DISCONTINUED

Chapter 15

*** A/N: Chapter / scene song from playlist - REAL EMOTION (Paper Route) ***

Luna was freaking out. This was NOT good. No, this was way more than not good. This was flat out BAD. Unless of course she was wrong. Was she wrong? She sure hoped she was wrong, but at the same time she also didn't. Oh man... what a mess.

Her and Olivia and Bo had been sitting around at lunch lamenting about how it was really far too nice a day to be trapped inside dissecting Romeo and Juliet and then frogs in English and Biology respectively, when they'd reluctantly agreed that while they'd stick around and suffer through the afternoon, right after school was out they'd head to the river to hang out for a while in the late afternoon sun.

Then Olivia had remembered her commitment to get extra help after school - her recent test / retest hadn't gone well and now she actually was failing - and while Bo and Luna were quick to suggest canceling their plans and rescheduling for another day, Olivia would have none of it, arguing that her "pre-calculus inadequacies shouldn't ruin anyone else's chance for a lovely afternoon at the river". She had insisted that they go on without her. Bo and Luna had argued (Luna more than Bo, or so it had seemed to her), but Olivia had been adamant and they'd eventually relented, with Bo and Luna agreeing to meet up after last block, go to Luna's house to drop off their school stuff and pick up Mack before heading to the river.

The walk to the river had been nice. Quiet, but nice. Again, Bo was good at quiet. Although this time Luna seemed to sense a bit of odd tension in the quiet that wasn't usually there with Bo.

At the river they'd laid down on the flat, dark rocks that had been warming in the sun all day while Mack had busied himself plunking around in the shallows at the river's edge. For a small dog he sure did love the water, but his depth perception was, it seemed, a little lacking. Perhaps understandable since his eyes were basically at water level. As such, he'd plunk around for a while until he invariably just walked off a drop, at which point his walking just transformed to dog paddling and he'd calmly do a little U-turn to head back to where his feet touched bottom and the cycle would start all over again. Although there wasn't much of a current along the edge, Luna still always tried to stay downstream of Mack just in case since it wouldn't take much for the little guy to get swept away.

They'd been lying there for a while, enjoying their hot rock therapy, when Luna had turned her head to glance at Bo, assuming he'd be lying with his eyes closed as she had been. But he was not. He was looking right at her. What she should have done was smile and wave innocently and nonchalantly and "best friends hanging out at the river on a sunny day" like. Or toss a pebble at him as a best friend might do, or something like that. But no, she hadn't done any of those things. Nope. Instead she'd just stared back at him, seemingly unable to look away. But that wasn't the worst part. Oh no. As bad as that was, the worst part was that he hadn't just smiled innocently and waved or thrown a pebble at her like best friends would have. No. That's not what had happened. No, instead he'd just kept staring at her, and he'd done so with the same look on his face that she feared that she had on hers. Eventually it seemed they had both looked away at the same time.

This was terrible. Had that really just happened? It couldn't have. She was certainly going to do her best to pretend that it hadn't. She rolled off her rock, away from Bo and towards the river, and waded into the water, her face flushed and her heart beating faster than it should.

"Too bad Olivia couldn't join us today" she said, her mind adding You know, Olivia... my best friend and your girlfriend!

Was there an awkward pause before Bo replied? "Yea. Yea... for sure. Too bad."