The thing about winter is that unfortunately, there are those dreary days. You know, the days where the dark clouds loom outside and you pray that the snow is just going to sprinkle from the sky, signaling an early release from school and total and complete freedom. Then you can haul ass home, camp out and do positively nothing due to the fact that there's a snow storm outside. I love lazy days like those. Except, of course, when there's no forecast of snow and my mom screeched at me to get up. My mother's nagging tone is the kind of voice that makes countries go to war and cars to crash. She nagged to me about the importance of my education, like if I don't go to school one single day, I'm going to go and resign myself to having to become a stripper as opposed to like, curing cancer. I honestly won't even try to comprehend the scare tactics that parents use against their kids. I mean, seriously, it's like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. You may you think you're able to but all you're going to be is frustrated after many failed attempts. So, ultimately, you're just going to be like, "Okay, screw this!"

Even if my mother hadn't screeched at me, there were still a few reasons to get up this morning.

The first, of course, was the excruciating test on The Count of Monte Cristo in Miss Kwan's class. Sure, consulting Spark Notes for the test might've not been the smartest idea but there's only so much of that total snooze fest that I can take without wanting to hang myself. Besides, my English grade is hanging in the balance. I realize I'm playing Russian Roulette with my grades but god, what the hell? I know I'm not a total genius. I'm trying to do what I can with what I have. It's frustrating…not measuring up. I hate looking around in the masses of students that trickle in and out of the halls of Degrassi and pinpointing who's smarter than me, who's prettier than me, and so on and so forth. Being a high school student is the single most exhausting career on the planet. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Second, naturally, was Spirit Squad practice. It's a bittersweet moment of the day. Of course, I'm a fabulous addition to the Spirit Squad. I know my routines thoroughly and can do them with my eyes closed. I'm the integral part of a symphony of blue and yellow. I'm the important and whimsical guitar solo of some amazing ballad. See, there are some departments I can't help but be awesome in. Unfortunately, there's a catch to the situation. Paige may know that her squad would be a train wreck without yours truly but it's not like the girl's ever going to acknowledge it. She is the only planet in her universe with Hazel orbiting around her like a lone moon that does as its told. Rotate, rotate, revolve around the planet. Rinse and repeat. But still, I await the day where when Paige graduates and hands down the reins to me, myself, and I. I can just visualize the whole thing in my head. It's Paige's last Spirit Squad before graduating and bidding us all farewell. She sighs, reluctantly. Then, she says how it was "such a totally hard decision" and says that I'm the new Spirit Squad captain. People rejoice. There's celebration out in the streets. Manny Santos has come to save the masses from a long and tyrannous rein. And then all of the ass kissing, bullshit, and everything else between myself and Paige Michalchuk finally has some meaning.

The third part had become the pinnacle of my day for the past two weeks is basically a period of three seconds between third and fourth period. Normally, it'd be the time of day where Emma and I would idly chit chat while going from English to Lunch to meet the rest of the gang. Sure, there was a hiatus for a while when Emma decided that she wanted to have some sort of body snatching experience and go be Paige's best friend. We may have known each other for eons and eons but I'm not going to go and publish some manual about the inner workings of Emma Nelson's mind. I don't think so. But since then, we've reunited and it feels…good. Sometimes, it feels so weird that after everything, Emma and I are still friends. But I guess there are some things that are just reliable. My friendship with Emma is like turning on the evening news. Sure, you may not want to watch it but you know that it's always going to be on at six o'clock on the dot. …Not that I watch the news but you catch my drift.

After handing my test into Miss Kwan and picturing the horrible red "F" on it in bright red shiny ink, Emma and I meet up in the mob scene of a hallway.

"So, I think that Alexandre Dumas is going to come back from the dead and congratulate me for getting a wonderfully amazing grade on that test," Emma beams as we walk, side by side towards the stairwell. "How do you think you did?"

I imagine Miss Kwan sighing and placing the test on my desk. I imagine the big red "F" just staring me down and taunting me. I imagine her telling me that I'm going to have to get it signed by my parents and the yelling and the screaming. All of those thoughts and fears make me sick to my stomach. God.

"Oh, fine," I smile, half heartedly. The words "Fine" and what I presume my fate is going to be have one single thing in common: the letter "F".

It's then that the three seconds that are so worth coming to school for walks into my line of vision. Of course, he's attached to my former whatever it is that we were as they chat about guy stuff, whatever that might be. At this point, Emma's going on about the Whack Your Brain team and how Rick Murray transferring to Lakehurst is going to detrimentally affect the outcome of the competition that's coming up soon. It's easy to tune out Emma's drabble as everything around me totally and completely blurs around me. It's like one of those moments in those cheesy teen movies that I love where the object of the main character's affection is the center of focus and just glides on screen while majestic music plays.

"Manny, hey," Jimmy Brooks greets me, with Spinner at his side. His smile is one that can cure cancer, stop wars, and repair poverty inflicted countries. There's just something about Jimmy Brooks that makes it so that he like, enters all of my thoughts. When I'm in Math, listening to Mr. Armstrong drone on and on about how to prove that a triangle is really a triangle, I think about how Jimmy Brooks is in Media Immersion and how he's goofing around with Spinner.

Not that I stalk Jimmy Brooks. I mean, hello, I am so not Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. My five second fling with Spinner just provided me with information that's now convenient.

"Hey, you," I chirp, happily. Spinner gives Emma and I the obligatory guy nod. I mean, thank god that Spinner didn't open his mouth. Interacting with him just makes it so that all I can see in my head is how our relationship slash fling slash whatever it'd be construed as fell on its ass. And of course, days after that, Paige and him were sitting in the cafeteria, bathing each other in pet names and intertwined fingers.

And with that, the three seconds have ended as Jimmy and Spinner walk past us towards their lockers. Meanwhile, I'm standing there, knowing that those three seconds don't impact Jimmy Brooks the way that they impact me. I know, who would've thought? You never can look at a person and think that during some point in time, you're going to just sit there and think about them ad nauseum. I never thought that thinking about Jimmy Brooks would make my stomach perform a gymnastics routine and for the trademark blush, the tale tell signs of a major crush, to spread across my face.

Not that I have some humongous crush on Jimmy Brooks. He's cute, he's sweet. But crush? Yeah. No. …Okay, maybe a little bit.

"Okay, did I miss the memo that you and Jimmy Brooks are all of a sudden best friends," Emma interrogates me as we descend down the stairs.

I shrug. Lying has always been my forte. "C'mon, Em, I say hi to a lot of people. Jimmy's…cool." Cool? Seriously, Santos? Out of all of the adjectives of the English language, you pick "cool"? God, no wonder why my English grade is taking a good old fashioned nose dive.

"I just find it a little bit odd that you and Jimmy are all…buddy buddy when your ex-boyfriends are two of his best friends," Emma replies. There's this horribly annoying thing about Emma Nelson. When she says things like that, she tries her best to not be, well, a condescending bitch. That's my best friend, ladies and gentlemen. Always the ones with the opinions, always the knowledgeable one. Her thoughts on everything can be complied into a library, complete with an organizational system. It's a bonafide wonder that her and Paige didn't continue to be the best of friends, they both have that whole blonde Type A personality thing down pat.

I sigh. I hate this constant weight on my shoulder, the fact that I always feel the need to justify myself. It's just not to Emma, it's practically to everyone around me. Everyone wants an explanation. Of course, they want the explanation that they want to hear. I'm one person.

"Jimmy and I sort of ran into each other at Spinner's party and got to talking," I explain, finally succumbing to how things work in the Emma Nelson empire. "He's a nice guy. That's all."

For once, Emma decides to give up as she decides to change the subject to mindless chatter about whether or not she should sign up for the school play. Once again, I'm back to being cast as Emma's sidekick. Sometimes, I miss the days where everyone knew me for me, even if I did have to wear miniscule clothing and offer up my dignity on a silver platter. Fame comes as a huge price. People sacrifice themselves just so they can have their fifteen minutes of fame. Is it ever really worth it? Sure, people still liked to chatter about me and sometimes, it'd get silent in the girls' washroom when I walked in. But I'm nothing more than a fading star nowadays. It's almost insulting. At least last year, people couldn't get enough of babbling about every rumor that people pulled out of thin air. Now, it's like I might as well not exist. Talk about a blow to your ego.

Lunch and the rest of the day slide by carelessly. My lunch period is spent with the gang that consists of myself, Emma, Liberty, JT, Toby, and Darcy. Liberty and JT engage themselves in playful flirtatious banter and it's obvious that Liberty has yet to get off her ass and finally confess her feelings for JT. Emma babbles about how she's loading up on extracurricular activities so that her university application looks good. Please, Emma's would look positively flawless. Toby chimes in about Whack Your Brain and Darcy and I spend most of the period talking incessantly about the most recent episode of One Tree Hill. And typical to the routine of lunch, Shelia's tasty cafeteria findings travel from my mouth to my stomach and to the toilet of the girls' washroom. Classes pass with what I wished would be lightning speed. It's all a big fat blur of pretending to squeak by and appease everyone. That's my life, just pleasing people. I know it's totally selfish but can't I just do things that appease me? No, that would be selfish and that would be like having a murder rap on my record.

Being in school after the last bell has rang is kind of like, a surreal world. Even if you're there for sports, clubs, or god forbid, detention, it's this whole different planet. You can walk down the halls without being swallowed up by the constant stream of people walking down them. It's nice. It's refreshing. Unless, of course, you're stuck in the gymnasium and are under the rule of an evil dictator blonde by the name of Paige Michalchuk. Of course, I'm a crucial member of the squad but it's not like Paige is ever going to hand out the praise that I seriously deserve.

"Five, six, seven, eight!"

Paige commands us as we move as a unit, like an army going into battle. Our routine is carefully choreographed and perfectly timed to the mash up that she informed us Ashley Kerwin made on her computer. You had to hand it to Paige, her anal retentive tendencies did sometimes have a positive outcome. We're flawless. We're well engineered, a well oiled machine that won't ever need any repairs. Add in a blur of blue and yellow and we're something straight out of a perfectly synchronized routine in Bring It On. Darcy's on the right of me, trying so hard to keep up with the intricate routine that Paige concocted. I know the look that Darcy has on her face when she looks at me. It's pretty similar to the look that I used to look at Paige. I idealized her because well, I thought that Paige was the queen of positively everything. Paige knew everything where I, on the other hand, knew nothing and more nothing. Paige was sassy and knowledgeable.

We're nothing short of fabulous. Our movements are like visual poetry. Not, of course, that scat free form poetry or whatever it's called. I wouldn't know. It was liquid poetry, the kind that anyone could appreciate without having a degree in English. Not to mention, we looked hot. I don't know what it is with guys and cheerleaders. Maybe it's because we're always agile and in short skirts. Guys are simple creatures, really. Young, old. Nice guy, jackass. Every guy wants a girl who shakes pom poms and struts her stuff like nobody's business.

"Okay, okay, okay," Paige stops us all while waving her hands around, all frantically. "Heather, you're about as useful as Sully at a Friendship Club meeting right now. Everyone else, are you all on downers or something? This isn't working for me." She groans. "Let's just all take ten and then somehow manage to actually do a simple little routine effortlessly, okay?" Of course, Paige's standards aren't up to those people who are living in the real world. It's just how she operates. She sets the bar so high and puts herself up on such a huge pedestal so that no one can reach her and she just keeps climbing higher and higher so she can reach that bar. On one hand, I have to admire that. On another, sometimes I just want to see her fall. That's horrible, right?

The army of cheerleaders disperses into different directions. Darcy and I are about a good five feet away from Paige and Hazel, catching our breath and bathing in the luxury of this ten minute break. Unfortunately, given how far away we are from Paige, it's not enough of a distance for us to start bitching and ranting about how Paige is like some sort of dictator that Mr. Perino goes on and on about in History class.

"So, you will never believe who asked me for my number today," Hazel chimes with a mixture of smugness and glee to her voice as she turns to Paige.

"Hazel, no need for the suspense. Just spit it out."

"That guy, Mohammed, who's from the wrestling team. I mean, I know he's a total jerk and all but he's just so hot," Hazel says dreamily. Obviously, Hazel is over Jimmy and then some. What an idiot.

Paige snorts, "Hazel, honey, how do I put this nicely?" She pauses. "I hear that Mohammed and Sully get bored and sniff glue together in Sully's mom's basement on the weekends. Talk about disgusting."

"You also heard that Heather Sinclaire got her car by prostituting herself at the ravine," Hazel remarks.

"I have my sources."

Darcy and I just lean against the gym wall, letting the chatter that belongs to both Paige and Hazel just engross us. Hazel yammers on and on about how Mohammed would be the first date she'd been on since Jimmy, if she decided to accept that date with him. I sigh, looking at my nails and giving Darcy a look. Unfortunately, Darcy's still earning her degree in Degrassi Hierarchy 101 so it's not as though she has a clue about…remotely anything that they're talking about right now.

"You know what you need," Paige chimes as I can just tell the gears are turning in the thought factory that is Paige's brain. For a moment, I feel mildly afraid for Hazel. It's a fleeting moment that's gone in like, a nano second. "A totally wonderful girls' night. We can go out, get you a real man that doesn't hot box it with Sully in his car during lunch. What do you say?" It's then that Paige turns around and notices myself and Darcy, casually chilling on the sidelines. "Well, Manny Santos. You're invited."

"To what?" Playing the oblivious 'I haven't been listening to this conversation' card is something I do oh so well.

"Duh, girls' night with me and Hazel here," Paige replies, as if it's the most obvious thing on the planet. "Hazel needs a man and I'm sure you're better at scoping out guys these days than I am. I mean, I guess this is one of those departments where having a hot and amazing boyfriend doesn't come in handy." I bite my lip as I look at Paige, her face having an obnoxious little grin drawn onto it. I want to break her teeth. This is so typical Paige.

Two can play this game though. "Oh, you know I'm in," I chime, trying to hide the sting I feel from the mention of Spinner. "Besides, with my luck, I'll find Hazel a boyfriend who's so much hotter than Spinner Mason." Paige rolls her eyes while Hazel grins and starts saying about how much fun we're going to have before they ultimately walk away, chattering. What the hell did I just get myself into?

"Hello, am I like, invisible," Darcy whines, slightly while looking from the dynamic duo to myself.

I look at her, sympathetically, "To them…yes." While scanning the spacious gymnasium, there's a certain sight that catches my eye. "But give me a second, Darce. There's something I need to go do." I pat her on the shoulder, smile sweetly, and then trot off towards the opposite side of the gym where there's the sound of a familiar voice just chatting away.

"Get this, Oscar, my mom made me watch Desperate Housewives with her last weekend," JT chats away, cradling his mascot head in his arms, engrossed in the sound of his own voice. JT knows how to get practically anyone to listen to him. "And I don't know, at first, I hated it. Then, I liked it. Then I fell asleep and had this weird crossover dream where it was Scream meets Desperate Housewives and Nicolette Sheridan was trying to stab me because she was Ghostface… Freaky, huh?" He shudders.

Before Oscar gets a chance to say anything, I pat JT on the shoulder. "JT, buddy, pal," I greet him, complete with a sticky sweet tone of voice and a smile to match, as if they were made for each other, like a set of matched and cozy pajamas. "Wanna do me a favor?"

He furrows his eyebrow in total confusion. "Um, if it involves a possibility of jail time and life without parole, I'm gonna have to pass…"

I sigh. I've always been one for meddling. It's just this little habit I have. I guess it's because sadly, my own romantic life seems to be this grand disaster yet in a twist of irony, I'm wonderful when it comes to handling everyone else's. God knows how. "No, it just involves you getting up off your ass and doing something you should've done a long time ago," I inform him.

"You're starting to sound like my mother before she tells me to clean my room," JT remarks, skeptically. "I'm officially terrified."

God, JT frustrates me sometimes. "Stop being such a total wuss and go and ask Liberty out already!" It's seriously starting to torture me, having to watch JT and Liberty be totally oblivious to the fact that they like each other and then none of them does anything about it. I mean, they've made some pretty convincing arguments as to why they haven't made a move. I get it, the risk of potentially running over their friendship with a mack truck is really huge. However, isn't it just worth the risk? It's almost beautiful, how they feel about each other and how after all of this time, they could just get together and…love each other unconditionally. But love's tricky. It's scary. It's like a beautiful piece of artwork one day and the next, you're grasping at nothing and wondering what the hell went wrong. It's beautiful but it's also stomach turning and earth shattering at the same time.

"Well, you're one for getting straight to the point," JT thinks he just cleverly avoided what I said.

"JT," I start off, attempting to figure out how not to just wring his neck. "You like Liberty. Liberty likes you. One of you has got to make a move some time this century," I continue on, wringing my hands and not knowing how the hell to do this without putting my feet up both JT and Liberty's asses. "Just…Liberty went on and on at our sleepover about how much she likes you---"

"Wait, what?"

"You heard me. So, seriously just…do it. Please? Or I may have to kick your ass if you don't. One of you has got to just…make a move," I insist, almost desperately. "Please? You know you want to. Once you do, you get to make out with Liberty all you want. Is that not incentive enough?"

"You sure do know how to motivate a man, Miss Santos," JT replies, almost shyly while still cradling his mascot hand. "Fine, fine--" Something obviously distracts him. What could possibly be more important than his impending romance with Liberty becoming official? "Uh oh, take cover. It's a jock stampede. Heaven help us all."

It's then that rushing from the corner of the gym that houses the boys' locker room, everyone swivels in the direction of Degrassi's basketball team running laps, as forced by Coach Armstrong, around the roomy gymnasium. I glance to where Hazel and Paige ran off to, Hazel burying her gaze she had in Jimmy's direction into the floor. I shake my head at her, rolling my eyes and glancing back towards JT. It's then that twice this day, I see that smile in my direction.

"Yorke, man, what's up? Manny, hey."

I return the smile, realizing that my smile doesn't do to Jimmy Brooks what his does to me. I'm sure that Jimmy doesn't get that feeling in the pit of his stomach, the good kind of nervous flip flopping and the good kind of blushing. But it's all gone within five seconds after Jimmy whizzed by me, JT, and Oscar. Yet I'm still standing, staring like an idiot.

JT looks almost amused. "Oh Jimmy Brooks, I love you," He mocks in a high pitched squeaky voice. "I can't even talk to you because I just love you soooo much. You light up my world." He shakes his head. "You really do like your men to be in a band, don't you?" A dramatic sigh comes out of his mouth. "So that's why we didn't work out. I'm just not Downtown Sasquatch enough for you. I'm okay with that."

I scoff, "Zip it, Future Mr. Liberty Van Zandt." I give his shoulder a shove and trot back to where Darcy's standing.