Ally and Elliott

Chapter 3

The cool breeze ruffled my hair and I pulled my cardigan closer to my body. At this time the sea looked dark and sinister under the clouded moonlight, it made me feel on edge.

Sinking my feet into the sand I thought back to earlier in the backstreets with bandana boy. I realised with regret I hadn't thought to ask his name.

.........

I blushed at my stupidity. Of course he'd known I was following him. It was me he'd been running from! He'd tricked me.

''You tricked me." I scowled.

"I simply ran. You simply ran after me. Now here I simply am and here you simply are. What can I do for you that must be done?"

I struggled to follow the jibberish he was spouting. Did he think he was Dr. Seuss or was he 'simply' insane? I began to panic when I realised we were alone, I was lost and that he could potentially be dangerous..

"Hellooo? Anybody home?" he knocked gently on my head.

Wait why was he knocking on my head!?

Oh maybe because I was standing there dumbfounded and speechless just staring blankly at him.

"Well I just wanted.." I trailed off when I realised the idiocy of me following a complete stranger all this way to simply demand an apology for him laughing.

I had completely overreacted. I'd felt uptight and wound up and angry and I'd been unnecessarily harsh for no reason other than him making a small mistake.

I was the one who'd been rude.

It's funny how it'd taken me almost a mile long run for me to figure that out.

"...to say sorry for snapping at you when you were just making conversation. I'm sorry."

His face split into a grin.

"I say we shake hands, call it a truce, a day, call it whatever you like. Then we go get a coffee?"

So with me standing there in disbelief, completely baffled yet in complete awe of this strange sparkly eyed boy in front of me, we shook.

..........

The waves had begun to touch my feet by now. A sign it was time to leave. I pulled my converse on my feet, not bothering to brush the grains of sand from them first .

I trudged home at a pace that felt slower than which the earth moves. The whole time thinking longingly of a warm cup between my cold fingers and the sound of a weird boy's musical laughter ringing in my ears.

I smiled when I thought of when we'd arrived at a tiny gap between two buildings. A gap that was full of plants, comfy mismatching chairs and a plastic roof supporting multicolored lightbulbs on a rope, colourful parasols and painted cutlery, all hanging and swaying gently in the breeze.

To say it had looked whacky would be an understatement.

I'd immediately wished I hadn't agreed to this, whatever this was..

In the midst of all the madness stood a wooden shack. The doors were wide open, painted red and inside was one table and chair and a counter, it appeared to be a tiny shop.

The sign above it read 'The best Coffee In The World Served By Me'. The sign had been delicately scratched into the wood and shrunk noticeably in size towards the end. Lets just say the 'T' appeared to be five times larger than the 'e'.

"Tadaa!" bandana boy had thrown his hands up towards it and grinned proudly.

I'd realised he was waiting for me to say something.

Be nice.

"Um.. well this is certainly different."'

Great. I'd sounded as bad as Jamie.

"Different you say?" he'd smirked.

"Well.. different to what I was expecting."

"Never expect anything other than the unexpected. That way you always come prepared for battle. Come on!"

Then he'd pulled my arm and led me towards a rickety table and plonked himself down on an orange beanbag. I'd looked around wearily and noticed that the place was rather full, we'd actually taken up the last available table .

The atmosphere was lively yet peaceful and... was that whale songs they had playing?

"Good afternoon mes amis! I am Me, I will be your waiter for today seeing as though Me is the one and only one who works here. Now what can I get for you to have!?"

Ah that was it.

It had finally happened, I'd cracked up! This entire scenerio was a figment of my imagination. That could be the only explanation why I was sitting here with a crazy boy, surrounded by crazy people, high on caffeine and looking at a large crazy French man complete with a checkered apron and white chef's hat almost taller than himself.

As if to prove to the world my insanity, I'd begun to giggle.

My giggle suddenly erupted and before I knew it I was full on belly laughing. Something I hadn't done since god knows when.

Then I heard thunder rolling and startled I stopped laughing abruptly and looked up to see Frenchie too was hysterical.

His laughter was so loud the entire place had stopped talking. Everyone was staring at him bellowing, hiccuping, snorting you name it.

I looked around the room at people's bemused expressions, I caught bandana boy's eye. I couldn't help myself. At the exact same time we both cracked up.

Everyone had looked away after a few seconds and then carried on as usual. Eventually we'd wiped the tears from our eyes and stopped.

Until Mr.Loudlaugh had asked me what I'd wanted and I'd said "coffee please". Well that just set us off again.

Bizarre really.

Of course I managed to sneak back inside without anyone noticing.

Why would they if they hadn't even noticed I'd gone?

........