A/N Heyyo everybody!
Thank you Kennyon, for the wonderful (and only) review of chapter 2! T'ree thumbs way to the side, back atcha!
Katie- I am "distapointed" in your lack of reviews for the 2nd chapter. If I get reviews, I write faster! :-D
CHEESE IS GOOD!
Amanda and Katie started to follow Jack as he walked out of the gates of the distribution center, but he stopped as he reached the sidewalk. He turned around to face them, "Who do you wanna sell wid now?" he asked the girls.
"We were doing so well with you before..." started Katie.
"I have to go..." he said, finishing his sentence with a mumble behind his hand.
Katie and Amanda looked at each other knowingly as Jack fidgeted with his papers.
"Trying to get rid of us?" Amanda asked Jack as Dutchy walked through the gates.
"Dutchy, Jack says I need an escort." She informed him.
With a grin, Dutchy responded, "Would you care to join me, miss?" offering his elbow.
After flashing Katie a smile, Amanda linked her arm in Dutchy's and responded, "Thank you, kind sir! You're my hero!"
Katie watched them walk off into the distance, "BLARG!!!"
Bumlets walked out the gates just in time to hear Katie's interesting exclamation.
After following her gaze, he noticed that his selling partner just walked down the street with someone else.
His cry of "He left me!" was almost drowned out by her cry of "She left me!"
They just looked at each other and laughed.
"You can sell wid' me..." Bumlets offered.
"Okie day!" Katie enthused. "Bye Jack, have fun (mumbles behind her hand) -ing"
Bumlets looked at Katie with confusion, but just shrugs, and follows her as she walks off.
"So where is it that we are going?" Bumlets asked Katie.
Looking around, Katie answered "I have no idea... what do you suggest?"
Grinning, Bumlets said, "There's a pretty good sellin' spot over this way." he motioned over to the left.
They stopped walking under a tree, and Bumlets pulled out the top paper from his stack.
"Lets see what we got here." Bumlets said, unfolding the paper.
Setting her stack down, Katie did the same thing. "See anything interesting?" she asked, flipping through the pages.
With a frown, Bumlets said, "Not too much. Wait, here's something!"
~~~
"Helpless citizen mauled by vicious canine!" Dutchy called out to the passerbies
"By what time are you usually finished selling?" Amanda asked him.
"Thank you sir." Dutchy told a customer before telling her, "Different times, sometimes it takes longer than others. If I have time before supper, I sometimes go to central park, and sit in the shade on the grass, or something."
"Cool." Amanda commented.
"Nah, it's not that cold, even in the shade, since it's still summer." Dutchy said.
"No, cool is an expression, like 'that's neat', or 'nice' she explained."
"Oh... I nevah heard that before." Dutchy commented, still slightly bewildered.
~~~
"That was the last one!" Bumlets told Katie in triumph, as he slipped the last penny into his pocket.
Holding out her hand, Katie exclaimed, "Gimmie five!"
Looking at her strangely, Bumlets pulled his hand out of his pocket, and dropped a nickel into her hand.
"No, no, no, no!" she said, handing the nickel back. "You put your hand up, like this." she instructed, pulling his hand up, and putting it in the right spot. Then she slapped the palm of his outstretched hand.
"That's a high five." she explained.
Still looking at her strangely, and still holding his hand up, he asked, "What's that for?"
Grinning, she answered, "It's like a handshake of greeting, or congratulations, but with no spit, ewwww. And you can put your hand down now."
His hand slowly went back down to his side, and he said, "Oh."
Katie asked him, "So what now?"
"I dunno, what do you want to do?" Bumlets answered.
"I dunno, what do you want to do?..."
~~~
"Ohhh, I can see a fish!" Amanda commented, pointing to an odd shaped cloud in the sky.
"I can see it too." Dutchy agreed.
They were lying in the grass, on the side of a slight hill in the park.
"It is so pretty here." Amanda said.
"I know, this is my favorite spot in the whole park, this hill is perfect for leaning on."
"It's comfortable" Amanda told him.
After hearing Dutchy's stomach rumble, Amanda asked, "Are you hungry, or something?" with a smile.
"Yeah, I suppose it's about supper time, ya wanna head over to Tibby's"
"Uh huh, my stomach is about to start growling too." Said Amanda.
~~~
"I dunno, what do you wanna do?"
"I dunno, what do you wanna do?"
Bumlets smiled, "Are you hungry?"
"I dunno, are you?"
"I suppose so, ya wanna go to Tibby's?"
"Sure!" Katie said, and started walking down the street.
"Wrong way, Katie." He laughed at her.
"I was gonna take the scenic route." She confirmed with a nod.
Since they didn't go very far that afternoon to find a selling spot, it only took them a few minutes before they were inside, and had found a table to sit at. Bumlets noticed that Katie seemed enthralled by the ceiling fan above their table.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" he asked her.
"I was just thinking how much fun it would be to spin on that fan." She said with a smile.
With a laugh, Bumlets told her, "It is fun, I've done it before."
"Ohh, ohhh, can I try?" she asked excitedly.
"Sure, Mr. Tibby doesn't care."
~~~
Dutchy held the door open for Amanda, and she walked in, and stopped, 3 feet from the door, staring across the restaurant.
There was Katie, hanging from the ceiling fan by her arms, trying with all her might, to touch her toes to the tabletop, to push herself off so she could spin, while Bumlets stood off to the side, clutching his stomach from laughing so hard.
"Uhh, Uhh, can't…. reach… BLARG! I'm too short!" she gasped with the effort of trying not to laugh while kicking her feet around, trying to gain momentum.
She failed, and fell to the tabletop laughing.
"I wanna try!" Amanda exclaimed, as Katie rolled off of the table.
"Go ahead" Bumlets encouraged.
"This I gotta see!" Dutchy said, pulling up a chair.
Using an empty chair as a step, Amanda stood on the table, and reached up, and grabbed the ceiling fan, kicked off, spinning quickly with a "WHEEEE!"
"Not fair!!!" Katie exclaimed, stamping her foot. "Just 'cause I'm short!"
Amanda continued spinning for a few moments before Dutchy asked her, "I thought you were hungry."
"Oh yeah!" Amanda agreed, letting go, and jumping off of the table to the floor. She laughed as she almost fell over, and Bumlets and Dutchy caught her, and held her arms until she steadied herself.
"Thank you!" She said with a laugh. "I got it now." She told them, and they let go of her arms.
Still grinning, they all settled themselves at the table, and looked over at the menu posted on the wall.
~~~
As soon as they got back to the still empty lodging house lodging house, Katie realized, "Amanda, I haven't played my game boy for a whole 2 days!"
"Then go for it, you brought enough batteries to last a normal person a few years… you, a month."
"YAY! Thank you, Costco! Red version, here I come!"
"What is she talking about?" Bumlets asked Amanda, with Dutchy looking at her for an explanation too.
"It's a toy type of thing… it's hard to explain, you'll see." She told them, shrugging her shoulders.
Katie continued to rummage through her bag until she pulled out her game boy, and sat on the lower bunk, which now was Amanda's.
"Die, Dragonite, DIE!!!" She yelled at the thing in her hands.
"What is she doing?!?!?!" Bumlets asked, concerned.
"It's a fighting game, you try to fight these little animals and capture them." She tried to explain.
Dutchy and Bumlets went over and leaned over Katie's shoulder to try and see the screen of her game boy, and their jaws dropped.
"How does that picture move?" Dutchy asked her.
"Have you ever seen a nickelodeon moving picture?" Katie asked them.
"No." Bumlets responded.
"Yeah, I did, this one time…. It was a whole bunch of pictures that when you put yer money in, and turned the crank, they flipped so fast that it seemed like the picture moved." Dutchy explained.
"Kinda like that…. I think." Katie responded.
Bumlets sat behind Katie on the bed so he could look over her shoulder, still amazed at the thing in her hands, and Dutchy sprawled out on the floor.
"All of a sudden, I am really tired!" he explained, after getting a weird look from Amanda, who was sitting on Katie's top bunk.
"You aren't allowed to be tired!" Amanda scolded mockingly.
"What? Why not" Dutchy asked.
"Because I said so!" Amanda told him, as she threw Katie's pillow at Dutchy's head.
His yell of surprise was muffled by the pillow as he scrambled to get up from the floor.
Amanda jumped down, and grabbed her own pillow from her bed, and attacked him again, before he could get himself together.
"I'll get you for that!" he threatened.
"Sure you will." Amanda disagreed mockingly.
They went for each other, and there was a flurry of white, as they hit each other over, and over. A stray pillow smacked Katie's shoulder, and she barely even flinched, she was so engrossed in her game.
Dutchy took a swing at Amanda, hitting her in the arm, and she pummeled him in the head, leaving him laughing, and trying to defend himself in between her merciless attacks. He fought back quite well for a while, but one blow straight to the head sent him off balance, and he fell backwards, landing on his bum on the floor.
Before he could get himself back up, Amanda smacked him in the head, and knocked him over, dropped the pillow on his stomach, and sat on the pillow. The surprise enabled her to yank his pillow out of his hands, leaving him defenseless. As she smacked him on the head, he yelled out, "Help!"
Katie called out some simple advice, without looking up from the game boy, "Dutchy, tickle her!" she instructed.
"Noooo!" Amanda objected, trying to defend herself.
He reached out, and tickled her sides, and she immediately started screaming with laughter, and kicking and flailing around. She rolled over, and was no longer sitting on Dutchy, so he jumped up, still tickling her, and sat on her, pinning her to the ground.
"No… fair!" she struggled to call out in between breaths. "Can't… breathe!" she gasped, finally ending his tickling spree.
They heard someone running up the stairs, and everyone, except Katie, who was still entranced by her game, looked at the doorway..
David, followed by Les, came tearing into the room.
"What's wrong, what was that screaming for?" David demanded, looking around the room, his gaze stopping at the strange site of Dutchy sitting on Amanda.
"Watch this!" Dutchy told them, and started tickling Amanda again, who responded with more screaming.
David stood there, not knowing whether to be mad at them for making him worried, or laugh, because it was so funny. The latter soon won out though, and he grabbed the pillow off from the closest bunk, and tried to beat Dutchy off of Amanda, who was still shrieking.
Les, curious as to what Bumlets and Katie were doing, wandered over to sit next to Bumlets, behind Katie on the bed.
"Wow! What is that!" he asked her.
"Game boy." She responded, without looking away from the screen.
"Game boy?" Les asked.
"Yup" she responded.
"But… you're a girl!" Les informed her.
"So?" challenged Katie.
"But why don't you have a 'Game girl' then?"
Her eyes finally came unglued from the screen, as she looked over her shoulder at Les. "I have no idea."
"Can I try?" the little boy asked jumping up and down in excitement.
"Just a sec, let me switch games… this one is wayyy to hard for you to understand… at least not in this century…Lets try Zelda." She said, slipping the other game into it, and turning it on. "You are this guy." She said, pointing to the tiny character. "Those three hearts are your 'life' and if you get hurt, they hearts disappear one by one. You get to kill bad people with your sword."
"I get a sword!!! YAY!" Les exclaimed.
"The different buttons do different things, here, you figure it out." She said, handing it to Les.
When she finally looked up from her game, after she handed it over, she noticed that David, Dutchy, and Amanda were still going at it with the pillows.
Giggling behind her hand, Katie nudged Bumlets in the arm, "Lets get 'em! You grab a pillow, and I'll take this one… then we'll ambush 'em!" Katie took the pillow and started toward the fray, with Bumlets close behind.
"BONZAI!!!!" Katie yelled as she attacked David furiously. Bumlets took Dutchy, and Amanda attacked him.
"Hey! Only I can attack Dutchy!" Amanda yelled.
"Help!" Bumlets cried as Dutchy and Amanda teamed up on him.
Katie tried to attack David with the pillow with one hand, while trying to tickle Amanda with the other, but the only thing she succeeded in doing was getting herself smacked from all sides by Amanda, David, and Dutchy.
"HEY! NOF 'AIR!" Katie protested in between blows.
Bumlets looked up to see Jack and Kid Blink standing in the doorway.
He broke away from the group, and walked over to them.
On his way over, he grabbed a couple of pillows from bunks he passed, and tossed them to Jack and Blink. "This is a war zone, you need to be armed." He informed them.
Shrugging their shoulders, Jack and Blink looked at each other before charging into the middle, and taking up the defense of Katie with Bumlets.
"The teams are uneven, that's not fair!" David said with a laugh, as he hit Blink over the head.
The fight continued for a few more minutes until it was interrupted by a shout
"What's going on?" Snitch almost yelled to be heard.
Everyone froze, most of them holding their pillows in the air above someone's head.
"We get Snitch!" Amanda called out, hurrying over to him, and handing him a pillow from the closest bunk. "You, me, Dutchy, and Davey are on one team, the other team is Jack, Blink, Katie, and Bumlets." She explained as she pulled him over to the group.
"Ready?" David asked Snitch.
"I guess so." He answered.
"GO!" David announced, and the fight began again.
As reluctant as Snitch was to join in, he turned out to be a really good pillow fighter. His reflexes were quick, and his aim was good too. He was also the last one standing, after everyone else collapsed onto the floor.
Jack grinned in contentment. ~Those girls aint that annoying, I guess. ~ He admitted to himself.