~*~
"We're still having lunch by the way." I say as I trudge out of the change room with my overflowing hockey bag casually tossed over my aching shoulder.
She scoffs. Her eyes still a little red since I left her out here with Connie so I could get changed. Coach Orion also had escorted her father, Dr. Best, out of the arena so they could have a little chat with Dean Buckley about the eruption of arguments that occurred just a few minutes ago.
"You mean I'm going to have to spend more time with you?"
I shrug. "That was the deal. One lunch. It is almost dinner; therefore you still owe me one lunch hour."
She shakes her head at me. "You should be on the debate team."
"However you should be on the ice. . ." I start, but am quickly shut up by one of her death glares. "So where do you want to go?"
She bites her lip nervously. "I want to show you something."
~*~
I grin as I realize we are walking towards the girl's dorms. You need to be escorted by a girl to get into the girl's dorms and it's not like I have never been in the girl's dorms before. I have been in Connie and Julie's like ten thousand times, but they aren't really girls to me, they are more like really feminine guys and I would probably never consider dating them, even though I have to admit, they both are really hot.
"What exactly do you want to show me?" I ask coyly.
She rolls her eyes. "This isn't a date so don't think your going to score because you definitely aren't."
"Way to kill a guy's confidence." I mumble as she walks past the female guard.
She looks back at me as she walks into the hallway. "But it would be false sense of confidence and that's wrong." She turns to a door and pulls a key from her pocket and opens the door exposing a regular dorm with tons and tons of boxes around. Obviously she hasn't gotten around to unpacking. "Now it's in one of these boxes." She murmurs as she walks to the bare bed to the right.
I feel stupid asking this but I know I have to. "What is?"
She turns to me. "It's a black box with silver etching. Can you help me find it?"
I walk over to her and open a cardboard box. This is fairly new to me seeing I have never moved in my life. I rummage through the box. I pull a few things out of it. A professional camera, film, negatives; she must be into photography or something. I reach deep down into the dark box and to my surprise pull out a large hockey jersey, Dallas Stars.
She looks over at me and grins. "Hey, I've been looking for that. That was Peter's. He practiced in it a lot." She took it out of my hands and quickly slipped it on over her black T-shirt. It was about 3 sizes too big.
I frown as I reach down again. This time I pull what we are looking for; the little black box. "Found it."
She nods and sits on the bed and pats a seat beside her and I quickly take it. She takes the box from my hands and sits it on her lap. I watch as she runs her fingers along the edges, contemplating on whether to show me.
My eyes widen as I look at the insides of the box. There must be hundreds of newspaper clippings, photos and little mementos. She immediately goes for the first picture and hands it to me.
I'm terrified at the person in it. She was right. Peter, I'm guessing, looks a lot like me. The guy is slightly more built than I am and his hair is darker and I'm pretty sure his nose is a little bigger, but other than that, he looks like an exact replica of me. Or am I an exact replica of him. "Whoa."
She nods. "I miss him." She sighs. "I miss my special spot."
My eyes jerk away from the picture. "Special spot?"
She nods. "That's what we called it." She took dug around in the box and handed me another picture.
My jaw dropped. He was holding her up, with one hand. She must have been a good seven feet in the air. "Isn't that scary?"
She sighed. "The first couple times it is. The idea of loosing your balance or your partner catching his edge and slamming into a rock hard surface more than six feet down is terrifying." She grinned. "But after that it's amazing. You can't hear anything except the air whizzing past your ears and your breathing."
"You miss skating." I say as I hand her picture back. "You try to deny it but I can tell."
She licked her lips and handed me a newspaper clipping to me.
"Peter Boyd, 16, passed away on February 20 2003 on the way to a competition. He died on the way to something he loved more than anything." I read aloud. I looked over at her.
"It's lying. He wasn't on the way to something he loved." Her eyes shimmered with tears. "He wanted to quit. I begged him for one more competition; just one." She sniffed. "It was my competition. I killed him. I made him promise he would come. It's my fault and now he's dead."
I couldn't believe it. "It's not your fault. The roads were slippery or someone wasn't paying attention. It couldn't be your fault."
"See! That is exactly what I'm talking about!" She said getting up pointing at me. "He would do anything to make sure I wasn't at fault. He loved to argue. He loved to win. I see that in you and that is exactly what I used to make he come and that's what makes me responsible." She shook her finger at me. "And I can tell I would do it again and I can't stand to watch another person end up like him."
I stood up and took her by the shoulders. "No, you can't blame this on yourself. It was an accident and I'm not planning on getting in one anytime soon."
"Banks get out. Go." Her eyes pierced into me like a hundred stabbing knives as her eyes welled up with tears and began to spill onto her porcelain cheeks. "Please, just go."
~*~
"Charlie, right angled trig is really easy. First you need to memorize the trig ratios. . ." I looked over at Charlie. I had been only tutoring for about a half hour and yet he was sleeping soundly. "Charlie!"
He groaned as his arm that was propping his head up gave out and he slammed his forehead against the desk. "Banksie; don't wake me like that." He whined as he rubbed his face.
I shrugged. "I need this for our community involvement crap and you need to pass math or Coach is going to kick you off the team."
"A teacher, a person who talks in someone else's sleep." He said burying his face in his arms. "Can we take a study break?"
I roll my eyes and close the textbook.
He suddenly sits up straight. "How about you tell me about Josie and what happened after you rushed out of the change room?"
"If I do that will you actually pay attention?"
He grinned one of those 'I'm-pretending-to-me-innocent-so-you-can-believe- your-getting-what-you-want' grins. "Yes."
"She took me to her dorm." I started.
He grinned and playfully punched my shoulder. "You stud! I knew she would come around. No one can resist a Duck."
He was quickly shushed by the rest of the people in the library.
"I'm not finished." I sighed. "And she showed me a bunch of pictures; like of her old partner." Charlie wore a confused look on his face, much like the look on his face when I was explaining the Pythagorean Theorem. "She used to figure skate; pairs mostly. Well at the beginning of this year her partner died." Charlie finally nodded. "Well he looked a lot like me."
The look crossed Charlie's face again. "Are we talking evil twin or are we talking I can see the resemblance?"
I shrugged. "Don't know. He was bigger than me and his hair was darker; but the rest was uncanny."
"Evil twin; got it." Charlie nodded.
I shook my head. Charlie somehow made my life sound like one of the soap operas we have all caught Julie and Connie watching. "Well she started saying a bunch of junk about it being her fault and I told her it wasn't and she told me he wanted to quit and I told her it still wasn't her fault and she began saying I acted like him too and that she wanted me to leave so I did."
Charlie shook his head. "I'm so glad the girls I go out with are half normal."
"What about Lynda?"
He frowned. "I thought we were never going to bring her up again."
"Wasn't she the one who put daisy air fresheners in your hockey bag?" I laugh. I know Charlie hates it when I bring up her.
"Ok back to trigonometry." He said changing the subject quickly.
I grin. "So what is the ratio opposite over adjacent?"
He bites his lip nervously; racking his brain for an intelligent answer. "Tangerine?"
~*~
I toss in my bed. I can't sleep. I can't get her out of my head. I look at the ceiling and groan. This place sucks.
"Banksie, you're not the only person trying to sleep."
I jump at Averman's voice. I didn't realize he's light snores as quieted. "Sorry man."
Her reaches for his glasses as he yawns. "What's on you're mind bud?"
"Nothing." I reply even though I yearn to tell him everything, even though I had told Charlie.
"Sure. You're an insomniac when you're nervous or have something on you're mind. So will you spill now so we both can get to sleep?" I smirk. Averman isn't his funny self when he is tired.
I contemplate what I should tell him.
"Oh wait. I know. Tomorrow is that date thing you have with that girl." He replies cutting me off. "And you don't have to tell me about the whole thing. Charlie only told me 'cause I'm your roommate and all. So what you're nervous about her yelling at you or something?"
I shake my head. "No. I would rather her yelling at me than ignoring me, which she seems to like to do when I do something that reminds her of Peter."
"Boyfriend?"
I sit up and bite my lip. I honestly have no clue if he was. I know they were good friends and he would have obviously done anything for her. "I don't . . . know."
Averman slides back under his covers as he sets his glasses on the table. "She obviously likes you; a lot."
"She does not! She said she wouldn't ever go out with me." I say amazed at Averman's stupidity.
He sits up and turns on a lamp casting shadows across his face. "Obviously she does. She wanted you to leave when you reminded her of someone she was really close to. I saw her face when you were hugging her after practice and you're the only person she has opened up to."
"Maybe she's shy." I offer as a reason even though we know that's basically an impossibility.
"Didn't Dwayne tell you that he left his lasso hanging on his chair in science and she tied it up into knots?" He chuckled. "He said that Kenny and him were untying them for an hour."
I slink back into my bed.
"She likes you and she's trying to stop herself."
~*~
I jump as I hear an abnormal noise in my room. Silence surrounds me and is broken by a click click click someplace. I look around and I can't quite figure out where it is coming from.
Click, click, click.
It's driving me nuts. I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Click, click, click.
I look at the window and notice pebbles sitting on my sill. I open the window look out as I am hit in the nose with a stone.
"Owwwww!" I yelp making Averman stir but he still sleeps.
"Adam!?" I hear a voice yell-whisper to me.
I frown as I rub my nose. "Yeah. Who is it?"
The person is silent. "It's Josie. Come down!"
"Josie! It's . . . midnight! What are you doing here, at the boy's dorm at midnight?" I yelp looking at my watch.
"Lunch!"
I look down at her as my eyes adjust to the dark and the moonlight. "I like having my lunch after breakfast!"
"Come on Banks! It's lunch somewhere in the world! Think, in China, they are having lunch right now!" I see her figure wave her arms dramatically.
I roll my eyes wishing I had gotten more than an hour of sleep. "Coming." I quickly shut my window and pull on a pair of jeans and slip on a sweatshirt and grab my jacket of a hook and shut the door quietly.
~*~
"Hey sunshine. Coffee?"
I groan. "There will be no mention of sunshine seeing it is still dark out."
She pouts. "I thought hockey players were used to being woken up early."
"It isn't early. This is still late. It is still night."
She smiled. "Well, if you want to get back by lunch we had to get up this early."
My ears perk. "Get back from where?"
"Wisconsin."
I chuckle nervously. "Funny. Seriously where are we going? The mall?"
She stops and turns to me. "We are going to a little cemetery just over the state line. It's not like I'm asking you to go to Canada or something."
~
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A/N: Another chapter finished! Go me! And some people are saying that I should stop asking for flames. I'm happy to know that my first MD fic is going over so well! You guys like me!! *tear* You guys are great by the way! You are so quick at reviewing! The quicker you guys are the quicker I post and the quicker everyone is happy!!! And I like happiness! Thanx you guys!!
~Toodles!
"We're still having lunch by the way." I say as I trudge out of the change room with my overflowing hockey bag casually tossed over my aching shoulder.
She scoffs. Her eyes still a little red since I left her out here with Connie so I could get changed. Coach Orion also had escorted her father, Dr. Best, out of the arena so they could have a little chat with Dean Buckley about the eruption of arguments that occurred just a few minutes ago.
"You mean I'm going to have to spend more time with you?"
I shrug. "That was the deal. One lunch. It is almost dinner; therefore you still owe me one lunch hour."
She shakes her head at me. "You should be on the debate team."
"However you should be on the ice. . ." I start, but am quickly shut up by one of her death glares. "So where do you want to go?"
She bites her lip nervously. "I want to show you something."
~*~
I grin as I realize we are walking towards the girl's dorms. You need to be escorted by a girl to get into the girl's dorms and it's not like I have never been in the girl's dorms before. I have been in Connie and Julie's like ten thousand times, but they aren't really girls to me, they are more like really feminine guys and I would probably never consider dating them, even though I have to admit, they both are really hot.
"What exactly do you want to show me?" I ask coyly.
She rolls her eyes. "This isn't a date so don't think your going to score because you definitely aren't."
"Way to kill a guy's confidence." I mumble as she walks past the female guard.
She looks back at me as she walks into the hallway. "But it would be false sense of confidence and that's wrong." She turns to a door and pulls a key from her pocket and opens the door exposing a regular dorm with tons and tons of boxes around. Obviously she hasn't gotten around to unpacking. "Now it's in one of these boxes." She murmurs as she walks to the bare bed to the right.
I feel stupid asking this but I know I have to. "What is?"
She turns to me. "It's a black box with silver etching. Can you help me find it?"
I walk over to her and open a cardboard box. This is fairly new to me seeing I have never moved in my life. I rummage through the box. I pull a few things out of it. A professional camera, film, negatives; she must be into photography or something. I reach deep down into the dark box and to my surprise pull out a large hockey jersey, Dallas Stars.
She looks over at me and grins. "Hey, I've been looking for that. That was Peter's. He practiced in it a lot." She took it out of my hands and quickly slipped it on over her black T-shirt. It was about 3 sizes too big.
I frown as I reach down again. This time I pull what we are looking for; the little black box. "Found it."
She nods and sits on the bed and pats a seat beside her and I quickly take it. She takes the box from my hands and sits it on her lap. I watch as she runs her fingers along the edges, contemplating on whether to show me.
My eyes widen as I look at the insides of the box. There must be hundreds of newspaper clippings, photos and little mementos. She immediately goes for the first picture and hands it to me.
I'm terrified at the person in it. She was right. Peter, I'm guessing, looks a lot like me. The guy is slightly more built than I am and his hair is darker and I'm pretty sure his nose is a little bigger, but other than that, he looks like an exact replica of me. Or am I an exact replica of him. "Whoa."
She nods. "I miss him." She sighs. "I miss my special spot."
My eyes jerk away from the picture. "Special spot?"
She nods. "That's what we called it." She took dug around in the box and handed me another picture.
My jaw dropped. He was holding her up, with one hand. She must have been a good seven feet in the air. "Isn't that scary?"
She sighed. "The first couple times it is. The idea of loosing your balance or your partner catching his edge and slamming into a rock hard surface more than six feet down is terrifying." She grinned. "But after that it's amazing. You can't hear anything except the air whizzing past your ears and your breathing."
"You miss skating." I say as I hand her picture back. "You try to deny it but I can tell."
She licked her lips and handed me a newspaper clipping to me.
"Peter Boyd, 16, passed away on February 20 2003 on the way to a competition. He died on the way to something he loved more than anything." I read aloud. I looked over at her.
"It's lying. He wasn't on the way to something he loved." Her eyes shimmered with tears. "He wanted to quit. I begged him for one more competition; just one." She sniffed. "It was my competition. I killed him. I made him promise he would come. It's my fault and now he's dead."
I couldn't believe it. "It's not your fault. The roads were slippery or someone wasn't paying attention. It couldn't be your fault."
"See! That is exactly what I'm talking about!" She said getting up pointing at me. "He would do anything to make sure I wasn't at fault. He loved to argue. He loved to win. I see that in you and that is exactly what I used to make he come and that's what makes me responsible." She shook her finger at me. "And I can tell I would do it again and I can't stand to watch another person end up like him."
I stood up and took her by the shoulders. "No, you can't blame this on yourself. It was an accident and I'm not planning on getting in one anytime soon."
"Banks get out. Go." Her eyes pierced into me like a hundred stabbing knives as her eyes welled up with tears and began to spill onto her porcelain cheeks. "Please, just go."
~*~
"Charlie, right angled trig is really easy. First you need to memorize the trig ratios. . ." I looked over at Charlie. I had been only tutoring for about a half hour and yet he was sleeping soundly. "Charlie!"
He groaned as his arm that was propping his head up gave out and he slammed his forehead against the desk. "Banksie; don't wake me like that." He whined as he rubbed his face.
I shrugged. "I need this for our community involvement crap and you need to pass math or Coach is going to kick you off the team."
"A teacher, a person who talks in someone else's sleep." He said burying his face in his arms. "Can we take a study break?"
I roll my eyes and close the textbook.
He suddenly sits up straight. "How about you tell me about Josie and what happened after you rushed out of the change room?"
"If I do that will you actually pay attention?"
He grinned one of those 'I'm-pretending-to-me-innocent-so-you-can-believe- your-getting-what-you-want' grins. "Yes."
"She took me to her dorm." I started.
He grinned and playfully punched my shoulder. "You stud! I knew she would come around. No one can resist a Duck."
He was quickly shushed by the rest of the people in the library.
"I'm not finished." I sighed. "And she showed me a bunch of pictures; like of her old partner." Charlie wore a confused look on his face, much like the look on his face when I was explaining the Pythagorean Theorem. "She used to figure skate; pairs mostly. Well at the beginning of this year her partner died." Charlie finally nodded. "Well he looked a lot like me."
The look crossed Charlie's face again. "Are we talking evil twin or are we talking I can see the resemblance?"
I shrugged. "Don't know. He was bigger than me and his hair was darker; but the rest was uncanny."
"Evil twin; got it." Charlie nodded.
I shook my head. Charlie somehow made my life sound like one of the soap operas we have all caught Julie and Connie watching. "Well she started saying a bunch of junk about it being her fault and I told her it wasn't and she told me he wanted to quit and I told her it still wasn't her fault and she began saying I acted like him too and that she wanted me to leave so I did."
Charlie shook his head. "I'm so glad the girls I go out with are half normal."
"What about Lynda?"
He frowned. "I thought we were never going to bring her up again."
"Wasn't she the one who put daisy air fresheners in your hockey bag?" I laugh. I know Charlie hates it when I bring up her.
"Ok back to trigonometry." He said changing the subject quickly.
I grin. "So what is the ratio opposite over adjacent?"
He bites his lip nervously; racking his brain for an intelligent answer. "Tangerine?"
~*~
I toss in my bed. I can't sleep. I can't get her out of my head. I look at the ceiling and groan. This place sucks.
"Banksie, you're not the only person trying to sleep."
I jump at Averman's voice. I didn't realize he's light snores as quieted. "Sorry man."
Her reaches for his glasses as he yawns. "What's on you're mind bud?"
"Nothing." I reply even though I yearn to tell him everything, even though I had told Charlie.
"Sure. You're an insomniac when you're nervous or have something on you're mind. So will you spill now so we both can get to sleep?" I smirk. Averman isn't his funny self when he is tired.
I contemplate what I should tell him.
"Oh wait. I know. Tomorrow is that date thing you have with that girl." He replies cutting me off. "And you don't have to tell me about the whole thing. Charlie only told me 'cause I'm your roommate and all. So what you're nervous about her yelling at you or something?"
I shake my head. "No. I would rather her yelling at me than ignoring me, which she seems to like to do when I do something that reminds her of Peter."
"Boyfriend?"
I sit up and bite my lip. I honestly have no clue if he was. I know they were good friends and he would have obviously done anything for her. "I don't . . . know."
Averman slides back under his covers as he sets his glasses on the table. "She obviously likes you; a lot."
"She does not! She said she wouldn't ever go out with me." I say amazed at Averman's stupidity.
He sits up and turns on a lamp casting shadows across his face. "Obviously she does. She wanted you to leave when you reminded her of someone she was really close to. I saw her face when you were hugging her after practice and you're the only person she has opened up to."
"Maybe she's shy." I offer as a reason even though we know that's basically an impossibility.
"Didn't Dwayne tell you that he left his lasso hanging on his chair in science and she tied it up into knots?" He chuckled. "He said that Kenny and him were untying them for an hour."
I slink back into my bed.
"She likes you and she's trying to stop herself."
~*~
I jump as I hear an abnormal noise in my room. Silence surrounds me and is broken by a click click click someplace. I look around and I can't quite figure out where it is coming from.
Click, click, click.
It's driving me nuts. I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Click, click, click.
I look at the window and notice pebbles sitting on my sill. I open the window look out as I am hit in the nose with a stone.
"Owwwww!" I yelp making Averman stir but he still sleeps.
"Adam!?" I hear a voice yell-whisper to me.
I frown as I rub my nose. "Yeah. Who is it?"
The person is silent. "It's Josie. Come down!"
"Josie! It's . . . midnight! What are you doing here, at the boy's dorm at midnight?" I yelp looking at my watch.
"Lunch!"
I look down at her as my eyes adjust to the dark and the moonlight. "I like having my lunch after breakfast!"
"Come on Banks! It's lunch somewhere in the world! Think, in China, they are having lunch right now!" I see her figure wave her arms dramatically.
I roll my eyes wishing I had gotten more than an hour of sleep. "Coming." I quickly shut my window and pull on a pair of jeans and slip on a sweatshirt and grab my jacket of a hook and shut the door quietly.
~*~
"Hey sunshine. Coffee?"
I groan. "There will be no mention of sunshine seeing it is still dark out."
She pouts. "I thought hockey players were used to being woken up early."
"It isn't early. This is still late. It is still night."
She smiled. "Well, if you want to get back by lunch we had to get up this early."
My ears perk. "Get back from where?"
"Wisconsin."
I chuckle nervously. "Funny. Seriously where are we going? The mall?"
She stops and turns to me. "We are going to a little cemetery just over the state line. It's not like I'm asking you to go to Canada or something."
~
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A/N: Another chapter finished! Go me! And some people are saying that I should stop asking for flames. I'm happy to know that my first MD fic is going over so well! You guys like me!! *tear* You guys are great by the way! You are so quick at reviewing! The quicker you guys are the quicker I post and the quicker everyone is happy!!! And I like happiness! Thanx you guys!!
~Toodles!