Escape: Through the Fourth Wall

6: The Plot Gets A Move On

I trudged through the hallway, my head spinning. In fact, my mind was so preoccupied that if Zac hadn't found me, I wouldn't have remembered to head to the library, let alone find my way there.

"Where were you?" he asked. "We've been waiting for ages!"

"Oh. Right." I momentarily shook the morning's events out of my head. "Uh, yeah, Wen kept me back after class a bit."

Zac frowned. "What? Who? Wen?"

Come to think of it, it would have been a lot more convenient if he had said that in the previous chapter. Or if the Author had made that chapter just a little bit longer.

(A/N: Nah, then the ending wouldn't have been right.)

Excuses, excuses.

I gave him a look that meant that some really interesting shizz had just gone down, and he understood.

"Let's talk at the library, then," he said, his frown not fading in the slightest.

***

"That old dude's name is Wen?" Zac asked, raising one eyebrow. "What kind of a name is that?"

"Come on, man," shrugged Mac, "Who knows what names were considered normal in the 18th century."

Zac laughed. Jack furrowed his brow.

"Uh, Mac?" he asked, "Have you ever seen the guy?"

Mac stopped scanning rows of books in the Teen Fiction corner of the second floor library they had gathered in and looked at him, puzzled. "No. Why?"

Jack avoided her gaze. "It's nothing. Never mind."   

Someone snorted.

Our main characters wheeled around to find the only other person in the library, who wasn't even the librarian. 

 "Who are you supposed to be?" asked Zac, because he was used to random characters appearing from nowhere at this point. He looked the kid up and down. "Is your name, like, Emo or something?"

It wasn't hard to see why he'd asked- this guy looked so emo he could have given Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Eeyore combined a run for their money. His black bangs barely revealed his dark eyes and what appeared to be eyeliner, and he wore skinny jeans that seemed way too tight for any creature that required limbs to locomote. He was wearing a black hoodie as well, but the cynosure of his get-up was the fact that he was wearing the hood on too. Of course, it was hard to tell, because he was sitting in the darkest corner in the universe.

"Yeah", chimed in Mac, "Haven't you heard of this magical thing called a haircut?" 

"And are you colour blind, or do you actually not know that you can buy clothes that aren't the colour black?" Zac continued.

"Or that normal people sometimes don't feel like wearing hoodies indoors?"

"And do you mind shifting to an even shadier spot? Unfortunately, we can see you way too clearly."

The boy was silent for a few seconds, eventually dragging his chair to an acceptably bright area. He looked up at Zac.

"Nice to meet you too." 

It didn't help that his voice reeked of condescendence. 

"The name's Draco. But please just call me Drac."