Heehee, I made Jinx a good person. Even though she was in the villain lineup at the end of Homecoming part 2. She's still cool. And this chapter's really long :) Raven's POV!

I do not own the Teen Titans. If I did, Hot Spot wouldn't have, like, died at the end of Trust. My brother was flipping out at that point. Heehee, so was I. I love Hot Spot.

"Tell me, Jinx. Of all places you picked for our homework hour, why the football field?"

Raven raised her hands exasperatedly. Her friend, Jen, or, as she was fondly called by Raven, Jinx, and she did their homework together after school everyday, either in the library, under a tree, or, as they did today, on the bleachers in the football field.

Jinx twirled one of her pink braided pigtails before answering.

"'Cause the football team is practicing, of course," she said, tiny pink spots appearing on each of her cheeks. "And for other reasons…" She trailed away, leaving a suspicious silence in which Raven raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I figured that," she said sarcastically, casting a glance out on the football field, where the team was doing drills. "You've had a crush on that guy Vic since seventh grade." The blush in Jinx's cheeks deepened. "But what are the 'other reasons'?"

"Oh, nothing," Jinx said, trying to sound offhand.

"You're really bad at lying," Raven said, placing her fingertips on either side of her head. "I can feel it in my psychic vibes." Jinx giggled as Raven lowered her hands.

"Fine," Jinx's smile became smug. "The team mascot's gonna join the cheerleaders' practice in a few minutes."

Raven felt her cheeks grow hot as she quickly turned her head to look at the cheerleaders, who were practicing their cheers a few feet away from the football team.

"Why would you care about that?" Raven asked, turning back to Jinx, feeling her cheeks grow warmer.

"I don't care," Jinx had a mischievous glint in her eye. "You do."

"Do not," Raven retorted quickly.

"Geez, Rae," Jinx rolled her eyes. "You're worse than me. It's obvious you like Gar, the green haired NA Tiger."

Raven chose to ignore this comment, and turned back to where the cheerleaders were now listening to someone tell a seemingly amusing tale. Raven saw a glint of gold in the center of their gaggle, and knew that Terra was telling them all a story, most likely how she had asked Gar to the dance. As Raven watched, Kori extracted herself from this bunch, saw Raven, and waved.

Raven returned the cheerleader's wave rather unenthusiastically before turning back to Jinx. She wore a rather smug expression on her face.

"Knew it," Jinx said simply.

"Whatever," Raven said quickly, before pulling a notebook out of her backpack. Jinx did the same, and they opened the matching blue five subject notebooks up to the last section. Both of the section dividers bore the word 'Spanish,' one in Raven's spiky scribble, the other in Jinx's loopy cursive.

Raven began to count out loud in Spanish. Jinx joined in, and the two friends counted all the way up to fifty. Then they both wrote down the days of the week and the months of the year, and swapped notebooks.

"You forgot the accent mark on sábado," Jinx drew an emphasized accent mark on top of the first 'a.'

"And you forgot the one on the 'e' in miécoles," Raven also marked an accent mark.

"Accent marks shall be our downfall," Jinx said in a deep voice. Raven chuckled. They switched back notebooks, and opened them up to their Latin section. Raven wrote down five Latin sentences in hers, leaving one of the words without a proper ending. Jinx did the same, then the girls switched notebooks again.

'Jinx always gives me irregular verbs on purpose,' Raven thought as she looked down and saw three verbs without endings. She skipped these and quickly added the correct endings to the nouns.

"Rae!" Jinx said suddenly. Raven looked up from her verbs quickly.

"Wha?" she asked. Jinx gave her a look that plainly said, 'Guess who's behind you.' Raven turned, and saw Gar walking lazily over to where the cheerleaders were practicing.

He had obviously decided to practice out of the costume, as he was not wearing the fur-covered uniform. He was instead wearing a plain white shirt and a pair of black sweatpants with the NA emblem on them.

"Hi, Gar," Raven said as he passed their spot on the bleachers. She was surprised she had so much as greeted him without making a fool of herself.

"Hey, Raven," Gar said, smiling widely.

"Nice hair," Jinx said quickly, fingering one of her own pink braids as she complimented him.

"You too," Gar winked. He then looked at Raven's hair for a few seconds before saying, "If you ever want to color your hair, I think purple would be best."

"Um, thanks," Raven giggled.

"See ya," Gar waved before continuing his progress toward the cheerleaders.

"Bye," Raven and Jinx said at the same time. As soon as Gar was out of earshot, Jinx said, "Now will you let me dye your hair?"

"No," Raven twisted a bunch of her black hair in her left hand. "I prefer natural hair colors."

"Unless the hair belongs to Garfield the Tiger," Jinx corrected her.

"Cut it out," Raven said impatiently. "I've still got three verbs to conjugate." She turned back to her verbs, giving her paper a small smile before facing what surely would be her downfall in Latin.

She and Jinx switched their notebooks again, and corrected each other's problems. Raven tried to concentrate on Jinx's neat writing, but she was distracted by a squeal from the field.

She looked down to see Terra half jumping half skipping over to Gar, making the skirt of her cheerleading uniform flop up and down unnecessarily. Raven tried to shut all this out, but she just did not find Latin verbs absorbing enough to block the happy yells.

Jinx punched her arm lightly.

"Ya wanna go to the library now?" she asked, giving Raven a look that plainly said, "I understand."

"Yeah," Raven closed her notebook and pushed it into her black backpack. Jinx did the same, and both girls stood up, slung their backpacks over their right shoulders, and began the uphill trek to the library.

"Your mom'll know where to pick you up, right?" Jinx asked breathlessly as they neared the halfway up point.

"I told her the library before school, because that's where I thought we would be the entire time," Raven said, grateful for her friend's concern.

"Great," Jinx swung her backpack around so it was hanging in front of her. She unzipped one of the pockets and began digging for something. "I've got something for you." Jinx found what she was looking for, and pulled out a slip of thick yellow paper. She handed it to Raven, swung her backpack back around, and smiled.

Raven looked down at the piece of paper she was holding. It had a border of stars, and in fancy letter said, "Night Under the Stars." Her name had been written on it in Jinx's neat handwriting. Raven realized what this slip of paper was, and shot her friend a nasty look.

"Why did you give me a ticket to homecoming?" she asked.

"Because I knew you wouldn't go if I didn't," Jinx answered promptly.

"I'm not going," Raven retorted as they reached the top of the hill and turned left toward the library entrance.

"Oh yes you are," Jinx argued playfully. "You're coming in my group and you are going to have fun. I'm not about to let my best friend stay home alone on Saturday night."

"I won't be alone. I'll have my parents to keep me company."

"Sitting on a couch watching old black and white movies with your parents is more fun than going to a dance with your best friend?" Jinx said in mock astonishment.

"Well, no," Raven admitted. "But –"

"No buts," Jinx held up a hand. "You're going to the dance and having fun. It's about time you came out of your shell and let your fun side take over."

Their conversation came to a quick halt as they entered the library and received piercing glares from the librarian at the desk.

"Two problems," Raven whispered as she and Jinx made their way over to their usual table. One, I don't have any other friends in that group. Two, you have a date."

"So?" Jinx asked as they sat down in the squishy armchairs set next to the table and plopped their backpacks down on the floor. "There's bound to be someone else you can talk to while I'm talking to Garth." She blushed slightly. "Roy's in our group, and he doesn't have a date. Neither do Leo and Kori."

"Kori's in your group?" Raven asked loudly, which obtained a stern look from the librarian.

"Well, yeah," Jinx said offhandedly. "Why shouldn't she be?"

"It's nothing like that, I was just surprised. Who all's in the group anyway?"

"Me and you, of course. And then there's Garth, Leo, Roy, Kori, Robin, Kitten, Vic," Jinx blushed as she mentioned Cy, "and Bea."

"Didn't Kori want to go in Terra's group?"

"Well, she did, but then she found out that practically the entire football team and cheerleading squad was in that group. That group is gonna be nothing but squeals and grunts, I assure you. She found out about our half-formed group the next day and asked if she could be in it."

"And Vic's not in that group because…?"

"He asked Bea, and she was already in our group, so they opted to go with us. And before you ask about anyone else, I'll just fill you in. Garth's going with me, and he, Leo, and Roy are, like, best friends. Robin's pretty good friends with Roy, since they're both runners, so that's how he got in our group. Then Kitten asked Robin, and you know how Robin is; he can never say no. Even to that spoiled brat." Jinx rolled here eyes as she finished this speech.

The two girls mentally voted not to do their homework, and spent the rest of the time in the library talking about the dance. Raven broke the conversation abruptly when she checked her watch and realized that it was time for her mom to pick her up.

"It's time to go!" she told Jinx, who immediately stopped talking mid-sentence and picked up her backpack. The two girls exited the library to find two cars parked in front of the building.

"Bye, Jinx!" Raven waved as she opened the passenger side door of her mom's blue car. Jinx waved as she got into the other car.

"Did you and Jen get much done?" Raven's mother asked as she buckled her seatbelt and hoisted her backpack onto the backseat.

"Not really," Raven said honestly. "We got sidetracked by the dance." She blushed as she said this, for her mom gave her the look all mothers give their teenage daughters when they first mention a school dance.

"Are you going?" her mother asked as she drove out of the parking lot.

"Jinx bought me a ticket," Raven shrugged. "So, yeah. I guess."

"I'm glad," her mother turned onto the highway. "It's about time you went to a school dance. Besides, I've wanted to go dress shopping with you for a while."

"Dress shopping?" Raven had completely forgotten about that part. Dress shopping was number four on her list of things she hated, number one being her father, two being cheerleaders (namely Terra at the moment) and three being make up.

Suddenly, a wonderful thought occurred to Raven. She knew how she was going to get out of dress shopping.

"Can't I just make my dress?" she asked hopefully.

Raven was known, by the half of the school that actually knew her, for her extraordinary Halloween costumes, all of which she had made herself.

"Do you know how?" her mother asked, taking her eyes off the road for a spilt second to look at her daughter suspiciously.

"Well, no, but how hard can it be?"

"I'll make a deal with you, Raven. We will go to the store to look at dresses. If you don't see one that you like, you can make your dress." Her mother halted at a red light, and looked over to see her daughter's disappointed face.

"Rae, I know you hate dress shopping, but we really need an excuse to stay out of the house for an hour or so."

Raven looked into her mother's concerned face, comprehension dawning.

"He's in a mood again?" she asked.

Her mother nodded.

"Well, in that case, I know exactly what we should do," Raven smiled slyly. "We will go and look at dresses for a total of fifteen minutes. Then we'll go see that movie you've wanted to see for a week now. Then, to top it all off, we'll browse the soundtracks at Media Play. That should keep us occupied for about three hours."

"And he'll really believe us when we say we were looking at dresses for three hours?"

"He will when I show him this," Raven turned in her seat, unzipped her backpack, and pulled out a sketchpad. She opened it to show her mother her intricate drawings of full-length homecoming dresses.

"Why did you draw these, if you don't mind me asking?" her mother asked as the light turned green.

"Jinx asked me to draw a dress that would look good on her. I just got a little involved and drew some dresses for other people."

"Works for me," Raven's mother chuckled, and turned her car in the direction of the mall instead of their house.