Okay, I'm not sure where I'm going to stop this chapter, so I'll just write until the chapter gets to average length for my chapters.
And if anyone actually thinks I own Jackie Chan Adventures, get the idea out of your head now, because I don't.
Gym was the last class of the day, so when it ended Jade headed straight for the office to find where Seymour and Charlie had gotten to. Even if Gym wasn't the last class Jade would probably go to the office to find them anyways. She had to make sure that they were okay, because seriously, two boys against five jocks? That was basically the definition of unfair.
Jade found Seymour sitting outside the office. He had a bruise here or there, but looked okay. Jade suspected that Charlie probably looked worse, because it had been him doing most of the fighting. Jade sits down by Seymour.
"Where's Charlie?" Jade asks. Seymour nods to the office.
"Still in there with his brother, talking to the councilor, or the principal, or whoever it is." Seymour says, "Everyone else already left with just a short talking to, so Charlie's the only one in serious trouble."
"Why? It wasn't just his fault." Jade says.
"Maybe not, but he was the one who started throwing the punches. But I blame Alex for that, even I felt like punching him in the jaw." Seymour says.
"Yeah, Alex has that affect on people," Jade mutters, she turns back to Seymour and says "Why did you stay though? I mean, you're not in too much trouble, so why stay?"
"I don't know," Seymour admits with a shrug, "I guess I sort of want to just show Charlie that I am here for him." Seymour leans closer to Jade and whispers "Between you and me, I think Charlie may have some abandonment issues."
"What are you talking about?" Jade asks.
"Well, think about it. His parents got lost at sea when he was younger, then his best friend up and leaves to Europe. Frank didn't even tell Charlie before he left, remember?" Seymour says, still keeping his voice low.
Jade did remember, Frank had left two days after the battle with Tempus, and Charlie hadn't even woken up until four days after the battle. Jade remembers mostly because Frank had been kind enough of giving her the job of telling Charlie where he'd gone. As expected, Charlie hadn't reacted well to the news at all, but that didn't mean that he had abandonment issues. Jade wanted to argue with Seymour about this, but really, what good would it do? He could be just as stubborn as she was sometimes, so Jade just let it be.
"Whatever," Jade says, "I'm going to go get Charlie's sketchbook, I'll be back in a few minutes." And without waiting for a response, she heads back to her math classroom. When Jade enters the room she finds her teacher there, just doing some paper work.
"Um, hey," Jade says to get her attention. The teacher looks up from her work at Jade and grabs Charlie's sketchbook to give to her.
"See if you can get Charlie to pay attention more," She says as the hands the sketchbook over, "I'd really rather not have to send Charlie to the office any more then he already is."
"I'll try," Jade says, though she wasn't planning on doing so. If Charlie didn't want to do math or any other kind of school work, that was his business. Jade runs back down the hallways back to the office. She figured out why schools have the 'no running in the halls' rule when she ran right into Charlie, knocking them both to the ground.
"Ow, oh, hey Jade." Charlie says very casually, "I was wondering where you were."
"What do you mean you were wondering where I was?" Jade asks, "You know that I was in class up until five minutes ago."
"True," Charlie admits with a shrug. The two of them just sat there on the floor for a minute in silence until Jade couldn't stand it, she hated awkward silence, which was any silence at all.
"So," Jade says, to get the conversation going again, "is the sea of lectures over yet?"
"Not even close," Charlie sighs, "Maybe from the school it is, but I'm positive that Ephraim's just getting warmed up."
"Speaking of your brother, where is he?" Jade asks, looking around the halls, as if he'd just be standing there.
"Oh, the councilor wanted to talk to him alone for a minute, but he'll be out soon." Charlie says. Charlie had only just said it when Ephraim came out of the office, and he looked mad.
"Come on Charlie, we're going now." Was all Ephraim needed to say. Charlie sighed and stood up, then turned to help Jade to her feet.
"I'll see you later, Jade." Charlie says before he goes and follows his brother out of the school. Jade watches Charlie go with a feeling that she'd forgotten something. Then out of the corner of her eyes Jade saw a sketchbook…Charlie's sketchbook, it must've fallen out of her hands when she'd ran into Charlie. Jade hit her head with her hand, she'd completely forgotten to give Charlie his sketchbook back.
Jade goes over to pick up the sketchbook but notices that it had fallen open. Jade hesitates, she knew that this sketchbook was more like a journal, that all of Charlie's personal thoughts were in it, but she couldn't resist the curiosity to see what's inside. Jade picks up the book, sits back down on the ground, and opens it up from the beginning.
The first few pictures were nothing out of the ordinary, just drawings, but then Jade found a drawing of Frank, except, it wasn't him. Frank looked like he was Shendu, so he was in demon mode. And for whatever reason he was wielding a sword. Something really weird about the drawing was that most of it was just black and white, but the tip of the sword had been colored in with red. Jade looked at this picture for a minute before moving on.
The next pictures were of the demon kids, in the order that they'd met them. The strange thing was that all the pictures were drawn so that you couldn't even tell the kids were demons at all, they all looked like normal people, even Fare. Even weirder was that one picture was of a teenage guy who looked like just any guy off the street, it took Jade a minute to realize that this was a non dragon version of Drago.
After looking for a while Jade realized that these weren't individual pictures, they were telling a story. Jade was still confused though, most of the drawings were normal black and white, but some did have red in them. Jade decided to take another look at the drawings with red in them to see if she could find a pattern or reasoning behind it.
The first was the drawing of Frank with the sword, the sword tipped red. There was another picture of Shendu Frank, just standing there looking smug, his eyes were red and his hands were dripping something red too. There was also a drawing of Dylen and Frank, with Dylen's hair colored red. Another picture of Frank (Shocker, I know) and a few others. But one drawing that stood out to Jade was of her and Alex, kissing. Jade didn't like this picture, and apparently neither did Charlie, because it was sloppily drawn, even Jade could see that. Alex had what looked like a knife in his pocket, which confused Jade because Alex didn't carry knives around everywhere.
Suddenly Jade found a connection between the drawings. When those things had actually happened Charlie had been in a very bad mood, he'd seemed angrier and more depressed then he usually was. Jade closed the sketchbook, something was wrong, she knew it, she just didn't know for sure what it was...wait a minute.
Jade stood up quickly and ran outside. She had an idea what was going on, but she didn't like it, at all. Fear was an emotion that Jade didn't feel very much, but she had to admit that she was afraid right now. Jade started running toward Charlie's apartment building, hoping that he was there and his brother wasn't. Jade needed to talk to Charlie, alone, to find out if her idea was true or not.
Jade just hoped that she wasn't.
Okay, there's no going back from here, we are now past the point of no return, so I can't change my mind on the plot now. Agh, I feel like Charlie's sketchbook is way too obvious, but then again, it is basically a journal, and journals are very obvious on what is going on in people's heads. Charlie wasn't ever expecting anyone to read it, so it's fine.
