Part Six

Leaves crunched under Craig's feet as he walked to the school. It was earlier than he would normally leave but for some reason he felt well rested and decided to go to school a little early. He arrived at the school and went into the cafeteria to buy a breakfast burrito and saw that Jimmy and Andrea were already there and seated. After making a few lunch lady jokes at Spinner who stood behind the counter serving food with a stupid hair net over his blondish head, he sat down with them. Andrea was smiley as usual, scrolling through pop songs on her Ipod.

"How can you listen to that crap?" Jimmy said laughing at Andrea as she selected the new Justin Timberlake song.

"It's a good song!" She said in defense, putting one of her ear buds into his ear. Jimmy looked pained as she turned up the volume. Craig just shook his head and took a bite of the burrito. "Me and Alicia were dancing to it in my living room before."

"She listens to that stuff?" Craig said with a mouthful of food.

"Not usually. She likes things that she can dance to though." Andrea said, switching the song. She could never keep one song on for too long, a trait which Alicia had inherited from years of friendship with Andrea. Craig smiled, So she dances, he thought. "We did school talent shows together in elementary school. She sang some stupid Aaron Carter song while a bunch of us danced in the background." Andrea said with a laugh, remembering good times. Craig stood up and left the table, walking to the computer room where Ashley was editing some music.

"Hey you." She said to him smiling, her short jet black hair spiked up as usual.

"Hey Ash." He said standing behind her and leaning over to see the screen.

"What are you working on?" He asked her, watching the sound bars go up and down.

"What, it doesn't sound familiar?" She said with a smirk, turning the volume. Craig heard his own voice and guitar coming from the speakers and stared at Ashley.

"Wow, that sounds really good." He said in shock, suprised that she did such a good job.

"Well I had nothing else to do. Hey...do you want to go out sometime? I mean...I miss you." Ashley said, looking him in the eyes. Something inside him felt like soaring upward but then it collided with the image of Alicia that had been burned into his brain recently. The sudden collision of goth and gorgeous almost made him choke. With his voice coming out hoarse, he managed to say,

"I actually can't do that. I'll get back to you though." Craig responded grabbing his bag and walking away so that he wouldn't have to be in the room with Ashley anymore. Him and Ashley had broken up recently and Craig wasn't sure he wanted to go back down that road, and Alicia seemed so amazing. A smile came to his face when he remembered that he would be meeting her later at Billy's. The rest of the day went by relatively quickly for Craig, and meeting Alicia was like fuel to his over-exhausted brain. He ate lunch that day with Marco and discussed his band, and decided to have a practice the coming weekend.

After school he went back into the computer lab and checked for Ashley. When he was sure she wasn't around he sat down adn began to write a song. he had some time to kill and he needed to keep himself busy. It wasn't long before Craig found himself lost in the music once again. The lyrics flowed through him as easily as the blood through his veins and he smiled as his fingers flew across the keyboard at what seemed like lightning speed. A giggling Emma and Manny shocked him back to his senses.

"You might want to wipe the drool of of your chin before you get electrocuted." Emma said laughing, and sitting down at a computer to work on whatever activist paper she was working on at that particular moment. Manny just stared at Craig and smiled, Craig eyed Manny seeing a pink lace thong showing over the top of come low rise jeans and shook his head focusing on the screen.

"It's okay to look." She said, smiling at him. He just turned bright red and stared at the screen so hard that he could see the individual color bars that made up the display. All he could think to himself was "three more hours...three more hours..."