Catching Up To Do (Ulrich.)

[Jalen August]

Taking out her phone for the fifth time that day, Jalen sunk deeper into the small wooden chairs at the library and mumbled to herself. Ulrich really needed to go easy on the texting. That boy really hadn’t given her a moment’s peace since she had gotten to know him. So they played a video game once in a person and then a few times after that online, what was she, his only friend? The girl could be kind, but she was also easily annoyed, and she simply closed her phone after telling Rick that she had to finish the homework she didn’t have time to do over the break.

Jalen’s Christmas had been busy, to say the least. First there were the friends who wanted to see her – Cole and Leon to name a few. Then there was the plans JD and her had made, what with him coming over to her parent’s place for dinner, and then her meeting his younger brother. Both of them were sweethearts, in their own special ways. All in all, it had been a busy, and happy holiday, aside from the few threatening texts from Zac about JD’s heart and all that nonsense. Now that she was back, Ulrich seemed to pounce on the chance to see her again. Jay felt bad for him, being stuck at the school when he wasn’t at home. Talk about a bad case of cabin fever.

Pushing her hair out of the way, Jalen was tapping her black high heeled boots repeatedly on the floor as she squinted hard at her Calculus textbook. Why she was taking the hardest math the meta school had to offer was beyond her. Something about postsecondary or something like that, if she was ever accepted anywhere. Three rejections so far, only two more to go. But she was trying to stay positive, and for some reason she thought if perhaps she paid her dues to the math gods, they would reward her.

[Ulrich Schneider]

It had been a while since Ulrich had last seen Jalen in person, and to the boy, it had been way too long. He genuinely missed her and wanted to see her again. Texting her and destroying her online with his amazing video game skills wasn't enough. He wanted more. He needed more. Jalen was one of the few people to make him come out of his shell and feel, well, alive. In his mind, Jalen was the perfect girl. She was beautiful, nice, liked to play video games, and was impressed by his photo album of all his guns. That put her at the top of his list of friends. Time away from her was beginning to feel like time wasted.

Christmas break had passed recently and Ulrich was allowed to go home and visit with his family. During his time away from Hammel, he went on a hunting trip, opened some presents, and got to spend some time on the range with his babies. In that short period, Ulrich's relentless text messages to Jalen came to a halt, but as soon as he returned to school, they began again with a renewed vigor.

Ulrich was in his room, sitting all alone in his bed while staring at his ceiling. His cellphone was in his hands as he waited for Jalen to reply to his latest text message. She had told him that she was busy doing homework, but Ulrich wasn't satisfied with that excuse. He didn't think sending a reply to a text message could interrupt homework enough to cause a problem.

A couple more minutes passed and still there was no reply. A mix of anger and curiosity filled Ulrich's head. "What kind of homework could she be doing that's so important that she ignores me?" He stood up and changed out of his pajamas. It was investigation time. After putting on a black, long sleeved shirt, and camo cargo shorts, he slipped on gray beanie plus a pair of black sunglasses and exited his dorm.

Since he knew Jalen was doing homework, Ulrich quickly began narrowing down all the possible locations she could be. The two obvious choices were her dorm and the library. He decided to check the library first, since it was a public place, he could make up an excuse for being there other than trying to see her.

Walking through the library doors, he snuck around the bookshelves to give himself some cover. He moved only when he saw her looking down at her books, and by the time he found a safe observation point in the library, which happened to be in a back corner where the religion books were shelved, he noticed that she was doing her homework like she had said. This sight came as a relief to the boy, but he wasn't done with the spying just yet. He wanted to see if she would pick up her phone and reply to a text from someone else.

[Jalen August]

Jalen kept looking at her math, and tapping her foot and pen until someone tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to stop. She did, but not without commenting that the one other person in here would be a nerd busy doing homework as well. She put her head on the table before her, when she got the chills. For some reason, it felt like someone was watching her, and she turned around a bit to scope out the library. No one was there. It seemed like she had unknowingly become her friend’s prey – go figure.

Letting out a sigh, it was plainly obvious that Jalen was struggling. Why she hadn’t asked JD for help over the holidays she wasn’t sure, she wasn’t very good with the whole, planning ahead thing. She took out her phone, another text from Ulrich. She ignored it to text JD and tell him she could really use his brain and that they should switch for today. Oh if only that were a possibility.

Going back to the text from Rick, she tried to decide on what to say. Jalen already asked about his holidays, hence the five text explanation she received back, but when she said she was busy with homework, he didn’t seem to believe her. We’ll hang out again soon Ulrich, I promise she typed in quickly, before attempting to go back to her work. Her eyes only flicked to the paper for a millisecond before her sensitive hearing picked up on the obvious.

A bling went off somewhere in the back corner of the library and Jalen leaned over in her chair to see who it was. If it was the nerd who just told her to be quiet, she was going to give them a piece of her mind. Wrapping her grey sweater around her waist a little tighter, the girl enjoyed the satisfaction of the clicking noises her heels made. She smiled – let the whole world hear she was approaching.

“Look, I...” Her voice trailed off as a familiar face came into view. “Ulrich?” Jay was surprised. The hunter had been successfully hunted. “Are you spying on me?” She asked with a bit of a grin. She had heard of role play, but this was a bit extreme, even by her standards.

[Ulrich Schneider]

Ulrich noticed Jalen pick her phone up and begin to text. His rage slowly started to build at the sight. Jealous rage flustered with a bit of confusion struck him, but he found his mix of emotions quickly turning in to fear when he heard a sudden BLING come from his pocket. A text? He pulled out his cellphone and realized that he got a text from none other than Jalen.

We’ll hang out again soon Ulrich, I promise.

The content of the text filled him with joy, but at the same time he knew it made his secret mission to spy on Jalen at the library worthless. He put his cellphone back into his pocket and when he looked up, he noticed he had been spotted. The "f bomb" was dropped under his breath. He completely forgot about the fact that he had a good chance of hearing it no matter how quiet it was.

"What? Spying?" he said as his eyes began frantically scanning the shelves, "No, I was umm... just searching for a book to check out." Ulrich grabbed the nearest book he could reach, which happened to be the Holy Bible. Maybe trying to hide in the religion section of the library wasn't such a good idea after all.

Opening up the book to a random page, he pretended to skim some of it before slamming it shut. "Yep, this is exactly what I was looking for," he said as he attempted to scurry off to the front desk to check the book out.

[Jalen August]

He swore, and this made Jalen smile a little more. She crossed her arms in front of her as Ulrich tried to find a book to place an excuse on. Her eyes scanned over the title and she raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were the religious type,” she said with amusement. Then he tried to manoeuvre around her and she stepped in front of him.

“Look Ulrich, you’re cute and all, but keeping tabs on someone is just crossing the line.” She said, hoping he would understand what she was trying to get at. She wasn’t mad at him, not yet anyways. Feeling her phone vibrate in her pocket, she took it out and grinned. A text from JD. Another look was cast to Ulrich, “Have fun with that,” she said, pointing to the Bible before returning back to her seat to answer her favourite speedster. Jalen knew Ulrich was lying, but he seemed pretty embarrassed enough, there was no need to further the pain.

I think I have a stalker :/ She texted to JD, trying to keep herself from laughing. Whatever Ulrich was playing at, it was just a game right? Jalen looked over her shoulder to where Ulrich was and sent him a wink and a small wave.

[Ulrich Schneider]

Ulrich couldn't be any more nervous than he was at the moment. When Jalen stepped in front of him and cut off his escape route, he didn't know what to do. There was the option of plowing through her, but he didn't want to hurt her... or himself for that matter. "Yeah, I uh, I'm a born again Christian," he said frantically as he began to back away from the girl, "p-praise Jesus...?"

It became obvious that she was on to him. She figured him out. Ulrich had no choice but to cover his tracks, tuck tail, and run. "Keeping tabs? No! I was just checking this book out! I swear!"

Watching as Jalen pulled out her phone to read over a text she had received, Ulrich saw it as an opportunity to scram. He managed to slip past her and walked as fast as he could to the front desk where he was confronted by a librarian. He placed the book down like he was going to check it out, but quickly realized that he forgot his library card. Out of sheer embarrassment and nervousness, he dashed for the door, leaving the book behind. Turning around for a moment, he could see Jalen wink and wave at him. His feelings were mixed up from the sight. He couldn't tell if he was angered by it or if he found it sexy, but either way, he ran into the hallway and didn't stop running until he was finally outside.

Once outside, took a seat on a bench and looked at the ground. He was upset by the whole situation, but what concerned him the most was who Jalen was texting. He had to know. "Who are you texting?"

[/b] he asked her through text message bluntly. Despite all that went down only a few minutes ago, he was more than willing to do it all again if necessary.[/blockquote]

[Jalen August]

“Right...” She said, completely unconvinced. Jalen shrugged and watched him walk up to the librarian, who seemed just as shocked as Jay did about the title of the book. How strange, that someone who had seemingly tried to shoot up the school take a book out on religion. He was starting to look like a real nut case to be honest. His fleeing just made him seem all the more suspicious on changing his mind on whatever diabolical plot he had in mind. Jalen decided she could write an awesome story about Rick, not that she would tell him about it – it would flatter him too much.

Jalen laughed to herself finally after flirting and sighed down at her books. Well, at least that break had been fun. She could play at games too if that’s what Ulrich wanted. Her phone blipped again and she wasn’t surprised to see who it was from. The blonde took one last glance at her homework and decided Rick was a bit more interesting. She would put it off until she realized it wasn’t worth studying anyways and simply fail again. This moment was just too juicy not to take a bite out of.

Why, are you jealous? She asked just as bluntly. It wasn’t meant to be mean, but it was written over text after all. Ulrich had no business asking who she was talking to, and she really couldn’t say ‘My boyfriend’ because technically, JD wasn’t her boyfriend, and Jay wasn’t a liar. Besides, answering a question with another question would be way more interesting into getting to know Ulrich. That, or just piss him off.

[Ulrich Schneider]

Jealous?

Ulrich asked himself if he was feeling such an emotion. The answer was yes. He was very jealous, but there was no way in hell he was going to let Jalen know that. He pulled out his phone and began typing up a reply that he hoped would convince the girl otherwise.

"I'm not jealous. I'm just curious. There's nothing to be jealous of anyway. I just wanted to know who you were having a conversation with, that's all. Is there something wrong with that? I'm just trying to be an informed friend."

It only took him and his dextrous fingers a couple of seconds to type up the message, but he read over it a good ten times or more before sending it. The content of the message was something he would never say to Jalen in person, but since there was distance between them and he wasn't face to face, he was a bit more brave with his words.

((OoC: Sorry for the crappy, delayed reply. School started up and began to kick my butt!))

[Jalen August]

Jalen read over the text and smirked. "Informed friend my ass..." She muttered, poising her fingers over her phone. An informed friend? If you must know, it's another friend of mine, I do have more than one. She didn't reread the text, she didn't think twice about it. She had spoken, or rather written, her mind and she didn't give a damn what Ulrich thought as she hit 'send'. If he had a problem with her social life, it wasn't hers to deal with.

At that point, Jay decided she couldn't concentrate on homework anymore. Now would be a good time to go for a run with her constant companion Mr. Pod. Packing up her stuff, Jalen left the library (to the relief of the geek who had been there the whole time) and went back to her dorm to change. Hopefully Rick wouldn't be asking what she was doing now. If he did, she truly had a stalker on her case.

The end.