(See what I did with the title😂)

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Bree sat in her room smiling. She was smiling for the first time in months! And why was she smiling? Her parents had talked to her for the first time this week. Her parents almost never talked to her during the week, because they had work. But Bree had to ask them about the trip, and they had said yes. Although later she had heard them saying that they where glad she would be out of the house, she didn't let that put a damper on her trip.

Bree packed her suitcase that night and went to bed dreaming of adventures she could have in Germany.

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Bree got up early the next day. She was downstairs eating breakfast when she heard the voice of her little sister.

"Natasha! Give me my hairbrush NOW!!!!!" Susan screamed from the bathroom. She came down the stairs a few minutes later wearing a slim knee-length black dress with red heels. She had her hair pulled back into a half-up, half-down look with a full face of fancy makeup on. In other words, she was way to dressed up to go in the car to drop Bree of at the airport. She wasn't even going to go to the mall and she was carrying a tiny clasp purse in between her right arm and her waist.

"Bree, Bree, Bree, my darling older sister. What in the world are you wearing? You cannot go on a plane, and sit around a million people looking like that!!!" Susan said in a berating tone. "Here let me fix your hair."

Susan reached up to pull the beanie off of Bee's head, and as fast as lightning, Bree's hand went up and stopped her arm by grabbing her sister's wrist. She pulled her arm down, and as she was trying to free herself, Bree gave her a Russian rug burn. Her sister squealed in pain and ran across the room.

"Breanne!!!" her sister screamed at her while holding her hurt arm gently.

"You know every time I hurt you, you call me that. You don't have to call me by my full name. That name is to be left on the birth certificate. " Bree retaliated.

"Ugh." Susan huffed. "That really hurt Breanne!"

"Just because I have an elegant longer full name, doesn't mean you have to use it!!" Bree yelled at her. "And you need to learn how to deal with pain. Crybaby."

Even though Bree was partially joking her sister took her literally. "How dare you Breanne Campbell, deal better with pain? And you have a lot of experience with that I presume? No, you don't!" Susan spat in Bree's face. Susan was so mad that she punched her sister slightly in the arm. No. It was actually with all her force, but to Bree, it was like nothing.

"That's all you got?" Bree scoffed. "Seriously?" Bree loved winning fights with her sister, but her sister didn't want to give up so easily.

"And you could do better?" her sister mocked. "Actually, YES!" Bree yelled the last word as she punched her sister's arm as hard as she could. The impact was a little bit bigger than Susan expected, even Bree was surprised.

"OOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!" her sister yelled. Fortunately for Susan, her parents had witnessed the entire thing and only had to take one step forward before they were standing in front of Bree with the same look they always look at her with, disappointment.

"She asked for it," Bree stated simply, slipping up to her room to get her bags. She came back down as her sister was walking upstairs with a nasty purple bruise on her shoulder. Bree smirked to herself, she had punched her sister! She would never get another chance to punch someone for years.

Bree went outside, loaded her stuff in the car, and they were off to the airport. Bree sat in the back of the cramped car with her stuff next to her, listening to Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish. She sat back, listened, and let her mind wander. As she was listening to the song her mind thought of a certain pair of blue eyes she knew all too well. As she thought about it more, her mind uncovered the rest of the face for her. Conner. Yes, she knew she had a slight crush on him, but she thought that it was because she loved his stories. But, it suddenly dawned on her how much she noticed of him. She noticed how he was really cute when he stuttered, he loved his sister a bunch(she had seen her with Conner the year before), and he was always nervously fixing his reddish-blonde hair. ^What?^ She was just observant. Or was that it?

Her parents pulled up into the airport's parking lot, said goodbye to Bree, and pulled out. Bree started walking over to the group of students as she saw Mrs. Peters say something. Conner whipped his head in her direction so fast she thought he might have gotten whiplash. As Bree got closer, she pulled an earbud out to say good morning, but before she could say anything, she let out a yawn. She swore she saw Conner's eyes pop out of his head a little as she did. But maybe her eyes were tricking her.  After yawning, she said good morning to everyone. Mrs. Peters told them their seating arrangements, and she found out she was sitting next to Conner. At this news, Conner's eyes seemed to glow. Did he have a crush on her? She would have to ask. ^Not that that would be weird or anything, she liked to be frank with people^

As they were in line to get their passports checked she noticed Conner staring at her passport picture. He looked guilty and startled as her eyes met his, so he quickly said, "Your passport picture is much better than mine, I got mine over the summer and made the mistake of asking them if I was supposed to smile right as they took it." he said ^good recovery in my opinion^flipping open his passport picture to show her. When she saw it it took every ounce inside of her to not laugh. After studying it for a moment she blankly stated, "It looks like you sneezed and it scared you." she said as honestly and blankly as she could. He seemed to buy it because he smiled one of those beautiful smiles she loved. ^Geez, I'm getting mushy.^

They got through security with a little difficulty, because she was wearing so many bracelets, it took her a long time to take them off. After they were off the scanner lady asked her to take her beanie off. Bree said that it didn't contain any metal so, why should she? She said it so politely that the lady let her through. Conner was on the other side of the scanner waiting for her with his mouth wide open, and a very shocked expression on his face.

"You just argued with security!" he said to her after she had been scanned.

"No. I just told them it was unnecessary to take off my beanie. There's a difference." she said with her same blank expression. He looked so shocked by this. He started to say something, but stopped, pursing his lips together.

"You have a question?" she asked calmly, remembering that he did that any time he had a question.

"What?! How do you know that?" he asked, frantically, looking around in bewilderment. 

"You purse your lips together when you have a question," she said simply, then internally smacked herself for giving away that she knew so much about him. 

"Oh, yeah, I do do that. Well, it's just,-" he started hesitantly " you never anywhere without your beanie, do you ever take it off?" he asked shyly.

"No." she stated simply.
He seemed to take the one-word answer as an end of the conversation, for he didn't pry. 

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They boarded the plane and took their seats. The plane was getting very crowded and Mrs. Peters still hadn't sat down yet so Mindy asked, "Where is your seat, Mrs. Peters?"

"I'll be in first class." Mrs. Peters said, "But don't worry; if any of you need me, just have a flight attendant notify me. I'll be in row one, seat A. It's going to be a long flight, so get comfortable." she said, and walked off.

Conner took the seat by the window and Bree sat next to him. As Bree looked over at Conner, it looked like his brain was going a mile a minute to find a way to start a conversation with her. Just as Bree was going to say something Conner asked her, "Are you okay by the window?" Bree's mind was struck, of all the things to say he managed to ask the dumbest one. "But you're by the window," she responded with the most confused face she had ever pulled off.

For a moment it looked like Conner was going to slap himself for being so dumb, but he recovered and said, "Oh, right, what I meant to ask was if you wanted to sit by the window. I wouldn't mind switching seats." ^Nice recovery, a little shaky though^

"I'll be fine," she said. "I'm just going to read for most of the flight," she said gesturing to her bag full of her favorite murder mysteries. ^Why did you have to tell him what you were going to do, now he will think you're super weird for reading thick murder mysteries.^ Instead, his eyes expanded a tiny bit more and looked at her like she was the coolest thing on the earth for reading murder mysteries.

"Great let me know if you change your mind," he said and sunk farther in his seat while Bree got a book out. "So Mrs. Peters told me you like to write, too," he said, obviously trying to fight the awkwardness that was in the air.

"Uh-huh. Short stories mostly. I read some of yours when I TA'd for Ms. York last year- they're cute. They remind me of classic fairy tales."

And, yet again, Conner's eyes popped a little farther out of his head. "You've read my stories?" he asked in disbelief. "Yup," Bree responded coolly, trying to hide the fact that she had pictures of every single one of them on her phone at that very moment to read them whenever she wanted, and that she loved them a ton. "I liked them a lot- especially the one about the Curvy Tree and the Walking Fish. Those were clever." And then the not so uncommon blush of a dep red crept up Conner's cheeks. That happened a lot around her.

"Thanks," Conner said, "Those were originally called the Curvy Giraffe and the Flying Frog, but I changed the titles so they would sound more.....um.....realistic. What kinds of stories do you write?" he asked, probably to hide the fact that these stories meant more to him than some short stories he wrote in seventh grade.

" I just finished one called 'Cemetery of the Undead'. It's pretty self- explanatory." Bree said. The way that Conner looked at her after that made her feel cool about writing that stuff when she thought that he would think that she was stupid for writing that stuff, and she thought she was stupid for writing that, but he thought that he was stupid for writing what he wrote, and thought that she was cool for writing what she wrote. *I applaud you if you got that the first time reading it through!*

Conner nodded a little too much to seem normal and said, "Sounds lovely." with way too much enthusiasm. "I've thought about changing up my genre. I think it would be fun to write darker stories like that. Stories with vampires and werewolves, but no love triangles or anything-"

Bree was barely listening to him, she was focusing on the fact that whenever she was around him, he would turn bright red and ramble. Maybe she was imagining it, but maybe he had a crush on her. ^No. No. No. She was not thinking about this right now.^ She was on a once in a lifetime opportunity for school, and here she was thinking about a boy who wrote some of the best stories in the world. ^Seriously.^ She wanted to know if he had a crush on her, and there's only one way to find out.

"Oh, Conner- I forgot I had something I was going to ask you," Bree said point-blank. His answer surprised her. "Ask me anything," he responded. This sudden confidence surprised her but she continued as planned. "Do you have a crush on me or something?" Bree asked point-blank.

It seemed like all of Conner shut off. In other words, it looked like someone hit him with a bus. He was dumbfounded. After a complete minutes of silence, he seemed to regain his being and mind, and said in a slightly higher voice, "What? No! Of course not! Why would you think that?" he asked as if she had just asked him if he was a leprechaun.

"Because you turn bright red and ramble whenever I'm around you." She stated simply. She tried to state it in a way that was neither accusatory or suspicious.

Conner forced a laugh that was definitely not genuine and said, "Oh, that? That's nothing. That's just my sodium allergy." he said and looked as surprised to hear it come out of his mouth as she was.

"Sodium allergy?" she asked with a questioning tone. "I've never heard of such a thing," she said like it was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard.

"It's very rare." Conner started. "Makes me turn bright red and ramble for no apparent reason......So that explains all that...." he said slowly, obviously making it up as he went. She looked at him suspiciously, obviously not convinced.

"Sorry, I just thought since we're going to be sitting next to each other for half a day on this plane I would ask," Bree explained.

"I appreciate you asking, that would have been totally awkward......Just sitting here.....for hours and hours....one of us crushing on the other....glad that's not the case.." the boy looked like he was going to die of embarrassment.

Bree didn't want to embarrass him anymore, so she pulled out a book and started to read her book. A few minutes later they were off in the air, soaring through the sky.

"Amazing," Conner said under his breath.

"Have you ever flown before?" Bree asked him, curious about why a plane would be so interesting. The boy had disappeared last year during school, and she always thought that he had taken a plane to see his grandma in Vermont.

"Not on a plane," Conner responded, a moment later he looked mortified as if he had just said he believed in aliens.

"Then what did you fly on, a magic carpet?" Bree asked squinting her eyes

To Bree, it looked like the boy thought she wasn't joking.  Conner laughed a little before turning pale and said, "I've been - um- ballooning before. It was really neat, but nothing like this. Technology is almost like magic these days." he said. It took Bree a moment to process what he had just said. To her it sounded like he knew what magic was, the way he made the comparisons was almost like he had been around it, but she knew that was just her imaginative brain talking. ^No one had ever seen magic before, right?^

"You know Arthur C. Clarke said that 'Magic is just science we don't understand yet.'"she quoted, partially to remind herself that it wasn't real. "Not always," Conner muttered under his breath. Although Bree had heard what he had said, she asked him to repeat it to see if he would. "Pardon?" She asked. "Oh, nothing. That's a great quote," he responded, lost in thought.

Bree was getting a little bit suspicious. "Where did you go ballooning?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's a long story," Conner said shrugging. "It was with my sister in my grandma's- um - state," he said a little unsure. "But this is my first time on a plane," he said. Bree raised her eyebrow a little higher, "Looks like you're having a lot of first experiences." she said slyly, and before he had a chance to respond, she popped both earbuds in and listened to music. She loved causing situations like that. But this time she felt badly, she felt like she had just kicked a little pup's nose. She tried to shake off that feeling for half the flight until Conner nudged her to reality.

"Can you move please?" Conner asked, obviously needing to go to the bathroom. "Sure," she muttered in response. She moved her legs to the side, and he climbed through. just the little movement of her legs made her realize she needed to stretch. She got up and stretched for a moment before she saw all of the reading club girls get up from their seats and corralled around the bathroom. As she got closer she realized that they were interrogating Conner about his sister and where she was. She listened closer and heard Conner's panicking voice try to mellow into an I don't know what you're talking about voice. ^He didn't succeed.^

Bree realized after a little more talking that he was going to come back to his seat, so she went and sat down. Conner came and she stood up to let him in. After she sat down and tried to go back to reading her book, she started an interrogation of her own. "So your sister lives in Vermont now?" she asked. "Yes, with my grandma," he said. She could see that he wanted to talk about whatever he was hiding with someone else, but he couldn't. Bree knew that people would want to share more about their life with people they liked. Did he like her? Or was she just imagining how he was a little bit more uneasy about lying to her?

"Vermont's pretty far," she said, continuing her interrogation. "It is. But we talk on the phone a lot," he responded, even unsure about lying about talking on the phone. ^Why was he uneasy about that. Wherever Alex was, she had signal, right? Or was she dead? No, she couldn't be, but where was she? Because wherever it was, it wasn't Vermont. That's for sure.^

"So that's where you went ballooning I take it?" she asked coyly. "Um....yeah. Why?" Conner asked, still uneasy. "Just curious. So if you've never flown before, how did you get to Vermont?" she asked, thinking this would be an easy question to dodge. But Conner's mind looked like it was going a mile a second to try to find an appropriate answer to this question. "Train?" he peeped a last. "I see why they'd be suspicious," Bree said and popped an earbud into her ear, occasionally side-eyeing him over the course of the flight.

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THANKS FOR READING!!!
BYE BOOK-HUGGERS!!!
TLOSGEEK2-OUT!!!