Here goes the fourth chapter:

Dylan woke up easily that morning before his alarm clock, for once. He had slept like a baby that night (well, actually not like a baby because babies wake up every two hours and cry, but you get the point). Dreamily he looked over at the alarm clock who's blurry but luminous red numbers blared at him in the darkness. Blinking and squinting he stared at it until the indistinguishable red blur finally came into focus. 5:36. Sighing, Dylan heaved his drowsy body out of bed and plodded down the stairs.

He pretty much lost time from there with video games, T.V., and e-mail. It was a rare treat to actually wake up before everyone else and Dylan savored it as any teenage boy would be by using all of his time to goof off. When he was getting off of the computer he looked at the clock and did a double take.

It waz 7:26 and he’d have to leave soon to walk with Alicia to school! “Holy crap!!” he screamed. He ran around the house, grabbing his lunch money off the counter, throwing on an old My Chemical Romance T-shirt on, brushing his teeth and hair. While he ran around frantically the 7 year old twins, Jack and Jenny, would occasionally tear there eyes away from ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ to watch Dylan freak out, which was almost as entertaining. Just as he finished getting his backpack in order Jack said excitedly, “We don’t get school ‘til next Monday.” He grinned at his big brother, showing the gap in his smile were the front two teeth had fallen out, hoping to make Dylan feel better.

Dylan had to smile when he looked into that happy little face. “Lucky you. You guys also won’t have homework until a couple weeks after you start, unlike me,” he said, shrugging his backpack unto his shoulder and waving good-bye as he walked out the door and skate-boarded down to Alicia’s house. He got to the door and hurriedly straightening up his hair, he pressed the doorbell.

Alicia answered it almost immediately. For a few minutes he just stared at her, soaking in her tiniest details like a sponge. She had on just a blue tank top and shorts and her hair was in a messy bun, but it didn’t matter to Dylan. She couldn’t have been more beautiful if she had worn a dress from the heavens.

“Ready to go?” He asked, snapping out of it and flashing his grin at her. “Yeah, one sec,” Alicia said, giggling. She ran upstairs, said a hurried good-bye and slammed the door before her family could snoop to see who it was. Offering him her hand, they practically skipped down the driveway. They talked about nothing, yet to them it was as if they were speaking of the most important matter ever to happen.

All to soon the big brick school loomed before them with kids swarming towards it. Fenton Junior High seemed to glower at them and swallow them inside like a giant fairytale beast. Kids shoved past them and bumped into them so many times it almost seemed to be on purpose. Ah, the Tuesday morning traffic jam. Lots of kids, little hallway.

Finally they reached the hall that split into two where one of them went down a hall to her locker and the other went to the one across from it for his locker. Dylan checked the marked schedule and saw that they would have Spanish, Homeroom and Lunch again. Seeing a nearly empty hall, he ran down to homeroom, which, fortuneately, was not too far from his hallway.

Noticing that the teacher was gone, he quickly took the seat behind Alicia just before the bell rang. She turned in her seat and handed him a salmon-pink school flyer. “Did you see these flyers all over the bulletin boards?” she asked him, bouncing with excitement. “No, I was too busy trying to get in class before the bell to notice the bulletine boards,” he said, wondering what could’ve been on that slip of paper that got her so geeked up.

“Hurry up and read it. Mrs. Harrison will be hear any second,” Alicia said, still bouncing. He flipped it over and saw the ferret mascot printed on the sheet and was about to read the bold print just as Mrs. Harrison walked in. Quickly stuffing it in his desk, he flashed her a grin. “Welcome to our first Science class together!” she said, grinning widely as if it were a happy time. “I’ll start off with something easy. Read these pages, write down the definitions and then summarize what a chemical reaction is to me.” She quickly turned around to write down the page numbers and instructions.

“Begin!” she trilled, facing them with an even wider grin before sitting down at her desk to do paper work. Dylan rolled his eyes and glanced down at the paper. The ferret had a huge word bubble saying, “HEY ALL YOU DRAMA KINGS AND DRAMA QUEENS!!! It’s that time of year to cast roles for this year’s play… A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM!!!! It’s a classic Shakespearian piece and we encourage you to audition!! Here are all the parts:

THESEUS

EGEUS

LYSANDER

DEMETRIUS

PHILOSTRATE

QUINCE

SNUG

BOTTOM

FLUTE

SNOUT

STARVELING

HIPPOLYTA

HERMIA

HELENA

OBERON

TITANIA

PUCK

PEASEBLOSSOM

COBWEB

MOTH

MUSTARDSEED

(Plus other attendents to Theseus and Hippolyta)

As you can see there are endless opportunities for roles so don’t be shy and show us your stuff! Auditions will be in the audotorium on Friday from 5:30-7:30. Posts will be up next Tuesday!”

He reached over and tapped Alicia on the shoulder. She turned and mouthed, “Isn’t it great? I’ve always wanted to play as Hermia in this play! Are you going to audition?” “I don’t know. I mean, acting is sort of a side activity for me,” Dylan whispered, shrugging his shoulders. “But I thought that you were really nervous just standing in front of the class,” he said, leaning in closer so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“I am really nervous in front of a small crowd but I’m pretty okay with acting in front of a large crowd. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain,” she murmured. Returning to his work, Dylan thought over what he knew about Shakespeare from Social Studies last year. He had 3 children, the one named Hamnet died at age 11 and that gave him the idea for Hamlet, he made some of the greatest plays of all time, the lines in his plays had the words end in –eth a lot and some of the lines were really long. Thay was about all that he could remember about Shakespeare that seemed important right now.

At last the bell rang and Alicia sprang up and jabbered excitedly in his ear about how she had always wanted to be an actress; she especially wanted to be like Keira Knightley. “I love her movies, the best ones are the ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ movies,” she said in a breezy tone. “I love the ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ too! They rock! But how do you know you wanted to be an actress if you haven’t been to a school since kindergarten or been in a school play?” he asked, confused.

She rolled her eyes at him and she looked at him with ‘Duh!’ written all over her face. “Whenever I meet new people, they always ask me how I know celebrities and movies and stuff like that. Just because I was home-schooled doesn’t mean that I was cut off from the rest of the world. But anyways, back to the Shakespeare play,” she said, sounding brighter.

All day, Alicia talked and talked about the Shakespeare play, except for a brief five minutes when they joked around at lunch because the hamburgers looked like someone squashed an unsuspecting lemur on the road and the lunch ladies picked it up, threw it on a grill, and put the whole undercooked roadkill lemur burger on some poor kid’s bun. When they walked up to Alicia’s front door after another long conversation about the play, he asked, “Hey Alicia, that girl Hermia that you wanted to be; doesn’t she have a lot of speaking parts?”

“Well, yeah. She’s basically the main female character,” she said. “Well then, I definitely know that you’ll be perfect for that part!” Dylan replied cheerily. He kissed her on the cheek and walked down to his house. He groaned as he walked up his driveway, realizing that tomorrow would probably be worse because the play auditions would only be 2 more days away.

Sorry it took so long everyone! I was grounded from the computer so I couldn't finish it 'til today.