As you say

Chapter 3

"Okay kids! Welcome to the Grand Canyon!" a preppy tour guide said to us. I rolled my eyes at her. She looked just about a year or two older than us, and didn't every boy notice it. Her blouse was so tight, her boobs will most probably have to be amputated, and her skirt shows a bikini tan line. I observed Christopher and Benji drooling all over their bronchures, staring at the blonde.

"Guys," snorted Cassie.

"This is my type of person!" I hollered, hooking in with Cass, smiling. We shoot each other know-it-all glances and laugh.

"Well," said Blondie, effectively capturing attention with a girly giggle, "we have to get going if we want to finish this tour before y'all have to go to bed!"

"Bubbly bitches bimboing..." Cass says, rolling her eyes. She despised being treated childishly.

"Yeah, and it's sick that it has this much of an effect on the guys," I whisper to her.

"True that," she sighs, glancing around at all the boys with their pumped out chest as if they had something to prove to Blondie. Personally I thought they all looked like bullfrogs ready to croak, they must be in pain...

"C'mon girls!" Blondie shouts annoyingly over her shoulder, sashaying her ass more and more with every step. Cass and I burst out laughing at her.

"Oh, my word! She looks like she's about to dislocate her hip!" Cass says between laughs. Giggling, we make pur way along the path as Blondie tells us all about the 'fascinatingly unique flora', but didn't really listen, since we have our very own backyards full of shrubs too. By the time we got back to the bus my hair was a frizzy as a '70 disco chick.

'Oh, well, nothing I can do about it now', I shrugged. Meanwhile, Blondie (finally heard her name, it's Erebelle, but she was still practically mentally raping Christopher, so...) took the time to make sure all of us got her card in case we ever became interested in any of the 'unique fauna and flora'.

"Hey, that was some tour, huh?" Blake says from next to me.

I smiled up at him sweetly, "Sure was."

"Want to go get a last look before we're off again?"

"Why not?" I said a bit hesitantly. Blake threw me a competitive look and all but ran to the nearest lookout point.

I stopped about 7 feet from it, not daring to get any closer to the edge.

"Is poor little Zi-Zi afraid of the teeny wheeny itsy bitsy drop?" he taunted me. I clenched my jaw so hard I could've broken a jawbreaker in half.

"I told you to never cal me that again!" I growled at him. Family names are meant for family members.

He just stood there, smiling. As if he had some diabolical plan or something.

"Come on, Zaili!" he said, challenging me. "How are you going get at the top of the Eiffel tower if you can't come over this silly little phobia?"

"Silly? Little?" I squeaked at him, my voice an octave too high. "Do you have any idea how I feel right now?"

"Did you seriously just ask the guy who had to comfort you when you thought the bus was too near the road's edge?" Blake said, roaring with laughter.

I didn't say anything. I didn't move anything. In fact, the only moving that I was doing was my internal organs processing stuff or whatever... I slowly spread my feet to shoulder width, putting my fingers through some beltloops, biting my lip like it was a piece of hard candy. I could almost - almost - hear the creepy West music as I stares Blake down.

Copying my stance, he tried to scrape together enough courage to take me on... and he couldn't do it. I didn't blame him at all... I can be pretty freaky sometimes... I don't know, he's probably woried that I would sit on him and bite his leg or something...

Concluding to some similar fact that I was not incapable of doing so, he help his hands up in the universal quitting sign and came to sit next to me.

"You are brilliant", he says softly.

"Told you."

It was spectacular. We just sat theee and watched as the sun got swept behind several clouds and a mountain. Blake watched it like it was a dying wish come true. I smiled. He didn't always realize that sometimes you have to step back you get ahead.

That was a lesson I learned well...