A Couple of Teenagers

Silver-Streak's brow furrowed as he looked at Noelle.

"Did you forget that you kissed another guy? And did you forget telling me that you've kissed another guy?"

Noelle sighed. "No. No, of course not. I just... hoped, I guess... that maybe we could pretend it didn't happen. Just for the rest of the afternoon. Just for goodbye."

She stood up and reached for her tshirt. "It was stupid of me, I guess."

Silver-Streak's hands began to glow silver as he stepped behind Noelle, so that she was between him and the pool.

"Yeah you did forget, so into the pool with you!" He lunged forward and tackled his slender girlfriend dragging her back into the pool with him.

They fell into the pool, colder now after the ice had melted into it, and Noelle clung to Streak as they surfaced again. Their legs entwined under the water as Noelle blinked away the water that clung in drops on her eyelashes, and hesitated a moment, meeting his eyes, then leaned in and kissed him.

Softly, their lips touched, and then she pulled away to scan his face, to make sure this was ok.

Silver-Streak pulled back after the kiss and looked Noelle in the eyes. A slight smirk on his face.

"I'll see you later Frosty... I've got studying to finish up after all." He floated up out of the water and drifted through the air towards his clothes. He looked back over his shoulder, wet hair hanging in his eyes. "See you at dinner... I hear that we're having pot roast tonight." Before Noelle could respond he flew down the hall leaving a streak of silver light in the air behind him.

Noelle watched him go, torn between hope and another wave of despair, then paddled over to the edge of the pool and got out. After a perfunctory attempt to towel off, she wrang out her tshirt and pulled on her shorts, twisted her hair up into a bun, and slipped her feet into her flip-flops. She took a few steps back towards the hallway Streak had disappeared down, then changed her mind and headed back outside, not wanting to run into anyone else who might be wandering the Castle's halls.

Closing her eyes, she hovered for a moment over the grass, then ported back to her apartment. Behind her, her flip-flop dropped from her disappearing foot and fell under an azalea bush.

On her balcony, Noelle slid open the glass door and stepped inside, kicking off her other shoe and wandering blindly into her still-dark bedroom. She peeled her wet clothes off, leaving them on the floor where they fell, and curled up under the covers in her bed -- the bed -- and shut her eyes, not wanting to think, to remember... to cry again.

She failed.

Silver-Streak closed his bedroom door as he touched down on the floor. Without thinking he reached up and turned on his stereo. It was halfway through "Everybody Hurts" by REM.

He blasted it through the wall shattering it into 23 pieces.