Hello!

I'm actually super proud of myself right now because I pretty much managed to get this whole chapter written in one day for you so that you would have something to read before I go on holiday. It's not super long like some of my other chapters but it's a chapter, so here you go!

Lela hadn't stopped thinking about Wet Side Story since Mack and Brady had told her about it earlier that day. As she traced patterns in the blanket she was laying under in her make-shift bed her mind refused to stop running on overdrive. She couldn't get over the fact that she wasn't 'real', it was making her question everything and even though she reassured Mack that she was fine (because the others all seemed to be ok with it) on the inside she was really starting to panic. Lela had her knees tucked in to her chest and had her back up against the wall opposite the door, which was quite wide open. The hallway was dark because it was so late but moonlight still crept in from a window at the end of the hallway. The only thing remotely entertaining Lela was watching the dust particles' shadows dancing in the light cast on the floor, but calling that entertainment was a stretch. And instead of reassuring her, the soft snores from the four other girls in the room just made her feel more alone.

The click of a door opening pulled Lela out of her whirlwind of thoughts and brought her attention to her rescuer. Tanner slipped out of the boys' bedroom and turned to make his way down the corridor, but the girls' open bedroom door made him stop. Almost instantly his eyes met with Lela's, which were more than enough to tell him that something was wrong. Abandoning his journey to go to the bathroom, Tanner stepped over a sleeping CheeChee and sat down beside Lela, who was trembling to the point where Tanner had to hold on to her hand to stop it shaking. She then relaxed her legs so that Tanner could wrap his arms around her waist and hold her to his chest. Once the couple were settled, Lela instantly felt more at ease, just because Tanner was there with her.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hi," Lela whispered as she played with Tanner's fingers and laced them between hers.

"Why are you up so late?"

"I couldn't sleep," Lela replied simply.

"Why not? What's wrong?" Tanner asked, his concern clear in his voice.

"Nothing-"

"Lela, tell me," he persisted. "Please."

"I'm just scared," Lela confessed, her voice wavering as if she was about to cry.

"About what?" Tanner asked, resting his head against Lela's to try to comfort her further.

"How we're not real and that we're just characters in a movie," Lela said, her voice only just edging above a whisper.

"I thought we talked about that earlier, you said that you were ok," Tanner said, sensing that there was more to this than just that.

"It's still a scary thought though," Lela said.

"There's nothing to be scared about, we sing and dance in a musical," Tanner quietly chuckled. "Just count yourself lucky that we're not characters in a horror film."

Lela let out a tiny giggle at that, which plunged the couple into silence. After a while she spoke up again. "Tanner."

"Yeah?"

"Why can't we just be normal like Mack and Brady?"

Tanner was quiet for quite some time after Lela said that; he didn't really have an answer for her. The longer he just held her in the darkness though, the clearer the reason became to him. "Because if we were, we wouldn't be us."

"What do you mean?"

"We wouldn't have the history we do, we wouldn't have the friends we have, we wouldn't have the life we have, Lela," Tanner said. "We might not even have each other."

"You don't know that."

"I know, I don't know a lot of things. But I do know that I'm proud to be a part of all this Wet Side Story stuff with you."

"Why?"

"Oh come on. You're not telling me you don't like hanging out at Big Momma's every day, are you? Or that you hate singing for everyone at the beach," Tanner teased, making Lela's face break into a smile.

"No, you're right, I do love it," Lela admitted.

"So why are you so worried about it?" Tanner asked.

"I'm not anymore," Lela reassured him. "Thanks to you." She turned and gently kissed Tanner, bringing her hand up to cup his cheek. "You can go to the bathroom now, sorry for distracting you," she sheepishly said when the pair broke apart.

"I don't need it anymore," Tanner quietly laughed. "And don't worry about it; you're more important to me than my bladder ever could be."

"Oh, stop being so romantic," Lela said sarcastically, lightly batting Tanner's arm.

"Hey, I can't help it. Maybe I can only be romantic when I'm in the movie," Tanner teased.

"No, you're romantic all the time," Lela said with a smile. "I love you," she said after another lull in the conversation.

"I love you too, now get some sleep," Tanner said in a hushed voice. The couple shared another kiss before Tanner got up from the floor and disappeared back into the boys' bedroom.

Although Lela could now happily drift off to sleep and dream of Tanner and her anxiety about the movie was gone, another problem had arisen from the couple's discussion. Both Lela and Tanner were feeling terribly homesick.

"Please help me find something for them to do before they start singing about being missing home," Brady begged as he marched into the kitchen, where Mack was preparing things for lunch,

"Don't give them more ideas," Mack hissed. "They've already brought that up twice."

"Why are they so miserable anyway? It's not like they've been like it all week, it just started this morning," Brady said.

"I don't know but we've got a much bigger problem on our hands right now."

"What now?"

"Brady, it's Sunday."

"And?"

"What day's tomorrow?"

"Monday."

"And what happens on a Monday?"

"I don't know, it's summer. Anything can happen on a Monday."

"Brady, when do we go back to school?"

"August 29th."

"And what's today's date?"

"August 28th," Brady said, slipping his phone out of his pocket to check. Only then did it hit him what today was. "Oh my god, today's the last day of summer."

"Do you see my problem now?"

"Yeah, we haven't done anything cool yet and it's midday," Brady said, already disgusted with himself for forgetting.

"No! We have school tomorrow and we haven't got the others back home yet!" Mack cried.

"Ugh," Brady grunted. "Why do things just keep going from bad to worse?"

"What are we going to do? We can't leave them here unattended all day," Mack said. "My grandpa might want to open the shop."

"I don't know," Brady confessed, drawing a complete blank.

"You don't think we could pass them off as normal kids at school, do you?" Mack asked.

"What?"

"We could dress them as normal 21st century teens and introduce them to the principal as people who are interested in coming to the school," Mack said.

"Are you crazy? What if they get recognised?"

"Well we've been pretty ok so far regarding that. No one's said anything."

"Yeah, no one's said anything yet."

"They'll probably just think they're imagining it, no one's going to believe that a movie character's a student at our school," Mack argued. "They'll just assume that they look similar if anything."

"Mack-"

"Well have you got any better ideas?" Mack demanded.

"No," Brady admitted.

"Look, Brady, I know this is insane but it's all we've got and until we get them back home it's our responsibility to keep them under control. And this idea is all I've got that will help me do that, but I can't do it alone."

"And you won't have to," Brady reassured her. "We're going to need all the help we can get to pull this off though."

"As long as we explain it carefully to the others then I'm sure that they'll do as we say and not make things more difficult than they need to be."

"Are you sure about that?"

"No, but I can hope, can't I?" Mack sighed. Brady walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "What are you doing?" Mack mumbled into his shoulder.

"I'm trying to get you to take a second to relax," Brady said, holding Mack in his embrace until he was satisfied that she had significantly calmed down. He knew she had when she felt her breaths even out like she was sleeping. He then held her by the shoulders out in front of him and looked at her with a smile. "We can do this, ok?"

"Ok, we'll break the news later," Mack smiled, weakly high-fiving Brady before going back to preparing the drinks (and herself for what was about to come).

"Look guys, if we can't decide between volleyball and mini golf then why don't we just do both?" Brady suggested, desperately needing a break from the teens' bickering. After distracting the teens from thinking about Wet Side Story by letting them choose what they wanted to do today, Brady found himself in the middle of an intense debate over the day's activities.

"We don't have enough time to do both," Lugnut shot back.

"Of course we do, it's the last day of summer, we've got twelve more hours of the day," Brady said.

"What did you just say?" Seacat asked.

"It's the last day of summer?!" Giggles cried. By the look on her face you could have sworn that Brady had just told her it was the last day before the world ended.

"We have way longer summers back home," Rascal said.

"Don't bring that up," Brady muttered to himself, putting his head in his hands. But before he knew it the teens were back to weeping about missing home and the fact that summer was over.

Brady couldn't take it anymore. He lifted his head, let out a heavy sigh and walked out the door. Luckily, he went unnoticed. "Mack, help me," he said, dragging Mack out of her bedroom and into the hallway.

"Hey, I was sorting out my stuff for school," Mack objected, still clutching her planner in one hand and her pencil case in the other.

"Please, Mack," Brady pleaded.

"Ok, what do you want?" Mack asked, moving to put the stationery items back on her bed.

"We need to tell them about school," Brady said. "Now, preferably."

"Why? I thought we were going to leave it until tonight."

"That's the only thing I can think of, that I haven't already tried, that's going to stop them from being so miserable. Nothing else seems to be working."

"Ok. Are you sure they're going to take it well though?"

"No but anything's better than their moping. We can only hope that they think so too," Brady said, resting his hands on Mack's shoulders. The pair stared each other down for a second, trying their best to prepare themselves for whatever disaster zone they were about to create by bringing more unwanted news to the Wet Side Story teens. After the couple each let out a sigh, Mack quickly pecked Brady on the lips, took him by the hand and led him back into the living room.

"Hey, guys. We have an announcement," Mack chirped, hoping that if she started out cheerfully then things wouldn't turn bad so quickly.

"What now?" Butchy asked.

"Yeah, yous is gonna be tellin' us the sky's fallin' next," Struts chimed in, a woeful frown printed on her face.

"It's actually good news," Mack smiled.

"Really?" Giggles asked with hopeful eyes.

"No, don't get excited, I ain't buyin' it," Lugnut grumbled.

"Just hear them out," Lela said, shooting Lugnut a scolding look.

"Uh, thanks, Lela," Brady said, awkwardly showing his appreciation. "Tomorrow we don't have the day off for summer," he began to explain. "This is our last day of summer vacation."

"So that means that tomorrow we have to go back to school," Mack continued. "And we were hoping that you'd be ok coming along with us."

It was a rather mixed reaction from the group, like the reaction to yesterday's news. But at least it wasn't a completely negative one.

"Are yous kiddin'?"

"Oh my gosh! Really?!"

"Wait, we have to do like lessons and stuff?"

"Is the lunch there any good?"

"I ain't goin' to no school. Can't wes just stay here?"

"Hey, maybe it'll be fun."

"School really isn't that bad," Brady tried, hoping to change the opinions of a few members of the group. Mack almost choked on her own spit when she heard Brady say that considering how he normally couldn't care less about the place.

"You sure about that?" CheeChee asked, raising one of her eyebrows at Brady.

"Yeah, it's pretty chill," Brady lied, apparently quite convincingly because CheeChee seemed to buy it, along with most of the others.

"Doesn't school mean homework though?" Seacat asked.

"Hey, hey, hey, I ain't doin' no homework," Butchy piped up at the very mention of the word.

"Well it's not like you guys are going to be staying here forever," Mack said. "This is just a temporary thing so that we can supervise you all until we can get you home. So you don't need to worry about doing well in any of your lessons. Unless you want to, then you can go ahead."

"So we don't have to try?" Seacat checked once Mack had finished rambling, something she tended to do when she started to get nervous.

"No, not if you don't want to," Mack clarified.

"Sweet," was all Seacat said in reply.

"I'm cool with that," Coral agreed, high-fiving the surfer boy next to her.

"But if we want to try we can," Lela confirmed.

"Sure," Mack replied, a little startled that one of the musical airheads was actually interested in school. "We'll sort out your schedules tomorrow so you can choose what you want to do. As long as you're with me or Brady at all times you can do whatever lessons you want."

"Groovy," Tanner grinned. His smile was shared by pretty much everyone at this point. After being told that they could put in as little effort as possible, the teens that had previously seemed totally against it were pretty on board for the whole thing. Luckily for Mack and Brady, it had gone a lot more smoothly than they had anticipated.

"This is so exciting," Lela squealed as the big group started to break off into their own conversations. "Maybe I'll find something I'm good at."

"You're good at everything you try, Lela," Tanner said with a loving smile.

"I'm not good at volleyball," Lela argued.

"Did I hear someone say 'volleyball'?" Coral gasped, her head instantly whipping in Lela's direction.

"No," Brady groaned. With that one word, Lela had triggered the debate over the day's activities again.

"What's wrong now?" Mack asked. "That went amazingly well," she beamed, very impressed with her and Brady for pulling that off so smoothly. "We should be celebrating," she joked.

"They're arguing again though," Brady pointed out.

"Who cares? We'll do everything they want to do," Mack giggled. "It's the last day of summer, right? We've got to make the most of it because tomorrow we're all going to school because they went along with our plan!" she exclaimed. Clearly she was very pleased that everyone's opinions had turned out positive judging by the fact that she was bouncing around on the balls of her feet like an excited toddler.

"Wow, you really are in a good mood, huh?" Brady chuckled, Mack's expression instantly brightening his.

"Well duh?" she giggled again. "Come on, guys. What do you want to do then?" she asked the group.

"Volleyball."

"Mini golf."

"Surf."

"Baseball."

"Anything but this."

"Ok, well let's start setting up the volleyball net then," Mack said.

"Yes!" Coral and Rascal cried, high-fiving again.

"What?!" Struts screeched, stamping her foot in frustration. "Why are we doing what they want to do?!"

"Relax, we'll get around to doing everything," Mack said, easily brushing off Struts' complaint with a smile. Thankfully, the biker girl didn't protest further.

"Oh I'm going to crush you at this," Coral said to Butchy with a grin, trying to psych out her boyfriend before they even got outside.

"Not if I put you two on the same team," Seacat cut in.

"Who said you're choosing the teams?" Giggles asked.

"Me, duh," Seacat said, flashing a cheeky smile. "Come on, babe. You can be the other team captain," he continued, wrapping his arm around CheeChee's shoulders.

"Fine by me, I'm choosin' first though," CheeChee said with a confident smile and her signature giggle.

And thus the volleyball tournament began. Seacat's team beat CheeChee's because instead of choosing her team tactfully, she chose her closest friends first (none of whom were terribly great at volleyball) but the Brady and Giggles did put up a good fight for her. Seacat, Coral and Mack truly did excel though, but that's probably because Seacat and Coral are both leading members of the Wet Side Story volleyball team. Mack was just super pumped though, so naturally she played extremely well.

After volleyball came the baseball match, where Butchy and Lela were the teams' captains. And to spice it up a bit, the siblings decided to make it boys vs. girls. The only thing that was keeping the scores rather level were Coral and Struts' amazing fielding skills, which left the two girls completely exhausted afterwards. Surprisingly Lela had a pretty good swing on her too, which shocked pretty much everyone. Butchy's incredible batting was definitely putting the boys in a good mood, but not so much the girls, especially his very competitive girlfriend Coral. Mack and Brady managed to convince both teams that the boys' rather large win was a tie so that they didn't have a fight on their hands for the round of mini golf they were about to embark on.

Mini golf was a whole other story because literally everyone had a great time. It was super chilled because there was nothing really competitive about tiny golf clubs and brightly coloured balls. Everyone was pretty sure that Tanner was faking the scores so that Lela would win but no one really cared. There were so many of them that they had to go around in three groups though, so that minimised any arguments as well. Mack and Brady played with Lela and Tanner, Coral and Butchy played with Lugnut and Giggles and that left Seacat and CheeChee to play with Rascal and Struts. The fact that they all had ice cream afterwards continued the good mood and soothed the sting of coming last for Giggles, Rascal and Tanner. CheeChee definitely almost peed herself from laughing though when Seacat hit his ball into the grass and set off the sprinkler, promptly drenching the group ahead of them.

The main event was really when they got back to Mack's house though. The late afternoon sun lured them outside again as soon as they'd stepped through the front door. And I'm sure that you can imagine that as soon as Tanner and Rascal found a tarp in the garage the teens went nuts. Seacat went straight for the hose and Giggles grabbed every bottle of washing up liquid she could find in the house. And just like that, the slip and slide was born. The bikers were reluctant to go anywhere near the thing but the surfers couldn't contain their excitement and before long Mack and Brady were joining in with their antics and literally dragged the bikers onto the slide to join them. The soggy teens didn't stop there though; they continued hanging out on the beach until the sun had set. They roasted marshmallows, stargazed, surfed until they could only see from the moonlight, had a late night picnic for dinner, danced the night away, held the most bizarre sand sculpture competition ever and laughed until their sides hurt.

"This was so much fun," Brady said, gently playing with Mack's hair as she lay with her head in his lap. "It's easily the best last day of summer in history."

"Yeah," she smiled to herself. "And it can only get better from here."

As Mack looked out at the collection of teens gazing up at the stars and cracking jokes she couldn't help but grin. She still couldn't believe that she'd convinced them all to go to school. Obviously it must be a sign that this was the right thing to do with them.

Oh Mack, how wrong you were.

This was no sign. This was the worst thing that her and Brady could possibly have done for the Wet Side Story teens.

I hope that you liked it!

So the Wet Side Story teens are going to high school now…yikes. This is the part of the story that I've been looking forward most to writing so hopefully the chapters will only get better from here. I know this one kind of sucks and is a little bit rushed but I really wanted to give you another chapter before I go away on holiday tomorrow.

I'll be away on holiday for two weeks and I'll try my best to get some writing done but I honestly don't know if I'll be able to get the next chapter done before I get back home again. If you want I could try to write some little one-shot type things on my Tumblr (which I will put on my profile) for you to read as well as some of the other things that I've mentioned on there, but I'll do whatever you guys want. Would you prefer for me to focus on this story and try to write a full chapter in the tiny bits of spare time I'll have on holiday or would you rather just read some fluffy one-shots? Please let me know in a review!

If I don't manage to get a lot of writing done while I'm on holiday though, I highly recommend that you read DianaDirectioner's Teen Beach stories because I honestly think that they're amazing. Her work really inspires me and her latest story is getting really good lately, I've been completely hooked by the story line and she deserves way more reviews than she has. So please go and send her some love!

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say for now. Thank you so much for reading! Don't forget to review about what you want me to do with my writing!

-cherrygorilla