Hey you guys! Man it's been a loooonnng day. I meant to upload this chapter this morning, but due to my wonder procrastinating issue, I was busy reading my fellow readers works, but Im like a spy, I get in, I read, I get out. I'm kind of mean because I don't always leave reviews, but I usually read more finsihed products instead, so they don't need that extra UMPH like ME MYSELF AND I do to get the ball rolling. Not that in progress work isn't wonderful, it is. But usually I don't have the patience to wait for people to upload. I'm only human. I'm impatient with myself. I have Chapter 13 written completely in my notebook, but then I knock off two pages and rewrite the ending because I hate, hate, HATE copying stuff down, even stuff I've written. I want to rip my hair out, so I edit my stuff constantly so It's nice and long but I don't end up shooting myself before I can upload. So, enjoy Chapter 13!
I was jumpy after that. Maybeck was as cool as a cucumber, not even worried about being found out. I was so worried that Bernadine would be able to tell we'd spit swapped. Something about her could sniff out chemistry between people. It was a terrifying thought, being found out. I'd acted out on hormones and faulty wiring connection in my brain. Bernadine would be jealous, because if I could see the googly eyes she gave Maybeck, everyone else could too. I would not be jealous if he liked her. I had Philby to fall back on. It sounds mean, I know. But can I help it if I'm attracted to two guys at once? No…
But back at Main street, I could see Bernadine giggling away with Ammaro. So she was googly-eyed over Ammaro for the moment. Why did I feel so relieved? Maybeck was not mine, nor was I his so… why was I so protective of his, dammit!
A few minutes later, Alei and Finn emerged. Alei looked Maybeck and I over
"What the hell happened to you two?" Finn snorted while Alei laughed.
"Jungle Cruise." I muttered. "Maybeck got mad at one of the lions and decided to wrestle it. I fell out of the boat when it pounced and a crocodile ripped off my shirt sleeve." "But crocodiles are native to Florida." Charlene said.
"That obviously doesn't matter. I know the difference. And it's an animatronic during the day." Willa muttered.
"Oh yeah, right." Charlene nodded.
I opened my eyes and sat up. Readjusting after a visit was no problem. Finn and Alei were definitely getting cozy with each other. She got this sly look in her eye whenever he came near her. No one ever imagined me noticing things their secretive about. I'm like a smart winning contestant of Survivor. While some go in running and screaming carrying grenades, bazookas and AK-47's (figurative of course) I crawl on my belly, slowly and surely, sneaking up on my enemy, taking them out one by one until I win. All figurative. (My enemies are good kept secrets.)
I changed into my PJS and checked the time with my phone. Just past five AM. The sun would start rising within the hour. Ick. I had cousins in Maine and knew that the sun started rising about five AM, still into the 4 o'clock hour if it was early. But for here, it was early and incredibly late at the same time.
Way later that morning, I was riding my bike, in the direction of the public Library. As a DHI celebrity, little kids wanted to crowd me all the time. So I gave the local munchkins a chance to meet me whenever they wanted on the weekends by reading to them the book of their choice. Last Sunday it was Joey Swisher's pick for this Sunday. He chose a classic: Curious George.
When I arrived, I said hello to the librarian Tabitha, who you thought of as the sweet little Grandma type, but I knew back in the 40's, she'd been a female plane pilot in WWII. One of the few. Under soft little Granny, hard core bad-ass pilot. She once showed me a picture of her and her plane Mr. Right. I love that plane.
In my designated reading spot was a comfy little chair, but upon my arrival, was an intruder to my no-touchy thrown. Only I was supposed to sit in that chair. My chair. One little girl, who'd I'd never seen before had dragged out a revision of the Kingdom Keepers book. We were all in it, but it was less violent. We were all short, stubby and eerily adorable. Same with the Overtakers, all short, stubby, cute, but with grumpy looking faces. The little girl had brown hair being held back from her face with a purple flower clip and a pale green clasp. I was always cautious around those color. Usually they screamed danger, but Maybeck couldn't leave the park. And this was a little girl. She hummed innocently.
"Hi, can I help you?" I asked her.
"Mommy just signed me up for the reading summer program. She said you'll read to me."
"You're early. It doesn't start till noon."
"Mommy said you would say that. So I'm s'posed to give this to you." She handed me a small piece of paper.
It said: Willa Angelo, the library said you would read to my daughter, Ally. Read he the book of her choice. Grace Theiry.
Jeeze, no "Please" no "Thank you". Just one rude "read to my daughter."
Whatever, I can deal with stuck up mothers. "Okay. Today I'm reading Curious George."
Her face turned sour. "Mommy said you'd read me anything I want."
I leaned down and looked her in her eye. They were bone chilling blue. Shivers. "But you're mommy was wrong. Joey picked Curious George last week. So we're reading Curious George."
She wrinkled her nose. "Fine."
After the reading, Ally Theiry was the last one standing. A tall pale girl I'm guessing to be about eighteen. She had ice blonde hair and a very prominent bone structure in her face. But even though her eye shape was different from Ally's, it was the same chilling color. She was wearing a pale purple t-shirt and jeans despite the raging ninety-some degrees.
"Gretta!" Ally ran into her arms. I had to look away from them.
"Let's get back home. Mom's waiting."
"Are you her sister?" I asked.
"I am." Gretta said without hesitation. Her creepy eyes sent a shiver down my back. Without another word, Gretta took her sister by the hand and steered her out the door to a pale green car. They left, the car just as silent as them. Weird.
I was running out of breath, only able to here the pounding of my own heart and the slam of my sneakers against the ground.
Maybeck looked up from our hiding spot and abruptly hid again as a laser shot over head and made a clean cut hole the size of a dime in the wall behind the spot Maybeck's head had been. He would have been dead no doubt about it.
"Fudge." He hissed. Actually he said something else, but it's not very nice.
"Holy crap! Is that the Buzz Lightyear laser?"
"Kind of." He looked back and then looked at me. "It's one of the bad aliens carrying one of the lasers."
"Where the hell are the good aliens?" I hissed.
He pulled out a teeny little good alien from Toy Story. It went, "Oooooo."
He shoved it back into his pocket. "That's all they do. Unfortunately they weren't designed to be battle experts."
"And the bad aliens were?" I said.
"Yep."
"Makes perfect sense." I muttered.
"Ain't it the truth…"
"Now what?" I asked. He leaned forward to the shelf in front of us and grabbed a stuffed Simba. "Use your head. Distraction." He ripped off the smiley lion's head.
"Ewr, I like Simba."
Maybeck grabbed a pen, a diary, sunglasses and a board game. Then he threw each item in the opposite direction. Simba's head hit the robot, bounced off and onto the floor. The alien robot shot a laser at it. Simba go bye-bye.
Without warning, Maybeck threw one last item in another direction. The robot went after it and Maybeck took off- again without warning. I followed pursuit, terrified out of my mind.
"Maybeck! Wait, dammit! Get your sorry ass back here and rescue me!"
A laser shot past my head and singed some of my flying hair, sending me running in zig-zags, screaming. I was tackled from my right and flew to my left, Maybeck on top of me. Awkward. He rolled to the side and knocked over a tub full of stuffed animals. They all fell to cover us in a mountain of plush and Disney characters. Maybeck pulled out a matchbox and lit a few matches. He made sure not to burn any of the toys and let the smoke curl up and out of the pile. I understood after a minute or two, he wanted to confuse the alien robot into thinking we'd be annihilated.
After a second or two, the robot wandered away. I sat up and waved the smoke away. I hate smoke. With a passion.
"Well that was fun." I said to Maybeck.
"The only reason it charged us was because I stole something from it earlier. It was deactivated, so I just thought I'd swipe it's memory chip. Pretty stupid of me. Not half a nanosecond after I'd taken it, it was up and after me."
"So… it's you're freaking fault that I got my rear end almost burned to a crisp?" I snapped. "It better hold the secrets of the universe."
Philby looked ready to throw his computer against a wall. "How the fudge am I supposed to figure this out?" He said. "It's in freaking Ancient Latin. Do I look like I know freaking Ancient Latin? We use a sort of Latin Alphabet, but this is just crazy. I can't decipher this crap."
"There's no way to figure it out?" Charlene asked him.
"There's always a way, Charlie. But the most effective and effectful ways are the most risky."
"Like?"
He typed in some random letters and numbers. "What's that?" Alei asked, jumping up and down to see over the shoulders of Ammon and Maybeck.
"A few years ago, I accidentally broke through the FBI's master firewall- don't ask me how I did it, it's still a semi-mystery- and with a few keyboard tricks and something I like to call the Ninja-"
But before Philby could fully explain, Ammon said the most words I'd ever heard come out of his mouth at the same time. "Holy crap, you have Ninja technology? I'd die to get a hold of that jackpot, dude!"
Since when Did Ammon say more than five words at a time, let alone "crap" and "dude"?
"Yeah, I do. You've heard of it?"
"Damn straight I've heard of it. How did you manage to get a hold of it?" Ammon had changed personalities as fast as I changed my opinion of Maybeck- well, no, that didn't quite work out seeing as I'd always like Maybeck, but I wasn't willing to admit that to myself.
"Completely by accident. As I was saying- I can break into any X-file that belongs to the FBI. Completely undetected. And I can download the soft wear needed to decode this stupid code." Ammon pushed his way next to him and as we all wandered away, I smiled to myself. Ammon just made the first move to poking out of his shell.
Two hours later, Ammon was taking a brake by sitting alone at a table with Nadeah. They were so cute together and very secretive. She took his hand and he raised hers to his lips. She giggled insanely. I walked up to Philby and watched as he struggled with numbers and access codes and passwords.
"So…"
"This is really hard." He told me. "Do me a favor… hit the enter, shift, alter, and F12 button all right… now!" Without pausing I did so. And with great difficulty.
He breathed a sigh of relief. "We're in. I hacked into their main server. Now… to do some downloading." He smiled at me.
"What the hell!" He shouted. "More fudge-ing gibberish!"
"Language, language, Philby."
"I work my gluteus off to hack into this fudge-ing server and all I get after downloading the software is another fudge-ing code to decipher! I'm tired, I'm going home and going to fudge-ing bed." He shoved his computer into his bag and threw the bag over his shoulder and picked up the black button. Muttering to himself and he grabbed my hand and Alei's hand. We grabbed other peoples hands and after we'd all joined hands he hit the button.
Hello... so, am I the only one who imagines Nadeah and Ammon as the PERFECT couple? Maybe because in my mind he's like an egyptian, asian-y cute guy with long hair and glasses hiding his good looking features. Mix raced? Just like Nadeah! Let me know what you think of them! -Lizzy (-::-) Review, peas and turkey! Love the review button! Love it I say! But not too much, cuz that's creepy.