Part Four by Randa: nighthawk2775@aol.com

During Francis and Hyde's little confrontation, Jackie had crept out to sit
on the Foreman's porch. Hyde's coulsins were... well, they were freaky.
Malcolm was too smart for his own good, and she shuddered to think of Reese's
knowledge of all things melting. Dewey was just adorable, though. And what
an ego booster! He had told her she was pretty about ten times straight in
the past hour. Obviously, he hadn't gotten it from his cousin.

Hyde was acting very strange. She would almost swear that he was jealous!
But that didn't make sense. Hyde never got jealous. She had tried to make
him that way numerous times, but it never seemed to work. He just looked at
her with his "I am so incredibly disgusted by your patheticness" look. She
really hated that look.

Jackie's thoughts were cut off by Francis slamming the door. She turned
around to face him. In this light he looked just like Hyde, but without the
'fro and sideburns.

"Hey there, beautiful," he said, flashing her that dreamy smile and sitting
down beside her.

She grinned. He wanted to flirt, huh? Well, flirting was her specialty.
"Hey yourself," she murmered, batting her eyelashes enticingly.

Francis looked away. "So... you and Hyde, huh?"

Jackie's mouth dropped wide open. My God, he was just like Steven! Hyde had
asked her that exact same thing in that exact same tone about Chip.

Francis eyed her. She really was a beautiful girl, with all that hair and
those great eyes. Not to mention her body. Her body was good, too. Nice
and tiny, curved in all the right places. She was just about perfect. Too
bad Hyde saw her first. Of course, he was too dumb to claim her. But, then,
maybe he had? It wasn't like Francis was a part of his cousin's circle. He
had no way of knowing for sure if they were officially together. Well, if
they weren't, Francis wasn't about to give her up without a fight. "Are you
two a couple?" Please God no.

She pouted. "No. Well... no."

Yes! "That's too bad."

"Yeah, I know," she sighed.

It was at this time that Francis had one of the most devious, yet incredibly
brilliant ideas of his life. What the Hell? he reasoned. All's fair in
love and war, after all. "I think it's totally wrong the way he is getting
you're hopes up."

Jackie looked up, squinching her eyebrows together in confusion. "What do
you mean?"

"Well... me and Hyde have got this thing. I guess you'd call it
competition. Whenever one of us sees that the other is interested in a girl,
we try to steal her."

Jackie looked outraged. "So he's just trying to annoy you by asking me out?
Is that what your saying?"

Francis nodded, silently congratulating himself on a lie well told. "Yup.
Oh, he doesn't mean anything by it. He's just fooling around. He'd do the
same thing with any other girl."

"Ooohhh!" Jackie stood and started to pace. "I can't believe he'd do that."

"Believe it," Francis said. He caught her hand and pulled her back down.
Jackie made a little sniffing noise. At first he ignored it, thinking maybe
she just had a runny nose or something. Then the noise came again. And
again. He finally looked down at her, and immediately froze with horror.
She was crying! He couldn't stand it when girls cried. He felt horrible.
He just wanted to have a chance at dating her, and look what he'd done!

"Jackie, I'm sorry. I was just jok--" Jackie snuggled up next to him and
buried her face against his chest, sobbing softly and effectively cutting off
his train-of-thought.

Francis automatically put his arms around her. He didn't want to tell her
the truth. She'd hate him. Besides, Hyde wasn't good enough for her. She
deserved someone who cared about her. Someone like... him! That's right,
he decided. He wasn't gonna tell her. Not right away, anyway. He had an
entire week here, and he was going to spend every second of it making Jackie
like him. That's right, Cuz, he thought. The war is on.

May the best man win.