maybe he's right.
maybe there is something wrong with me.
I just don't see how a world
that makes such wonderful things…
could be bad.

~Part of Your World, The Little Mermaid


yashi14, Bre - thanks for urging me to update!

RunningBarefootAtMidnight - thank you, thank you, and I still love your penname :)

tiny . coco . chan - you are my rock; thanks for your review.

&

(a quick but rather important notice on the bottom for my other fanfics.)


Chapter Seven:
Middle Ground


--

--

I stared at his back, a stolid uncompromising wall, for a few more moments before following the opposite way and pretending the encounter had not affected me. I touched the bottom of my lip, where my trembling was at its worst, and collected myself. I told myself to look forward, and saw long blond hair that was vividly leading the campers. Far ahead of her a familiar-sort of bowl-cut head was herding campers as fast as he could out of the lobby.

Then the possessor of the blond hair confirmed who I thought she was, and her voice blared out. The strident tones caused several little campers next to her to stick their index fingers into their eardrums. Suddenly there was no more time for quivery lips or about-to-cry feelings.

"Heeey!" Ino screeched. "Lee! Back at here! These kids – I'm being swamped by them. It's nice of you to just skip off with a few campers and pretend you're doing your part – "

The voice had reached glass-breaking proportions. Wincing, I pushed as lightly as I could through the crowd and stopped, tapped her on the shoulder.

"I'll help."

"Thanks for your offer," Ino said in normal tones without looking at me, "but only counselors can lead the kids, and seeing that all counselors are all taken up - "

"I'm a counselor," I said, with more assurance than I felt.

She stopped yelling and turned, eyebrows raised. "Who are you?"

"I'm Hinata Hyuuga. I'll be helping out today – "

"Wait," said Ino. "I can't hear you. Say that again?"

"I'm Hinata. I'm supposed to – "

"Wait. What? Repeat that?"

"I. Am. Hinata. Hyuuga. I will – "

"You're trying to tell me that you're Hinata Hyuuga who was at the same boarding school?"

"Yes – "

"The same Hinata who I was so damn jealous of because she spent every waking moment with Sasuke Uchiha?"

"Um – "

"And the infamous girl who walked out of boarding school before graduating and became an actress?"

"Yes," I said miserably, and hung my head.

"So it was you. Well," said Ino. "I want to ask you this."

"Yes?"

"How much did getting one of those official makeovers cost?"

What? I thought, but before I could process thought into language she had placed a firm hand to the last camper in line and had pressed him out the door. Without turning back, she said, "You have your work cut out for you."

I had to wait a moment before responding. I wanted to be friends with her; I didn't want to respond with complete acquiescence.

"Yes," I said simply. "I know."

"And a lot of Sasuke fangirls who are ready to claw your eyes out."

"Oh," I said. Then, "Why?"

"Well, first of all," said Ino, and she slowed down slightly so I could walk in the same step with her, "you spent time with him four years ago."

"That – "

"Second of all, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you were in love with him."

"Not – "

"And third of all, everyone says you broke his heart." She looked me straight in the eyes with her clear blue ones. They were not admonishing or overly curious but expectant, as if she'd seen the whole thing with her very eyes and formed her own opinions of the matter and she was waiting for me to concur with her.

"I don't know," I said helplessly.

"Well, those fangirls are right," Ino said briskly. She sped up to drag a little boy back into line – he'd been trying to squish a bug – and instead of returning in line with me she walked backwards with her hands behind her back.

She was really very graceful. I wonder if she'd still been practicing ballet.

"Those fangirls," said she candidly, "witnessed the fall of an empire such had not been seen since the Fall of Rome."

"…empire?"

"Empire Sasuke," she explained. "Those fangirls were right, you know. I think he did experience…heartbreak, if you will."

"I – "

"He locked himself in his house for several days after a certain girl left," continued Ino. I knew she wasn't trying to be ruthless. However, her words were; they cut to the bone and I felt the imaginary wounds reopening.

"And how did the fangirls react?" I said, changing the course of the conversation. I wished time could be fast-forwarded a few minutes at the very least.

"Well, if you must," she said, "I was one of them. Just as his world – empire – tumbled, ours did too. It just wasn't good, to see him like that. All boarded up in his house and isolated."

"Look – that must be a mistake. Maybe he was away for two days."

"Maybe," said Ino, and she turned back around to resume the normal direction of walking, "he wasn't. Maybe he was, oh I don't know, heartbroken."

"He wasn't heartbroken!" I said, and irritation crept into my voice. Annoyance had overridden the sudden feelings of anguish because I had forced it to; I wasn't ready to deal with the relationship with him right now. "I knew him explicitly well – " Now did you? asked the maudlin little voice in my head – " – and we weren't like that." I think, I added silently, in a subdued thought.

"Well, if you knew him 'explicitly well,'" said Ino in a knowledgeable voice, "then how come you're nervous about using his name?"

"What?" I retorted, only because it was true and "what" was the universal defense of denial. I hoped she would buy that. "I don't use - what? Sasuke? I just used his name - see? Sasuke. Sasuke." Yet my heart suddenly began beating with the mentions and final admittance that yes, he did exist; yes, I was acknowledging him, finally, after all these years of either ignorance or denial.

She was better at seeing me through, however, than I thought. Because acting was not an innate process for me and came only through conscious thought, I did not think to act being "fine" with saying his name. And because of that my blunder must have shone through.

"You are nervous," confirmed Ino succinctly.

"I said I wasn't," my voice protested. But I had already lost the battle.

"Dear," she said, and she slowed to a stop as we reached the outcrop of low bedrock. "I am not a fangirl anymore. Am just saying. I will not deem it a felony if you admit that you feel uncomfortable when we're talking about him." She gazed at me intently. "I just think it's slightly interesting."

"Interesting?" I repeated, but before I'd received a response she was yelling directions at the campers and she was pulling ropes from a crate that Rock Lee had brought. I reached in as well and doled out ropes to the campers accordingly.

Oh well. It was easier when Ino herself wasn't interested in pursuing the subject. At least I knew I wasn't.

But before I could completely finish tying the ropes on the carabiners - a task I hadn't found useful since fifth grade rope climbing - someone brushed my shoulders.

"If you thought I'd forget so easily," grinned Ino on her way of securing the ropes of her sixth camper, "you're wrong."

--

--

When I'd finished the ordeal of tying ropes, spotting children, enduring Ino's earsplitting warnings and shrieks and Rock Lee's effervescent bubbling enthusiasm (which wasn't so bad comparing himself to Maito Gai, whom I'd heard was a lot worse) - after all that, I was physically exhausted.

Inwardly I was mentally awake, bright and excited, feeling like I had never before felt, at least not a feeling I remembered; I couldn't pinpoint a moment feeling like this. Suddenly I knew how my old classmates had stayed together. It certainly wasn't through the confines of school. They did things like this together; maintained camps. Most likely they had had sleepovers and deep heart-to-heart talks, did things that fed the soul and continued the bonds of friendship.

Laughing with Ino and Rock Lee, I thought I finally saw a little into the vestiges of true friendship.

And the children were not that bad. Even campers who had been dumped at this camp because of busily working parents during the summer were not that bad.

I could weather them - I had weathered acting. And rock climbing was blissful paradise compared to leading in a play in which its emotions I did not feel.

When the first activity and lunch were over, I returned to the lodge, where only a few green-shirted counselors were walking around or sitting down, consulting their notes for what was next. The campers were outside finishing lunch and getting into lines. I could hear their shouts from outside; bright noises of sweetness and sunshine. Oh, to be a kid again.

The clock was set above the huge fireplace that was only used during Christmas and New Year's. Ino had told me that long ago, the camp founder nearly had had a fit when his assistant had suggested putting a clock in the lodge.

It was a natural place, claimed the irate camp founder, a place without the stresses of modern life.

However, when he had retired the remaining leaders had enough sense in them to at least put up a small indicator of time - the lodge was such a busy middle meeting ground of everyone and the culmination of activities, without a clock it would be chaos like it had been so far.

So, Ino told me, they finally made a clock - one with twigs and bits of used metal where otherwise fine, industrialized steel workings took place. The numbers weren't there, just dashes made by a particularly sharp twig. Of course they'd needed the mechanical workings from a real clock - they weren't quite advanced enough to make the inner workings from scratch - but nevertheless the external of the clock was completely "naturalized", and above the fireplace it didn't look like the "modern world" at all, having an outside made of leaves and wood.

I looked at this clock now, and although the clock itself wasn't stressful, the feeling that plummeted into my stomach was.

Five more minutes saw me leading campers to the second activity, kite-flying.

Five more minutes also saw Sasuke doing the same thing.

Maybe, I thought with a twisted feeling of hope, he was sick. Sick a few hours ago due to stomach cramping - (wait that didn't sound right, he wasn't a girl) - or maybe salmonella poisoning; hey, that could happen to anyone - or maybe there was a Very Important Family Emergency Meeting to attend to and precipitously he'd left, being absent for the second activity.

"Maybe," I voiced aloud hopefully, "he fell and needs stitches because he fell on his head and broke his brain."

"Who," said a voice," are you talking about?"

I turned around and saw Karin, and laughed a laugh designed to laugh away what I'd just said. "Ahaha, nothing, really."

"Sasuke, right?" she said rather with an air of a long suffering doctor who'd seen it all. "Ino told me, you know. She tends to tell everybody these things. Did she tell you about her theory of Empire Sasuke and His Falling?"

"Yes," I admitted, then, abashedly, "Because of me."

"Don't listen to her," said Karin more sharply. Now she had the air of a psychiatrist with a self-destructing patient who was repeatedly banging his head against a wall. "It's just a theory, you know. Like the theory of evolution."

"And look how true that is."

"Ah, who knows. I'll give you a better example - the theory how people think acai berries help in lowering weight."

"Um," I said. "Okay."

Karin took on a more serious look. "Hinata," she said. "It's not fair to you if you keep bashing yourself this way. Maybe it's all these reminders of the past and the things you committed then. I take it that Ino's not helping, either."

"She says that she's not a fangirl anymore, though," I said miserably.

"Once a fangirl, always a fangirl," Karin quoted wisely, though I was pretty sure the original words had been "once a cheater, always a cheater." Or liar. Or thief. "She's still upset on Sasuke's behalf. Perhaps you ought to stop thinking about their feelings and think about yours. You need to give yourself time to heal, too."

"It's just so hard," I said desperately, relaying so little of the emotions I found I must deal with.

"Ah," said Karin. "But tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it."

"Pardon?"

"My favorite Lucy Maud Montgomery quote." She leapt up from the bench and pretended to sing into her scarf. "Tomorrow is always freshhh," she told me in a sing-song voice. "With no mistakes in it."

"Thank you," I muttered, but I laughed. She seemed always so cheerful and in tune with her life. A sad friend who needed cheering up? Done.

"You'll be fine," she said. But on my behalf her face seemed to grow a little worried. Her voice wove down to a whisper. "When do you see him again? I mean when do you work with him?"

"You know," I said, once again miserable. "In, like, half a minute."

She grew quiet.

"We're in kite-flying together," I continued monotonously. "With, I think, Shikamaru."

At his name she perked up. "Ah, Shika," she said, her voice taking on a wise quality. I raised my eyebrows. "Shikamaru," she said in a more confident whisper, "if one of those souls who truly understand the recesses and crevices of nature and the universe and the rustic qualities of the human being."

"Do you understand?" I said.

"Well, no," Karin said matter-of-factly. "But I'm pretty sure he does. I mean he is a walking prodigy. By age twelve he'd made his own computer program."

"Really?" I wondered, my interest piqued. To think I'd been at boarding school with him all those times and never thought twice about his better-than-average test scores. I didn't convey this to Karin, however. "Why?"

"Why I mentioned it? Because he'll get what's happened between you and Sasuke."

"You mean he's experienced in the field of..." Love seemed to rigid a word, too passionate; "...affection?"

"Well, yes, there is that. But once he sees the awkward position and awkward looks you two might share, he'll just get it. He'll help you, I promise."

"Help me what?" By this time my voice had taken a near-panic quality to it. We were the only two counselors left, and outside I heard Ino shouting for the campers to get into line. My feet started to shake into movement.

"Help you...cope." She paused. "Well, not really cope. Just get by the whole thing. Don't worry, Hinata! If there's a middle man there's no one you should pick more than Shikamaru Nara."

"Are you su - "

But I never got the words out, because the door of the lodge had opened and someone had stepped in, effectively cutting into our muted conversation.

It was Sasuke.

The air particles seemed to freeze in a whoosh, creating an expanse of solid air between us, molding our bodies and everything around us into something like clay figurines. My feet stopped trembling; my mouth, stuck between a word, was left slightly open. And my eyes stared at something above his left ear. I couldn't seem to look into his eyes.

Maybe he was looking directly, straight-on, at me. If he was I didn't see it, didn't want to.

Maybe he wasn't affected at our confrontation. And for him, his voice box continued to work, as if it was well-oiled and never had met a hitch in its making as mine did, always.

He was so sure of himself.

"You're needed," he said very pithily. I didn't need to point at myself and mouth who, me? I didn't need to raise my eyebrows at recognition. I was very simply, very straightforwardly, part of the furniture, a totem pole, it seemed, made of wood and maybe with a little added-on decoration to look like a human.

He turned and opened the door and let it clang shut after him.

I was astonished the day didn't end and give way to night; the coldness would have been complete.

"Go on," urged Karin.

"Don't say," I warned her, and maybe warning myself, too, for the notion of hoping too optimistically, "that it will get better." I was backing away now, walking a little backwards, a little like a drunken man who didn't know his bearings. "Because I know it won't."

"Hinata," Karin said. "Wait. It - "

"It won't," I said, breathing very fast. "It won't."

I opened the door and let it clang shut too, and let my wooden legs walk to the dark-haired man who stood in front of a line of waiting campers.


(I just read Someone Like You and That Summer by Sarah Dessen so the tone of this chapter might have been a little depressed)

Thanks for loving me enough to read - I really, really appreciate it and it makes my little writing world a brighter place.

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After ACM, I'll be starting up again either The Journal or Spring in My Heart.

...and is all :) -h.h

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