Two;

--

There she stood. A late autumn wind whipped her dark hair free of her half-ponytail and Massie didn't bother to fix it. Maybe - hopefully? - it looked sexy. The game hadn't started yet. Massie quickly found out that the team ADD was facing - from a school simply called Westchester Middle School - was notorious for being late. They were also the non-uniform-wearers she'd seen earlier. Some of them were cute, but most of them were short and grumpy-looking - not Alpha Boy material in the slightest. Michael on the other hand...

Nearly five - okay fine; six - minutes had passed since Cordelia had shyly placed her hand into Mrs. Jenks', her mom, and mumbled something about "mean, median, and whatever" for homework. Massie thought the relationship the Jenks family had was unbelievably adorable. It was comforting to know that some Westchester families could behave normally, even when her parents were acting more distant than usual.

"Do you" (loud giggling) "go to school around here?" asked a petite girl, who made herself known to Massie by jumping in front of her. The girl had the fairest skin in all the land - she would've made a pre-vamp Bella Swan look like she weekended in Cabo. Her hair was a deep espresso colour and framed her heart-shaped face in a pixie-cut. If she went to OCD, she might have been PC material - had she not been so tiny, for her size would make clothes-swapping a no-no.

Massie nodded, causing a spiral of Jakkob-snipped hair to hit her button nose. "I go to OCD."

"Oh." The petite brunette's face had fallen, but she replaced it with a smile - something Massie quickly discovered was her signature. "Nice to meet you, anyway."

"Yeah!" a raspy voice called from somewhere behind the tiny girl. "I'm sure you're not like those other capital-B-witches that go to private school."

The raspy-voice girl revealed herself - easily. She was more than a whole head taller than the brunette. Her skin was winter-rosy and dishwater blond hair was tied in a half-hearted ponytail. Unlike Smiley, her hazel-green eyes held a sarcastic sparkle. "Got a name, princess?"

"Massie Block," she smoothly replied, tossing a closed-lipped smile for the snarky blonde's benefit. "What about you?"

"Elspeth." A roll of her startlingly pretty eyes. "Don't mind the house-on-the-sea name. My mom's a naturalist. Our house is vegefied. I've gone to the dark side-" smirks rippled through the group of girls, who Massie could only assume were ADD's answer to the Pretty Committee "even looking at a cafeteria hamburger makes me want to barf."

"That's Nora." Elspeth, presumably the leader or at least the most vocal member of their clique, hitched an unpolished thumb at Smiley. "Lynette." Her finger moved to point at a sweet-faced girl, who had the biggest blue eyes Massie'd ever seen to match her cute dimples. She was chomping hard on a wad of gum, barely paying any attention. "And, last and least, Kelsey." Kelsey waved a bare hand. Her nose was red from the cold and Marvil-red side-bangs hung in her eyes. She wore a too-big navy hoodie that looked like it belonged to a guy. She was sitting on the bench, textbooks and papers spread out about her. One headphone was stuck in her ear.

"Basically," Lynette drawled, her off-key accent on show, "we're the unofficial cheerleaders."

"She's right," Nora agreed, doing an uncalled for twirl, clutching the ruffled hem of the Forever 21 dress she wore over white tights as she spun. "Our boyfriends play every sport known to man and it's our duty to show support!"

"'Our duty'?" repeated Elspeth, her tone incredulous. "We're not married or anything."

Trying to regain part of her lost Alphaness Massie smirked and let slip a, "Puh-lease. You're obviously pretty serious, or else you wouldn't be here."

For a second, the private school-educated beauty swore that the dirty-blond haired girl would explode. Would there be a black-and-white photo of her, beaming, in tomorrow's newspaper? Would the headline read: 'Westchester teen found dead in a ditch somewhere, does anyone really care?' She gulped, matching Elspeth's stare in intensity.

That was when Elspeth Carter burst out laughing. She threw her back and let loose a stream of giggles. Massie thought the girl's laugh was kind of beautiful. Odd, certainly unique, but beautiful in its own way. She now understood why someone would want to date her - before she'd thought Elspeth was more the 'I'm so scared of you, but I'd rather be on your good side' type deal - at times, she could be unexpectedly wonderful.

Massie glowed.

--

Finally, it looked like the game was starting up. Massie wondered why the opposing team had yet to slip into their jerseys. Some of them were lazily swinging around standard school-issue baseball bats, pulling funny faces or making their movements exaggerated, like in a cartoon about the sport. Occasionally, she found feel people - guys, probably - staring at her and knew why: for one, she was a new face. For another, she was easily the prettiest of the girls there. Without Alicia or Faux-livia there to outshine her, the brunette looked some kind of gorgeous - like a regal lady-in-waiting or an ambitious-slash-evil Anne Boleyn.

Massie was quickly informed by Elspeth that ADD was at bat first. While the teams set up, the girlfriends-of-players formed a circle against the bitter wind. They went around, carefully saying their cell numbers, and Massie programmed them into her iPhone. After that, the opposite was done with Massie's number being saved instead.

"Which ones are your boyfriends?" she asked, trying to keep her heart out of her throat. She prayed to God that no one had called dibs on Michael yet.

"We'll introduce you to them after." Elspeth waggled her fingertips.

"They're the cute ones!" Kelsey called, looking up momentarily from a Geography text with an orange cover. Everyone - Massie, too - giggled.

Nora popped in between the two leaders of two very different cliques. Her head of close-cropped dark hair was stuck in between Massie's Blair Waldorf-inspired-by curls and Elspeth's dirty blond ponytail. "My boyfriend, Remy, is number seventeen. El's is twenty-one, that's Lyle. Kelsey's is forty, Greg. And Lynne's is -" NotMichaelnotMichaelnotMichaelnot - "Warren, number sixty-seven."

"Cool. I'll probably forget them all, though." Not true. Massie's memory was kind of amazing - 17, 21, 40, 67. She had also logged that Michael's number was nineteen.

"I'm subbing today," an eerily familiar voice whispered in her ear. Massie turned, spooked. Then she felt a smile lifting her lips. Michael. "That means I have nothing to do except look pissed off at the other team."

"Hey."

Elspeth was tossing a neon green softball to Nora - who missed by a long shot and shouted, "No fair, you're a giant!"

"Hey yourself." Michael's dark eyes glinted from behind his man-bangs.

Awkward!

--

No longer was the situation awkward. After the initial, prototypical inquiries about schooling (public vs. private?), family (Massie was an only child; Michael had one sister, Cordelia, and an absentee father), and friends (the Pretty Committee and Michael's jock squad), the conversation had turned for the better. Soon they transitioned into a chat about nothing in particular.

In a word? Massie was smitten. And by the smirk on his face, Michael wasn't opposed to her, either. She had never planned to wither in the spotlight, alone, after the infamous Block-Harrington spilt. Of course, she assumed Dempsey would assimilate into the position Derrick once held. But after what she observed last night...there was no chance of that happening. Michael was a wonderful second choice.

"I'm glad I came today." Her French-tipped fingers played with the tangle of necklaces she'd bought from Bergdorf's last week. "I had..." her voice trailed off.

"Fun?" Michael supplied, grinning. From behind the shield of her messy bangs, Massie spotted the other girls laughing, flirting and subtly touching their boyfriends. She watched Nora's painted lips curl as Remy patted her on the head, exaggerated her short statue. Elspeth was giving Lyle one of her infamous-as-Massie-had-learned long diatribes. Kelsey was sharing her Science notes with Greg. And Lynette was fluttering her Bourjois-enhanced lashes at Warren.

"Yes. Fun, that's the word."

"Well," Michael admitted, "I had fun, too. Is there any chance you'd come to my next game? This time, Thursday?"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

And that was when Michael - tall, long-haired, sporty, fun, sweet Michael - leaned in and just-barely brushed his lips against Massie's. It occurred to her that she hadn't glossed since the car ride with Mrs. Jenks, but that didn't seem to be so much of a big deal just then. Quickly, Michael pulled away, like her lips were on fire. He couldn't meet her eyes, but the low, "See you around," he offered reassured her that she wasn't that bad. Besides, Derrick was always begging for her kiss - surely she couldn't be so terrible.

Slowly, Massie raised her fingertips to her lips, wondering if she'd just imagined the whole thing.