Stormbreacher - Book 1 of Titanomachy Series

Chapter 7: Nerds and Insanity

The rest of the day was boring; so boring I'm not even going to talk about it. Actually, the next few days were also pretty boring in general. Nothing happened besides Aunt Kia visiting every two hours, it felt like, and talking with Carlos and Stinger. Not that talking with Carlos is bad—I really like him. He's a nerd, and I like nerds. You can talk to them for hours, even if you're not into the same stuff they are.

As for Stinger? Well...honestly, I don't know what to say or think about him. He's completely immature and childish, let's not fool ourselves, but I seriously can't tell if that's just his personality or if he actually does have the mind of an eight-year-old. I say this because, even though Stinger certainly isn't the wisest guy in the world, he isn't petty. And he isn't especially stupid. I mean, presumptively, you'd have to have some level of intelligence to escape the Project: Basilisk place that he came from, right?

I tried to broach the subject with him a couple times, to no avail. Every time I tried, Stinger would get really sheepish and tell me that he'd talk about it later. And then he'd usually remove himself from the conversation and run off somewhere, usually out my window. And it pissed me off every time he did that.

How the hell do I get him to talk...?

It did mean that Stinger wasn't intentionally trying to piss me off as much, so there was at least something positive about it.

One day, he returned from moping around outside absolutely covered in cotton candy, somehow, and with a massive grin on his face. He looked more like a pink sheep than a dragon. "Athena! Athena!! You won't believe what I found!" He squealed, bouncing all over my desk and flinging pink cotton candy all over the place. The walls, the floor, the shelf, the bed—nothing was spared.

I had to grab Stinger and plop him down in an empty box to contain the cotton candy explosion. "No. No, I don't believe I will." I grumbled. "How did you get so much cotton candy on yourself?! Look at what you did to my room!"

Stinger poked his head out of the box. "Oh. Uh...sorry. Sorry, Athena. But look at this!" He ripped a piece of cotton candy stuck to his wings and excitedly shoved it into his mouth. "You can eat it! You can eat all of it!"

"Yes, I know that you can eat it. I've eaten cotton candy before, genius!" I snapped. "Where did you get so much? You've become a cotton candy bomb."

"I found it in this awesome place! Everything had lights, and they were glowing, and blinking, and shining! There were so many happy people!" Stinger's scales shone an ecstatic sunshine as he struggled to get out of the box. "And, Athena, there was this biiiiig wheel that was spinning! And there were people on the wheel, too!! I don't know how they got on, but they—"

It took me a few moments to figure out what the hell he was talking. "Ohhh, the boardwalk. You mean the boardwalk." I said. "That's how you found the cotton candy."

"Yeah!!" Stinger twisted his tail up to his mouth and bit off another piece of candy. "It's so cool! Can I show you, Athena! What if I went to show you? And then we got more cott candy or whatever it's called!"

I thought for a moment. I'd gone to Veridian's boardwalk once or twice—it was honestly kinda lame, and sometimes a little gross. But it was alright, if you wanted to just crash and do nothing for an evening.

"I mean, I'd have to ask Mom, but I guess we could go. There's nothing stopping us." I said begrudgingly. "It's not that incredible, but sure."

"What do you mean, it's not that incredible?! It's so cool!" Stinger shrieked. "Go ask your mom! Please! I really super wanna go!!"

"Sure! Fine! Stop begging, and I'll go ask! But only if you go clean yourself off in the bathroom!" I opened the door to the hall and pointed towards the door. "Second door on the right. Get out of here."

Stinger zipped out of the room before I left myself. Mom was out on the kitchen island doing paperwork—which wasn't a great sign for our boardwalk expedition. Persephone was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey? Mom?" I asked, presenting myself with almost a business-like manner. "I had an idea for something fun everyone could do if you're not busy. You know, since the past few days have been a little nuts."

Mom didn't bat an eye away from her paperwork. She had a calculator next to her—I assumed it was taxes or rent or something. "Well, I am busy, but I technically don't need to do any of this paperwork until July. What's your idea?"

"I say...we go to the boardwalk."

Mom frowned, and lifted her dark eyebrows. "And how long do you plan on going?"

"Until Christmas."

Mom snorted, but she then met my gaze without humor. "Seriously, Athena."

"Well...I'm not sure. Maybe around...eight?"

"Persey goes to bed around then. Or at any rate, she's supposed to."

I shrugged. "And? She can't stay up a little past her bedtime?"

"Nope." Mom shook her head. "We'll come back at seven-thirty."

"But I don't like the boardwalk, Mommy!!"

"I don't believe you, Persephone."

"You should!!"

Only Persephone could ruin a perfectly fine day at the boardwalk. Or just a perfectly fine day in general. "She's why we can't have nice things," I whispered into my sweater. Stinger chuckled and squirmed underneath, causing me to hiccup uncomfortably.

We had decided to walk to the boardwalk, since it was only a few blocks away and there was a massive traffic jam blocking the roads leading up to the boardwalk (which, let's face it, had probably been there for like three years). I had drifted way ahead of Mom and Persephone on the way there so they wouldn't notice the large lump of Stinger fidgeting on my belly. Unfortunately, they would notice that I was wearing a sweater on a fairly warm evening, and there wasn't a lot I could do about that. Long pants were too hot, my shorts were too short, and my t-shirts were too thin. Wearing a lighter hoodie wasn't going to work, either—every time Stinger tried to crawl inside, his weight was enough to pull the collar back and choke me.

The Veridian Seafront Boardwalk is kinda...meh, like I said. The part with all the rides and stuff is fairly big and spans a little under ten blocks, I'll give it that, but there isn't really a whole lot on it. There are only two proper thrill rides—the wooden and probably unsafe Hot Dawg roller coaster and the Tower of Gods that goes up like a hundred and fifty feet or something, but other than that, the only other thing that you could do was burn cash on bad souvenirs or, if you were really insane and don't care about breaking actual laws, you could also trespass and check out the abandoned buildings on the south side of the boardwalk. I am not insane.

Apparently Stinger was, though. "Athena? I saw some super old buildings on the other side of the boardwalk. And I wanna go see them. Can we, please?"

I slouched with a groan. You just can't win around here.