May 2013
1 post
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Season Three; page 322
Niko spent the blurry beginning of his morning haphazardly knocking everything to the floor like a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex with no control over its tail. Of course, every time he bent over to pick something up, another helpless object came tumbling down. The racket reached a volume that Spencer knocked on his door in the midst of a battle with his make-up collection.
“Are you...
March 2013
2 posts
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Season Three; Page 321
He took her home after that. They drove mostly in silence, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. That was, until they pulled into her driveway and Clem realized what was probably going to happen next. She could feel her muscles tense up, her lips purse, and her whole body reject the reality of her situation. She knew what was coming. She knew how ends of dates were supposed to go, real ones,...
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Season Three; page 320
For the first time in hours, Jason had a moment to himself. Niko had gone home for the evening, and all six of his brothers were running around in the backyard like lunatics. It was just Jason and the kitchen. He began cleaning methodically, carefully, expertly even. He had always liked cleaning, he liked how there was a beginning and an end to it, how when he was surrounded by all of his high...
February 2013
5 posts
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Season Three; page 319
It wasn’t until high school that Nine discovered “studying for a midterm” really meant goofing at a friend’s house and summarizing the night with a few questions off the study guide. She sunk into this change excitedly and had actually come to the point of packing nail polish instead of extra notes.
Sierra ushered the volume on her personal stereo to a quiet surrounding,...
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Season Three; page 318
Lethal Weapon was one of the many American movies Niko had never seen. He had never been a major movie buff, but during his film phase he spent most of his time in Paris and, as an all-knowing, snobby teenager, only allowed himself to set his eyes upon French film. Lethal Weapon definitely thrust him outside of his expertise.
The Whitefield boys seemed to know the movie by heart. In particular,...
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Season three; page 317
They left the restaurant stuffed to the brim with delectable food and conversing happily as Pavel lead Clem to his car. He wouldn’t tell her what they were doing next, except that he hoped she liked it. She grumbled over and over that he should just tell her and stop worrying, and that way…if she didn’t like it; they could change their plans now. But Pavel just kept shaking his head and mumbling...
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Season Three; page 316

No matter how many times Niko had and would spend time with the Whitefield boys, he would never get used to the density of the chaos. There were just so many of them, and they were all shouting and fighting and chewing and teasing. Even the brothers that seemed to shy away to their own corner like Brian got roped inside the horrific insanity. Niko perched upon his feet as if he was wading...
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Season Three; page 315
The first stop on their date was the traditional date staple of dinner. Not that Clem minded all that much, she was starving. Pavel lead her into the restaurant the same way he had lead her out of her house, with a loose grip on her hand. She smiled slightly when he wasn’t looking, finding herself happy at the slightest thing, like him holding her hand, or the fact that one of the first things he...
January 2013
4 posts
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Season Three; page 314
With a polite step backward, Jason invited Niko inside the noisy house. The entryway seemed somewhat soundproof with only a few shouts and rolling bouts of laughter penetrating the surroundings. Just as Niko parted his lips to speak, a painful thud paused time. While Niko wanted to check if anyone needed to go to the hospital, his body stressfully clenched at the possibility it was Clem, Jason...
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Season Three; page 313
Clem was immediately plagued with two unexplainable surprises when she arrived at school the next day. One, she had three midterms in the next week. And two, it was almost Thanksgiving. The first surprise almost completely negated all the awesome stuff about it almost being break. She had a test in pre-calculus, Spanish, and history (when was the last time she had paid attention in history?). She...
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Season Three; page 312
Niko went home that night feeling light as ever, humming to himself some unknown, enchanting tune that drifted him right off to bed. When he awoke, he found that he had slept so soundly that his instant reaction to the rising sun was a sweet sigh. The bitterly cold outdoors drew him out of his covers and into sweatpants for his morning run.
Rising after dreamingly tying his tennis shoes at the...
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Season Three, page 311
Clem was immensely glad for a reason to not talk about her grandmother, or Jason, as that topic could undoubtedly lead to. Anything would have been better than reliving that particular disappointment, or that most recent conversation. And so she latched onto Niko’s request like it was a life preserver in a rip tide, it was much safer than everything else in her life, even skating tricks. With...
December 2012
8 posts
3 tags
Season Three; page 310
Niko didn’t speak much because there was nothing to say. He knew Clem to be the simple type. He knew that he could be quiet, silent even, and Clem wouldn’t attempt to thrust him out of it, to confess and feel and heal. Clem couldn’t. Frankly, it felt more cathartic to sit next to her and weave in and out of conversation while driving to an ice rink than to recall disturbing...
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Season Three; page 309
Clem did not wake up when she was supposed to the next morning, in fact, she woke up thirty minutes beforehand, to Jason shaking her shoulder and whispering her name, urging her to wake up. She was awake pretty quickly, but decided to punish Jason for waking her up before the sun was up by grumbling and taking forever and a day, even for her, to get up and actually open her eyes. When she was...
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Season Three; page 308
Niko had nothing.
Well, that was wrong. But that was how he felt. His muscles had loosened completely, his body seemingly about to fall through the chair. He was lost. Niko was more lost and abandoned than he had ever been before. Despite the box full of evidence of his parents and Spencer’s thriving guilt, Niko discovered something he already knew: Family wasn’t genetic.
He had...
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Season Three; page 307
Unlike when Pavel was in the stands, Jason’s presence at the game didn’t distract Clem. In fact, it actually helped her focus more, which was possibly why her lack of concentration had unnerved her so much last week. Usually, when she had an audience that she knew, that she was aware of, outside of the few parents and the usual crowd of people, it actually pushed her to make fewer mistakes, take...
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Season Three; page 306

After his brief but thorough discussion with Abe, Niko found himself with nothing to discuss with Ichabod. Of course, he had the usual dilemmas about the pills, about how he acted around others, of his sense of belonging not only to his family and friends but the world itself. He didn’t know what to say about those except what he’d already spilled forth in the awkward comfort of the elongated...
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Season Three; page 305
When the Whitefield children woke up the next morning, it was to find that there grandmother was no longer there. Now, this wasn’t that unusual of a thing. Oftentimes when Charlotte came to visit, she’d disappear in the middle of the night, only to call the next day from her home in Idaho just to let them know she got there safely and hadn’t been run over by a bus or something while out getting...
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Season Three; page 304
Mornings no longer crisply awakened Niko to possibility and improvement. Granted, they weren’t dribbling sorrowful tears into his yawning mouth, either. It was merely blunt opening his eyes, immediately wondering what there was to look forward to on that particular day. He would immediately visualize the afternoon and evening and ponder whether or not he could see Clem. It was a...
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Season Three; page 303
It was another day. Clem still hated school, math was still difficult beyond belief, she was still anxious about her…date on Friday, and she was still annoyed with the girls on her basketball team. The only thing that had really changed was that that morning at the breakfast table, her grandmother had started talking about leaving. And despite the fact that her grandmother had been there for...
October 2012
1 post
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Season Three; page 302
Niko wasn’t entirely sure if he even wanted to attend school anymore. He was awfully close to a C in his Calculus class with a test approaching that he really didn’t want to study for. He disliked all this computer time in the morning, all these restless hours sitting aimlessly on the spinning chair. It was time to explore the great outside of his basement. As soon as his time was up, Niko flew...
September 2012
1 post
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Season Three; page 301
School was disastrous. Not that Clem cared all that much. Even so, she found herself almost wanting to skip basketball practice for the express reason that it was in the vicinity of her pre-calculus class. But she decided that that beautiful orange basketball didn’t deserve to have her frustrations with math taken out on it, so she went anyways.
Her grandmother picked her up when it was over, and...
August 2012
4 posts
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Season Three; page 300
Niko found himself rather distracted from the remaining shaking fear of Clem’s grandmother through his altercation with Clem. But she was being defiantly wrong about the entire situation. Sure, he was an ass, but he didn’t basically put himself in her way. He was sitting on the beach when she came careening down right into him, not even looking. She did not look, no way, or else why...
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Season Three; page 299
It took all of Clem’s self control to keep from snorting in laughter at Niko and her grandmother. She buried her head in her pre calculus book, trying to hide the smile that was blooming across her face. If the only thing that would keep her from bursting into laughter was to feigning concentration on her math homework, she would resort to that. But she still listened attentively to the...
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Season Three; page 298
Niko awoke to the Sunday of his last soccer game as if he hadn’t even closed his eyes. He wasn’t restless, but it was as if he had jumped through time to eliminate all the wait before he saw Clem once again. Even though he had avoided her lately to be safe, to hide in a cavern and allow his wounds to mend, his basic instinct remained to rush toward her general direction. Perhaps this...
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Season Three; page 297
Clem went to bed preoccupied and she woke up the same way. If anyone had known why, they would have been surprised. It was completely unprecedented that the only Whitefield daughter would be worried about a boy, let alone an upcoming date with one. And no one could have been more surprised by it than Clem.
She didn’t tell anyone, mostly because she didn’t know how. Adrian called in the...
June 2012
6 posts
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Season Three; page 296
Niko did not run that morning because he had his second-to-last game in the afternoon in Porbeagle. Though he would spend the entire game laterally squatting next to the net, the pre-game practicing would surely involve a few laps and intensive exercises and he didn’t feel like sinking his entire body in sores. Granted, it might take his mind off of the throbbing in his heart.
He called...
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Season Three; page 295
Pavel’s skating plans didn’t last long. Which was fine, because it was getting late and Clem was still exhausted from the game. But regardless of her deteriorated mental state and Pavel’s lack of skills, her ‘date’ insisted that they skate for as long as possible. Clem kept pleading for him to stop and give up, but he just kept saying “One more time around!” That was, until he slipped, his arms...
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Season Three; page 294
Nine let Niko continue, which he hadn’t expected himself to do. After each sentence, and sometimes just a fragment of a sentence, he thought he’d come to a clenched stop. Then more words would topple out for him to dawdle inside, examine and shed, like fingering a pool of water and watching the ripples scatter from his palm.
He clarified a few times about his sincere happiness at being her...
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Season Three; page 293
When they finished eating Pavel announced they were going roller-skating. At this news, Clem groaned, audibly and without any shame, complaining of aching muscles and tired limbs and asking if they could just like go sit on a park bench or something. But Pavel insisted; he badgered her, poked her, and pleaded with her until she agreed. She sighed heavily, leaning against the wall outside the...
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Season Three; page 292
Niko’s jaw stuck ajar, the last defensive retort dying before it reached the tip of his tongue. After a few moments of the two of them staring at one another, his mouth hanging open, he finally realized his position and slowly brought his lips together again. He tried to pretend nothing had happened and his eyes darted to a corner momentarily. What was he to say now – say that he had mistaken...
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Season Three; page 291
When they finally exited the gym and the cool night air hit Clem’s face, she let out a satisfied sigh, finally relaxing after the tenseness that had filled her during the game. The smile that had already been on her face ever since the end of the game grew even wider as she let go. Pavel walked behind her, chuckling slightly at Clem’s reaction. “Well, since you didn’t ask me…” he said pointedly,...
May 2012
12 posts
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Season Three; page 290
The realization of what the pause hid took minutes to fully grab hold of his innards. It rested like a question mark along his temple at first. He tilted his head to hold onto it and quietly study Pavel. He still did not know why he recognized this man’s face, and what more he had no clues of where to look for the memory. Where would a college boy exist in the Venn diagram of Clem and Niko’s...
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Season Three; page 289
Clem hated being uncontrollably flustered by the presence of someone else, especially a boy. It would be one thing if Pavel was a college scout, but for her stomach to do a little loop the loop just at the sight of him in the stands was completely unacceptable. Anyone who was acutely aware of Clem’s playing would probably be able to tell that she was off her game that night. Granted, she was...
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Season Three; page 288
Finally, the game began.
When the two sides entered into the gym, Niko’s eyes found Clem in a passing flicker of a moment. His heart beat maniacally to the sound of their shoes squeaking and smashing against the floor, shaking hands and heading to their places. He waved at first, then realized that not only was she probably not looking into the crowd but she probably wasn’t in a...
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Season Three; page 287
Clem honestly wasn’t nervous about the upcoming scrimmage. Her classmates might think she should be, but she wasn’t. She had been playing on her high school’s team for three years now, had been varsity as a freshman, and led her team to become state champions two years in a row now. A little district scrimmage match? This would be a piece of cake. What did she really have to worry about?
Though...
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Season Three; page 286
As usual, when Niko awoke he strapped on his tennis shoes and ran through town. He made himself bring a jacket and gloves that day since last time the chill of the winter season paired with the wetness of Virga City had nearly frostbitten his fingers last time. They were light wear, but they were something. Because of the jacket’s pocket, he brought along an mp3 player with him with much...
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Season Three; page 285
School, school, school. Why was there always so much of it? All Clem wanted to do was eat, sleep, play basketball…and, well, maybe see someone like Pavel or Niko or Adrian every once in a while. She didn’t ask for much, she just wanted to do anything but math. So, consequentially, she spent most of pre-calculus idly imagining VCHS’ inevitable win on Friday, and, not that she would admit it to...
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Season Three; page 284
First thing on Thursday’s agenda was the usual running, showering, and breakfast-munching before his online education. He ran an extra two miles than usual, which resulted in his day getting pushed back fifteen minutes. The rain from the night before had wet the streets and now and again he would jog into a puddle. Niko detested this, especially how the water would stick to his leg with...
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Season Three; page 283
Unfortunately for Clem, the rest of her day was decidedly lackluster in comparison to the unexpected excitement of lunch out with Niko. In fact, she barely stayed awake in the rest of her classes. Except PE, which was pretty impossible to fall asleep during (though she probably could have knocked out during sit ups if she put her mind to it), she found herself nodding off, only waking up when...
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Season Three; page 282
When Clem described her grandmother, Niko couldn’t help but think that it sounded like Clem if she aged seventy years and knew how to use a gun. Granted, he didn’t actually know if she was skilled in artillery, but he assumed otherwise. Niko thought that she would have brought it up at some point in their relationship, possibly to intimidate or enrage him further in their early...
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Season Three; page 281
The last time the two of them had been in Applebee’s it had been a less than pleasant experience, to put it lightly. It was only when they were actually in the restaurant that Clem remembered that this was actually the place where her partnership with Niko started all those months ago. It was a little disconcerting to say the least, and she couldn’t help but remember how just the simple acts of...
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Season Three; page 280
Niko could not keep from releasing a great sigh of relief. It hadn’t been on purpose, it was reflex - the tension and stress that had sunk into his skin when she started numbering off fast food joints now airlifted and exhaled away. It was cleansing.
Clem rolled her eyes. At this point, Niko was sure he could hear her roll her eyes.
“Applebee’s sounds perfect,” he...
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Season Three; page 279
The last time the two of them had been in Applebee’s it had been a less than pleasant experience, to put it lightly. It was only when they were actually in the restaurant that Clem remembered that this was actually the place where her partnership with Niko started all those months ago. It was a little disconcerting to say the least, and she couldn’t help but remember how just the simple acts of...
April 2012
159 posts
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Season Three; page 278
As usual, Niko awoke early to run and then shower followed by facilitating his usual OCD cleaning tendencies. He wanted to get done earlier than usual in order to visit Clem and feed her lunch. He hopingly assumed that someone, like Jason, would get her breakfast with a side dish of pills and thus she would only need help for lunch. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to simply drive over...
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Season Three; page 277
Clementine’s fever broke soon after Niko left her room. She had vaguely heard the door shut behind him in the depths of her sleep, and when her eyes finally blearily opened, she found that she felt far less awful than she had the last time her eyes had seen light. Instead of being burning hot, she was now slowly drifting back to normal temperature. Although her body was suddenly engulfed in a...
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Season Three; page 276
Niko watched her eyelids shut. It was delicate in a way he knew she did not realize she could be. He began to feel a movement - a thought - turning within his arms. He was unsure what it meant, but it felt an awful lot like rewinding. Replaying. Knowing he had things to do, Niko let the processes function subliminally so that he could go to work. As quickly and softly as he could manage, Niko...
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Season Three; page 275
He seemed to accept her unwillingness to look at him as a part of her being sick, which Clem was thankful for. True, that was part of it, but there was more, and Niko didn’t need to know that part. He seemed to just ignore the fact that she so obviously didn’t want to see him right of the moment, he was just there next to her, cooing her name. She wanted to ignore him, in hopes that if she did...
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Season Three; page 274
With the large blanket in his arms (draping his body, really), causing him to haphazardly stumble down the stairs, Niko attempted to get everything done within seconds. Nevertheless, his rational mind still caused him to do everything in steps instead of half-way all over the place. Step One) Find the coldest place in their house. Niko knew he hadn’t had the entire tour, but he was still...
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Season Three; page 273
Clem spent most of the next few hours drifting in and out of consciousness. She wasn’t quite sure where she was, or who was with her, or what she was actually saying while she was conscious. In fact, she wasn’t always quite able to distinguish the times she was conscious from the times she wasn’t. She was vaguely aware that Niko was with her on the conscious end of things, but in her head, that...
