Okay, fine, so you get two chapters tonight. Maybe I'm trying to appease you all for making you wait so long. Anyway, this is a cool chapter, so read on. We are so close to the good part, even I'm excited to see how it will turn out!
Disclaimer: Oh, whatever, just read!
I heard a car honk outside the coffee shop. After I finished wiping tears of laughter from my eyes, my reaction to all of the guys' reactions to the horn, I noticed the door leading out of the Starbucks open by itself, but a girl about my age leave the shop. It was like she materialized there in the middle of her walking somewhere. The she got into the car and drove away.
"Did you guys notice that?" I asked them, gesturing at the door.
"Yeah," Corinth agreed. "Where did she come from?"
I shrugged and looked around the whole store again. There was an entire table I hadn't even noticed when I first came in, one with a bag hanging off the back of one of the chairs. "What's that?" I went over and opened it up to reveal a wallet, some hard candies and pencils, and a tattered green notebook full to bursting with scribbled on papers. While I was flipping through the notebook, Corinth was looking inside the wallet and Neal was stealing a red Life Saver.
"Her name is Amanda Connors, according to this ID card. And she lives here in Naples." Corinth announced. "Does Cortez Boulevard mean anything to you?"
"Yup. It's right by my own house. She lives there?" I asked. I sounded perfectly calm as I said that, so it must have been a shock to everyone when I let out a tiny scream and dropped the notebook like it was red hot, sending loose papers fluttering all over the floor. I collapsed in the chair nearest me and put my head in my hands. Both Neal and Joren gathered up the looseleaf and Corinth sat down next to me.
"What happened to you? You look like you've seen a ghost." He seemed genuinely concerned. It was the first time I had even perceived him to be the kind of guy who would show his concern on the outside. So I told him. He would have found out anyway.
"That girl was my author, I guess. This whole thing with you and me and Neal and Joren, it's all in that book. She's writing our story. And I guess she forgot it, and only wrote that when she was in the store we couldn't see her, so now that she's left, we can see things for what they really are. Thanks," I said as Joren handed me back the notebook.
"So she's written all of us?" he asked me, sitting down.
"I don't think so. I mean, I've read about you and it doesn't say anything about you that's from the books. I bet it's just a fan fiction. I've written them before. But I guess this is a really weird one because it takes place in Florida as opposed to Tortall. Or is she just writing this for us to believe and none of it's true at all?" I slumped back in my seat. "This is so confusing."
"How can it be true if she didn't write it? Did she?" Neal asked. "Check the pages, see if us doing exactly this is written in there."
"It's not." I told them after a quick verification. "So let's assume that Amanda just made a mistake. Let's go to her house and corner her there, so we can get back to our own lives again."
We ran from the Starbucks to the nearest bus stop, and spent the ride back to my neighborhood in awkward silence. Then we headed to Cortez Boulevard, the polka-dotted bag holding the green notebook that held all of our lives slung over my shoulder.