DISCLAIMER – I do not own The Weekenders or any of the show's characters. Doug Langdale and Disney own them. I also do not own A Midsummer Night's Dream. The title and a quote I used in this piece of fanfiction both belong to William Shakespeare.
AUTHOR'S NOTE – Hello there! This is BeeKay84, author of the Weekenders fanfiction A sorrow shared. This is my second piece of Weekenders fanfiction which I finally finished. I was hoping I could release it months earlier, but I was busier than I first thought I'd be. So, my time for writing was pretty scarce. But here it is! Please note that English is not my native language, so I apologize for any mistakes in advance. And I know that – as a Weekenders fanfic writer – I'm pretty unknown, and I'm not (and will never be) even nearly as good as admireable authors, like Attic Man, Lord Malachite, Didjargo or Gerarddominus. But still, I love writing and hope you enjoy this little story at least a bit. My first Weekenders fanfic was written in script form, which IMHO works well with fanfiction that is supposed to be like a 10-minutes-episode. Though this story is more like a 10-minutes-episode as well, I attempted at novel form this time. That's why I parted it in 3 chapters. Now, I hope you enjoy. ;)
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THE WEEKENDERS: A MIDSUMMER WEEKEND'S DREAM
-FRIDAY-It was a normal Friday afternoon at Bahia Bay Middle School. The bell rang after the last class and the kids were racing out of the building, visibly happy that they had overcome yet another school week and the weekend had started. Among them was Tino who calmly, but with a joyous smile on his face, marched towards the exit.
"Hi, here's Tino," he happily shouted, while the students still ran past him in the greyed background. "This weekend is a very special weekend! Well, neither there's a great band coming to town, nor a totally pointless and stupid competition to take part in – but let me tell you: This weekend is gonna be so special that there can't possibly be anything more special! It's gonna be the one and only, the greatest, the…"
"Tino!" Carver shouted beside him. "Get to the point already!"
"Alright, alright," Tino sighed. "I just wanted to put some suspense in here. Okay, check this out: This weekend, it's gonna be the 8th anniversary of our friendship! Now, if that's not special?"
"It's hard to believe we've known each other for so long now," Carver said. The background turned back to normal, as Lor and Tish joined them.
"We have to do something totally awesome this weekend, something very special," Tino stated. "But first, we need a suitable, quiet place to discuss what we could do."
"Let's go eat some pizza!" Lor shouted enthusiastically.
"No, there we'd only be disturbed by that strange pizza guy with some stupid show," Carver retorted. "It's best when we go over to Tish's. There aren't any annoying siblings or mind-reading mothers around, either."
"Alright," Tish agreed, and so they went right on.
On their way there, the four of them didn't talk much about school or about their homework. They rather came up with memories from the earliest days of their friendship and all the years following. They couldn't even count all those weekends they had spent together. There really must have been something very special about their friendship, something that was able to keep four such different young people together for such a long time. And that was indeed a reason to celebrate, they all agreed. They had to think of something very special.
When they finally arrived at the fence around the beautiful little house of the Katsufrakis family and Tish was about to open the door, she suddenly stopped and stared. While the others were still giggling about one of their many memories from the weekends past, Tish noticed something extremely strange: In front of the fence, right in the middle of the door, there lay a relatively big stone that clearly contrasted from the white fence. But the strange thing was: The stone had the shape of a heart.
"Ey Tish, what's up?" Lor inquired as she noticed Tish's stiff posture.
Carver followed Tish's confused stare at the ground with his own eyes. "Oh, looks like somebody wanted to block the way."
Tino shook his head and remarked: "That's not what it looks like to me. Notice the shape of this stone." He added in a conspiratorial voice: "There seems to be something more about it…"
Tish cleared her throat and stuttered: "Um, that, that certainly is nothing but a… a coincidence. Yes. A coincidence. There are many – many stones that by chance look like, you know… Well, I don't think that has anything to do with…" But when she bent down to pick up the stone, an envelope came into view underneath it. It said "Petratishkovna".
Tino grinned: "So? You're sure there's nothing about it?"
Tish ashamedly looked down at the ground and then back on the letter. They all waited eagerly, but Tish didn't do anything. Lor finally couldn't stand it any longer and demanded: "Come on, open it already!"
"And read it aloud!" Carver added.
Tish still felt entirely unsure and ashamed. Should she really read the letter aloud to her friends? On the other hand, the four of them had told each other many a secret already in the past years. She opened the letter and unfolded it, as it only consisted of a single piece of paper that has been folded to an envelope. Tish's eyes moved from the left to the right and to the left again, line after line. And suddenly, she took a deep breath and shouted joyously: "That's unbelieveable!"
"What? Tell us already!" Lor exclaimed.
Tish beamed: "Just listen to this!
'Petratishkovna, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!'"
Tish sighed and held the letter up to her heart.
The others just stared at her in confusion. "Huh?" Carver asked. "What kind of senseless stuff is that?"
Tish hissed: "That's from William Shakespeare, you ignorants!" Then she became calmer: "It's a quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to be precise."
"Oh right, Shakespeare!" Tino noticed.
"Well, that would explain a lot," Carver added.
"What, Shakespeare dedicated one of his poems to Tish?" Lor asked. The others gave her some blank stares. "What?"
"That's just incredible!" Tish continued dreamily. "Who could have written that? Who could, by any chance, suspect that I admire Shakespeare and his works?"
Tino, Carver and Lor looked at her with bored expressions.
"Well," Tish sighed. "Just about anyone."
Of course, this incident totally messed up their plans – or rather the attempt of making plans – for this weekend. First, to avoid Tish's parents' interference, they went to Snack Shack's.
While they were queuing in front of it, Tish said to Lor who was standing behind her: "How are we supposed to find out who wrote that letter? We have to proceed in a tactical and cunning way."
Lor noticed Percy getting at the end of the line behind her, turned around, grabbed him by the collar and bellowed at him: "Was it you who wrote that letter to Tish? HUH? Come on, admit it already!"
Percy stuttered in a shocked manner: "But… but… err, what letter?"
Lor kept screaming at him: "Don't try to deny it, or else I'll glue you to the wall!"
Percy freed himself and ran away as fast as he could. Tish glared at Lor. "What?" Lor uttered. Tish just rolled her eyes and turned around again, for it was her turn now.
After all four of them got their chili-cheese-fries, they sat down at their regular table. Tino started: "Okay, first of all we should think about who the letter could be from."
"Well, it must be someone who is well-read and knows how to use the words of Shakespeare," Tish concluded.
"Besides, that someone must know your complete first name," Carver added.
"And what if it was one of you guys?" Lor suggested and alternately pointed at Tino and Carver.
"No, no, no, I sure didn't do it!" Carver clarified.
"One would've noticed that immediately, because then the letter would've been illegible," Tino jibed at him. Turning to Tish, he said: "But it wasn't me, either, I swear."
"But who else knows Tish's full name – and is able to spell it correctly?" Lor interposed.
"Well, I think that includes just about anyone at school. After all, my name appears in the yearbook," Tish explained. "And as Shakespeare's works are frequently used as reading matter in class, that doesn't really limit the bounds of possibility." A long silence followed.
"Maybe it was Bluke!" Lor said suddenly.
"No, maybe it was Leard," Carver suggested.
"Or could it be Percy?" Tish considered.
Tino wanted to suggest something as well, but then he just sighed: "I don't think this is gonna help."
"Tino's right," Tish agreed. "I suggest we all think to ourselves in silence first. Then, every one grabs a napkin and writes down the name of someone who, in his opinion, is most likely to be the author of that letter. And then, we try to figure out together whose suggestion is the most probable one."
They thought about it for a few minutes, in which Carver ate the most chili-cheese-fries at the same time. Then, Tish signaled them to grab a napkin, and they all wrote something down. Tino hesitated and in the end turned the blank napkin around.
Tish was the first to turn her napkin around and explained: "I suspect my attempt at falling in love with Percy back then might have touched him more than he admitted in the first place."
Lor was next. Her napkin said "Bluke". "I just couldn't come up with anyone else," she said apologetically.
When Carver turned his napkin around, Lor, Tish and Tino gasped: "What! HANS?"
Carver justified: "What? I just didn't want to stick with my first opinion – like you did."
"What about you, Tino?" Tish asked.
"Well, I, um, actually I didn't – um, come up with anyone," he stuttered.
"That can't be," Carver noticed. "You're too nervous right now."
"No, I, I can't say it. At least not here."
"Why not?"
"I just can't. I can't say it – in front of Lor."
"What? Why not in front of me?" Lor shouted.
"Oh, you mean…?" Carver suspected it already.
Tino sighed. "Yes… I believe it could have been Thomson."
"What? No way!" Lor stood up, shocked. "Not in this life!"
"Lor, calm down!" Tish said.
"No, I won't calm down!" Lor screamed even louder.
"Lor, that doesn't mean he actually was it. It's nothing but a suspicion," Tish tried.
"You better hope he wasn't!" Lor sat down again and looked at Tish in a threatening way. "Or else I don't know what!"
"Okay, now calm down!" Carver uttered. "So, how are we gonna find out who it was? Do we have to spy on every guy, or what?"
"Hey, that's not a too bad idea…," Tino said in a conspiratorial voice.
"You want to spy on Thomson?" Lor was shocked. "No, count me out!"
"Well, fine, Lor, we're gonna find out without you," Carver replied. "Probably it's even easier without you."
"Yeah," Tino agreed. "It could be difficult to spy on Thomson with Lor shouting at us he can't be it."
"Okay, so tomorrow, we'll just start with Thomson…," Carver suggested.
They all seemed to ignore Lor and her supressed anger, until she stood up and proclaimed: "Okay, fine, go on and do your stupid spy game, but keep me out of it! I'm going home to do my homework!" She grabbed her remaining chili-cheese-fries and angrily stamped away. The others just gaped after her.
"Wow. Lor is going home to do her homework… voluntarily!" Carver noticed.
"She really must be pretty disturbed…," Tino added.
The three of them were still sitting at Snack Shack's for quite a long time, discussing how to proceed. Tish was pretty silent the whole time, but Tino and Carver didn't really notice. Then, they all went home and did their homework in order to have enough time left for their mission. They found out that Thomson had a football practice on Saturday morning. And there, they wanted to lie in wait for him, hoping that they could solve the secret of the mysterious love letter.
End of Chapter One