Claire left for LA at the end of the seventh book. The PC never met Skye Hamilton or Griffin Hastings. None of the couples broke up.
I don't own any of the characters you know about.
Massie Block had quite a few talents. An impeccable taste in clothes and boys, for one. The ability to manipulate whoever she needed to get whatever she wanted, for another. Searing wit, for yet another. But the thing she'd always prided herself on was her confidence.
So why was she standing at the entrance of the Westchester High School cafeteria with a plate of California roles and a bottle of Perrier, wishing she was invisible?
She scanned the caff with narrowed amber eyes. And immediately knew the answer: her friends – excuse me, her ex-friends – were not beside her. And without their support and approval making an invisible barrier around her designer-dressed, Pilates-toned body, she felt like an LBR. A pasty, bathroom-cologne-wearing, Old Navy-clad, bucktoothed LBR.
"Mass!" One of the A-minus-list girls from her Fashion Design elective was waving from a table that was almost the best in the room. Almost. Massie remembered a time when almost-best had been something to wipe her Jimmy Choo stiletto boots on. Her throat sealed shut as she realized that in high school, almost-royalty was the best she could do.
It was only the second month of high school, but Massie was a quick learner. She'd grown to realize that in a scene dominated by athletics, being beautiful and cunning and fashionable just wouldn't cut it. She could be popular, maybe, but she wouldn't be it.
As she began her slow walk to the almost-table, she pretended that was enough.
Theoretically, Alicia Rivera supposed, she'd hit the jackpot. Only a freshman and she was sitting beside head cheerleader and Homecoming Queen Skye Hamilton at the A-list table with the cute jocks and her fellow cheerleaders. She was used to the stares and the whispers, of course, but she still loved feeling the envy, the covetousness of everyone who wanted her or wanted to be her. It was just that she now had to feel it in a skimpy blue-and-gold cheerleading uniform instead of classy Ralph Lauren separates.
The girl who couldn't run could dance. Massie had always ragged on her for that. But where was Massie now?
"So, Leesh." Cassandra Gordon put her elbows on the table, almost in the vinaigrette dressing of her salad, and raised her overplucked eyebrows. "Got a dress for Homecoming yet?"
"Well, I –" Alicia smiled at the thought of the simple red Stella McCartney dress that she'd bought at the mall over the weekend.
"Hope not," Skye Hamilton interrupted sharply. Alicia watched Josh Hotz, now the JV soccer captain, stare at the leggy blond the way he'd once stared at her. She tilted her head so that her glossy raven mane swished enticingly from one waist to the other, but he didn't notice, even though Skye barely noticed him. "Because I'm going to pick out a suitable dress. Leesh needs to stop going for clothes that make her look like she wants to star in Full House. I mean, hello? Don't you want to show off some of that dark Mexican skin?"
Alicia bit her full, MAC-glossed lip. "Um, yeah," she agreed, forcing a sweet smile.
Pretty Committee or the cheer squad, Alicia Rivera never got to do what she wanted. But at least Massie had known she was Spanish, not Mexican.
Then again, where was that lying, cheating, pretentious whore now?
"Guess what!" Taylor yelled exuberantly.
Dylan Marvil set her loaded tray down on the table and took a gigantic bite of fried chicken before smiling at her best friend. "You saw a gorilla in math?"
"Yeah, and he's on the football team, but that's besides the point." Taylor ran a pale long-fingered hand through his green-streaked blond hair. "The point is, I am now the proud owner of a metallic blue 14Inch fucker called the Silverman Bass Guitar."
"No way!" On his other side, Jessica Rhett's blue eyes lit up.
"14Inch fucker," Dylan burped mischievously. Taylor cracked up. Dylan grinned, loving the full throatiness of his laugh.
Skye Hamilton called Dylan's posse the art freaks, and once upon an OCD Dylan would have agreed. But the thing was, now she preferred to think of them as incredibly talented individuals she had a shitload of fun with. Taylor had a band Benjy Madden would have dyed his hair blond to be in. Jess could paint like a dream. Layne could invent things Einstein would've been happy to, and she was crazy fun. Su Ling could be on Broadway, honestly, and Dean and Braden? Well, what couldn't they do, besides play football?
Dylan sometimes wondered if the others resented how close she was with Taylor, since she was just a drummer in his band and not a very good one at that. Still, when she was on the receiving end of that laugh, that smile, well, it made everything else inconsequential.
Kristen Gregory pulled her algebra textbook closer to her face and squinted at it, wondering when, exactly, books had become the only friends she had.
She'd always kind of suspected she was a nerd. But being Massie's friend had made her nerdiness cool; she'd even started thinking she was popular in her own right. She should have known the truth – that the Pretty Committee's patronage could make Weezer's frontman hotter than Jessica Simspon.
"Harvard," she said out loud, trying to remind herself that she wasn't always going to be a loser. Confident that in the musty, dusty, silent library, nobody would hear her.
"Tell me that's not the name of some other guy." His voice pricked her skin, sending shivers running down her back in a deliciously frightening way.
"Hey," she said, faux-calmly, turning around to look at him and regretting the decision when his warm breath hit her face.
He reached out and ran his calloused hands up and down her thin shoulders. Kristen felt like clay at his touch – utterly pliable. She closed her eyes involuntarily. His soft lips pressed into her throat, and Kristen's world was spinning all over again. She clawed his face away from her throat and bit down on his lip, feeling him smile triumphantly as he took her apart. He kissed her with control and she shoved herself against him urgently, abandoning any sort of want to regain herself.
He pulled away after an eternity of desperation. "Here," he said, putting his algebra book down next to hers, not meeting her eyes.
Kristin curled her hands into fists as he backed away with a wink. How could he make her forget, every time, that his kisses were nothing but currency? That he was out of her league? That she was someone he used and spit out – quite literally – whenever he felt like it?
Kristen could have lived with the heartbreak. It was the self-hatred that made her pick up her pen and drive it slowly, ruthlessly into her arm. The need for self-punishment that made her stare coldly down at the rivulet of blood snaking out of the cut, feeling nothing but a sense of balance.
"I can't," Claire Lyons whispered, a single tear streaming artistically down one cheek. "I can't be the girl everyone thinks you need."
"But you are the girl I want," Tom Felton declared passionately.
As their blond heads closed in for a kiss, Claire held her breath.
"That's a wrap!" The newest director of Harry Potter shouted.
Claire sprang away from her co-star even before the entire crew of Draco and the Hufflepuff Nobody: A Love Story burst into applause. She didn't pause as she passed the projection room, didn't stop as she ran past a couple of cheering extras, and jumped back only when she slammed into the tall brunette on the steps of her dressing room.
"Excuse me," Claire said to the film's publicist.
The brunette looked frustrated. "Claire, please consider saying you and Tom have found a romance off the sets on Leno tomorrow," she pleaded. "I've told you a million times, Harry Potter fans don't want Draco with an unknown girl as opposed to, say, Hermione or Ginny, and a coup like that could stimulate audiences in a way that –"
"And I've told you a million times, I have a boyfriend, Felicia, so please don't ask me anymore?" Claire prayer-positioned her hands.
"A boyfriend who –" Felicia started.
Cl-eh, Cl-eh. The sound filled the room.
"Happens to be calling me right now!" Claire finished. She dashed inside, shut the door almost violently, and pressed her Motorola Razr to her ear eagerly. "Cam?"
"Hey." Cam's voice was choked, like he'd swallowed ten Gummy Bears at the same time.
"Hey!" Claire beamed at the air. Hearing Cam's voice made her feel like they were cuddling by a roaring fire with a snowstorm howling outside, kissing and feeding each other Red Vines and Gummy Bears. "I miss you! How's the East Coast? Cold yet?"
"Claire, we need to talk."
Claire stopped beaming. "What's wrong?"
There was a long, pregnant pause. "I can't do this anymore," Cam said finally.
"Do what? Call me? That's okay. I can call you. I have some money now, so I can afford it…" Claire knew she was babbling, but panic was filling her stomach the way sea water filled the holes in the sand in front of her house in Malibu.
"The last time I saw you was four months ago, Claire!" Cam exploded. "I go to dances alone, I don't kiss anyone on New Year's Eve, I miss you like crazy at night but there's nothing I can do about it –"
"I'll visit more often," Claire promised, even though she knew she probably couldn't.
"Every day I see some stupid tabloid saying you're with some new Hollywood guy –"
"That's all just rumours, Cam! And they're stupid!"
"You chose that life, Claire. You chose it." Cam swallowed audibly. "I can't – it's too hard for me."
"I love you, Cam," Claire said urgently.
"I'm sorry," Cam said, sounding desperately sad. "It's over, Claire."
"Claire?" Felicia pushed the door open. "Claire, you're just not committed enough to your career. You're a fantastic actor but you hold back in romantic scenes, you don't contribute to your image, you –" She stopped. Claire remained immobile, staring into space, too stunned to even cry. "At least think about Leno," Felicia sighed.
"Okay," Claire said in a voice that didn't sound like hers.
"You'll think about it?" Felicia looked surprised.
"No," Claire said. "I'll do it."
It wasn't middle school anymore.
Like it? Hate it? Let me know:D.