Alright, I know I said I would post chapters 9 and 10 at the same time, but I decided to go ahead and post this one, since it's been done for about a week. I'll warn you, there's a huge cliffhanger at the end of this chapter, but that's all I'm saying. Enjoy. Luv, Giz.

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Chpt. 9: The Bad Week

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"Sometimes you're the windshield; sometimes you're the bug." -Mark Knopfler

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"We got cloudy skies over Gotham City today, folks, with a 50 chance of rain later into the afternoon, and highs in the mid to high 60s, a bit warm for October. Now here's 'Holes in the Floor of Heaven' by Colin Raye..."

Mid to high 60s my foot, Rob thought to himself as he pulled the comforter back over his head and let out a groan. It was colder than 60. Maybe it was even around 40 inside the dorm room. Whatever it was, Rob couldn't stop shaking. Or shivering. Whatever it was called. He just wanted to sleep.

"Dude, it's hot," Rob heard Gar say from across the small room.

"Could it be any hotter?" Vick added with a moan.

Rob wanted to say, "How can you say it's hot? It's freezing," but when he tried to speak, his throat was too hoarse, and nothing but a croak came out.

In an attempt to tell his friends of his problem, Rob decided that the only way was to croak until he got the attention of either Gar or Vick. He had been croaking for about five minutes before Vick looked over.

"Hey man, it's time to get up. Didn't you hear your alarm?"

Rob croaked some more.

"Gar, I think something's wrong with him."

More croaking.

"Is he sick?" That was Gar. In a final attempt, Rob threw the covers off and resorted to talking.

"I'm sick!" Rob tried to say, but it came out of more as, "Ib dick!" due to a stuffed up nose.

"Yes, that did indeed used to be your name," said Vick with a laugh, referring to a time in the past when Rob had been called "Dick". It was a dark time. However, his name had been changed in the fifth grade for obvious reasons.

"Maybe you'd better stay in today," said Gar. In response, Rob nodded and croaked some more. This was going to be a long day.

"Where's Rob?" asked Terra a few minutes later as she chewed noisily on a pack of 100 Calorie Chips Ahoy Thin Crisps (a fitting breakfast in her eyes).

"Sick," answered Gar, catching Kori's ears.

"Will he be okay?" she asked, more than just a hint of concern in her voice.

"No doubt," answered Vick as quickly as possible. "Just a sore throat, it sounded like." He put a tray down on the table, piled high with what seemed to be everything from eggs to toast to yogurt to things that weren't even supposed to be eaten from breakfast. The others were sure they felt the table quiver under the meal's weight.

Kori seemed to be a little more relieved after that news, and proceeded to turn to Terra. "How did studying for your Geometry test go?" Terra had been up until 1:00 studying for a Geometry test that they had today. Raven, as usual, had studied until 9:30 and spent the next hour and a half checking and double checking her World History homework. Terra hadn't done the homework at all; she'd been too busy studying.

"Uhhh… good…" Terra lied. She had spent basically the entire time going over the area of cylinders, but still hadn't grasped the concept, which was no big surprise. Terra had always been a bit slow with numbers.

"That's was just my thought," said Raven, sarcastically, placing her tray down on the table in between Gar and Terra.

"Why does he have to give us a test on Monday anyways?" Terra asked, crinkling the Chips Ahoy bag in her fist.

"What happened to your hair?" Vick asked Terra, his mouth full of half-chewed scrambled eggs.

Kori had made a futile attempt to curl Terra's straight, blonde hair this morning. However, as always, it had failed, and Terra turned out looking more like a victim of a maniacal hairdresser rather than a poor teenaged girl in search of a trendy, new coiffure. Instead of cute ringlets, Terra's hair had formed into some sort of bizarre triangular blob, straight at the top, and wavy at the bottom. To try and fix the problem, Terra had pulled her hair back into a bun. However, this did not prevent the poofy-ness, and several pieces of unruly hair were still loose around Terra's face.

"Happy Birthday," Raven said to Gar and, much to the surprise of her tablemates, kissed him on the cheek. Gar had arrived back at school the night before after spending the past three days with Hannah in celebration of his fifteenth birthday, which had been on Friday.

"Do you have your permit yet?" Kori wanted to know, and was delighted when Gar pulled from his pocket the laminated card.

"I look like a monkey," he declared as Kori studied the picture.

"I think you look more like a sloth," Vick said, leaning over to see it.

"No, he doesn't," Kori protested. "I think he looks more like… hmm… Chad Michael Murray."

"Ewww," commented Raven, wrinkling her nose. "But in a sick way, you're right." Raven turned to Terra for a possible response, but the blonde had become immersed in her Geometry again (From the looks of it, at least. To occurred to Raven that she could be actually thinking of anything.).

Then, the bell rang, with all of its usual blaring pandemonium, and students throughout the cafeteria began to get to their feet.

"Good luck with your test," Kori called to Terra, who grunted something in return before stomping off to the trashcans.

"Oh, I feel terrible about her hair," Kori informed Raven as the latter collected her trash from the table.

"It's not that bad," Raven lied quickly, and Kori's face brightened a little.

"Really?"

"Yeah," said Raven. "I think it looks sort of like Marilyn Monroe, only longer and a little less curly."

"You've got to be kidding," Vick muttered as Kori dashed off. "Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn Manson, maybe, but-" There was a sudden thud. Vick winced, and Raven watched as something resembling a muffin slide down the back of his head and drop to the floor.

"Dude, there's, like, butter on your head," commented Gar, who was just getting up from his seat, a tray in hand.

"Why do I feel like this week is going to totally suck?" Vick asked, examining the margarine on his hand with disgust.

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Raven and Gar arrived at their first period English class three minutes after the late bell had rung, due to their attempts to track down the muffin-thrower. The hallway was eerily empty as Gar turned the knob.

"Mr. Logan," the teacher, Ms. Anstett, said sharply when the two entered the room. "Late again, I see. I'm sorry, but I'll have to give you detention this afternoon." In disbelief, Gar glanced behind him; Raven had made it safely to her seat, and was now proceeding to remove her notebook from her backpack.

"Sorry," she mouthed soundlessly at her boyfriend as he came to take his spot beside her. On Raven's other side, Terra still had her head in her Geometry binder; whether or not she was comprehending what she was looking at, Raven couldn't tell.

"Gar," Ms. Anstett said from behind her desk. "Will you help me and pass out these papers?" Gar reluctantly rose from his seat and took the stack of papers on the desk; they were last week's quizzes, the ones on poetic terms and literary devices, and Gar's was on top.

"I got a 35?" he hissed when he was out of earshot of the teacher, and a few people in the front row giggled.

Raven looked up when Gar slapped a paper down in front of her. It read "100" in cheery, red letters, and when he shuffled through the papers to find Terra's, even her's was an "85", though she didn't even look up from her studying for a moment to assess her grade.

"Today's not my day," he growled when he was done passing out papers. Nearly everyone in the class besides him had scored in the 80-100 range, making his grade not even look like a number anymore.

"Chin up," Raven said with a faint smile, letting her eyes wander across her desk and onto the floor to her left. There was something on the floor. Something grey-ish green…

"Hey, look!" Gar turned his head to face Raven upon hearing her voice.

"I found $5.00!"

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It started raining right at the end of second period, just at the time that Kori would have normally met Rob next to the door that opened towards the walkway to the Fine Arts Complex. However, to the Rob's dreadfully untimely illness, Kori was sadly subjected to walking by herself.

She moved down the hallway with the flow of students, shuffling her emerald green Old Navy flip flops through the water and mud tracked in from outside, and pushed open the door that led back outside, towards her study hall. The rain was getting harder, and dangerous mud puddles lurked on either side of the uncovered walkway.

Kori had always had the tendency to get lost in thought while doing even the most simple of things, like, for example, walking down a walkway. As people passed, hurrying to get out of the rain, and Kori neared the building, she fell into a sort of stream of consciousness, and her thoughts trailed off.

Why did it have to rain today?

Why does it rain at all?

Why doesn't it rain, like, Hi-C, or something?

Yeah, that would be cool.

Only it would stain our clothes.

I wonder if Terra got that grease stain out of her skirt…

She should really learn some housekeeping.

I wish I were a Merry Maid, like on that commercial with all the women running around, vacuuming all cheerfully and everything.

I bet they get paid good.

Splash!

Kori had just plunged her right foot into a pit-like mud-puddle, and her leg was plastered with mud all the way up to her mid-calf. Perfect.

"Why are you barefoot?" Vick asked three minutes later when Kori tiptoed into study hall, her flip flops in hand. They had turned a shade of puke green, from the combination of the green foam and the mud that Kori couldn't get off with just a paper towel.

"I zoned out and stepped in some mud," Kori explained, "and now my shoes are squeaking every time I walk."

"So you took them off?" finished Vick as Kori sat down in the empty desk behind him.

"Yep." Kori answered. She was trying to think of what size shoe all of her female friends wore at the moment; Raven wore a size six (too small), Bee wore a size nine (too big), and Terra… Terra wore a size eight, too, didn't she?

Just right. All of Kori's other shoes were either flips flops or shoes that she wouldn't want to mess up by stepping in another puddle, but she was sure that Terra, who was infamous for not caring about anything having to do with clothes, would probably be able to lend her a pair of tennis shoes, or something.

The opportunity came a class period later in Health. Kori had decided to put back on the flip flops just to walk to her classes, but was in no way enjoying the farting noises her feet were making with every step she took. Someone with a more slapstick, bathroom approach to comedy would find it amusing; Kori thought the noise was disgusting.

"Terra, can I borrow some shoes during lunch?" asked Kori moments after Terra and Raven traipsed into the classroom, Raven laughing about how Terra had apparently run into a closed door in a futile attempt to catch it before it closed. Terra's hair had lost a bit of its puffiness, and was now sort of limp and lifeless, while still frizzing out of her ponytail elastic in all directions.

"Sure," Terra answered. "Which ones do you want?" She took her seat by the open window and wiped some rain from outside off of her desk.

"Any shoes are fine, really," Kori said quickly. She glanced at Terra's feet; the blonde had gone with a pair of durable running shoes today, thankfully canceling those out for Kori.

"Okay," Terra said absently, turning in her seat to face the front just as Coach Durbin entered the room.

"Get out you're homework," the woman said, and there was a shuffling of notebooks and paper as the students rushed to search for the homework in question; with her beast-like, muscular legs and the Nike symbol tattoo on her ankle, Rebecca Durbin was not a force to be reckoned with.

"I found it!" yelped Terra, pulling a crumpled worksheet from unseen depths of her backpack. She slapped the paper triumphantly on her desk and began searching in her purse for a pen. Unfortunately for Terra, her elbow happened to bump up against the worksheet, pushing it towards the edge of the desk. On the same note, the window was regrettably still open, and when the paper reached the end of the desktop, it fluttered not to the floor but right out the window and into the rain, where it began a spiraling decent to the ground below. When Terra looked up from her purse, newly found pen in hand, her eyebrows shot up and her jaw dropped.

"Oh, shoot," she said, only she didn't exactly say "shoot". Instead, she said something that caused Kori and Raven's heads to turn just fast enough to see Terra's homework freefalling out of sight.

"Coach Durbin?" called Terra, shooting her hand up in the air. "My homework is, uhh… in my locker. Can I go get it?" She bit her lip in anticipation.

"No," Coach Durbin said simply, and carried on with taking up homework. Terra's eye twitched with annoyance.

"Typical," she reasoned, sinking down into her seat. Raven had to feel sympathetic towards her friend, so she herself put her hand up in the air.

"Coach Durbin, can I get mine out of my locker?" Raven smiled graciously and sat up tall in her seat.

"Come right back," Coach Durbin responded, and Terra's jaw went slack.

"But you have yours!" she hissed, but Raven didn't say anything. A minute later, Kori and Terra watched out the window as Raven picked Terra's worksheet up off the wet grass and shook off some of the pooling rainwater before heading back to the building.

"Dumb luck," said Terra, still sulking.

"What do you mean?" Kori wanted to know. She was occupied with poking her flip flop and making water seep out of it.

"Rae's the only one of us who hasn't walked into a wall or gotten pelted with a muffin," said Terra, who had been told the muffin story by Raven, "or woken up with the flu of dropped her homework out of a second-story window or stepped in mud."

Kori considered this as Terra continued to wallow in self-pity. "Gar hasn't done anything like that," she mused a moment later, and Terra hummed in semi-agreement.

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Well, they were wrong. About Gar, that is. According to Dash, who had a study hall with Gar fourth period, Gar had gone to the bathroom during class and walked right into the women's' restroom without thought. Thankfully, there hadn't been any girls in there when he entered, and he nearly-immediately saw the "Tampons are to be disposed of, not thrown or stuffed down sink as a joke" sign. He left as quietly as he had come in, but was pretty sure that a couple of teachers saw him leave.

"How did you do on your Geometry test?" Vick asked Terra once they had all finished hooting with laughter.

"Not so hot," Terra replied the best to her ability, as her mouth was stuffed full of chicken fingers and honey mustard. "I totally forgot, like, half of the stuff on there, and I ended up leaving a lot blank."

"She started hyperventilating," Raven recounted. "We all thought she was going to pass out, and Mrs. Casper was seriously about to go get a paper sack from the art room."

"The whole class started going, 'Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out'," said Gar. "It was priceless!"

"I think I might have gotten by with a nice, clean 60, though," Terra said to Vick.

"Terra, you left half of it blank," Gar argued. "That's a 50, at highest, assuming that you got everything else right." Terra's face fell.

"Oh," she said, and took another bite of chicken.

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The rest of the day went similarly: Kori ended up wearing Terra's heart-patterned high tops and got made fun of by three different people whom she didn't know; Gar failed another quiz and, while in detention, got written up for chewing gum; Terra tripped going down some stairs and ended up tumbling down the rest, landing at the feet of Randy Godfrey, a really hot senior guy twice her size who probably ended up getting a good look up Terra's skirt; Vick got hit in the head with some Old Spice deodorant while walking to his dorm room after seventh period; Rob was still sick in bed; Raven found $7.00 on a bathroom floor and got extra credit on a Biology pop quiz for knowing who the leading actor in George of the Jungle was (It was Brendan Fraser, though no one could figure out why Mrs. Gammel was asking this).

It was 9:07 PM when Terra, Raven, and Kori were finished with their homework, and they were now seated on their dorm room floor, playing, of all things, Clue (Kori's idea).

"I wonder who threw that rock at dinner tonight?" said Terra, moving her "Miss White" piece into the Conservatory.

"I don't know," answered Raven. "Terra, make your accusation-thing."

"Oh." Terra took a moment to think. "Was it Mr. Green, in the Conservatory, with the… the… with the wrench?"

"Vick sure has been getting hit with a lot of things," Kori commented as Raven held up her "wrench" card to prove Terra wrong.

"It's not just - Rae, it's you're turn - him," Terra noted, rubbing her butt where she'd tumbled down the stairs. There would be a nasty bruise there in the morning.

"Yeah," said Raven, moving Colonel Mustard (comically chosen due to the fact that he clashed with her hair so badly) twelve spaces and into the Study, one of two rooms not marked off, and the only information needed for her to win.

"What do you mean, 'Yeah'?" Terra retorted. "Not a single bad thing has happened to you all day!"

"You even found $12.00!" added Kori.

"Maya flicked me off leaving dinner tonight," Raven suggested, but was answered with a snort from Terra's direction.

"She does that all the time," the blonde said, waving off Raven's words.

"Well…" Raven couldn't think of a good way to win this argument. "Was it Ms. Scarlet in the Study with the revolver?" she finally said. Kori held up the "Study" card in reply, and Raven marked it off on her checklist sheet.

"You know, Ms. Scarlet kind of reminds me of Maya," Terra said to no one in particular. "I mean, she had the same hair and skin, and I bet she has the same size boobs." Kori and Raven hummed in response.

"I have an accusation to make," Raven said finally, putting her checklist and cards face-down beside her on the floor. "It was Ms. Scarlet, with the revolver, in the Hall." Kori dutifully took the small envelope from the middle of the board and pulled out three cards: Ms. Scarlet, the Hall, and the revolver.

"And Raven wins," muttered Terra.

"I know I'm amazing," Raven joked. She fell dramatically back onto the carpeted floor, and her violet hair fanned out around her face like a halo.

"Seriously," Terra continued. "You've had perfect luck all day! It has to end sometime, right Kori?" The redhead was busy putting up the board game, however, and only responded with a nod.

"Just watch," Terra said with a teasing smile. "This whole week'll go by, and the rest of us will be all battered and tired, and you'll be a millionaire from all the cash you find on the bathroom floor and everything. And then, Friday night while you're asleep, a sniper's gonna pop in our window and shoot you."

It was meant as a joke, and that's how Raven took it, but she couldn't help but think about the prediction in a new light a while later while she was searching for some chapstick in her purse and came across Maya's note.

I will get you, it read, and Raven felt her blood get a little colder. She had laughed then. Granted, that was before the confrontation on the staircase the other week. Could Maya have been serious?

Raven tried to wave it off, but she was still thinking about it after midnight that night, while she was trying to sleep. Kori was breathing deeply, looking like an angel, and Terra had fallen asleep listening to her iPod; Raven could hear the slightest beat to some rap song Terra probably knew all the words to.

It was about 1:00 when Raven drifted off. Finally asleep, she had a dark and sort of disturbing dream in which she found Maya kissing Gar in the back of their English classroom. Raven walked up with some choice words for both Maya and her boyfriend, but as soon as she got close enough, Maya whirled around and said, "He's mine, now, Slager," and then she impaled Raven with a giant pole. Bizarre, yes, but it greatly disturbed Raven. She bolted awake in milliseconds and sat up straight as a board. Her heart was pounding so loud she was sure it would wake up her roommates.

For a few moments, she remembered the dream, and kept seeing it play out in the dark corners of the dorm room. Then, Terra muttered something in her sleep that sounded like the chorus of "Get Low", only with a sort of German accent, and Raven was immediately calmed down. Within moments, she was back asleep, calm and breathing deeply. She was so tired from the long day of lucky happenings that she slept straight through until her alarm went off.

But she had the dream again.

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"Are you feeling better, Rob?" Gar asked the next morning as he was getting dressed. Rob answered with an inaudible groan and stuffed his head back under the covers.

"I take that as a 'no'," Vick commented as Gar yanked on his pants. Since the boy was so small, his pants dragged the ground and required that his belt be much tighter that what looked healthy. However, Gar had already grown almost an inch since school began in August, and he was now basically the same height as Raven. In spite of this growth spurt, the "standing on a step-stool to make out" rumors persisted.

"Let's get out of here before he reverts to violence," Gar suggested, grabbing his hunter green backpack from its resting place beside his own (un-made) bed. Vick obliged and followed.

"I take it Rob's still sick?" Kori asked disappointedly when the boys arrived alone at breakfast just minutes later.

"He wouldn't pull the covers off his head to tell us," Gar answered, eying the waffle bar.

"So how has your morning been?" Terra asked the boys. Her hair had been pulled into a normal ponytail today, and her feet were in perfectly ordinary American Eagle flip flops, so that she couldn't go wrong.

"Nothing really bad," Vick said. "Gar fell out of bed trying to turn off the alarm clock, and I broke my favorite headphones by stepping on them." He didn't mention that he got hit by a Hi-Liter that "fell out" of a second story window; it wouldn't have added anything to the conversation. "How about you?"

"Kori burned herself with a hair straightener," said Raven, and Kori held up a rather red finger, " and Terra choked on toothpaste and nearly threw up on her only clean skirt." Vick looked at his blonde friend; she did look a bit green at the gills.

"Hey," said Kori suddenly. "Don't we have that Health test over contraception today?" Terra's eyebrows shot up and she almost choked again, this time on her Poptart.

"No," Raven replied. "That's tomorrow." Kori exhaled in relief.

"Thank goodness," she breathed. "I didn't study."

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Apparently, Health wasn't the only thing Kori had forgotten about. She and Vick arrived in their first period Chemistry class to see the words "Test Today" scrawled on the board in big, green letters.

"We have a freaking test?" Vick said overly-loud, and the whole class turned to look at him.

"Oh," Kori said softly, looking at her feet as she walked to her desk.

"Watch your language, Mr. Stone," warned Mrs. Flanders, who thought "crap" was a bad word. With a groan, Vick took his seat across the room from Kori (they sat alphabetically) and pulled out his notebook to study.

"It won't be hard," said a girl named Whitney who sat behind Vick and made all A's.

"Want me to quiz you?" asked a boy named Joseph who sat to Vick's left and black Croc shoes with socks.

This was going to be a long day.

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For such a long day, Health class sure came fast. Kori, Raven, and Terra entered the classroom for fourth period only a few seconds late with total unawareness of what Coach Durbin could come up with in the from of an assignment.

"At least we don't have a test," Raven commented as Coach Durbin stood up from her desk. She had in her hands what appeared to be large, construction paper signs with some loopy, Sharpie writing on them.

"Oh boy," Terra said sarcastically as the teacher walked around, putting one sign on each desk. When it came Terra's turn, Coach Durbin was out of signs. Kori got the last one; it said "vaginal spermicide".

"I don't even think I want to know what we're doing with these," said Raven, who now held a sign reading "birth control pills".

"This a little review for our test tomorrow," Coach Durbin announced, and a groan erupted from the class. "I'll ask you in a minute to get up and come to the front of the room with your contraception signs. Then, you'll stand in order of how effective you think you, as your assigned method of contraception, are. Understand?"

"Well, this won't be embarrassing." Terra was being sarcastic again as the people around her began to migrate to the front of the room, each clutching their contraception terms, until only Terra and a couple of tenth graders were left.

Kori felt her face flush as she stood in front of her peers; she had never been one for public speaking, and the whole contraception thing wasn't helping. She watched as the girls to her right arranged themselves in a long line of "condoms" and "birth control pills" and "diaphragms". Finally, it was Kori's turn. She moved to the end of the line, holding the sign in her hand.

It was already unfortunate that Kori's place in line was right by the door, and when Coach Durbin decided to make Kori read the sign, the situation definitely didn't get any better.

"Vaginal spermicide," Kori said in a small voice just as the door beside her opened. She looked slowly to her left. It was Randy Godfrey.

"Nice sign," he said to Kori.

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"I can't believe you got your head stuck in a window!" Raven put her hand to her forehead and tried to stifle a laugh as she looked at her boyfriend. Gar was gnawing on a large piece of lettuce.

"It wasn't all my fault!" he argued. "That window was possessed!" His table-mates (sans Rob, who still wasn't present) laughed. "Seriously! It fell on its own accord!"

"And it was the window's fault that you had your head stuck through, as well?" Vick joked. They were referring to an incident earlier in the afternoon in which Gar had stuck his head through the window in his sixth period study hall, and the pane had become loose and slipped down, trapping his head outside of the building. It took two teachers and several able-bodied eleventh graders to get the window back open. There was now a large, red mark on the boy's neck where the pane had hit.

"Totally," answered Gar, taking another bite of his salad.

"So how was your afternoon been, Rae?" Vick asked Raven. The latter smiled and sipped on her ice water.

"I got a 100 for some Biology homework I didn't even turn in," Raven said with a smirk, "and Maya got in trouble for flicking me off during World History."

"Lucky duck," Terra muttered. "Last night, Kori and I were saying that she's probably going to get into some accident on Friday and wind up dead."

"Well, that's not morbid," Vick said sarcastically, and Terra rattled off her idea involving the sniper. When she got to the part about him shooting Raven, Gar reached down for his girlfriend's hand.

"Gar?" Raven said patiently. "Why is your hand on my butt?" Gar's face went bright red.

"It is not!" he argued, moving his hand quicker than he ever thought he, or anyone else, ever could manage.

"It's just so big," Terra marveled. "It's hard to miss."

"Are you calling Rae's butt fat?" Vick chuckled.

"No," Terra said quickly. "It's all muscle."

"Really big muscle," Gar said after a moment, and Raven blushed.

"Trojan man," Terra sang softly, but still loud enough for Kori and Vick to hear. Vick seemed to choke on his fried chicken.

"Oh my," Kori said, blinking once.

"Not really!" Gar said at once, semi-frantically.

"You mean, not yet," Terra interjected. Raven put her Styrofoam cup down firmly on the table.

"This conversation ends now," she said, but her friends couldn't help but notice she was smiling.

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That night, Raven slept like a baby and dreamed that she was pregnant with Zac Efron's unborn baby, so Terra and Kori decided to take her to see Buddha, who was performing live at a bar in Mexico City. When the trio arrived in Mexico, Kori and Terra got on stage with Buddha and started singing "Under the Sea" to Raven, who eventually decided that naming her baby Poseidon might not be such a hot idea. The dream came to a close with a scene in which the ceiling caved in and Kori turned purple, sprouted wings, and saved everyone. Raven woke up with an odd sense of calmness and chaotic comfort.

She got out of bed silently and turned off her alarm without waking up Kori and Terra. Closing the bathroom door behind her, she ran the water for her shower; she had been up so late helping Terra with her Biology homework that she hadn't had time to wash her hair. She shaved her legs without cutting herself and dried her shoulder-blade-length hair in a record time of seven minutes.

This is going to be a good day, she thought to herself as she smiled at her reflection in the fogged-up mirror.

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"So how's Rob?" Kori's question was becoming a daily happening at breakfast.

"He's better, actually," Vick reported.

"He cussed me out for turning on the light this morning," Gar added with a smirk.

"Yep," Terra noted. "I'd say he's well on the road to recovery."

Raven was smiling as she put her tray, loaded with a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a glass of iced water, down beside Gar's.

"Presenting, Little Miss Sunshine," Terra said in her fake announcer voice.

"Ha, ha," Raven replied. She took a long sip of water. "By the way, Terra, your hair looks nice. Seriously. What did you do to it?" All noise ceased at the breakfast table as Terra held up one, single lock of blonde hair in her right hand. Sure enough, it looked fairly presentable. What was usually piecy and stringy had become soft and straight, and where it usually frizzed it looked neatly smoothed down.

"I don't know," marveled Terra. "I didn't straighten it this morning, though. Maybe that's it…".

"It's a sign of the Apocalypse," Gar said with hushed reverence, then, with a louder voice, "Quick! Into hiding! Man the bunkers!" Kori and Vick broke into peals of laughter, and Raven smiled in her version of joyful hysteria. Terra still looked like a sort of mix between disbelieving and celebratory, as though Orlando Bloom had just walked up, out of the blue, and asked for her hand in marriage.

Things started looking up after that. Vick dodged a carton of chocolate milk headed straight for his white dress shirt; Kori found the lip gloss she thought she had lost weeks before (it was at the bottom of her purse); the lunch ladies started serving Gar's favorite soymilk again (he drank three Styrofoam cups of it); Mrs. Casper, the Geometry teacher, stopped by the table to tell Terra that, due to a grading mistake, her test grade had been changed from a 77 to an 83.

"I feel some good luck on the way," Vick commented as they left the lunch room.

Only hours later, he would be eating his words with a fork and knife.

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"Number seven is… side-angle-angle," read Mrs. Casper. Raven made a small, neat check mark on her paper. It was second period and the ninth grade Geometry students were checking their homework.

"Oh yeah," taunted Gar under his breath. "Who's gotten every single one right so far?"

"That would be you," Raven muttered.

"You know," Terra said. "Your little 'Genius-Boy' dance was almost annoying the first time. Now, I just want to punch you."

"Ditto," Raven agreed through clenched teeth as she marked #14 wrong with a small, neat "X". That was the fifth one out of a total of fifteen. Why had she thought today was going to be a good day? She'd had her turn for the past two days; today was going downhill. She could feel it.

"Hay Rae," said Terra, passing her homework up to the front of the row. It had a messy "95" scrawled across the top. "How do you think you did on last night's World History homework?" Raven felt her heart stop.

"We had homework?"

"Yeah," Gar cut in. "It was that review sheet we didn't do in class yesterday…"

He might have said more, but Raven didn't hear. She had a perfect record in World History, one that would not be blemished by a bad day such as this one.

"Mrs. Casper?" Raven's hand shot up in the air like a bullet. "Can I please go to my locker? It's important." Mrs. Casper nodded her blonde head, and Raven stood up.

"I'll be right back," Raven said briefly to Gar and Terra, who were comparing their History worksheets.

As Raven walked out the door, she barely registered the black-haired girl getting up behind her, Coach purse in hand, Lumaini boots clicking on the cold, tiled floors.

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Raven took a deep breath as she entered the stairwell up to the third floor. As she had no classes up on the top floor of the building, it was rather inconvenient that her locker had to be up there, away from everything.

Raven sniffed hard; her nose was getting stuffed up. She had probably caught whatever Rob had. Oh, well. It was probably her own fault for making out with one of Rob's roommates. Being Gar, that is. Raven would never kiss Vick, even if her life depended on it. She never wanted to kiss a guy other than Gar as long as she lived. Other guys were annoying. Okay, so Gar was annoying sometimes, too. But not always. Raven had already put great thought into this; she would marry Gar, and then they could go live somewhere far away and have only girl children.

Thinking of marriage made Raven think of sex, which made her feel kind of fluffy and full of butterflies. She was still feeling this way when she heard it loud and clear.

Somewhere behind Raven, a boot clicked on the floor. She felt her heart quicken; that boot was familiar. Too familiar.

It was Maya.

Raven's picked up the pace to match her pounding heart. She was almost to her locker. She could make it. Just ten more steps. Nine more. Eight more. Seven more.

"Raven, wait up," Maya had the nerve to call out. Her voice chilled the blood in Raven's heart. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Raven turned to face Maya. The Indian girl's black hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and hanging from her earlobes were chandeliers of cultured-looking beads. Her skirt had been rolled at least twice, showing a bit too much of her legs for Raven's liking.

"Sure," Raven answered hesitantly. She had a basic idea of what Maya might want to talk about, and it included a certain someone Raven had been French-kissing on the way to Geometry.

"Good," Maya said simply. She bounced the toe of her boot on the floor. "I was hoping that we could come to some kind of agreement about Gar."

So Raven was right. It was Gar Maya wanted to talk about.

"Can we not just leave him out of this?" Raven managed to say through clenched teeth.

"I'm afraid not," Maya answered with a smile of false sympathy. "You see, you didn't pay attention to my warnings. Am I not correct?"

Raven didn't answer. Maya moved her right hand from her hip to her purse, and Raven became suddenly aware of the bulk inside the bag, obscuring the signature Coach "C"'s.

Oh God, Raven thought. She's about to pull a gun on me. She's really about to kill me. And only six steps away from my locker. What luck. However, Maya's hand went right on past the clasp to her bag, and instead she fingered the handle, which was looped around her slender shoulder. Raven felt a tiny bit of relief shoot through her chest.

"Why can't you just do as you're told?" taunted Maya. Raven narrowed her eyes.

"He's my boyfriend," she said loudly, her anger giving her sudden courage. "I love him. I'm not giving him over to you."

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," Maya replied with a laugh, "but I'm a girl who gets what she wants, and I have methods of doing what I can to make sure that everything happens to my advantage. Understand?"

Raven's anger turned to fury, and then to a hatred that rose up in her and filled her lungs and her heart. She felt like she was suffocating. "Gar is mine," she managed, and the hate came pouring out in her words, dripping off of every syllable. "What in the world do you think you can do to change that?"

Raven didn't mean it as a challenge, but that was how Maya took it.

"What am I going to do?" she laughed. The noise, like some horrible, death-tolling bell, hit Raven's like a bullet. "I'm going to do this."

And then she pulled a gun out of her Coach purse.

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So how was that for a cliffhanger?

I'm almost done with chapter 10, but I'm going away for the weekend, so it will be next week before I can get it up. It's not nearly as long as this one, just so you know.

Part One is drawing to a close, but this story isn't. I'm going to try and finish out the year, with Part Two taking us to June.

That's all I have to say, so just please review, okay? Thanks!

-Giz