Steph – Yes that was much wordier than usual lol. Of course I couldn't make it that easy you know I have a very specific plan for this entire series, you even know the plan. Thanks for the review and I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Jammeke – Stargate really does have an awesome group of characters, it's just a shame most of them never got the attention they deserved. Thanks for the review, I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter and I hope you enjoy this one too.
Belanna30 – You'll be finding out a little bit of what's going on with Elizabeth's father very soon. I'm really dragging this sparky thing out aren't I lol, almost done with that though. I hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks for the review.
Dr Rosemary Weir – Romance coming very soon, thanks for the review and I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Kuro – Kate's part was kind of written from my own experience exams always drove me crazy. You'll know about Elizabeth and her father very, very soon, I think I was a little mean giving everyone all that hope at the end there and then taking it away again lol. I hope you enjoy this chapter though and thanks for the review.
Bunnylass – Thanks for the review. The exams were kind of a throw back to GCSE's and A levels for me lol, Kate's art was entirely my own experience of still being stuck in the exam hall for ages after I finished the exam. I' really glad you enjoyed the chapter and again, thanks for your review. I hope you enjoy this chapter too.
Chapter 28
Laura finished running the brush through her hair and decided just to leave it down. Janet was still doing her make up so it would be another few minutes before she was ready. Laura grabbed her leather jacket and slipped it on sitting on the edge of her bed to wait for her room mate. They were supposed to be meeting the others in the cafeteria now but she supposed Teyla and Vala would probably be at least a little bit late so she wasn't worried. The guys would entertain themselves until the girls were ready, they always did.
The end of year exams were finally over and the group now had nothing to worry about except the light prep work they'd be doing for the next few weeks. After that it would be the summer holidays and they'd all be going home to their families until the start of the next school year. It was hard to believe their first year was almost over it, it didn't seem like that long.
"Alright, I'm good to go," Janet said as she put on her own jacket and tucked her small purse into the pocket. The two of them left and headed for the cafeteria, when they arrived the guys were all there as expected. Kate was there too, she was sat talking to Rodney and Radek who for once weren't bickering.
"Hey," Carson greeted as he left the football game that was going on. It was a good thing the cafeteria was closed otherwise the lunch ladies would have had something to say.
"Teyla, your hair looks fine, now would you please stop going on about it," Elizabeth was saying as she and Teyla showed up. Teyla was messing with her hair and looking slightly sulky as they walked over to the rest of the group. The football game came to a close since they were now just waiting on Vala and Sam. Ronon walked over to Teyla and took her hands down from her hair with a half amused smirk.
"You look fine," he told her and she narrowed her eyes at him.
"My hair is all frizzy," she complained still sulking.
"You keep messing with it and you're going to have greasy hair instead," Elizabeth told her as she moved to sit on the table John was currently sat at. Teyla childishly stuck her tongue out at Elizabeth who just rolled her eyes and turned to talk to John.
"I'm here," Vala announced only to get elbowed by Sam. "I mean we're here."
"Let's get going before a fight starts breaking out" Jack said. "And for once it won't be the guys involved."
They all moved out of the cafeteria and headed toward the forest exit of the school. They went through the gates and followed the path toward town. Laura could admit this forest was pretty creepy even during the day and she knew from experience how much creepier it was going to be when they came back after dark. Then of course, once they were through the forest they had to sneak back into school grounds and to their dorms without getting caught since it would obviously be well after curfew when they made it back.
There were already a lot of students in town, a lot of them getting something to eat before they hit the clubs. Their group was no different; they went into a restaurant and after fifteen minutes were seated. It was always hard for them to get tables with there being so many of them.
They ordered dinner and the food took longer than usual to get to them, again because they were such a big group. They were all eager to get to the clubs as soon as they were open otherwise they were going to end up queuing to get in. There were so many students with plans to celebrate the end of exams that the clubs would likely be overfilled pretty quick. Their only real concern tonight was Jack, this was the first time he'd been to clubs since his battle with Allinyas and the drug was still in circulation especially on the night club scene.
Laura was sure he'd be okay, if the temptation came up then they'd have to deal with it but there was a good chance that the drug wouldn't even cross paths with them so there was no sense worrying about it. Jack couldn't spend the rest of his life hiding from every situation where he might encounter drugs, especially if he wanted a career in the protectorates guild.
They were let into the club straight away and Laura immediately ran off to the dance floor dragging Janet along with her. Unfortunately for Sam, Janet had linked arms with her so the blonde got dragged off as well. This was the first chance that they'd all had to come out and really enjoy themselves in a long time and Laura fully intended to take advantage of it. There was no way she was letting any drugs ruin this night out like they had her last one.
Jack had been doing well right up until he'd caught sight of what looked like a drugs deal going down in the corner of the club. His eyes had been following the possible dealer around for the last few minutes. The temptation was there, it was stronger than he would have expected. He'd thought that faced with this situation he could easily turn away from the drugs but now that he was staring at a potential source it wasn't quite as easy.
He tore his eyes away from the twenty something, dark haired man and looked over at his friends. Half of them were on the dance floor oblivious to his current predicament and the others were at the bar getting drinks, equally oblivious. He needed to ignore that man as much for them as himself, they'd all gone above and beyond to help him and it would be a hell of a way to repay them to go and take the drugs again.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Sam standing there with a knowing look on her face. She smiled and glanced over at where Jack had been looking and surprisingly she didn't say anything, she just took his hand and dragged him over to the dance floor. After a few minutes he forgot about the drug dealer and when he did finally remember he turned to look for him. He couldn't see him though and it was possible, even likely, that he'd left the club and wouldn't be coming back that night.
It was a great relief to know that he'd come face to face with his problem for the first time since he'd quit and he'd beaten it. The temptation wasn't going to go away anytime soon maybe it never would but he knew he could ignore it. He had too many reasons to stay clean and none to go back to the drugs.
"See," Sam said quietly. "I told you you'd be fine."
She had told him that, just before they'd all gone their separate ways to get ready. He'd been staring of into space worrying about exactly this situation and somehow she'd known. It was strange how well she seemed to know him but then she'd been with him through the worst few months of his life so maybe it wasn't all that odd.
John tucked the letter from his parents into his bag with a smile. It wasn't often letters from his parents made him smile, they were usually filled with politics and the mundane goings on in the Governor's house. The occasional one that contained the antics of his uncle was always good for a laugh though. His father's brother had never really matured, even in his late forties he was still the prank pulling, goof off teenager that he'd always been. All of Caldera should be glad he wasn't the oldest since his grandfather had died when the brothers were still young he would have had no chance to defer the governor's throne to the other brother. It was lucky really that his father had been the oldest, as strict and unfeeling as he could sometimes be, he made a great governor.
"What are you smiling at?" Elizabeth questioned as she bookmarked her book and put it down on the grass.
"My parents aren't coming to parent's week," he stated with a grin.
"Why are you so happy about that?" she questioned. "It's not like the teacher's would have had anything bad to say about you."
John shrugged. "Natural instinct."
"I'm sure it is," Elizabeth replied rolling her eyes.
"Besides," John began. "I want to enjoy these last few weeks of parent free life before I have to go and spend the entire summer with them."
"You don't want to go home?" she questioned, there was something in the way she asked the question that made him wonder if she did.
"You haven't met my parents," he told her. "I love them but they're all about politics and duty. Their priority is always the country and what they feel is best for it. They're great governors but sometimes they're a little lacking in the parenting department. What about you, are you looking forward to going home, I mean you haven't been back all year?"
"Yeah," Elizabeth replied after a moment.
"You don't sound very convinced," John stated and Elizabeth shrugged. She never did talk about her family, her home or anything from before she came to magic school and the whole group had chosen not to pry but he was curious now. Obviously she could tell he wanted further explanation and she must have surprised herself as much as him when she gave it to him.
"My mother died when I was younger," she told him.
"I'm sorry," he said feeling guilty now.
"You didn't know," Elizabeth shrugged again.
"What was she like?" he questioned and she smiled this time.
"She was great, everybody loved her. She had all these ideas about making the world a better place, all the things she could do to help people. She was quiet though, all these ideas and she only ever voiced half of them. I think it frustrated her in the end, how much she still wanted to do," Elizabeth explained losing her smile at the end. "She got sick and I don't think she was very happy at the end, I was young though so I could be wrong."
"What about your father?" John questioned. "You still have him right?"
Elizabeth bit her lip and looked down. "Yeah, I do. He's a governor and that's the most important thing to him."
John decided to change the subject. "So, I heard Professor Niya is having an affair with Professor Penrose and that's why she left the school last week."
Elizabeth smiled and obviously recognised his attempt to lighten the mood. "You shouldn't believe everything you hear. Niya left to go to a series of lectures in Alteran city, she told us about it in class a couple of weeks back and Penrose only got married a year ago. His desk is covered in pictures of his wife and their kid, that's why he lives off campus, so he can stay with them in town."
"Well, excuse me, Miss 'Know it all', I am clearly not as observant as you," John laughed and Elizabeth shook her head at him.
Cameron jotted down the occasional note, since all their lessons were just light prep work for next year he'd decided it was okay to take it a little easier in lessons. His notes weren't very detailed but they were enough for him to study over the summer, on the rare occasion that he actually sat down to study. He had far more interesting things to do with his summer than sit and study for school when he'd already spent his entire year studying.
"Alright students," Professor Penrose began. "Pack up your things."
The class did as instructed, unsure why the Professor would have them pack up fifteen minutes before the end of the lesson. He uttered some words and gestured for the tables to move and instantly they all manoeuvred around the students to the sides of the room with the chairs following after them.
"Let's do some spell practice," Penrose said. "The main spells you'll be trying to master next year are the morphology spells. These are the spells that allow you to change both people and objects into other things. Now obviously we don't teach students to turn people into water fountains, at least not until your senior years and even then only certain students learn it. However you will be converting objects, liquids and even certain gasses. It may sound simple enough but I assure you it's not. This is very complicated magic and it takes a lot of time to master it."
At least this sounded like it was going to be interesting, Cameron thought. Penrose brought a statue into the middle of the room, it was a small cat sitting down and with a few words and a wave of his hand he turned it into an angry looking cat that if it wasn't made of stone would probably be attacking them now.
"So who wants to try to change it back?" Penrose questioned and there was silence throughout the room. A few students were trying to hide themselves at the back in the hopes that Penrose wouldn't call them out to make a fool of themselves. "Mr Murray," he called out. "Let's have it."
Cameron was sure Teal'c had sighed and visibly slumped as he walked forward so that he was standing in front of the angry cat statue. He repeated Penrose's words and made a hand gesture at the cat which sparked but remained unchanged. Penrose called out someone else to try who failed as well before he moved onto another student. Ronon and Vala were also called up and neither of them was any more successful than the other students had been. Cameron was one of the fortunate few who hadn't been called up before they reached the end of the lesson though Penrose promised them their turn, Cameron wasn't sure he wanted his.
They all gathered their things which had followed the tables and chairs to the sides of the room before they left. The rest of their lessons were cancelled for the day, something about part of the staff being on a training course. That left them with nothing to do, some home work that would probably take ten minutes to complete and a reading assignment.
"We should find out who else is free for the rest of the day and go shopping" Vala suggested. "I know Teyla, Elizabeth, Jack and John are free but I don't know about any of the others."
"Maybe we don't want to go shopping Vala," Cameron threw out there and Vala looked at him like he'd grown another head.
"Yeah, right," she replied sarcastically and sauntered off to the cafeteria.
"I think we might be going shopping," Ronon stated with a sigh.
Sam picked up her lunch tray and waited for Jack to do the same before the two of them headed back to the table. Lunch had started twenty minutes ago but so far they were the only ones there. They knew a couple of people had gone into town for dinner but the others were just missing and since Rodney was in the latter group it was rather worrying. She put her tray down on the table and took a seat while Jack did the same.
"Maybe John and Elizabeth finally got a clue and are otherwise occupied," Sam suggested and Jack shook his head.
"Don't you start I, hear enough of that from Teyla," Jack stated.
"Yeah but don't pretend you don't think exactly the same way she does," Sam laughed and Jack narrowed his eyes at her.
"Maybe I do, but it's not my place to butt in, they'll figure it out when they're good and ready," Jack told her and Sam raised an eyebrow at him.
"Elizabeth refuses to acknowledge she has emotions relating to other people and even if she did realise there was something between her and John an army of Wraith couldn't make her admit to it. As for John, men are completely clueless," Sam explained and it apparently took Jack a moment to realise what she'd said because he was nodding his head.
"Wait, hey!" he exclaimed and Sam had to put her drink down to laugh. "I am far from clueless, thank you very much," he told her indignantly.
"You're very clueless," she told him and resisted the urge to roll her eyes when he didn't pick up her meaning. Instead he took a bite of his burger and just glared at her.
"I am not," he stated and the way he said it, with a mouth full of burger, was unbelievably childish.
"What's he sulking for?" Vala asked as she sat down along with John, Elizabeth and the half of the group had opted not to go to town for dinner.
"Where the heck have you guys been?" Jack questioned. "When Rodney didn't turn up for dinner we started to get worried. We were just discussing whether or not we should organise a search party."
Rodney would probably have tried to defend himself from the comment but he was already half way to the cafeteria counter. Everyone else sat down, more content to take their time and not in a rush to join the long cafeteria queue.
"There was a fight outside, you should have seen it. Two of the seniors got into it and they were really going at it until their friends intervened and tried to separate them. Then the teachers came along and ruined the show. The two guys were sent to the principle but they barely made it five steps before they started up again. They were just dragged off by the teachers," Ronon explained sounding amused by the whole thing.
"Sounds like we missed a show" Jack stated.
"They probably couldn't have picked a worse time either, parents week starts on Monday and of course the end of year party is on Wednesday. Not only are they going to get their parent's wrath in person, they're probably going to get banned from the party," Janet said with a shrug. "I suppose it's they're own fault though."
"Oh that reminds me, girls shopping trip on Saturday, we need to shop for the party," Vala told them and the girls were lost after that to talk of dresses, shoes and jewellery.
TBC
