Hi. So I haven't updated in a while, and I'd apologize but I've gotten kind of ticked off at the reviewers of , so I won't.
Dear Moonlight1234: since you're an anon, I can't send you a PM and spare you the humiliation about to come. You said, so eloquently, "They get together in the Serpent's Shadows while Zia's an old man..YOU HEARD NOTHING!"
Ignoring your poor usage of capitalization, I'd also like to suggest you look a little closer at the story you're reviewing. If you do, you may see that the date first published is well before the release of The Serpent's Shadow. You're correct, I heard nothing—but I did read the book. The events of this story are comprised entirely of speculation based on the first two Kane books. I'm really not the one who looks stupid here.
Speaking of TSS, I never did rant about it, but I just need to say that I called that school for the arts thing, I totally called that! (Not that I ever actually wrote anything about it, but it's a wonderful feeling when your headcanon comes true.)
Dear coolguy: You are also anonymous. I am sorry that you think Adrian is boring, but I will continue to write with him. And I don't know what I was thinking, since you never specified what "it" was that was "horrible" and "super bad". Nothing I can do, really, but if you think my story's so bad, may I suggest you don't read it?
Last but not least, a sincere thanks to all the reviewers who have left messages over the last twenty-one (!) chapters with constructive criticism, praise, and xo's. I've been hugged and kissed a lot, and appreciated them all. May you all receive many weasel cookies!
Oh, almost forgot: the Adam and Lindsey from last chapter were meant to be Adam Young, better known as Owl City, and Lindsey Stirling, better known as a flawless individual and my girlcrush because wow she's a cutie. Look them up, they're both great musicians.
O-o-O
Sometimes Carter wondered why after he'd settled into Brooklyn House, after he'd lived in the same time zone from more than a week, was when his sleep patterns went screwy. Even traveling all over the world, he'd usually managed to get in a solid six hours—even if one or two of them had been half hour naps snatched in planes or taxi cabs. Now he was lucky to get three or four, and not a very restful three or four either.
At least he had company. Zia was sitting on the floor, on the other side of the coffee table, notebook laid out in front of her. He could hear her muttering and erasing and muttering some more as she worked on something or other for some speech class—he was too out of it to recall the details.
He sighed and gave up on the book he was reading; he didn't have the patience necessary to deal with the mess of despicable characters and and miserable parties that was The Great Gatsby—even if it did have the best drunk driving scene in all of literature. It would just have to wait until the morning.
He looked up to ask Zia how she got past Tom's pretentious attitude—and choked.
She was twirling her pencil through the fingers of her right hand, her eyebrows furrowed as she pouted at the notebook in front of her, her left hand absently tucking her hair behind her ear, and her shoulders were hunched forward in concentration and he felt like he'd been punched in the gut.
She was beautiful and he was an idiot.
"Staring is rude," she informed him after a few moments of his gaping—without looking up, of course—and he opened his mouth to apologize but how was he supposed to talk when his lungs had shriveled up and crawled into his throat? All he could manage was "Um—uh—did you…ever decide what speech you were going to do for contest?"
God, he sounded like a blithering moron. A thousand witty responses that anyone else on the planet could have retorted with but he was the one who started to talk about speech contest, which he didn't know the first thing about anyway and he sounded so stupid but how could he think when she was just sitting there looking like the amazing human being she was and he was in love with her and he couldn't even tell her that because he was choking on his Adam's apple—
"Yeah," she said absently, blissfully unaware of the mental whirlwind across the table. "I thought I'd write the witch from Hansel and Gretel defending her case in court. The anglerfish would have been fun, but no one would understand the parasite joke." She looked up and gave him a smile that made his stomach melt and trickle down into his feet.
Her eyebrows pulled back together with concern. "Are you okay?"
No. He wasn't okay. He was hopelessly and permanently and actually in love and maybe had been for a long time now and he was more terrified than he'd ever been in his life. After all, he was seventeen, she was just barely eighteen (her birthday was before his, which didn't mean much except that it gave Walt a few months to make cougar jokes) and what was he supposed to know about being in love with someone? How was he supposed to look across the table at this beautiful woman in her holey sweatpants and realize that this was it, this was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and not have a heart attack?
He wanted to brush off her question, to say "Fine" and leave his emotional trainwreck for another day, another conversation.
But she deserved better than that.
"I love you," he choked out.
She froze. Then, slowly, she dropped her pencil on the table and wrapped her arms around her knees.
"Oh," she said.
She took a deep breath and started gathering up her books.
"Zia, wait—" he started to say, but she held up a hand to stop him.
"Don't," she said. "I just…I need to think." She balanced her texts and notebooks in one arm and squeezed his hand with the other. "I just need space, okay?"
She walked as fast as she could to the stairs.
*#*#*
He definitely did not get six hours of sleep that night. He spent most of the night awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Zia, whom he seriously doubted was thinking about him. She'd probably spent five minutes deciding that he was a complete moron, that she'd had enough of his ridiculous infatuation, and then rolled over and dreamt of strangling giant snakes or something like that.
How on earth was he supposed to look her in the eyes tomorrow?
He was an idiot. A complete imbecile. He should have kept his fat mouth shut.
But how could he?
*#*#*
He didn't see Zia at breakfast, which was kind of a relief. No way was he prepared to deal with the tongue-lashing that was surely coming to him. He didn't see Sadie, either, which was weird; Zia may have gotten up early to avoid the crowd, but Sadie was not a morning person in any sense of the term. And there was no way she'd sleep through breakfast.
It made a little more sense when both Zia and Sadie stumbled in the front door, dripping sweat and some gooey substance he associated with demons and monsters. He decided it was best not to ask.
His expression must have been pretty good, because Sadie opened her slimy arms and said, "Come give me a hug, brother dear."
"Pass," he said, and loaded his plate with hash browns.
He felt a very sticky embrace from behind, and turned around to make a snide comment that he forgot immediately when he realized it wasn't Sadie. It was Zia. She wiped some monster goo off her mouth and said, "Kiss?"
"Er, maybe later," he stammered.
She grinned and planted a kiss on his neck, anyway, which caused multiple trainees to suggest they get some privacy.
"I love you," she murmured, her mouth next to his ear.
He was so stunned, pinned to the spot he was standing in my sheer elation—she doesn't hate me, she loves me—that he didn't move until she poked her head back around the door to yell, "By the way, you might want to shower before you eat—this stuff starts to burn!"
He ran. He was definitely going to get this goop off soon—but first he was going to try his best to tackle his girlfriend.
O-o-O
What he's going to do if he ever manages to tackle Zia, I don't know. It also seems to be a counter-productive course of action; he's already covered in slime. But he probably won't catch her because Zia is a ninja. I'm 99% sure of that.