Yay! I got some reviews! Pat on the backs to you all! And this time I shall endeavour to STAY ON TOPIC. I may not succeed, but I shall do my darndest. This chapter is a bit dumb. The thing about Kevin is OTT, I know, but it isn't meant to be overly realistic. Oh, and I watched "Dogfight" last night – LOVED IT! The ending was perfect. I cried and cried. Had a shower, cried. Woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink, cried. I'm such a sook. But if you think that's bad, you should see after Stand By Me. Oh dear. ANYWAY, on with the lame chapter…

CHAPTER TWO

The next week, Monday morning, Tess found me in my room, pretending to snore into my pillow.

"Don't you think you should get out of bed?"

"No," I mumbled.

"Grow up. Seriously. Get. Out. Of. Bed. You have half an hour before school starts." She looked at me expectantly, as if she actually thought I'd get up.

Pssh. I thought she knew me better than that.

"I can't. Too embarrassed. Too lazy. Anyway, what are you doing at my house?"

"What are you talking about! I practically LIVE at your house." (It's true, for some reason she was always hanging around at my place.) "Now GET YOUR ARSE OUT OF BED!"

She was worse than my mother.

Eventually, though, I did pull myself off my mattress, hitting my head (as usual) on the bookshelf that was above my bed.

"Why do I even HAVE that shelf?"

Tess was waiting for me downstairs, talking to Mum. I've never had a problem with my parents not liking my friends. On the contrary, they seem to like my friends more than they like me. I could hear them yabbering away. I pulled on some clothes and rushed into the kitchen, resisting the urge to yell "TA-DAAAAA!".

I grabbed an apple, waved chao-chao to the room and, along with Tess, dashed outside to catch the bus. On the way to school, I kept getting the urge to put a paper bag over my head so that I would be unable to see Kevin Baker….and he wouldn't be able to see me. Well, okay, he would, he definitely would see me, I mean, not that many people wear paper bags on their heads.

I guess I'd better explain why I was acting so weird. (Weirder than normal, at any rate.) That weekend, my "Get Kevin Baker" plan had reached it's climax. It was the moment of truth. I was going to ASK HIM OUT. Big deal. Very big deal.

Tess and I had planned everything. We had done our research. We knew where Kevin would be on Saturday morning (walking his dog around the block outside his house), we knew what kind of girls he went for (blonde, busty things – I seriously considered dying my hair, but I was broke) and we knew what his favourite colour was (dark blue). So it should have gone really smoothly.

Trouble was, we had forgotten ONE MAJOR THING: my atrocity at handling all situations with member of the opposite sex.

Here's the gist of the conversation on that fateful morning.

Kevin: walking

Elle: stalking

Kevin: turns Wha- oh, hey.

Elle: Hiiiiiiiiii….red face, idiotic voice

Kevin: Um, how are you?

Elle: Good. Great. You?

Kevin: Pretty good.

Elle: That's good. That's great!

Kevin: Well, I guess I'll see you in Algebra on Mon-

Elle: No!

Kevin: scared Uh…

Elle: What do you think you are doing? (What did I just say?) I mean, tonight. I mean, what are you thinking of doing tonight? Cause, I could you know, do it with you.

Kevin: Oh, I have a family thing, sor-

Elle: Oh! Well, I could do it with them too! (WHAT!) I mean, not do it, just do…um, what I'm saying is, do you want to go out with me?

Kevin: Oh, crap, I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but I have a girlfriend.

Elle: (You liar! You do not! I researched you, you idiot.) Oh. Oh I see. Yeah, I definitely see that. Okay. So. Um. That's a no? Okay. (Wind it up, now, come on, shut up) Yeah. So, Monday. Algebra? Okay. But, I still like you, if you ever wanna, you know. Do something. I mean, I like dark blue too!

And it all really went downhill from there. Well, more like downmountain. Downsteepclifffromwhichthereisnoreturn. To this day (okay, this was all only a few months ago, but hey) I still can't believe how utterly bad my performance was. I cringe every time I think about it.

But back to Monday morning. We pulled up to the school, tramped off the bus and walked to form class. Along the way, Tess and I discussed the failure of the plan.

"Well, you screwed it up," (thanks, man, what input) "but it could have been worse! Hah, no, I'm kidding, seriously it was that bad, it couldn't possibly have been any worse." Tess grinned at me. How exactly did she think she was helping?

"Let's face it, the plan sucked," I said. "Next time, we just need to take into account that I'm a dick. And we need a more….crafty plan. More sneaky. More sly. More….crafty."

"Quite." She sighed, then stopped and faced me. "So who's next, Elle? It's really crunch time now. We only have two weeks before the dance. Who's number 2 on your hotty list?"

I pulled the crumpled pages out of my pocket. I had crossed off "Kevin Baker " and, underneath, I had recently scrawled "Chris Chambers". Tess leaned over and took a look.

"Oh gooooood," she exhaled.

"Why?"

"Oh…it just," her face was going rather pink. "It might help me with the guy I've chosen to go for."

"Oh, re-he-eally? (A.N. a la Ace Ventura) Well do tell! Who is it!"

"Um, do you know a guy called Gordon Lachance? Gordie?"

I paused and thought. "Can't say I do. Describe him."

"Well, he's really cute. Brown hair, big, adorable brown eyes, tall. He's Chris's best mate, so it works out perfectly!"

"Ahh! You mean GORDIE! Skinny guy, right? Ho dang, this is great!" Immediately, the wheels in my head began turning. Tess and I grinned at each other and did our token evil guy laughs.

Algebra class that morning was one of the worst hours of my life. I kept my head down almost the entire time. I couldn't risk seeing Kevin.

"Elizabeth, can you give us the answer to question four, please?" Mr Ritchie asked. Well of course I COULDN'T. I was too busy staring intently at my graffitied desktop. Needless to say, Mr R wasn't too impressed about that. He called me up to the front of the class to work out the equation on the board. (Which I got wrong the first 3 tries.) As he explained where I had gone wrong, I glanced around the class. Something was strange; something was…missing…..Oh.

Kevin wasn't even there.

LATER THAT DAY, IN FLAVOUR COUNTRY (AKA, MY HOUSE):

Tess and I began work on our "Ultimate Guy-getting Plan" that afternoon. We made a list of the steps we had to take:

DAY ONE: Get to know his friends. And get to know him through them. Suss out the competition. And warning: there WILL be competition.

DAY TWO: Shopping. (Not part of the plan, just needs to be done.)

DAY THREE: Casual chit-chat with guy in question. Try and get friend-of-guy to put in a good word for you and BAD word for competition.

DAY FOUR: Ask guy if he can a) help you with homework, b) tell you where something is and how to get there or c) help you carry something. BONUS TIP: injure yourself as much as possible. If you seem to be in pain, he will look after you. Great "looking into each others eyes" opportunity. Also, sprained ankle him as transport! Hopefully. Remember to start diet on DAY ONE.

DAY FIVE: Review progress and

That's as far as we got before my brother stomped upstairs to tell me that dinner had been ready for half an hour and that he'd eat my corn if I didn't hurry up. Tess and I looked at each other and performed our super tricky hand-shake.

"Good luck." She vanished into the night as I ran off to the dinner table, only to find Danny with a surprised expression and my piece of corn hanging out of his mouth.

A/N: Arghhh….This story is so UNFUNNY. Please forgive me. First day back at school today and my brain is already starting to slip out my ears. I'm sure you know the feeling.