peregrination

[ eins. ]

Once upon a time, there was a girl who went by the name Journey. Journey was definitely not your average girl; it's hard to be average when you're the daughter of a scuba diver turned billionaire. The only problem was that her mom and dad--who were both scuba divers--really wanted her to be a scuba diver, and Journey didn't want to because she was terrified of the water. Ever since she was a little girl, Journey has been having reoccurring nightmares about drowning.

Journey didn't have any friends to spill her nightmares to, all because her parents had just moved her to Australia because, apparently, diving was so much better in Australia. Australia would've been a pretty cool place to live in, in Journey's opinion, except for the fact that she lived right next door to the world's most annoying person: Ashton Irwin.

Now, normally this would have been totally okay, because Ashton was the definition of attractive, but it wasn't okay because he was always trying to scare her out of her mind. For example, every night since she had moved into her new house, at exactly 3:00 AM, Ashton would pound on her window and pretend to be a demon; this was funny at first, but after two months, it had become quite bothersome.

This activity ended in her, just yesterday, storming over to his house and beating on the door, informing his mother of what had been happening in the middle of the night. Sadly, this had no impact on the Aussie's actions, as he proceeded to bang on her window every half hour until the sun rose. Though she was pretty sure that he had gotten grounded, the only proof of that was watching him fall out of the window in attempt to sneak out the night before.

"Hey, Evans! I really need your help!" A loud voice followed by the doorbell being rung repetitively startled Journey from her thoughts. She rolled her eyes, pushing herself off of the bed and pulling the curtains back to see the rather familiar boy standing on the sidewalk and jumping up and down whilst waving his arms around in an attempt to capture her attention.

"What do you want now, Irwin?" Journey yelled down to the foolish boy, after struggling with opening her window.

He had stopped the jumping now, staring up at her with two pieces of a drumstick held in his raised hand, "I need some money!"

Journey sighed before chucking an, unknown to Ashton, empty piggy bank at him and slamming her window shut. She hears a shout of glee, but that's quickly followed by a loud groan and a, "Come on, Evans! This is really important!" but it was slightly muffled by the glass.

"Why should I help you?" Journey opens her incredibly difficult to open window and yells down at the messy haired boy after getting annoyed by his consistent pleas for money.

"Uhh," he dropped his hands to his sides before reaching up and scratching his head, "I'll give you something--anything!"

"Will you babysit my siblings on Friday?" Journey said, smirking. As an afterthought, seeing as Ashton looked more than pleased with her response, she added on, "And I want your bandana--the red one."

Ashton gasped and brought his hands to his heart in shock before saying, "Not my precious!"

Journey had a smug look on her face as she smirked, "Yep. I think that's a pretty fair trade."

Ashton turned away from her to think for a few moments; he then sighed and tossed up his favorite bandana to her.

"How much do you need, anyway?" Journey shouted, seeing as she had gone further back into her room in order to grab her purse. "They can't be more than twenty, right? 'Cause that's all I have."

"Twenty is good. Thanks, Evans. Now I think you need to give me your number so I can know when to come over and babysit," The messy haired boy said with a wink as Journey tossed a neatly folded twenty out of her window.

She scoffed, "In your dreams, Irwin! You live next door, not in another country."

"Well, I could live in another country--"

"Goodbye, Irwin."

She slammed her window again, hoping that it wouldn't break with all the slamming it was receiving, and watched the Aussie linger for just a few seconds before running the opposite direction of his house, towards where she could only assume was whatever place he bought drumsticks from.