Oblivious

Attention

It had to be a surprise.

If it were not, she would probably duck out of the way and spoil all his perfect plans. All that brainstorming wasted if she saw it coming. He could already picture that victorious look on her face, and he was not looking for things to haunt his memory for the rest of the month. That would suck.

A lot.

He was determined to win this round. With a barely audible grunt, Chase Turnleaf tugged the rope attached to the low ceiling. The bucket moved with it, making a loud clanging noise echo in the nearly empty Courtyard behind him. If he could, Chase would ask for assistance from his friends. But no. Doing so may spoil the surprise as well, not to mention it would waste precious time. Besides, the Triplets and Adelaide were just on their way from school.

He had to do everything himself.

After five hard minutes, the bucket was perfectly in place. He slipped through to the other side of the red door to inspect it. The innocence of the doorway made Chase want to smile. She would never expect a thing.

Chase wiped the sweat off his brow. He whispered a short incantation that made the golden coins disappear once they hit her. Well, they wouldn't really disappear. They would just teleport to his room. He couldn't do that magic yet unless he was willing to faint right there, and that was not very knight-in-shining-armour-like.

Just then, familiar voices drifted down the hallway. A whole trio of them.

"...ask me where he is. All he ever does is follow her."

Chase slowly peeked through the tiny gap by the door to the Courtyard. The three brothers were most likely leaning against the wall beside the door, but Chase could barely even see their shadows.

"It gets annoying, actually," said a low voice that was surely Kevin Zipes'. "He's always blabbing about this devious new girl."

"Right! Like, what, is the new girl more worthy of his time than us?" Kyle Zipes said.

"She has a name, you know. Rory Landon," Connor Zipes said, a hint of an eye roll in his voice.

Kevin scoffed. "Yeah, okay, so this Rory Landon comes in and steals all of his attention. Why?"

"Because she's awesome."

Both Kyle and Kevin turned to Connor, eyebrows raised.

"You know it's true. How many other girls can take out a dragon's eye on her first day with a sword she's never used?" He looked around at them. "Come on, guys. Don't give me that look. We were too afraid to even speak about dragons on our first day! She didn't even know magic was real until, like, two minutes before! Both her parents aren't even Characters!"

Kyle thought for a bit. "Oh. That explains it then."

"Explains what?" Kevin asked them suspiciously.

Connor nodded. "Right? And she's not too bad looking either."

"Wait, what? Explains what?"

"Why Chase is so interested in Rory," said Kyle.

"Why?"

"Because he likes her."

Chase choked on his spit. He? Liking Rory? Uh, no. He couldn't believe that his friends would come to such ridiculous conclusions like that. The reason he was following Rory all the time was because he wanted revenge. Obviously.