35. Breaking Bones

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"He's really in the hospital, is he?"

"Yeah. At first, I thought that they were lying. He really isn't coming then. Can't say he didn't deserve it, trying to call us in for two days before the trip," an evil senior cackled with another.

It was Wednesday and all the seniors of Paradise High were standing near the buses, ready to leave for the trip. Apparently, someone had spilt a ridiculous amount of baby oil in all of our school corridors before school hours on Monday. This forced the school to declare Monday and Tuesday as holidays. None of the students were harmed but the same couldn't be said for our dear Principal, Mr Brown. Rumour had it that he had arrived at school before anyone else and learned about the oily hallways the hard way.

"I wonder why he got here before the others," Matt mused.

"Yeah, I made sure to check if anyone was coming in before the school hours," Mason frowned.

"Why are you standing so quietly, Miller?" Torryn narrowed his eyes in unadulterated suspicion.

"Yeah, you didn't even make a stupid comment when Brit came over to kiss me," Rhea murmured confusedly.

"Oh my God," exclaimed Ethan, pointing an accusatory finger at me. "After we were done with the oil, you were speaking with someone on the phone. You even asked us to leave soon. At the time, I thought that was because you didn't want us to be caught bu-but you wanted us all to leave because you had actually called Brown."

A simple phone call about a few students wreaking havoc in the chemistry labs had been enough for the man to come running in.

"You caught me, I didn't want us to be caught," I shrugged.

"Of course, you called Brown," Mae let out her signature bark of laughter.

I just smiled innocently-well, as innocently as one can after having indirectly broken some bones- at my gaping group of friends.

"Wait, but won't he know that you called?" Mason frowned.

I smiled, "No, I used Ethan's phone."

"What?!" Ethan cried out.

"Thanks, buddy," I smiled some more enjoying the anguish on his face. Of course, I forgot to tell him that I had only thought of calling from his phone but in the end, I had just used the telephone in the staff room.

"I have to admit that I wasn't expecting that from you," Matt said, something akin to hero-worship sparkling in his eyes. "That was genius," he grinned.

"Yeah, at least now Brown won't come with us for the trip," Owen smiled happily.

"I didn't know you were capable of that," Torryn gave a disbelieving shake of his head.

"I like having lots of friends and if people knew my exact capabilities of evil, I wouldn't have as many friends," I pouted. "I hope he isn't seriously injured though," I scrunched my nose, trying to picture our principal on a hospital bed.

He must be sweating in an air-conditioned room too, my subconscious snickered in a mean way.

Be more sensitive, you broke his bones, I chastised.

"He'll live," Owen affirmed, texting someone from his phone. "My contacts at the hospital say that he'll be in great health by next week."

"Contacts at the hospital?" Rhea echoed, giving him a weirded out stare.

"We get into a lot of fights," Owen gestured towards himself and Torryn and Matt and Ethan.

I shrugged. "Makes sense."

"Come on, students," Ms Diaz yelled from the front, apparently done with attendance. "Get into these buses."

After boarding the bus, I looked ahead to see that Mae had somehow already saved me a seat beside her at the end of the bus. Perks of being a really small person, I guess.

Grinning at her, I bounced along to the seat. But one seat before where she was sitting at, someone tugged at my hand. This resulted in me toppling over on that person.

"Ouch!"

"Graceful as always, Miller," an arctic cold voice grumbled from beneath me.

"Oh, hell," I scrambled away from Torryn, immediately bumping into Ethan who had been standing behind me. Ethan tumbled to the ground, grabbing Kyle along with him. Kyle, not quite satisfied with the number of people on the ground, pulled two other classmates down, who in turn had grabbed onto someone or something else. Soon, the bus was a chaos of shrieking students and falling bodies.

I frowned at Torryn. "Why would you pull me like that?"

"Yeah," Ethan scowled as he pulled himself up from the ground. "As happy as I am about Aria falling for you, which is a lot," he grinned wide enough to split his face in two before scowling at Torryn and me again, "I am not going to get injured for that every time."

I gave him a weirded out look. "Man, you weirder than Rhea and she's always talking weird things about Brittany like an obsessive psycho."

Rhea, who was sitting on the seat beside where Ethan was standing, shrieked, "I do not!"

"Sure," I assured with a straight face.

Brittany, who was sitting beside Rhea and trying very hard not to laugh, tried to take Rhea's attention away from me, "Babe, you know she's just joking right?"

Rhea turned away from me but only after giving me the glare she only reserved for the people who had the special ability to piss her off. At this point in life, I was the only one that glare was reserved for.

I snickered to myself.

Everything behind me was still chaos. I once again turned to frown at Torryn, "Man, why would you pull me like that?"

Torryn grimaced at the scene behind me. "Sorry about that. I forgot you were clumsier than the average human being."

Giving him an unimpressed look, I opened my mouth but the bus started abruptly, jerking me away from my hold on the seat and I ducked as a bag went flying over my head and landed in the back.

"Watch it," Torryn snarled at the person who had thrown the bag, while tugging on my wrist, gently this time. I was so surprised by this gesture, that I let myself fall on the seat next to him.

I turned around to see who had thrown the bag. I was surprised to see that it was Liam, my friend from our school's football team. He was built like a giant, so him sending the bag flying like that wasn't the surprising part (hell, he could easily throw me like the bag). The surprising part was that he was a teddy bear who wouldn't hurt a fly, unless, of course, he was playing football.

"Sorry, Aria," Liam winced. "I didn't mean to do that. The bus just started and it flew out of my grip. Did it hit you?" He frowned in concern.

Looking at the guilty expression on his face, I knew he didn't do it intentionally. "It's fine, just be more careful," I gave a half-smile.

"Yeah, I'm very sorry," he grimaced, looking very guilty.

I waved him off, with a good-natured smile.

"Sit," Torryn said when he saw that I was about to get up after everyone settled down. "Please," he nodded when he noticed my confused frown. My cheeks heated up.

I shot him a confused look which I repeated for my subconscious. I was very confused. Why did he want me to sit next to him? And why was I blushing?

Stop blushing, woman!

I turned to look at where Mae was sitting (and to hide my overreacting cheeks from Torryn), only to be surprised again. She was trapped between the window on one side and Matt on another. By the looks of it, he was attempting to flirt with her while she was trying to transport the venom from her eyes into his blood.

I raised an eyebrow at Torryn, "I want the window seat."

He narrowed his eyes at me and I returned the favor.

"Mae would let me have the window seat," no, she wouldn't "The window seat or I'll sit somewhere else," I bargained.

At this, Torryn smirked, "Everywhere else is full now."

I strained my neck to look around the bus and sure enough, all the seats were taken, except for one at the very back.

"Oh, there's one at the back, next to Cody. I'll ask him to let me have the windo-"

Before I could complete my sentence, Torryn had shot out of his seat as if he were struck by lightning. I raised my eyebrows at him.

He nodded to the window seat with an almost pout.

Aww!

Wait, no, window seat, yay!

I shook my head at myself and shifted inside grinning. I passed him my bag to keep in the compartment above our seat.

I looked out of the window to see that we'd already left the school grounds. We had been informed that it would take us approximately 1 and a half hour to reach the campsite.

"Do you think Mae will kill Matt before an hour or after?" I asked Torryn.

"Hm. Matt's tough. After an hour."

I considered this and nodded, convinced. "He is pretty reckless. Did you tell Milo that I'll miss him?"

Torryn rolled his eyes, "Yes."

"Great," I sighed happily before shooting him an unimpressed look. "I can't believe you didn't bring him along."

"How, pray tell, was I supposed to do that? Hide him in my bag?"

I shrugged. "Well, that's what Kyle seems to have done," I pointed to Kyle, who was sitting on the seat adjacent to us with a bag on his lap that was moving in a way that there had to be a living thing in there. Or two.

Torryn shot it and Kyle a suspicious look. "I hope it's not a cat."

"Then I hope that it is a cat," I snickered, playing with the headphones around my neck.

I looked around the bus to see that most people had donned on their sunglasses and turned back to see Torryn already staring at me.

A little unnerved by the intensity of his stare (though I would never admit that to him), I blurted out, "Did you know that sunglasses were originally designed for Chinese judges to hide their facial expressions in court?"

"No," Torryn replied. "I did not."

By this point, Torryn was used to me spewing out weird facts about random things.

"Did you know that only 2% of the Earth's population has naturally green eyes?" Torryn shot back.

I raised my eyebrows, impressed and happy that he understood the game. "And where did you come around that fact, Cole?"

He shrugged, the tips of his ears turning pink in an endearing way. "I saw a pair of beautiful green eyes and got curious," he murmured so softly that I almost missed it, his green eyes looking slightly unfocused.

Dude must've seen the mirror.

"Noice," I nodded enthusiastically. "Green-eyed people are also said to be sex addicts."

Torryn blinked. Then he let out a loud chuckle and shook his head in disbelief for the second time today as I rambled on and on about the weirdest things I could think of.

-×-×-×-×-×-

Tyler Atwood, our young course planner/instructor for the camp with his bronze skin and eyes that resembled honey, had quickly become popular among the female teachers of Paradise High (there were two), and the students of Paradise High. Not to mention that his physique made even Ryan Kavinsky, the star quarterback of our school's football team, feel a little self-conscious.

Mae had quickly decided that she would be listening to instructions intently from now on. Matt, who had survived the bus ride due to an unsurprising turn of events where Mae had gone to sleep before 20 minutes into the journey, had an irked expression on his face.

"Alright, guys, listen up," Tyler (he had allowed everyone to call him that), clapped his hands together, standing in front of the crowd of students. Everyone except for a few jealous boyfriends shut up immediately. "Now, we will be having lunch soon, but before that, you all need to set up your tents so that you don't have to carry your stuff around. Make groups of three or four, not more than that," he glanced pointedly at a group of 9 boys in the back, who started whining immediately.

After forming groups (Mae, Rhea, Brit and I would be in one tent), we headed to where the tents were waiting to be set up.

Staring dubiously at Rhea's and Brittany's outfits that definitely didn't belong on a campsite, I turned to Mae. Now that Tyler Atwood was done talking, Mae had turned back to looking sleepy and deadly again.

I sighed, not liking the odds of us getting the tent up anytime soon.

********************************

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