"Wish me luck," I muttered to Fang and Iggy as we entered the un-welcoming doors of Harding High. "Today we start our 'presentation' unit in drama class. Apparently just reading and studying plays is inadequate, so Mrs. Danbury has decided we need to recreate plays."

"Maybe she uses her drama classes to scout talent for the fall and spring productions. Who knows? Maybe she'll select you as her lead actress for the upcoming musical." Iggy ducked under my glare and slipped through a door into his first class.

"I'm sure it'll be fine, Max," Fang muttered.

"Famous last words," I said with a smirk before slipping into the dim classroom. I slid into my usual spot in the back row and to my surprise someone slid into the desk next to me. I had been sitting alone for the beginning of the semester and not to be rude, but I preferred it that way.

"Hi," a soft voice said, and I turned slightly in my seat to face him. He extended a hand, "I'm Gray. Gray Mallard. I moved here from Rhode Island, but my family is out in Colorado for good now."

I gave him a quick tight-lipped smile, "I'm Max. It's nice to meet you." After what Nudge had told me, I felt slightly on guard. I shook his hand quickly before returning it to my natural grip around my water bottle.

"How do you like it here? At Harding High?" He asked scooting his chair near over towards my desk.

"It's been good, I guess. I mean it's high school. I don't want to throw myself off the roof every time I walk in the door," I smirked. "Just once a week."

Gray laughed, his eyes sparkling slightly in the light. "Glad you've managed to make it through."

"It's been a taxing year," I said laughing.

"You've only been here a year?" he asked.

I nodded, "I moved here at the end of last summer, so this is my second academic year at Harding." I shrugged. "It was fine. People here are pretty cool."

"Where'd you move from?"

"Arizona. My mom got offered a better job," I shrugged again. Wow, I was really turning into Fang.

"What does she do?"

For the first time in my life, or well at least during the semester, I was relieved as Mrs. Danbury bustled into the classroom. I felt like I was being bombarded with questions and had a feeling Gray wasn't planning on stopping until class began.

"She's a vet," I said before pointedly turning my attention to the front of the class – something I rarely did until I received death glares from my classmates or teachers.

Gray opened his mouth, clearly about to ask another question, when Mrs. Danbury cut him off. "Alright, today is the day that everybody has been waiting for when the real acting begins! As school tradition holds, we will select one theatrical production to cast within the class, practice and maybe even perform during our beloved Arts Week."

I felt my throat tighten and my stomach dropped. Suddenly, I wished I was answering Gray's hundreds of questions. Anything compared to the torture of getting selected to having to perform in the school's musical.

She plowed on, her blonde hair piled on top of her head swaying perilously from side to side as she walked: "We have been given the great fortune to purchase the musical rights to The Beauty and the Beast a classic production that highlights romance, friendships, character development and employs a wide variety of the drama principals we have studied thus far."

Somebody from the front row raised their hand, "Who will get cast for the different parts? And what about the costumes, sets and overall production?"

Mrs. Danbury nodded, "I'm so glad to see such keen interest and insights. Because this is just an academic class, there will not work required outside of this class besides the typical homework assignments and therefore, it can be considered a mini-production. No lights, no crazy sets, no pit orchestra. Just true emotion and passion of actors and actresses upon the stage. Keeping with such a theme, we will likely not rehearse the entire musical – just the scenes in which we can most benefit educationally as a class, and so we can grasp the beauty of the theater within."

"Can I switch classes?" I muttered under my breath.

Thankfully, a bunch of very talented, very engaged and very interested girls sat in the front of the class who were already arguing over roles they wanted which left me very content sitting in the background waiting to be assigned the role of a villager. Preferably, a mute villager that doesn't dance, talk or sing. Honestly, Fang was right – I'd be perfectly happy as part of the set.

For the remainder of the class, I counted the ceiling tiles in the auditorium as each of the girls sang their own rendition of a song from Beauty and the Beast. (In case you were wondering, there were 264 tiles ceiling tiles.)

The second the bell rang, I booked it out of that room even as I heard Mrs. Danbury yell, "The bell doesn't dismiss you, Max. I dismiss you." Uh, yeah. She dismissed me when she decided we had to act for an hour every day and make me sit there in great pain.

"Max," a familiar voice called as I let the auditorium door slam behind me. "Max, hey," he breathed as he caught up to me.

"Oh, yeah. What's up?" I asked Gray who looked slightly shaken by his rapid emergence from the dark drama room.

"I was wondering if you wanted to, you know, hang out this weekend? Maybe grab coffee or lunch? Or, I'd love to meet some of your other friends and get to know Harding High better."

I shifted uncomfortably; Nudge had briefly warned me about this. "Sorry, I'm really busy this weekend. Maybe some other time?"

I watched awkwardly as his face physically fell. "Well, if anything changes, here's my number." He handed me a small, professional-looking card that had his name, phone number and apparently some acting agent on it.

I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but as usual I'm pretty sure it came out as much more of a grimace. I slipped his card into my pocket. As I turned around, much to my surprise and relief, Fang had appeared out of nowhere leaning against the closest set of lockers.

"On a scale from Marie Kondo to Fyre Festival, how put together was drama class?" I just shook my head as his dark eyes fixated intently on me. "Come on, I've been working on that all morning."

I rolled my eyes but couldn't resist the twitch at the corners of my mouth. "It was a solid catastrophe. A full-fledged Fyre Festival."

"Did she make you act?" He asked looking mildly concerned.

I shook my head, "No, but apparently were doing a case study of Beauty and the Beast with the possibility of performing at Arts Week because apparently showcasing a bunch of talentless seventeen year-olds is good entertainment for the school."

He smirked, "You're not all talentless. I'm sure there will be some people who will volunteer for the lead roles and you can be some piece of furniture or something."

"Have you seen the movie?" I asked incredulously. "Literally all of the furniture talks."

He shrugged, "I saw it when I was like four or five. Angel would probably like it, but she's too caught up in Moana still. If you prefer, maybe they can cast you as a plant or something. Or a non-magical inanimate object. Or, maybe you should just direct the play."

"Yeah sure, but that defeats the purpose of not doing any work."

"You're making this very difficult for me and for yourself," Fang said with a rare sparkle in his eye.

"Let's just go to lunch," I said laughing as I tugged on his jacket heading towards the cafeteria.

"So," Nudge said turning pointedly to me the second Fang and I slid into the lunch table.

"So?" I asked her although I had an unfortunate feeling I knew where this was going.

"What's up with you blowing Gray off?" I opened my mouth to answer, but it was unnecessary because as usual, she had much more to say. "He's new! You remember what it was like to be new! That was you, just over a year ago with no friends and no one to turn to at school. And you totally ignored him even though I know for a fact you're not busy this weekend. Besides, he's got such dreamy eyes, a great smile and he's into you."

"What happened?" Fang asked casually, but I felt his arms tighten next to me and I felt as he twisted his ankles together underneath his chair.

"It's nothing," I muttered. "Gray, the new kid in my drama class, asked me to hang out this weekend, but I told him I couldn't because I'm busy. Which I am," I added defiantly to Nudge.

I felt Fang's arms loosen slightly to his sides, but his feet remained where they were tucked underneath his seat.

"What do you possibly have the entire weekend, Max?"

"Well, I told my mom I would consider a college visit with her," I said making things up wildly as I went. "She's been harassing me about taking the whole college application process seriously before it's my senior year and I have to actually apply to schools."

"Oh," Nudge said, clearly at a loss for words for once.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly trying to ease the tension I had undoubtedly created, "but I don't understand why you can't take him under your wing. You know more people here and are more involved than I am; I think he'd benefit a lot more from your guidance and friendship than mine. Besides you're the one who's actually friendly."

Nudge gave me a soft smile, and I was glad I had for once cleared tension that I had caused. "I'll see what I can do, but he wants you not me, Max."

I groaned. I really didn't have the time nor mental capacity for this. No means no, so move on and deal with it. Maybe this was a sign that Fang and I finally needed to come clean with our relationship.

"College visits?" Fang asked me with his eyebrows raised as we ventured home after our last class a few hours later.

I smirked, "Good, huh? I had to make something up that was believable for me to busy the 'entire weekend'."

"Less believable for you, maybe," he said shooting his hand out and catching a fallen leaf that was plummeting towards the ground.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked turning to face him trying to minimize the accusatory tone.

"Nothing," he said shaking his head. "But, I am beginning to wonder if we should tell them."

"Tell them what?" I asked not entirely listening as I too tried to catch a leaf that had fallen from its tree seconds before.

"About us."

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Just with these guys chasing you around, asking you on dates…" he trailed off.

"Okay, it was really just one guy. Apparently quite a relentless guy, but still." Fang raised his eyebrows looking at me quizzically. "But, I agree with you."

"Tonight?" He asked.

"Plan starts tonig—" My voice trailed off as I pulled my phone out of its pocket which was buzzing incessantly for some reason. The only person who ever consistently texted me was Fang, so all the notifications were unusual.

Scanning his phone as well, Fang swore under his breath. "Where did they get this?" He asked turning the phone towards me, shoving it in my face.

It my eyes a second to adjust as the same photo came into focus on my screen. Then, I proceeded to swear not-so-softly under my breath. It was a photograph of Fang and me taken apparently during one of the few times we've kissed in the surrounding neighborhood, and somebody had shared the photo to Twitter where it was now trending. His hands were gently holding my waist and my hair thankfully hung in a sheath across my face.

"Wait," he muttered, "there's a caption. 'Guaranteed Max had a better time with me.'" Fang swore again, but this time very audibly. He had been holding an apple in his hand which suddenly whipped across the field in front of us and erupted impressively against one of the nearby trees. "Who does he think he is?" All of the color had rushed to Fang's face, and his fists were clenched very distinctly at his sides. "I'm gonna kill him."

"Fang," I whispered getting in front of him and grabbing his hands trying to unclench the tightened fists they had become. "Please just look at me."

The golden specks that usually danced in his eyes were gone. He shifted his gaze to meet mine and I felt his hands slacken slightly. "It's okay. We'll…we'll deal with this." Under the surface, I was seething. I could practically feel my blood begin to boil, but Fang was angrier than I had ever seen him. He looked like he had the power to do some serious physical damage, and I knew it was my job to calm him down.

"What right does he have?" Fang's voice sounded like a growl. Angry. Threatening. Upset.

"He's a horrible human being," I whispered

"Nobody has the right to treat you like that, Max. Nobody. Especially not Dylan."

"Fang," I sighed. For once, I had no words. That freak must have been following us through the woods. To make matters worse, Lissa had retweeted the picture with her own sadistic twisted caption, ' fride Call me when you get sick of this uncultured trash'. "What do you want to do?"

"I'd like to go beat the crap out of Dylan and explain to him exactly how women should be treated."

"Okay, let me rephrase that. As much as I would love to see you pummel Dylan into the ground, I really don't think this is worth you getting charged with battery, or even assault. Out of the following potential options, what would you like to do? We can go home. Unpack this. Take a minute. We can go to the Creek Overlook. We can go find Iggy and Ella – get an outside opinion. We can technically report this to the school board as cyber bullying."

"Max," he looked at me as though he was in pain, "the last thing I would do is go and report this photo to the school. What are they going to do?"

I smirked, "I just wanted to offer it up in case you had a change of heart." Apparently, sarcasm was not the way to calm Fang down today. "Come here," I said grabbing his hands gently and pulling him to a secluded patch of land with a large fallen tree directly blocking the path. I sat down. "Look. Dylan is an absolute asshat for taking that picture, let alone posting it, but, he's not worth it. But you are worth it. If you go after him in any sense, you're going to be the one paying for it and that's exactly what he wants. He wants you to pay for it."

I think I was finally starting to get through to him. His body lost its rigidness, and he sat in the tree looking defeated yet determined. His muscles resumed a relaxed position, but the spark seemed to be reignited in his obsidian eyes.

"Besides," I continued, "at least now everyone knows that we're dating. We no longer have to be that subtle."

"Clearly we weren't being subtle enough before if there's photographic evidence of one afternoon."

"Let's figure out a way to get back at Dylan, together, that doesn't put either of"D us at risk. Deal?"

He nodded slowly, "Deal."

A pickup truck drove along the side rode that was just a few feet from our tree bench, but as it grew closer, the truck began to lose speed. A tan, blond, blue-eyed filled the driver's window. He opened his mouth to say something demeaning, I'm sure, to Fang who had jumped up next to me.

But suddenly, Fang was no longer by my side. I'd rarely seen him move so fast as he chased down my would-be-attacker and apparent stalker. Dylan, in the passenger seat window, shouted something at Fang I couldn't hear. As the truck picked up speed, it rounded the corner with Fang trailing shortly behind as they both quickly disappeared out of sight.