So I had this entire chapter written and it was really late so I saved it and went to bed…but apparently I forgot to save it because I couldn't find it anywhere the next morning ! So I had to rewrite it all over again and I was having the hardest time remembering exactly what I had written the first time, so unfortunately it's not as good as the original draft ): I'm so sorry it's been forever since I've last updated, but before this whole incident happened I just really wasn't in the mood to write, which sadly happens every now and then…I know I've said it before but there are times when I just want to read fanfic instead of writing it so that's kind of what the past month has been like… But I got my butt into gear, wrote this chapter (twice!) and now it's posted (:
I don't know how long it's been since I've done this, but I do not own anything related to the Gallagher Girls series; the girls, the boys, and some scenes all belong to Ally Carter (:
11. Chapter 11
After spending all afternoon at the lake, I decided it was finally time to head back to my cabin. Although I had technically calmed down after speaking with Zach, I still couldn't stand the thought of having to face everyone, especially my roommates. So that's why hours later, I was just now leaving the calmness and soothing atmosphere of the lake, just as the sun was setting.
As I made my way through the camp grounds, I noticed that no one was out and about, eliminating my chance of running into people. As nice as it was, it was pretty strange considering everyone was usually still out at that time. Before I even thought about the reasons behind it, I already knew that it was because of me. If I knew my mom, she would have sent everyone to their cabins so the adults could look for the missing student, no matter who it was. Despite what Tina and Hannah said, my mom doesn't do me any special favors. She loves all the Gallagher girls the same, and would shut down camp for anyone that went missing. Not just me.
Finally, after trekking through the woods for a while, I had reached my cabin, stopping at the base of the front steps unsure if I really wanted to go in or turn back around and run away again. Taking a deep breath, I prepared myself for whatever explosion was bound to happen when I walked through the front door that stood before me.
Quietly, I opened the big wooden door, trying not to draw attention to myself. Unfortunately my attempts at going unnoticed were over before they even began, for all three of my roommates were waiting in the front room of our cabin along with the boys. Macey and Liz were pacing back and forth while Bex and the boys watched them from the couches, probably mentally betting on how long the two girls would last.
The moment I walked into the cabin, all eyes turned to me, rendering me feeling as though I should've ran again when I had the chance.
"There you are," Bex said as she stood up from beside Zach, sounding more irritated than relieved.
"Where have you been?" Macey exclaimed, stomping over to me.
Before I had a chance to answer, Liz added, "Your mom and Joe have been looking for you all afternoon!"
"I was just at the lake," I explained, glancing at the boy who sat on the couch as he tried to avoid my eyes. I didn't want to think about why he would've kept my whereabouts to himself, but the concern still made its way into my mind. Turning back to the worried girls in front of me, I added, "I'd hardly call that hiding."
"You scared the hell out of me, Cam!" Macey exclaimed, putting her hand over her heart for emphasis. "We had no idea where you were and then Joe made a big deal about you being out in the woods by yourself and—"
"I think what Macey is trying to say is that we're glad you're okay, Cammie," Grant said, standing up and cutting off the panicking heiress. With a small smile, he placed his hand on my shoulder and gave it a small squeeze.
I smiled back a thank you before he dropped his hand to his side and turned to the boys who remained seated on the couch. Jonas looked at me as if he was just as relieved as Macey and Liz were to see me, while Zach sat hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees, looking at everything he could to avoid meeting my eyes.
"We better go before we get in trouble for being in here," Grant offered, heading towards the door. Jonas stood up first, followed by a slow-moving Zach who acted as if his body was weighing him down.
As he passed me, I gently grabbed his arm and looked up at his strong face, pleading, "Zach—"
"Later, Gallagher Girl," he warned me with a harsh tone that told me not to argue with him. His voice was so quiet, I almost didn't hear him, so I was sure everyone else in the room wasn't aware of the quick exchange between us. He continued to follow his roommates out the door without another glance.
"Glad you're back, Cammie," Jonas called back to me before Zach shut the door behind him.
I knew if Zach had a reason for acting so weird, it must have been a good one. But I still couldn't help feeling as though I had missed something important, and it was going to come back to haunt me. And soon.
"What happened to you?" Macey asked once it was just us girls again.
Sighing and sinking into one of the chairs, I answered, "Tina and Hannah were just being their naturally bitchy selves and—"
"We heard that part," Bex said, momentarily glancing at Liz. With her eyes sliding back to me, she added, "Kudos on not crying, by the way. That must've been tough."
Remaining silent, I gave her a simple nod in response.
"I was talking about what happened after you ran off," Macey clarified as she slid down onto the end of the couch closest to my chair.
"I was at the lake," I repeated. "I needed some time to think and relax."
When Bex piped up, sounding a little too enthusiastic for herself, I was a little surprised to hear her say, "A little birdie told us that Zach took off after you." A smile crept across her face, and I'm pretty sure she didn't even realize it was happening.
I looked over at Liz, wondering how her tiny mouth could be so big. Sometimes, she was almost as bad as Tina when it came to relaying information back to our roommates.
She gave me a small, sheepish smile that read guilty all over her face. But I could tell she didn't feel bad about it—she just felt bad that there was a possibility that I was mad.
"Did he find you?" Bex asked, apparently unable to wait any longer for the juicy details they assumed happened.
Deciding to tell them, despite Zach's warning, I started, "Yeah, he did. I told you I wasn't hiding. The lake is a pretty open place. I wouldn't be hard to find."
"So then what happened?" Macey asked, mimicking Bex's enthusiasm perfectly.
"Nothing, Macey," I said, knowing they weren't going to believe me. "He just comforted me. That's all."
The black-haired beauty eyed me, and I knew she could hear something in my voice that gave away how I really felt about the conversation I had with Zach that afternoon. With an all-knowing tone, Macey replied, "Zach is a very sweet guy, there's no doubt about that. But he's also very charming." She narrowed her eyes like a mother does when she's giving you one last chance to tell the truth she already knows. "Are you sure that was all?"
As I looked away from her intense stare, I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks and I prayed that the red hue wasn't as bad as the burning sensation was. "Well," I started, not knowing what I was going to tell them first.
He was genuinely concerned about how I was feeling.
He missed the black box to make sure I was okay. And not because he had to, but because he wanted to.
He made me feel safe. He told me I was never alone.
"He called me pretty," I blurted, unaware of the reason why that was the first thing I wanted to share about the amazing Zach Goode. Out of all the other perfectly good things to say about that afternoon, I chose that one.
My roommates were about to have a field day.
Liz gasped and her eyes grew wide with excitement. Jumping up from her seat, she exclaimed, "That's so cute! That means he likes you!"
I turned to Macey, waiting to see her reaction because, no offense to Liz, she was the boy expert of the group and would know the meaning behind it.
"No it doesn't, Liz," she told our overly excited friend, who slumped back down into her chair with defeat.
I would never admit this, but I felt slightly defeated myself. After what happened at the lake the night before, and then again that afternoon I was sure Zach was, even if just a little, maybe into me. But Macey would've been the person I would've talked to in order to find out, and she just claimed that it didn't really mean anything relationship-wise.
Smiling, she added, "But he does like you, Cam."
I tried to hide the fuzzy feeling in my stomach, which I thought I did very well, until I opened my mouth to speak and my voice was flooded with excitement. "Really? How do you know?" I practically begged. I mentally hit myself for letting my emotions get the best of me.
"I know because of the same reason Liz knows how to modify car engines to increase their gas mileage and reduce the carbon dioxide toxicity in the atmosphere," she said with a stern look. "I'm an expert."
"Besides, have you seen the way he looks at you?" Bex asked. "It doesn't take a genius to know he's into you."
"Really into you," Liz added with raised eyebrows.
I shook my head, stubbornly. "You guys don't have anything better to do than to observe Zach Goode like he's some kind of experiment?"
"Is that a real question?" Macey asked, looking at me as though I was crazy. "Cammie, we go to an all-girls boarding school and now we're camping with a bunch of hot guys. Of course we have nothing better to do than observe them."
"That's sad."
"We can't all have some dreamy boy falling in love with us," Bex teased.
"He's not 'falling in love' with me, Bex," I told her, starting to doubt that she, along with my other roommates, were supposedly the advanced geniuses that Gallagher prides itself on recruiting.
"Then why did Grant tell me to warn you about hurting him?" she asked as if that proved everything.
"And I've had a ton of boys tell me they've never seen Zach so distracted by a girl before," Macey added.
"Jonas said the same thing," Liz finished.
"Well, they're all crazy," I said, refusing to believe that the most attractive boy at Blackthorne could actually like an all-around average girl like me.
Rolling her eyes in frustration, Bex stood up and moaned. "Cam, you can be so stubborn sometimes," she complained as she walked back into the bedroom.
Following her, I argued, "He's just a teenager. He's sixteen, how is he supposed to know what falling in love is?"
"Then explain his weird behavior tonight," Liz said as she trailed behind everyone into the room.
I stopped short of my bed, taking in her words. They had noticed it, too? I didn't know what it meant, and the fact that Liz was currently asking me the question meant that they didn't have a clue either, which was probably the scariest part of all.
Thankfully, no one had noticed my hesitation before climbing onto my bed, and Bex continued speaking as though spending our days and nights with these boys was an everyday occurrence and she knew the Blackthorne boy well enough to make such judgments as the one she answered Liz's remark with. "Yeah, it was kind of unusual, wasn't it?"
As Macey sat down on Liz's bed, she looked at me and said, "I thought it was just because you were missing and he was worried, but when you came back he was still sort of out of it."
Plopping down next to her, Liz asked the one question that I couldn't seem to figure out. "Why didn't he tell us he found you?"
I looked at her, unable to come up with anything better than, "Did you ask?" as a response, considering I myself had been wondering the same thing.
Blushing slightly, she remained quiet, probably mentally scolding herself for not thinking to do so before.
"It's still information normal people would reveal, whether we asked or not," Macey explained, refusing to accept any excuse as to why he let her worry herself crazy all afternoon.
"I don't know, guys," I said more harshly than intended. "It's not like we really talked once I came back. I don't think he even looked at me." I hated that my voice waivered somewhat from the slight hurt I was feeling by Zach's dismissal of me before leaving.
"That boy is strange," Bex said as she rolled over on her bed. Whether she chose to ignore the waiver or she just didn't hear it, I don't know, but she closed her eyes as if to say that there was nothing more for her to say.
Noticing my silence, Macey got up off of Liz's bed and walked over to me, resting her hand on my arm. "Cam, don't think about it too much. Go to sleep and we'll ask him about it in the morning." She went over to her own bed after she received a nod from me and announced to everyone, "Good night, guys."
"Night," I said, laying down on my bed and rolling over so my back was to everyone. I barely heard the goodnight escape from Liz's mouth, which meant she was already falling asleep like Bex was.
After a few moments of laying in silence, wondering about the mysterious bipolar Blackthorne boy, I heard Macey whisper to me across the room, "I'm sorry I was so harsh with you earlier. I was just worried about you, that's all."
"Don't worry about it, Mace," I told her, knowing that if she thought I was mad at her, she wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. "Thanks."
From all the calm breathing floating around the room, I could tell that all three of my friends had drifted off to sleep while I laid there, staring up at the ceiling and wondering if I actually knew the real Zach. He was sweet, like Macey said, and very charming, as well. But was there more to him that none of us Gallagher girls knew about? How could someone go from almost kissing me in the moonlight and calling me pretty and perfect to hardly looking at me and brushing me to the side? If that was the real Zach, constantly switching from hot and cold, then I was getting into a whole load of trouble that I wasn't looking for.
Maybe Zachary Goode wasn't the perfect dream boy I thought he was, and I was only setting myself up for heartbreak…
I know it was short, and not very exciting/interesting… but I had the next scene all planned out and then realized it would make this chapter WAY too long. So I broke them up into two different chapters. I promise this next update will not take as long as this last one, and I sincerely apologize for the wait !
But on the plus side, I found some really interesting fanfic stories while on my binge-reading these past few weeks (:
Oh and I forgot to come up with a clever name for the chapter, so I just left it as is.. lol
Anyway, shout out time !
Operative CG16: sorry this isn't exactly "more", but the next one hopefully will satisfy whatever this one did not (:
xQueezlex: I like the slowness too. Although it's going to start picking up a bit (: and start getting more dramatic ;)
ForeverInMyOwnWorld: …whoops… sorry
Awesomegirl3362: well thank you (:
Braideddorthy: I'm glad you like it so far (: sorry it took me so long to update :/ and I really like your idea ! I'll see if I can work it into the story with what I have planned out and what not.
ImmaGOODEgurl: thank you ! I think you're amazing for liking and reviewing (:
Hannahslye: thank you so much (: I really appreciate it !
So I have decided that this story isn't going to last much longer…maybe four or five more chapters… at least that's how I'm feeling about it right now. It's not that I'm having writers block, I just feel like I completely forgot where I was going with this story and now it's not really living up to par with what I had expected. I'm sorry everyone ): BUT I WILL NOT LEAVE IT UNFINISHED I PROMISE !
Thank you for everyone who has read/reviewed/followed/favorited Secrets of the Woods (: I really appreciate it and it's the only reason I'm continuing to write this story. Also, a big thanks to everyone who writes fanfic because you're all amazing and you fulfill that Zammie void (: so THANK YOU ! :D
