Hehehe. Thanks for all the reviews on the Prologue of 'Sage and Susannah' ppl. I thought that getting this chapter up quite quickly was my reward to you – but it didn't seem to work that way. I lost half of it on a stupid floppy disk… last time I rely on those things to save my precious fanfiction.

Okay, I've stopped babbling. Here is chapter one of my ficcie. Have fun and enjoy reading… also, can you please remember to review:D

∞ Isa ∞

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– Sage's POV, Friday afternoon –

"Oh, come on, boo, just let me go with you." Alejandro pleaded with me. No matter how much he did, however, I would never agree to his coming to Carmel with me. That would just be total destruction.

I turned around and laughed at him, taking the army-navy surplus cap on the top of his head and putting it onto mine, "Maybe next time, sweetpea, I think I'll take this one a-solo!" I raised my arms as I said this and did a little twirl. Alejandro's hands moved to my waist and we danced a little number before letting go.

Alejandro Reveille and myself were dance partners at Baila, our local studio in Houston, Texas. We were not, however, born anywhere near each other. Alejandro was 100 Puerto Rican and I was full fledged New York, we had very many more differences, such as Alej fought with his parents all the time – I had never met mine myself. I was taken from them when I was five, all I remember are the faces of a azure eyed woman and a shaggy haired man that seemed to be burnt onto the back of my eyelids like tattoos when I slept.

As I was musing in a daydream state, Alejandro almost dropped me but managed to changed it quickly into a sleek drop. I swept the floor and was, as if someone had clicked their fingers, knocked back into reality. Alej bought be back up, hugged me around the waist and I twirled again before we stopped. Behind us, we heard faint clapping.

Antonio, Alej's Uncle who married and lived in Texas, was behind us. When I came up to him he kissed my cheeks and gave his nephew a masculine hug. "Hola, senorita Sage y senor Alejandro, tu como bein?"

I smiled right back, I had never really understood Antonio and Alej's fast Spanish converses. As both Reveille's began speaking at a swift pace, Beatrice, Antonio's wife, came up behind me and hugged me from behind. "Sage! Baby doll! How' ya been?" I turned around to face her and gave her another hug.

"Fine, Bea, et toi?" Beatrice snorted and a smile broke out upon her face soon enough.

"I'm sorry for laughing, deary, but your french still needs a little work!" She patted me on the shoulder and looked at her husband affectionately – you could tell on sight that they were gaga over each other. Bea went over to fix Antonio's collar, which was once again sticking up.

Typical Bea: the perfectionist. Alej ran away fast enough before Bea could see his untucked shirt. He did it for good purpose, though, so he did not cause an uproar in the studio. Bea would go haywire and we would have to stand like army men for at least a half an hour before she was finished lecturing us – Antonio included.

Alej joined me again and I noticed his shirt was neatly tucked in. Bea came up to him, scanned his clothes and winked at him, "Your learning, spunk bubble." Bea liked to call us different names. I was baby doll and deary, Alej was spunk bubble and sweetpea (which is where I got my nickname for Alej from) and Antonio was gorgeous and senor.

I heard Antonio sigh, "Come now, mujer-" mujer, pronounced as 'mu-keh' meant woman, the name Antonio called Bea "-let us go celebrate our senorita's last day in Houston!" He lead Bea over to us, armed wrapped around her waist.

Antonio whispered something in Alej's ear which I could not hear, and Alej ran off to go get something from his room in the roof of the studio. "Senorita," Antonio's gaze was averted to me, "You should get proper clothes on, chica, we would not want our senorita getting the flu before she arrived in her new state." I looked down at my quite revealing rehearsal dress, made by Tess, our sewing mistress, and knew exactly where Antonio was coming from.

Bea winked at me and I screamed childishly as I ran out of the dancing hall.

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- Susannah's POV, Friday afternoon –

I sighed deeply, being Susannah Simon today was too much work. Seriously. I dropped off my bag in my room, ignoring the ghostly presence at the window, and walked into the bathroom.

On noticing I was in the room, the ghost turned to me. I did not see it but I could swear he blinked three times before getting up and following me into the bathroom. Don't ask me how I knew this, but I did.

Jesse stood in the threshold of the door. I felt my face grow hot but remembered the ghostly glow surrounding him – there was no where it could go, Susannah, I reminded myself, now wash your face and get out of the bathroom!

I proceeded to do so and all the while doing it, I could feel ebony eyes on my back.

Once I washed my face and my hands, I turned around, feeling a little more revitalized. Just as I was about to breeze past Jesse, he held my shoulder lightly. A smile played on his thin – and very gorgeous – pink lips which moved softly as he spoke, Spanish accent carressing all his words.

"How was your day, Susannah?" I sighed again. Why didn't he call me querida anymore? Querida was Jesse's private nickname for me. I missed it come from his lips, sometimes purposely and sometimes accidentally. I didn't care which one – it would most probably be the latter since Jesse usually blurts it out in a sentence – as long as he said to me again. Because he hadn't called me that for ages, the longest time. Ever since we…

Well, ever since we kissed.

It was only once, and although quite short, very passionate. I remembered how my youngest stepbrother, David (I call him Doc), had came bursting into the room, talking to me about something or other and ruining the remainder of the kiss. I had broken apart quickly and started to talk to him politely as if everything was normal.

But inside I had cussed him (Doc, I mean) and how every single time I wanted to reveal my feelings – we were interrupted.

Here and now I answered Jesse's question. "It was good, Jesse." Then I turned and walked back into my bedroom. Jesse followed, I could hear his swashbuckling – er, I mean, riding – boots hit the floor softly, spurs shaking.

Ignoring him, I emptied the contents of my bag out onto the four-poster bed mom had jazzed up for me when I first came to Carmel, and sorted through the mesh of papers, textbooks and food wrappers.

Through my mixing and matching of schoolbag contents, I found a box of ticktacks. I threw a few into my mouth and continued to look for my Trig homework. Eventually, I found it in my Biology book and, moving the excess stuff off my bed, began working on it right away.

Every now and then I would look up at the window seat and see Jesse, reading one of the old tomes that Father Dominic gave him (he called it light reading… er – light?), he would look up and meet my eyes for a brief moment and then a small smile would cross his face before he started to read again.

Sighing for the gazillionth time that day, I rested my head on my left hand and started to doodle along the boarders of my Trig homework sheet. I was sure having trouble with this maths, I thought glumly.

Somehow, my body language on the subject most probably, Jesse caught onto my thoughts. His head arose and he asked, "Susannah, you look like you are having trouble with your-"

"Trigonometry." I replied dully.

"Trigonometry," Jesse repeated, nodding twice, then continued whatever he wanted to say, "May I be of some assistance? I may not know much about the advanced work you seem to be doing in the 21st century but I do have the basics which may become useful." I handed over my homework willingly, my pacer along with it.

Jesse looked at the pacer skeptically, "What is this?"

I rolled my eyes, "It's a pacer. You write with it." I stood and took the pacer from it, then scribbled on the back of the sheet a little, finally, I gave it back to him. The eyebrow with the cute little scar – one, I knew, for a matter of fact, Jesse got from a dog bite back in the 1850's – arose and Jesse studied it with fascination.

"Interesting," he said with a crooked grin up at me, my heart beat a little faster as it always did when Jesse smiled at me and he looked at the homework – taking all of it in. "Aha!" He claimed after a moment and began scribbling, with the pacer, rapidly. He did this until the lead apparently wore down. Then he just looked confused.

At this, I couldn't help but laugh. I shoved him over with a pushy "Scoot," and then clicked the end of the pacer down twice then, as the lead came through, vacated the premises of the window seat and handed Jesse the pacer back.

Now both eyebrows were raised, but Jesse said nothing. He just continued to scribble in, what seemed to be the answers. I couldn't see whether or not they were correct because Jesse's hand just zoomed across the page. I noticed, with a small smile, that he was left handed. Wasn't there, like, a law back in 1850's about people having to be right handed? I didn't know. Maybe I was just thinking to much.

Or too little.

The latter must have been true, Jesse, after a moment or two, handed back my work – three pages of Trig filled in with the working out included. Problem was – Jesse's handwriting was old-fashioned, and, unlike my messy scrawl, very much neat.

But who cares about that right now! I thought as I looked at the answers, I registered that they were all correct. When I showed Mom, who was an expert at these things, she agreed. Then she asked who wrote them out. I told her I would come back to her on that one and she just stared at me. Uh-oh. Mom was coming onto me.

Meh. I was more stunned at the fact that – JESSE WAS A TRIGONOMETRY GENIUS!

That's a little too much, if you know what I mean. Your boyfriend being a Trigonometry genius while you can't even succeed in simple algebra sums. I couldn't really call Jesse my boyfriend though, he had only kissed me once and had never even asked me out.

Well, shouldn't that kiss mean something to him? It sure meant a lot to me – in the relation of us. This should at least mean that Jesse liked me even just a little bit in that special way, shouldn't it?

I was at a loss, with both trig and the status of myself towards Jesse.

When I came back into the room after having the chat with my mom, Jesse was back to reading. I looked down at the red ticks on the page. "Helloooooo… Mathematical Genius? Yeah, it's just Suze here telling you, Jesse, received an A+ on your Trig homework… or, actually… my Trig homework, to be exact."

Jesse looked up from his book, apparently not hearing a word I had just said, "Huh?" He asked, eyebrows again raised. I breathed out in a huff, my sarcasm was so wasted on him. Yeah, that's right. Him and my mom. My mom was just to happy and Jesse was obviously too smart to know what my dumb comments actually meant. That and he was not hip with the lingo much.

Meh. Whatever.

"What did you say before Susannah, lo siento, I was reading." A smile was plastered on his face.

My own eyebrow raised, I put my hands on my hips and smirked, "I just came to tell you that your apparently a mathematical genius. Can you do my homework for the rest of the year?"

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The end of chapter one… Finally. Lol. Jesse is a mathematical genius… don't ask where that came from. Most probably out of my mouth as a burp. Or out of my ass as a fart, I do NOT know.

Gah. Thanks SO so much, again, for your reviews on last chapter. In the next, we will be learning a lot more about Sage and how she's changed from the seemingly quite, brainy typed girl to the carefree, graceful dancer. By the way, while I'm at it, Sage's school in Texas commences earlier than the Mission Academy, thus finishing earlier as well. Don't ask me if this is true, though, I'm from Auckland, New Zealand.

Please review, I should try and get the next chapter written as soon as I can but I cannot make any promises.

As for now? Our acknowledgements for the Prologue:

Alexlily – Why thank you for the review. The poem was easy, we are learning about dream poetry in school so I decided to write a story one about the mediator. Pvtt.

Mysteriously Mystical – Five minutes, believe it or not. I'm good at rhyming words. The 'fib' part was a little hard though. It took a lot of brain cells to think it up.

Iluvmeg – thinking about evil names is perfectly fine. But Sage isn't an evil character… now Paul? Whoo yeah! Evil AND hot. Lol.

N.S.Hoerter – Thank you:)

Amo el Jesse – Hehehehe. Did you like this update? Tell me:) :) :)

Whitedestiny34 – It's only for the prologue, as you can see by this chapter. I just wanted to try something new, ya know? Heh.

L l u v i a – Thanks, Raine. You bright up my live… which sucks… ya ya… don't mind my gay singing. Lol. I LOVE REVIEWS:D How's chappie 1 of Torero? I've finished the prologue for you:grins:

Sweetsonwhells – what type of a story do you think it would be if Jesse and Paul weren't involved? BORING. That's what. Thanks for r&r-ing me.

Nikki007 – Heh. Thanks. You MUST update on your stories… but alas, I know how you feel. It's hard with all the pressure of other things, such as school (die) and actually having a social life… unlike Suze… lol. Joking. She rocks.

Until next time…

∞ Isa ∞