A/N: Thanks to the people who reviewed last chapter! I hope you enjoy this chapter, because our favourite ghost-turned-human makes an appearance. Sorry for the wait!

"No." My mom had even crossed her arms to match the thin line in which she'd set her mouth. "There is no way that you are meeting this boy." I cringed at her word-choice. 'Boy' was no way to describe someone with such a high level of sophistication as Paul.

"But Mom!" I argued, as I had been doing for the past hour. I'd come back too late last night – the house was shut up, and everyone was in bed, even my oldest stepbrother, Jake. I had been forced to creep in quietly and lie in bed, planning the best way to inform my mother of Paul's offer as I listened to the low, phlegmy rumble of Andy's – my stepfather – snoring.

The next morning, I had skipped over entirely what had happened on that stage – i.e., facing enough public embarrassment to last me until I was forty – and presented my mom with Paul's business card. She'd refused outright.

It was there, in the kitchen, that I stood now, bartering for this one piece of freedom. I was obliged to refer to my flawless report card – because when you only have two friends, there's not a lot else you can do in a town like Carmel besides study – but she still didn't budge. Not one bit.

"Oh, Paul…" mimicked Brad, in a high falsetto as he trudged into the kitchen, still in his pajamas. I struggled to control my gag reflex as he stretched his arms over his head and revealed two large sweat patches. "Oh, Paul, I love you. Let me have your babies…" I blushed now as I realised he must have overheard my description of Paul. I had fought with myself to make it concise, but evidently, I hadn't been brief enough, and my tone of voice had conveyed exactly how I felt about him.

"Brad, shut up," my mom ordered, before she turned back to me. "Susie, I'm sure he's a very nice guy. But the truth is, every guy is nice when he wants something out of a girl." Oh, please. Spare me the guard-your-flower lecture, I beg you. With his head inside the fridge, I heard Brad snort.

"Maybe you should be giving Brad 'The Talk' and not me, Mom," I said, masking a smirk as I heard his head hit the roof of the fridge. "After all, from what I've heard he's been exceptionally nice to Debbie Mancuso-"

"Suze!" Brad's neck, I saw with some pride, had begun to turn its usual grape jelly-purple. "What did you have to do that for-?" I shrugged nonchalantly as my mom turned on him instead, and I slipped out of the room in silence, swiping Paul's business card off the table as I went.

I sank on to my bed, debating my choices for today. As it was Sunday, my only two friends – Cee-Cee and Adam – were at church, along with every other student at my school. And I mean, I would totally have joined them. Except that generally, people with a fixed atheist belief like mine were not really that welcome in church. Especially under the glare of Sister Ernestine.

So instead I turned to homework – a page of quadratic equations and a History essay. If I was sure that Brad wasn't back in his room – a heavy thump-thump-thump up the stairs that sounded a couple of minutes after I retreated to my room told me he'd escaped the Mom lecture for now – I'd have gotten out my guitar, and painfully tried to figure what went wrong last night. But I knew better than this. Last time I'd started singing within a yard's radius of my middle stepbrother, he'd gone round the house replaying my songs word-for-word, with added spite. It had taken a threat of doing the dishes for a whole month from my mother that had stopped him continuing his routine into school.

My Sunday was slow, just like any other, though I was satisfied. After all, it would beat the day that came next, I was sure. Because tomorrow would be Monday, and I'd be back in the clutches of Kelly Prescott and her minions, the girls who ruled the school. And thanks to my before-mentioned report card, paired with my apparent lack of fashion sense, I was hardly their favourite person.

-x-

As I crossed the quad the next morning, the school was alight with fresh gossip. For one horrific second, I worried that word had got out about my "Scraping the Barrel" stint, and I would be not only the laughing stock of the Hind Leg, but also of my school. I approached some of the larger crowds of people, waiting for the sniggers, but they didn't come. Instead, I saw him.

He was tall – taller than even the six-foot-plus jocks. The fog from the bay meant that he had wrapped a thick, cashmere scarf around his neck – which was an olive colour, to match the rest of his smooth skin – and the dark brown jumper he wore was a similar shade to his hair. I watched in wonder as the light breeze jostled his curls, even the ones that caressed the nape of his neck, and then was over the moon when his delicately sculpted face turned in my direction, and I could lose myself in his deep, chocolate eyes.

I was still swimming as I heard the bell ring; a soft tinkling in the distance that didn't really apply to me anymore. I was too busy admiring this new God, the new reason to rush to school in the early morning.

But then, as the crowds began to shuffle to form the two lines required for assembly, a figure crossed my path. I watched in slow-motion as white, manicured fingers closed over the boy's hands. Kelly Prescott tossed her honeyed curls over her shoulder, before shooting one venomous, victorious look at me. She'd gotten there first. It so figured.

I didn't see any more of the beautiful boy – or of Kelly Prescott, for that matter – until lunchtime. As we were dismissed from third period I headed, as always, towards the music room. The brassy letters "Room 201 – Mr. Petrelli" – were faded now, but I would know them anywhere. This was the place that made every other second of being in this hellhole worthwhile.

"Suze!" I was greeted warmly by Mr. P as I came through the door. He never ventured to the cafeteria at lunch, preferring his own food, though I never saw the giveaway brown bag. "How did it go?" Mr. Petrelli, my own personal sunshine, was the only person besides Cee-Cee, Adam and my mom who I had told about my stint at the Hind Leg club. He had almost been mentoring me – his Obi-Wan to my Luke Skywalker – for the six months it had taken me to reach the top of the waiting list.

I pulled a face as I straddled a plastic chair and took out my lunch. "The actual performance was a bit of a nightmare," I replied, and I watched as Mr. P's expression drooped a little. "But then I got this." I took out Paul's business card, which now had one corner creased thanks to my mom's inept handling, and pressed it into his palm. I was glad to see that he considered it just as I had being doing as soon as I had returned home Saturday night – like it was the Holy Grail.

"An A&R rep?" Mr. Petrelli sounded, as I had hoped, impressed. "Nice work, Simon." He handed it back to me. "But you know, you gotta be careful with these music types." Ugh. Was he in cahoots with my mother? "They're generally all talk and no action."

"Not Paul," I blurted out before I could stop myself. God, was I that infatuated already? I was pathetic. I cleared my throat, trying to backtrack. "I mean, he seemed like a decent guy." Mr. P shrugged and gave me a look that kinda stung. Almost like he didn't trust me.

"You know," he said, and he struck out an arm dramatically. "I got offered a record contract once. A million-dollar deal. I could have been a star." I snorted. "What, you don't believe me?" I shook my head, chewing my sandwich, and he dropped the act. "Well, it was a really good dream." He walked away, back to his desk, and I continued with my lunch, dwelling on everything. Everybody I had spoken to so far about my run-in with Paul had brushed it aside, like having a career in music was the stuff of fairy tales – like it couldn't really happen. They had all been so excited for me and my fifteen minutes of fame at the Open Mic night, but now it had amounted to something, nobody was cheering me on. Even Cee-Cee and Adam, who I had told excitedly during homeroom this morning, had exchanged sceptical glances.

I finished my lunch and stowed my Tupperware back in my bag, before reaching for one of the school's guitars. It felt cold and foreign in my arms, but it was good enough. I could never risk bringing my own instrument to school.

A few strums in, however, and I was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. I looked up in surprise to see the new boy, arm-in-arm with Kelly peering in. I stopped playing immediately. Even Mr. Petrelli rose from his desk, as if in my defence.

"Susie!" Kelly's voice suggested astonishment, but I knew from the look on her face that she had been counting on seeing me here, as if the sight of me bent over a guitar made me an automatic dork to the stranger she was with now. "I was just showing our new student Jesse here some other parts of the school."

"Likely story," I growled under my breath. Jesse's eyebrows lifted in amusement, but apparently Kelly hadn't caught it.

"I volunteered to take care of Jesse," she continued, her sugar-sweet simper beginning to boil my blood. "So you know, don't worry about it or anything." In other words, he's mine, back off. So she'd caught me looking. Well, who could blame me? Up close and personal, Jesse was more attractive than before. I could see now his minor features, like a chalk-white scar that intersected his charcoal eyebrow, and the perfect, curled arc of his eyelashes. His dark eyes flashed dangerously as he spotted me surveying his handsome face. I looked away, blushing.

"We'll be going now," Kelly announced, and the tight hold she had on Jesse's muscular upper arm tightened as she flashed me one last sarcastic smile. "See you around, Susie." She went to pull Jesse out of the music room, but he remained still, his eyes still on me. His midnight stare unnerved me, but the flush I felt creeping up my neck was more comfortable than the sparks that had flew up my back the previous weekend with Paul. I felt more in control – more like myself. With Paul I had been a nervous, giggling fan-girl, hardly capable of words.

"Jesse?" Kelly's voice rose another octave as she tugged his arm again. "Let's go." Her speech this time was more like a question. The usually unmoving self-confidence that reigned supreme over her features had faltered.

"Actually," Jesse said, and the fingers I had wrapped around the neck of the guitar trembled as his low, luxurious voice rumbled through me. His accent, as hinted at by his colouring, was a little Spanish. His English, however, was flawless. "I think I'm going to…" He stopped, and I found my voice catching in my throat as I anticipated his next words. He was going to… what?

But then he glanced around the room – at Mr. Petrelli, at me, at the small assembly of AV geeks who were bickering over a speaker, and then finally at Kelly – and shook his head, as if clearing it of all the fog that had been gathering in his mind. "Never mind," he said, and one corner of his gorgeous mouth turned up in a half-smile. "We still have the rest of the school to see, si?" The poise was back on Kelly's face in a snap second.

"Definitely, amigo," Kelly replied, as she led him out of the room and out of sight. I guess I was still staring at the door – most probably lusting after the perfect Hispanic idol who had very nearly stayed in the room with me, I could feel it. It was only Mr. Petrelli's warm hand on my shoulder that pulled me from my reverie.

"Suze?" he asked, and he followed my stare to the door. "Are you O.K?"

I nodded, wordlessly, and stood up, replacing the guitar on the wall. "Sure," I answered, finally. I reached into my jean pocket and pulled out the business card. "Mr. P, do you have a phone in this room?"

"Yeah. Dial 9 to get outside the school." He surveyed me unsurely. "Why…?"

I shrugged, trying to appear cool. "No reason," I said, the weight of the card ten times heavier in the palm of my hand. I smiled. "I just have to make a call."