AUTHOR'S NOTE — Thank you for all the reviews for the last chapter! I appreciate every single one of them! BTW, important A/N at the bottom, thanks.

DISCLAIMER — If I owned Austin & Ally, Auslly would already be happenin', and it's not so obviously, I don't, capiche?

Enjoy the chapter. :)

Defying Gravity
two: early mornings

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."

— neil gaiman

Mornings are my favourite part of the day — I don't know, maybe it's the sun leaving trails of blazing red-orange on the dew wetted grass, or maybe it's the lazy hum of crickets and insects and the sweet scent of pollen. Whatever it is, I've always been drawn to early mornings, and this one is no exception. At seven, I found myself sitting outside of the cabin, taking in gulps of the crisp air in an effort to calm my racing heart.

Today was the first day of camp — the first official day; where the actual instructing was done — and, yeah, it would be a bit of an understatement to say that I was nervous. After all, this would be the first time that I was solely responsible for teaching someone something . . .

But, you know, no pressure or anything . . .

The morning air did have a somewhat calming effect on me, and I'll admit that now that I wasn't worried about the job that I would be working on in less than two hours, my mind did what it usually did when I wasn't paying attention: make up songs. I'll have to admit that it sounded a little bit like those cheesy songs with the repeated "Na na na" parts, but hey — I liked it.

I was startled out of creating my future masterpiece when I heard a cry from a distance — "Ally? Ally Dawson? Is that you?"

I shrieked because it couldn't, it just couldn't, be him. But it was — Elliot, my old friend from camp who I'd said goodbye to three years ago, never expecting to see him again. I flung myself into his toned arms excitedly. "Elliot — oh my God, Elliot!"

He still smelled the same to me — like fresh laundry and vintage guitar sales — and he let out the same familiar light laugh as he held me in his arms. Before you get ahead of yourself — no, I do not like Elliot; I may have, once upon a time, harboured feelings for him but I was a different person then. Now, he was my goofy brother more than anything. Heck — we even looked alike with our matching dark hair, dark eyes, and smiles. "I'd heard that you were coming back from one of my roommates but . . . I could not let myself hope." I frowned at that.

I relished in the feeling of being in his arms for a few seconds more and then stepped out of his embrace. "Really? You kept in touch with Dez?" I was slightly shocked because despite the fact that Elliot was liked by almost anyone, even I hadn't kept in touch with him and the chances that scatterbrained Dez did —

"Dez? Murphy? Uh, no." Elliot looked slightly confused. "Your friend — uh, I forget, named after a city in Texas . . . "

"Dallas?" I asked, raising an eyebrow; truthfully, I knew that Dallas wasn't the one seeing as I'd only met him yesterday but the only other option was —

"No. Austin, that's what his name is." Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait — WHAT?

I smirked a little, "Don't you live with him — should you know his name?"

Elliot shrugged. "I'm bad at names, okay?" Same old Elliot.

"Anyway," I said, putting the conversation back on topic, "Austin was talking about me? What did he say?"

Elliot looked genuinely surprised. "You mean he didn't tell you?"

I rolled my eyes. "No. He did tell me and I just want you to repeat it, why?" The corner of his lips twitches as if he wanted to laugh but he managed to hold himself steady.

"Oh — well from the way that he was talking, you'd think that you guys were friends . . . " Elliot trailed off at my derisive snort. " . . . I take it that that's not the case, then?" he added uncertainly.

Of course; Elliot had left camp three years ago — the Incident That Must Not Be Named happened two years ago — anyone else would know of my rivalry with Austin Moon.

. . . But one thing that continually baffled me was that Elliot said that Austin had said I would return — he'd told Elliot, but why would he check to see if I returned? I'd have thought he'd be glad to see the back of me. Austin Moon was definitely an enigma that I was determined to crack by the end of the summer — if we didn't kill each other first.

.

Elliot and I talked until the wind started to seep in through my thin t-shirt and I began shivering uncontrollably. He'd chuckled and said, "Maybe you should go inside, Ally."

"N — no," I'd managed to stutter out. "I — I'm f — fine."

Elliot raised an eyebrow. "Get in there, Allyson." When he called me by my full name, I knew that I had no choice but to argue. Giving him one last reproachful look — to which he responded to "We have all summer, Dawson! But not if you get pneumonia and die!" — I dutifully went back into the cabin.

It was early morning still; the sun was painting brilliant red-gold stripes against the bunks, but no one seemed to be sleeping. The mood was unusually tense in the room, and for once the music was at a respectable volume. Even Trish, who was a fireball of energy, couldn't find it in her to make fun of me, and the sense of security that I'd gotten while talking to Elliot was starting to wane.

I fought the urge to stick a clump of hair into my mouth.

"I'm so nervous," Emma breathed from her bunk across the room, almost reading my thoughts. I tried to give her a reassuring look — but then I remembered that being reassuring wasn't one of my many qualities.

I gave her a nervous grin. "I know, so am I." The eerie silence that had replaced the ever-blasting stereo was starting to make me more nervous, and I really wished that I'd stayed outside talking to Elliot.

"This is killing me," Trish said, her brow furrowed, "can we just go and eat?" Anything to get out of this cabin and this horrible, horrible, waiting.

"Besides," Kate said, twirling a strand of blonde hair around her finger nervously, "it's almost eight and we start the camp stuff at nine; we'd better hurry." The other girls nodded.

I trailed behind them, not wanting to go to the Mess Hall but also not wanting to spend another minute in this cabin. The girls didn't seem to notice my apathy to the idea of breakfast, however, because they soon sped ahead of me. I probably could have caught up with them if I wanted to, but I didn't feel like it.

"Hey," someone said from beside me. "Since we're going to the same place, do you mind if I walk with you?"

I sighed. "Will you leave if I say no?"

He gave me his smirk. Usually, I would have already sped up and out of there, preferring to spend time with the girls and their meaningless banter over boys and fashion and how hot Andrew Garfield was but a question was burning on my tongue from the time that I'd spoken to Elliot.

"Moon, can I ask you a question?"

He gave me that infuriating look that made me want to smack him silly and said, "I believe you just did, Dawson."

"You are insufferable!" I groaned — I didn't even know why I'd bothered. "Why did you talk to Elliot about me?"

He froze, eyes widening and shoes making a crunching noise as they stopped abruptly. It took me a few seconds to notice that he had stopped and by the time he began speaking, I had to turn around and face him. "You were talking to him? What is he, your boyfriend?"

I let out an impatient huff. "No he isn't, and while I don't see why that would matter to you, I just want to know why you felt the need to tell one of my closest camp friends that I was returning this summer. Or why you felt the need to look at my file in the first place!"

"It doesn't matter to me," he said, and the sneer that had been absent from his voice for the last few minutes returned with a vengeance. "Now excuse me." With that, he brushed past me and into the Mess Hall, not looking back once.

It was only after I'd stared at his retreating figure for a few more moments than was necessary that I realized that he had not, in any way, answered my question.

Not one bit.

AUTHOR'S NOTE — . . . and the plot thickens.

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