Charlie's Little Story Within the Story

This story is for my co-author.

So many things had happened in the last few chapters, I never got around to explaining what I had said to Heathcliff at Selene's birthday party.
The reason why I understood one hundred percent what Heathcliff was going through was because I had experienced it myself, but it wasn't me who fell in love first. Here's my story:

By the time I got to ninth grade, where I lived, most kids have already gone on at least one date and have had their first kiss. I was among the small minority who didn't do either, but I didn't know that at the time, because I had no close friends and was poorly informed about school trends. Interestingly, all my classmates thought I was smart at science, so they would often socialize with me for a few moments, bringing me homework to do, or to me to ask about what they didn't understand in class. I helped everyone as best as I could, until my science teacher told me after class one time that nobody was really learning anything because I had done all their homework for them. She suggested that I should start a homework club at school instead if I wanted to help people with their homework. Through this, I found out how to start a club.
That's how I came to know my sweetheart (who back then wasn't my sweetheart yet); she was a frequent member of the homework club and helped me a lot with writing essays while I explained maths to her. Later I found out that she was writing an action-adventure-mystery-thriller-romance novel, so I read her manuscript and thought it was a really good book in-progress. After that, whenever she got stuck in a part of her book she didn't know how to finish, I gave her some ideas she could use. For these ideas I drew inspiration from old Hollywood movies I had watched, and she liked the ideas very much.
Eventually she became my best friend; we spent a lot of time together discussing the books she was writing (there were more than one!) and essays and maths. To show my friendship I invited her to watch my favorite movies with me; she liked my movies, just as I liked her books. We found out that we have a lot in common.
That was when she told me that she has a crush on me; it was after watching Superman at my house, and the credits were still rolling. She leaned against me and whispered it just as the romantic cue on the soundtrack came up, but I didn't make a remark about this amazing coincidence, because at that moment I felt very hot on the inside, which was strange, because I didn't think (and neither did all of my family) I had ever blushed before. I had never felt so uncertain in my whole life.
From then on afterward, her friends began dropping obvious hints that I should get together with her. One particular friend of mine did so too, because he had gotten to know her through me mostly. I still didn't know what to do, so I did nothing and didn't think much about it.
Gradually, my best friend and I, we drew apart. It might have been her doing, but for the most part I think it's because I was acting oblivious and not even saying anything. At this point, my friend was desperate, and he told me that my best friend thinks I don't like her, so she was trying to avoid me and get over the crush.
When my friend told me this, I was sad and angry at myself, because I had hurt my best friend's feelings.
If there's one thing I never wanted to do, it's to hurt someone's feelings. Dad always told me to never hurt anyone's feelings, because feelings are a lot more valuable and fragile than the body (which to hurt occasionally is okay, but only at fight clubs and in emergencies). It wasn't that I had hurt my best friend's feelings because of something I said or did, it was because I didn't do anything when she said she likes me, and not doing anything turned out to be a lot worse than doing something.
I thought about it, as I had been doing for some time. I realized that I like her, I like her a lot and much more than the books she was writing, and to my surprise, a lot more than my favorite movies too.
Of course, I didn't have the guts to tell her so late after she told me that I like her too, so I was helped along by a wonderful coincidence. My best friend attended the same English class as me, and at that time we were studying short stories. At the end of the unit, our assignment was to write a short story, so this was what I wrote it on.
I changed all the names and the places, but all of her friends and my friend too saw the parallel between my short story and what happened between me and my best friend.
In my story, the protagonist - a boy who likes movies - has a best friend - a girl who write books, which the boy also wants to do - who confessed to him that she has a crush on him. The boy was too shy to respond, and the girl thought he didn't like her. To make up for his mistake, he wrote a short story based on what happened between him and his best friend and read it aloud in class. The story was the same as the story he was in, with the main character writing a short story to tell his best friend that he likes her. In the end, the girl saw that the boy likes her too, and they joined hands and walked off into the sunset.
My English teacher loved my story, not because it was true (he didn't know that), but because I incorporated a story-within-a-story loop in my short story, and he complimented me, saying it was clever of me to have thought of that.
After school, my best friend walked up to me as I was walking home and said it was very touching of me to have done what I had done, she thought it was cute and she liked it very much. Then, she said if I wanted to cause a lot fewer misunderstandings like the one between me and her in the future, I'm going to have to learn to express myself better, of which I'll have plenty of practice, because from that moment on we were officially in a relationship.
That was how my best friend became my sweetheart.

I wanted to tell Heathcliff this story because I thought he doesn't have to try so very hard to woo Theo, because I'm sure that Theo is a good person who knows that Heathcliff's feelings are valuable and will value them like he values her.
When I get the chance, I'll tell Heathcliff this story...as soon as I lose the very angry Magic School Bus, which had just sped up and was near to catching up to the hovercraft.

C.N. - chapter 57

Now that I had rescued Heathcliff and got myself back behind the controls, I turned stealth mode back on so the noise of the hovercraft engines weren't that loud anymore. I didn't know how Dennis managed to turn off stealth mode, or if he didn't, how stealth mode got turned off; but I didn't have time to ask him either, because I heard some very loud metal-on-metal crashes that definitely did not come from our hovercraft. I turned around just in time to see a life-sized monster truck fly over the roadside treeline and land right in the middle of road behind us. It remained there like a roadblock that materialized out of nowhere and the crash must have been some of the trucks that were chasing us T-boning into it.
The monster truck was silver and shiny, the size of three steam rollers. It looked to be armored with steel from hood to underside. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
The trucks that were chasing us (they seem puny now compared to the gigantic truck in the road) were blocked by the body of the monster truck, stopping them in their tracks. I think the appearance the enormous truck surprised the convoy in pursue as much as it did to us. Because nobody moved for some time, I had let go of the controls and put the hovercraft at hover-parking and joined everyone else at the back of the hovercraft to see what was going to happen.
Then the monster truck roared back to life, made a ninety degree turn and started to plow down the truck convoy. Effortlessly, it mounted one truck after another and crushed them all flat under its huge wheels. This was so unexpected that for a moment I thought I was watching an episode of Monster Jam. Kyle's men in the trucks scrambled out of their trucks and raised their automatic weapons to fire at the monster truck, doing no damage. Turrets extended out of several portholes that opened up on either side of the monster truck and the turrets began to blast firepower at the men now attempting to surround the monster truck, mowing them all down in a matter if less than a minute. The scene was so violent and it was happening only fifty yards away down the road, I shut my eyes and opened them again when the firing stopped.
Kyle's men lay scattered on both sides of the road, wisps of smoke rising from the bullet holes in their bodies. The monster truck was silent for some time again after this massacre, and then it began to come slowly, and then accelerating in speed, at us.
Theo was the first to realize that I wasn't at the controls anymore.
'Get back to the controls! Get us out of here!' Theo yelled, pushing me into the controls seat.
I pushed the throttle of the hovercraft with all my strength and it sped down the road. I looked behind us to see the monster truck chasing us and gaining distance every instant.
'Go up! Go up!' Theo yelled.
I raised altitude rapidly, and found the monster truck shrinking in size beneath us.
And the unbelievable happened, once more. One moment the monster truck seemed to be speeding down the road beneath us, the next moment, wings shot out of its sides, and then the moment after than, it took off from the ground.
'Mamma-mia!' Heathcliff, Dennis, Mr. Kent and I uttered in unison.
'What?!' Theo couldn't believe what she was seeing either, but she didn't day mamma-mia.
The hovercraft was still rising higher into the air. I managed to get enough sense back into me to close the pressure-lock hood so we don't go unconscious in midair.
The monster truck flew like a plane, it did a wide one-eighty degree turn and was flying upwards towards us. From my angle, it looked like the Magic School Bus in a really bad mood.

T.N - Chapter 56

I watched Charlie attempt that crazy stunt with Heathcliff, and I urged myself not to shut my eyes or to scream at them. The propellers would’ve drowned out my voice, and I could already feel the soreness in my throat from my screaming earlier. I could only watch as their hands got closer and closer, and I gripped the edge of my seat. Suddenly, the helicopter lurched towards the jeep, and Charlie nearly slipped off onto the road below. Miraculously, he stayed on, and managed to grab onto Heathcliff and haul him up. The helicopter swayed back as they climbed up the ladder. I turned to Dennis, who looked like he was having way too much fun piloting the helicopter.

“What the hell were you trying to do, you dunce?!” I yelled at him. “If it wasn’t for luck, Charlie would’ve been road kill!”

“No need to freak out at me,” said Dennis, grinning. “I managed to help them up.”

“If you do anything like that anytime soon, I will personally kill you. Get out of that pilot’s seat as soon as Charlie gets up here,” I said. “You’ve never flown a helicopter before, have you?”

“Nope,” he replied. “I learn best through experience.”

Before I could let out the string of expletives that came to my mind at the moment, my arms were suddenly pinned down and my face buried in alcoholic smelling fabric.

“Theodora darling, you’re safe!” exclaimed Heathcliff, his arms tight and rather uncomfortable around me.

“Heathcliff, what the hell have you been drinking?” I tried asking, but my question was muffled under his bear hug. From the smell of him and the singsong tone of his voice, I could tell he was very intoxicated.

“What did you say?” he asked, pulling away just enough so I could speak properly.

“I asked you what the hell you’ve been drinking. Seriously, you’re in no shape to be walking, let alone driving and climbing up a ladder into a moving helicopter!”

My scolding was cut short by gunshots, and I heard the sharp crack of a bullet meeting the helicopter’s side. Without saying a word, Kent pulled Heathcliff off of me and into the backseat beside Dennis. Without me really noticing, Charlie was back at the pilot seat.

“What’s the plan?” Charlie asked rather calmly.

“Just keep heading to the location. I think we can take care of them,” said Kent. He calmly pulled out a gun. Then another one. And another. He tossed one to me and one to Dennis, who prepped it like it was a well-rehearsed action. He saw me staring at him quizzically, and smiled.

“I’ve been in plenty of dangerous places. I need to know how to defend myself,” he said. He clambered over Heathcliff, made his way over to the door on my side of the helicopter, and with calculated precision, shot at the jeeps. I heard the burst of a tire, and a couple of shouts as men clutched their arms and vehicles spun into ditches.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “It appears you’ve had more than enough opportunities to practice,” I remarked.

“I’ll tell you all about it on the way across the Pacific Ocean,” he replied, and fired a few more shots. So far, there were no casualties caused by Dennis’s shots. “Now, your turn to try,” he said.

I looked down at my gun. A thought of Wolfgang taking that shot for me a few days ago popped up into my mind. Blood, and that dread I felt listening to his shallow and unsure breaths seeped into that image. I shook my head, and handed the revolver back to Kent. “I can’t, sorry.”

Kent looked at me at first puzzled, and then he smiled a little. “Didn’t think you would,” he said.

I heard a loud squealing of tires, and both Dennis and Kent snapped their heads to attention. I peered out of the door just in time to see a heavy armour car shoot out from behind some trees and right in front of the jeeps chasing us.