Summary: Thanks to my pushy mother, I was forced to take a computer-coding/hacking class throughout high school, and it was now the last day of my junior year. Due to Jimmy pissing me off yet again, I ended up chasing and having a literal run-in with him. It was followed by our denial of feelings towards eachother, leaving me emotionally distraught. I later found through the process of hacking an old audio file in Goddard's system, but what could it mean? Could it be that he feels the same way that he did back then, or have his feelings for me changed? ?
A/N: I think I rated this oneshot right, but I'm not entirely sure, cuz this is my first oneshot with a rating like this... Let me know if I did well with that, and if I didn't, I can always change the rating! Cut me some slack, okay, cuz I'm new at writing this kind of content, if you would, please? ? ? Hope y'all enjoy it! ! And many thanks to Anysia and Cinnamon Ninja(who told me I had her permission to use a oneshot of hers in this thing; thanks, girl!) for the inspiration of this oneshot! Full credit for inspiring me goes to you both! !
Deciphering Coded Feelings
(Cindy's POV)
It was just one day until my seventeenth birthday, and the last day of my junior year was finally over! I was incredibly elated to hear that school bell signify the start of summer vacation! Just WHY my mom made me take that computer coding class for the past three school years, I had no earthly idea... Perhaps she had finally figured out that the class was the key to surpass Jimmy in my grades. But it still didn't work, since he always got "A+'s" in the areas I always got "A's", which was pretty much everything since he didn't take any abstract classes, the ones I excelled in, like creative writing and art. But, whatever... It was the start of summer vacation! Why should I have been worrying about my grades?!
I was at my locker, gathering up my things and cleaning it out, when a familiar voice rang out in my ears paired with footsteps headed my way, sounding all proud and conceited. I knew without looking in that direction that it was Jimmy, gloating about his final grades, as usual. I tried to ignore him, but he kept persisting in getting my attention, the braggart! !
His words were like cat claws scratching against the blackboard of my brain, driving me almost to the breaking point! I gritted my teeth furiously as I fought the urge to sock him right there and then after I'd gathered my things, put them into my backpack, put it on my shoulders, and slammed my locker door shut. I groaned bitterly and turned to face him to see just exactly what it was he wanted, giving him a death glare.
"Were you even paying attention to what I was saying, Cindy?!" he finally finished, looking extremely annoyed with me. Jeez, he was like a perpetual motion machine, always running his mouth about something! If it's not about his grades, it's about his IQ or science in general!
I heaved a big sigh of impatience and slapped my forehead, then remarked firmly, "I was trying to ignore your obnoxious bragging... Don't you think I'd know by now how your grades will always be superior to mine, Neutron?!"
"Yes, the notion HAS occurred to me before, but what I was saying while I was being so rudely ignored was that my grades are the highest for any high school junior in the entire COUNTRY! ! Doesn't that deserve a little appreciation?!" Jimmy persisted, following me as I attempted to walk away from him.
I just rolled my eyes and snapped sarcastically, "Woo... Hooray for you, Neutron! Highest in the country! ! I'm SOOO impressed! Not! !"
"Ugh! I don't believe you, Cindy! I get positive acknowledgement from everyone ELSE, even Libby sometimes, but you are just too stubborn to admit it! !" he snarled as he marched in front of me, blocking my way. Talk about RUDE! ! ! Right at that moment, I became infuriated!
"Me? Stubborn?! YOU should talk!" I scoffed, walking towards him and forcing him to back up against a wall, "YOU just can't handle the fact that I'M right sometimes, too! !"
Jimmy just shoved me away a few inches and ordered, "Puking Pluto, get outta my personal space! ! ! Your perfume is giving me a headache! !"
"Touch me ONE more time, and you're dead! !" I threatened, unaware of the crowd we were attracting around us.
Getting a stupid smirk on his face, he reached out and poked my arm, saying in a teasing voice, "Touch! See ya! !" He immediately took off running afterwords, heading out the school's double-doors with me in hot pursuit.
"Oh, shit, Neutron, you are gonna GET it! !" I shrieked while chasing him. I noticed that he suddenly tripped in a small pothole in the road, him landing on his stomach and turning over to be on his back. But being so blinded with rage, I hardly even took notice, and that led to me tripping, as well, and landing right on top of him.
Okay, this is very awkward! ! I thought to myself, finding myself staring right into his deep blue eyes and a blushing sensation quickly arriving at my face. I found Jimmy doing the same thing for a few moments, then we both hastily got off eachother, laughing nervously as we rose to our feet.
"Okay, that was, um, weird...," he noted, clearing his throat.
"Yeah," I admitted hesitantly, laughing nervously as I felt myself start sweating bullets and my face going bright red again.
"Unless my eyes deceived me, you were distinctly gazing into my eyes just then, and I could've SWORN that we nearly kissed eachother!" Jimmy remarked, giving me a stern yet surprised look.
"What-?! Ew! !" I objected, hands on my hips, "I wouldn't ever DO such a thing! ! Like I'D ever have feelings for you! ! ! Which I DON'T! !"
"Yeah, well, neither do I! !" he hissed as his face reddened, activating his jetpack and zooming off into the distance, "GOOD DAY! !"
"Same to you, bub! !" I retorted as I walked the rest of the way home, a few tears welling up in my eyes.
As I walked into my house for the day, I noticed my mom sitting at the kitchen table, apparently doing her taxes or something of the like. She lifted her head when she heard me come in and wanted to know, "How was school, Cindy?"
Still in a rotten mood from my literal run-in with Jimmy, I unintentionally barked at her as I headed upstairs to my room, "Fine, Mother! ! !" With that, I trudged into my room and slammed the door behind me, dropping my backpack in the middle of the floor and flopping face-down onto my bed, my head resting on my forearms while on my pillow and tears streaming down my cheeks.
As I cried my eyes out, thoughts regarding what happened with him flew through my mind at what seemed to be hyperspeed. My phone rang twice, but I hardly even heard it due to my intense sobbing... How can he not have feelings for ME?! I thought helplessly, I'm a very likable person, and we have SO much in common! ! We're both really stubborn in nature; we both love science and excel in it to a HUGE degree; we're straight-A students! Granted, he gets straight-A+'s whereas I get straight-A's, but that's beside the point! ! Just, HOW can he not find me attractive?! I've definitely matured a good deal since we were eleven, and so has he! God, why can't he see that I find him attractive, too?! I just can't understand it! !
Then, after a few minutes had passed, a thought hit me. I sat bolt upright in my bed, rubbed my eyes, and said to myself, "Hey, wait a minute... Perhaps those computer coding and hacking classes will prove useful, after all! I could use my newfound skills to see if he's got any hidden and encrypted messages he's written or recorded on one of his computers or even Goddard, for that matter, that he doesn't want me to see or hear! I'll DO it! ! !"
I lept out of my bed and seated myself at my computer, turning it on and soon began typing away at it. I very quickly found out that hacking into someone's computer, especially Jimmy's, would be much more difficult than I'd anticipated... But in my stubborn nature, I wasn't about to give up so easily! Even though I encountered several levels of encryption in his head computer, I kept at it for the next four hours. No one was about to bring Cindy Vortex to her knees in ANY shape or form!
After a tedious four hours of decoding encryption, I wiped my brow with the back of my hand and told myself, "Finally! I'm in! !" I searched through his various files, from experiment blueprints to scientific journals, but I never came across anything that struck me as truly personal, like a journal entry with sentimental thoughts scrawled all through it. It was all just concrete facts throughout the whole system...
I just exited the whole thing in a matter of moments, realizing that the process was a complete waste of time. Then, it hit me: Goddard! He was a computerized system, too, after all!
I felt my hair and noticed that several strands of it had fallen out and my ponytail was drooping, a testament to the hard work I'd just done. So I just pulled it loose and shook my head to free it, letting my golden locks cascade down my back. "Phew, that feels SO much better!" I muttered in relief, "Now, to find out what makes Goddard tick! !"
Locating him was a piece of cake, though once I began attempting to hack into his system, it wasn't so easy... It was already going on eight 'o clock at night, but I was wide awake and rearing to go! There were five levels of encryption in Goddard's system, but that wasn't gonna stop me! It took me until eleven'o clock to crack the codes, then a gigantic list of programs and files appeared before me. These must be all of his different modes and abilities... I realized, There must be a few million of them, at least! ! I just dragged the scrolling bar down to the bottom of the screen, it taking at least five whole minutes since there were so many files! That was when I came across an audio file at the very bottom, dated October 6, 2011, which was almost six years ago from that current moment! "Geez! He made this file a long time ago!" I gasped in disbelief, attempting to click on it, but encountered three levels of MORE freaking encryption on that single file!
"Holy SHIT! ! This must be some incredibly valuable file he's got here! But I still gotta find out what it says, so here we go again!" I hissed to myself, typing like crazy yet again. Luckily, that one only took until eleven-forty-five to decode, and I was IN immediately afterwords! After all that work, I clicked on the file again, and THAT time it opened in my Windows Media Player program, and I immediately plugged in my headphones so I wouldn't disturb my sleeping mother.
The recorded message proceeded as follows:
"Goddard! Goddard, wake up, boy. C'mon, there's a good dog.
Dictation and recording mode, please, Goddard, and translate my speech into text, too, just in case. What? No, in English, please, not binary. Thanks, boy.
Ahem.
October sixth. Unpublished message number nine-eighty.
I'm getting a bit sick of it. The looks, the whispers, the 'moments'…it's time to clear something up, even if the only person who's going to hear it is Goddard. Even if I wish I could say it to everyone.
It gets tiresome having to repeat myself.
Please, please, please, for the love of Heisenberg's Principle, stop making assumptions about my feelings. I do not need my waking hours sullied any further by petty rumours, hear-say and catcalls about my...'relationship'...with Cindy Vortex. Especially when 89.38% of them are extraordinarily unlikely (give or take half a percent or so). Why? There are a multitude of reasons, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest. Let me be succinct:
I. DO. NOT. LOVE. CINDY.
If I was going to be in love with ANYONE (not that I am – I'm eleven! Eleven! I'm not even old enough to shave yet!) it would be Betty. Ah, Betty…she's the one with dark hair that shines in the sun, a perpetually friendly smile, green eyes that…wait, what? No, no, slip of the tongue. Nothing meant by it at all.
(Goddard, can you edit that bit out? …no? What do you mean, no? Oh, so that's what you think, huh? …fine. If you're going to be that way, fine. I'll just delete it manually once I'm done. Continue recording. Thank you.)
Anyway, that's just judging by appearances, which I fully admit is petty – but come on! Look, even though science is everything to me, (and I'm…a bit vertically challenged…) I AM still a male. Despite the rumours that I know spread behind my back. I still appreciate beauty, even though the logical segments of my mind scream at me to stop being such a fool! I don't know quite why I fall into a stupor every time Cin…I mean, Betty's around.
Well, okay, I DO know, but I still can't fight it. Everything else – the villains, the bullies, the times my inventions mess up things for the whole town– I can fight off, in one way or another. Everything else, I can zap with a hypno-beam, or blow up, or reason with, or run away from. But this…this reaction to her…I can't do a thing about it. It's uncontrollable. I can't baffle it with scientific understandings, I can't zap it or shrink it or blow it up or run away. And…it scares me.
Why do you think I invented the love pheromone? To create a vaccine, that's why! But the potion was too dangerous a weapon. (Can you imagine the destruction Professor Calamitous could wreak if he got his hands on it? Or King Goobot? Or Eustace, or Meldar, or Beautiful Gorgeous, or…well, okay, Beautiful probably doesn't need a love potion to start with. But still, you appreciate the extent of the problems that could be caused.) Once I realized the monstrous potential of my creation, I had to destroy it. (Well, most of it. You never know when I might need it.) Not only was that love potion an illogical idea in the first place (How did I think I was going to contain it?), it made me look like a grinning fool whenever she was around. Goddard showed me the footage, and it was…terrifying, to say the least.
And, relating this back to my original point, I know that it's pheromones that make me smile like an idiot when I smell her perfume.
It's pheromones that make me feel the need to prove myself to her, to better her in every competition we enter.
It's pheromones that make me want to save the world, just to make her be that little bit nicer to me.
It's nothing but pheromones, okay? Nothing but hormones. Nothing but chemical responses in my brain.
There is nothing but that, and…and there will never be anything more than that.
I don't love Cindy. I won't.
Aw, I don't even know why I'm saying all this, let alone why I'm recording it. I guess…I guess it feels good to say something and know nobody will hear me. (Nobody but you, of course, Goddard.) Why not Sheen, or Carl? Sheen and Carl are my best friends, but there are some things that they just can't understand, or won't. And added to that is the fact that they'd never let me live it down if they heard me talking like this. I can't talk to Cindy or Libby about this (for reasons that I hope are obvious), and the same reasoning goes for my parents. And aside from them…well, there isn't really anyone, aside from them.
I'll probably play this back in the future and scoff at myself. Heck, I'll probably delete this file the second I'm done recording it. But…still.
End recording, please.
Thanks for recording, boy. And sorry about waking you up in the middle of the night. I guess I couldn't sleep until I got that off my chest.
Heh. No, keep the file, just a bit longer. Triple-encrypt, though. Thanks.
Activate sleep mode, boy.
Goodnight."
I listened to the whole thing practically speechless, hardly believing anything he said in that recording... Then I reasoned with myself about it a bit, saying to myself, "His dog isn't the only one who heard this by now! Pfff, yeah, he said that he didn't have feelings for me back then, but what was with the mentioning of green eyes?! Doesn't that mean something? ? Okay, wait... He fell into a stupor every time I was around?! Why didn't he tell ME that?! And why in the HELL would it scare him? Well, he was eleven when he recorded this, so that makes sense... kinda... Now, the love potion incident was practically a nightmare for me, but hey, I was only ELEVEN at the time, so... yeah. Good thing Goddard showed him the footage of his reaction to the potion, cuz he looked so freaky, not to mention HILARIOUS now that I look back on it, when he was under its influence! And HELLO?! What in the HELL do ya think pheromones mean, Freak Boy?! Well, what are ya gonna do once you've found out that I heard this from six years ago, huh?! Looks like he never ended up deleting it, cuz I just listened to it! Recorded in the middle of the night, too, eh?! Oh, Neutron. You make me laugh! !"
Right then, the time was exactly midnight, and it finally hit me that we were experiencing a major heat wave, where even in the dead of night it was in at least the eighties outside. I ended up having to use an electric fan in an attempt to cool myself off since our air conditioner was shot, and even the lightest scrap of clothing was causing me grief! So I shut my curtains to make sure no one could see inside, shut and locked my bedroom door, then went to brush my teeth, since I hadn't done so yet.
Once I finished a few minutes later, I shut off all the lights and shut my bathroom door connected directly to my bedroom. By that time, I was exhausted! I shed whatever I was wearing, tossed it into my clothes hamper, then climbed into bed and pulled only the lightest sheets over me due to the heat, wanting to let as much air as possible circulate around my body and keep me as cool as possible.
"Much better! !" I sighed happily, and was about to drift off to sleep when my phone rang again, avidly vibrating atop my wooden bedside table. "Oh, now who could possibly be calling me at THIS hour?!" I groaned, reaching over and picking it up to see who it was. It was Libby, so I answered it and wanted to know with a yawn, "Yeah, Libs? What is it? ? Do you even realize what time it is by now?!"
"Cin, I tried callin' ya earlier right after I'd witnessed that scuffle you an' Neutron had after school let out, but you didn't pick up. I figured you were applyin' for colleges or something important like that, but I got more worried the later it got, so I'm glad ya finally answered my call! Are you alright, girl? ?" she explained to me with an anxious tone to her voice.
"I am now, thanks," I replied gratefully, "I was really distraught several hours ago just after I'd chased him out of school, accidentally and literally tripped and landed right on top of him, and nearly instantly afterwords we denied our feelings for eachother. I was really upset cuz of that, but now, thanks to that computer coding and hacking class my mother made me take for the past three years, I've got some dirt to dish out on that stubborn, know-it-all genius! !"
She just groaned and questioned, "What did ya do, Cin?!"
"I hacked into Goddard's files, which took me around four hours, and found a six-year-old audio file with Neutron practically giving away his feelings for me! He tried to deny it the whole time, saying it was just hormones that made him do odd things around me, but you and I BOTH know what hormones signify, don't we?!" I bragged, feeling very happy with myself.
"Oh, God, you KNOW it, girl! He was trying to get by with just a scientific explanation fo' it!" Libby cracked, giggling. Then she paused for a moment, as if deep in thought, then added, "The other reason I called was cuz Neutron called me earlier since he couldn't get ahold of you, saying he was wanting to apologize for his, as he put it, 'abominable behavior directed at you' earlier... He mentioned wanting to go over to your place and apologize in person, but I talked him out of it. At least, I think I did, cuz he seemed to agree with me at the time..."
"He doesn't need to; I'm fine now. Well, aside from being piping hot due to this heat wave-!" I began to tell her, but she interrupted me.
"Hold that thought, Cin. I'm gettin' a beep...," Libby instructed, and put me on hold for about a minute. Then she came back and said, "That was Neutron again. He said he can't take the guilt anymore, an' is gonna teleport to your exact location with his watch any moment now..."
"He's gonna-?!" I started to say, but immediately was stunned, not to mention a little embarrassed, when Jimmy materialized right away in my bedroom, donning only a bathrobe. I pulled the sheets up to my neck and quietly squealed in shock, dropping my phone on the floor in the process. Once Libby didn't get a response from me, she most likely just hung up moments later...
"Cindy, are you alright? ?" he asked, taking a seat on foot of my bed where my comforters were piled up, "Don't you need to be covered up more?"
Freeing my arms but keeping the rest of myself covered, I remarked firmly, "We're in the middle of a heat wave, Jimmy... And my air conditioner is shot, so I'm using a fan and am trying to keep as cool as I can."
"I couldn't help but notice, and so's mine. Must be this damn heat that's the cause of it...," Jimmy observed, attempting to fan himself with his hand, "And this thick robe of mine isn't helping in the slightest. I only wore it so you wouldn't feel self-conscious or humiliated when I arrived."
"TRY me...," I replied curtly, "I'd have to do the same thing if I wanted to teleport to your place. So, we're practically in the same boat here. I am SO hot! !"
"I feel ya...," he agreed wholeheartedly, "I need to remove this thing before I get heatstroke!"
"Nothing or no one's stopping you, Jimmy. It's really difficult to embarrass ME...!" I put in.
He hesitated for a few moments, then gave in, "Uh, okay, only if you're sure about that. If you say so..." He then untied it and let it fall down and off his shoulders, pulling his arms completely out, then uncovering his legs.
"Feel better?" I wanted to know.
"Yes, much. That fan of yours feels enticing on my bare skin," Jimmy breathed, then turned to face me, getting on his knees while still on my bed, and reminded me, "Look, I'm sorry about this afternoon. I shouldn't have said those things to you; they weren't truthful..."
"Hey," I reassured him, scooting over to make room for him and patting the spot beside me, "You were just in a fit of rage right then. You didn't mean it! And neither did I. Sorry about that..."
Jimmy crawled up next to me and slipped under the sheets, then admitted, stroking my bare back after I'd turned over, "It's okay, Cindy. We all have our rotten days!" At that moment, he hugged me from behind, catching me off guard for a moment, then I just accepted it, stroking his hands that were wrapped around my chest. I gave in to the urge to cuddle soon after, letting him wrap his legs around my waist.
Then, I suddenly felt something extremely weird, but very exhilarating at the same time, and gasped, "Oh, my God-... WHOA! ! !" I'd never felt this sensation before, but it got my adrenaline pumping like nothing else did and made every hair on my body stand on end, a satisfied grin gradually making its way onto my face.
"Cindy, is everything okay?" Jimmy asked me, still holding onto me tightly.
Letting out a sigh of appreciation and satisfaction, I informed him amorously with my eyes gradually closing, "Everything's perfect...! Oh, and by the way, it's after midnight and June fifth by now, which happens to be my birthday."
"Well, happy seventeenth birthday, Cin!" he barely whispered, for he was nearly asleep, as was I.
"Thanks, Jimmy...," I whispered back as I drifted off to sleep, as well.
Little did I know how early my mom would be getting up that following morning, around eight-thirty...
About ten minutes before then, around eight-twenty, I slowly opened my eyes to the morning sunrise peeking through my curtains, then turned my head to see Jimmy still asleep next to me. Wow, what a night! I thought happily to myself, This has gotta be the best birthday gift EVER...! ! How lucky I am to know a guy like him! I just laid there and relaxed, thinking about it in depth...
Before I knew it, it was eight-thirty, and I heard a familiar bedroom door open downstairs and footsteps making their way to the kitchen. My eyes flew open in realizing the reality of it: my mom was awake! I could NOT let her catch me in bed with a guy! ! I shook my sleeping companion awake and anxiously told him, "Jimmy, Jimmy! Wake up! !"
He sat up and rubbed his eyes with a yawn, then wanted to know, "'Morning, Cindy. What's so urgent that you had to wake me up so early? ?"
"My mom's awake, and she's bound to think something's up when I don't head downstairs to greet her like I usually do right after she gets up! !" I said in anxious tones, "Get your robe on and teleport outta here!"
"Jumpin' Jupiter, you're right! !" Jimmy realized, leaping out of my bed and grabbing his robe that had fallen on the floor during the night, slipping it on in a hurry, "Luckily, my parents are later sleepers than your mom is! I better go! !" But just before he left, he slipped me in a brief kiss on my lips and quietly added, "Oh, and thanks for the awesome night!" With that, he teleported out and back to his own home.
I just giggled to myself while holding my hand over my mouth for a moment or two, then hurried and slipped my own robe on, it being a bright pink compared to Jimmy's ocean blue. Just like his gorgeous eyes. I then unlocked my door and hurried downstairs before my mom could head up to check on me, which would be a bad sign in my book, and sat at the breakfast table with an innocent look on my face.
She turned to face me and questioned, "You sleep well, Cindy? ?"
"I sure did, Mom," I informed her with a relaxed smile on my face. Little did SHE know... I could now rest assured in knowing that Jimmy did have feelings for me, as did I! And nothing was ever gonna change that!