Chapter 1
Thirteen Days
He pulled the scarf tighter around his neck and jammed his mitt covered hands inside his puffy coats pockets.
Winter decided to rear it's ugly head brutally in FEBRUARY instead of January, or even December.
"Oh, stop being a wimp Denzel! It's not that cold!" Marlene exclaimed. To prove her point, she balled up some fresh snow and tossed it playfully at the other teen. Denzel flinched at the impact of the White Death to his face.
He shook his head roughly, causing snow to fly off every which way. He glared at his girlfriend. Marlene giggled gleefully that soon turned nervous sounding. She didn't mean to hit him in the face! Just to nail him forcefully in the arm was all. . .
She knew the look on his face meant two things; Denzel was mad, but he also had that teasing glint in his eye that wanted revenge.
Marlene backed up slowly, raising her hands in a gesture of peace. Her eyes widened when Denzel kept scuffling his boots closer and closer towards her.
There was no hope, she should just surrender. Bringing her hood up over her head and pulling the strings, she prepared for the frigid rush of snow at her face.
She cracked open an eye a minute later. Huh?
And that was when she got knocked in the snow, caught off guard.
Denzel had let out a war cry and tackled her into a giant snow pile behind her. Her breath stuck in her throat and was released in a fit of howling laughter once she hit the fluffy snow.
Even though Denzel was the attacker, he got it the worse. Instead of sidestepping Marlene's searching hands for the boys coat to bring him down with her, he slipped on some deadly ice and landed face first into the ugliest part of the pile.
Denzel lifted his frozen face out of the snow slowly and turned to face Marlene. She laughed at how the dirty slush was sliding off his frost bitten cheeks. He carefully opened his blue eyes, afraid that some of the nasty slush would get in them.
Despite getting a faceful of snow then he intended too, he sheepishly smiled at Marlene's visible joy as she clutched her sides. His heart started to thump and his stomach felt like it was filled with sunshine.
The deep 'ah-oooga'-like horn broke the both of them out of their merriment.
The chestnut haired teen grabbed his girlfriends hand and hauled her up. They raced to the school bus.
As the bus driver gave the sopping wet kids odd looks, Denzel led Marlene up the stairs, telling her to be careful not to slip as she just waved him off. He was becoming too much like Cloud.
Once they plopped down in a seat together they immedietly continued to laugh loudly, waking up the other half-asleep children around them.
"Aw, how cute." snorted someone from above. The couple wiped their eyes and looked up.
"Hey, Matt!" Denzel greeted his friend. They did their new secret handshake that involved 'clever' twisting moves and several explosion-ish motions. A girl beside Matt rolled her hazel eyes.
Marlene made an attempt at standing and leaning over to hug her friend. "Boys will be boys, huh Sophie?" the girl laughed in agreement.
When the bus lurched forward in movement and before the driver could yell at them to sit down, the other two children sat down in a seat to the side of Marlene and Denzel. The group avidly chattered about their weekends until they reached the school.
The local school in their district wasn't that far from 7th Heaven, just about 10 blocks or so. The driver opened the doors of the yellow bus with a grumble, all the kids immedietly filtering out and running up the stairs to the schools main entrance.
Edge of Meteor Middle School was the name of the building, according to the monument planted in the frosted grass.
Marlene could feel warmth surge through her and her fingers regain feeling once she entered the building. She sighed in comfort. Any longer and she would have been a popsicle! Preferably cotton candy flavoured. . .
Sophie and Matt were yelling at each other (like always) off to one side of the entrance. Marlene looked around. Where'd Denzel go?
The boy in question was staring at a wall.
"Er, Denzel? Is the wall ok?" The young teen whipped around, flustered.
What was up with him? He was blushing and his eyes were wild. She tried to look around him to see what was on the wall, but Denzel swiftly stepped to the side, effectively cutting her off.
"Oh, it's n-nothing." Denzel persuaded weakly. This just made Marlene all the more suspicious. Before she could out juke him to see what made him so nervous, he started wheeling her in the opposite direction.
As she was about to protest, Denzel shouted out a feeble excuse. "Don't want to be late, right Marlene? That witch of a homeroom teacher you have might give you a detention! Heh-heh. . ." He ended in a mad man mumble. She was confused. Was he starting to get affected by the snow?
"Uh, right." she responded, still befuddled. Denzel continued to push her in a direction of a wide hallway and stopped.
He turned around and rushed to the other hallway across the room similar to Marlene's and waved rapidly to her.
"Bye Marlene! See ya later!" And with that, he rushed down the hall designated to the 8th grade classes with the blush still on his face.
Before she could raise her hand for an attempt at a wave goodbye, he was gone after he knocked into another boy and helped him pick up his papers.
She shook her head and walked down her 7th grade hall, bag slung over her shoulder. She'd just have to talk about Denzel's odd boy behaviour to Sophie in class.
Denzel dropped his binder on his desk, along with his head.
Thirteen days. He had thirteen days to ask Marlene to the 8th grade Valentine Dance!
When he saw the poster near the entrance he started to feel his palms sweating. It took him almost three weeks to tell Marlene his feelings about her before they started dating! And now the dance? A VALENTINE'S day dance, no less.
The Valentine Day dance was something only the 8th graders had the privelage of, since they were the oldest and supposedly more, 'mature' than the rest of the juniour high. He knew people from the year before who went to the dance and the stories about it, to him, were scary.
Everyone going HAD to bring a date. Towards the end of the dance, before everyone got sent home, they played a slow song to which all the couples had to dance with each other. It was tradition in the school.
Denzel moaned to himself as he halfheartedly hit the top of his desk with his fist, not caring about the strange looks he was recieveing. He couldn't not ask Marlene! That'd be so cruel and it'd hurt her feelings. She was his girlfriend afterall. . .
And she was his girlfriend! It should be easy to ask her, but. . .it wasn't. When he saw that sign he got the same nervous fluttery feeling he felt when he asked Marlene out in the beginning. That's why he didn't let her see the colorful crudely handmade sign (no doubt created by one of the 6th graders), she'd expect him to ask her right there and then. It'd just be a miracle if she didn't mention it to him until Valentine's Day.
The chestnut haired boy took a deep breath. He was going to do it, one way or another. Thirteen days was plenty of time, right?
Where the heck was Matt when you needed him! He needed to have an emergency 'bro to bro' conversation with him about all of this.
Here's the long awaited sequel to "Homework"! If you haven't read it, do it now! Ugh, I suck terribly at story titles. . . any new suggestions would be awesome ;D I'd also liek to mention that I bumped up their ages a bit here. Denzel's in 8th grade, so he's about 14. Marlene's in 7th, so around 13. Now, the name of the school. I didn't want something boring like, Egde Middle School. Blah. So I named it Edge of Meteor! If anyones seen Advent Children, you would have noticed the HUUUGE monument in the middle of the story dedicated to Meteor. Small references from Homework, like Marelens love for sweets, mainly cotton candy xD Not sure when the next update would be, but until then review and tell me what you thought! It might motivate me ;D
~Sabby-Sama