Nat’s POV:
I actually considered karate chopping his face, but all of a sudden time froze. I froze, I felt as I couldn’t move. A girl had her hand out stretched towards me, and when I looked up at her confused, she dropped her arms, and my hand landed weakly on Jake’s face.
Great! That would have been a really good karate chop; do you have any idea how long I’ve been guessing who this Adler guy is?! Then come’s Gemma waltzing in with that smug ugly face of hers.
“Leave the poor boy alone Nat!” my mother scolded.
“Yeah, NATASHA” Timmy teased.
“Who the hell said my name was Natasha?”
“Nat, Natasha? Aint it right?”
“Nope, my name’s Nadine, but people call me Nay-dean so I settled on a nickname, and let’s face it, ‘Nad’ just doesn’t work, and dean is a guy’s name.”
“Your name’s Nadine?” Jake croaked. I realised my hand was still on his neck and I quickly pulled away.
“Yeah, Natasha aint no Egyptian name”
“Well you can hardly call your daughter Nefertari”
“That’s ancient Egyptians” Sheila said matter of factly “seriously dude, how much do you know?”
“When did ‘Nadine’ become an Egyptian name?”
“How about we stop arguing about whose name’s what kay?”
A grumble of agreement came out of Jake, who probably had an effort even talking, but the subject was closed.
“Show’s over!” I screamed, they scattered away, and within seconds the hall was empty.
“WAIT EVERYBODY BACK!”
The room was crowded once again, and I just stared at all of them until I found what I wanted. “You” I pointed at the girl who held my hand from karate chopping Jake. “Come ‘ere”
She whimpered and her parents- or who I think are her parents- grabbed on to her. “p-please, she’s all we have!” her dad stuttered.
Pathetic
I made my teeth look all sharp and pointy, and smiled, baring my teeth. They gasped and so did the whole front row of people there, “I don’t bite” I said sweetly.
“NAT!” my mother screamed. “Stop it this instant!”
“You know, I kinda like my fresh parents, the ones that can’t speak English” I stated, “ones that didn’t actually care about what I did”
“What are you talking about, fresh parents? How can they live in London when they can’t even speak English?” Timmy asked indecorously.
“Whatever, what do want from the poor girl? Just put the girl out of her misery already”
“You want me to kill her?” thud "well looks like her parents were so focused on me talking to myself they hadn’t realised their daughter fainting!” I said looking pointedly at them. They made a circle around her body. I just went in between the crowed, kneeled next to her, and slapped her. “Please, get up, this isn’t national Fainting day!” I pleaded, “all I wanted to know was how you did that, I aint gunna kill you! See, I kill one guy and suddenly I’m a firkin serial killer!”
“Don’t take it personally habibty” my mother said soothingly, “their judgmental jerks, what to do?”
A chorus of about five about five people shouting hey! Came from the crowed, the rest turned to look at them.
“That aint fair” a brave fifteen year old boy said with a shaky voice. “We aint judgmental” I shot him a glare “p-please don’t kill me”
“My point exactly” my mother said glaring at him. She threateningly stalked towards him and decided to slap him across the head.
He stared at my mother for a few seconds and then his faced cracked in to crooked grin. “Dude, I never got hit by a ghost before, ALRIGHT!” he screamed, and went to his friends and high fived them.
I just stared at him. “Have you got hit by the most powerful girl in the world before?” I said cracking my knuckles. He shut right up.
I sighed sadly and looked at my mother. She may not have ever been there for me, but she’s here now right? Tracey Beaker’s mum never came back. She just left and never even came to visit.
But my mother wasn’t like that; she came to me, even though she was dead. This would sound weird, but this was the scenario where not even death would separate a mother from her daughter. And I should be grateful for that.
She must have realised how sad I looked because she enveloped me in a warm hug, and breathed into my hair, “it’s going to be okay, habibty. Life will throw loads of obstacles, but it’s just how you deal with them that make you the person you are, and are going to be. So don’t let something that small let you down”
“I love you mummy” I whispered, “and nothing is going to change that”
“Aw, that’s so sweet Nat. now instead of looking like a retard, how bouts you come help us with this one” Jake stated pointing down at the girl that was still fainted on the floor.
“Err… sure, what do I do?”
“H… never mind” he said hastily, he looked kind of frightened, I tried to catch fear in his eyes but they suddenly went bright with happiness and love.
Sheila was walking towards us with Nate behind her. He looked at me and smiled warmly. I remembered that I was still upset from him, but he still sings to me, so I smiled back.
“Nat found her mum” Jake said gleefully. Sheila stared at me and grinned brightly, while Nate just smirked.
“That’s gre-” she looked around, and scowled at the people crowding the area. They all turned to me for permission.
“Leave the girl and go” and they all scattered away.
“Like I was saying, that’s great news Nat! When do we get to meet her?”
“You don’t” I said in fake cheerfulness, “she’s dead!”
“That’s good!”
“Your mum said what now?”
“I meant that she still visits you, it’s so sweet!”
“I know”
“So why are you here?” Jake asked after the conversation was visibly getting awkward. My mum had left and so had everyone else, including Timmy and Adler, and it was just the four of us.
Nate was kind of behind the scenes and was just standing there quietly, observing.
‘What’s up Nate?’
‘nuthin’, what about you, how you been doin’?’
‘I’m ight really, what’s on your mind?’
‘Peter Moore, I met this guy called peter Moore, nice guy’
The name sounded familiar, but I shook it off. I knew for a fact that I didn’t know a peter Moore.
‘Cool, I should meet him some time, you know what he is?’
‘Think he’s a shape shifter?’
‘Oh, ight, have you seen any fairies or trolls round?’
‘Ha, ha, I’m cracking up so hard’
‘Shalap’
‘Is that a natty way of saying shut up?’
‘Just be quiet dude’
‘Dudette’
‘Right cuz you really act like a girl’
‘Who give a gun?’
‘Obviously you’
A finger snapped in front of my face and everything came back into focused. Nate was still smirking at me with a hint of amusement in his eyes which I really didn’t appreciate. Sheila was still beaming down at me and Jake was looking around cautiously.
“What’s wrong Jake?”
“You haven’t happened to see Emily round have you?”
“No, what’s bothering you?”
“Nothing important”
“Why does it look like your waiting for a bomb to go off?”
Just as I said that, there was a huge boom coming from the wall, and once again, there a whole in the wall the size of a girl, which was kind of comical.
“Hey what’s with the ‘I’m the avatar, so deal with it’ attitude towards my poor dome?” I stared at him.
“Aang does not say that, full stop. And don’t even try to impersonate him.”
He frowned at me, “it wasn’t Aang that said it, it was Korra?” his voice went a bit high at the end making it sound like a question.
“Korra?” I said slowly.
“Let’s just stay on the point here? You have met your mum, and that’s great! Well not the fact that she’s dead, I’m sorry you didn’t get to say good bye to her before you died. You got kidnapped by surprise”
“The one day my fake mum makes me take out the trash” I said bitterly. This was all her fault, the reason I cried for the first time (for real) was because if that fraud.
Technically, it wasn’t really me that was crying, it was Stacey, but let’s faces it, I was controlling her body, and she was sort of me…
Well I still felt angry. She had no right to make me take the trash out; I was almost four for god’s sake! What kind of irresponsible mother would let their fur year old daughter take out the trash?
I had to seriously stop thinking about these random things. Living in a freak circus, I was bound to be locked up in a Looney bin.
I thought of Sheila and her positive attitude and then at Nate, who when it didn’t come to me, he would take every breath seriously.
“Are you sure you two are related?” I asked Sheila at the same time Nate blurted “I love you Nat!”
It was awkward, so I pretended I didn’t hear him. But when he repeated himself, I slapped a smile across my face and beamed back at him.
“that’s so sweet, I love me too” he raised an eyebrow, his neck turning a bit pink, then turned and smirked back at me.
“Sweet” he chuckled, Jake nudged me in my side and mentioned towards the crowed that were still right outside the doors, and only then did I realise they hadn’t left the girl like I think I asked them to.
Think? Yeah, I seriously can’t remember. There is a lot going on right now, and all I actually wanted to ask her was how she did that thing… I’ll have to wait then wouldn’t I?
I sighed, but went into the room with Jake, wondering what he was calling me in for.
“Look, about Nate...”
“Don’t cry, it was a joke okay? If it’s a touchy subject then I won’t tease him.”
He sighed in frustration. “it’s not that Nat, it’s the fact that he used to be your mate and now he’s not, and even though he isn’t anymore, he still has feelings for you, and the fact that you guys aren’t mates is not natural, and we still don’t know w hay. We think it might have something to do with Timmy though... we don’t know yet.”
“Why don’t you ask someone about it? And how does it have anything to do with Timmy, he’s Stacey’s mate aint he?”
“Not that kind of, has something to do with, except, maybe Stacey was chosen because of how close she was to me? I don’t know” he sighed again, running his hand through his hair.
Something on his head caught light and my breath caught in my throat. I stared blankly at him, and slowly came closer.
I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a white hair due to all the stress he was going through, or maybe even a speck of dust that somehow caught light, what I wasn’t expecting was a miniature dagger in his hair.
But that wasn’t what I found. When I was close enough to actually catch a glimpse of what was on his head, I was really surprised.
On Jake’s head, running round in his hair... was a miniature version of the teddy bear Sheila had gave me, and I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn it stuck his red silky tongue out at me.