with Katie the whole time?"

He seems baffled. "Um, well. Ya see... She just looked like she wasn't having as much fun as I figured she wanted to be, so I made her fave a ton of fun."

"Did you have fun, Katie?" Kendall asks me.

I nod. "Oh yeah. I had a great time. And now I have this bear as a keepsake!"

"I hear this carnival is going to be a monthly thing," says Logan.

"We'll definitely be going every month then," I reply instantly.

hope y'all enjoyed this little ditty. i've never written for big time rush before, but i've always wanted to and so... now i have. review and tell me what you thought. i will love you forever.