~Baby Steps~
~by ChipetteGirl10~
~The Assignment~

For every other week now, Simon Seville had been visiting the Miller residence to "tutor" his brother's longtime girlfriend Brittany Marie Miller, the social diva and most popular girl in school. Most of the study sessions ended in the same way – lip-locking. The blue-clad boy felt it was wrong in so many ways. First of all, the girl was supposed to be dating his brother, who could easily pummel him if he wanted to. Secondly, Simon was in love with Jeanette, Brittany's sister – wasn't he? He shook his head. His feelings had been confused for far too long now.

"Sorry I'm late class; my car wouldn't start this morning," their teacher said, interrupting Simon from his thoughts. Simon shifted his focus to his health class teacher, Mr. Fudderwudder. The 30-year-old looked excited about something, and Simon figured, as usual, that it would be yet another boring class project that he would get done within the next week, and be forced to lean back and watch everyone else hustle at the last minute to get theirs done.

"I have great news, however," the male teacher said, rubbing his hands together. Simon looked to Jeanette, who was sitting across from him on his right, with another student in between them. The brunette was looking on with somewhat of an interest, most of her attention on Simon. Simon smiled at her, causing her blush, and then redirected his gaze back at his instructor.

"We are getting a new assignment to raise a baby doll. I have a basket up here, as you can see. These are for the girls only, sorry boys. There are slips of paper folded in her with the name of one of the boys in the class on it. Whoever's name you get, that is your assignment partner. This is to make it fair so nobody is left out," Mr. Fudderwudder said. He went around the room, holding the basket up to each girl in the class, instructing them to wait until everyone had a slip for the big reveal.

Five minutes passed until each girl finally had their slip of paper. Simon looked to Jeanette. Jeanette wasn't looking in his direction back at him; she was looking at Theodore. Simon mentally began to panic. If he wasn't paired with Jeanette, who was he paired with then? A shockwave hit him – hard. He just hoped it wasn't—

"Hi Simon." Brittany was suddenly standing over the boy's desk with somewhat of an annoyed, yet happy look on her face. Simon covered his face. No, no, no, no, no, NO! Brittany said nothing other than her greeting, but instead showed him the slip of paper in her hand. In blue ink, his worst fears were realized: Simon Seville. Simon was ready to scream. After weeks of going to Brittany's house and doing things he shouldn't, he really didn't want to be paired with Brittany. In his opinion, it would only make things worse.

~Later~

"I got Brittany as my partner for the project," Simon told Alvin later that day. They were just getting out of chemistry and were heading down to the cafeteria when he decided to break the news. His red-clad brother showed none of the anger or upset like he thought there would be, nor did he get an ecstatic response. All Alvin did for Simon was shrug.

"Cool. I got paired with Eleanor, and I heard Jeanette got paired with Theodore," Alvin said. Simon nodded as the brothers entered the cafeteria and took their spots in the lunch line. The chipmunk was glad that was all the response was. If Alvin had known about what was going on every Saturday, Simon was sure that Alvin would have gotten extremely angry. A tiny morsel of relief slipped into Simon's being, and he thanked his lucky stars the situation wasn't any worse than it actually was.

"Look, there's the rest of the gang," Alvin said, pointing to a table on the far side of the cafeteria. Simon smiled. It was the first time in a while that all of the chipmunks were sitting at the same table. Ever since Brittany's popularity sky-rocketed last year, she was always off with the cheerleaders and their fairly large, but harsh and snobby, clique. Simon was very surprised that Alvin didn't take the same path. He and Jeanette had always secretly suspected Alvin would be the first one to break off for a posse or clique.

The siblings walked over to the table three minutes later with food sloppily thrown into small sections on the red plastic lunch trays. Simon took a seat next to Jeanette, while Alvin chose one next to Brittany. The red-clad chipmunk draped an arm around his girlfriend with a grin.

"Hey babe," he said, kissing her on the cheek. Brittany kissed him back. Simon's fists curled under the table. Brittany was treating his brother like dirt…she was playing him, that was it! Brittany was playing Alvin Seville. That was something few people did, and that was on extremely rare occasion.

"So Si, you're paired with Brittany, I heard. Is that true?" Jeanette said, causing the chipmunk to avert his gaze to her. Simon nodded with a glare at Brittany.

"Yeah…and I heard from Alvin that you got partnered with Theodore," he said in reply. Jeanette nodded with a small smile.

"He seems like an okay guy for a partner, but I would rather have had you, Simon," the purple-clad said, somewhat flirtatiously. Simon's cheeks turned crimson as Jeanette placed a hand on top of his. He was grateful Jeanette wasn't aware of how nervous he was…or what was going on at her own house, between him and her own sister.

"This is going to get crazy…"