5 8/25: Reminiscing Beach Night - A. Thomas & C. Jung

Chan-hee's POV

After the sunset soon turned into a glimmering moonlit night, we decided to make a campfire. Ali decided she would go back to a store and get some snacks. She's not back yet, so it's just Khalil and me. We managed to get a fire going before it got completely dark, but now that it's just him and me, we're not even making one bit of communication with each other, even though we're sitting on different sides of the fire. To be honest right about now, he looks scared out of his shit. So I decided to break the silence between us by asking him a question. "Hey, Khalil, what's wrong?"

I look at him, waiting for him to respond to me, but he doesn't break from his phone. He's just madly texting someone and looking really scared. "Khalil," I try again to get his attention. Again, he does nothing. "KHALIL!" I practically yell out loud, and I finally get his attention then. "What? What is it?" he says. I give him a concerned look before saying, "What in the hell is wrong with you? Why do you look like you're scared to die?" I say back to him.

He tries hard to make a straight face, but I can tell it's not working. "Umm, nothing, Chan. There's nothing wrong with me. Why would you even ask that?" he says. He then starts to scratch his hair with only two fingers, which instantly tells my instincts he's lying.

"Ok, first of all, you're being very chatty. When a person is chatty, I know they're lying to me. Second of all, you're scratching your head. You never do that unless you're lying to me or Ali, or in fact, anyone at that. Thirdly, you look scared out of your mind. I can see you're trying to change the face you're making, but it's not working," I tell him before adding while folding my arms together, "so you better tell me, or I guess I'll just have to get one of my girls to figure it out for myself."

When I bring up the fact that I'll get one of my girls to figure out everything he's doing, I'm smiling devilishly and he's looking shocked and scared, both of us knowing what I'm talking about. I have a specific amount of girls for our gossip page for our school. I have exactly six girls to help me out with doing one task each: a hacker, a second-in-command, and my other four that let me know details about anything that's juicy for the blog. You can basically say it's my gang of girls for a gossip blog.

"Ok, ok, fine," he says, giving in. "I'll tell you, but you have to promise that you CAN'T TELL Ali OR put it on that stupid gossip page."

"Hey! My gossiping is not stupid, it's significant for the school. But I promise to not tell Ali OR put it on my blog," I tell him.

"Cross your heart?"

"I cross my heart and swear on my life."

"Ok, so I got some message from an unknown person saying that they needed me to do something for them. I tried to ask them who they were and how they got my number, but they told me it was none of my concern," he explains.

"'None of your concern'? The hell it is!" I retort back to him.

"That was exactly what I thought! But anyway, he told me again that he needed me to do something for him. I decided to go with it and asked what it was. You know what he said to me?"

"No. What?" I say, leaning in closer but not a lot since the fire is sitting right between us, sparks crackling.

"He wants me to sell drugs around the school to people for money."

At this point, I'm shook. "Wait, WHAT?! Drugs?! He's gotta be out of his mind!"

"I was the same way, and me and you both know what happened to my dad, which made me promise to you, Ali, myself, and my mom that I would never do drugs or never have anything to do with them."

"Yeah, I know that," I say, remembering back to a day when we were 13 when he told us his dad was a junkie and he died from overdosing on drugs. I remember that promise he made to us when we were all at my house in my room. To never do drugs because of what happened to his dad. "But, what will happen if you do?"

"I don't even know, Chan, and that's why I'm scared as shit. But, think about it. If I wasn't to do it, one of you guys would be killed, or I would be killed my damn self. I don't really have a choice."

Come to think about it, he's right. I mean, what choice would you have if you were asked to do drugs by some unknown person? It could be anybody in the damn world, but I'm gonna shorten it down to just this town, Blue Winter. This town isn't always as innocent as it seems. I've known that ever since I moved here from Seoul, South Korea, my hometown. Ali and Khalil have told me about the killings and stealing in the past.

"You're right. Maybe it was the best choice to just do it. We don't know who this person is, or what he's capable of," I say to him just as I see headlights to my right side. I know it's Ali pulling up now with the snacks. I mean, who else is gonna come to the beach at 9:30 at night? "So how are you gonna get the drugs?"

"He said to meet him at some address, and it has to be tonight unless we want to be killed the next day or if someone gets to them first."

"Ok, I'm gonna come with you when you go to get them. That way if something bad happens I know about it."

Just as I finish that sentence, I see Ali come into view with 2 bags in her hands. "Look, here comes Ali. Just, umm, act like we're laughing about something. And look happy, won't ya?" I say to Khalil just as almost Ali is near us. He rolls his eyes, but he instantly puts on a happy smile, and then we start laughing just before Ali is standing by us with 2 bags.

* * * * * *

Alixandria's POV

"Hey, guys. Whatcha laughing about?" I ask Chan-hee and Khalil just as I get to them with the snacks I bought.

"Oh, just something funny Chan told me," Khalil says. They both smile at me with gleaming eyes like nothing's wrong with them whatsoever.

They kinda seem suspicious to me in a way, but I just shake the thought off. I set down the bags not too close to the campfire and then sit myself down on the sand. "So, I got some marshmallows, some bags of gummy bears and gummy worms, and some thin fire-resistant poles for our marshmallows," I say to them as I start pulling out each item and identify it. I hand a pole to both Chan and Khalil before taking out some marshmallows from its bag.

I hand both of them three marshmallows and then put 3 on mines before we all raise our poles a little close to the fire. "I remember the last time we did this, Khalil burned his," Chan says to us, making Khalil give her a mocking look. "Whatever, Chan, I wasn't paying attention because of your talking always going on forever," he says to her. I chuckle a little as they go on about who caused what.

After about 2 minutes, I break them up. "Ok, ok, guys, settle down. Let's move on from that, ok?" That, fortunately, gets them to stop, and we talk about more memories that we've had together. As we go on about that, I start to realize something about it. From the time I've known Khalil 'til now, I've always been kinda... I don't know, weird around him. Like, when we were having normal conversations, I would sometimes mix my words up in a sentence. Other times, I could feel my face being very warm, my nose sweating for no reason when it wasn't even hot, or I would twirl my hair whenever I wore it down.

Now being the ages we are, I still feel my nose sweating when I'm around him, like right now, for example, even though that might just be the campfire and its heat. My hands are kinda shaking now, too, which means the pole with my almost burnt marshmallows is shaking a little also. And I really have the urge to just twirl my hair right about now, even though it's in a ponytail.

Then, things started to come more clear to me. As Khalil and Chan talked with each other, I just sat there listening, soon pulling my marshmallows from above the fire and in front of my face. 'Oh my God,' I thought to myself as soon as I realized what all my thoughts and actions from before and right now.

'I think I'm in love with Khalil Castle. And I can't deny the thought of it, either.'