Settling Slowly

Chapter 23 - Pantomime

I was of the opinion that the three of us looked absolutely ridiculous or like we were in a pantomime. So yeah. Ridiculous. First of all we'd casually walked around most of campus to find Danny – fortunately the weather was finally warming up a little, I mean, there were only a few days until March and that meant Easter and that meant chocolate. But that as not the point here. The point about the weather was that whilst I still had a hat and gloves on, my poor skirt-not-overly-clad legs weren't legsicles anymore.

Anyway, we'd eventually spied Danny in the gym doing kick boxing with some guy I had never taken the time to pay attention to before and still could barely remember what he looked like even though he'd been right in front of my eyes a moment ago. The gym doors were modern replacements of the old double arched doors and had a narrow pane of glass going from to bottom of both of them. I'd walked passed the door barely glancing inside, but the fight caught my eye and for a moment I'd simply watched thinking how simply awesome it would be to do something like that. Then I had an internal rant about my glasses and not being able to do anything awesome like that because of them and then I'd realised who I was staring at and leapt to the side out of sight.

Then I peered through the window again just to make sure.

"Guys," I hissed and waved them over.

"What?" Evan asked at normal volume.

"Shhh!" I hissed. "He's in there."

I peered back through the window. A moment later Evan carefully looked through the window as well, just as carefully as me and his head was just above mine. Then Luke put his head above Evan's, probably for comedic effect.

"I thought you said he boxed," Luke whispered.

"He does," I confirmed. "This is part of his training. When he was with Lex he only came to this gym on Mondays."

"He has more than on gym he goes to?"

"He likes the one in town. The twenty four hour one."

"A twenty four hour gym?" Evan asked, equally quietly and with a note of distaste. "What kind of person goes to the gym at, like, one in the morning?"

"Someone with tiny penis syndrome."

Danny and his partner stopped fighting and as one turned towards the doors. The three of us quickly pulled back and flattened ourselves against the wall.

"Do you think they saw us?" Evan whispered.

"I don't know," I said trying to not panic.

Because if both of them came this way, we were screwed. We needed to get Danny alone.

Carefully, and hardly daring to breathe, I peered through the window again. They were pausing for a drink. Then the other guy left the sparring ring.

"Go!" I whispered to Luke and Evan. "He's alone. Go!"

"What?" Evan asked.

In response I just grabbed his arm and pushed him through the door. Well, he was supposed to go through it; he kind of just splatted against it like a bug on a windscreen.

"Oh jeez," Luke muttered but pushed him the rest of the way through.

Once the door had closed and stopped flapping on its hinges I peered through again. Danny was sat stretching on the floor looking unconcerned even though Luke and Evan were still stood up. I kind of wanted to be annoyed about that, but yeah. He really didn't have much to worry about. Luke may have been into more guyish things than Evan and Scott – he loved paintball, went to see motor racing with his cousins and stuff like that – but he balked at confrontations as much as me. And Evan... well, he was Evan. He was almost as effeminate as me sometimes. Not in the way he dressed or anything like that, but he was... soft. Calm. The quiet one of the group.