A/N: Here it is! Sorry for the wait! Ok, it still doesn't have a plot, but it will, so stick with me please!
The next morning, I woke up at about 4:50 and couldn't fall back asleep. I lay there for a few minutes, just staring at the ceiling and worrying about nationals (we were up against some really, really, really good people this year… Like Katie Orscher and Garrett Lucash… Don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of theirs, but can I help wanting to grind them into a pulp on the ice? Not that I actually think we're going to beat them…) I realized there was no way I was going to fall back asleep and got up.
My brother Cary (yes, Cary is a boys name. My Uncle's first name is Cary. That's who he's named after, apparently) came into my room at 5 a.m. "Ready" He asked, knocking once on my door before stepping in. "I need a ride. My car broke down and it's in the shop. Don't you have to skate today"
"Ready, I can drive you, sorry, and not until later today. It's Saturday. I don't have to be there until 7. Or 7:30. George has been late a lot lately, anyways."
"Hmm… good. Have you had breakfast yet"
"No. You"
"Nah. Whatcha want"
"Hmm… something with a lot of sugar. Or calories. Or any kind of meat. Of course, we all know I'm a vegetarian, so there goes that idea." Being a vegetarian by force is not fun. Because for one, I love bacon. That sounds weird, coming from a tiny sixteen-year-old vegetarian girl, but sadly, it is true. I love meat. I just never get to eat it because of all the fat. And, of course, because I have to be teensy. Gets very annoying sometimes.
Anyways. We settled for something from Burger King—the wonderful place of meat-I-can't-have, open 24 hours in Huntsville—and ate on the road while talking to each other.
Cary worked at the Space and Rocket center, the biggest space center in America. And, now that I think about it, the world. Anyways, the center was about 20 minutes away from our house, so we had a nice little drive ahead of us that we used to talk or joke or confuse each other with confusing confusingness. Like Cary'll confuse me with random stuff involving the center. I confuse him with skate lingo. Like Beillmans. And axles. And flips.
We stopped and I got out to walk inside with him. On a normal day, I would have just dropped him off at the door and gone on my merry way to the rink. Not today—I had stuff to talk to someone named Chase about. It's a long story… ready? My older sister, Mary-Ellen, was dating Cary's best friend, Chase. Did ya catch that, hon? Mary-Ellen and Cary are Irish twins, by the way. They're about 10 months apart. So they're in the same grade—Cary skipped second grade—as Chase. That's how Marny (it's my nick/pet/to-annoy-her name for Mary-Ellen) and Chase met. They started going out in the 6th grade and had broken up once because he turned into an idiot and thought he could have possibly liked another girl. When he realized how far out of his league she was, he turned back to Marny. It was really funny, actually—I was surprised she agreed to go out with him again. Never mind that she had been head-over-heels in love with him the whole time he has been trying to get Sara's attention…
Anyways. I'd overheard him asking my dad for his blessing to marry Marny… and before I let him marry my only sister, I was going to have a few words with him. Like"If you hurt her, I will hunt you down and kill you using only panty-hose and a yogurt lid" or something along those lines.
Chase was waiting for Cary inside, like he always did. When he spotted me, he gave me a glare and marched down the hall to the guy's dorms. The guys slept on the right end of the bottom floor. The girls slept on the left end of the top floor… er… in the dorm building, anyways. My school had taken me back in the 5th grade… that's all I remember… (A/N: I did go with my school once. Only once. I had a really… interesting… experience. Like, people stay up all night and talk at the top of their lungs. Normally, this doesn't bother me if I can fall asleep before they start, but they started talking the second they got back from the showers. It got so annoying that I got some friends to tell a counselor, who talked to the people talking all night and complaining about how tired they were in the morning… They blamed my friends, who in turn blamed me. The one who got in trouble—cuz she did it again—to this day refuses to talk to me. Talk about holding a grudge… Wow. That was a long note.)
There was a lobby where you were supposed to wait if you were coming with a new group. Obviously, I wasn't allowed in the boys dorms because I'm a girl—duh—so I marched up the stairs to wait on Chase and Cary. I still had half an hour before I had to leave and arrive at the last possible moment.
There was a group of teenage students standing in the lobby, each talking amongst themselves and looking incredibly alert for being up at 5 in the morning. Then I realized they were speaking French—and more than that, they were the same people I'd seen at the rink yesterday! How coincidental is that? Weird, huh? And if they were the French students, then they would have been up at this time, since France is 7 hours behind Alabama, and it would be about 10:30 there…
Chase and Cary came upstairs a few minutes later, looking annoyed. I shrugged it off, grabbed Chase by the ear, and dragged him over to a remote corner of the room. "I walked overheard you asking my dad for his blessing last night." I informed him calmly. "So if you want to marry Marny, then at least know that I'm going to have to threaten you with… something… if you hurt her. Because she's Marny. She's like… a lily, in full blossom. If you cut the blossom off, it'll die. Or something. Right" I paused. "I just made an idiot of myself, didn't I"
"Yeah, Adrianne. You did. And about Ella…" (Ella was his pet name for Mary-Ellen, by the way) "I won't hurt her. If I do, I give you permission to come after me with a gun and shoot me. And I'll say that I gave you permission to do so."
"Ha" I laughed. "Anyways… are all these people from France"
"Yeah. Some boarding school. They're here on a class trip."
"Oh." I sighed.
"Adrianne"
"Yeah"
"You speak French better than me. Go mingle."
It was true—I spoke fluent French. My mom was from France. She married my dad, who is American. Since Dad worked all day, I got left at home with my mom, whose native language was French. Thus, she spoke it a lot around me. It got to the point that no one could speak anything but English around me for fear that I'd learn French better than I learned English. Then I'd never get out of kindergarten because I'd be stuck speaking French while all the other kids were speaking English.
I "mingled" for a total of fifteen seconds before some guy—the one with white-blond hair with the purple spot in the middle—came up and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Do you speak French"
"Yes." I whirled around to talk to him. "Why"
He shrugged. "No one else does."
"Cary does." I pointed to my brother. "And Chase speaks more than an average person."
"I'm Odd." He stuck his hand out and we shook.
"Odd" I asked.
"Odd. Odd name, huh" He paused. "Sorry, no pun intended."
I laughed. "Eh, I've heard some weirder ones. Like Cary. It's a girl's name, right? My parents named my older brother Cary. And my sister's name is Marny. Ok, well, we all call her Marny, but her real name is Mary-Ellen. I'm rambling, sorry."
"It's fine." There was an awkward silence before he said"If one of us doesn't ramble, no one is going to be able to talk for all the silence. Anyways, I want you to meet someone."
He walked over to a group of people standing roughly fifteen feet away. Among them, I recognized the blond boy with glasses, the girl with pink hair (how cool is that?) and the other guy that I'd skated into.
"Hi." I said shyly.
"This is Ulrich." Odd pointed to the one I'd knocked over. "This is Jeremie." He pointed to the blonde guy with glasses. "And that's Aelita." He pointed to the girl with the awesomely awesome pink hair. They waved. I waved back. "So…"
There was a long silence before my watch alarm went off. It was usually there to remind me that I had ten minutes to be on the ice, and therefore needed to stop flirting with the guys on the hockey team and making Luke jealous and get my skates on. Today, I wasn't even at the rink, much less in the car on my way. "CRAP" I swore. "Sorry." I added. "I was supposed to be at the rink, like, five minutes ago… Um… I'll see you tomorrow" I asked, walking backwards. "Sorry, I'm really late… Bye" I ran out of the room.
I ran down the stairs and was getting in my car when my phone rang. It was Luke. "Yo" I answered. "Whatcha want, fatty"
"Luke's daughter is sick. He called in today with some personal thing. I found out from the attendant why. So… we should go visit her… and get some ice time, because the hockey team wants the ice if you don't get here in ten minutes."
"I'm coming. Chase is about to propose to Marny. I had to threaten him with death… you know, the whole… CRAP" I swore again. "Sorry. Eighteen-wheeler just pulled out in front of me. Which daughter"
"The little one. Alison."
"With what"
"She's in ICU, that's all I know. Not yet"
"Huh"
"Sorry. They're bugging me about the ice."
"Tell them to go away."
"Hmm… yeah. Like a little shrimpy guy like myself is going to tell some big, bad hockey player to bug off. Yeah, real smart, Annie."
"I'm on my way. That's the best I can do. I can't think and drive at the same time, either."
"Well… go faster and get off the phone, then."
"Yeah, smart, Luke. Introduce a newly-licensed sixteen-year-old to this wonderful thing called 'speed' and all its addictive properties."
"If you can't talk and drive at the same time, get off the phone, Annie."
"Bah. I'm off. Bye"
"Bye." He hung up and I kept driving, thinking about Odd and the people I had just met.
So I sat there in the car, thinking about him… and stuff…
When I got to the rink, all the hockey players were skating all over our freshly-zambonied ice. Luke was sitting against the wall with a look of defeat across his face, looking bored out of his mind and really impatient.
"Hey fatty" I called, marching into the rink. "Evil hockey players! Get off our smooth ice! You don't have practice for three more hours! Shouldn't this be good"
"Nah." They skated off. Isn't that interesting—they listened to me, but they didn't listen to Luke. Or anyone who came in and told them to get off. Does this tell you anything?
Anyways. Luke and I ran through our routines a few times before the ice got too rough to skate on. We were coming back later, anyways, so we skated off and put on our street clothes, then went to see George. He was, obviously, in the hospital with his daughter and the rest of his family (another daughter, his wife, and his parents, who were too old to live by themselves and refused to be put in an old-people home) waiting to hear something about his daughter. They weren't allowed in to see her, and she was out like a light, so she couldn't get out to see them… duh.
And there we sat, for who knows how long, until the doctor came out and told him the news.
It was bad. Real bad.
They didn't know exactly what was ailing her yet, but from what they'd been told, it sounded like anemia, which is where you don't have enough iron in your blood. This wouldn't have been too bad, if they had been 100 percent sure that it was anemia and not something else. As it was, though, they weren't… which meant it could have been something else. Something… worse.
And it was. It was a whole lot worse.
A/N: Right, someone asked about Yumi in the last chapter… Here's what's happened, and it has a point in the story, I promise. She's in another grade, right? And this is a class trip. So obviously she got left behind. She is in the story, I promise, it's just in a later chapter. After this one, Adrianne doesn't see any of them for another 3 months (roughly 5 chapters) and then… well… let's just say Talia is a main character in this one. It gets into her past… including her sister… Muahaha. I know where it's going and you don't! Neener neener neener! Anyways… I'm sorry it's so late getting this chapter up… I had band camp all week long (at least we didn't have to march this time…) and I have a piccolo part, so it's not like I could exactly skip. Not that I'd want to, because I'd flunk out of band, which is really hard to do if you attend all required functions… so… anyways, I'll shut up now. I'm going to finish the other chapter of All My Brothers… Read it, please! If you haven't already!
THANK YOU'S!
Diamond-Halo- AWESOME! A FELLOW SKATER! (grin) Yeah, I'm not that good, cuz I only go, like, once a week, so… If I get something wrong, let me know and I'll fix it, ok?
Kayrana- thanks!
Allyfromcali- Cool! I'm gonna have to read it!
Three reviews? IS THAT IT? Come on, guys, you can do better than that!
Oh, one more thing. I am grounded… for having a "bad attitude" or whatever… so if they take my computer away… well, for one, they'll take my sanity, but for two, the next chapters will be late getting posted… Yeah, anyhoo… That's all. Thanks for reading! Now go press the little purple button that says "go" and make an author really happy!
