Author's Note: And here's the extra chapter everyone.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Extra Chapter

"I don't know what to do." Jude was groaning as we walked down a street one Friday March afternoon after computer club.

"Well, which one of them do you like better?" I asked. She sent me a look that clearly read that she liked them both just as much as the other.

I rolled my eyes to the heavens.

"You can't date them both. They'd kill each other for one thing." Like they weren't already trying to, I thought a little grimly. They had finally clicked that, hey, they liked the same girl.

Ok, so when I say kill, it was more they had come to an agreement or I guess you could say, a bet, which was basically this; they would use whatever means, civil and proper and all that crap to win Jude over as their girlfriend and whoever actually wins her over, the other one would step down and accepted it as the status quo.

Which for Felix to agree to something like this, is actually quite amazing and also shows just how much he does in fact like Jude.

Neither of them want to hurt Jude (just like she doesn't want to hurt either of them), so are trying to keep this whole situation as civil and friendly as possible. Only problem is the two of them are quite competitive when they actually feel like it and Jude is someone they both really want to date. This is probably why they have gotten me to stand in as referee in this bet of theirs, to make sure that neither of them does anything unhanded that could mess up the other ones chance with Jude.

Of course, as soon as I found out about this little agreement, actually I was the one who thought up the idea (Yeah, I know, I'm a flipping Genius, though would you rather have your two best friends beating the crap out of and not talking to each other instead?), I told Jude, who of course started flipping out about the whole situation. Like she was now.

"But I don't know what to do. I can't choose between them! That could totally mess up their friendship!"

"They have that agreement, remember?"

Jude pulled a face at me.

"Just because they agreed that whoever "wins" me," she pulled another face, "the other would step down and things would return to the way they were before this whole mess, doesn't mean that that will actually happen!" she ranted, kicking at the sidewalk angrily.

"It might." But I was being hopeful.

"Look, seriously, out of the two of them, who do you like better? Paul or Felix? You seemed to be pretty interested in Paul at the end of last year."

"No, I was pretty interesting in youat the end of last year," my face went red, but she continued on anyway, "it was only when you mention that Paul was interested in me and had been for a while, that I became interested in him."

"And Felix?" she went red in the face and I rolled my eyes. Typical girl! Always falling for the bad boy!

"Well, you're going to have to decide soon…"

"No, I don't. I mean, not really…"

"So, you're just going to lead them along for the rest of the semester?" I asked and she sighed.

"I could stop hanging out with you guys." She said, wincing. I didn't like that idea much either.

"That would probably only make it worse, they'll either blame each other or themselves or both."

"So what should I do?"

"Figure out how to tell them that you like them just as friends."

"Oh god…" she said and buried her face into her hands. I know, I was cringing as well at the thought of her giving that speech to the two of them.

"Or you could always go along with their agreement and let them take you out, you know a couple times each and then at like the end of the semester figure out which one you like better."

"So that I can go out with the one I chose for the summer and then have it all end when we both go off to college."

"You don't know that that's going to happen."

"Michael, seriously, how many high school relationships have you actually heard about, that have survived college years? Especially when the people involved in the relationship are going to different colleges? It just doesn't work."

"Wonderful." And I was suddenly no longer thinking about her relationship problems but my own. Well, not so much my relationship problems, because currently Mia and I had none, but if what Jude was saying about college was true…

"She's the best friend of your little sister; you are going to see her more often than you think you are. Plus she has her limo; she can visit you whenever she wants." Jude reminded me and I nodded, feeling a tiny bit reassured.

"Have you thought of what you want to get her for her birthday?" Jude asked, obviously trying to change the topic away from her. I shot her a look that clearly read we are so not finished with the conversation before sighing.

"No."

"Have to you asked her?"

"Yeah and she's being as difficult as me about it. Well, she has said that she wouldn't mind another song but that's about it."

"What's wrong with writing her a song? If my boyfriend… shut up, that conversation is over… wrote and played a song for me for my birthday, I would be over the moon about it."

"Yeah, but a song isn't really anything compared to a moon rock." She punched me in the arm.

"It's the thought that counts, not what it compares to or the value of it is."

"I know that. I just want to get her something… I don't know special."

"And a hand-written song from her boyfriend isn't?" Jude asked and I pulled a face at her.

"It's different. I want to get her something that when she looks at it, she'll immediately think of us and…" I trailed off because just as I was saying that something in a jewelry store that we were just walking by caught my eye.

"Michael?" Jude asked in surprise as I ducked into the store.

"Um, excuse me." I said, feeling a little nervous as I walked up to the counter were a bored looking shop assistant girl looked up at me from her magazine. "I was just wondering about the price of a necklace that you have on display out the front of your shop."

She looked me up and down, taking in my school uniform and my windblown, all time messy hair with raised, manicured eyebrows, but instead of telling me to just get lost, she did as I asked, walking around the counted and unlocked the back panel of the window display where I had seen the perfect gift for Mia.

"Which one was it?" she asked once she had the display open.

"Um, the silver snowflake please." She nodded and carefully pulled it from the stand that it had been resting on.

"It's two hundred and ninety dollars." She informed me, her eyebrows raised again as if she was expecting me, after hearing the price of the necklace, to bolt from the shop.

I just nodded.

In a sort of resigned way, she walked back, after locking the display up again, around the counter and placed the necklace down on to a velvet mat.

Carefully, fearful that I might in some way damage the tiny pendent, I picked it up and looked it over. It was a simple, but pretty snowflake design, all up about the size of my thumb nail.

It was light in my hand and it glittered slightly in the stores lights, reminding me of Mia's eyes when she was truly happy about something.

"I'll take it, but do you mind holding it for a bit for me? I can put a deposit on it today though," I added quickly when she looked at me skeptically; "I just haven't got all the money on me."

"This isn't some kind of trick is it?" she asked. "This is the only one we have of this necklace design."

"No," I said shaking my head as I pulled out my wallet, "I can put a hundred down today." I said and showed her that I could. This seemed to reassure her quite a bit.

"We can only hold it for two weeks, just so you know." She said as she plucked my deposit from my hand.

"That's fine." I said as I looked at the necklace again, feeling this great weight lift off me.

It was perfect and exactly what I had been looking for, for the past couple of months.

The shop assistant looking at me again, a slight frown between her eyes.

"Aren't you the guy who is going out with that Princess of that country that no one has heard about until her discovery?" I felt my ears grow red.

"Um, yeah I am. It's her birthday soon, so." I shrugged.

"I think she'll love it." And she gave me a genuine smile. "She seems like a sweet girl." I smiled a slow, soft smile that I always seem to start wearing whenever I think of Mia.

"Yeah, she is." I replied.

After she, her name was Lisa I found out, had taken down my details, I left the store feeling quite pleased with myself, finding Jude sitting on a bench just a little down the street, reading her Chem text book.

"You could have come in, you know." I said once I reached her.

"Nah, you needed to do that by yourself. Can't hold your hand all the time, you know." She teased.

"What about my holding your hand during this whole Felix/Paul thing?" I replied.

"Oh, you've still got to do that for me. At least until we graduate."

"Wonderful." I sighed.

"I thought about it." She said suddenly.

"Hmmm."

"About taking your advice and having a go at going out with both of them, since that's what they've more or less agreed to try with me themselves."

"You sure?"

"Uh huh. I mean, we'd all know what's going on, so it wouldn't be like cheating or being disloyal or anything like that and it simply to see…"

"Who you'd rather date."

"That sounds horrible, you know that?"

"Yeah, it does, but what else are you going to do? I mean, it's not like you haven't been wrestling with this yourself."

"It was so much easier when I was invisible." She groaned. "Or when it was just Paul who liked me."

"Because you knew that he would never actually get around to doing anything about it."

"Like you."

"Hey, I have too. I'm with Mia now, aren't I?"

"Yeah, and that was after how many months?"

"Shut up."

"God! Why did Felix have to start liking me?" she moaned. "I mean, I'm not his type or anything!"

"No, you're not." I agreed, "But you interest him. You can make him laugh and you make him think. You've opened up this whole new world inside his head."

"When he isn't stone senseless you mean." She grumbled, pulling a face. It wasn't exactly small knowledge that Jude was against both Felix drug and drinking habits. She told him that frequently. And I think he's actually starting to listen.

"Hey, you have to admit that is happening a whole lot less of late." Because of you, I thought but didn't add. She was under enough pressure as it was without her needing to know that the reason why Felix was cutting back on the drugs and alcohol was her.

I'm dreading what will happen once and that is if Jude chooses Paul over him. It won't be pretty. Heck he might actually end up in rehab, which is something that I so do not want to see.

"Look, just give them both a go and if neither work out, at least you tried." I told her gently and she sighed.

"I suppose. You're not going to hate me are you?"

"Hate you? Why?"

"I don't know. Bro's before ho's?"

I rolled my eyes at her.

"Jude, I could never hate you. Annoyed at you if you keep this up any longer without actually doing anything about the pair of them, but no, I could never hate you."

"Good." She looked relieved. "So how do I tell them that I agree to go along with this stupid agreement of theirs? And wait, how do I choose which one to go out with first? And…"

"How bout we both tell them because it was me after all who told you about it and I'm the referee for this whole thing. And for the who goes first, we'll stick their names into a hat and you can choose that way."

"You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?" Jude said sounding torn between being impressed and annoyed.

"Not as much as you might think." I replied, stretching my arms above my head.

"Thanks." She said, smiling at me.

"No problem. You helped me out, so, fairs fair."

"I know but still, thank you."

I shrugged.

"You do know I'm still going to be asking you on advice with Mia right?"

"Duh. I'd be worried if you didn't."

"So I help you with those two and you help me understand the mad minds of girls. Deal?" I held out my hand and she grasped in with a grin.

"Deal."

"So," she nudged me with a slight grin as we came to her apartment block, "you taking her to Prom?"

"What?"

She laughed as she entered her apartments lobby with me staring opened mouth after her.

Prom? What? Mia wouldn't want to go to the Prom…

Right?

Author's Note: So basically this extra chapter was mainly to set up a few things for book 5, mainly where and how Michael came by getting Mia's snowflake necklace (Which by the way, the price of the necklace in this, is actually the price of silver snowflack necklace that I saw in a jewelry store a few weeks back (I know, my mouth completely dropped when I saw it. It looked exactly how I imagine Mia's snowflake necklace to look. I wanted to take a picture to show all of you, except that the shop assistants start glaring at me the moment I took out my phone, so sorry about that). Granted it was priced at Australian price, but still 'shrugs') and setting up the Jude, Paul and Felix triangle that is going to come to head some time during book 5 and also faintly hinting at Prom.
Overall, it's a filler chapter, a little boring because nothing much happens but it setting a few things up because there is such a wide gap between this book and the 5th.
Actually, I think it becomes like that after this book. I think only 8 and 9 are set side by side in the same months. 5,6,7 and 8 have huge gaps between them and obviously 9 and 10, there are years... hmmm, I'm predicting that this might be a pain when it comes to writing these books (Like the later ones weren't going to be hard enough to write already!). Book 5 is being hard to write because I don't know where to start, should I start where Mia Diary starts or have some M&M moments before that? But I'm working to figure that out. Tempted to just get on with the rest of the book and deal with the beginning later down the track.
Anyway, thank you so much to all my wonderful, loving readers. Without all of you, I would never have gotten this far in the PD series.
I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (Though I will be back before then, but lets keep with tradition, shall we.) to you all!
Bye for now!