Cheer-Streaked: A Westbridge Over-Drama
by The Jessica X

Sabrina & all other characters are © Archie Comics / Hartbreak / Paramount / Whatever. This work of fiction is © myself.

WRITER'S NOTE: Thanks to gillkinkle93, Jodi and valeriethewitch for the reviews; a nod to Ross Wyatt 3rd for the PM, as well. Hopefully my story continues to entertain! And now, on with the shoe. ::puts on shoes::

Chapter 7: Some Freaky Morning

Why yes, it's more than a little icky, thanks, but I woke up holding Sabrina Spellman. Worse than that, I was too shocked to move. Her face was literally right in front of mine; I could see every eyelash, every pore (oh God, the pores!)... her breath was warm on my face. I could feel the rise and fall of her chest on mine, and her back's mirrored movements under my hand. She snored a little, actually - I should've known. Still, now that she was asleep and therefore not whining or sticking her nose into other people's business, I couldn't help but think she was almost... cute.

Right about there's when I started screaming. And when that woke her up, she joined me.

It took a few seconds for us to disentangle ourselves from... ourselves. I backed to the wall, still screaming, and she jumped off my bed backwards, landing on her butt. By the time she caught her breath, my screams had given way to a constant stream of "Oh God oh God oh God..."

"Libby," she panted, jumping up and grabbing my shoulders. "Snap out of it!"

"Oh God oh God oh God-"

She slapped me, just hard enough for me to wake up and slap her back.

"Ow!"

"Serves you right for striking my flawless face," I growled, still a little dazed. I pushed past her and headed for my vanity mirror, clutching the back of my chair and trying not to vomit. "What... what happened last night?"

"Um... I dunno," she confessed, running a hand through her ratty hair and looking around the room. "Hey, where are my shoes?"

"Believe me, in this tasteful room your neon-orange pumps ought to stand out," I spat, straining to keep the idea of this whole ordeal from overpowering me. "One of these things is not like the other or whatever."

She'd become good at ignoring those comments. "The last thing I remember... is talking about Brad Pitt, maybe."

"No," I said, turning; the fog was lifting. "No, we'd moved on from Brad to Keanu. No, wait... we were talking about some guy named Dashiell, I think." I pulled at my poor scalp. "Oh, I don't remember!"

"We must've just passed out," she said, laughing a little with relief. "Wow, that's one way I never thought I'd wake up, eh?"

"Yeah," I said distractedly, and then a fresh wave of nausea hit. "Oh my God, I actually spent the night with Freakerella. Ew, ew, EWWW!"

"The feeling's mutual," she said quickly. "Aha!"

"What?!"

She was standing up with one shoe in hand. "Just have to find the other one... there it is, under that flapper hat of yours."

"Oh yeah..." I laughed automatically. "We actually did the foxtrot, didn't we?" And I realized what I was saying. "What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Libby-"

"Listen, you," I started, whirling on her. "I don't know exactly why I went insane last night, but... but whatever it was, it stays in the past. This room is like Vegas now, okay?"

"Got it," she said with a thin smile. "Nobody can know we had any fun; it's all misery all the time when we're together. I'll just be going now."

"You do that." I sunk into the chair. "I... I need to think."

"Gotcha." And she was out the door, ugly pumps in hand.

God, if you're out there, why did you do this to me? Am I being punished for something? All I did was be hot, brilliant and popular. Are those felonies now? Evidently, the answer was yes, because nothing short of murder or wearing a pancho could earn me a sentence like this: the knowledge that I had slept all snuggled up to that freakwad, a memory I knew I could never erase no matter how many times I banged my head on the table.

I was still banging my head on the table when the door slammed open. "Libby!"

"No!" I said, jumping up. "What part of 'get away from me' do you find hard to understand?! The 'get', or the 'from', or maybe-"

"No, shut up!" She ran into the room, pointing at her tacky watch; her eyes were wider than I'd ever seen them. "It's almost nine!"

"So what?!" I screamed, automatically backing up from her (I never wanted to be within three feet of that girl again!). "Did you miss your morning kibble?"

"If we don't leave right now, we won't have time to go by my house, grab all our crap and still make it to the science fair before they get to our table!"

"Oh hell," I moaned. "Then all this will have been for nothing, and I'll still get the detentions. Why me?!"

"We have to go, like, yesterday," she said, throwing a wad of clothes from my closet at me. "Pick something out of there and meet me downstairs in five minutes; I have to pee like an incontinent racehorse!" And out she went again. As I peeled off yesterday's culottes (damn dress code) and sifted through the rest of my closet, I listened to her stumble around, trying to find the bathroom. It was like being trapped in the 8th level of Hell... or Kmart. This whole thing just made me want to die.

I had it down to two choices when she ran in and asked, "Ready?"

"HELLO," I yelled, covering my underwear-only self, "KNOCK MUCH?!?!"

"Sorry!" She covered her eyes for a minute, then lowered her hand. "Wait a minute, it's not like I don't see this in gym every day, so why are you flipping out?"

"Because I'm not used to people barging in like my room's a morning sale at Macy's," I growled through gritted teeth, turning back to the clothes. "Do you think the judges will like mauve or taupe?"

"Just put the taupe on, it looks like it'll take less time."

"Mauve it is," I muttered, jamming my legs into the pants. "The more sophisticated it looks, the more seriously they'll take us."

"Yeah, well once you've sophisticated yourself, meet me in the car," she ordered, heading for the door. "Remember, I have to change at my house, too."

"Why?" I said through my blouse. "You'll just look as plain as you do now."

"Ha ha. Move it!" And she whipped around the corner.

"My life is twelve varieties of ridiculous," I thought aloud as I grabbed the suit jacket and heels. "But I guess I gotta."

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For something as geeky as this that I shouldn't give two figs about, I was pretty nervous at the fair. We had table 27 - they were circling 10 when we got there. Basically, we had just enough time to hang up our little factoid sheets (the glue wasn't working and we couldn't find any tape, so we finally had to use Juicy Fruit; I let Sabrina handle that part) and spread out our little bottles of perfume-like crap before they got to our row. Amazingly enough, thanks to Sabrina's meticulous planning, it actually looked like we'd been set up for hours instead of minutes.

"Wow, are we lucky; I must've hit every single green light between your house and the school."

"Yeah, uh, that is weird," she admitted, lining up our bags of leftover ingredients. "But whatever, it's a Saturday; lights are more prone to green."

"I guess." I sighed, straightening my blouse. "Do I look okay? Anything in my teeth?"

"You're clear. How about me?"

I scoffed. "How about you? Ow!"

She kicked me in the shin - just a light one, but I still can't believe she kicked me! "Stay with me, here; if I look like a wreck we both look like a wreck!"

"Right, right," I said, looking her over. Well, there's only so much to work with, but the little freak was working it pretty well, actually; nice silk blouse in a lime green, rather dark tan skirt to offset it... her hair was up, almost as intricately as mine. Also, she'd bothered to slap on a little makeup, which never hurts with pores like those. "You look fine, but you should probably buy new stockings; I think I see a budding run."

"Thanks," she said, turning back to look at the judges. "I guess that's the closest I'll ever come to getting a compliment from you."

"Got that right."

While the judges scrutinised the next few tables, Sabrina quizzed me on our stuff; something about eucalyptus and windows. Then, at long last, it was our turn.

"Perfume, huh?" Mr. Kraft said, shaking his head and making a note on his clipboard. "Once upon a time, students all did volcanoes and tornadoes in bottles. I guess this is a herald of that 'new millenium' thing I've been hearing about."

To my surprise, Mrs. Quick was a judge; that at least explains why she was so gung-ho about the whole thing. "Oh, hello there, Sabrina, Libby." She smiled, looking over our table. "So, what do we have here?"

"Well, judges" I began, giving Sabrina a quick glance before looking all the judges in the eye, "we chose to do our project on aromatic oils; we wanted to see which base materials produced the strongest scents."

And so it went; I talked, Sabrina went into her shpiel, they asked questions and wrote things down... it wasn't as complicated as I thought it was gonna be. Mrs. Quick and the other woman judge (didn't know her) seemed to like our project more than Mr. Kraft and Principal Larue did, but... duh. Just for good measure, while the others were reading the fact sheets I gave Mr. Kraft a pathetic "Please vote for us?" face, to which he sighed and looked like he was caught between a rock and a hard place - voting for me, his favourite student, or against Sabrina, our sworn enemy.

"Whew," Sabrina breathed as they moved on to Billy Ziegler's booth on spores or whatever. "Do you feel like you'll ever want to smile that much ever again?"

"Only when I become prom queen." Unable to stand for much longer, I leaned against the table. "What do you think our chances are?"

"Slim to none... I saw at least one robot making eggs benedict on the way in."

"Oh, perfect."

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END Chapter Seven