Brenda met up with Blue Oyster Pearl at the coffee place, the hippest one on Melrose and they talked about the art they would submit for the annual art festival that would be hosted by various galleries and coffee spots on the strip.

Cyrano had been encouraging her to express her talent more fully and Brenda had embraced his advice. She was but a mound of clay that had to be molded into an artist. It would be the hardest; the most grueling journey of her young life but on the other side of it would be greatness. That's what he told her when they huddled after he had used his scathing tongue to rip up one of her paintings. She felt verbally beaten when he criticized her work but when she cried bitterly after one of his reviews, he told her that she would feel reborn once her angst and pretentiousness was stripped away, leaving her bare and vulnerable.

She believed him wholeheartedly. Look how far she'd come since he put her under his tillage. She had traveled on her way to becoming a respectable artist, if not a prodigy, someone with depth and courage to become her best.

Blue Oyster Pearl had started dropping acid to better serve her creative muse but Brenda swore she'd never resort to doing that. She relied heavily on chi tea and a vegan diet.

"So do you think I should submit my sculpture?"

Brenda blinked and glanced over at her.

"What…?"

Blue Oyster Pearl sighed.

"You're not even listening," she said, "You know that Cyrano will lose interest in you soon."

Brenda furrowed her brow.

"I doubt that," she said, "He said I was the most talented artist he'd ever mentored," she said, "I have raw talent and the world will know it soon."

Blue Oyster Pearl sipped her coffee.

"I doubt that," she said, "I think you're engaging in wishful thinking but it doesn't matter because by the time he replaces you with another impressionable young girl, you'll be a much better artist."

Brenda preened.

"I know and I'll do whatever it takes to get me there," she said, "It's so close I can almost touch it. Almost…"

Blue Oyster Pearl smiled.

"Anything…?"

Brenda pursed her lips.

"Well not everything…I won't do any drugs or anything like that…"

She reached into her purse to pull out a cigarette to light up.

"No I'd never do anything like that," she said, "I'm not that desperate."

Blue Oyster Pearl looked miffed.

"I only drop a little acid to get into the moment," she said, "when I have to get a piece done. Not enough to cause any permanent damage or anything."

Brenda wasn't so sure about that. She thought the young woman across from her more than a little odd not that she'd ever tell her that. No, she wanted so much for her new, more mature, her edgier friends to accept her. She always felt the odd one out when hanging out with the gang of West Beverly and Kelly and Donna treated her like she was such a downer.

She was better off without them and she'd show them all when she became the most successful artist in West Hollywood. This festival on Melrose would get her started in the right direction.

But no, she wouldn't do any drugs, she thought taking a puff on her cigarette. The Chi tea was cooling off and she had to get back to Cyrano's studio where she did all her work. She had a couple of hours to put in before she had to head back to Jim and Cindy's for dinner.

"So are you going to invite your friends?"

Brenda just looked at her.

"Friends…you are all my friends."

Blue Oyster Pearl snorted.

"I mean your high school friends…"

Brenda paused. She'd never thought about inviting them and she didn't want them around her when she hung out with her new friends.

"Oh they weren't really my friends," she said, "I never really fit into their clique. That's why I left high school to find my own way. I'm so much mature than the rest of them especially when I went to Paris."

"Where you picked up your smoking habit right?"

Brenda looked down at the cigarette clutched in her fingers and nodded.

"Yes…among other things."

Blue Oyster Pearl chuckled.

"I had a blast in Paris…that's where I met Cyrano," she said, "At the Louvre painting the Venus De Milo…only with arms."

Brenda hadn't known that her mentor had spent time with an easel and canvas at the famed museum. It just made her all the more impressed.

She hurriedly drank her chi tea and then rushed off out of the coffee spot leaving a puzzled Blue Oyster Pearl in her wake.

Andrea had been jealous of Emily Valentine when that loose harlot with dye blond locks and a motorcycle jacket had first arrived at West Beverly. Everyone thought she'd been a tramp and it was her own fault for that because she'd come on to every good looking guy in the school.

Even Brandon….she'd ended up with him and he'd been happy with her until he got wild and wigged out one night at a club and discovered later on she'd spiked his drink with something called Euphoria. When Brandon had dumped Emily like a soiled rag for that, Andrea had hope in her heart that he might finally start looking in her direction.

But no, Brandon had used her shoulder to recover on before returning to playing the field. Last week he'd been chatting up some tall, lithe girl with flaxen colored hair down to her lower back and all Andrea could do was just watch and wonder if he'd ever look at her the same way.

She thought about that when she'd been working at the club to a crowded house. She had been getting dressed to do her first number behind Candy and Pepper, asking herself as she sorted through her feathers, about this mysterious Mr. X. The man who managed the club but who didn't have a face, at least not one any of the dancers had ever seen.

Not that she could dwell on it, she had a show to do and she saw the spotlighted pole in the stage in the center of the room and after putting her headdress on, she walked towards it.

After she climbed up on the stage, she looked across the room and saw Gil standing there talking to Ginger one of the veteran dancers. Andrea wanted to roll her eyes, thinking so like him to flirt with the most voluptuous dancer in the room.

Gil was just a sexist to the core and she knew that from just dealing with him as an advisor for the newspaper.

She started dancing and she didn't know if he was watching, not that she cared. She had to earn enough money to pay the higher share of the rent that Grandma Rose demanded from her.

If she didn't pay her by tomorrow, she'd be tossed out of the house and have to find another place to live. Someplace within her school district…who didn't ask for a copy of her birth certificate.

David had the dream again and he called up Donna on the phone after she'd returned from shopping with Kelly.

"I dreamed about him again Donna," he said, "I think I'm going crazy."

She just rolled her eyes as she tried to come up with what to say to him.

"David…it's a dream isn't it," she said, "Because you have unresolved feelings about what happened with Scott."

"I know he's dead…I saw him bleed on his mom's Persian rug," he said, "and they buried him."

Donna wished that he didn't just come to her when he needed reassurance and then spent all the rest of his time with other women…looser women who didn't walk around in tight jeans and a tank top…just to cover their chastity belts.

"You feel guilty because you abandoned him right," she said, "He was your best friend and you ditched him to hang out with us."

He fell quiet and she wondered if she should have been so blunt but she was getting tired of him and his moods. Yeah he was sexually frustrated with her but he should just get over it.

Life went on and people died…and yeah it was kind of his fault but he'd have to learn to live with that too.

But Scott was only haunting him in his dreams, he did not walk on this earth anymore.