Wings of Fire: Jade High School

You Mean Adorable!

Turtle

"Hey, Turtle, is this a good paragraph?" Kinkajou shoved a piece of lined paper in his face.

"Gah!" Turtle swatted at the sheet to rid it from his facial region, reaching out to grab it. He looked down in dismay at the slight touch of drool imprinted from his face onto the paper. "Oh, yeah," he said after doing a quick scan of the essay. "That's a keeper."

Kinkajou looked relieved. "Good. Cause I don't wanna write another one. I already spent all night working on it. It was awful. I don't care about what happened to Columbus during World War 2!" 

Turtle didn't have the heart to tell her how extremely wrong that was. He was pretty sure she was supposed to writing about what methods the Native Americans used to hunt Buffalo, and the rest was self-explanatory. 

"Anyway," Kinakjou continued on as she stuffed her essay into her binder. "That's that done." She glanced at the clock. "Ugh. Why does study hall take so long? Turtle, give me something to do."

"Umm... I don't know." A tiny thread of a thought floated into his brain. Kiss me? Probably not. "How about you write a story or something?"

Kinakjou tapped her finger to her chin. "I like it. How about 'The Epic Adventures of Kinkajou' for a title?" She looked at him expectantly. 

"Perfect." He gave her a thumbs up. Turtle watched her pull out her school-owned laptop. She'd pretty much vandalized it. The device was covered from head to toe in rainbow and star stickers. And glitter. Lots and lots of glitter. 

"I'll make sure to show it to you when it's done. It's gonna be epic! Like, you know, the title suggests." The bell rang, and all the students started to gather their things. "Aww. I didn't even get to start. Well, time for lunch!" She slipped her laptop back into her bag and gestured for him to follow. "Come on! I wanna go eat! I heard it's mystery meatloaf!"

"Great! Just great..."

+          +          + 

Turtle kept eyeing Winter as he ate his turkey sandwich. It was terribly awful that he packed his own lunch while Kinkajou enjoyed her mystery meatloaf, she kept saying. Turtle didn't know if she could agree with her. At least the other male at his table agreed with him. 

Winter completely ignored his food, continuously staring off into the distance. Turtle didn't even know why he kept sitting with them. Maybe there was nowhere else to sit? That's gotta suck. Or maybe...  What if he likes Kinkajou? He narrowed his eyes at Winter. Thankfully, he didn't seem at all interested in the peppy teen sitting across from him. In fact, the more Turtle focused on him, he realized that Winter looked a lot more flustered than usual. From Turtle's experience, Winter was not the easily flustered type. 

Being the brave one, Turtle whispered to Kinkajou, "Does Winter look different to you?" Kinkajou raised one slim eyebrow, then looked over at their cold-hearted colleague. 

"Well, he should be embarrassed," She mumbled, her eyes narrowed. 

"What?" Now Turtle was curious.

"Well, he should. He ruined my sleepover. Just ask him."

He took a deep breath. "Uh... Sure. Yah, I got this." Turtle turned to Winter, who had now locked eyes with him. "So, what did you do, uh, this time?" That came out a lot weaker than he expected it to be. Huh. Maybe he wasn't as brave as he thought.

Winter glowered at him like he did every day. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

Kinakjou scoffed, "Let yourself think that. Tell him what you did." Turtle put a hand to his forehead, confused with his friend's behavior. Kinkajou didn't get mad (or experience anything other than happiness) very often, from what he could remember. 

Now Turtle was eager to figure out what his classmate had done. Winter finally said, "Alright, alright. I may have kinda crashed their slumber party." Kinkajou raised an eyebrow. "Ok, fine. I did. But it wasn't my fault! I was being a good student! Icicle and I came in early, and you and Moon happened to be sleeping in the library, along with some other girls, and honestly, you should be the ones punished!" He rambled on, his hands waving in the air. Qibli had once told Turtle that Winter tended to use exaggerated hand movements when he was defending himself. How he noticed that, Turtle would never know. 

Next to him, Kinkajou had stopped paying attention a while ago. "Blah, blah, blah," she said through a mouth full of meatloaf.  "I'm just trying to figure out if it was all worth it to see your face when you saw Moon. Her expression was pretty priceless too."

For the first time since, well, forever, Turtle saw Winter's face turn beet red, an odd combination with his normally pale face and snow white hair. "What are you talking about?"

"Sometimes I'm the smart one, and that kinda scares me. It's so obvious that you like her. And honestly, I think she kinda likes you too. As much as I am mad at you right now, I can't help but marvel over how cute you to would be as a couple." Wow. While Qibli might notice things that most people couldn't, (Or didn't care much about to be frank) Kinkajou had the eyes of a hawk when it came to seeking out potential romance. And that meant she would have noticed him by now. Turtle heaved an internal sigh.

Meantime, Winter's had turned an even brighter shade of red. All he could do was stammer out a series of ums and uhs, before going quiet and staring out the window. Kinkajou beamed. 

Turtle shook his head. "Heartless," he mumbled. Kinkajou shook her head. 

"You mean adorable!" 

Author's Note

Heyo!! I never realized how fun it was to write Winterwatcher! Buuuuuuut... I still love Moonbli. I've been getting a lot of inspiration from Hallmark! Cheesy romance movies are to... awesome. I've been watching a super cute one that genuinely broke my heart. It's called "Royally Ever After." 

Ooo! And one more thing! I need you guys to decide which story you want me to update! A New Perspective, or Glistening Amber? It's up to you guys! 

Make sure to vote, comment, and follow if you like what you see!