Aces [#NANOWRIMO2017]

Seraphine Sings Her Heart Out, In More Ways Than One

A/N wheee more author's notes! :D I have two important things to say in this one. First, you remember waldeinsamkeit-? They drew ANOTHER piece of fanart for me and heckin' heck I love it. Seraphine is on the left, and their OC Mia is on the right. Second, shoutout to one of my classmates and best friends for writing the lyrics of Luck of the Draw when I couldn't!

Wᴇᴅɴᴇsᴅᴀʏ, Fᴇʙʀᴜᴀʀʏ 14

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I'm not sure if my mother bought my story, but she let me go. Probably sensed that there was a reason I wasn't telling her everything.

She got that much right, but it wasn't exactly a good reason. Still. I'm grateful that she didn't push me for details.

With that in mind, I'm going to have to come up with a better excuse for when Lynne comes to school. She's not going to believe me if I tell her that I'd been clumsy enough to fall out of a tree, then skillful enough to patch myself back up again...

Actually, she'd probably believe the first part. Because it's true.

Speaking of Lynne, where was she? She hadn't showed up to school yet, but I knew that her bus had already come. I was just considering calling her and asking if anything was wrong, when my phone rang. It was Lynne. She read my mind!

"Hey, Sera?" she said. She sounded a little off. "You there?"

"Yeah, it's me. Where are you, Lynne?"

I heard sniffling from the other end. "Sick. I caught a cold. I was just calling to ask if you could bring my homework to my house at the end of the day?"

"Sure thing. Get well soon, honey."

"Thanks, Sera," came the stuffed-up reply. "I miss you."

I laughed quietly. "Lynne, it's only been twelve hours since I last saw you. How can you miss me already?"

"No, I mean, like, I feel like we don't hang out enough anymore." There was a pause. "Oh my gosh, you do still want to be best friends, right?"

"Of course I do, silly! Are you feeling okay?" I asked, genuinely concerned.

"Okay. Sorry. I guess I'm just tired. See you soon, Sera."

"Later, Lynne. Get well soon." I heard a click as Lynne hung up.

Of course I still wanted to be Lynne's best friend. What was she thinking?

On the other hand... there had definitely been a bit of truth in her words. In the past, I'd spent all my free time by Lynne's side. Now, I was spending less and less of my time with Lynne and, more importantly, more and more time lying to her about where I really was.

I felt a little bad about it, but then I realized that this meant that I was finally branching out a little, that I was finally making new friends. And Lynne was a flexible girl; I was sure that she'd be fine.

I put my cell phone back into my jacket pocket, and as I did so, I spotted Ace across the field. He had a big black blob of something in his hands. I was about to run over and greet him, when seemingly out of nowhere, someone else appeared.

I recognized him right away.

Is that... is that Matt Donatelli?

I took in his short brown hair and leather jacket, and I could almost feel his blue eyes piercing into me. Add that to his alpha-male stance, and, well, yeah, it was definitely Matt.