Disclaimer: I don't own Hannah Montana or any characters/actors associated with said show. (But I'd sure love to have personal access to Mitchel Musso!)
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TUESDAY:
Today, Lilly decided to pester Oliver. After getting to the bottom of Miley's case in record time, she figured that it was time to test her skills on him. It would be much easier and faster than with Miley, Lilly assumed. She had, in fact, assumed right. It had taken Miley three periods and then lunchtime before she admitted it; for Oliver, it had only taken one.
"'Sup, Oliver?" Lilly asked nonchalantly.
"Nothing much, Lilly. You?"
"Same. Hey, I have a question...you liked Miley before you found out she was Annah-hay Ontana-may, right?"
"Yeah, why?" Oliver said. As soon as he realized what he'd admitted, he froze. Lilly clapped excitedly.
"I knew it!" Lilly started doing a happy dance despite the fact that the whole class was staring at her in shock.
"You can't tell her that!" Oliver ordered. Lilly stopped her dance and looked at Oliver as if he was crazy.
"I know that. You have to tell her."
"I will, eventually..."
"No, Oliver, you have to tell her today!" Lilly demanded, crossing her arms in front of her chest, daring him to contradict her.
"Are you joking?" He asked weakly even though he already knew the answer.
"Nope."
"Can I have until the end of the week?"
"Fine, but if you really don't want another guy like Jake to sweep her off her feet, then you'd better tell her the next time you see her." Lilly warned. Oliver mumbled something under his breath and Lilly smirked before heading to Biology.
Lilly walked into the classroom and spotted her friend at their normal table in the middle of the room. Miley didn't notice Lilly walk in, she was too busy writing something in her notebook.
"Hey, Miley." Lilly greeted cheerfully. Miley's eyes widened at her friend's sudden appearance and she hastily closed her notebook and put it under her biology book before smiling up at Lilly.
"Hey, Lilly. Have you seen Oliver?" Miley asked nervously, hoping that Lilly wouldn't ask why she hid the notebook.
"Yeah...why do you want to know?" Lilly asked, purposely pretending she didn't see Miley try to hide her notebook; she made a mental note to steal it later when Miley wasn't looking.
"No reason. He's just my friend; can't I ask where my friends are without being accused of having ulterior motives?"
"Sure Miley, don't get so defensive."
"I'm not getting defensive!"
"If you say so..." Lilly sighed. Just then Oliver walked in and a large smile wove its way onto Miley's face.
"Hi, Oliver." She chirped.
"H-hey, Miles." He looked at Lilly, silently asking if she had told Miley any of their previous conversation. Lilly just smiled and shrugged unhelpfully. Oliver sighed heavily and sat down at their lab table.
"Today, we are will be doing a plant lab on differentiating monocots and dicots," their biology teacher, Ms. Kunkle said. "I want you to get a partner. Once you have your partner, come up here and get your worksheet and then head outside. You'll be gathering two examples of monocots and two examples of dicots." Lilly immediately ran across the room to be partners with Amanda, purposely leaving Oliver and Miley to be partners.
"Be my partner?" Miley asked hopefully.
"Yeah, definitely!" Oliver agreed eagerly. Miley looked a bit surprised at his enthusiasm. He caught her glance, "What? Now I know I'll get an A." For half a second, a brief look of disappointment flashed across Miley's face—she had hoped there was a different reason for his excitement—but she quickly replaced it with a mock glare and slapped him playfully on the arm.
"Hey!" He complained. Miley just smiled wryly at his outburst.
"My hand slipped." She said rather unconvincingly. Oliver was about to protest when Miley hit him again.
"Ok, now I know that wasn't an unintentional 'slip of the hand.'"
"Neither was the first one." Miley said laughingly and raised her hand to hit him again, but he stopped her mid-strike by grabbing her hand in his and intertwining their fingers so she couldn't wrench her hand away. Not to be defeated, Miley giggled as she got her other hand up to slap his other arm, but he captured that one too. Now they were stuck; not that either of them minded, Lilly noted from the other side of the room. It seemed as if time froze for them, both were staring at the other with a look of...Lilly couldn't place it, but she knew it sure wasn't platonic anymore. Unfortunately, Amber and Ashley also noticed.
"Oh look, Stewart and Oken, loser love!" That naturally got the whole class to look at the two and start whispering. Amber and Ashley looked at one another haughtily, "Ooohhhh tsssssss."
Miley and Oliver hastily let go of each others' hands and didn't make eye contact; both were staring avidly at the floor with their faces slowly gaining color. Clearing his throat Oliver spoke to break the awkward tension.
"C'mon Miles, who cares what they're saying, it's Amber and Ashley! They have nothing better to do then to torment people. Let's just ignore them and go get the worksheet and start the lab." Miley shook her head at Oliver in slight amazement.
"You know, for a donut, you sure have some very non-donut moments. You're completely right, let's go." They walked to the front of the room. This attracted many stares, but they ignored them all and went outside to start the lab.
Once the two were outside, they looked around for leaves and flowers that would be examples of monocots and dicots.
"Miley, I have to ask you something." Oliver said nervously.
"Yes?" She replied, her heart beating faster, hardly daring to believe where this might lead.
"The flowers with two seed leaves are monocots right?" Miley was disappointed, but she didn't let it show on her face.
"No mono means one, so that would mean that the monocots have one seed leaf and dicots have two."
"Oh, okay," he said sheepishly, "That makes sense. Can't we just go to the garden that's by the lunchroom or something to get the examples?"
"Oliver that's brilliant!" He blushed under her praise. The two of them headed over to the garden and Miley squealed once it came into view. "This is perfect! There are so many different examples." She picked an iris and then reached for a rose. "Darn I can't pick a rose. I don't have gloves. Oh well, sunflowers are my next favorite flower." So she picked a sunflower and held it up next to the iris.
"Do you see how the iris has petals in a set of three?" Miley asked. Oliver nodded. "Well that's an example of a monocot. The flowers that are monocots always have petals in sets of three, while the dicot flowers are in fours and fives, like this sunflower. And the leaves of the sunflower have veins in a net pattern unlike the iris whose leaves have parallel veins." Miley was radiating happiness as she was explaining this and Oliver marveled at her carefree beauty and intelligence. Miley set the flowers down and wrote on their paper everything that they needed.
"Oh, I almost forgot!" At the top she penned carefully: 'Miley and Oliver.' She smiled wistfully at their names until Oliver brought her back to reality.
"Um, Miles?"
"Yeah?"
"Isn't there a backside to the worksheet?" Miley gasped and flipped it over to find that he was right. She started quickly going through and answering the questions. While she was distracted, Oliver let go of her hand and went to the rose bushes. There was a bush with dark pink roses and a bush with red ones. A gut feeling told him to get a red one; lucky for him, lying next to the bush was a pair of gardening shears. He grinned, picked them up and started looking for the perfect rose. Oliver saw one that was just beginning to open its petals and decided to get that one; it would last longer than one that was fully bloomed.
Quickly he snipped the flower off of the bush but still leaving about seven inches of stem. The only problem with the rose now was that it had huge thorns. He cut off the thorns from the bottom to about three inches from the top. Now there was a place for her to hold the rose without getting practically impaled by the stems. He headed back to where Miley was sitting and finishing the last question on the worksheet. When she finished, she turned around to find Oliver standing behind her and holding out to her a beautiful red rose.
"For you."
"Aw, thanks!" Miley gushed. "It's gorgeous!" She reached up and gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. The spot where her lips touched Oliver's cheek tingled pleasantly. Oliver felt that this would be the perfect time to finally tell her his feelings, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, the bell rang.
"Shoot, we have to go. Come on Oliver!" Miley ran out of the garden, thinking that her friend was following her. When she looked back, she saw him hitting himself in the head.
"What in the world are you doing?! We have to go to Algebra II now!" He made no attempt to move, so Miley ran back, grabbed his hand and led him back to the class. As soon as they got in, she handed their paper to Ms. Kunkle and they ran to the lockers to get their math books. She put her book under her arm and set the rose carefully down on her biology book before running (and still holding onto Oliver's hand) to Mr. Corelli's math class. Lilly was the only one to notice they were still holding hands until they sat down, Miley behind Lilly, and Oliver a row to the right and a seat ahead of Lilly.
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Second Author's Note: Please review; especially if you add the story to your alert/favorite list. At least 15 reviews overall would be awesome!