Attention anonymous reviewers: STOP!
Making an FF account takes like 2 minutes.
I want to say hi to EVERYONE, but I cannot because SOME reviews do not have an email I can respond to! Come on people, be like Nike and Just Do It!
Also, for everyone who read Air and Stone, yes, this is going to follow the same Summer miniseries that I wrote. BUT it will have new chapters and revised events.
Drive Down
Torture.
One word to describe waking up and not having Toph say goodbye to him. One word to describe the hours of agonizing silence Aang had to put up with as Gyatso drove down.
The ride down was much longer than Aang thought is was going to be. His iPod did not have enough songs, nor did he bring a long enough book. Every minute when there wasn't music playing or something to read was another minute spent thinking of Toph's angry face.
"Dammit." He thought, thinking of how much he was going to miss her, even if she was mad at him.
Aang lost track of how many hours passed. He knew that they reached the Jersey border when a very strange smell filled the air, forcing Aang to roll up the car window.
He counted the bumps in the road on the highway, and the water towers when they got near their rented home.
He tried, his hardest, to forget Toph…but the cheek she slapped still stung when he thought about it.
"Here we are." Gyatso pull over to the side of the road (which was very wide, unlike the roads back home) and stopped the car in front of a beach house, several blocks away from the Atlantic shore.
The front lawn, where grass should have been, was covered in white rocks as pale as the moon. As pale as Toph's skin. Aang sighed.
The house itself was, ironically, in better shape than Aang's own home. The paint was fresh, the windows were clean, and the wood on the outside was intact and looked new.
The house had an empty feel to it, like it was an hollow grave not yet filled. But it was still nice. Nice enough to bring a smile to Gyatso's face.
"Not bad for a three month vacation, eh Aang?" Gyatso asked, already out of their little car.
"It's great." Aang barely glanced at the house.
"Well, let's get unpacked." Gyatso hobbled to the trunk and began taking bags out with the grace of a young man.
Aang sighed and got out to help him. He could feel the long, long, long summer ahead of him and he didn't want to spend it alone.
Toph sped down the highway, ducking in and out each lane , not caring if there were cops around.
"Move it!" She yelled at the people in front of her for having the nerve to drive 60 mph on a 65 mph highway.
She blasted her stereo up louder and her windows rattled. Extremely heavy music screamed out of her subwoofers.
She was angry. Usually, she only acted out for the hell of it, but now she was so mad that she conspicuously knew that her temper was veering out of control.
There was no one in the car seat next to her, no one she could call, and she wasn't driving to any particular destination.
She just needed to get out of her house…again. She needed time to think.