Diane Young [Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014]

Diane Young [19]

19

Elijah was carrying Duke. I really  missed Duke and I guess he missed me too because he jumped me.

"Hey Dukey toots!" I said after I had successfully caught him and was putting him in my hair. He squealed and I was happy. Elijah got up in front of me and brushed himself down.

"What do you want to talk about, then?"

And just like that, all the faux courage and confidence I had built up within me dissolved like sodium chloride in water. Instead of focusing on Elijah, I focused on Duke who was turning the same colour as my orange nail polish as I spoke.

"Oh, er, I-"

He looked at his watch. "There's a bus coming in three minutes."

"Shall we take it?"

"We could."

After he said this, we both just stood around and looked at each other. That is, until Elijah gestured in front of me, signalling he was waiting for me to go in front of him. I did and we made our way to the bus stop, where it said a bus was due. We waited for a few moments before boarding the bus and sitting down. At first, I wondered if he was going to sit away from me, but to my surprise, he sat next to me with ease.

I cleared my throat and began to speak. "Elijah West, I -"

"Let's not talk on the bus, Diane Young."

"Then when?"

"When we get off."

"... Where are we getting off?"

"When I want to."

I remembered the fact that it was useless to question Elijah West on journey's, because he'd never give a straight answer and instead opted for keeping locations secret. Soon enough though, I realised that we were heading towards the movie theatre's direction and looked to Elijah questionably. He met my gaze with a slight smile that I didn't know whether to return or not.

"Why are we heading here?"

"To get popcorn of course. Popcorn from a theatre is the best thing for talking to people. "

"Only if they have strawberry flavoured popcorn."

"But of course."

They didn't have strawberry flavoured popcorn, but they did have pink popcorn and that was kind of the same thing. Well, according to Elijah it was.

We were sat outside the theatre eating our popcorn in silence. He cleared his throat, I sniffled in response. When we had been silent for more than ten minutes, I sighed, figuring that it was getting ridiculous. 

"I just need to say I'm - Why didn't you tell me about Ellie?" I blurted out instead. He glanced over me with a neutral expression.

"Oh, you found out?"

"Yeah, today."

"And what did you do?"

"I- I didn't do anything. There's nothing for me to do?"

He shrugged. "If you say so."

"Why didn't you just straight up tell me though? Could've saved you a lot of odd situations where you withheld the information." I said. 

Elijah West turned towards me and grinned momentarily. "It was more fun watching you piece it together and flounder about with all the clues I dropped."