Young Writers Society

Chad laughed as he and Ryan raced to leave the Movie Theater, crashing through the doors and into the cool night air. Ryan whirled around to face Chad, pumping his fist in the air.

“Yeah!” he shouted. “What’d’ya think of that? Yeah!” He jumped and spun in some strange form of victory dance as Ryan pretended to hang his head in shame.

I followed quickly after them, looking sheepishly at the theater employees who were glaring in our direction as I pulled Leo behind me.

“Guys!” I scolded them, half-laughing myself. It was hard not to laugh at the two of them. Leo just shook his head behind me.

Jessie and Kelly ran out, not even caring about the employees, grinning from ear to ear. “Who won?” they asked eagerly, though they already knew the answer from looking at the guys before the question was even out of thier mouths.

Ryan looked sad, shooting comical puppy dog eyes at the girls. “I lost…” he told them quietly. Suddenly he straightened up, squaring his shoulders. “But I shall not lose again!”

“Oh yeah?” Chad looked at him, his every movement issuing a challenge.

“Yeah,” Ryan retorted, raising his fists jokingly. “Come on, man. Let’s do this!”

Chad shook his head, lightly pushing Ryan’s fists down. “Not in front of the ladies, my dear Ryan.” He shook his head. “Never in front of the ladies.” He smiled winningly at Jessie, causing her to roll her eyes and exchange laughing glances with Kelly.

“Alright then,” Ryan said slowly. “A different kind of battle then.”

He quickly dropped onto the pavement and began doing push-up after push-up, his muscles rippling under his blue T-shirt. Chad watched him blankly for a moment and then dropped as well, quickly matching his friend in speed.

“Oh please,” Kelly murmured softly, though her eyes were glued to the two of them.

Leo wrapped his arm around my shoulders gently, shaking his head at Ryan and Chad. “Come on, guys…” he said. “Stop showing off.”

Chad stopped, looking up at him. “You may already have a girlfriend,” he told Leo, nodding toward me. “But us single men have to do something to impress the ladies.” He smiled at Kelly and Jessie again before going back into the push-ups, fighting to catch up with Chad.

I laughed. As if Chad needed to do anything to impress the ladies. Any girl that he was interested in would have already fallen for him, just because of the way he could look at a girl and suddenly make her feel like she was the most important person in the room.

Patrick and Christy slowly came out of the door behind us, stopping as they saw Chad and Ryan.

“What are they doing now?” Christy asked blankly.

“Dying,” Ryan groaned rolling over onto his back, breathing heavily.

Kelly and Jessie broke into laughter, leaning against each other.

“Oh, yes,” Kelly said cheerfully. “Such manly men we have here.” Jessie, nodded, not even making a sound any more as she laughed.

“Well,” Chad said, stopping mid-push-up and looking over at Ryan. “I suppose that means I win. Unless of course there are any other challengers.” He looked back and forth between Leo and Patrick.

“Yeah,” Patrick said defiantly. He took a step forward, glancing over at Leo. “Come on. We can take them.”

“Whoa!” Chad objected, sitting back on his heels. “Two against one! That’s not fair!”

Patrick waved it away. “Then both of you. We can still beat you.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said weakly. “Now that we’re exhausted.”

“Aw,” Jessie said sweetly. “Poor baby.”

Ryan titled his head back to look at her, a glint showing up in his eye. “Am I detecting sympathy? Does this mean that you’ll be nursing us back to health?”

Jessie blinked and then slowly began to grin. She knelt down on the pavement, pulling his head into her lap and running her fingers through his hair. “Of course, baby,” she crooned, the barest hint of mischief running through her voice. “I’ll do that for you.”

Ryan smiled, closing his eyes. “Really?”

“There’s just one problem,” she went on softly. She stood up suddenly, stepping away. “We have to go home,” she told him, her tone sharply returning to normal. “So we just don’t have the time. You’ll have to get better on your own.”

Ryan stared at her, open-mouthed. “Oh, you’re cruel.”

“Thank you,” Jessie said, simply grinning.

I couldn’t help but laugh at her tone. This was what I loved about going out with these guys. No matter where we went, whether to the movies or just out to Denny’s to eat, we always ended up joking around like this afterward.

Maybe it was something that everyone our age did, but for me it was new. I had just moved here from three states away where I had led a somewhat sheltered life (as Chad called it). My parents had inexplicably decided to send me to public school after having been enrolled in a highly conservative private school for the first ten years of my life. Somehow I had fallen in with this group of strange, unique characters over the summer and now I could barely imagine what it was like before I knew them.

I’d met Leo first. He’d seen me wandering around the town, simply exploring the streets and had simply fallen in step beside me. He told me then that he was bored and he was looking for “some small piece of small town adventure”.

I’d laughed. Who talked like that these days? But he had been dead serious and had gone on to tell me how adventures always began with a mysterious stranger that is seen wandering around. It hadn’t taken him long to explain that I could very well be that mysterious stranger even if I didn’t know it. We walked together for a few minutes and then he turned back with some sort of explanation of how we’d left “his territory” and how he felt the need to return to “his cave”.

I was to learn later that “his cave” was how he referred to his room and that “his territory” was simply the streets he was used to walking along when he was too bored to do anything else. However, It was a long time before he told me any of that. He seemed to enjoy the fact that he could confuse me so easily by dropping one of those phrases that only he and his friends knew what they meant, though he enjoyed it more when I started using the phrases myself.

I saw him everywhere after that, it seemed. At the Wal-Mart, at Denny’s, and on random streets that he walked along. It wasn’t long before he’d introduced me to Ryan, Patrick and Chad and then Jessie and Kelly when they came back from their family vacations. I’d gotten to know them so well over the past few months and before long Leo and I had started dating. I could honestly say that I these people were some of the closest friends I had ever had.

Christy was the only one that I didn’t really get. I hadn’t met her over the summer, but had only seen her for the first time when school started up in September. She had seemed a ghost then, quietly slipping in and out, saying hello to the others, but more often staying off to herself. She didn’t seem to like large groups, but much preferred to have one on one conversations with her friends. I rarely saw her talk to any one that wasn’t in our little group, but I was sure she did things that no one else knew about.

She was quiet, almost to the point that she didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of them, but she walked with a silent confidence that at times made her seem more like them then I ever could be. And yet, she didn’t often go out with us like this. Chad said that she spent most of her time in her room at home, dreaming up some plot or story and then writing feverishly at it until was done. I saw her in the hall sometimes, staring blankly into space until something interrupted her. She’d gently explain that she’d been “lost” and everyone understood what that meant, but I had to wonder at how much she seemed to disappear into her own head.

I couldn’t understand it, honestly. Why would you go off like that when you had such hilarious friends to hang out with?

I’d heard once that the quiet ones, the ones the chose to stay by themselves turned out to be serial killers. When I’d first met her, I’d wondered if one day she would turn into one, and whether we would be her first victims. Now that idea seemed laughable.

Chad and Ryan had laughed too when I’d suggested it, saying how cute it would be to see Christy running around with a Tommy gun. The thought was just too absurd to even be taken seriously for a moment. Christy was quiet, but she wasn’t a brooding, the-world-hates-me-and-I-hate-the-world quiet. She was sweet, and more often then not, there was the gentle trace of a smile on her face. She was simply a mystery, more of a mysterious stranger than I could ever be.

And in all honesty, she was a mystery. To me, to Chad, to Ryan, even to Kelly. Jessie seemed to have some idea of who and what she was and Patrick and Leo knew her better than anyone else, though they never chose to enlighten the rest of us as to the goings on inside her head. Maybe that was the way she liked it...

Leo nudged me gently, drawing his arm slightly tighter around me. “Reese?” he asked me softly.

I blinked, coming out of my thoughts and looking around at the others. “Sorry,” I said quickly. I looked at Christy. “I got… lost.”

Christy cocked her head to the side slightly, raising one eyebrow ever so slightly. “Lost, Reese? Using my phrase now are we?”

“Don’t tell me you’re dreaming up stories in your head too now,” Chad said, sarcastically. “We’d have to have battles of the Writing Queens.”

“It wouldn’t be much of a battle,” Patrick told him, glancing at Christy.

She looked down at her feet. “Stop,” she whispered, almost inaudibly. But as far as we all knew, it was true. Patrick, Leo and Jessie were the only ones she’d ever allowed to read her stories, but from what they said she was phenomenal, good enough to be published if she’d only take the time to try.

Maybe that was what it took to understand her. Maybe you had to read the things she wrote to really be able to see the workings of her mind.

“We’d better be going,” Jessie said, starting to pull Kelly toward her pick-up truck. It was such a big truck compared to the two girls, neither of which was over five foot four, but Jessie liked it. “It makes me feel powerful,” she had told me one evening. “Like I could run over the whole world, if I wanted to.”

“Beware the short people!” Chad had shouted afterward, trying to warn the entire universe it seemed. The two girls had promptly chased him halfway around the school parking lot and back.

“Wait,” Kelly said, turning back toward the others as Jessie continued to drag her away. “What are we doing next weekend?”

Ryan blinked. “Um, we have a date, remember?” he prompted.

Kelly looked confused. “A date?”

“Yeah,” Jessie said tolerantly. “It’s homecoming, remember? You’re going with Ryan. I’m going with Chad. Reese is going with Leo. Ringing any bells?”

Kelly looked sheepish. “Oh, right,” she said softly. “Sorry. Blonde moment. Then I guess we don’t really need to pick a movie or anything.”

“No,” Jessie told her. “Although some one still needs to find a date.” She looked sharply at Patrick.

Patrick turned to Christy slowly. “Maybe I don’t?” he questioned hesitantly.

Christy took a step back. “What?”

“Do you want to go to Homecoming with me?” Patrick asked her slowly. He played with his fingers nervously as his hands hung at his sides.

“I wasn’t planning on—“ she began, ready to decline.

“Oh come on,” I said. “You should come. It’ll be a lot of fun. And you’ve got an offer for a date.”

She looked at me silently. For a moment I thought she was looking over my head at something. Maybe she’d gotten lost again. Leo shifted lightly behind me.

Christy turned slowly toward Patrick. “Sure,” she told him softly. “Why not?”

Patrick broke into a smile. “Really?” He leaned toward her, eyes bright and more excited than I'd seen him in a long time.

Christy smiled as well, more at his happiness than at the idea of Homecoming. “Yeah. I’ll go.”


Author's note: Just a little something I've been working on. This is by no means the whole thing and I have no idea how long this will actually turn out to be, but I thought I'd post the first part anyway)

Wow...that was really good!!! It really flowed along, and caught me up in it! Very good...I love the 'competition' between the guys at the start....

Another great work from Dusky, why am i not suprised? Its really good and it will be cool to see some more, do you ever stop writing? don't worry, I'm just jelous!

Me? stop writing? Not on your life! lol.

Thanks for the comments, both of you. Is there anything that stuck out that needed reworking?

I'm going to try to have the next piece of this up either today or tomorrow.

Movie Theater

In the very first line, this is capitalized. It isn't a proper noun, unless you put in the name of this particular movie theater.

I really like how you made it have short one or two line paragraphs at the beginning, then longer paragraphs in the middle, and back to short paragraphs.

“Oh please,” Kelly murmured softly, though her eyes were glued to the two of them.

The way you said "murmured softly" made it seem... like, I don't know, she was really horny or something, as opposed to interested. You might wanna change it Unless you want her to sound horny..?

You may want to make sure that readers know what the main characters name is. About halfway through, you say "Reese" for the first time, and I was a little thrown off and confused by that.

Christy cocked her head to the side slightly, raising one eyebrow ever so slightly. “Lost, Reese? Using my phrase now are we?”

It seems like Christy is a little more bold than you made her out to be elsewhere. I really like your characterization, it's very realistic, but you contradict yourself with Christy's character sometimes.

Other than what was mentioned above, this is a really excellent story. As I said before, your characterization is phenomenal, and I'm looking forward to the next part

Very nice.

I had some trouble at the start, though. I like the way you threw me into the scene, but I needed something sooner to help me figure out exactly what was going on. I had to read the whole thing (well, most of it) to get the idea that they were just out having a good time together. I kept looking for something more. That stopped me from enjoying it on the first read through.

I only have a few comments:

Duskglimmer wrote:I laughed. As if Chad needed to do anything to impress the ladies. Any girl that he was interested in would have already fallen for him, just because of the way he could look at a girl and suddenly make her feel like she was the most important person in the room.

This sentence to too long. You need to break it up.

I’d met Leo first. He’d seen me wandering around the town, simply exploring the streets and had simply fallen in step beside me. He told me then that he was bored and he was looking for “some small piece of small town adventure”.

You use words like "simply" and "only" too often. The adverbs can be good, but sometimes a more specific verb would be better, or just leave the adverb off, which is what I would do here.

I hope my comments have been helpful.

Thanks for the comments both of you. I'm working on fixing the things you pointed out as we speak and I should have an edited version up sometime soon. Until then, here is the next section (it's not much, I know, but bear with me):



Jessie looked a little surprised. “Well, great!” she said finally. “Then we’ll see you two there.”

Christy nodded slowly. “Right,” she murmured.

Jessie and Kelly hugged us all good-bye and then climbed into Jessie’s truck, cranking up the music as they drove away and singing along with it at the top of their lungs. Chad and Ryan laughed as they heard Kelly hit an extremely off-key note.

“We should be leaving too,” Ryan told Chad, Patrick and Christy. “My dad is going to have a fit if I don’t have the car back in the garage by midnight and that means we have…” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes to get you all home.” Ryan winced. “Okay, my dad is definitely going to have a fit, but let’s get going so I don’t get killed.”

“We wouldn’t want that, now would we?” Chad said, patting his friend’s shoulder.

Ryan shot him a look. “I’m not sure how to take that.”

“Why would I want you dead?” Chad asked, innocently. Ryan didn’t seem to be convinced.

“Well, I can take Christy home,” Leo suggested. “That’ll save you a few minutes and it’s on the way to Reese’s house anyway.”

“Thanks, man,” Ryan told him, relaxing only slightly. He hurried across the theater parking lot toward his car. Chad loudly claimed shotgun as he shot across the pavement to catch up with him, Patrick close on his heels.

Leo, Christy and I waved good bye to them as they pulled out onto the street heading for home. We watched them for a moment and then got into Leo’s car, following our friends out of the parking lot.

“Thanks for the ride,” Christy said as we pulled into her driveway a few minutes later.

“No, problem,” Leo told her, smiling. “We’ll see you on Monday.”

Christy nodded and opened the car door, walking slowly up the path to her front door and disappearing inside the house.

Leo backed the car out of the driveway carefully and then continued down the street toward my house.

“So what are you doing tomorrow?” I asked, flipping on the radio and beginning to search for a good station. I don’t know why, but I never liked it when it was absolutely quiet when it was just the two of us.

“My parents are taking me down to the lake for the weekend,” he told me, his eyes still on the road.

“Again?” I asked, surprised. It seemed like he was always going down to the lake.

Leo laughed a little. “Yeah. My parents want more time to work on the house down there. I’ll be back by Sunday night though.”

“Okay,” I replied. I winced a little as Justin Timberlake’s voice came into focus on the radio. Who told him that he could get a solo career? I quickly turned the dial again, spinning through various songs quickly, finally stopping as I heard Thousand Foot Krutch’s Move. I leaned back in my seat. Much better.

Leo looked over at me quickly, his eyes darting back to the road in front of him. “You’re not going to turn it up?” he questioned.

I blinked. The radio was at a very comfortable level for me in all honesty. I wasn’t one of those people that liked to have the music up so loud that you could feel the bass in the floor. “No,” I told him lightly.

He laughed. “Fine.” I knew he was resisting the urge to reach over and crank up the volume.

I settled back, closing my eyes, enjoying the music and his company. After a moment I heard him move and I reached out and smacked the air in front of the radio, striking the top of his hand.

“Don’t you dare,” I warned jokingly. He just shook his head, smiling as well.

* * *

The rest of the weekend passed quietly with Leo out of town. Chad and Patrick went to some concert or another on Saturday night. I saw Jessie and Kelly at the Mall on Sunday, but for the most part we all went our various ways over the next few days.

Monday morning we all dragged ourselves to school, wishing the weekend hadn’t ended just yet.

First period just seemed to drag on forever. I can’t remember why I thought it would be a good idea to have AP History that early in the morning. That morning all I heard was the teacher droning and the girl behind me scribbling something.

I looked over my shoulder once to see if she was really catching what the teacher was saying and had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. She wasn’t writing notes at all. Her pen was moving over the page, forming words, but they weren’t coherent and if I would be very surprised if any of them actually applied to that day’s topic.

Not that I could have written better notes that she did. Five minutes after class started, I couldn’t even tell you what the teacher was rambling on about. It was something about some person that invented some something and revolutionized the American way of life. He could have been talking about the guy that invented the “revolution” for all I knew.

By the time class let out, I was more than ready to move around and actually wake up. I ran across school to get to my next class, dodging the other students in the hall.

A couple of freshman nearly ran me over as they stumbled along. Poor them. It was still near the beginning of the year and they still hadn’t gotten the lay out of the school down yet. I hadn’t been doing much better than them until a few weeks ago, but at least I was a Junior…

I laughed suddenly. What difference did that make?

I bumped into someone and hurried to apologize, ready to point the person (probably a freshman) in the proper direction. Blinking, I realized it was Christy.

“Sorry,” she repeated back to me, adjusting her backpack over her shoulder. She glanced off down the hall. “I really need to start looking where I’m going more.”

“Yeah,” I agreed slowly, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. “You really do. Where are you today?”

She met my gaze again. “What?” she asked, confused. We sidestepped to avoid a group of Seniors coming down the hall, flattening ourselves against the hall.

“Where are you?” I asked again. “On the road to a lost city? Battling a creature from the deep? Hiding from an unnamed enemy?” I listed off a few more things, trying to guess at what story line had been playing through her head.

“Battling,” she answered me vaguely. She smiled secretively. “Definitely battling.” Her attention was already elsewhere, wandering over the other people in the hall, or maybe something beyond them that I couldn’t see.

“Oh…” I said, feeling somewhat disappointed. I kept wishing that one of these days she would give me a more detailed answer like she did for Leo and Patrick, but apparently that was going to have to wait until she knew me better.

I started to say good-bye, knowing that I didn’t have much time left to get to class and then stopped myself. “Hey,” I said. “Me and Jessie are going to Mall after school to look for a dresses for Homecoming. I think that Kelly’s coming too. You want to join us?”

She hesitated. “No thanks,” she replied apologetically. “I’ve sort of already got plans.”

“More battles?” I asked sarcastically. My eyes widened a little as she nodded. “You should come,” I told her. “Really. It’ll be a lot of fun.”

Christy started to refuse again.

“You have to get a dress sometime, don’t you?” I cut her off.

She leaned back, looking at me for a moment as if seriously considering it. “What time?” she said finally.

I grinned. “We’re meeting at the North end of the Mall at four. We’ll see you there?”

She nodded. “Sounds good…” Her eyes suddenly caught on something all the way down the hall. “I have to go,” she told me shortly. She started away, her eyes glued to whatever it was, calling back over her shoulder, “I’ll see you at four!”

I shook my head in disbelief. What kind of strange creature was Christy?

Hearing the warning bell, I took off, almost running to make it to class on time. When I got there, I sank into my seat, breathing heavily as I set my backpack on the floor beside my chair. Everyone else was hurrying to get into their seats as well, quickly falling silent as Mr. Rothers, our Algebra teacher stood up to close the door.

“Good morning, everyone,” Mr. Rothers said, coming back to his desk and rifling through the papers on his desk for the attendance list. “How were your weekends?”

The class mumbled an answer, throwing together a mixture of yes’s, no’s and an occasional “great”.

Mr. Rothers looked up at us, shocked. “Not awake yet?”

“Nope!” one of the boys in the back of the room joked loudly. “Can’t you hear us snoring?”

Mr. Rothers shook his head slightly and the class laughed quietly.

“Well then, Mr. Mathias, I hope you can dream up the answers to the equations,” he told the boy. “Let’s get started.” He slid the attendance list out of a pile on his desk and started reading off it. “Kate Andrews?”

“Here,” Kate said simply from the left side of the room.

“Alex Borrows?” Mr. Rothers continued down the list steadily, checking off the names as he went. “Dustin Mathias?” he said, near the end of the paper.

“All brain cells present and accounted for, sir!” Dustin called back cheerily.

Mr. Rothers didn’t look up. “I hope so, Mr. Mathias. I hope so.” He moved on. “Leonardo Neallan?”

Silence. I twisted around in my seat to see why Leo wasn’t answering. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d pretended to walk in and fall asleep just to joke around with Rothers. But today, Leo wasn’t even in the room.

“Mr. Neallan?” Mr. Rothers asked, glancing over toward Leo’s empty seat. “Has anybody seen him this morning?”

“He was in Chem lab this morning,” one the guys on the right side of the room told him. “I don’t know where he is now, though.”

“Alright,” Mr. Rothers sighed. He quickly finished off the list and jumped right into the lesson. We spent all morning solving various equations with Mr. Rothers tossing various clever remarks around to keep us awake and smiling. I kept looking toward the door, expecting Leo to slip in, but he never did.

When the bell rang, I gathered up my things quickly and headed out along the hall. Other students were flooding out of their classrooms, chatting and laughing. Before long, the corridor was filled with a mish-mash of voices so thick that I could barely tell what the person next to me was saying.

“Reese!” Jessie shouted over the noise as she and Kelly threaded through the crowd to get to me. She stopped right in front of me and lowered her voice slightly. “We’re still going to the Mall tonight, right?”

I nodded. “Have you seen Leo?” I asked.

Jessie blinked. “No,” she replied slowly. “Is he missing?”

“He wasn’t in class,” Dustin said, coming up behind me and dropping an arm around Kelly’s shoulder. “Hello, Kelly,” he said brightly.

Kelly forced out a tolerant smile. “Hello, Dustin,” she replied.

“How are you, Kelly?” he pressed on, completely ignoring her expression.

“Go away, Dustin,” she told him, forcing a polite tone into her voice.

Dustin grinned. “Ah! I see I caught you in a good mood!”

Kelly rolled her eyes.

“I just wondered if you had a date for Homecoming yet,” Dustin asked.

Kelly turned and smiled at him. “Yes. I do. I’m going with Ryan.” She lifted his hand from her shoulder and stepped away from him.

“Darn,” Dustin swore good-naturedly. “I knew I should asked sooner.”

Kelly shook her head. “I still would have said no, Dustin.”

“Sure,” Dustin laughed. He turned to look down the length of the hall. “Well, maybe I’ll ask Christy then. She’s always good for an interesting refusal. Hey Alan!” he shouted to someone down the hall.

Alan looked up suddenly from several yards away. “What?”

“Where’s Christy?” Dustin questioned.

Alan lifted his hands in a shrug. “She wasn’t in class today.”

Dustin turned back slowly. “Wait a minute… Christy and Leo are missing?” He got a strange look in his eye.

“Dustin,” Jessie said warningly.

I looked back and forth between the two of them, confused. “So what?”

“Maybe you should check the janitor’s clo—“ Dustin began.

“Shut up, Dustin,” Kelly cut him off. She looked at me levelly. “I saw Christy heading toward the auditorium before second period. Why don’t you look there? Leo could be with her.”

“Thanks,” I said, glancing at Dustin before heading off across the way to the auditorium.

I always felt odd in the auditorium when it was empty. The room was so huge and every sound echoed through the empty air. Today was no different. The lights were down, except for a few that lit up the very front of the stage. A piano had been set up on the right side of the platform. Leo and Christy were sitting on the bench in front of the keys, speaking softly as his fingers ran over the keys, striking various chords. Their backpacks had been dropped on the floor beside them off-hand.

I started drifting down the middle aisle toward them, trying to catch what they were saying.
Soon their voices died down and he simply kept playing, adding in a few more notes, all of them deep and dark. The melody they formed was no lighter than the individual chords and for a moment I stood stock still, listening. I almost wanted to cry from they way the music seemed to be pleading for help.

Christy watched him for a moment and then set her hands on the keys, mimicking the chords in the higher notes. Somehow, it only made it sadder.

Then suddenly, her fingers started flying. She began pulling a sweeter melody out of the old one, weaving it in out of the dark chords that Leo was still playing.

The music ebbed and flowed, drifting back and forth between the pleading notes and the soothing tone of Christy’s melody. It never seemed to sit still, always changing from one thing to another. One moment Leo’s piece lined up with Christy’s and the next it became even darker and more earnest, going back to the original chords. Every time, Christy’s part changed as well, almost as if she were responding in a conversation, becoming even more soothing, complimenting everything he played perfectly.

Finally, both pieces started to hit the same tone, growing louder as it swelled for the last time in a triumphant, hopeful note. Slowly, Leo stopped, dropping his hands in his lap. Christy continued, her fingers skimming easily over the piano, slowly playing the final melody line out again and then she stopped, turning to smile at him.

The silence in the auditorium after that seemed almost unbearable. I took the last few steps toward them. “That was beautiful,” I said, almost hesitant to mention it at all. It seemed like trying to apply words to it, might break the spell.

Leo turned suddenly at the sound of my voice. “Reese,” he said, surprised.

“We missed you in class,” I said hurriedly, trying to explain why’d come in.

“Sorry,” Leo apologized. Christy glanced at me and then began gently playing the piano again, hinting at the music they had been playing before.

“Where’s that from?” I asked, not wanting the silence to invade again.

She stopped, looking at me blankly. “From?” Christy shook her head slowly. “We were just making it up.”

My jaw practically hit the floor. “Really?” I demanded. “Can you play it again?”

She laughed softly. “I don’t even remember where we began,” she whispered. Standing, she picked her backpack up off the floor. “I’d better be going.”

Leo slipped off the bench as well, giving her a gentle hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For everything.”

She smiled at him. “Glad I could cheer you up,” she whispered back before stepping down off the stage. “I’ll see you later, Reese,” she told me quietly as she left the auditorium.

I watched her go and then turned back to Leo in concern. “Are you okay?”

Leo laughed, grabbing his backpack and jumping down to stand next to me. “I’m fine…” he told me, wrapping one arm my shoulders. “Now.” We started up the side of the auditorium, following Christy out.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him, unconvinced.

“Nothing,” he continued to assure me. “I was just having a Dorien Grey morning.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You really need to read more, Reese,” Leo told me, laughing again. “Dorien Grey. He’s a character in a book. They put him in a movie once, but that wasn’t exactly his finest hour.”

“Okay. So what’s a ‘Dorien Grey morning’?” I questioned.

He paused before answering. “Dorien Grey couldn’t age or scar. He had a portrait that all the scars and things passed to instead. He just stayed this really young-looking guy, but he was scared that if he ever saw the portrait that the spell would be broken. When he did finally look at it, everything passed back to him.”

I waited patiently for him to go on.

“Every once in a while,” he told me. “I have days where I know that something’s wrong, but I don’t seem to be scarring and I guess I get scared that I’m scarring something else and one of these days I’m going to find it and all of it is going to fall back on me.”

I kept quiet, trying to wrap my mind around that. “I…” I started. “I don’t really get it.”

Leo blinked and then smiled broadly. “You really need to read more, Reese,” he said simply.

I rolled my eyes as we headed back into the hall and joined the rest of the school in scurrying to get to class.

That's really interesting... of course, I haven't seen "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" so I have no more of a clue than Reese. But, I love how you pull other stories into your own.

If I can jump back to the very beginning... I'm confused about what contest could have possibly gone on while they were in the theater. What was it?

I'm really enjoying this. But, I'll be honest, I'm worried about what's going on between Leo and Christy.

the contest was a race to see who could get out first. I'll try and go back over that and make it clearer.

And as for being worried about what's going on between Leo and Christy, things should be explained a little more in the next section, though I'm not sure if it will dispell your worries. Most of the story has to do with what's going on between Leo and Christy.

* * *

The Mall was crowded that afternoon and Kelly, Jessie, Christy and I took our time threading our way through the masses of people that were hurrying about. We’d already spent a good two hours combing through all the dresses that larger stores had to offer and had started going into any of the smaller shops that looked promising.

“Whoa…” Kelly said, as we stepped inside a prim little shop. Racks of dresses lined the walls on either side of us with mirrors spaced evenly along them. In the center was a large mannequin display and beyond that I could see the cash register and the dressing rooms along the back wall. Surprisingly, there were only one or two other customers inside, a very appealing fact.

Kelly was eyeing one the dresses that the mannequins were wearing happily. “That one,” she said, a smile spreading rapidly across her face. “I definitely need to try that on.”

Jessie glanced at the dress impartially. It was a long blue gown with spaghetti straps and an empire waist. Sequins were scattered over the last few feet of the skirt, thickening as they reached the bottom. After a moment she nodded her approval. “It’s definitely pretty.”

Kelly was already on her way over to the racks to begin her search for the dress. “Understatement,” she called back over her shoulder. Jessie and I just laughed. We moved toward the racks, chatting quietly with Christy just behind us.

“Ooo… look at this one,” Jessie said, pulling out a red strapless dress.

I looked at her doubtfully. “Strapless? I don’t think so.” I turned back to the racks, sliding a few dresses aside to look at a fifties-inspired black and white dress. I examined it for a moment. It was pretty. But I wasn’t something gorgeous.

“Aw, come on,” Jessie insisted, holding the red dress out again. “Red. It’s a power color!”

“Great,” I laughed, pushing past her to look at things further down the rack. “I’d rather be comfortable.”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “How about you, Christy?” she asked, giving up on me.

Christy eyed the dress apprehensively. “When was the last time you saw me wear red?” Christy questioned.

“Um… never,” Jessie said after a moment’s thought. “Time to try something new?”

Christy laughed softly, shaking her head. “No. That’s definitely a Jessie dress, though. You should try it on.”

Jessie looked at the dress again and then grinned. “You’re right.”

Somewhere across the shop Kelly squealed as she found the blue dress she’d seen on the mannequin. She quickly rifled through the dressed and pulled out one in her size and ran over to us. “I found it! It’s perfect!” she nearly shrieked. She held up against her body and twirled around, so excited she could barely hold still. “And I just need to find some really nice heels and a good bracelet – ” She looked up at Jessie sharply. “I’m thinking like a nice sparkly cuff kind of thing – and oh! I’m going to need a good necklace too! Do you think we could stop at Clare’s before we go home?” She twirled again. “Isn’t this awesome!?”

Christy shook her head, gently laughing as she turned back to the racks.

“Yeah,” Jessie told Kelly. “It’s great!”

Grabbing Jessie’s hand, Kelly raced off toward the dressing room, leaving Christy and I to continue our search.

“Finding anything?” I asked Christy as I shoved a few more dresses to the side. They weren’t anywhere near fancy enough.

“Not really,” Christy murmured. I could hear her behind me, slowly sliding the dresses along the rack as she glanced at them. “They’re all too…” she paused, searching for a word.

“Plain?” I supplied, passing over a black dress with edged with sequins. Too much sparkle, not enough eye-catching attractiveness.

“No,” she told me. “Quite the opposite actually.”

I stopped, looking at her over my shoulder. “Seriously?” I asked, surprised.

Christy nodded. “Why?”

I shrugged, turning back to the clothes. “No reason.”

We continued looking for a moment and suddenly we heard Kelly squeal again. The sales clerk looked toward the dressing rooms in shock while Christy and I merely laughed. She was way too excited over that dress.

Jessie and Kelly came out a moment later, both grinning from ear to ear.

I cupped a hand around my ear as they came back over to us. “What’s that I hear?” I asked jokingly. “Could it be the sound of money changing hands and two people going home with dresses for homecoming?”

Kelly giggled. “Yup! We loved ‘em.”

“Wow…” Christy whispered behind me. “We couldn’t have guessed…”

“And found something, Reese,” Jessie said, taking hold of my arm and guiding me further back into the store. “You have to see this.” She scanned the racks for a moment as she searched for a specific dress and then pulled it out.

For a moment I forgot to breathe, the dress was so wonderful. It was a black, floor-length dress with a corset-style bodice. A white panel was sown down the front with the corset lacing laid over it. Beads were sown over the bodice and to look like vines and leaves. In other words: It was perfect.

Without meaning to, I nearly grabbed it from Jessie’s hands. Her smile simply widened.

“I thought you’d like it,” she told me.

“Like it?” I breathed. “I love it!” What was I saying earlier about Kelly getting too excited over a dress? Forget I said anything like that…

“Well, go try it on already!” Jessie said impatiently. The two of us hurried off toward the dressing rooms.

“I’ll be right out,” I told Jessie as I started to slip inside.

“I’m actually going to keep looking around,” Jessie said slowly, stepping back out toward the racks.

I blinked. “I thought you liked the red one.”

“Oh, I do,” she promised quickly. “But I have help Christy find something. There is no way I’m letting her go home today without getting a dress.”

“Okay,” I agreed, laughing. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

Author's Note:[/b] For those of you who are confused as to why Christy is at the Mall with them... I went back and I changed it so that she accepted the invitation from Reese. I've already editted this thread to show that.

Your stories are always so engaging, Dusky. Good description of Leo and Christy playing, by the way. I'll have to keep up with this.

Jessie slipped off, beginning to sort through the racks again while I stepped inside the dressing room.

Once I had the dress on, I wished I never had to take it off. It was absolutely gorgeous and I felt gorgeous in it. It was amazing what a dress can do for your ego. I spent a long time in front of the mirror, pulling my hair back and piling it on top of my head, trying to imagine what the entire outfit would look like. I couldn’t help but grin at my reflection, as I spun around and the skirt flared around me. I owed Jessie… big time.

When I did finally come out, Jessie and Kelly were standing off to the side, waiting, bags slung over their shoulders. Whatever they’d been saying, they stopped as I came out.

“Where’s Christy?” I asked cheerfully.

Kelly nodded toward the dressing rooms. “In there,” she said. “Jessie found her six dresses and told her she had to try every single one on.”

“Not that she will,” Jessie laughed. “How much you want to bet she falls in love with that first one and ignores the rest?”

“Yeah…” Kelly agreed, smiling. “Did you see the look on her face when you showed it to her. I think she was in love with it before she even touched it. Or as in love with a dress as Christy can be.”

I shook my head slightly, grinning. “I’m going to go pay for my dress, kay? I’ll be right back.”

They nodded and I went to the cash register, happily handing the dress over to the cashier for bagging. When I came back, Jessie and Kelly were whispering again. Slowly, I walked up behind them, being extremely quiet.

“It wasn’t good…” Jessie was saying, her voice so low I could barely hear it.

“No, really?” Kelly replied sarcastically, a bit louder than Jessie liked. Jessie motioned for her to be quieter.

“Did you see the look on her face when he came out of the auditorium?” Kelly pressed on. “It was just about the opposite of good.”

“But you have to admit, he looked a lot better after talking to her,” Jessie said, looking toward the dressing rooms. “They are good for each other.”

“If they were so good for each other they wouldn’t have broken up in the first place!” Kelly insisted. “And aren’t you forgetting something? He has a girlfriend now!”

“I know…” Jessie told her. “I know.”

“What are we talking about?” I whispered, coming in between them.

Kelly jumped, looking surprised, though she quickly covered it. “Nothing,” she said hastily.

“So,” I said, pretending to look pensive. “You’re talking about a person who has a girlfriend but was seen cavorting with his ex, and whom you’re not supposed to be talking about…” I grinned. “Sounds like teenage scandal. Spill.”

“Reese,” Jessie said, rolling her eyes. “You are such a wannabe Gossip Queen.”

I sighed. “Yeah… I know. And I’m so bad at it. But come on, fill me in.”

The two of them looked uncomfortable.

“I’m going to see if they sell shoes here,” Kelly said, avoiding my gaze. She headed off across the store quickly.

I turned to Jessie. “Okay, seriously,” I said, now dropping my joking tone. “What’s going on?”

Jessie shifted her feet nervously. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to just let this one go?”

I blinked. She had never asked me something like that before. She was always in on the latest gossip, and I was always asking to be pulled into the loop. She’s joked with me before, but never actually treated it like it was anything serious.

“Who were you talking about?” I asked slowly.

Jessie sighed. “Promise me you’ll let me finish before you react,” she said firmly.

“I promise,” I agreed swiftly. I had to know what was going on.

“We were talking about Leo,” she told me levelly. “He—“

My eyes grew wide. “Leo saw his ex today?” I asked sharply. “I thought she didn’t go to our school.”

Jessie looked even more uncomfortable. “We never really said that.”

“Who is she?” I demanded.

“Reese,” she winced. “You’re reacting.”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down enough to think clearly. “Leo wouldn’t cheat on me,” I told her deliberately.

“No, he wouldn’t,” she agreed. “And he didn’t.” She hesitated. “But he and his ex are still really good friends and they were seen alone together today. It started talk and, well…” She shook her head. “A lot of people think that if it’s being said around school that it’s true.”

“Who is she?” I asked again. My thoughts were stumbling all over themselves trying to dig up girls that he was close friends with. I’d seen him talk to Jessie and Kelly a lot, but it was pretty obvious it wasn’t one of them.

Unless Kelly had decided to start talking in third person. I shook my head. No, even Kelly wasn’t that crazy. The only other girl that I’d seen him spend a lot of time around was Christy and…

I stopped, looking at Jessie sharply. “Christy?” I asked. “Leo and Christy used to be dating?”

“Yeah,” Jessie told me. “A long time ago. Freshman year and the summer before Sophomore year.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Jessie bit her lip. “Christy felt like she’d really messed up Leo’s relationship with his last girlfriend. She told me that she didn’t ever want to do that again, so we decided that it would just be best if we didn’t spread it around. They’re good friends. That’s all they are now.”

“Then why is there still talk?” I questioned, wanting to believe her.

“Because…” Jessie tried to explain. “They seemed to be so good together. They lasted for a long time, almost a full year. No one really understood why they broke up in the first place. One minute they were happy as anything and the next thing we know, they come into school and can barely even look at each other.”

I looked at her doubtfully. “Why did they break up?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Haven’t you asked Christy? I mean, I know most people have problems getting anything out of her, but you’re good friends—”

“Yes. I did. But she doesn’t know either. I’m not even sure if Leo did. Either way it’s over now… They both know it. The only thing that’s left is the gossip.”

I couldn’t help but remember the way they had looked sitting on the piano bench that day. The way she had smiled at him, the way he had looked at her, the way they had played so effortlessly together, blending the melody lines until it was hard to tell where one of them began and the other ended.

Was that how it had been when they were still together? Hard to tell where Christy ended and Leo began? What had Jessie said? They are good for each other.

Was it really over? Or were they telling themselves that because it needed to be?

I looked at Jessie. “You don’t really believe it’s over, do you?”

She glanced down, suddenly focused on her shoes. “It doesn’t involve me. They both know it’s over.”

“But you did say that they were good for each other,” I pressed.

“They’ve both had their problems,” she said. “Leo hasn’t exactly always been clean cut. And Christy… well, there are reasons why she keeps people at arms length now. But they both have helped each other. A lot. They’ve been best friends for a long time.”

I shook my head a little.

“Reese,” Jessie told me. “Leo is your boyfriend. He chose you over Christy. He’s yours. Ask anyone and they’ll be able to tell you that he loves you. Please don’t worry about this too much. Christy can’t—Christy won’t let herself—come between the two of you.”

“What’s going on?” someone asked quietly, standing in the doorway of the dressing room.

I looked up at Christy sharply. It took me a moment realize that it actually was her. She wasn’t in her usual T-shirt and jeans attire and instead was wearing a deep maroon, floor-length dress. It had an empire waist and the cloth was gathered both there and at the deep square neckline. Tiny cap sleeves laid over her shoulders, edged with just a small bit of lace. It was an extremely simple dress, made of a soft, weighted material that hung just right on her slim frame.

Seeing her standing there, it was suddenly all too easy to see that she was exactly the kind of girl that Leo would want. And who wouldn’t want her? Christy was strange, but she was that alluring kind of strange that just made everyone want to get her to open up and tell them everything.

I swallowed, looking at her. “Nothing,” I murmured. “Absolutely nothing.”

She glanced back and forth between Jessie and I. I knew she didn’t believe me. Could I blame her?

awww... this is making me sad...