New World

3 | Mountain Sound

A knock sounded from the other side of  Lila's bedroom door. She sighed and paused the movie, pushing the chocolate packets out of the way and dropping her water bottle onto the bedside table. She walked over to the door and swung it open, seeing it was just Livvy, Ty and Kit.

"You're watching The Notebook?" Livvy said, raising an eyebrow, hearing the familiar soundtrack.

Lila shrugged her shoulders. "What do you want?"

"We're going out. Are you coming with?" Livvy voiced. "We won't be long, so you can go back to your precious movie."

Lila said with a slight grin, "Obviously I'm coming. The Notebook can wait."

They left the institute with Lila in the lead hopping down the steps, but then slowed to walk with Ty, talking quietly to him. He smiled at her words.

They passed the parking lot, and a statuary garden, and then they were so far away from the house that they were in the chaparral desert.

Ty had moved to climb the mountains, and Lila was trailing after him.

"Ty!" Livvy called. "Ty, get down from there!"

"I will when I'm done with this!" Ty called in return. He was climbing the mountain steadily, easily finding footholds and handholds.

"Lila! Why are you going?" Livvy called after her sister.

Lila shrugged her shoulders as she turned around. "For fun?"

Livvy just nodded, before Lila ran off after Ty, who'd gone so far up the mountain already that Lila doubted she'd reach the top before him.

Finding footholds wasn't especially easy, certainly not as easy as Ty found it. She'd never been a naturally good climber—her arms were weak and she was better with balancing, especially sneaking around because she was fast—but she climbed nonetheless, trying to follow Ty's path.

"How do you do it?" She asked when she reached the top, flopping onto her back. Ty looked down at her and laughed a little. "You're so speedy, and you just find footholds like that." She clicked her fingers.

Ty shrugged his shoulders. "It's easy for me."

"I wish it was easy for me," she returned.

"What do you think of Kit?" Ty asked suddenly, and Lila raised her eyebrows in thought, staring up at the thin clouds above them.

"He's fine, I guess. We don't really know him so I can't really say."

Ty just nodded.

"Why? Is something wrong?" She asked, looking to her triplets with furrowed brows, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun. Ty shook his head, so she dropped it.

She sat up and leaned back on her hands, head tipped back to the sun, warming her skin. After a few moments, as Ty spoke about how he wanted to buy more Sherlock Holmes books, Lila glanced to the side while still listening to him.

She found Livvy kissing Kit in the desert before them, Kit's arms around her and Livvy's around his neck.

"Oh my God!" Lila exclaimed, turning her head sharply to the left, looking at Ty, who'd broken off his speech and was looking alarmed. "Livvy's kissing Kit!" 

Ty sat up onto his knees and glanced over the edge of the cliff in the direction Lila had. "What?"

"She's known him, like, a week! You can't fall in love that quick!" Lila said in an accusing tone as she shook her head, looking from Livvy and Kit to back to Ty.

"Diana's there," Ty announced, looking at Lila in an almost cringing expression.