Hi, hi! Been veeeeerry busy lately, but I have been trying to write more. This chapter is a little longer than usual, and it's cute, so I hope that makes you all happy :) A lot of people are saying they want Jenny and Julian to kiss, and the only thing I can say is...everything in good time ;) Please review!

OoO

When Jenny awoke, her hair was stiff and twisted from hardened salt, and her lips felt chapped. She stretched out her sore muscles and blinked, surprised, at the slanted golden rays of late afternoon sun reaching from across the ocean.

"Julian…" Jenny looked to see her friend snoozing on the rock beside her, limps sprawled like a lazing jungle cat. "Julian, wake up. We slept…"

The white-haired boy stirred, dark lashes fluttering up to reveal sleepy, morning-sky blue eyes. "So we did," he muttered drowsily, bones popping as his arms stretched upwards.

"We'll be home late," Jenny pointed out, far less relaxed than her friend.

"No problem," Julian yawned, "we'll just call our parents from a payphone, tell them we're staying late after school or something."

"Okay," Jenny said, mollified. She saw no reason why Julian's idea shouldn't work; her parents trusted her, and she'd never done anything that would betray their trust…until now, that is. "Should we go catch the trolley?"

"Mm, that won't be necessary."

"Why not?"

"Because we missed it."

"Oh," Jenny said. I knew I was going to regret this.

"No need to worry though," Julian soothed, "we'll just catch the six pm. Want to get something to eat while we wait?"

"Well…" As if on cue, Jenny's stomach grumbled, "okay."

The boardwalk had grown cool and breezy as early evening set in. Jenny snuggled gratefully into the black-and-gray striped hoodie Julian had slid over Jenny's shoulders when he caught her rubbing her arms. They had a variety of options before them on the awakening boardwalk, from deep-fried hotdogs and milkshakes, to vegan brown rice sushi and kombucha. They picked a little table outside the "Raspberry Cafe"—a coffee and ice cream shop that Jenny's mother would refer to as "quaint." The middle schoolers made an executive decision to skip straight to dessert and ordered ice cream waffles. While they ate, waitresses giggled behind their manicured hands about what a cute little couple the fair-haired tweens were. Jenny made to correct them, but her mouth was full of waffle, and Julian was grinning.

"Oh, leave their illusion intact."

"Only if you stop stealing all the ice cream," Jenny bargained.

"Only if you stop being too slow," Julian retorted.

After paying for their sugar fix with combined lunch money, Julian dragged Jenny to his favorite place in Vista Grand: the Silver Ball Arcade, where a child could pay a five dollar entrance fee and play all the games he wanted for two hours. The employee at the turnstile, however, just let Julian in with a grin and a wink. Julian must be a very frequent customer, Jenny thought as she followed behind.

"When do you come here?" Jenny asked, since she and Julian always spent most of the day in or near each other's company.

"It's open all night, and sometimes I don't feel like sleeping," Julian explained with a shrug, "and anyway, this isn't the first time I've skipped school."

Jenny marveled at the refurbished wood-and-steel machines. They were all old-world originality and craftsmanship mitigated by shiny finishes and freshly installed lights and sound effects. Jenny's favorites were the pinball machines, peculiar ones with little wooden cut-outs that flipped up and down, spun around, and slid on tiny steel tracks in intricate, clockwork dances. With Julian, Jenny's dormant competitive streak always found a way out. They played side-by-side, battling the machine and each other for points and tickets.

"Hey watch this," Julian said. He flicked his fingers towards the game, and Jenny watched with wide eyes as the impossible occurred beneath the glass.

Directly in front of the gleaming metal ball, a circle of nothingness bloomed like a miniature blackhole. It existed for the briefest of seconds, disappearing when the ball tumbled in, but Jenny would never forget how its edges crackled with supernatural blue light, or how looking into it was like staring at an endless night sky from which all the stars had been erased. It was…wrong. Unnatural. A terrifying sort of magic. Julian was smiling as tickets spilled from the machine.

"Where'd the ball go?" Jenny demanded in a tight whisper, "Is it…gone?"

"Of course not," Julian looked at her with laughing eyes, "everything that disappears has to go somewhere. I just don't really care where."

"Don't do that again, okay?" Jenny said, "I like it when you make things, like that orb of light, but that was…"

"Darkness?" Julian's voice had gone curiously solemn, "It's like a double-sided coin, Jenny. You can't have light without darkness. Or vice versa."

Jenny shook her head; she didn't like this sort of talk. "It's just a trick anyway, right? Just for fun?"

Julian's good humor returned when he pulled the massive stream of tickets free from the machine's slot. "It's a good enough trick to get you that giant stuffed giraffe you've been eying."

So Jenny forced the incident from her mind; she felt a little silly for over-reacting to a small, harmless magic trick, because that's all it was, right? Briefly, she chastised Julian for cheating but, she accepted the giraffe regardless.

Incidentally, Jenny and Julian missed the last trolley. This time, Jenny wasn't even effected—it was just another mishap in a long line of amusing indiscretions. She and Julian stayed the night under the boardwalk, using their backpacks and Jenny's giraffe as pillows. The next day, they took the seven am trolley and went to school in their wrinkled clothes, salty and sandy and feeling as though they'd come back from another world.