***
"I think... Lani is border-line genius," Tait sighs contently. His honey-almond hair, currently in a cute little man-bun on top of his head, bobs around slightly. Because of the water it looks a few shades darker. Shaping his face, though, are loose strands of his usual colour which feather about it freely.
I dip my fingers into the water as my arms hang over the edge of my tube, floating down the lazy river called Castaway Creek. After a full-on day of thrill rides, water rides, and of course, kids rides, a relaxing float is just what we need to top off the day. I can just feel all my stress melting away into chlorine nothingness the longer I sit here with my butt jammed in this tube.
On second thoughts, will I be able to get my butt unjammed?
Pah. Let's leave future problems for the future.
Anyway, Lani rented us out a riverside Cabana - something she's done every other time we've come here - and with it came the usual buffet styled lunch. I'll be honest here and say that it was the highlight of my day.
"Border-line? This kid wants a black eye, doesn't he?" Lani scoffs, then proceeds to kick a baby tidal wave of water at Tait. Emerald eyes flash with glee as he attempts to spin in his tube and protect his face from Lani's onslaught of water.
"Knock it off, would ya?" Frowning as usual, Elijah lifts his leg, and in one effortless shove, puts a few more feet of distance between him and Tait. "The fact you're still bouncing with energy exhausts me more, you twit," Elijah grumbles.
"Leave him be, Elijah. He probably ate too much sugar again," Marc smirks as his tube bumps into mine. "Hi, hun." I grin back at him in reply.
"What are you, a kid?" Lorenzo snorts. "Getting on a sugar high is very childish, and not manly at all." He brushes his hair from his face, running his fingers through it as he does, imitating some models I've seen from several of Jamie's countless magazines.
The previously calm waters are kicked up as a water fight ensues, initiated by Lorenzo's teasing. Connor, the only person other than myself who didn't get dragged onto the battlefield, floats closely beside me. "I really can't hate them," he mumbles so quietly I almost don't catch it. A little voice in my head tells me he was talking to himself, but I ignore that bugger.
"Why would you hate them?" Slowly, Connor turns to face me. He stares at me for a few seconds, looking genuinely bewildered, before shaking his head at me, grinning.
"Trust you not understand," he says, but I sense no malice behind his words.
I shrug off his comment as I notice the entrance of the river not far ahead of us. It's almost as if it triggered the sudden urge I get to use the bathroom. I wriggle and writhe in my tube, trying to get my butt unstuck. How embarrassing would it be if I couldn't get out? Seeing that I'm nearing the golden gates of the exit, I scramble about more urgently, not wanting to miss my exit now and have to go for round two down the river while busting to go to the bathroom.
If that were to happen, I think I'd end up climbing out from the side - tube and all - out of desperation.
All of my struggling and I'm rewarded with no results, but I do manage to make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention.
"Squirt... Are you ok?" Elijah questions, sounding confused.
"I," I wriggle to one side, "am," I wriggle to the other side, "FINE." This time I shove as hard as I can and still get nowhere. Giving in to the tube, my limbs go floppy and lifeless against it. "Sorry guys. I tried," I sigh grumpily, watching as we finally approach my pit stop.
I take one look at Lani and understanding flashes in her eyes. She easily pops out of her tube and does a little walk swim thing over to me. Before I can ask her to help me out, she's saying, "deep breath! One, two, three!" and then I'm underwater. I break surface, releasing the held breath I had, and immediately start heading for the entrance-exit thing. "Toilet break. We'll be back in a moment." With that, Jamie also pops out of her tube and it floats nearby Bailey, who grabs a hold of it.
"I'm going with you--"
"To do what?" Lani interrupts an already standing Elijah. He looks refreshing as water droplets fall from his hair, trailing down his body as if they rehearsed their movements earlier. "Stand outside the door? No thank you. We'll be fine by ourselves."
Pausing in my tracks, I turn slightly as I hear Elijah growl. He looks ready to stick a tube on Lani and throw her halfway down the river. I wave dismissively and carry on with my mission. I finally reach the faux river bank exit and squeeze out my ponytail. Wearing just a two piece bikini, I feel extremely exposed and self-conscious. The last time I came here, I was too young to be wearing a bikini, and I wore a rash shirt. Today, though? Lani and Jamie were adamant on making me wear a bikini. I made sure to pick one that had more coverage, and ended up conceding to the white bandage one.
Awkwardly standing with my head tilted to the side, I see the rest of the group. I expected to see them floating away, but instead, they're all standing and staring. Jamie and Lani who crept up beside me while I was lost in thought, snort.
As if snapping from his own daze, Callum shakes his head. "Short-stuff, you really shouldn't be going alone. You look like a tempting treat just ready to eat." The way he manages to say something like that with such ease makes me slightly jealous, seeing as I can't even say 'you look nice' without turning into a tomato.
Nevertheless, I feel my face flush. And then the image of a toilet appears in my mind. A toilet that I will flush. After using it.
"We'll be ten minutes at the most," I promise. "If we take longer, I give you special permission to come and get us." I grin as I take Lani and Jamie's hands. As we're leaving, I laugh seeing Jamie poke her tongue out pointedly at Elijah, and the silent but steaming Kota.
***
"See? In and out with time to spare!"
Chuckling at Jamie's high pitched and defensive tone, I dry off the remaining water from my hands. "I worry for their future. For all the worrying they do, they'll have grey hair by the time they're in their late thirties," I say. The tissue paper I used to dry my hands flies towards the bin, but misses it by about half an inch. I pick it up and discard of it normally.
"Worry and stress is unhealthy." Lani fixes her side braid and puckers her lips; smacking them to spread a clear lip balm. Thankfully, we stopped by the Cabana along the way to pick up a few things. I grabbed my shorts. I wanted my shirt, too. It didn't happen.
Goosebumps had prickled my skin when we entered to cold white tiled bathroom floor, and I now find myself wanting to stand underneath one of the hand dryers. To say I'm keen to get back out in the sun is an understatement.
"Let's just quickly get back. They've probably chewed through all of their finger nails by now." Pushing the heavy bathroom door, I hold it open for Jamie and Lani. The I myself barely make it two steps out the door before some guy obviously - keyword here being 'obviously' - barges into me.
"Sorry, sweetheart." You're freaking kidding me. "Didn't see you there." His pre-pubescent arms cross over his pre-pubescent chest, displaying undeveloped pre-pubescent biceps.
'Ok, Eli. They get that he's pre-pubescent. Shut up and move on.'
'Don't you see what she's doing? She's using a diacope!' the nice voice defends. (YO JENNIFER ✔)
'I'll show you a diacope in a second; when I dia-COPE you in the face.'
'That doesn't even make any sense.'
Before I can tell the voices in my head to quit their quarrelling - wow, ok, I sound like a psycho, now - I notice in the corner of my eye a less than amused Lani.
"What do you want, brat? You lost your candy? Is that it?" It doesn't take more than half a brain to figure out it was Lani who mockingly asked that with a pouty bottom lip.
"Typical Latina bitches; always running they mouths. Don't think I won't hit you just because you're a girl," the kid snarls. Surprising me, though, a grin slowly creeps it's way onto his face as he says, "hashtag e-qua-li-ty?"
"Te pegaré como a una chica, jetabierta," Lani snarls, letting out her unmistakable Spanish. Jamie quickly takes both mine and Lani's hands in her own. She probable done it to calm Lani down, and reassure me no one is about to die.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. So, girl," he turns his attention to me, "your friend not here? The big ol' Frankenstein with the different coloured eyes? He fucked up when he poured that water on us. He got my phone wet. And now it's broken. And he's gonna buy me a new one."
"Woah, I think this twit is trying to hustle us," Jamie excitedly whispers, yanking on my arm. I almost snort at her weird reaction to this situation.
"Honestly, kid. Just get out of here and I'll forget that you tried to hustle us," Lani rolls her eyes. I feel like her 'unbothered attitude' would be fully complete if she started filing her nails.
The pre-teen, determined and looking near livid, stands toe to toe with Lani. See, if he were taller than her, this move could've been intimidating. But he's not. So it wasn't. In fact, I think Lani is a teenie bit taller than him.
"I'm not fucking talking to you, ok? So why don't you piss off to a fiesta with all of your bullfighter cousins, huh?" Oooh, boy, R.I.P.
I can see clearly that Lani is having trouble controlling herself. She's ready to snap and use his shin bones as toothpicks. Luckily for the teen, though, he's only hit by a scarily spoken threat. But I have the impression that it's going to take more than words to get rid of this guy, and I know that thought alone is enough to make Lani smile.
"¡Te corto los cojones!" Lani's insults are a little more gruesome when she speaks Spanish. With the guys, she just plays around. But when she's speaking Spanish, shit is about to hit the fan.
Oh, and by the way, she taught Jamie and I what that line translates to.
'I'll cut your balls.'
*shivers*
What happened next was kind of in slow motion. It was like an explosion of chaos.
Uncoordinated and unexpected chaos.
A/N
Te pegaré como a una chica = I'll hit you like a girl
Jetabierta = basically the equivalent of calling someone an idiot
:)
B)
>:O
P:
:o
So, what happens in the next chapter? Do you know?
And I'm sorry about the awkward accidental update I did a few days ago. I realised what my issue was. While it is true that I was semi-zoned out while I did it, there's a legitimate reason.
The new Wattpad app update has the Publish button where the Save button previously was. So when I was starting a new chapter, but got distracted and could no longer continue, I went to quickly 'save' what I'd written. I'd written one word. Haha... 😑
Tysm for reading!