Chapter 24 - Together again at last

Together again at last



The Friday after the party, Kaede and her friends were sitting in their classroom, chatting when Kaede's mobile rang.

`Ahhhh!' Kaede yelled, grabbing her bag. She never had a mobile before, and Seto had just gotten it for her, however much she had protested.

`Mobiles are great,' Seto had said as he pushed her towards the counter of the phone shop. `How else will I be able to know exactly where you are?'

Having never needed a phone before, Kaede found it difficult to get used to. She always forgot it, never charged it, and always forgot her ring tone so whenever someone rang her she didn't answer, forgetting she had a phone.

She ripped open the front pocket of her bag before that mobile phone could cut the call into voice mail. She flipped it open and put it to her ear as quickly as possible. `Hello? Who is it?'

`Kaede, it says my name on the screen when it is ringing!' said an impatient voice that sounded a lot like Seto. She looked at the screen and saw that it was indeed him.

`Oh yeah!' Kaede grinned.

`Did you forget that you had a phone again?' he asked annoyingly.

`Shut up,' Kaede snapped back. `I didn't even want a phone, you made me get one.'

`Whatever,' Seto said impatiently. `What are you doing tonight?'

`Working, I'm not as rich as you are, y'know, I do need to work at some point.'

`Oh, okay, so what are you doing tomorrow?'

Honestly, he was like a dog with a bone, never giving up. `Nothing, I'm free tomorrow.'

`Good, I'll pick you up around 7. Please be ready,' and with that he hung up.

Snapping her phone shut, she turned back to her friends.

`He's really brief, isn't he?' Sakura said, not even bothering to look up.

`Yeah,' Kaede said, standing up and going to her locker to collect her maths books. `But that's Seto.'

She heard coughing behind her and turned around to see Joey having a completely fake coughing fit, as he always did whenever she mentioned Seto, which actually wasn't that often.

`Sorry,' Joey said between forced coughs. `I just…have something wrong…with my throat. Terrible cough…terrible.'

Kaede rolled her eyes, hardly able to believe that she was seen going out with such a loser. As she walked back to her desk, Joey got up to go to his locker, and as he past her by she stuck out her leg in front of him and he stripped over, landing on his stomach on the floor.

Ignoring his swearing, Kaede shoved her books in her satchel and lay down on the table. She didn't mind being a dog to Joey, especially at the moment, but it was getting really boring, and she didn't want to lose him as a friend, although she thought that maybe she already had.

But the bell rang, bursting her thoughts, and she, Yami and Tea say goodbye to everyone and go to maths.



***



Kaede sat in the life guard's chair at the swimming pool, bored as usual. Nothing happened, except she had to tell these girls to leave the pool because they were running around the pool edge. She twirled the string of her whistle around her finger and forced herself to stay awake.

She was actually nearly asleep when she heard a sudden shouting. `JOEY! WHY THE HELL DID YOU BRING MAI ALONG? YOU ALWAYS BRING HER TO EVERYTHING!'

Kaede jumped three feet into the air when she heard this. She stood up on the chair and stared over the pool towards the entrance. There they were, every single one of them, Sakura, Yuula, Tea, Ana, Mai, Joey, Honda, Yami, Ryou, Duke, Seto, Takumi, Marc, Tenshi and Mokuba, all wearing swimsuits and all with little blue bands around their wrists indicating that they have paid to use the monster island that was currently being inflated at one side of the pool. Tea was facing Joey, her face red, and obviously it was her who had been shouting.

She blushed when Mai made a strange noise. `Sorry Mai, I do like you very much, it's just Joey NEVER asks!'

`That's fine,' Mai laughed. `Now where's Kaede?'

They all looked over at where she said and waved. It was at that moment when Kaede wished she would just have normal friends.

When the monster island was set up, all of them began mucking around and shrieking at the top of their voices. Kaede was unable to keep up with all the rules that they broke. She just let one of her fellow life guards take her place on the chair and grabbed several buckets and her store of ice. She poured some cold water from the tapes into the buckets and added the ice, twenty ice cubes into every bucket. She stood them next to her on the side of the pool closest to the monster island and every time Joey went by she threw the contents of the bucket at him, laughing at how he immediately threw himself into the pool, never making it to the other end of the island.

After ten minutes of this she decided that she should join in their frolicking, and asked her boss if she could make up the extra hours some other time.

`No, you'll still be working, but you'll be like our spy among them,' Kyoko grinned at her. `When one of them put even a toe out of line, blow your whistle and send them out.'

Kaede shrugged her shoulders, unsure whether Kyoko was joking or not. She stripped into her one piece swim suit underneath her red polo top and blue shorts and dived into the pool, swimming up to her friends.

`I thought you were working!' Seto yelled when he saw her.

`I was, but then you guys happened!' She yelled back, hugging Sakura, Tea and Ana when she arrived. She just waved at the others, and ignored Joey, who was once again having a coughing fit. Instead of retaliating, she completely ignored him and had several swimming races with the others, winning them all. Whilst she was ignoring him, Joey, sulking, pulled Mai with him onto the monster island and began running up and down it, yelling, refusing to get off it and jumping up and down. One of the guy life guards got so pissed off with him he jumped on at the start, reached Joey and threw him off. Joey hit the water with a tremendous splash, and as soon as he surfaced every life guard on duty blew their whistles and Joey was forced to sit on the side, dripping wet, next to the open door with no towel, freezing his arse off, whilst the life guards passing him threw Kaede's store of icy water at him.

Nothing happened for about half an hour, until Ana, Yuula, Mokuba and Tenshi began to play a game, seeing how long each of them could hold their breath underwater for. Ana dived down to the bottom of the pool, sat down on the bottom and stayed there. A whole minute passed, and Ana was still on the bottom of the pool, and not even a bubble of air had broken the surface of the water above her head.

Kaede watched from the side of the pool where she sat, talking to Seto, Sakura and Yami, and got increasingly worried. She looked at the clock on the wall, getting worried. She knew that she should do something. She jumped back into the pool and dived down to Ana, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her back to the surface with her.

`Aww!' Ana said when her head broke the surface. `I could have gone on for ages.'

`Out, now,' Kaede said shortly, pointing to where Joey sat by the door. Muttering, Ana climbed out of the pool and sat next to Joey, and had to sit there enduring the icy water and cold breeze.

After an hour more, their two hours were up and they had to get out and get changed. The girls said goodbye to the boys, and went to the showers in the changing rooms to wash the chlorine off their skin. Kaede and Yuula had to share a shower, each fighting over the hot water. They dressed and left the changing rooms, meeting up with the guys in the reception. Kaede waved goodbye to Kyoko and walked out into the night with them, for the first time in the longest time, together again at last.

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