Heart of Flame: Freshmen Year

Chapter 22

Nathan took a long time in the locker room. I wasn't sure why, until he explained that Barnes wasn't happy with his decision of letting me on the team.

"Don't worry about it, man. Barnes is always a jerk. He'll get over it pretty soon." Ame reassured him.

"Thanks Ame. You're right, he'll get over it eventually." He said, giving her a smile.

"If you want I could convince a Kaiju to eat him. It probably wouldn't be too hard." I said teasingly. Nathan laughed, a joyus, bubbly sound that I missed hearing.

"Yeah, probably would give the poor Kaiju indigestion, though. Too old and stringy." He joked with me. That made me beam. The fact that he was willing to joke with me about Kaiju made me happy, especially since before he would get mad and tell me to fuck off.

"So, do you guys have any plans for the afternoon?" Aiden asked. I thought on it for a moment.

"I have homework and chores. But other then that, not much." I said.

"Same here." Ame pipped up.

"I might go see a movie later with Carlos and Kyle." Rhythm said behind me.

Does Agono even have a theater? I wondered. I had never seen one, but who knows. There might be one somewhere.

"I'm not sure what I'll do." Nathan admitted. He looked over to his boyfriend.

"What're doing?" He asked.

"Not sure either to be honest. I have a lot if homework, but all of it is due Friday so it's not like it matters right this second." Aiden said.

"Wanna hang out at my place?" Nathan asked.

"Sure, why not."

Nathan, if you want to ask your boyfriend out on a date you probably shouldn't ask for him to hang out at your place. Maybe take him out to dinner or whatever Agono has to offer. I thought, wanting to say those words aloud but I didn't want to do anything that might break Nathan's frigile trust with me, so I kept my mouth shut.

"Sorcha, you wanna spend the night at my place? We pretty much have the same classes, so homework should be easy." Ame offered.

"Sure. I'd just have to pick up a few things at my place first. Plus, inform mom." I said. Ame nodded, and we continued walking to Nathan's.
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Once we had dropped Nathan and Aiden at Nathan's house, we started heading back towards the direction of the school and my house. Rhythm, Carlos and Kyle all left at about the halfway point, since that's were Rhythm's house is. While we were walking, I realized that I had never met Rhythm's parents before.

"Hey Ame, have you met Rhythm's parents before?" I asked out of couriousity.

"A few times. Most of the time they're not home, though. They usually work long hours." Ame said, which made sense to me. A lot of people in Agono seemed to work long hours. Probably because there weren't a lot of people to work.

We got to my house at around five in the afternoon, two hours before mom got home. We took those two hours for me packing my stuff, working on homework and watching T.V, which was a mistake since all that was on was the news.

"You'd really think King 5 would have better things to do then tell people about Kaiju attacks." Ame muttered. I glanced at the screen, only to see a gray haired man in a suit jabber on with a graph behind him, saying something about how the Kaiju attacks are becoming more frequent, and he even went so far as to suggest that we might have another war on our hands. I scoffed at that, thinking that I highly doubted that since my father's in jail right now, so there'd be no way for him to bring about the order for war. Most likely these Kaiju were rebels, angry at humanity and wanted to cause trouble.

The signal that mom was home was the sound of the garage door opening. Wanting to ask her as soon as possible, I lept up from my spot on the couch and walked over to the garage door to watch mom pull up. She smiled at me through the front window, and I smiled back, pressing the button to close up the door.

"Hey sweetie. How was your day?" Mom asked when she stepped out of her car.

"It was alright, all and all." I answered truthfully.

"That's good. And what about tryouts?" She asked, a glint in her eye. I moved out of her way so she could walk into the house before answering.

"I got in." I said.

"You did? Nice!" Mom exclaimed, looking proud. She offered me a hug, and I gladly took it.

"Like there was any doubt she wouldn't." Ame piped up from the couch. Mom smiled again at Ame's comment.

"You know, I told your father that you were going to try out for Basketball. Of course, he had no idea what basketball is, but once I told him it was a type of competetion, he was really proud of you." Mom said. I let out a slight giggle at the thought of father being proud of me of anything.

"He's proud of me?" I asked.

"Of course he is. You're his little girl." Mom said. Still, I found that kind of hard to believe. I had thought him and most Kaiju thought of me as a weakling that needed improvement.

"Whatever." I muttered, turning away for a moment to gather up my mountain of math homework.

"Hey, is something wrong?" Mom asked, geantly grabbing onto my shoulder.

"Yeah I'm fine." I said. "Why?"

"Well, when you said whatever, you sounded... Off." Mom noted, a look of concern flashed in her eyes. Then, realization spread across her face.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Mom asked, although it sounded more like a statement of fact rather then a question.

"I'm not sure what to believe." I said truthfully.

"Well, believe me when I say your father's proud of you." Mom said, giving me another smile.

"Okay." I said. There was a moment of silence before I remembered that I was supposed to ask her something.

"Oh! Hey mom, can I spend the night at Ame's?" I asked. Mom kind of gave me this funny look once the words came out of my mouth.

"But its Monday." Mom pointed out.

"Yeah, I know. But she lives one house down so getting to school in the morning will be easy." I rebutted.

"Alright. But don't stay up all night. You need your sleep for both school and basketball practice." Mom said, pointing at me with a pen. I beamed from pointed ear to pointed ear.

"Thanks mom!" I exclaimed, gathering up all of my stuff that I needed. Ame was already waiting for me at the door by the time I was done.

"Bye mom!" I said, opening the door.

"Bye sweetie! Have fun!" She called after me before I closed the door.

"You ready?" Ame asked. I gave her a nod before we started walking down the street to get to her house. Along the way, I realized something. I hadn't been picked on for being half Kaiju, there hasn't been a Kaiju attack and none of my friends where angry with me. It was like I was living a normal life again.

And I kind of liked it.