Chapter 5: Penguins, and Dolphins and Starfish Oh My!

"Lex, come on, wake up," I whined. I had been trying to get Alex up for the last 10 minutes so we could start our day of sight-seeing around New York but Alex hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. Since Theresa and Jerry were down in the shop and Max was at a friend's house, it was just Alex and I alone in the apartment.

"Mmmpphhh." Was all that I was able to hear when Alex mumbled through the pillow that was covering her head. I rolled my eyes and tip toed back to the guest room and looked through my ITunes to find a death metal song (not that I ever liked death metal, but I never knew what to expect when I swapped music with my friends). By chance I found a good song to use and I tip toed back into Alex's room and turned my volume up full blast before pressing play, waking Alex up and nearly sending her off the bed as she jumped and shrieked.

"Morning, sunshine!" I yelled over the music, sporting the most obnoxious grin I could on my face.

"Jesus Christ, Mitch, you almost gave me a heart attack!" Alex exclaimed. I pressed pause on the computer and the music came to an end.

"Well I tried waking you up gently, but it didn't work." I said, closing the lid of my laptop.

"So now that you're up, let's get this day started."

I bounced out of the room and Alex slowly but surely made her way out of bed.

"So, you up for trying another Alex Russo recipe?" Alex asked, starting the coffee machine and gathering supplies for whatever she had planned for breakfast from the fridge and cupboard.

"Depends, what is it?" I asked.

"Well, I call it breakfast poutine." Alex replied.

"It's hash browns topped with scrambled eggs, cheese and hollandaise sauce."

"How on earth did you come up with that?" I asked.

"I don't know, I like experimenting with foods." Alex replied.

"Well, it sounds good so I'm in." I said.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Sure, wanna handle the scrambled eggs?"

I nodded and we got to work, knowing that it could take a while before the food would even be close to ready. While I handled the eggs and hollandaise sauce, Alex cooked the hash browns and grated the cheese while she waited. About half an hour later everything was done and Alex quickly threw everything together into two separate bowls for her and me.

"What do you think?" Alex asked.

"This is amazing!" I told her.

"You may need to come home with me and be my personal chef."

Alex giggled at my comment, taking another forkful of her poutine. Trying to avoid cleaning up as much as possible, we slowly ate our breakfast and talked about our plans for the day.

"...and after that we could maybe hit a movie tonight."

"Sounds good to me" I agree, taking my last bite of my breakfast poutine and throwing my bowl into the dishwasher. So far we had decided to spend the day at the New York Aquarium, then if we had time we'd go to the mall for a bit before heading to a movie and coming back to the apartment.

"Okay, well let's aim to leave around 11, that way we get there just in time for lunch." Alex suggested and with that we quickly cleaned up from breakfast and started to get ready to go. I decided to leave my hair curly and wear my dark skinny jeans with just a plain white tank top and my red and black plaid shirt over it.

"Ready to go?" Alex knocked on my door and asked. Alex was also wearing skinny jeans but was wearing a white blouse underneath her white cardigan.

"Yeah, just need to grab my bag." I replied. Grabbing my bag from the edge of the bed and a jacket for just in case Alex and I said a quick goodbye to her parents and let them know where we were going before heading out and catching the subway to Brooklyn. The subway stop wasn't too far away from the Aquarium so we only had to walk about 15 minutes or so before we got to the entrance.

"Okay, what should we go see first?" Alex asked once we had paid and made our way in.

"Uh, well what is there?"

"I don't know, let's see." Alex replied and took a map and info packet from the display near the entrance.

"We got belugas, otters, seals, dolphins, pen...penguins!" Alex exclaimed.

"It's settled, we're going to the penguins"

Next thing I knew I was being drug to the penguin exhibit by an extremely excited Alex (which is adorable for those who haven't seen her excited).

"Do you even know where it is?" I asked her as we kept running past various exhibits.

"Yeah, just follow the map!" Alex said as we continued to run.

"Whatever you say, Dora." I replied.

"I'm going to choose to ignore that." Alex said and we continued to maneuver through the crowds of people. As we ran I looked and noticed Alex was holding the map upside down.

"Alex, the map is upside down, we're going the wrong way." I told her.

"Oh...Okay, it's the other this way!"

Quickly turning around we started heading back and eventually started going the right way.

"Okay, it should be right around...here!" Alex said and we stopped dead in our tracks right across from our destination.

"They're so cute!" Alex exclaimed and I swear her face lit up brighter than a 5 year old on Christmas morning. We watched the penguins swim around and waddle around for probably about 10 minutes or so (also taking videos and pictures while we did so) before the person in charge of the penguins called Alex's name.

"Collin!" Alex called out and waved over to the sandy brown haired guy across from us.

"You know him?" I asked.

"Yeah, he's my friend Michael's older brother." Alex replied. Collin waved us over and we made our way to the door where Collin was waiting for us.

"Hey, Russo, long time no see." Collin smiled.

"Yeah, it's been a while. I didn't know you worked here." Alex said.

"Yeah, been working here for just a couple of months. Who's your friend?"

"Oh, this is Mitchie. She's my pen pal from Colorado who's visiting over spring break." Alex replied and I shook Collins hand.

"Nice to meet you, Mitchie."

"You too." I smiled.

"So, you guys wanna come in and see the Penguins?" he asked and before I even had a chance to say anything Alex nodded and we were being brought down this small hallway and into the opening of the penguin habitat.

"Just a second, I'll be right back." Collin told us and we stood there a for a few minutes until he came back with one of the penguins waddling close beside him.

"This is Mumble." Collin said as the tiny penguin came near us.

"He's so cute!" Alex gushed and kneeled down so she could pet him. She was so excited over Mumble all I could do was just giggle.

"Come on Mitch, he's not going to bite...I think." Alex said and I rolled my eyes and kneeled down beside Alex and pet Mumble.

"Can you get in trouble for letting us back here?" I asked.

"I don't think so, as long as it's people I know it's fine." Collin replied. We stayed for a couple more minutes and got to feed the penguins (and take some pictures) before saying goodbye to Collin and heading around the rest of the aquarium.

"Okay, I say let's go watch the dolphin show. According to this it's starting in like 10 minutes." Alex said and we made our way over to the Dolphin show(I took over the map reading since Alex had us almost go in the wrong direction again) which had just started by the time we had gotten there. We found a small spot on the bridge and watched the show from there and I have to say some of the tricks the dolphins were doing were really cool. They did flips, spins, a little dance that the trainers had taught them and even waved to the crowd by using their tails. The show ended after about 20 minutes and we made our way into the room with all the huge tanks.

"Look, a sea turtle." Alex pointed out and sure enough there was a sea turtle in the large tank behind me.

"Haha, that's so cool...Oh my god Alex, a shark!" I exclaimed and Alex nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Where?!" she yelped and all I could do was laugh as she realized I meant in the tank.

"You jerk, you scared me half to death!" Alex whined while playfully hitting me on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry but I just had to." I laughed. Alex gave me a pout and I couldn't help but melt.

"Alright I'm sorry. I promise I won't do that again."

"Thank you." Alex said and we continued looking around. While I was looking at a few of the fish I heard a familiar voice break through the crowd. I looked to my left and sure enough Devin and who I assumed was his pen pal were probably about 20 feet away from us. I did my best to make myself not get noticed but obviously my plan didn't work since he came up right beside me. My next plan was to start talking to Alex but she was so interested in the exhibit I didn't want to disturb her.

"You know, I always liked starfish." Devin randomly said as he came up right beside me. I knew he was trying to be nice and start some small talk with me but I wasn't letting him get off that easy. Not after the last time we talked and he tried yet again to convince me to go to some house party that someone I didn't even know was having. That time we actually got into the worst fight we've ever gotten into and I didn't particularly want to talk to him.

"I can see why." I replied, pretending to be interested in what he was saying.

"Really?"

"Yeah, did you know Starfish don't have any brains?" I asked.

"Thought you might since you sometimes seem to have that in common."

I could hear Alex fighting back laughter behind me and after giving Devin my best "get the hell away from me" look, he decided to back off and headed off to another exhibit with his Pen Pal.

"Not that that wasn't hilarious as hell, but wasn't that a little harsh?" Alex asked.

"Not when it's douche bag Devin." I replied.

"So that's Devin." Alex said, taking a look back at Devin who had gone back to look at the Sea Otter Exhibit again.

"Yeah. Wanna go check out another exhibit?" I asked and thankfully Alex nodded and we headed over to the Sea Lions.

"What did they do that made you dislike them so much? If you don't mind me asking." Alex asked, looking at the exhibit in front of us.

"It's a long story." I replied, not really wanting to get into everything when we were supposed to be enjoying ourselves. As comfortable as I was with telling Alex things I hadn't opened up completely about the whole Skylar situation with her, it wasn't exactly something I was proud of.

"We got time." Alex replied, and I took a deep breath before looking at Alex.

"Can it wait? Maybe we can talk about it later when we're home." I suggested and Alex contemplated my offer for a moment before agreeing. For the next hour or two we walked through the entire aquarium and looked at as many exhibits as we could before taking a quick break for food and making our way back to Alex's place. We had walked around so much we were a bit more tired than anticipated so we opted on skipping the movie we had planned to see and just went to the mall for a little while instead.

"Where do you wanna look first?" Alex asked.

"They've pretty got every teen clothing store known to man here so I'm sure we could find something."

"Do they have an Urban Outfitters? That's usually where I get my stuff." I replied.

"Yeah, I think it's on the next floor up."

Taking the escalator we went up to the next floor and found the Urban Outfitters, which had a way better selection than the Urban Outfitters at home. It didn't take long for both Alex and I to load up on clothes and eventually we had to stop ourselves before we bought out the entire store. We stopped by a few more stores along the way but we mostly did some window shopping since we spent most of our money right off the bat. By around 6:30 we decided we'd finally head home and after catching the bus we got back to Alex's apartment just before 7:00.

"Hey, girls. Have a good day?" Theresa asked us the second we got through the door.

"Yeah, it was great." I replied.

"Not only did we get to pet some penguins, we bought out the Urban Outfitters at the mall too."

"Well I'm glad you girls had fun. There's some lasagna and garlic bread left over if you're hungry. We just finished so it should still be nice and hot." Theresa told us and after dumping our bags in our bedrooms we each grabbed a plate of food before retreating to Alex's room. We mostly talked about the day while we ate, and at one point looked over the pictures we had taken and swapped a few, then in the midst of looking over the pictures Alex decided to bring up what I had said to Devin again.

"So, you never told me what that whole thing with Devin was about." Alex reminded me.

"Mind sharing with me now?"

Hello my lovely readers! I'm so sorry I made you guys wait this long for a chapter! I feel horrible and I swear I'll be updating a lot more over the next few months! I hope you guys enjoyed this chap and I'm sorry if it's kind of lame for the first chapter back since forever ago haha.

R&R!