The room surrounding me is sterile and blank. The ceiling is creped with points of asbestos and the windows are lined with heavy beige curtains. The wall décor consists of generic prints of flowers in acrylic pointillism. The television is encased in a wooden box.

The environment at the Playa was summery and warm, the perfect-vacation contrast to the third-world living conditions on the island itself. The hotel room in which I will reside for at least the next month is more business trip than summer vacation. The comforter on the bed is floral and a bit crunchy, the sheets are heavy and cold. The beds at the playa were narrow and soggy, these ones are queen-sized and firm.

There couldn't be a greater contrast between my dwellings from season 1 and season 2. One thing, however, remains consistent: I am thoroughly unexcited.

It's in my nature to rarely get worked up over anything, be it in the form of excited squealing or angry diatribes, but at least with season one I had this sliver of hope that things would eventually get interesting, that eventually I would make it to the top, possibly even win, and have some great stories and mad cash to bring back home. That could get me worked up.

But of course it's no mystery how season one turned out, and there's no debate that it was very different than what I expected, or rather, what I'd hoped for. The number of times I really got my heart racing can be counted on my fingers:

1. When my team won the first challenge (I danced.)

2. When we had to do like a two-k run at seven AM.

3. When Owen was moments away from crossing the finish line

4. When I kissed Cody

Seeing as number 2 was more of a biological response to athletic exertion and not a psychosomatic repercussion of duress or euphoria, I suppose my exciting moments can be contained within a trilogy.

September started yesterday. Nobody's been eliminated yet for some reason, but something tells me that today is the day.

I strongly question why the production team insisted that I (along with Tyler, Cody, the twins, Eva, and Courtney) come back to the set for the second season if they knew we'd have literally nothing to do the entire time. In a sliver of good fortune, the brief time spend home gave me a chance to go through my basement library and nab as many books as I could fit in a suitcase. In fact, I took an additional suitcase of just books, and took the train here to avoid spending the fees that an additional bag would require. That's how much these little paper distractions mean to me.

I couldn't really find that many novels that I hadn't read or felt like reading so my suitcase library also includes: an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader from 1997 (gotta love outdated statistics), a cookbook (If I'm not going to be merry, I may as well eat and shrink, right?), a few kids books I stole from a sibling's ancient stash (I kind of still love Magic School Bus), and the Bhagavad Gita (as a non-Hindu Indian I should make the effort to read it, but I know I probably won't). The entire suitcase is not unlike the collection of things I'd have crammed into a bindlestiff on a tentative childhood escape from home, minus the unopenable canned foods.

I pick out a random soft-covered selection from my tickle trunk and recline once again into the bed. At least there's a television in here. It's still morning, but I decide I don't really want to leave my room today, or any day. I wish I were at school.

"So I heard that Izzy got eliminated today" Cody says to me, digging his hand into a bag of barbecue chips.

"Mh mh" I mumble absently as I flick through the stations of his hotel room TV. In the four weeks or so since we left the Island and surrounding areas, all strange and anticipatory thoughts of Cody have cooled back into 'he's my cute friend' territory. I turn to him "What did you say, I wasn't really listening."

"Izzy got kicked off the show tonight. Third eliminated."

"Oh shit." I groan.

"What?"

"That means she's coming here, doesn't it? I swear to God if she's within three doors of my room I'm bargaining with Geoff to steal his. Which frankly won't be hard since he already essentially lives inside of Bridgette's."

"Inside of Bridgette's what?"

I roll my eyes. "Room. You tried too hard to make that dirty." I click to the TV guide station. "There's nothing good on."

"Go on the history channel!"

"I didn't figure you a Hitler buff."

"No man, Pawn Stars is on."

"What's Pawn Stars?"

His mouth forms an O upon hearing me say this.

"You don't know Pawn Stars? It's this show that starting airing this summer while we were at Camp, about like, four overweight guys in Nevada who own a pawn shop."

"Is this like, a Sitcom? They show sitcoms on History?"

"No it's a reality show!"

I grimace "You gotta be kidding me. A reality show."

"Yes and I really really like it and please switch to it Noah, please, it's already 10:50 and it's almost over!"

I roll my eyes once again. "Fine" The show is still on break when I change the channel.

"What's the matter with you, dude, you seem like even more of a huge bitch than usual."

"I'm not sure what you've been doing with your time, but last time I checked, I've been inside this hotel for, what, sixteen or seventeen days now? Living off room service and group grocery orders and having nothing to do but read or watch TV. We can't even go anywhere because we're in the middle of town and we don't want to be 'seen by the public'. I swear to God, I'm gonna snap. I'm so done with this show." I set down the remote control and rub my temples. "I would far prefer committing death-defying stunts in the name of entertainment than endure this degree of sensory and social deprivation. This level of boredom should be a challenge worth a hundred k itself."

He chuckles awkwardly. "Well at least you can kind of hang out with me sometimes. I mean I know you miss the hot tub and the wii."

"Yeah and the only other people around are two psycho girls, two crazy squealing girls, and…" I search for a good term. "Tyler."

I let my head slam back into the pillow. "I just wish we could go home, if we're not going to be doing anything. I'm going out of my way to be a real stick in the mud this season, just out of spite." I pull the other pillow from beside me and put it over my head, smothering myself lightly. "I'm just soooo bored!"

"We should do something cool tomorrow." He says quietly. I drag the pillow off my face and turn towards him.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. Stuff."

There really isn't much 'stuff' to do. After having spent more time in this hotel, I've taken inventory of what facilities are available to me. We spend most of our time in our rooms. There is no central kitchen for us to eat from unless we go to the hotel's restaurant, which, being a hotel restaurant, has roughly 8 entrées on the menu so it's obviously unwise to go there every day. There is in fact a pool and hot tub, smelling harshly of chlorine and occasionally containing a considerable collection of waterwing-toting children. Because we don't have a central place to eat, we don't come together as a group very often. Also due to our lack of cafeteria, most of our meals are ordered in from take-out shops and grocery orders. To my delight, there's a Thai place two buildings down with a great variety, but it annoys me how I need to wait forever for a delivery person when if I were to leave the hotel myself, I could get to the restaurant after literally 2 minutes of walking. They say we can't be in public during filming, at least not unsupervised, especially those of us who were on the show but got eliminated.

Otherwise there's little to do here. There's a conference room on the first floor that, however ornate it appears to be, serves us no purpose at the moment. The only other activity we have to occupy our time with is the pay-per-view, from which we can order anything for free. But it would be an understatement for me to say I have no interest in watching 'Straight Boy's First Dick Volume 4' on pay-per-view.

So sometimes I hang out with Cody, and then I sleep, and I read. And I avoid getting bedsores.

Oh yeah there's also a gym but I doubt I'll ever use that.

That Pawn Stars thing is over, and some random show about Aliens is playing now. The history channel officially has nothing to do with History. Cody, recognizing the absurdity of the situation, twists off of his bed and wriggles a hand to the remote at my side. I dig it out from under my thigh and hand it to him.

"Take it. I should leave now anyway." I get up and motion towards the door. A squeak escapes Cody.

"Are you sure you…sure you wanna leave? I mean I'm not kicking you out, you can stay as long as you like!"

"Uh, yeah, I'm gonna get ready for bed soon, anyway. Long day of strenuous mental exercise, as usual."

He hops off of the bed and approaches me, standing beside his bathroom and halfway to the door. "Oh, but, um it's going to be midnight soon!"

I shoot him a confused look.

"I wouldn't mind if you stayed a bit…a bit longer."

My heart suddenly drops a beat, and begins to pound hotly in my upper abdomen. "Don't be weird." I coax out of my suddenly drying throat.

He glances at the clock, which reads 11:16. "Well…suit yourself."

I let my eyes linger on him for a moment more. His expression is a bit unreadable. I open the door and slide out. "Night" I call back.

I travel a few doors down to my own room, slide the card through the door, wait a fraction of a second for the little green light, and enter.

I brush my teeth. I wash my face. I run a comb through my hair.

I take off my clothes.

I sit on my bed in my underwear. The lights are off but the lamp is on. I place my cell phone on the bed in front of my crossed legs.

I press a button: '11:57'

I sigh. I wait. When the screen times out and goes black, I click the button again.

'Tuesday 8 September 2009/11:58 PM'

I stare at the words. When the 58 becomes 59, I begin to press the button over and over to ensure that the screen stays lit up.

Tuesday, 8 September. I keep staring.

Sixty seconds later, the digital display switches from 11:59 PM to 12:00.

I keep my eyes on the screen, still. Wednesday, September Ninth, Two Thousand Nine.

Well Noah, you're officially seventeen now, I say to myself. How do you like it so far?

I've had better.

Waking up the morning of your birthday is always strange. I open my eyes. The faint sliver of light from under the dense hotel curtain creeps into my room, and like other days, I spend my first second of wakefulness remembering where I am. The next second I spend recognizing it's the ninth of September.

When it's your birthday, you go about your day normally for the most part, but there's always a little voice in your head that periodically reminds you that it's your birthday. The voice whispers to me, 'it's your birthday'. The voice is not nasally and flat like mine, but empathetic and Cody-like. I crack a tiny smile.

I open my eyes fully, greeted by the dull grey corners of my ever-sterile hotel room. I realize that what woke me was the sound of my phone buzzing. I press the centre button.

Andrew Crane – 8:18 AM: Just got to school & molly reminded me its your birthday td. Happy birthday bro, too bad you can't be here with us! Enjoy season two i guess

I slide the keyboard open. 'ugh don't remind me, I'd so rather be at school for my birthday. Prob just gonna hang out w/ that cody kid today. Thanks for the birthday wish tho, at least I am allowed to keep my phone on my person this time around.'

I swing my legs out of bed and stretch myself out. I usually prefer to shower at night, but I realize I've been wearing these underwear a bit longer than I probably should, so my first birthday order of business is to bathe.

I flick the light of the small, spotless washroom adjacent to my sleeping area. If there's a tiny benefit to being here over being at the playa, it's the luxury of unshared washrooms. The showerheads empty into bathtubs here whereas on the island the showers were narrow enclosures with limescale-clouded panes of glass.

I step into the clean porcelain shower and turn on the water, back shuddering at the sudden contrast of the hot droplets against my skin. As the water pools at my feet, I allow my thoughts to wander.

I know for certain that my usual sour attitude has done nothing but sour further during these hellish few weeks. My slightly post-dated temper has curdled into complete cynicism. As the summer weaned of July, I grew accustomed to having Cody around, and as the house grew fuller, I even began to accept the friendship of others like Owen. I kind of forgot how empty and mind-numbing the first weeks at the Playa were. The dark days.

I squeeze a blob of the ever-replenished hotel brand shampoo into my palm.

What's different now? I have Cody, still, but his presence seems more of a distraction than a reward. I feel as though we are all imprisoned in our little cells here. As much as I didn't enjoy Harold's sleep-talking, Owen's gas, and DJ's random night terrors, the cramped quarters at camp Wawanakwa were at least familial – never alone, for better or for worse.

Maybe since I grew up in such a full house, the idea of being alone all the time bothers me once it loses its novelty. As much as I love to escape into my bedroom with a book, as much as the child version of me would hide away wherever he could fit just to be away from the bustling cavalcade of children in his house, my desire for solitude was always borne from a need to escape crowding. If there's no one to escape from, the solitude is not a privilege, but a requirement.

Well, I'm not entirely alone. I have Cody. That was enough for a big chunk of the summer. And eventually the others will get here, one by one, and it will be like a big party again, and I'll be dying to spirit myself away to my room once more. With a book. With myself. Just myself.

Until then, I have Cody.

As much of him as I deserve.

I sigh as the foamy water cascades down my shoulders, slowly running clearer. I grab conditioner.

Of course I need to think of this, here in the shower. How cliché to have your deep internal monologues in the shower.

So last night Cody made my heart almost flutter like a bitch for the first time in a while. I'm not sure why he suddenly got weird like that, but if I remember correctly I already decided to give up on such false hopes a while ago.

He stood close to me and didn't want me to leave his room. Does that mean something?

To be fair he also kissed me almost a month ago and we never brought that up again, and I still have my doubts that he was drunk enough to forget anything, let alone something so dramatic.

Sometimes I believe Cody is a seven-year-old who has no conscious recognition of the external world, who doesn't have an internal monologue of his own, and simply acts without narration, without question. I like to believe he's too kind to troll me, or even too dim to know enough about my feelings to be able to troll me.

I like to believe that he'll always be the way he is, too simple to be cryptic yet cryptic all the same. I like to believe I can feel like I love him without acting like I do.

And sometimes, I believe my so-called false hopes about his intentions are actually false fears. For as cynical as I am, I've grown to love his presence, exactly as is, with all those tiny moments of 'maybe', blanketed in the far more numerous moments of 'probably not'. And I don't want that to change. I know what it feels like to kiss him, and I will never forget. We managed to survive, completely intact, from that incident, and I'm rather unwilling to pull such a stunt again. That's enough.

I could mentally check off all the times in literature where the power of unrequited love is even stronger than loved returned, but as I said, that's enough.

I'm not going to go down that road, I give up. And not 'give up', in the defeated, surrendering way, but in the sense that, as I did during the summer when I 'allowed myself' to fall for him, I will simply 'allow' this entire Total Drama Action fiasco to slough off of me without impact.

I am a boy coated in Teflon. Total Drama Action is the greasiest, yolkiest eggs ever laid. Can't stick to me.

One egg for 'I love Cody', one egg for 'God I'm bored', one egg for 'I can't win money'.

Crack these metaphorical eggs onto my surface, fry them sunny-side up or leave them on the heat til they denature and brown to a crisp.

And I'll just stay there, being a pan.

Oh my God, I think I read too much. That was a ridiculous analogy.

I think I spent enough time in the shower. I turn off the water and yank a (very white) hotel towel down from the shower curtain bar. Quick pat-down, wrap up my hair like a gay little queen, fresh underwear, check phone again.

Molly MacMullin – 8:59 AM: HAPPPYYYYYYYY BIRRRTHDDDAAAAAAAYYYYYYY !

I snicker.

Mom – 9:02 AM: Don't know if you're up but I'm going to be late for work. Happy birthday to my BIG little boy! We miss you XOXO. My youngest is a year away from adult, I feel sooo old

And my smile widens. If there's someone who can scrape down my armour of icy sarcasm, it's my parents. They're essentially sweethearts.

My initially bitter and pessimistic expectations for my seventeenth birthday soften somewhat. I blow-dry my hair, combing it into my signature style which is a classic combo of 'kinda gay' and 'pretty nerdy' but comes together in a way which I can describe as 'mostly satisfactory'.

With my hair mostly dry, I open the bathroom door to be greeted by two things: a gust of unpleasantly frigid air, and a sheet of paper on the floor near the door. I didn't look at it before I entered the washroom, yet somehow I feel it was there before I ever stepped into the shower.

It's face down. I bend over to pick it up.

It's a single sheet of hotel stationary. Scrawled in blue ink with the classic slanted-and-smeared style evident of a lefty, it says:

'Noon today, lobby, near that weird jar of coffee beans that's there for no reason'

And the birthday bitters become another step less bitter.

The reflective bronze doors of the elevator slide open with a ding and I step into the tiled hallways of the hotel lobby. I round the corner, coming to the little awkwardly-placed table, covered by various pamphlets advertising local attractions and, of course, the mysterious vase of coffee beans in which a single false flower rests.

I curiously grab a couple of coffee beans from the vase and squeeze them in my hands, attempting to extract the fragrance into the oil of my hand.

"Noah."

I turn suddenly to see Cody and shove the coffee beans into my pocket.

"Hey." I say weakly. He exudes excitement through an ear-to-ear grin. "Why are you so happy?"

"Because we're going to have fun today."

"Not if Chris and his goons have anything to say about it." I say, exasperated.

He grabs my wrist and brings his face somewhat close to mine. I hate to admit I flush.

"Some staff members of the show have their eyes on the lobby at all times, of course." He says. I give a puzzled look. He gets a little closer, coming as close to whispering in my ear as he can without it looking suspicious to an outsider. "Every day from 11:30 to 12:30, a guy comes in to check the pH level of the pool. He comes in through the small side door on the pool level. It opens up to a sort of gravel pit, there's a shack, and then a little staircase that leads into an alley."

I don't understand his plan fully, but I see enough to feel nervous. "We're gonna make a run for it!?" I whisper anxiously.

"Just for a few hours, then we'll be back. I mean what's Chris gonna do about it, kick us out of the competition?"

I laugh because it's the closest Cody's ever come to successful sarcasm, even if the result wasn't quite sarcasm. He keeps a grip on my arm.

"Come on!"

We shuffle back to the elevators, quite silently. He presses floor 1.

"No one will notice?" I say, just to be certain.

"Inside sources tell me that today's an elimination day on set. They've got bigger fish to fry than two fugitives, I think." He turns to me to give a gap-toothed smile.

When we reach the next floor, we creep through the hallway discretely. This operation requires the highest level of espionage to be pulled off properly. We slowly peer around the corner, through the glass door that leads to the pool.

The place is deserted.

We scramble into the pool room, over the tiled pool deck, to the other edge where the service door is left unlocked. The serviceman's toolbox is on the edge of the pool, but he is nowhere to be found.

"I feel bad about wearing outdoor footwear on the pool deck." Cody whispers.

"Cody, we're essentially breaking house arrest here."

After one more quick visual sweep of the area, we slip out the door, locate the staircase, and rush into the narrow alleyway between the two sections of building. One last look behind up, and we run onto the back street.

"We made it! I haven't figured out how to get back in again, but we made it!"

"So where are we going, anyway?" I ask him.

"I dunno. What is there to do in Muskoka?"

"We should have grabbed the pamphlets off the literally coffee table." I groan. "And by the way, wherever we go, we have to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. Like please, no eye contact with strangers, especially those in the 10-18 demographic…or whatever demographic our show was directed at."

"I catch you."

"So once again, what is there to do in Muskoka?"

"I dunno. Fishing."

"Please, just execute me instead."

The voice in my head that says 'it's your birthday' never stays quiet for long, yet it never causes me to outwardly mention the date's significance. The voice begins to utter a second part to the phrase: 'It's your birthday – and you're spending it with him."

The downtown area of this medium-sized Muskoka town is more of one long commercial street, aptly named Commercial Street. Along this street lie a few staple shops, like at least two Tim Horton's. A few clothing shops, a Chinese food place, a Shopper's Drug Mart, and some old department stores that are probably leftovers from the 1930s, with tall, wooden storefronts.

Cody and I visit a thrift shop nestled in a tiny nook between an auto parts store and the second Tim Horton's. It isn't the kind of thrift store where you find the kind of vintage gems hipsters go nuts over, but rather, the kind of place overweight people leave their old clothes when they finally drop the pounds – where half the inventory has been forgotten and untouched by their owners since Cody and I were toddlers, finally hauled into the light just to get stuffed into another bin.

There are books in there, but I don't have the space for any more books. Besides, these books are rigid from water damage, and mildew-specked. And among them are a few old dieting books, which furthers my explanatory hypothesis as to why most of the clothes here are at least size 14.

The only items in good quality are baby accessories, which get used for a few months before they're outgrown, and pass through many small hands before they wear out.

Cody shuffles through a small section of old video games, but most are CD-ROMs inside crushed cardboard packaging, along with two or three educational Arthur the Aardvark games which probably can't even run on anything more recent than Windows 2000.

We high-tail it out of there without making a purchase. We're low on cash anyway, so accustomed to getting our food mostly for free.

Cody nudges my arm. Across the street, there is a cinema – a small one. Empire 4 or 5 or something. I usually only see Empire Studios 8 – 8 projection rooms. The cinema seems almost pocket-sized, jammed beside a Pizza Pizza. It's strangely quaint.

I take note of why Cody nudged me. On the marquee, the letters spell out: 'Inglorious Basterds – 3:40, 6:10, 9:20'

"That seems like a film you would like." He tells me.

I try not to get excited. "Of course, I can't say I enjoy mindless violence and movies filled with shooting…" I turn to look at him. "But….I suppose I could make some concessions." I add sarcastically.

The popcorn costs its weight in kobe beef, but it's worth it.

At a little café-like shop at the end of the main street, likely the only such shop that isn't Tim Hortons, Cody and I sit face to face at a rickety patio table. It had been a bit cloudy earlier today, but now, at six-thirty or so, the sun is washing warm, red light across the road.

"I hated the part where Brad Pitt put his finger in the girl's bullet wound. I almost wanted to throw up." Cody says, as he looks down uncomfortably at his chicken on rye.

"In a movie where dozens get scalped and a hundred get shot, you're grossed out by the finger thing?"

"I dunno! It just made me really queasy."

I pick a sprout from my sandwich and toss it in my mouth. "It was everything I'd hoped it would be." I chuckle, before taking a swig of my coffee. I take the cup in both hands and form a cheesy smile.

"I actually had…" I lower my voice, lest someone hear me being positive for a change. "I had a good time today. We should sneak out more often."

He offers a gap-toothed smile, as if my entertainment was his entire goal today. "I'm glad! I don't know if I should let the others know about the little window of escape. If too many people use it too often, it will get obvious."

He scratches his scalp and glances behind his head. "I think I'm gonna go pee." He says abruptly.

I nod imperceptibly and watch him get up and enter the restaurant. Today was like the perfect first date that wasn't. As if the time I spent at home, and worse, in the hotel, was lifted off of me like a fog. Just me and him strolling along the streets of this marginal and nameless town.

I wish it could be like this for a long time. I wish I could take him back to my hometown and have him meet all my friends at school. They'd pick on him, I'm sure, but he'd find his niche. One day, they'd be discussing a topic he knows a lot about. He'd go on a long tirade and they'd be so impressed by his knowledge. They'd say, 'man Noah, he's kind of awkward, but you chose a good one, after all." And we'd go to prom together, even though he's in eleventh grade, which would be awkward because since I'm in Student Council and Honour Society I'd probably be pretty close to the front of the line when we red-carpet. And maybe he can meet my family too when I get the balls to tell them about me.

I cancel my reverie as Cody comes back through the glass doors, taking his place across from me.

"I wonder how we'll slip back in." he says absently.

"We can scale the walls. Well, you can. Just toss me a harness and pull me up." I dip a finger in the dropped vinegar on my plate.

"If I can stop Tyler, DJ and Owen from careening off a cliff then I'm sure I can pull, what, 135 pounds of you up the side of a building."

"Um, I'm 131 pounds! Offended much." I jab.

He snickers. "We had a good day."

"What?" I say, as his words were a bit off-topic. A shadow falls over our table, and out of the blue a plate with a miniature cake is set in front of me.

"It's the least I can do."

The surprise-cake is enough to send a jolt of happiness that gets caught in my throat.

"I like chocolate myself." He says. "But you said once, that," He stumbles over words. "That you like red velvet, and I assumed you meant cake unless you meant the fabric but like, that's kind of random to tell someone what your favorite fabric is, it's not like I'll make you pants for your…"

I stare at him throughout his diatribe with a hint of admiration.

"I mean. Eh. Happy Birthday." He pulls a matchbook out of his pocket. "I don't have candles. I just..just blow on the match, I guess."

The first match he strikes is immediately extinguished by the wind.

"I didn't tell you today was my birthday." I say.

"Yeah you did, remember how…" he tosses the burnt-out match and selects a new one. "Remember how it was Lindsay's birthday, the day after the crew came for the 'how are the losers doing episode' I think. Remember? And everyone had cake and stuff for her birthday, and you said something like, I feel bad for folks with summer birthdays 'cause their friends from school always forget about 'em."

Distracted by his speaking, he burns his finger on the second match. "Yeouch! Anyway. You said your sister or someone had a birthday in July and it always sucked for her because her friends would always be doing stuff and not able to have a party that day. And then I said that having a birthday on April Fools is way worse, cause it is."

I nod. "It is."

"And then you said that you don't mind having your birthday at the start of the school year, even if it makes you younger than most of your classmates. Or something like that. I don't remember how it went, I just remember that you said September 9th was your birthday. And I made an effort to not forget that because…" he finally successfully lights the third match, shoving it into the centre of the cake and shielding it with his hand.

"Because…it really sucks to be forgotten on your birthday." He looks at me with the most sincere look in his eyes. The melting of my heart makes up for our lack of candlewax. Another horrid metaphor.

"Now blow this out because I can't just shield it forever."

I smile silently, take a deep breath, and blow.

"Happy birthday, dear Noah, happy birthday to you." He whispers melodically. "I thought you might get pissed if I sang out loud."

"You know me well."

"What did you wish for?" He says, as he readjusts himself back in his seat.

"I can't tell you that." I say coyly.

I'd like to recount how the evening went after we managed to weasel our ways back into the hotel, but I feel as though despite my extensive vocabulary I'd be hard-pressed to find words to adequately explain the bizarre mix of awkwardness yet calm affection.

It was late in the evening when Cody decided to finally vacate my bedroom, and, in a manner identical to last night, we insisted on performing our pointless tango in which we can't decide whether we actually want to leave the room or not. He had his fingers on the lock when we stood in the doorway. He turned to me; his lips twitched. The tiniest grumble came from in his throat, but the sound was far from words.

We stood so close that our noses nearly touched, or at least my large proboscis invaded his personal bubble to some degree. And as is expected of me, I staunchly refused to go for the kill in any way, shape, or form, unwilling to destroy the false promise of a birthday wish so quickly. Although I can't help but feel as though my body softened a little towards him, as if the side facing him was being melted into malleable paraffin while my back-side remained stiff.

Before I had the chance to do anything stupid such as closing my eyes, he broke the short and dense silence: "Oh, by the way…"

He pulled out a card, plain folded paper, with crude smiley faces wearing pointed party hats. The H in 'happy' was coloured in a different marker than the other letters, likely because the first ran out of ink as evidenced by the faint beginnings of an 'a'.

I was happy when he gave it to me. I was happy all day. I felt as though I didn't need anything else for this to be a good birthday. So after another brief instant of us awkwardly staring at each other, he stuttered 'happy birthday!' and backed out the door. I said see you tomorrow.

Then I laid on my bed and saw that being a fool, I didn't take my phone with me on my excursions today. Three missed calls, seven people texted me. The calls are from some of the sibs.

And that's where I am now, on this shitty bed as the hours fade away on my seventeenth birthday. Cody's card is resting on my stomach and I'm staring at the ceiling. I really freaking love Cody, just thought I'd mention that. He went out of his way to make my birthday as nice as it could be given the circumstances, and he succeeded. I unfold the card again. It doesn't say anything special. It doesn't contain an encrypted love note. But I still stare at it intently, as if the note is written in disappearing ink and I might just notice it if I stare long enough.

And then I realize I kind of don't care because even without the love note, this birthday was great.

My phone begins to vibrate: 'Incoming Call – Michael Khosla'

My brother. So it begins.

Took me long enough, ugh. I am a bit squished here with these chapters because Noah doesn't do anything in Action. Birthdays are so special to me, no one wants to have a shitty birthday. And tomorrow, (July 17) is my fanon birthday for Geoff so it's an appropriate time to submit this chapter I guess.