Chapter 8: Remind Me To Never, Ever, Ever, Go To The Mall With Them Again
"Hey, Noah! Look over there!" I pointed to the wall behind us.
He turned around to look at what I pointed at. When he couldn't find anything, he turned back to me and asked, "What am I supposed to be looking at?"
I burst into laughter. "Haha, made you look!"
He sighed at my childish gesture and turned back to making breakfast. Yes, Noah knew how to cook. It's absolutely amazing at the moment since I was sitting in his dorm, waiting for my brother to wake up. It was really early, and I left my dorm without eating because I was in such a hurry to get over here. In the meantime, I begged him to make me breakfast. Thank goodness Noah knows how to cook.
"Here's your bacon, eggs, and chocolate chip pancakes." He set the food down on the table, steaming hot and ready to be eaten. The smells coming from it were heavenly. My mouth watered at the sight; especially the chocolate chip pancake part.
Absolutely delicious.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one to notice the appealing smell because the next thing you know, Alex was running out of his room to find the food.
Alex hurriedly looked around. "Food. I smell food. Where's the food?" He spotted it in front of me and immediately ran over to get a plate to start loading food onto it. Seeing that he was starting to take a lot, I started to get food for myself too.
A girl's got to do, what a girl's got do. Am I right?
As we were both shoving the breakfast down our mouths, Noah exclaimed, "Hey! Don't eat it all. Save some for me!"
But he was too late, and there was only one pancake left out of the whole breakfast he made. Alex and I smiled sheepishly at him. "Sorry, Noah," we both said simultaneously. Then we both offered him something off of our plates.
Grumbling under his breath, Noah took food off of our plates and started eating too. "So what brings you here to our humble dorm, little smurf?"
I took out money from my back pocket, remembering the reason I was here. I handed over the money to Alex. "Mom and Dad sent over money. Enough to get us through a couple of months."
He practically snatched it out of my hands to count it. "I can finally get that new video game!" he excitedly said. "And I can get..." I ignored him as he rambled on about everything he wanted and continued to ravish my food.
I finished quickly and threw the plate away. Noah watched me sit back down as he was still eating. "You eat like a pig," he pointed out. Then in a sarcastic tone, "Very attractive."
"Geez, thanks Noah. But when it comes to food like that, you have to eat it before someone takes it. I mean look at you. You were too slow to get your food, so you had to pick off of others' plates. You snooze, you lose. Follow the old saying."
"She's right, man," Alex said, backing me up. "It's either you get the food, or you leave it for others to take."
Obviously being outnumbered, he shook his head in defeat. "You guys really are twins. I doubted it at first, but you guys are actually the same-more than you might think."
I looked at my brother and he looked at me. Again, we said at the same time, "No, we're not alike at all." We laughed at Noah's annoyed expression after we did that. What can I say? It's all about the twin telepathy.
"The school must not like me. They just happened to place me with the twin of the most irritating person I have ever met," Noah complained as he stabbed his fork into his food. "You can leave now, little smurf. You gave him the money, so go away now."
I frowned at him for his eagerness to kick me out. "Well, since you guys have no plans today, I was going to take you both to the mall!" I exclaimed. Once they heard the "mall" part, they started to protest, but I quickly said something before they could. "Come on! It's a Saturday morning and there are probably a lot of deals. We get to spend the cash we just got. Also, there has to be a bunch of girls that you guys can pick up. I'm offering a great proposal: you can pick up girls, shop for whatever you guys want to shop for, I won't complain, and you'll get a free ride in my amazing car!"
I saw them begin to change their minds, so I put on the biggest smile possible without looking too creepy. "Please?" I begged.
They looked at each other then nodded their heads in agreement. Although, there was one complaint coming from Mr. Bad Boy himself. "One condition though: I refuse to be seen in a car driven by a girl. I'm driving-no complaints."
•••
We were arriving at the mall with Alex in the backseat, myself driving and singing along to songs on the radio, and a pouting Noah in the passenger's seat.
Please, like I'd let him drive when I clearly had a better car.
Since Alex and I had never been to this particular mall and Noah didn't want to talk, I decided to follow where the majority of cars were parking. The people with those cars were mostly from our school. Normally, I wouldn't park near them because I'd rather not get into those situations where someone you know sees you, then hugs you, and starts a conversation that you can't really get out of. You don't even talk to that person often, and they just keep rambling on when all you want to do is just go in and out as quickly as possible.
Though this was a special circumstance. People from our school would see that Noah was being driven around by a girl, the same girl in which he was showed up by because she had a better car.
I am done with the whole revenge thing. This was only because of his asshole moments that are constant throughout everyday. Might be harsh, but it's true.
Pulling into the parking lot, all eyes were already on my car. I giggled at the sight of people staring at my car and slapped Noah's arm to get his attention. "Looks like my car is more popular than you are. Prepare to be humiliated when our school sees you being driven around by me."
"And everyone knows that her car is extremely better," Alex chirped in. "I feel bad for you, Noah."
Noah banged his head on the window. "Believe me-I feel bad for myself too. My poor, poor ego is going to be tainted, broken, and ripped into pieces forever."
I rolled my eyes at how dramatic he was acting. "Suck it up, Matthews. Stop being so dramatic; you're acting like a girl." I found a parking space near the front, so I zipped into it right away. I might've got honked at for cutting someone off, but eh, who cares. Being close to the entrance means less walking.
"Lia! You didn't have to cut that person off. That was rude," Alex lectured. I've done it more times than I can count, and he keeps telling me to stop, but who listens to their sibling these days? "How many times do I have to tell you that before it sticks in your head? You need to get off your ass and stop being lazy."
I scowled at my twin. Noah snickered beside us as I was lectured, so I slapped his arm. "Whatever, Alex. Just go with it. Now both of you get out of my car; we have some shopping to do." I paused for a moment and smirked at Noah. "Plus, I want to see the drama unfold as people see you step out of the passenger's seat, while I step out of the driver's."
It was Noah's turn to scowl as I said that. A feral look-like a lion going for his prey-started to creep up his face. Alex was laughing while he got out of my car, and I was also laughing when I started to get out, too.
Something unexpected happened as I opened my car door that bewildered me like never before.
Noah practically jumped across the car and onto my seat. "What the freak are you doing?" I screamed at him. "My car, Noah, my car! Don't ruin my freakin' car!"
"Who cares about your car?" he obnoxiously replied.
"I do obviously!"
He held up his head with newly regained pride. "I'm getting out of this car before you and nothing is going to stop me from doing so."
"Do you think I actually care about that right now?" I screeched. "You better not ruin my car or so God help me I will-"
"Whoa, little smurf. Calm down," he said in a soothing voice. Noah jumped out of the car and held a hand out for me. "Now come on. Let's get to the mall."
I took his hand, and he helped me out of my car. After locking the doors, we walked toward the mall. Alex went ahead of us, since we took too long to get out of the car. So once again, everyone from our school who knew Noah was staring at us.
"Well would you look at that." Noah gestured to the people staring at us. "You should be honored to be walking with me. Being with the bad boy... That's a pretty big deal."
"This is what I mean about your ego being too big."
He rolled his eyes and opened the door for me as we entered the mall. The mall was huge compared to the mall in our town near Boston. The malls in California are huge and contain a lot of stores.
"Oh my goodness," I muttered in amazement. "So where should we start Noah?"
"You mean where should you start. I'm going off to the food court to eat."
"No you can't! I need someone to help me carry my bags."
"Tough luck, little smurf. I'm so hungry, and this stomach," he pointed at his stomach, "needs feeding."
I groaned in frustration. "Come on, please. Pretty, pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top." He still wasn't budging with his decision, so I tried for more drastic measures. I put on my best puppy-face possible, even willing tears to fill my eyes. Then I pleaded one more time. "Please, Noah! If you love me, you'll come with me. I don't want to be all alone."
Already, his resolve was weakening and his expression softened. He looked at me like I was the cutest puppy ever that was abandoned on the streets, which was exactly what I was going for. He looked at my face and tried to look away, but his eyes weren't wavering from my puppy-dog-look.
I got you now bad boy.
With his eyes still on me, Noah grudgingly sighed. "Fine little smurf. Let's get on with this."
Turning off my puppy-dog façade, I went into happy-mode and hugged Noah. "Thanks, Noah! Now, where should we start?" I said, putting emphasis on the "now" and the "we".
The first store that caught my eye when I looked around was Hollister. "Let's go to Hollister first. Maybe I can find that blue hoodie that you have." I took his hand and dragged him along with me.
Noah whined behind me. "Damn, this is going to be a long day."
•••
After three hours of continuous walking and shopping, Noah and I finally stopped at the food court. When we found a table to sit at, Noah instantly dropped all the bags he was carrying, which were all mine. We probably went through all the appealing stores in the mall, and I bought something from almost all of them. Being the nice guy he was, Noah carried all of my purchases.
"I never want to go shopping with you ever again, smurf. My back is killing me, my arms are killing me, hell even my fingers are killing me. I'm also starving like crazy. I was deprived from food and stuck in boredom for nearly the whole day!" Noah complained.
Okay, forget what I said about Noah being nice. Plus, we were only shopping for three hours, not a whole day.
He continued to be melodramatic and ranted on, "I had to follow you, the most annoying person on the planet, to help you shop. I even did it with an empty stomach because you guilt tripped me with the little puppy thing girls do. How do you say no to a face like that when it looks so f*cking adorable? That's the thing: you can't say no because it's like going against all the good morals of the world!"
Even though he went about saying all of that in the wrong way by insulting me, then complimenting, and using the phrase "good morals of the world" to answer a question with a bad word, his rant was overall sweet. This was a bad boy we were talking about; that's probably as good as it's going to get.
Not knowing how to respond to that, I blurted out the first things that came to my head. "Language Noah, watch the bad language." He looked like he was going to strangle me after I said that, but I quickly finished up, "But aw, that was really sweet in a rather odd way. And you insultmented me. Don't insultment me ever again. The words don't exactly match up, and it ends up coming out a little wrong."
Instead of an "I'm going to kill you right now" look, Noah looked at me with a "what the hell this person is crazy" look. "Little smurf... Are you high right now?"
"I'm not on drugs, Matthews. If anything, I'm as high as my 5'6 height." He seemed unamused, so I guessed that he didn't exactly appreciate my joke. He probably even looked at me as not just a crazy person, but a psychotic, crazy person. I just went up one step on the crazy scale.
"If you're not high, then what the hell is an 'insultment'?" If that's all he wanted to know, then why didn't he just ask that in the first place?
"An 'insultment' is both a compliment and an insult rolled into one. So when you put both of them together, you get an insultment."
"Where did you even get the word 'insultment' from?"
"I kind of thought it up by myself when I got told something that might've had a double meaning," I sheepishly said. I looked down and played with my fingers because a tiny bit of embarrassment flared within me. "You know just a little something I've put together."
Noah just looked at me with disbelief, a look I got from him a lot. Before I could actually get a real insult from him, I told him, "You know what, since you've been shopping with me this whole time, I'll buy you food as a thanks. Is that alright?" All looks of incredulity disappeared, and he eagerly told me what he wanted.
So there I was, standing in line at one of the pasta and pizza places to order us food. I wanted the pasta and he wanted the pizza. It totally worked out in the end because I was able to get everything in one place. I also texted Alex to tell him to come to the food court and asked him what he wanted to eat. He told me he wanted pizza, too. Guys wanting pizza is so typical. What's the big deal with guys and pizza anyway? It's something I will never understand.
I was struggling to carry the food back to our table. When I got back, I was also struggling to set everything down without dropping everything sloppily.
There were two strong football players above 6 feet tall that didn't stop to notice the huge struggle I was going through. I'm already getting food for both of them, so I didn't see why they couldn't help me. That's also something I will never understand.
Once I finally managed to get everything down nicely, I sarcastically said, "Thanks a lot guys. I'm glad you helped me with the food."
The "food" part was probably the only part of the sentence that they both understood because they stopped whatever conservation they were having and grabbed the food off the tray. "You're welcome for the food," I pointed out.
"Thanks," they both said with their mouths full.
Well that was very attractive. Another thing that I sometimes don't understand is how they got girls running after them.
Being the pigs they are, both Noah and Alex finished the whole pizza I bought at the same time I finished my pasta. Then, something miraculous happened. Four girls walked up to our table and started to flirt with both of them.
They paid no attention to me, which was usual since girls did this to Alex and his friends a bunch of times back home. But I decided to play around and distracted the two of them by fake gagging behind the girls' backs and making the weirdest faces possible. Alex already knew what I was doing, so he ignored me the best he could, but Noah, however, let's just say that he had never encountered something like that before.
One girl was blatantly flirting with Noah and being quite slutty at it too. She was leaning down really low, so he would see her boobs through the top of her shirt.
She wasn't even discreet at leaning down at all. It's like the oldest trick in the books to do the leaning down thing, and she couldn't even do it right! If she's going to do that, the least she can do is get some class and do it right.
I actually didn't have to purposely make a weird face for what she was doing because I had one self-consciously plastered on my face.
Noah, being unable to keep it in, blurted out, "Your face looks weird."
The girl in front of him looked offended, embarrassed, and quite angry at what he said. I laughed at loud, unable to contain my laughter because his comment was meant for me, not her, and she was obviously taking it the wrong way.
Noah realized his mistake and tried to correct it. "Oh sh*t. I didn't mean that. It wasn't meant for you, it was meant for her!" He pointed at me.
The rest of her little posse, who had heard the whole misunderstanding, looked to me. I sat there with the most innocent face I could manage. "Don't blame me. I was just trying to finish my pasta." I went to scoop up my pasta to show them I was eating, but nothing came onto my fork.
One of them pointed out, "You don't even have any pasta on your plate."
Another one said, "Your plate was empty before we came here."
I looked down at my plate. Sure enough, there was nothing on it. Oh my mushrooms, I'm in for it now, I thought.
The one that was flirting with Noah and unintentionally got called weird by him went up to him and slapped him on his face. "That's what you get for calling me weird, Noah. You've never called me that before, and I don't know why your calling me that now! You've seemed to love my face ever since high school started!" she screamed in a very high-pitched voice.
Her screaming caused almost everyone in the food court to look at the commotion. Oh great, we had a crowd now.
What she said about Noah loving her face caused both Alex and I to look at each other and make a gross face. I mouthed to him, "Gross." He nodded in agreement, and we both silently went back to listening to the argument.
Noah tried to defend himself. "It wasn't my fault, babe. It was all, Lia. She was the one making faces. I was calling her weird, not you!"
Still angry, she continued to scream, "That girl was making faces at you? Why are you letting her flirt with you?" She flipped her hair and looked away from him to look at me. "We'll finish this later, Noah."
Then she walked all the way up to me and put her face right in front of mine. "Whoa," I whispered because of the closeness. I looked at her face a little more closely and suddenly recognized her. "You're Claire Fidet. The one that's dating Noah, right?"
"Yeah, that's me," Claire practically spat out. "And I don't exactly appreciate you flirting with my boyfriend."
My eyes widened. "No, no, no. I wasn't flirting with him. I wouldn't flirt with him. He's annoying and irritating; who would want that?" She looked offended again, and I realized my mistake.
"So you think I'm wrong to date him." I shook my head and tried to fix what I said, but she kept on talking. "You b*tch. Don't ever insult me or flirt with my boyfriend." Claire took my water bottle that was in front of me and dumped all the contents on my head.
I sat there in shock at what happened. Noah and Alex sat there in shock too. Claire called the rest of her posse. "Come on guys. We're leaving now." She then addressed Noah and said, "We'll talk about this later."
She sauntered off with her gang; leaving a soaking wet me and two very shocked boys staring after them. I stood up to throw all the trash away and to grab all my bags. More calmly then I thought possible, I said, "We should also leave now. I don't need to become any more embarrassed than I am now." I was embarrassed. I had the whole food court, filled with people mostly from our school staring at the huge commotion that was caused.
Not wanting to argue with me, they both stood up and followed me to where we parked. As we were walking through the middle of the mall to the parking lot, Noah got the guts to finally speak up. "Little smurf, are you okay?"
"Does it look like I'm okay, Noah?" I said angrily. Tears were arising due to my frustration. "I just got embarrassed in front of a whole bunch of people in the mall. Does it look like I'm anywhere near okay?"
I pushed him in the chest thinking he'd just stumble back, but he was actually caught by surprise and ended up tumbling into the huge fountain behind him that was set in the middle of the mall.
After being soaked in the chlorine filled water, just like I was with the water bottle, Noah stood up from where he was in the fountain. "You did that on purpose!" Noah yelled. "Just because Claire poured water on you didn't mean that you had to push me into the fountain!"
"It was an accident!"
"Accident my ass!" He unexpectedly grabbed me and pulled me into the fountain, soaking me even more than before. "Now we're even."
Anger built inside of me, finally making its way through from the really long day it had been. Since things couldn't get and more worse than it already was, I decided to let all my anger out. "Noah Matthews! I'm going to strangle you!"
Well, I didn't exactly strangle him. However, I did tackle him back into the water like I was playing football. The real battle started when we began wrestling in the water, each of us trying to get the upper hand. We were gaining a crowd that was starting to cheer each of us on, which pushed us even harder to beat the other.
A voice on a megaphone abruptly stopped the cheering, which ultimately stopped us to see what was going on.
The voice on the megaphone blared out loud and clear. "Stop what you're doing and get out of the fountain right now. This is the mall police. Don't deny our orders, or else the consequences will become worse."
Noah and I looked at each other with wide eyes, both of us lying in the fountain with me on top of him. In a normal situation, he would've made a snide comment right now about our positions, but we both knew we were in big trouble. Big, big trouble.
____________________________________________________________
Happy New Year! I guess you guys can see this as a three-day late New Year Gift, so here's my present to all of you! I hope you've had a great new year so far (even though it has only been three days).
I''m dedicating this chapter to one of the first friends I've made through Wattpad. She's really great and super nice and is always encouraging!
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Til' the next update,
♥royalbluerose