Okay it's not early but it's not late.

Enjoy!


After we finally managed to film Anna's "interview" sections, her version of the tape didn't take all that long to put together. A simple cutting job really, it took under two weeks for me to finish it and send it in. The real challenge would be the version I was going to turn in to my professor. Sure, he was a nice guy, and I'd already told him what I was planning to do and he approved the idea, but I'd have to put an awful lot of work in to get somebody interested in skateboarding who couldn't tell the difference between a nosegrab and a nosegrind.

And now I was starting to talk like Anna. Just add that to the growing pile of things I'd need to worry about in the coming weeks.

Since college had finished up for the summer, I'd be expected to make an appearance to my parents more often now, if nothing more than to let them see I was still alive and eating properly. Not that it was a baseless fear of theirs, towards the end of my first year, I really let everything get the better of me and I'd rather not say how long I went without eating something not from a paper container. Summer of 2012 had not been a fun time for tubby little recluse Elsa to work off all the excess pudge.

After working through the list of edits I'd have to make for several hours at a snail's pace, I decided to call it quits for the time being. Looking at the analogue clock on the wall, I absently wondered if it were twelve hours or twenty-four since I'd first sat down to work on my version of the film. Either way, I figured some sleep was long overdue, so I, too tired to even get up, pushed myself on my wheeled chair from my desk to the foot of my bed and clambered on. I didn't stop to change into my sleepwear. In fact, I was so out of it I wasn't sure if I'd even changed out of them the past morning, so I could have been in my pyjamas as far as I knew. I was able to send Anna a quick text, something along the lines of "this project is kicking my ass". It probably came out a lot more garbled than that since I could hardly keep my eyes open to look at the thing. After I (hopefully) hit send, I chucked my phone to the end of the bed and passed out.

Only to be woken not an hour later by a distinctly warm, lumpy, moving thing landing across my stomach. Through bleary eyes I caught a flash of red. Well, shoot.

" Elsa wake up!" she chirped. Fuck she was in one of those moods. Probably high or something. I tried, unsuccessfully to push her off me.

"Go away Anna, you butt I was asleep..." I grunted, elbowing her side to try to get her to move. In my near drunk state, there wasn't a lot of power behind it, so Anna just brushed it off and continued trying to get me up.

"But Elsa! The sky's awake, so I'm awake, so we have to play!" she insisted. She moved to straddle me and began poking at my sides.

"Play what? Go play by yourself..." I threw an arm across my face to block out the light. Anna wasn't going any time soon, so I decided I'd best get used to it and try to catch a bit of shut-eye anyway.

"But Elsaaaaaa..." I could feel her face getting dangerously close to my ear, her breath tickling it as she exhaled, "I wanna play with you."

I sighed and removed the hand from my face. I turned my head to face her so she was no longer so deliciously close to my ear. I met her eyes. Her pupils were huge.

"Anna, you're high. Leave me along or I'll call the cops on you," I warned. I was so irritable I might have actually made true on that threat.

"Okie-dokie," she said, pushing herself off me, "I'm gonna go sit on the couch and make sure nobody kidnaps my Elsie."

"Don't call me Elsie," I mumbled, turning around to bury my face in my pillow and electing to ignore the adjective pronoun of 'my' she threw in.

"Sure thing, Elsa-kins." I just grunted at her in response, too fatigued to manage any coherent speech. She started cackling manically as she closed over the bedroom door when she went into the main living area.

Peace at last.


Peace at last lasted for about three hours before the incessant banging at my bedroom door became too much. I'd pulled my pillow over my head hoping to block it out, but evidently, Anna did not take kindly to being ignored and after about ten minutes of polite tapping had started whacking so hard against it, I was half afraid she'd eventually put her whole fist through the door.

Still trying to delay the inevitable, I reached over the side of my bed to grab my shoe and I chucked it at the door with a thunk. The knocking hesitated for a moment, and I allowed my hopes to rise before they were dashed when the knocking started up once again with renewed vigour.

"For fuck's sake Anna!" I yelled, finally having been pushed over the edge, "I haven't slept properly for days! What have you got against a good night's sleep?" I all but screamed at her through the wooden barrier. The knocking finally stopped, but for whatever reason I started to feel guilty. This guilt was immediately quashed when Anna's next words reached my ears.

"Do you wanna build a snowman?"

I sat up and stared at the door, not believing if I'd actually heard her correctly. A quick glance out my window to the bone-dry pavements of Los Angeles served only to confuse me further.

"What?" I asked her, to make sure.

"Do you wanna build a snowman?" she repeated.

"Anna," I started, rising off my bed. I stomped over to the door, trying not to stumble in my sleep-depraved state over the various dirty clothes, books, and miscellaneous items which had accumulated on my floor the past few days, and swing it open with force, "do you have a death-wish or are you really just that imprudent?" I growled at her. The smell from the front room hit me a moment after I'd removed the barrier between us. "Have you been smoking marijuana in my home?" she only shrugged in response.

"Who cares? It's snowing on TV, so I thought it would be cool to build a snowman."

"Anna, don't change the subject, I will not have you using illicit substances on my property. Also, it's seventy-five degrees out there, what exactly are you planning on making this snowman out of?"

"Jesus El, it's just weed, don't get your panties in a twist," she chuckled and looked at my attire, "are you even wearing panties right now I wonder?" Okay that was the final straw.

"Out."

"What?"

"Anna get out. I need to sleep, or I'm going to do something I'll probably regret later, and you need to sober up or whatever, so just go away. And I'm confiscating your key, so don't get any ideas." I really wished I hadn't given her my spare key, it was sheer laziness on my part. Anna would pop in so often I got a little sick of constantly answering the door, something I had not had to exercise in recent years, with school work taking over my life, so I just decided to give her the spare key, since nobody else was using it.

Without giving her a chance to respond, I pulled her around so she was facing the front door, and I started pushing her towards it. She flailed her arms sluggishly in protest, the high lessening her motor skills, but it wasn't all that hard to get her there. I left her a moment to open the door, but before I could push her all the way out she turned to me suddenly.

"What would you do that you might regret?" she drawled, her native Kentucky dialect slipping through slightly, something that only happened when she was drinking. If I looked to my fridge I'd probably find it devoid of any alcoholic beverages.

"I don't know," I grunted, trying to push her out. She was more actively resisting now that she realised how close she was to the door, "kiss you or something," I mumbled off-handedly.

What?

"What?" she echoed my thoughts.

Nice going numbnuts.

"Nothing! Just go, go on, get out, the door is right there," I rushed, trying to cover my slip. I gave her a few more shoves, but now that she was curious about what I had said, she'd planted her feet firmly and wouldn't budge.

"Nope," she turned to face me, "you wanna kiss me?"

"No, yes, I don't know, I just really want you to leave I'm too tired for this."

"Haha, you liiiiiiike me," she sang.

"I'm not so sure of that right now."

"No you like-like me," she poked my collarbone, "I totally caught you staring at my butt last week."

"You were imagining things."

"Whatever," she shrugged and finally turned to leave. She was almost out the door when she paused to say over her shoulder, "denial is the first stage of...something, I think. I dunno," she shrugged again before finally removing herself from my apartment. I quickly slammed the door shut behind her, and winced, feeling rude.

Moving past this, I thought back on my words to her. In my foggy state I'd totally slipped up. While I had accepted the fact that I had feelings for Anna, I wasn't quite ready to act on them. And even if I was, would they be reciprocated? I knew she liked girls, she'd mentioned it when we first met, but that didn't necessarily mean she liked me. But the thought of me wanting to kiss her hadn't seemed to bother her. But she was also high and little drunk so maybe she was just too buzzed to care. Or what if...

I shook my head to get rid of the thoughts running churning around in my mind. I still needed to catch up on some much-needed sleep. I'd figure this out later.

Trudging back to my room, and stumbling more than once on the same pair of jeans that had been carelessly tossed directly in my path, I collapsed onto bed for what I hoped would be the final time today.

Just as I could feel myself drifting off, my phone buzzed on the table beside my bed. I was tempted to ignore it, but I feared if it was Anna, she might come storming back in if I tried to brush her off. I sighed and snatched it up. There was a new message and speak of the devil.

Anna: oh yeah forgot to mention I got the sponsorship from oaken

This girl was going to be the death of me.


Later that day, after I'd finally managed to get some shut-eye, I'd agreed to meet Anna outside Oaken's, where she'd enthusiastically grabbed my hand and dragged me inside to introduce me to her sponsor. The man inside, Oaken, was quite possibly the largest single piece of human I'd ever seen and it was a wonder how he even managed to squeeze through the front door of the shop every morning to get to work.

With pleasant wave and an unexpectedly high-pitched "yoo hoo!" Oaken had given us a tour of the shop. He congratulated me on my camera skills, saying it was some of the best amateur footage he'd ever received. Well he had me won over. I'm sure he'd won Anna over the second he'd told her he was going to sponsor her.

She flitted excitedly from one side of the shop to another, browsing through everything. Anna really didn't need a tour. I had it figured that if she wasn't skating, working or hanging out with me, she was probably here, pestering Oaken. Well it seemed it had finally paid off.

"Hey," she said, suddenly latching onto my arm out of nowhere, "help me pick a new deck."

"A what?"

"A deck. For my new board. Oaken said he'd let me get a new board every month if I needed it during the sponsorship," she paused, finally dawning on her from the blank look on my face that I actually had no clue what a deck was. "Oh right, the deck is the wooden part of the board. The one with the picture." Well now it made sense why she was asking for my opinion on something this important. It really wasn't all that important.

"Oh, ja. We have some new designs in just this week," Oaken informed us. He walked over to a wall covered in decks on display and plucked one off, "we put the new Element Chromatic series out just this morning," he handed it to Anna, who gazed in wonder. He pulled out another, "or here we have a reissue of the Powell-Peralta classic Hawk design."

"Hey Elsa," Anna said to grab my attention, "wanna build a snowman?" she asked, pointing up near the top as she did. There, looking a little out of place between all the grungy, in-your-face designs, was a light blue board with stylised snowflakes decorating it.

"Ah, yes," Oaken said with a tone of approval. He reached up to grab it (being the only one of us tall enough to actually reach it) and handed it to Anna who gazed in wonder. "The Landscape Kinloch Snowflakes reissue. It's the one of the few I actually ordered in. Hasn't sold too well, feel free to take it."

Anna didn't speak only nodded, still looking at the deck.

"It reminds me of you," she suddenly piped.

"What?"

"The design. For some reason it reminds me of you. I like it," she said with a tone of finality, "right, I'll go pick out my trucks and play with griptape. I wouldn't think you'd be interested in that," she remarked.

"That's fine, there's a few shots I'd like to get for my film anyway, so I'll just...be around," I told her. She nodded and went off with Oaken as I left the shop. As I was going out, I wasn't really watching where I was going and I crashed into a body and lost my footing, falling backwards. I braced myself for an impact that never came. Instead, the stranger had grabbed my hand before I could hit the ground. In the commotion, I'd squeezed my eyes shut, so I opened them to take in the man I'd walked into.

"Whoa there, you all right? I'm so sorry," he said.

"No, no, I'm sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going, I'm fine," I told him, avoiding his eyes by brushing some imaginary dust off my shirt. When I did look at his face, the first thing that struck me was his sideburns. I knew I wasn't much one for beards, or men in general for that matter, but I could still appreciate a nice set of chops. His eyes were soft when I finally looked into them.

"Well thank goodness for that," he whispered. I wondered if Anna had noticed and was looking at us. Before I could turn my head to find out, he pulled me up so I was standing on my own and introduced himself, "I'm Hans, Hans Prince."


Blah blah blah. I have a few things to say about this chapter, so just click the Dogtown link on my tumblr page. They are interesting things, read them, I clarify things there instead of boosting my word count in A/Ns

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