Ari and Zac

Chapter 14: Romeo & Juliet

Chapter 14: Romeo & Juliet

Zac lay back on the faded blanket. A satisfied sigh escaped his lips. Things were looking up. After last night's Disruption meeting, he'd worried that he might have oversold himself.

"I'll ask her out tomorrow," he'd told them all with a cocky shrug. "That's what I do best."

He hadn't bothered to mention the way this girl blew him off over text last night. He could just imagine the snide comments that Cyrus would have made in front of the others.

As if Cy could do any better, Zac thought, his upper lip curling. Cy the cyber-genius, whose idea of macking on a girl was to ask her favorite operating system. Zac had seen his older cousin in action at the party yesterday, trying to talk to the other redheaded sister. That hadn't gotten very far. At least Zac knew how to start a conversation that didn't automatically send every female in a ten-foot radius bolting for the door.

Zac's conversational skills had their limits though. This morning's text exchange with Ari could have gone a little smoother. He'd gotten a decidedly hostile vibe...nearly lost his footing in the wave after wave of relentless negativity.

He'd gone into the conversation way underprepared. That was the main problem. When it came to hitting on girls, the key was to do your research ahead of time. Know something about the target. What are they into? Where do they like to hang out? Then all you have to do is pretend to like the same shit, and they'll fall all over themselves to talk to you.

Girls were so predictable. Zac must've used that trick a hundred times, and it worked with Ari too in the end. He was going down fast—well on his way toward crashing and burning—when he finally found a foothold with the Little Mermaid thing. Her favorite kids' movie? He could work with that. Then he just had to feign an interest in fairytales that didn't sound completely non-believable. It was a bit of a stretch, even for him, but he must've pulled it off.

She was here, after all. She lay beside him, stretched out on the beach blanket that he spread out for them underneath the pier. Zac had borrowed his cousin's iScroll for the evening, and he used it to project his downloaded copy of The Little Mermaid movie onto the underside of the wooden slats. Cyrus had protested loudly of course, but Grandfather had come down on Zac's side. This date was official Disruption business, and Zac needed the iScroll for more than just the movie. He needed access to the voice-rating algorithm, in case Ari decided to sing.

Not that Zac expected that to happen. Not tonight. He was still trying to figure out the extent of her whole "muteness" thing, but she seemed pretty dead-set on communicating by text message only.

He'd said "hey" out loud to her when she walked over to meet him tonight. She'd only waved in response, looking down at her feet. Then she'd pulled out her phone and texted him her answer, despite the fact that they were standing face to face.

Ari: hey

He hadn't texted back. He preferred to keep his phone in his pocket, along with his one good hand. No need to draw attention to the fact that he could only text one-handed... Zac had never understood why texting was so popular with his peers anyway. To him, it seemed incredibly slow—and incredibly easy for the tone behind the typed words to be misconstrued.

He'd answered her text by laughing and saying "hey" to her out loud again, and that pretty much set the tone for all further communication. He spoke aloud, she texted back. He kept his hands (or lack thereof) hidden in his pockets, and she pretended not to find anything the least bit strange about it.

Nope, he thought, stifling a smirk. Totally normal. Just two completely non-abnormal people on a first date.

Not that he wasn't enjoying himself. That was the weirdest thing of all, maybe. Zac was pursuing Ari for SirenSong-related purposes, but the truth was that he probably would've asked her out in any case. There was something about her. He couldn't quite explain it in terms of anything he'd ever felt around a girl before. It was like this air of mystery. Like a book you're not even that into, but you keep coming back to read more just to find out how it ends...