A/N: I had this lying around for some time. It was written in the phase I did have inspiration. What? When? Inspiration? Yes, inspiration. It's that thing I lost a while ago. If you find it, please return it. Reward: my gratitude and a cookie. Well, I ate the cookie, but you'll have my gratitude.
Disclaimer: Piss off
I'm in love…
I'm in love…
There, it's out. I finally said it, and saying it makes it… real. I'm in love, and I admit that. Not openly, I have a reputation to think of, but to myself. I could hardly get it over my lips, my toes are curling to the soles of my feet from disgust for that cheesy, obnoxious, corny feeling in my gut but I confess, with reluctance, that this is the truth…
I'm in love…
I'm in love…
Love, love, love, wonderful love.
Wonderful, terrible love.
I hate to love.
I hate love.
It's stupid. Boys are stupid. Even he is stupid, the object of my absurd infatuation. He's stupid because he's in love too. That's one mistake, falling in love. But he's the pinnacle of stupid-ness, he's so dumb, such a dummkopf, because he doesn't know who he's in love with.
Moron… He's fallen in love with the wrong person.
He's in love with Erasa, who is so dense that she couldn't even find her belly button with a map and written directions for God's sake.
But for a stupid thick-head, he's exceptionally intelligent. Like, smarter than I am. Booksmart perhaps, he's a walking encyclopedia. He's friggin' google. How could such an intelligent person such as himself fail to see that Erasa is not the one he's in love with, but I.
I! Me!I! ME!!
I, Videl Satan.
Dammit!
How did I get into this again?!
"Oh Vi, he's so handsome."
I didn't even look up from my book as I heard her petty whining and her exaggerated sigh. Erasa, you are my best friend, but you are stupid.
"Why don't you take a picture, it lasts longer." I muttered as I turned a page.
She seemed to ignore my comment as I received nothing but silence. My eyes left the page of the book for a sec and I saw that Erasa was observing something… or someone, and I needn't even take a guess to whom it was. It was the new kid of course, Gohan Son. He had just been accepted to our school and within no time he had earned himself the reputation of 'a beauty of a nerd', because he was, surprise surprise, a beauty and a nerd.
Not that I'm particularly fond of calling him a beauty. First of, girls are beauties, and only girls… if you ask me. And second, if it's allowed to call handsome guys beautiful, I still wouldn't call him beautiful… or handsome. I am not interested in guys, may they be beautiful, handsome or butt-ugly.
But he is a nerd. Making straight A's on all his tests, knowing all the answers in class, studying every free minute of his day… I wonder if this guy has a life.
I looked at Erasa and didn't fail to miss the faint blush on her cheeks and the pink hearts in her eyes. Rolling my eyes, I went back to read my book.
"She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."
"Do you think he has a girlfriend?" Erasa interrupted me and Mr Darcy.
"Oh yes, and a horse." I replied sarcastically. I received a puzzled look from her.
"A horse?" She questioned.
"Yeah, sure. What's a knight in shining armor without his horse?"
"Dellll." Erasa whined. "Be serious, okay? Do you think he has a horse… I mean girlfriend?"
"Why don't you ask him and let me read how Lizzy and Darcy get together?" I replied with irritation. Erasa looked straight ahead again. I followed her gaze. There under a tree, sitting on the grass, oblivious of the world aroud him and of our conversation, sat Gohan, reading one of his schoolbooks with utmost concentration.
"Look at him, Videl." Erasa muttered with a sigh. "He's handsome, he's smart, he's mysterious, he's way cute… of course he has a girlfriend, who am I kidding?"
"I am looking at him and from my point of view the only girlfriend he has is school, so don't worry."
Erasa pouted. "He's in love with school."
"Probably."
"That's worse than having an actual girlfriend."
I arched an eyebrow. "Oh yeah, a guy who's dedicated to his education. It's the end of the world as we know it."
Erasa rested her chin on her knees and continued to watch Gohan with an almost sad expression on her face.
"Can you believe it?" She mumbled.
"What? The Easter Bunny doesn't exist?" I asked with feigned childish innocence.
She rolled her eyes. "Don't be such an ass. I mean… I can get every single guy in this school, including half of the teacher's staff and the janitor…"
"And Ms Muscle…" I added.
"…Except the person I really want."
I nodded. "And you want Gohan."
"From the moment I saw him." She flashed me a bright smile as she said that.
"Oh wow, you are so totally head over heels that it makes my teeth grate." I said as I turned to my book again.
"You're hopeless." And saying that she recommenced ogling Gohan again.
"Says she who's hopelessly in love…"
For a moment we were silent and I was captured again by the misfortunes of Mr Darcy and Lizzy Bennett…
"But I can assure you," she added, "that Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting his fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set-downs. I quite detest the man."
…Until Erasa opened her mouth again.
"Do you think…"
"Erasa! Why don't you ask him?"
She looked at me with wide-open eyes. "Ask him if he knows I exist?"
"Well, if you ask him he'll know you exist." I replied.
"No, but that's lame. I'm not going to ask him that." She protested. I merely shrugged.
"Suit yourself then, though it might be the first conversation you two have."
"Like I know what to talk about anyway."
I looked at her as if I just heard a nun swear. "Why wouldn't you? You always do. You talk the ears off my head. You drive me nuts sometimes. You talk twohundred miles an hour and still you have no intention to stop. What do you mean you wouldn't know what to talk about? You are so annoyingly chatty that I often want throw myself out of the window just to be rid of you."
"I know, I know." Erasa said. "But that's with you."
"And any other person crossing you path, including the mail man, the milk man, the bus driver, the woman behind the counter in the supermarket and a few lampposts."
She eyed me for a second but ignored that last remark.
"It's different with him." She said, slightly irritated with me. "He's so smart and cool and mysterious, what do I say to him?"
"Try hello."
"And then what?"
"How's it going? Come on Erasa, this is basic communication."
"I know that." She was greatly exasperated now. "But what if he says something really smart? What if I don't know how to respond to that? What if he thinks I'm stupid?"
"There's only one way to find out… Go over there and talk to him." I pressed.
I saw her hesitating.
"Can't you do it for me?" She asked hopefully.
A chuckle escaped my lips. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, you're way smarter than me. And you can put up a good word for me."
I saw that she was perfectly serious. "Forget it."
Awww Videl, please do this one thing for me. I'll never ask for anything else, I promise." She begged as she looked at me with her puppy dog eyes. But I resisted.
"No, I'm not going to talk to him for you, I don't even know the guy and if I did I still wouldn't do it because he'll think that you're thirteen. What do you think this is, Junior High?"
"Awww come on." She continued whining. That's her, she doesn't know the meaning of no.
"Leave me out of this, okay? If you want to talk to him, go there yourself or pass him a note in class saying 'hey, I want to make out with you in the locker room. Interested?'"
By the look of her she seriously seemed to consider that option.
"NO!" I countered immediately. "Forget what I said. Just go to him and start a conversation."
She rested her head on top of her knees again and released a prolonged sigh.
"No." She decided.
"Suit yourself then."
There was a moment of silence between us again.
"I didn't know you liked Pride and Prejudice." Erasa said after a while. "That's like an eighteenth century chick-lit."
A faint blush crept over my cheeks.
"Ooohh, now I get it." She murmured mischievously. "You like romance stories. So there's a girl in you after all. Deep down, but she's there."
"Cut it out, it's literature." I grunted before I put the book in my bag. "Well, you going to sit here and stare at your distant lover or are you going to go with me to Literature class?"
Erasa reluctantly got up and followed me to the school building. I swear I heard her sing 'it's a girl, it's a girl, Videl is a girl'.
"The Romantic Movement is originated in the second half of the 18th century as a response to the prevailing Enlightment ideals of that time. Among the first of the Romantic Poets were William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Who knows when it was published?"
"1798."
I looked in the direction of the person who gave the year. Naturally, it was Gohan.
"Very good, Mr Son." Mr Brooke praised. Gohan didn't look up from his notes.
"Now can anyone give me some characteristics of the Romantic Movement?"
It was silent, before Gohan's deep voice again broke it to sum up the characteristics monotonously.
"Return to nature, importance of feeling and imagination, renewed interest in the past, interest in the countryside, common people and folk literature, interest in distant civilizations such as medieval, Greek, Oriental and interest in gloomy places like ruins and graveyeard."
He said it as if he read it from a textbook. Erasa and I looked at each other.
"Very well." Mr Brooke said, surprised by the ease with which Gohan summed up all those characteristics. He was about to continue when, out of the blue I remembered something.
"Escapism from reality." I mumbled.
The teacher turned to me and seemed to be more baffled than he was when Gohan gave him his elaborate answer.
"What did you say?" He asked. I saw that Gohan finally tore his eyes from his notes and looked at me.
"Escapism from reality, Mr Brooke." I repeated my answer, more confident than before.
Mr Brooke blinked for a second before he realized what I said. "Ah yes. Very well, Miss Satan. The characteristic Mr Son forgot to mention. Escapism from reality. Very good, the both of you." He said as he looked at Gohan and me.
I smiled at Erasa as she looked at me baffled, before my eyes fell on Gohan. He gazed at me indifferently for a while before he bend over his notes again.
I felt kind of satisfied though. I sort of corrected Gohan, the smartest kid in school. Or rather, added a vital part to his answer. That was cool.
"Hey Videl." Erasa whispered next to me. "How did you know that?"
"Oh well, I know everything, don't I?" I replied smugly. She gave me a smirk. My gaze returned to Gohan once more. He was jotting down notes again with the speed of light and I didn't give him any attention the rest of the class.
The day dragged on but finally, after biology, school was over and we could go home.
I silently walked next to Erasa to the parking lot. She was grinning uncontrollably as she looked at something she held in her hand.
"Why are you so happy? Didn't you hear Mr Dawson? We have a test next Monday." I said, but the smile didn't disappear from her face.
"I heard Mr Dawson, but it doesn't really interest me. What interests me is this."
She opened her hand and held it out to me. She was holding a tiny piece of paper in her palm.
"What's that?" I asked.
"This…" Erasa drawled as she held the piece of paper under my nose, "…is better than chocolate."
I looked at the piece of paper. Something was drabbled on it, but apart from that I saw nothing interesting.
"Oh yummie, a piece of paper. It must be my lucky day." I muttered dryly. Erasa immediately retreated her hand.
"Don't eat it." She warned. "This is Gohan's email address."
"Yuck, you can't eat email addresses."
"Videl, come on…"
"Alright, alright. I'll be serious. Now how did you get his email address? Did you pass him that note anyway?" I asked.
"Of course not." Erasa opposed. "I got it from Apple Pie."
"How did Apple Pie get it?"
"They're lab partners. So I figured that she must have his email address and guess what?"
"She did." I presumed.
"No, she didn't."
I was confused now. "Then how did you get that email address if she didn't have it? Where's the clue?"
"Well I asked her to ask Sharpener to ask Gohan if he could have his email address so he could give it to Apple so she could give it to me in exchange for a Mars bar."
"But… but… Why didn't you ask Sharpener to ask Gohan then?" I enquired, completely puzzled.
"Yeah, like I can ask Sharpener to do that." Erasa looked at me as if I was a nutcase.
"Oh yeah, as if…" I muttered sarcastically. "So what are you going to do with the address?"
"Well I have this great idea, it really can't go wrong, it's the best idea I ever had." She chirped. "And the best part, you are going to help me with it."
"Oh that's funny, I thought you said I am going to help you with it." I replied.
"You know, just a little bit of help." Erasa brushed it off with a smile.
"What exactly is a little help."
"Very little."
"Tell me."
"You are going to write him some emails pretending to be me."
I looked at Erasa as if she just lost it. "What?" I whispered menacingly.
"Oh it's really nothing." Erasa babbled. "You just write him some emails with my name under it, he'll be impressed by my intelligence and wit and he'll start to like me and want me and want to date me. It's simple really."
"Yeah, simple really." I said. "Only you forget that it's my intelligence, my wit."
"Like he knows."
"He will know!"
"How?"
"You're not me, Erasa!"
"He won't know."
"Yes he will!"
"He'll like me before he finds out."
I looked at her with disbelief. "How can you possibly think that this will work?"
"Trust me Videl, it's going to work. So are you in?"
"No, I'm not in!" I yelled almost angrily now.
"But Viii," She started to whine again, "he likes intelligent girls. I know it. I saw how he was looking at you during Literature class. He looked interested."
"You are seeing things." I countered.
"Please Videl, this could be my only chance with him. I'm not as smart as you, I won't stand a chance with my brains, I know that. Please, please do this. Just one email. Please Videl, I'll do anything for it."
I looked at my begging friend. She never looked more determined than now, as if this matter was somehow of vital importance.
I sighed. "This is really important for you, isn't it?"
She nodded vigorously.
"You like this guy that much?"
"He could be the love of my life. And I'm serious this time."
She did look serious, though I had a hard time believing that it was actually the love of her life. She had said it before. But nonetheless, I surrendered, though reluctantly.
"Alright, I'll do it. But only once, one email. You're on your own after that."
Erasa gave a cry of excitement before she pulled me in a tight embrace.
"I promise you, you won't regret this." She squealed with all her happiness.
"Yeah yeah. I just hope he's worth it." I grunted doubting before she released me. "Now, what am I getting out of this?"
"You can get a Snickers bar."
I looked at her for a while.
"You really know my weaknesses, don't you?"
"Like the best."
You know what to do to make me happy...