A/n: After a month's wait, here it is! Chapter 17! Sorry it took so long...I don't know if any of you looked at my profile, but I was moving, so my writing schedule got a bit screwed up. Hopefully I'll be back on track now. Thanks for the reviews! Over 70, I can't believe it!

Artist's Alley

Chapter 17

"Kaya-chaaan!" Mitsuki hung her arms around my neck, clinging on to me and whining into my shoulder. "First Kei-kun, and now you're leaving me too! I'm going to be so lonely!"

School had just ended and we were walking home together. Two weeks had already passed, and Deidara would be coming for me at seven the next morning. I was too excited to even think about anything else, but Mitsuki had been in distress about it all week, and today had been the worst by far. I felt a little guilty, actually. Since high school, it had been just the three of us: Mitsuki, Keito, and me. Now with Keito gone and me leaving, Mitsuki was going to be all alone. Keito's parents had withdrawn him from school and no one had seen or heard from him since. As far as the school was concerned, he had simply transferred somewhere else for various family reasons. Even though I knew more about Keito than I cared, I wasn't sure what the real reason for his transfer was, but I was pretty certain it had something to do with the Deidara incident. Whatever the case, when Mitsuki had asked if I'd heard from him at all, I'd told her no. It was a lie, of course, but I couldn't very well tell her the truth. I felt guilty about lying to her too, but if I told her about the Akatsuki and Deidara's and Keito's relationship to them, I was pretty sure it would just give her too much to worry about. Besides, stuff like that needed to be kept secret, even from one's best friend.

Mitsuki did, however, know that Deidara had blatantly lied to my parents about a special training school for artists. She had completely discounted my suspicions that it might be some evil plan for revenge, determining instead that he was in love with me and was willing to do anything to get me back. I wasn't so sure about that, but the thought that it might be a possibility, even a very unlikely one, gave me butterflies of excited nervousness. And, much to my horror and embarrassment, with her determination of Deidara's feelings in mind, Mitsuki had proceeded to spend the entire day making references to the mature steps our relationship would undoubtedly (in her mind) be taking once we were back together.

To prove my point, Mitsuki released my neck and said, "When you aren't too busy having crazy artist sex, you have to promise to come visit me!"

"Mitsuki!" I cried, looking around quickly to see if anyone had overheard her. "Stop saying stuff like that," I hissed at her under my breath.

"Promise!" she demanded, ignoring my comment.

"Okay, I promise I'll come visit you," I said.

"You have to!" she cried, and gave me her best puppy face. "I don't know what I'm going to do without you again."

I thought about mentioning that she was the one who had told me about Deidara in the first place, but decided that would probably just make her feel worse, so I kept it to myself. "Don't worry, Mitsuki. I can call you too."

"Unlike last time!"

I bit my lip. She was right. I had never bothered to call her when I had been at Deidara's house before. "Sorry…" I said.

"It's okay, but you seriously have to keep in touch! I'm really going to miss you."

"I know, I'll miss you too," I said. And I would, too. As excited as I was about getting to be with Deidara every day, it was going to suck not having a girl to talk to. I would definitely have to call her.

We had now reached the point where we had to split up, since our houses were in different directions. Both of us stopped and stared awkwardly at the ground, trying to stall. This was the last time we would see each other for who knows how long? I glanced up at Mitsuki and saw that she was fighting unsuccessfully to hold back tears. As soon as I saw that, I started to tear up too. I quickly hugged her. "You can come visit me too!" I said.

She sniffed. "Really? Will it be okay?"

"Of course! I'm sure Deidara-sensei won't mind, and if he does, he can just get over it."

She laughed and I released her so she could wipe her cheeks. "Yeah, he can't possibly say no to two cute girls," she said, and we both giggled. We were silent again. Mitsuki was the first to speak up. "Okay, call me first thing when you get there tomorrow!"

"Okay!" I said.

"Okay, I guess bye, then."

I said goodbye, and we hugged one last time then went our separate ways, waving over our shoulders until Mitsuki turned the corner and was out of sight.

When I got home, both of my parents were there waiting for me. My mother was holding a small wrapped box with a big yellow ribbon tied in a bow on top. "Welcome home, honey," she said, giving me a kiss and handing me the box.

"This is your going away present," my father said, patting my shoulder. "Go ahead and open it."

With curious excitement, I pulled off the paper and opened the cardboard box beneath. I dug through the Styrofoam popcorn inside and pulled out…a cellphone! Okay, it wasn't a great cellphone. It wasn't any sort of smartphone or anything, but I was still excited. I let out a squeal and hugged my parents, thanking them repeatedly.

"Our numbers are already in your contacts," my mother said, holding out her own cellphone.

"Since your mother hates landlines so much, we decided cellphones would make everyone happy," my father explained. So now we all had cellphones.

The first thing I did was call Mitsuki to let her know the news, and of course to give her the number for MY cellphone. After we hung up, I went through my room and bathroom to make sure I had packed everything I would need, since the last thing I wanted was to have to borrow Deidara's clothes again, until my parents called me down for dinner. We ate and then watched a movie since it would be our last night together, and finally everyone headed off to bed.

I didn't sleep much, and when I did sleep, I kept dreaming either somewhat embarrassing dreams about Deidara, or I dreamed about him going crazy and killing me. Even though they made my face turn red just remembering them, and just the thought of Deidara ever finding out about them was horrifying, I definitely preferred the embarrassing dreams. The dreams Deidara killed me were all different, but in all of them, I was always running and hiding from him, but no matter where I hid he always found me and as soon as he did, my legs suddenly stopped working and I could barely force myself to take even one step. At this point, just as Deidara was about to overtake me, I would wake up with a start, still feeling the panic from the dream. So of course, when I finally got up at a dreadful 5:00 in the morning and looked at myself in the mirror, my eyes had puffed up like balloons and there were huge dark circles under them. They were really bad. It looked like someone had punched me in both eyes.

"Oh nooo!" I groaned at my reflection. Why today, of all days? My first time seeing Deidara in two weeks and I had to look like this? I quickly ran downstairs and stuck two spoons in the freezer. It was a trick Mitsuki had told me about once. Apparently putting cold spoons on puffy eyes reduced the swelling. I wasn't sure if it worked since I had never actually tried it, but I definitely had to get rid of this before Deidara came.

While I was waiting for the spoons to freeze, I headed back upstairs and jumped in the shower. At the very least, I wanted to be clean. When I was washed, I dried and straightened my hair, then stole some of my mother's mascara. Hopefully my parents wouldn't notice since I wasn't allowed to wear makeup, even though I was turning 17 in a little over a month. It was really stupid, but my parents were determined that I shouldn't be wearing makeup until I graduated high school. Thinking about it made me roll my eyes. Maybe once I was living with Deidara I would go buy some makeup, since my parents wouldn't be there anyway. Of course, that would require money. Maybe I could get a part time job or something. Last of all, I picked up my mother's perfume and spent a few minutes trying to decide if I should put it on or not. I wanted to smell nice, but I didn't want to look like I was trying too hard. I could just imagine the smirk on Deidara's face and him making fun of my silly attempts to make myself appealing. Even though there had been some incidents that made it seem that he might like me, such as the time in the hotel room, I was pretty sure he just saw me as a kid whom he could easily tease.

In the end, I sprayed it just once on my wrist and rubbed it on my neck, then observed myself in the mirror and grimaced. I would have looked okay, except that my eyes still looked like purple balloons. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was a little past 6:30. That barely left me time to do the spoon treatment, so I ran back downstairs. My parents were awake now and eating breakfast. I said good morning to them and declined their offer to join them for breakfast. I had much more important things to do than eat, like putting spoons on my eyes. Grabbing the spoons from the freezer, which earned me a raised eyebrow from my father, I dashed back upstairs and lay down on my bed, resting the spoons under my eyes. I did that for 15 minutes, by which time the spoons weren't very cold anymore, and headed to the bathroom to see the results. I wondered if maybe I should have frozen more spoons so I could switch off once they lost their coolness.

Well, the spoons hadn't made much difference, if any. My eyes looked slightly less puffy, but the dark circles were just as prominent as before. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection and stomped back to my parents' bathroom and started digging through my mother's makeup supply. There had to be something here I could use! Finally, I found what I was looking for: under eye concealer. I quickly applied it, and it did help. That was the best I was going to get. I was now ready to go. There was just one thing to do…wait. I sat on the couch downstairs with my parents, and proceeded to stare at the clock. An eternal five minutes later, I heard a car come to a stop outside of our house. Jumping up, I ran to the window to peek out and saw Deidara's black Porsche parked there. The time had finally come. He was here!

A/n: Not much happened in this chapter...Next chapter is better, I promise!