Chapter 12: Code Hippopotamus
Patricia Hollister
“So Code Hippopotamus will stand for ‘utter shock.’ Alright. Hmm…” I said, tapping the notepad with the pencil with my lap. Louis and I were outside at the balcony, and we were sitting on a checkered-blue blanket. It was still about four in the afternoon. “What animal would suit the code of ‘getting agitated’?”
“Well,” Louis said, patting his shoes repeatedly. “Wait… um….” He face-palmed. “Ugh, this is difficult. Why are we rewriting the code, anyway?”
“We are not ‘rewriting’”—I made air quotes—“our code. I just need the full list and some more codes, because I’m feeling like it.”
“Argh.” Louis frowned. “Alright, what animal gets agitated easily?”
“A lion,” I offered slyly.
“No…” He shook his disapprovingly. “Code Lion stands for ‘mortal enemy standing near’.”
“I thought that was Code Snake.” I raised my eyebrows. Once Louis narrowed his eyes at me, I held up my hands. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry. I’ll try to be serious.”
“Good idea,” he said sarcastically, but there was a small smile tugging on the corners on his lips. “Umm… what about… Code Possum?” I opened my mouth to say that possums, in fact, don’t get agitated easily, but Louis held up a finger. “Do not argue with Professor Tommo. When I say that the code for ‘near agitation’ is ‘Code Possum,’ it’s automatically final. No more changes.”
Louis looked at me with a challenging expression, as if he was expecting me to say something that’ll throw him and his “final decisions.” I blinked, searching my mind for anything that’s related to the rodents that Louis decided on. “Do possums even get agitated?”
“You sound like you’ve never seen an agitated possum before.”
I gaped at him in disbelief. I braced myself for another useless argument with him, but everyone knows that the Hollister bloodline doesn’t and will ever not back down in an argument, useless, or not. Finding the right words to make Louis humiliated, I held up a finger. “On the contrary, I—”
“Mama told me not to waste my life; she said spread your wings my little butterfly…” The sound of my phone cut me off, playing the ringtone for a certain person. Louis raised his eyebrows in amusement at me, making me blush.
“Hey, I couldn’t help myself!” My lame excuse made Louis laugh. “I love them!” He continued laughing while Little Mix’s song kept playing. I took out my phone from my pocket, and it was my mother calling.
“You know, you could just ask Zayn for Perrie’s number…” he suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Right. Well, it’s Mum.”
I didn’t care if Louis would be there listening to our conversation. I picked up the call and pressed my phone to my ear. “Hey Mum.”
“Hi Trish!” I cringed at the nickname. Mum only calls me that when she’s in a good mood. Which obviously mean that she is, actually, in one right now. I glanced at Louis, who was staring at me questioningly.
“What’s up?” I said, ignoring what she just called me.
“Nothing much here, but everything’s going well since I’ve arrived. How about you? Did anything unusual happen at home?”
“No, not really. We had a lot of fun last night, though.”
“That’s what she said,” Louis muttered, and I shot him a glare. He just chuckled.
YOU ARE READING
The Boy Who Stayed (Louis Tomlinson)
FanfictionBecause of the three words that changed my life so quickly and so easily, everyone I loved in my life—except for my mum, of course—left. But there was one boy who didn't leave. He didn't even care that I had that stupid illness, and he promised to s...
