Anderson: Rob is hiding in the closet! Me: And…? Danny and Sabrina: We want to use it. Me: What did we say about the friggin' closet? Danny: No using it for that purpose – aw, c'mon! Me: NO! Charlie: Er, yeah, we'd prefer that you didn't, really, it's just a touch disturbing. Rob: I'm still not coming out! Geoff: Is he gay or something, because that would explain a bit. Me: He is not gay, he has a girlfriend, remember? And that's more than we can say for you. Geoff: Whatever. Joel: Why is the fridge empty…again? Anderson: ((burps)) Uh…I have no clue whatsoever. Me: Good lord, it's impossible to feed six guys with one fridge! Heck, it's impossible to feed one!

All we can say is that Rob's little out burst has done wonders for him. All of a sudden girls wanted him. Apparently, a guy who could quote Shakespeare, and romantic Shakespeare, at the drop of a hat was hot. And Rob, well, poor Rob, had every girl fourteen and up after him. None of the other boys if my group would have said no to this, but I knew Rob had Katie back home. And it was trying him dearly to ignore all of the pretty girls who were vying for his attentions, maybe to get a little poetry from him.

Anderson, Sean, Geoff and Danny could soon be witnessed carrying volumes of poetry, looking for anything and everything that could count as romantic. The angle wasn't working for them though, only Rob could pull it off. In fact, in the end, I think the only girls not wooed by them were Sabrina and I; a fact that Sabrina pointed out in late January during a club meeting as the interest of the girls in Rob was peaking.

They laughed it off, saying that they couldn't, no way, look at us that way. It seemed a little sad, but I didn't care much. I didn't need a good friendship ruined, but Sabs just seemed to be taking the whole thing personally.

"It's because of my glasses and my hair isn't it?" she pouted. "I keep telling my mother that this perm is just hideous, but she insists and-"

"It's not what you look like Sabs, it's just that you're a good friend." Anderson broke in lazily. "'Sides, how could I come to you for help if we broke up and you never wanted to see me again?"

Sabrina huffed. Danny was absentmindedly blowing smoke rings through the small hole of the cavern. His brother apparently smuggled him the smokes during vacations and visits. None of us really liked his dirty habit, my own father had smoked until Theo was diagnosed with asthma and the smoke interfered with his breathing, so I knew what it was like to live with one but it didn't appeal to me anymore. As Sabrina argued her case, he snuffed his cigarette and propped himself from where he'd been lying, lounging on his elbows. He shook his dirty blond hair out of his face, hazel eyes glinting as he smiled.

"O, my love is like a red, red rose- this is for you Sabrina Meeks, don't say no one ever recited for you."

"O, my love is like a red, red rose

That's newly sprung in June,

O, my love is like a melody.

That's played sweetly in a tune.

As fair art thou, my bonny lass,

So deep in love I am,

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun!

And I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run

And fair thee weel, my only love,

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my love,

Tho' it were ten thousand mile!"

"By Robert Burns." He finished before going to flop back over onto his back. Sabrina was speechless. All she could do was just sit. Then, "Danny?"

"Huh?"

"You're of Irish descent…right?"

"Uh huh."

"That poem was Scottish."

Danny sat back up. "I take the liberty to memorize the stupid thing and I can't even get any thanks for it."

"Well no one said you had to."

"Well no one asked you to carry on about how you're not getting any attention."

"Well no one said it was you who had to give it to me!"

"Well no one told you to listen!" he yelled at her. Sabrina's eyes, well, really her glasses, were flashing dangerously. The blond and the red head were trying to kill each other off with their stares. And if looks could really kill, both of them would be nothing more than little itty bitty piles of dust. Everyone else was getting uncomfortable right then. Sabrina sniffed and did something very bold.

"Well, if I didn't know better I'd say you were hitting on me."

Danny's face blanched. "If I was, you'd know, believe me, and I would most certainly not hit on you."

"Then you think I'm ugly."

Danny rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, muttering obscenities. "You're not ugly, you're just, just-"

"Ugly."

"-Sabrina, that's all."

"And what is that supposed to mean!"

"Well," Danny was hesitating and his concentration slipping up as his thick Rhode Island accent began to surface more. "You're just sort of, you know, a friend?"

"Does that mean I'm not a girl?"

"No, but, you know, I can't screw a friendship up because someone thinks I should date her because she finds me," he lowered his voice to a smooth, suave tone and quirked his eyebrows, "irresistible."

"UGH!" It was now time for the nerd to explode. "It's because of people like you, Daniel Mc Geough, that I can't just- I don't- ah!" Sabrina began to drown in her own frenzy of words, more like half said words, and stormed out of the cave and back to the school, taking Verse with her. We all looked back at Danny who looked innocently right back at us.

"What?" he asked.

0-o-0

I had no clue that Sabs could carry a grudge for so long, none whatsoever. I'm telling you now to never get on her bad side like Danny was. He was basically being shunned, it was as if, to her, that he had never even existed. He got not even one bit of praise or anything at meetings not did he receive the help needed for schoolwork. Not only that, but rumors were flying, spreading like wildfire, that they'd been dating.

It didn't matter that all of those girls were addicted to Rob, they would have been blind not to notice Danny. I mean, the guy was near as tall as Anderson with dirty blond hair that fell with casual elegance into mischievous hazel eyes and a smile with dimples…ok, so yeah, he was good looking. And a friend, very much my friend because that was the way it was supposed to be.

Sabrina shunned him all the way through to that magical day of February fourteenth when love was supposedly in the air. A few things happened that day, some of them more memorable that others. First off, Joel and Kelly and everyone else from my friends back home sent me enough chocolate to kill an elephant; perfect, that meant it was enough to keep me satisfied. Rob got about thirty secret admirer cards all containing poetry, some of it bad, some of it half way decent. Anderson walked into breakfast, declaring cheerfully how much he hated the holiday and that if any of us so much as even thought about saying "Happy Valentine's Day" he would throttle us. Oh yeah, and Danny and Sabrina finally broke Donnelly.

There was a large English test that day, all about grammar, the cursed stuff. I was plugging away on gerund phrases when I heard someone throw down their pencil quite loudly and swipe the papers from their desk so they scatted all over the floor. Donnelly looked up from her corrections with an acid stare.

"Mr. Mc Geough, pick up you papers and finish your test."

Danny simply leaned back in his chair and answered, "No."

"Mr. Mc Geough, pick up you papers and finish your test now before I give you detention."

"No, I can't finish your god damn test because my god damn friend is too god damn pissed at me to help."

"That's it Mc Geough! To the headmaster's-"

"Well, if someone didn't have to make fun of his friends, then someone would have gotten the help to pass some class that he's about to fail." Sabrina interjected coldly, never even looking up from her paper. "If that someone-"

"What is it that would want from me?" Danny asked, finally at his wit's end about the whole situation. Sabrina looked up and glared. She opened her mouth to speak but Donnelly cut in.

"Touching that you should be trying to make up now, but there is a test for the class and you two should be down at the headmaster's office-"

"No one asked you, you old crone!" Sabrina snapped at the teacher. Donnelly was flustered for a second before calling Sabrina some very choice names that a teacher should never call her students. Sabrina, aside from the occasional outburst among friends, wasn't exactly the strongest fighter in an argument. Sometimes she would seize up, like now, against Donnelly. But today, today Sabrina was on a team, and this team had a very brazen New Englander on it.

"Don't you call her that!" He said, actually going red in the face. There was a chorus of "Ooooos" all around. The teacher rounded on him.

"Sit down!" she spat, "I cannot have my class running around when they are supposed to be taking a test."

"And teachers shouldn't be calling their students something like that!" Danny was actually clenching his fists as he yelled. Anderson and I exchanged glances and grinned, oh, this was just too good. Sabrina found her voice.

"Sit down you stupid boy!" she screamed at Danny, "I don't need you to fight my battles!"

He looked down at her. "Well you were dong an excellent job there. I can assume you like that title-"

"I most certainly do not!"

"Well, then say something about it, or were you just gong to sit there, trying to wish it all away?"

"Well, uh, maybe I will, maybe I won't, but I don't need you to help me it the point!" Sabrina was going as red as her hair. I saw Annette grinning wolfishly from the back row and mouthing "Sexy." to her friend Gina in the front. I didn't have to even guess who they were discussing. Donnelly was in the background of their argument, shrieking out obscenities and orders for them to go the headmaster's office. Finally, when she began to drown them up, they both rounded on her and told her at the top of their lungs to just shut up already.

And that must have been the final straw. She snapped. She stalked back to her desk, pulling papers and books out and shoving them into her bag. She disappeared into her backroom and emerged with a coat and hat.

"I can't take you hellions anymore! This isn't a school, this chaos; anarchy! I really wonder why this school is so highly regarded!" she reached the door and yanked it open. "I pity the poor wretch you gets stuck with you next!" And with a violent slam of a door, she was gone. Silence descended upon the room swiftly and it settled like a thick blanket of snow. Gone. The teacher we'd despised was gone.

It was Geoff who broke out with the first strains of cheering and the rest of the class followed en suite. Danny was looking sort of please and Sabrina looked mortified at what had happened. She was going to collapse at any minute, I was sure. As the rest of the room cheered, she slumped into her seat pale and scared. I was going to help her, but Danny was already taking care of it.

He'd taken her hand and was pulling her up. I couldn't read his lips, but he was saying something softly to her and she was losing her scared appearance. In fact, she was laughing now and sighing with a smile on her lips. Of course, with no teacher around, the rest of the room was falling into real chaos as some of the boys made use of the situation a little too well by tossing around textbooks so that paper was scattered everywhere. I lost sight of Danny and Sabs. Where were they? They weren't at Sabrina's desk anymore.

Then I saw them in them in the corner, where there was a large window looking out over the snow frosted grounds of the Academy. I sucked in my breath in surprise as I saw Danny slip his arm around her waist. She smiled and flushed, taking her glasses off so that her blue eyes assumed a normal size. Danny grinned at this, his smile somewhat more genuine than I'd ever seen it.

And then they kissed.

Right there in the English room, no one but me the wiser to their activities. And I wasn't going to tell soon. Maybe I'd blackmail Sabrina a little later on, but I wouldn't tell any of the others. No way. I'm a good friend like that.

Of course, I was thinking about my friends back home and who could blame me? I knew that Kelly and Tony were spending one last Valentine's together for sure before college started the next year for them and they would be at different schools. And I thought of all my other friends and who they'd been dating back at the holiday break. The only two that had been available were Fran and Joel. Huh, Joel.

I'd written him quite a bit already, wanting to keep my link with them. In a small way, I was regretting my return to Welton. Sure, I had my friends here and I was thankful for the chance to meet them, but what of my old life? Was it entirely fair to have been ripped away from it? No, I decided, it wasn't. Not that I had a say in that either, my dad was the controller there. But my mom had made a point in her argument.

He couldn't just do this to me, no matter how good his intentions were. I was only scraping by as far as grades. The courses here were much harder and the school offered no art majors, classes that I needed to get accepted into my dream school, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. I shook my head as my thoughts and, I'm sure, my face clouded with that twang of bitterness. I set those ideas aside to revel with the rest of my class in the idea of a new English teacher.

Danny and Sabrina: YAY! Me: Don't too excited now, this is only small time stuff, bigger stuff comes much later. Charlie: Y'know what? Danny sounds an awful lot like a certain lead singer as far as looks. Me: No telling now, Charlotte. Anderson: Oh! Who is it? Sean: Yeah, spill them beans girl! Charlie: That was so freaky coming from you. Sean: Sorry. Charlie: Anyhoo, Dru here loves the Goo Goo Dolls, in fact, you know what? She likes alternative music. But, yeah, Danny sounds a whole like the Goo Goo Dolls' lead singer, John Rzeznik. Danny: …Is that true? Me: Um, yeah. And Rob's name…yeah, Rob Thomas? Lead singer of Matchbox 20 who has the most booooooootiful voice. Joel: What happened to Good Charlotte? Me: ((shrugs)) I've like alternative for a lot longer y'know. Joel: You haven't answered my question. Me: ((rolls eyes)) Good Charlotte is the first band I've like that wasn't alternative, ok? Ok!