1000 Reasons To Smile

Chapter 17: Circo Mortuorum

      "Flynn!" I turned around when I heard someone call my name, my eyes searching for whoever it was. Then, through the heavy crowd, I see Nathan jog up to me, and I grin. 

   "Hey, what's up?" 

   He shrugs. "Nothing much...I just wanted to apologize for, um, you know, what happened, and I never got the chance to." 

   I rose an eyebrow, but then realize that he's talking about the incident that happened where I'd gotten shot, which seemed ages ago, but in reality was only a couple weeks ago. 

   "Why would you apologize?" I asked, confused.

   Nathan shuffled his feet, seemingly uncomfortable. "Well, because if you didn't have to drop me off, then none of that would've happened."

   I shook my head. "No, man. First off, I wanted to drop you off, and second, there's no way you could have prevented me from getting shot. Besides, the wound wasn't even that bad, it just knicked me."

   "Yeah, but still-" Nathan started. 

   "No," I cut him off. "It's not your fault, so don't even try to blame yourself, okay?" Nathan shrugged, but didn't say anything else. 

   "Hey Flynn, hey Nathan." Peyton said, thankfully breaking the tension that had risen between Nathan and I. I like Nathan, don't get me wrong, it's just that sometimes he can be a bit...awkward, and give off that 'don't talk to me' vibe. 

   "Hey Pey, what's up?" I asked, casually swinging my arm around her shoulder. I saw Nathan's eyes flicker to the arm I had around her, before going back to her face and saying hi. What was that? I thought. 

   "Nothing much," Peyton said back, nudging me on the side.

   "Ow!" I complained-even though it didn't actually hurt-and looked at her. She looked at me, then to the side. Confused, I looked to where she had been looking, and noticed Emma. 

   "Oh, hey Emma!" I said, slightly embarrassed that I hadn't noticed her earlier. But, you can't really blame me. I mean, I'm not saying that she's the type of girl that nobody would notice, but more like she tries for them not to notice her. She's always looking down, her hair covering her face, and scrunching up her shoulders so that she looks smaller then she already is. She always wear really bland colored types of clothes, all over-sized and baggy. I'm not going to lie, though, she looked very hot at the M&M party a couple weeks ago. 

   "Hey," She murmured back. 

   "Okay, I lied." Peyton announced, suddenly. 

   I frowned, "What?" 

   "I lied," She stated again. "You asked what's up, and I said nothing, but something is up! Want to know what it is?" 

   "No," Nathan and I said at the same time, making me chuckle, Nathan smirk, Peyton pout, and Emma try to hide a laugh. 

   "Just kidding, Peylien. What is it?" I say. 

   "Well..." She says, taking a deep breath, as if getting ready to launch a speech at us. "I walking to the store to pick up milk, and as I was coming home I noticed something on the noticeboard they keep up outside. And guess what it was? It was a flyer for a carnival! It looked so cool, so I read through it and it said that Circo Mortuorum-that's what the carnival is called-is coming here in four days, which'll be on Friday, and all of us have to go!" She stopped talking, took a deep breath, then continued. 

   "I already checked the ticket prices, they're fifteen dollars per person, but if you have a group of eight or more then it'll be eighty dollars total, which is way less than paying individually, so it can be me, you, Holly, Emma, Messy, Cole, Nathan, and one more person! I don't know who but we'll figure that out later."