SO UM. I'M BACK.
I can blame it on two things A) SCHOOL. B) Wattpad. My Wattpad had exploded, my stories peaking up in pupularity and also the fact that I manage a trailer and cover shop it's a bit taxing to update...not to mention the writer's block. But nonetheless, I'm back and I made the cover! What do you think of the cover?
ahahahaha. don't kill me.
Disclaimer: I do not own shit.
Chapter 5
"Minimized Casualties"
Jason
Leo was still asleep, snoring loudly and drooling on his pillow when I crawled back into my bed. I stripped myself out of the clothes soiled in strawberry champagne and pulled the covers of my bed over my head to grab several hours of sleep before the day started.
But I didn't have the chance to sneak in so much of a wink when five minutes later I was woken up with a horn blasting in my ear, cold stinging water splashed on my head and Coach Hedge screaming in my face.
"Get up!" he hollered as he pulled my blankets off my bed and threw it onto the floor. Blearily, my eyes snapped open and before I had a chance to groggily remember where the fuck am I at, he yanked me by my shirt, then imitated the same gesture by tossing me onto the floor like a sack of flour. I landed painfully on the linoleum floor, groaning. "Get your ass changed and down by the courtyard in five!"
I barely knew what was going on through the receding haze of exhaution, except a burly extremely short buff man dressed in an orange polo shirt and gym track shorts was standing over me, thoroughly pissed off.
"I said get off your ass!" Spit landed on me, giving me my shower already.
"Okay...okay…" I mumbled absentmindedly, half asleep as I scrambled onto my feet and hauled ass into the shower. The cold water woke me up instantly, like hail raining down my back as the water rushed over me. I quickly brushed my teeth, put on my gym shorts and an old t-shirt, chucked on my running shoes and sprint down the hall of boring beige walls and fluorescent lights.
It was a new kind of hell. The Wilderness School's morning routine was literal hell. It was some kind of communist workout regime where everybody had to be up by seven thirty, down at the courtyard ready for the ten kilometre sprint around the desert. I didn't even know it was a thing, or a customary tradition until the coach was shouting at me to get my ass down for the morning workout but apparently it was. Percy, Will, Nico, hell even Leo was on time, lining up single file at the courtyard where every student was assembling, dressed in running gear.
"Dude, you're so busted," whispered Leo as I arrived into the scorching heat.
"Now because of some stupid cupcake was late, we're behind schedule," barked the Coach. "So you'll be running extra five kilometres."
Everybody groaned and sent me evil looks. I bristled. How the hell was I supposed to know? Not to mention, it was totally unlogical. Shouldn't we be running less miles if we were running behind time? "Partner up and start running. Don't lose track of the trail and don't get lost! If you do, you're just causing me more paperwork."
I swallowed. Was the guy serious? And partners? I glanced around. Leo had partnered up with some guy named Jake, Percy was with Annabeth- no surprises there and Nico was with Will. Oh great, this was like gym class all over again.
"Hey baby, wanna be my partner?"
Piper was behind me, tapping my shoulder. She was also in gear; a pair of black running shorts and a tight bright orange tank. Her hair was pulled up into ponytail and she was wearing her signature smirk, which I've been accustomed to handling so I managed the sentence without stumbling. "Yeah, um, why not?"
She shot me a sly smile, eyeing me in my vest. "Oh and try to keep up, will you? I go really fast."
"Yeah- yeah, um, sure."
She took off before I even know we were supposed to start.
She wasn't kidding when she meant she was 'fast'. Her legs kept pumping, eating up the faint dust trail of the desert the school had laid out. We jogged from the school courtyard out from the open fences they've unchained at the outer quarters of the school to the unorchestrated wild horizons of the Arizona desert. She was so fast, the only thing I could follow was the back of her head- her dark mahogany hair was a speck of colour against the gold sands.
I've struggled to keep up, because I was more of the type who preferred the indoors than outdoors. I was a born San Francisco kid who moved to New York; the heat was stifling and it physically drained me, soaking me in sweat as I licked my lips, thirsty and criticizing myself for not bringing a bottle of water.
We ran until my legs started to ache over the strain of overexertion but Piper still kept going, her fists pumping as her music blasted in her ears. Music, I thought, my head picturing to my battered iPhone 4 sitting on his desk, bring it with you next time.
Finally, we stopped for a rest. Piper rested her body on a large sandy rock, gasping and panting as she poured water all over her, causing her skin to become slick and wet, glistening in the sunlight.
"Tired?" she smiled mysteriously.
"Exhausted."
She chuckled in spite of herself. "You might want to get in shape. The school makes us run like this...everyday."
I gawped at her. "Everyday?!"
"Exactly."
"So do I have to kill myself to get out of it or...?"
"Maybe. Come on, let's ditch this. I got something to show you."
I glanced across the endless horizons of blue sky and golden sand, feeling a lump form in my throat. "Won't we get lost?"
"You're with me," she whispered, locking hands with mine. I tried not to be hyper-aware, analyzing and over thinking every detail of her hands, how small and delicate they were, how her skin was surprisingly soft. "You won't get lost. And even if you did," her lips curled up to that mysterious smile of hers, as if they were hiding a bunch of secrets. She's such a mystery that even she doesn't understand herself. "Would that be so bad?"
She led me across the cacti, walking through the harsh desert land. It was terminally hot now with the sweat pearling down my neck, dribbling from my ears, making my hair stick to my damp forehead.
"Do you have...any...water?" I licked my parched lips just to hydrate. She nodded, unscrew the cap of her water bottle and handed it to me. I tilted it into my mouth and lapped it up like a starving child from Africa because goddamn it, we were in the place where it could pretty much melt the whole freaking Antarctica.
We kept walking until we were pretty sure done for because I was definitely convinced we were miles away from the school and we were now food for desert geckos. Eventually, we came about a large rock formation, like the Uluru in Central Australia, rising into the sky. it's dark earthen red colour contrasted with the robin blue sky.
"Wow."
"We're here," said Piper loftily, smiling at the rock. "This is my favourite place in the world."
"We're going to climb that?"
"Just a bit of it," she tucked in a loose strand from her ponytail. "It's a good view of everything. Come on."
If it wasn't for my utter fascination in her unpredictable, totally unprecedented outlook of life, I wouldn't have followed her- albeit reluctantly. Together, with scrapy hands and knees, we painstakingly ascended the rocky mountain. Piper helped me a bit because she was obviously an expert in coming out here but she didn't protest or call me a wimp when I had particular trouble with navigating through a slippery cliff.
We stopped at a point where the rock protruded out, like a ledge. Piper was right. The view was spectacular, priceless almost, and nearly worth the climb. Below us, birds circled. The sight stole the oxygen from his lungs. It was a thick expansion of orange gilded golden sand for miles, with rolling blue skies and faint earthy mountains in the distance. Green cactus dotted the landscape. She sat on the dusty ledge, smiling wildly as her legs dangle beneath the edge.
Piper Mclean was unlike any other girl I've ever met- I noticed this. She didn't looked like Annabeth, who was blonde, tall and athletically skinny- which wasn't a bad thing. Piper was petite, by the height of five foot three, but God, she was curvy. Her breasts strained against her neon orange tank top, a shade that made her bronze skin popped. While other girls were lanky and thinner than Piper, Piper had boobs. It's not like I never noticed girls had boobs before. But it was like I never learned how to appreciate the definite importance of curves until Piper crashed landed into my galaxy. She took off her running shoes, dumping them behind her, and balled up her socks, then placed them in her shoes. Her bare toes swung up and down, her rainbow painted toenails dancing and wiggling.
"Your nails are all painted a different colour."
"Fantastic observation," she commented, though I couldn't distinguish whether she was sarcastic. "I feel if I painted my nails all the same colour, I'd be discrimnating all the others." She extracted a cigarette pack from one of the pockets of her running shorts and lit it up.
"Want one?" She shook the box.
"Yeah sure."
"One last time, kid. The next you should buy your own cigarettes." I hated how she called me 'kid' in that patronising tone of hers, as if I was a ten year old kid who didn't understand what she's talking about. It was bad enough that I had an older sister who treated me like I was in kindergarten. I didn't need another one.
"Ha." Our cherry tips ignited and instantly smoke flew up into the day. Her eyes changed colour into the same shade of the desert rock; an amber-orange with flecks of honey gold.
"So," she exhaled, expelling a gust of smoke from her lips, "What's your story?"
"What? What story?"
She rolled her eyes, like my lack of knowledge and awareness exasperated her. "Your tale before the Wilderness."
"I don't have a story."
She gave me an odd look. "What are you on? Everybody has a story."
"Well, I doubt you want to hear it," I said. "It's terribly unextraordinary."
"Then bore me with it, Sparky."
"Uh, well I was born and raised in San Francisco."
"Let me stop you right there, Grace. I hate the word 'well'."
"How so?"
"Because 'well' is such a filler word. What does it do in your sentence? Absolutely nothing. Does it communicate the message you're supposed to get across? No. What's the point of saying 'well' other than saying how you're feeling?" She crossed her arms, impassioned about the subject. Her cigarette was perchrd in between her fingers as she stared at the hotizon, her jaw setting. "Well is just a word to make you sound more clever, or more superior, or making things more vague to sound smart. Well is a way to escape what you really want to say because you're afraid of how others will react."
"Damn." I uttered softly, surprised at her thoughts. "I never looked at it that way."
"Because you never bother with looking at all." Piper blew out a cloud, billowing in perfect smoke rings along with the dry wind. She giggled and smiled at the smoke rings disappearing, "God, I'm such a pretentious little shit."
"You're not."
She arched an eyebrow. "You're a pretentious little shit too, Grace. At least I'm not afraid to admit it."
"Well-" she shot me a cross look, "I'm a wimp. I'm easily frightened."
"That's true," she teased me. "It's okay- I'm afraid of things too."
"You, afraid?" I echoed; the possibility of Piper Mclean afraid struck me as well...a nonpossibity. "A girl like you shouldn't be afraid of anything."
"I'm afraid of boys with extremely large moustaches, funerals, butterflies and falling."
The first one made me laugh, the second was morbid, the third was conventionally conventional and the fourth was the one that stood out. "Do you mean heights?"
Her foot swayed back and forth the edge of the cliffs and drily looked at me, "Does it seems like I'm afraid of heights?"
"Not really," I admitted. "Why falling?"
"Just the thought of descending without any control scares the fuck out of me. Anyway, back on point; your story."
"Well-"
She glared at me.
"Okay, okay." I huffed, sucking my cigarette dry, "Born and raised in San Francisco, then I moved to New York just last year and-"
"Oh my God!" She exclaimed, "I meant the interesting stuff. You're, like, the worst storyteller. Ever."
"Fine, jeez. My parents are politicians-"
"Those soul sucking corporate moguls that everybody hates?"
"Yeah."
"See? That's interesting."
"-and my parents...I guess they can be harsh. They expect me to be the perfect one. Thalia's the fuck-up. So I have to set an example."
"Jesus," she widened her eyes- and it was strange that I fascinate her when she's a much more intriguing speciment. "That's fucked up. But at least they care- in a fucked up way."
"Why?" I prompted, looking at her. "What's up with yours?" I was an exceptionally slow smoker but Piper worked them through like they were water. It was barely ten minutes and she was already lighting another one.
"My mom left before I was born so it's a pretty self-explanatory that she's a cowardly bitch," shrugged Piper nonchalantly, "And my Dad..." she laughed sardonically, "He's not any better."
"He can't be so bad."
"He pretends he cares but he's never there. And it's like "Don't fuck things up, Piper" but what the hell I can't care enough to enforce you not to fuck up. He lectures me not to do shit but at the end of the day, he's pretty much like: do whatever the fuck you want. So I did. And that's how I end up here."
The words were out of my mouth before I could control them. "I'm sorry."
Piper didn't say anything except for: "I'm sorry too."
"For what?"
"That I can't give you what you want." She finished her second cigarette and looked at the one I'm halfway through. "You're going to finish that?"
"What do you mean you can't-"
"It means that kiss doesn't mean anything. It's just-" For once in my life of seeing her, she appeared uncomfortable, "-I do stuff like that. I do things on impulse, like kissing you. I hope you know it doesn't mean, well, anything."
I blinked back furious tears. "But...I thought you liked me..."
She sighed, "I do like you, Sparky. Goddamn it, you're adorable." I swear to God I hated the word adorable, or anything remotely synonymous, to the extent of Piper hating the word 'well'. "If I could, I'd take you to Vegas, marry you and consummate the hell out of you. But I...I'm a fuckup. I break everything I fucking touch and you-" she paused for a while to take a drag, "-deserve better. I'm minimizing the casualties. This is something to watch for before you start fantasizing about forever. Trust me, Sparky, I'll snap your heart into two like a twig."
"Maybe you're just saying that because you're afraid I'll break yours instead."
She laughed slightly, as if the suggestion was so ridiculous and silly. "Nobody breaks my heart." She glanced at her watch. "You know what? We should get back now- or not, we'll get both our asses whipped."
Throughout the whole way back, we didn't say anything else.
So, um, like how many John Green references did you catch? And please review. :)
-savvy.