Aaaaah, took me too long to get this out! But hey, last chapter folks! It's long! Hope you like!

A big thank you to my reviewers!!

neon rose - thank you!

penny - :D Ok!

..

Chapter 4

"I give up."
It was still a nippy Wednesday afternoon, but Carl and Hoodsey sat on the porch doing their English homework. Hoodsey stopped picking at his purple jacket and glanced over at Carl's paper.
"It is kinda hard–"
Carl nodded. "I mean, I don't want to, like, like him on the first because he might think I'm pranking him, but it's the dance and I want to do something...."
"Oh. I thought you meant homework. Uh... I thought you couldn't go to the dance?"
"Well you thought wrong, Hoods," he replied, swinging his legs up onto the side railing and lying back, hands behind his head. "I figure I can outsmart Momster by blaring some music in my room and locking the door, and sneak out my window to the dance. Ginger does it all the time and hasn't gotten caught yet. By the time to CD runs out I'll already be at the dance."
The Bishop watched his friend's paper flutter to the ground, then looked back up at Carl. "You're just going to get in more trouble when your mom tells you to go to bed and you're not there."
"Oh well, I'll deal with it later."

Hoodsey sighed. He recalled some of their previous stunts that had landed them in trouble. Stealing another eyeball from the hospital had nearly made Lois lose her job, and they had had to do community service, just like Ginger and her friends. Making an invincibility potion with instructions from a book had also screwed up big time when they'd used some poisonous berries–"but I thought they were mulberries!" Carl had claimed–and made a dozen of their classmates sick before someone official had intervened. They'd gotten another hundred hours of community service for that one.
But when he looked at it from this perspective, they'd really done nothing of that sort for almost a year. They were well into seventh grade, would be going into eighth. Ginger was going to start tenth grade in a few months. Lois and Dr. Dave had divorced nearly six months ago for family issues; he thought Lois was taking it rather well. The thing they'd been so afraid of several years before was happening. They were maturing, losing their childish innocence. "Oh, they're just stupid kids," didn't work anymore. Maybe the stupid part, but they weren't really all that immature anymore. They just tended to pick the wrong decision once in a while.
Thus, one bad decision could topple them into more trouble than they'd gotten into before. Surely, going to the dance wouldn't be as big a deal as the things they'd done in the past, right?

"Where are you going?"
Carl glanced at the doorway as he finished assembling his fire escape ladder and threw it out his window. Unlike his sister, currently residing in his doorway, he didn't have any lattice to climb up and down on.
"A walk." He stamped the floor lightly, looking out the window again.
"Another one of those? Where've you been going?"
"Confidential," he shot back, leaning out the window and looking down. Crap, he noticed. The edge of the ladder is visible in the living room window.
"Carl." She shut the door and walked up to join him by the window. "You don't want to get in trouble again, do you? You know how much Mom worries about us since she divorced Dave. She's going to go nuts on you if you sneak out again, especially after doing it before."
"Oh well. Look. I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm testing this ladder so that I can use it with no problems tomorrow."
"Ooooh," Ginger cooed, suddenly grinning. "Meeting a special someone tomorrow at the dance?"
"You could say that."
"Who?"
"None of your beeswax."

"Oh come on," Ginger said, fiddling with a loose strand of hair. She'd done something to make it less curly, Carl noticed. It was almost completely straight, with a few kinks left here and there. "If you tell me who she is, I'll let you go out of my room, and I'll cover for you. Come on, no lies."
Carl clenched his teeth. This opportunity was too good to miss. But strike out once and Ginger would tip off their mom. Obviously he couldn't say Noelle–it wasn't the type of information he would keep classified–but he couldn't come out and say the truth either.
"Erh... Polly."
"Who?" Ginger's eyebrows went in separate directions, one up and one down. The end affect was a raised eyebrow.
"Polly Shuster. She's in my class. Acts like a bird."
He was getting a really odd feeling in his stomach. He'd had a brief relationship with Polly during Noelle's absence. It wasn't anything he'd care to repeat.
"Uh... right, Carl. I'm supposed to believe that?"
Oh no, she knows I'm lying. "Hey, I'm attracted to weirdness, sis."
"Ah. Whatever, Carl. You can use my window." She looked a little disappointed.
"Thanks Ging!" He happily closed Ginger out of his bedroom, then fell onto his bed. "I'm just one day away from the most confusing day of my life," he informed his calendar, reaching up enough to cross out the last day of the month.

"Carl! Up!"
"Uggh..." A roll in the wrong direction. A thump.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Ginger said from the door, unbuttoning her smiley pajama top on her way to the bathroom. "Don't want to be bruised in the head for... eh... Polly." She stopped and gave him an odd look. "Wait. Wasn't that the girl that you–"
He shut the door in her face.
"Carl! I said UP!"
A groan.
"Carl!" Lois peered around the door. "What's taking you?"
"I don't feel very good," Carl mumbled, rolling over again.

Lois left him in bed, and apparently let him sleep, because by the time he woke up it was past noon, and school would be out in less than an hour. Rubbing his eyes, Carl sat up slowly, looking up at the calendar. The dance.
He'd told Blake he wouldn't be there. Blake had said he wasn't going either. But maybe since Carl embarrassed him he would go anyway? It was hard to say. Blake didn't seem the type to play up to and challenge his own fears–he was more of the type that would avoid them at almost all costs. But hey, you never know. So what was he going to do? There wasn't much point in going if he hadn't bothered to think up an original prank for the entire group of people, and he had no time left. Going without a prank would cause him to lose face. And since the high school was invited, he wasn't looking forward to hanging out with Hoodsey, who would be watching Macie the entire time as she hung out with Andrew. The boy couldn't multi-task very well.
Ginger apparently wasn't going. She must still be sour about breaking up with Darren, Carl concluded. Funny, just a few days ago she'd been whining about what to wear. Girls are so odd.

So what would he do? He had a feeling his sickness was partly due to late-night worrying about pranks to pull on Blake, and partly to nervousness. Carl's hands weakened and he fell backwards. He liked Blake. But there was no way he was gay. He liked Blake and he wasn't gay. It was like a phenomenon, really.
Carl rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. Liking a boy kind of required being gay, or at least bisexual. He sighed, feeling a headache coming on.

Four o'clock. Walking students had come home from the Lucky School District by now. Of course, Blake Gripling wasn't a walker, though. Honestly, most of the Griplings felt transportation a must to go anywhere further than down the street. No chance of seeing him in a questionable neighborhood like Sheltered Shrubs, anyway.
Seeing Blake. Carl hadn't seen hide nor hair of Blake on Wednesday or Thursday. The boy must've sat at the back of their classes together. He felt a little bit guilty. Certainly he should've realized that saying it right to Blake wouldn't be the best idea. Surely.
And there were three hours until he would leave for the dance, trying his luck at catching Blake there anyway. He'd planned it all out, playing on his sickness; at seven-ten, ten minutes after the dance was to start, he would make sure Lois saw him going up to bed. He would lock his door from the outside, give Ginger his made-up story, and leave through her window. He would walk the thirty minutes to the dance with his bookbag, containing a flashlight for his trip home. If Blake shows, he would figure out some way to corner him in the hallway and talk to him; if not, he'd check in with Hoodsey and probably leave early.
He glanced into a little mirror on his dresser. His clothing was all wrinkled. He'd have to change into something at least a little more formal; in the past he'd not been let into dances because he'd worn too casual of clothing. Hearing a thump next door and clueless as to what to wear, he figured that Ginger would probably love to help him find a good outfit.

"Ginger?"
"Is that you, Carl? Be out in a minute!"
Three seconds later, the door opened to Ginger, wearing a dress and with her hair up.
"Uh. I thought you weren't going to the dance?" Carl quickly rethought his plan, and decided that whether Ginger was there or not, he'd likely still be able to get away with going.
"Oh. Well, Ian stopped me in the hall earlier–"
"Oh, that's good..." Carl said, to stop her from going on for five minutes about how much she and Ian are so perfect together. "I wanted to ask you if you have any idea what I should wear. I want to impress... eh... Polly, but I don't want to look overd–"
"Of course, no problem," Ginger said, and led the way back to his room rather eagerly. In the past few months, Ginger had delighted in being Carl's fashion adviser. Almost too much, it seemed.

And within seven minutes, countless casual buttoned shirts and cardigans sat on his bed, with a single pair each of dark denim jeans and khaki pants.
"Does Polly like classic styles or the darker type?" Ginger asked him, scratching her head.
"Er... what?"
Ginger grinned and picked up the khaki pants. "Here. You're wearing these. Put them on.
"Yes sir!" Carl muttered under his breath, replacing his pajamas with the khakis as Ginger turned back to the shirts.
Carl ended up with the khakis and a nice dress shirt that wasn't overly formal; Ginger, frowning at his sneakers, told him to wear his pair of brown leather shoes that he kept in his closet for everything except weddings and funerals. As soon as she left, he put them back in the closet when he cleaned up the rest of his clothes. He put his outfit inside his desk; out of sight, but accessible for when he came upstairs to go to bed.

During dinner, Carl pretended to have a stomach ache and a headache, but still took his baked potato up to his room where he devoured it hungrily, having had no meals earlier. Desperately hoping for free food at the dance, he took his plate back downstairs, putting on a pained face that was only half-fake.
Next came the longest part of the evening; he needed to make sure he was with Lois for at least ten minutes after Ginger left. Thus, he went into the living room about five minutes before Ginger was to leave (Ian's older brother was taking them both in his car, apparently) and played up on his woefulness in front of his mother.
Oh, yawning here and there, wincing, twitching, pretending to be sleepy and tippy from sickness was easy. Acting weird was his forte. But the waiting was the killer; he kept wondering if he'd have to do half an hour there and back in vain, if Blake wouldn't show up. And his mother seemed to keep wanting to send him up earlier than he could afford.
Ginger finally left. Only ten more minutes of torture.

He wondered what he would do if Polly and Ginger met at the dance. Ginger had probably seen Polly once or twice in the three or so weeks that they tried dating earlier in the school year... he couldn't remember. Blake. What was he going to do about Blake?
Ten minutes finally passed, and Carl had to measure his steps to keep from racing upstairs. He changed quickly and quietly, and only realized he didn't have a flashlight when he picked up his backpack and realized it wasn't in there. He didn't have time to change back into pajamas, and Lois would question his getting a flashlight when he was supposed to be asleep. Mentally cursing, he decided he'd deal with that when he had to walk home at nine. Or maybe Ginger would remember him and offer him a ride home with Ian and Ian's brother. Or maybe he'd leave when it was still light, but that was doubtful. At a quarter past seven, it was already getting dark. It would probably be almost black when he would get to Lucky High at seven forty-five.
Locking his room and hiding the key in the bookcase in the hallway, he crept around the creaky spot in the floor to Ginger's room. It wasn't locked, thankfully, and the window was open. He carefully climbed down, and started his uphill hike to the high school.

The walk there made him impatient; he didn't want to run lest he sweat in his nice clothes, but he didn't want to walk as slow as he was. Carl stepped at a quick pace, but it felt as slow as if he were crawling there.
He stopped at the intersection that led to Protected Pines, staring up at the neat rows of large houses on the mountain. Among them he could almost pick out the Gripling's house, but not quite. He wrenched his vision away and continued with a fresh determination that became giddy nervousness as he heard the fountain in front of his school and knew that there was one hill between him and the boy who kept finding his way back into Carl's mind.
There was a large banner hanging in front of the high school with 'Lucky Jr. High and High Combined Spring Dance' in block letters surrounded by blobs which Carl supposed must be goats. He walked under it as he entered the brightly-lit high school.

A section of lockers past the cafeteria was roped off and dark; he stared into this dark area, trying and failing several times to regather his nerves, until finally the bored-looking senior in charge of admission asked him if he was going to go in or stand there the entire time.
Music blasted in his ears even before the doors to the cafeteria were shut behind him, and he immediately saw Ginger, drinking punch and laughing at something a black-haired kid had just said. In another corner was Hoodsey, trying to fend off Polly, not paying attention as Macie and Andrew danced in the area without tables.

He was disappointed not to see Blake. What had he expected? He'd told the blonde that he wasn't going to come, and Blake had told him that he wasn't coming, either. But a part of him had hoped that maybe he would show up anyway. He wanted to see him. He didn't know what else. What the Gripling must be thinking... Carl had practically told him he knew that Blake liked him, and then the boy had avoided him for the life of him. He must've thought Carl was going to tease him because he was gay. Distracted, Carl realized his forehead was perspiring, and he slowly made his way through the masses to the punch bowl, looking around. He wanted to see Blake before Blake saw him and ran off.

The punch had no flavor whatsoever, and he tossed his cup in the trash, feeling very thirsty. He'd already eaten two cookies and needed something that would quench his thirst, not add to it. Glancing out the doors, he noticed that the senior had apparently joined in or had gone to the bathroom, and he snuck out in search of a water fountain.
Carl's search led him to the roped-off area; ducking under, he turned a corner and started through a row of lockers, wondering at the sudden blackness, when his foot hit something.
There was a muffled gasp as Carl tripped, and then a thump as he landed. He rolled over and grabbed at the first thing he felt, which happened to be someone's leg. And then he squeezed his eyes shut, because the voice that shakily asked, "who's there?" was very familiar and sounded like Blake had just been crying when Carl interrupted him.

"Blake?"
"Oh no," the other boy said, losing his own balance as he tried to shake his foot loose, and landed on Carl with a wince, shoe flying off into the darkness. "Er." It was a rather awkward position, to say the least.
"Blake, I–"
"No, I realized just how stupid I was being, and then I thought–"
"Blake–"
"–And I just wanted to tell you that if you never bring it up I-I'll never mention," here Carl heard a sniff, "it again if you don't, I just–"
"Blake, shut up for a second."
Blake cut off his words in the middle of sentence, and Carl did the first thing that came to mind.
"First, this." With a little effort, he rolled over so that Blake was under him, shifting so he wouldn't be squashed. "Next, I wanted to tell you that the reason I thought your crush on me was amusing because I'd just realized that I liked you too."

There was a very pained silence. "Blake?"
"No, Foutley, I'm not going to let you trick me with something like this–"
Carl remembered the date. "This is not an April fool, damnit," he told the boy that he was pinning to the ground. Biting his lip, he wondered whether he should kiss him now or what.
"Uh huh. I'm not going to believe it, I just–I don't want you to hurt me like that, Foutley, I–get off of me!"
"Why won't you believe–?" Carl asked. The question was punctuated by a punch to his shoulder that came out of nowhere. "Ooof!"
"Because you hate me, Foutley, you told me yourself!" Another punch. "Get–off–of–"
Carl chose this moment to lean in and try to find the Gripling's lips.
The kiss pacified Blake, and his arms seemed to fall to the side and eventually end up somewhere around Carl's head, pulling him closer in rather mindless and clumsy passion. The only thing that registered in his head the entire time was that Blake was kissing him back....

Carl rolled off of the Gripling, wiping Blake's spit off of his lips with the back of his hand, turning to face where he could see the very faint outline of him in the dark. "So... er... what do we do now?"
"Was... that wasn't... please don't say that that was just–"
"Quit your worrying, I just chose a rather odd day to let you know I like you," Carl said, poking him. "Even I'm not cruel enough to kiss you as a prank on April Fool's Day. And I wouldn't swap spit with just anyone," he added as an afterthought.
He felt Blake's body heat as the boy crept closer to him, to lean on his shoulder against the row of lockers. "What do you want to do now?"
The sound of loud music and chatter in the distance brought Carl back to reality in a rather solid bump. "Actually, I want to get out of here and walk home with you," Carl said, shrugging. "I need to be home by the time Ginger gets home, since I... er... snuck out." He felt tear trails on the side of Blake's face. "Why were you crying?"

"Crying? Me?" A nervous laugh. "I wasn't–"
"Uh huh. Really, why were you crying, Blake?"
"Because I came here hoping to see you and not knowing what to do whether I did or didn't. I didn't want to see you because I thought you'd tell everyone about... well. And I wanted to see you because I wanted you to find me...."
Carl pulled Blake closer in a half-hug, awkward from the way they were seated. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... I didn't think you'd run away when I said I knew who you liked. I thought you'd give me time to explain," he grinned despite himself.
"Let's start walking," Blake said, standing up and pulling Carl with him. "We can talk more on the way."
"It's dark," Carl said, pulling Blake into another quicker kiss. "Are you sure you don't want to call Winston?"
"Nah," Blake said, putting an arm around Carl. "So... er... are we boyfriends or something?"
"We better be, I didn't go through all that for nothing," the other boy replied, grinning in the dark. "Come on, it's a long walk home."