Chapter 5

Tara took a deep breath and turned the doorknob to room 248, pulling it open. A surprisingly large number of students were inside, seated not in traditional classroom rows but in a large circle, chatting with one another. Finally spotting Michael, she made her way over to where he sat.

"Hey, Tara, you made it!" he greeted her with yet another smile. Turning to the honey-haired girl beside him, he said, "This is the girl I was telling you about, from lunch. Amy, this is Tara. Tara, Amy."

"Hi, nice to meet you. Any friend of Michael's is a friend of mine." She smiled and seemed very genuine, which Tara liked immediately.

"Nice to meet you, too," the blonde girl said, taking a seat on Michael's right. "There sure are a lot of people here," she observed. "I have to admit that when you said a lot, I-I didn't think you would mean this many."

"Yeah," Michael said, "pretty much everyone's here now. We should be getting started here any min-"

Before the word made it out of the Goth's mouth, a big blonde guy in a red and white letterman's jacket stood up at the front of the room. "All right, let's get started." He grinned charmingly as everyone quieted and turned to the front. "Welcome to the Sunnydale High GSA! I hope you all had a great break, with the family members and all." A few groans and good-natured chuckles from the students. "Well, you seem to have made it back in one piece, anyway! For those of you who don't know me, I'm Larry Blaisdell, your GSA president as well as the Razorbacks starting quarterback." His football team buddies cheered enthusiastically – Sunnydale High was having a pretty good season. Larry beamed and continued, "Now we'll start this out the same as usual, I know I saw some new faces today, so here's what we do. We'll go around the circle and introduce ourselves. Just tell us your name, how old you are, and this time, tell us something you did over break. Start with Rick!" Larry clapped and mimed tossing a football to a dark haired student with deep brown eyes, who introduced himself as Rick, leading off the round.

Students in turn introduced themselves and gave a brief anecdote of something that happened on break. Tara was surprised to see Mary, one of the young waitresses from the Espresso Pump, who told everyone that she had "finally met someone, I hope" over break. This earned a resounding cheer from the students. When it was Tara's turn, she gulped, immediately forgetting what she'd planned to say, then stammered "Hi, I'm Tara, Maclay, um, I just turned 18…" more cheers from the students, who didn't seem to mind her nervousness, "… and over break I um, I moved here. Oh, and I got a job!" After Michael spoke, she whispered to him, "That didn't sound too bad, did it?"

He shook his head. "You did fine, don't worry about it. Everyone in this room is pretty cool, most of the time."

After the introductions were finished, Larry introduced the week's topic, a discussion about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and how it relates to current events. Tara was kind of surprised that a lot of the people in the room had actually read up on stuff that was going on not just in the US, but all around the world, in terms of gay rights. It was pretty cool, and the discussion was going well. After a while Larry stood again to announce that the meeting was over for the week. "And next week we're going to talk about a subject near and dear to all of us – the Winter Formal! So be thinking about that, and report back to us next week!"

The students, now breaking off into smaller groups, many of them still discussing the meeting's topic amongst themselves, slowly filtered out of the room. Tara rose and stood near Michael and Amy, not wanting to be on her own again so soon. Before she could decide what to say to them, she felt a tap on her shoulder. "Hi, Tara?"

The witch jumped a little bit, startled that someone would come up to talk to her, and she turned and found herself face to face with Mary. "Hi, Mary. Um, what's up?"

Mary smiled and tucked her dark curls back behind both ears. "I'm kinda surprised to see you here. I mean, here, the meeting. I knew you'd be going to school here already. So, you have the night off?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah, Michael told me about the m-meetings, and I thought I should check it out. Um, and Denise had me on all weekend, but I'm on nights starting Wednesday. Accommodating the school hours and all." She smiled nervously.

"That's cool, I'm on the same hours as you most of the time, then." Mary hesitated, looked down, and then back up. "So. Nice seeing you. I just wanted to say hi, but I should go, though. Uh, bye." With that, the dark-haired waitress turned and disappeared out the door.

"Bye?" Tara said. "Um, okay."

Michael chuckled. "Well, let's get going, then. I'm sure you two will see each other later," he said and nudged Tara's arm.

"W-what? I mean, yeah, we, we work together," the blonde said. "So, we see each other a lot. Kind of."

Michael shook his head. "Yeah. Well, Amy and I were gonna go hang out at the Bronze. If you're up for going…?" he trailed off, leaving the invitation open.

"Yeah! It would be cool if you could come with us, Tara," Amy added excitedly. "There's supposed to be a DJ tonight instead of a live band, I heard."

Tara nodded and gave a half-smile. "That sounds pretty fun. If you're sure you want me to go?"

"Of course we want you to go," Michael grinned. "We wouldn't have invited you otherwise."

"Okay, then. I'll go. Um, what's the Bronze?"