Unexpected ~ (Adriane)

I TRIED to take the twins shopping today, but Raven kept complaining, so I broke down and bought him a bag of skittles. My nerves started to twitch when he kept dropping them around the store.

The entire time I was listening to, “CLICK!” as one skittered to the ground, followed by a happy crunching sound as he scooped it up and ate it. I couldn’t help but cringe.

“CLUNK!” Munch, munch, munch.
“Don’t you know there’s germs all over those?” I snapped, shuddering.
“Yeah,” he said, somewhat thoughtfully. “But you can’t really taste ‘em.”

I dropped them back off at the house, where Zane was sitting on the porch, looking blearily at the clouds. (pigeon counting?)

I sighed oh-so dramatically and flung myself down on the front steps, rubbing the headache out of my temples. He was downing a beer, so I frowned at it.
“Rough day?” he yawned, sympathetically.

Sparrow padded up before I could answer. “Adriane?” she interrupted. “Have you seen my gloves? They’re pink and, well, shaped like my hand.”

Zane exploded into laughter, spewing beer across the grass.
“See what you get for drinking?” I scold with a polar-bear glare.
He looked genuinely surprised. “I’m not drinking,” he said seriously.

He looked down at the beer in his hand, stunned. “Oh. I - …,” he stood up, suddenly, frowning. He went into the house, annoyed, slamming the door behind him.
Sparrow and I watched him go.
“Well,” she said airily. “That was odd.”
Dune picked me up an hour later. I clambered into the passenger seat, sneezing.
“Where are we going?” I wondered as he started off down the road.
“Field trip.”
“Art Museum or Twinkie factory?”
“Better.”
“Better than dead guy’s furniture and processed pastries?”

He parked the car on the curb, leaping out. The place was alive and roiling with people and pigeons, store windows and bicycles.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the sidewalk, muttering and lifting his cellphone high above his head.
He was pointing it towards a church tower, the old kind with a bell.
“There’s a signal coming from there.”
“What? How? Why? Should I care? Is that a squirrel?”
“Ignore the furry mammal,” he said, looking distracted. He pulled off down the street at a lope, still staring at the cellphone, almost running into a parking meter. I had to jog to keep up with him.

And very suddenly, he turned to an apartment and whipped open the door, charging down the hall.
“What are you doing?”
He gave a half-smile. “Adriane, Adriane, Adriane. You would make a horrible detective. Think about it. There’s a signal, coming from the clock tower. That gay kid you had a crush on in Eden programmed my phone to pick up…what?”
“He was not gay! And I did not have a crush on him! I said he had nice abs.” But then it hit me, like that time Sky threw a cantaloupe at my head.

“He made it so your phone…. Would look for Eden technology," I said slowly, the cogs turning in my brain. “It’s a tracker! It’s searching for us!”
“And there’s hope for you yet,” he announced, stepping, unconcerned, into someone else’s apartment. People should really lock their doors.
There was some guy sitting on his bed, with a laptop open. “HEY!” He yelped, leaping off the bed, waving his arms like some dude in a commercial for adult diapers.

“Good afternoon!” Dune said cheerfully. He grabbed a glass of water off of the nightstand; jerked the cup behind him so the water flew out, then took the empty glass and yanked the laptop from the guy’s hands.
“WHAT?!” the guy howled.
Dune took a seat and stared at the screen. “Goodness, Jeff!” he cried, studying the open webpage. “Get a girlfriend!”

I leaned over Dune’s shoulder as he started to pound furiously on the keys.
“I’m not Jeff,” the kid gaped. “I’m Mark.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Dune said, waving his hand dismissively. He pounded some more on the keys, before bringing up a few pages on the church tower.

Dune tried to take a drink of water, realized the cup was empty, looked down on it in annoyance, then threw the entire cup behind him. The guy ducked as it went soaring over his head, before shattering into a nearby wall.

“Ah,” Dune purred. “Get this - it has a room at the top of the clock tower, where they keep the bell. Apparently, it is ‘not open to the public, due to private property right something-something,’ yeah.”
He leaped off of the bed, excited, and yanked a piece of paper off of a writing desk in the corner.
“Cut this,” he demanded, shoving it in my face.
“What width?”
He looked at me, confused. “Scissors?”

I laughed lightly, rolling my eyes. He flipped open his cellphone and held it to my ear.
“Call everyone. Right now. Tell them to bring the usual - fireworks, powder bombs, rope, bags of flour, walkie-talkies, wind-up toy mice, and snacks.”
Mark was starting to look a little green.
“The church isn’t open today,” I pointed out, rather helpfully.
Dune looked at me as if I was stupid.
“Oh,” I realized, a metaphorical light bulb lighting above my head. “I’ll tell them to bring the spray paint, too, then.”

My graffiti artistic skills are brilliant. I even have my own logo. Do YOU have your own logo? Ha. As if!
“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!” the guy looked seriously enraged; more like an advertising rhinoceros. However, I didn’t think rhinos needed adult diapers. Maybe indigestion pills? He did look pretty red in the face.
“Saving the world, Jeff. Saving the world,” Dune winked.
“My. Name. Is. MARK!”

Whatever yah say, kid. And delete your history, why don’t you?