Hello, Readers. Since it's been awhile since I've posted another chapter, I present to you a much, much, much longer chapter than I usually tend to make. Hopefully, You favorite, follow, and review! I really do love the support you all give me, and it motivates me to continue writing STLOFM (Save the Last One for Me).
Enjoy...
Viridian - This color is an aura that symbolizes emotional and mental stress.
"I saw everything."
I looked down at the mischievous munchkin. My eyes rolled in the back of my head with annoyance as I gave her her Shrek backpack, filled with nothing but dolls, gum, and art projects. "You're a little spy, Pippa."
She skipped a little at the sound of my minor insult that sounded to her like a compliment. "You're not very good with the ladies either," she replied with a look of pity.
"You're not old enough," I said, getting the gist she wanted to help mine and Elsa's former relationship. We were getting closer to the apartments, and I wanted to just end this conversation. I stopped her just as we were about to set foot on the concrete stares to my old home. I knelt down to her height level, setting a hand on her shoulder, and looked down at the hard surface. "Pippa," I began again, "when you saw... Elsa today..."
"Are you mad at me because I invited her to pick me up too?"
I nodded my head no. "Was she? Well, did she?"
The brunette six year-old crossed her arms, also looking down at the floor. She kicked her feet slightly, resulting in dirt to escape from the bottom of her high tops. "She was kinda..."
"Drunk," I muttered, more so in a question. Pippa gazed her eyes towards mine, and whipped a tear coming from my eye.
"Why, Jack?"
"What?"
With a single squeak, Pippa began to rub her own eyes with her fists to conceal her tears. "Why are you so hard on her?"
My heart was beating against my rib cage. More rivers of sorrow escaped my blue eyes, though in this sunset, coasting off the littered parking lot, they were more of a greenish teal.
"Elsa's going through a lot."
My breaths quickened. "What did she tell you."
"She told me about how she doesn't get to see her sister, and that the teens at school hurt her."
"In what way?"
Pippa cut the gaze between us, and gestured her face towards the apartments. "I don't know! She was about to say, but then she stopped talking about herself and told me to never let anyone bully me."
I stood up to my feet, heart still creating rhythms against my chest. "When did she tell you?!"
"Today! At the entrance to Sunny Side!" This is nonsense. I didn't see Pippa at all when I arrived.
"I talked to her before you got there, but went back inside when I saw you coming because..."
I gave a huge sigh and balled my fists. "Why, Pippa?"
"I wanted to see you two together!"
What!? Why the hell does she need to see Elsa and I together? Was it because she missed seeing us as best friends? What was it?!
"I miss the old Jack," she announced in guilt. Her chin was on her collarbone, looking down, again, at the solid concrete. "I miss my brother who didn't skip class, and wasn't always fighting with Mom."
I extended my arm towards her, but she backed away swiftly. Her feathery, long hair covered her face. "I miss my brother who didn't hang out with that mean friend! Because everytime you invited him over, you changed, and you were always mean to me!"
"Pippa..."
"I miss my brother who was friends with Elsa Summers!" The volume of her voice got louder and louder by each sentence. "When my brother was friends with Elsa, he was actually fun, and happy, and not rude!"
"Pippa," I muttered, tears in my eyes, blurring my vision; my face paler than it usually was; and voice cracking with every hiccup. "I didn't realize."
She lunged at my knees, hugging me tighter than she's ever hugged me before, and I knelt down to hug my little sister back. The warmness between us made me have hope. Good relationships between siblings are uncommon; extremely rare in fact. I should start opening my eyes at my behavior, and maybe my little sister would be proud to be related to me again. It's the most I can do.
It won't be easy though. Bad habits die hard, I thought to myself as I gripped the tiny Pippa.
"Just, please, Jack," she said into my shoulder. "Be friends with Elsa again."
Walking through the halls of Burgess High is like walking through an enormous beehive. Everyone is buzzing with gossip. See what I did there?
The hallways to third lunch were much more insane than usual. I heard bits and pieces of conversations talking about why some girl switched classes; why everyone was excited to see if there were gonna be a fight; and much more about the Back to School highschool party that was "unforgettable and horrific". I was never a fan, nor invited to these type of parties, so I wouldn't know. Although, apart from the drunken, irresponsible teens, I knew who everyone was talking about. I just didn't want to believe it...
What this time, Elsa?
The cafeteria was swarming with loud Seniors, such as myself. When I dragged my body towards my table- still fatigue from the restless night- I saw much more people at our table than usual. In general, it was just Hans, myself, and the kids that actually like math. But today, there were kids cramming millions of chairs against each other just to sit at this particular table. I barely had anywhere to sit; although, when I did manage, I was surprised to see a particular girl sitting across from me.
IRONY! This. Is. Ironic. Ironic I tell you! Ironically ironic! She's everywhere!
Scratch that. I wasn't surprised, I suspected this mob of kids were acting like wild animals because this had to with her. I tried to trick my body, nerves, and brain into thinking that I didn't see her coming. But, I failed.
"H-hi, Jack," she waved. I swear, everytime I saw that... beautiful... champagne haired young woman, her under eyes got darker and darker from insomnia.
Yes, I said beautiful. Because she is! Anyone would be lying if they said she was ugly. She rocked her no makeup look, and her thin lips would purse together at the rarest of times. Those are the times you have to just look at her, and tell her she's pretty. A girl like her should be showered with compliments, because she is someone I would want to get to know again and again and again. Wow, that escalated quickly... we're friends.
Look at me, making positive thoughts. *Sigh*, friends. But seriously, at this moment, after all the talks I've had with family, it's making me light up to her... slowly.
Shit! It's token me thirty seconds to adapt to my new- hopefully not forever- sitting arrangement, and I still haven't said a "hi" or a "hello" back to her. Not even a "bonjour!"
"Bon~ err. Hey, Elsa. W-what are you doing in this lunch exactly?"
She tucked a single strand of hair behind her small ears, looking down at the sticky, tiled cafeteria floor. She smirked, hiding the embarrassment. "I switched classes... again; although, this time resulting in a new lunch. This screwed up my whole schedule," she muttered under a raspy curse. I wonder if she remembers about yesterday.
I adjusted my seat, almost making the clueless queen bee, Cindy Ella, jam into the leader of the school's Book Club, Belle Beauty. Just as I was about to ask Elsa about why she changed her classes, I heard my devil of a "friend". Why am I still hanging around him?
"Afternoon, everyone."
Elsa looked up behind her shoulder. "Hello, Hans."
Hans sat his tray of inedible food on the table, and tapped the shoulder of Emma Swan to move over a bit for him to sit down next to Elsa. The way he plopped down with the biggest grin on his face, how he winked at Elsa, called her babe, wrapped his arm around her shoulder, gave her countless smooches on her head made me want to scratch his throat. That was morbid...
After a few minutes of adjusting to our surroundings, and two quesadillas later, Hans decided to finally talk to me like he usually did. "So, Jack," Hans said, adjusting his hair, and asking Elsa to get up from her spot to throw out his lunch . "We have a lot of visitors joining us for lunch."
"Yea." I looked around at the kids sitting next to us all."What about it?"
He sat his elbows on the table, folding his hands while resting his chin on his knuckles, giving a sly look of mischief at me. "You invited them to sit with us, didn't you?"
"What? No. I thought maybe one of you did."
"One of you? One of you?!" He burst into a maniac laughter; not one head from our table- or the whole lunch room- turned their heads to give a suspicious gaze. "You mean us."
I smiled with my mouth, not eyes, cause I was irritated with this guy. "Fine, sure, I get it, you two are together," I said as Elsa had finally gotten settled back into her seat.
"It was... unexpected, you could say," she remarked with nervousness showing in her face. I couldn't tell if she was nervous at the fact that I was still a tad upset at her the day before, or if she was nervous at the fact of being Hans' girlfriend. I don't want to admit, but I'm mentally stressing at this particular moment.
Hans' smacked a kiss on her hairline, looking straight at me as he did so. He was enjoying my jealousy, that idiot. But, jokes on him. He thinks I have a thing for Elsa, no, we're just friends.
"We're just friends," I said, turning him flabbergasted in a phony way, while Elsa blushed.
"Oh, Jack, I didn't say anything-"
"Let's discuss something different," Elsa had interrupted, pointing her eyes at the suspicious teens sitting right next to us. They hid grins on their faces, each and everyone of them, hiding it behind their phones, hands, and foods/drinks.
"Fine then," I said.
Hans' face turned bright. "Let's talk about what we're gonna do after graduation. Me first! I want to film movies... special movies," he acknowledged, taking a quick view at Elsa's wear up and down awkwardly as she sat, whilst she hid her cheeks behind her hands.
He pulled her more towards him. Her hand was on his knee; her shoulder against his chest; awhile his nose and lips all up in her ear. My heart quickened. I have to say something before I start exploding into fits. She clearly is uncomfortable. I decided to say something that nobody else knows about.
"I want to be a famous writer."
They stopped their seductive acts and faced towards me. Elsa says, "really? I wanna become an artist. Maybe I could make illustrations into your books," and finally pulled away from him.
With that, and an hour of burning rage for Hans deep inside, the bell for classes started. Today, I didn't feel like going to math with Mr. Jafar.
Almost everything was how it was when I arrived at my spot, Dr. Frost's lair. There wasn't much to do like I remembered. Just my stack of can, Pippa's dusty books, my blanket, and the teal rays of the sunset creeping in on me. It made me wonder why I couldn't live longer when I grew older to admire the beautiful sunset when I turned ninety, or maybe a hundred. Who cares, life brings many surprises.
"Isn't it great?"
I jumped. Second time she's popped up here.
"Elsa? Why do you keep coming out of nowhere?"
She laughed, "Imma spy." She fidgeted with her holed jeans, and fiddled with her ponytail as she smacked her teeth against her gum. "Want some," she asked, pulling out a pack.
I took a piece, and relaxed. She did the same.
"To bad I didn't have these back in my home town."
I shot my eyes open in protest. "Uhh. Burgess just started selling these brands of bubblegum again after three or four years of it being banned."
"No. I mean, like, my hometown, where I was born."
"How would you remember if I've known you since three, and we weren't living anywhere else but Burgess when we were three. Explain to me that." Where is this anger of mine coming from.
She crawled into a ball, hugging her knees like she did the last time we met here. "How would you remember every little promise we've made since three."
I had no response to that remark of hers. "That's what I thought," she said.
Fine. If she decides not to explain, I'm gonna ask more questions for her to answer. "Well, could I at least ask how Gurda and Kai are doing?"
She looked up at me and back down at the mess I've made with the books and cans. She responds with "They're scared, happy that we're home again, and disgusted with my parents back in my hometown". I wanted to ask who her parents were, but decided not to scare her off like I did the other times. I always assumed her parents were dead, which is the reason Gurda and Kai opened their arms to Els. But, again, I was too afraid to ask.
"So, where is this 'hometown'?"
"Home," she responds with no emotion. She was turning into a robot. I hope this doesn't have to do with Hans.
I wonder where "home" is.
"So, um, how about your sister, Anna. How's she doing?"
She smiles and sighs into her elbow. "I missed her so much, Jack. This horrid feeling not living with my best friend again just feels so..."
"Empty," I said. I know what it's like to be separated from your best friend. From my sister and Elsa. But, unlike with Pippa, I got to see her everyday. Elsa didn't with her sister, and I admire that about Elsa and how strong she was, and who she is becoming. I know I don't show her my gratitude for her as much as I should, but The feeling she left me when she disappeared left a pit in my heart. I didn't get to tell her my true feelings, or even say goodbye to her when I found out myself that she moved!
"How's the gum," she asked.
I shrugged. "I don't know why, but this gum for some reason changes my mood drastically! I feel like I'm on drugs!"
"Drugs?!"
Just my luck. Why the hell is the gym teacher, Mr. Fergus DunBroch, patrolling the abandoned soft-ball field?! His muscular body towered over me and Elsa. His Scottish accent was thick, and he would spit everytime he'd hear nonsense, or something foul that shouldn't be heard. His burning red hair shuffled as he huffed and puffed at us. He looked just like his daughter, Merida DunBroch, a real shit to the human species if you ask me.
"I knew you kids were the one making the smoochity smoochity ruckus like the day before! You wee lambs should be ashamed!"
"What?! We weren't kissing," Elsa corrected, standing her ground.
"I wasn't even skipping yesterday!"
"Kissing or not, you're coming with me for possession of drugs and skipping class, ya little munchkins!"
Viridian - This color is an aura that symbolizes emotional and mental stress
Guys, I'm not good at Scottish accents, cut me some slack.
If you didn't notice already, I decided to add in some last minute corrections.
I changed the rating to the story, so if you don't like smut all that much, now you know that this story may or may not contain some smut in the future. I haven't made up my mind yet.
There will be possible gore and violence in the near future, just have to wait.
But, yeah, the rest you should've figured out by now. The language, alcohol, and bullying.
Next chapter comes soon!