A/N: More to come soon! I'll have the next chapter up in two days. It's going to be Benvolio's paper-I hope I can do it justice. Review, please!

~Bananna

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Ben groaned, blindly feeling towards his new alarm clock the Lapets had given him so he wouldn't have to be awakened by Jake every morning, thank goodness. He turned it off, vaguely wondering if he could just rest in bed for a few minutes. No, he couldn't do that, he'd fall asleep again. With a groan, he sat up, grabbed the clothes he had laid out the night before, and made his way into the shower for two reasons. One, because Jake had used it last night so he had to take the opportunity in the morning, and two, so he could think.

It had been three weeks. Three weeks of school that had felt like forever. Three weeks of hanging out with Jake and Matt. Three weeks of absolutely no fighting that Jake had been so worried about.

Life, as it should be for the average teenage guy, was good.

The careless kind of good. Sure, everyone would complain about homework and things like that, but Benvolio knew to take it as a blessing. So that's what he was, for once in his life, careless. Not worried about Mercutio getting in trouble, or Romeo and his lover problems, or the stupid feud thing, or the fact that he wasn't counting the days since their deaths anymore. Nothing.

With a sigh, he finished, got dressed, and jumped down the stairs (2 at a time, as normal) and met Jake and his mom at the breakfast table. They smiled and fell into the routine. Eating. Riding the bus. Complaining about not have a car or a license. Math. History. Computers. Lunch.

Ben had slowly gotten introduced to the rest of Jake and Matt's friends. There was Adam, and sometimes a senior called Peter, who was somehow related to Matt, a small freshman that rarely spoke, some other ones…Ben wasn't particularly concerned about names. They didn't matter to him. As far as he knew, this was still a dream, true?

"So, what'd you guys write for your English project?" Jake casually asked that day.

Ben, who had been in the middle of taking a large gulp of water from his water bottle, promptly spit some out in surprise. Matt made a gagging noise, which he ignored. "The English project!" he exclaimed. "I forgot! I completely forgot! Aye me, I didn't do it! I'm dead!"

Jake raised his eyebrows, but of course Matt couldn't pass up the opportunity. "Oh, are you ever. Isn't that, like, half of your semester grade? You're screwed, my friend. You have about as much chance at passing now as we do of having Jake tell us which girl he likes."

"Shut up, Matt."

"See, Ben, he definitely likes somebody. Now, what was I saying?"

"A bunch of rubbish," snorted Jake, still steaming. "Every since Valerie broke up with you-"

"Oh, yeah, I was describing the state of your doom. You're as dead as the postman when this family just got five new German Shepherds. You're as dead as the fish whose bowl I never cleaned. You're as dead as Mr. Hebrew's head of hair. You're as dead as Jake's love lif-"

"Shut up now if you want to live to see last period," Jake growled, as the whole lunch table erupted with laughter.

Ben shoved his head into his hands. "Well, I can always do it in study hall."

"The whole project in 40 minutes? Really, amigo?"

"I bet there've been worse handed in."

"True," agreed Matt. "But that doesn't change the fact that I don't think you have any poster board or markers to outline the plot with."

Ben squirmed in his seat. There really wasn't a plot, that was just the way it happened. Benvolio had a problem with Romeo and Juliet. It was mostly accurate, as far as he could tell, but no one really spoke in Iambic pentameter. Everything Shakespeare this and Shakespeare that. And he hated the class lessons and discussions. The teacher had this opinion that he was the shyest boy she'd ever had, but Benvolio really didn't trust himself to speak about this out loud. Explaining the story to Jake and Matt was one thing. Hearing how Benvolio sounded like Benevolent and therefore he was the peacemaker and blahblahblah was another.

There had been once close call. Well, actually, several... There was Queen Mab's speech. And the day Mercutio had died. The balcony seen had actually been informative, if anything else. To see what his cousin might have been doing. But the day he really almost blew his top when the day the class had a discussion on Romeo.

"There are some scholars," the teacher had said, "that criticize his character. What do you think? Was the tragedy Romeo's fault?"

That one wasn't difficult. They talked about whose fault it was periodically.

"Some say he is too quick to act," she said. "That he was too emotional. Too quick to marry Juliet, to avenge Mercutio, to kill himself."

Benvolio snorted at that one. Darn right, he'd been too quick…you hadn't seen Ben out there hunting Tybalt, even though he'd also wanted to scream for blood…

"Some say," the teacher called out again, bring other debating students to a halt, "that Romeo was never really in love with Juliet."

Benvolio stiffened in his seat.

"Notice the way he cast off Rosaline so quickly," she shouted, "after meeting Juliet. He wasn't in love with her. He was in love with being in love."

Sometime during that phrase he had started shaking. Romeo hadn't loved Juliet? He had promised her a lie? He had married her on a lie? He had killed himself on a lie?

Benvolio may not have kept as good track of his cousin as he should, but he did know that when Romeo told you something, he meant it, and he would get that deadly serious look in his eyes and he would go out there and do whatever it took. Benvolio had witnessed it way back when they were thirteen and Romeo ran a raiding mission on the Capulet mansion just to get Mercutio's purse back. When they were ten, and Romeo promised his father that he'd get his mother a gold necklace for her birthday. When he was eight, and his mother died, and Romeo promised he could live at their house, no matter what Prince Escalus said about his mother's debts.

When Romeo promised something, he meant it.

Suddenly Benvolio knew what to do. "I won't do the outline," he exclaimed. "I'll do the paper."

This was met by a lot of sarcastic stares. "Dude, she grades those, like, twice as hard."

"I know."

"You don't even have pictures to distract her."

"I know."

"She said you need to write at least three pages from a characters' point of view."

"Iambic Pent- well, never mind. That'd just be ridiculous."

The lunch bell rung, signaling the end, and Benvolio muttered to Jake "I'll be in the computer room during study hall," and ran out of there. When he reached his destination, he started working right away. What alien words those were, appearing from under his keyboard on the screen.

My name is Benvolio Montague…