Author's Note: Sorry for the delayed update with this chapter. Been having a bit of trouble enroling in my cert 4 Networking course. It's been something close to a nightmare! Had been thinking there that I hadn't passed my cert 3, because they didn't send out my marks from last year! The running around that I had to do today... 'shakes head'. TAFE here in OZ can be truly appauling when it comes to being organised.
Anyway, enough of my whining, here is chapter three. I'm sorry to say not Mia's birthday party. No, that's next chapter and you'll be all happy to know that it is a loooong chapter, even longer than Mia's birthday dinner and it was a lot more fun to write. Poor Mike, sometimes he has no clue and simply can not win. Have I mention before how much I love tormenting him? Not the whole depressive gig that I had to write for book three, that wasn't fun at all, but just chapters where I can just mess with him, hehehehe, so much fun. Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think

Chapter Three

"So from the sounds of it, Mia's birthday dinner wasn't an overly huge success." Dad said when I walked out into the kitchen the next morning, rubbing my eyes and wishing it was Saturday already. Or even better, Summer Break!

"Huh?" I replied back intelligently as I poured myself a bowl of cereal before flopping down at the kitchen table opposite him, more than half tempted to simply rest my head upon the table top and sleep for another half hour.

Except that my fantastic Dad wouldn't let me. Instead he shoved his morning paper in my direction.

I blinked at it a couple of times, not making overly huge sense of what I was seeing until I rubbed my eyes a bit more, forcing the last of the sleep out of them.

"Oh." I said as I read the heading and recognised the restaurant in the photo underneath. Then I rolled my eyes in disbelief when I discovered that the whole incident had somehow made the front cover of The Post.

Must be a slow news day for what happened last night to make front page news, I thought with little humour.

When I finished reading the article which thankfully didn't mention either Mia or me, I noticed that Dad was looking at me with an expecting gaze for me to cough up the dirt on what really happen last night.

I rolled my eyes at him.

"They've pretty much covered the whole story in this." I said, even though I knew they hadn't, in fact they had got it all wrong, making out that Clarisse was the victim and that Jangbu had, for some reason, done the whole thing on purpose though they gave no reason as to why.

Dad gave me a deadpan look, so with a sigh I gave him the cliff-notes version of what had happen last night, which by the time I had finished, he was laughing.

"Well, one thing's for sure; Mia's grandmother is anything but boring." Dad said once he had gotten in control of his laughter.

"I could stand to have her being a little boring." I grumbled grouchily just as Mom and Lil walked into the kitchen looking at Dad in confusion as to why he was laughing.

I noticed with some relief that Mom was carrying the Times and that they clearly had better things to put on their front cover then Mia Grandmother's being covered in lobster bisque.

"Michael, why is the Times reporting an incident occurring last night at Les Hautes Manger between Mia's grandmother and a bowl of lobster bisque?" Mom asked me and I thumped my head against the kitchen table.

Ok, so a really, really slow news day, but at least with the Times the article is in the Metro section and not the front cover, but still! Can't they find something else to report about?

Apparently not, because it quickly became clear that every newspaper had taken it upon themselves to report the incident that had occurred at the Les Hautes Manger last night, each adding their own little twist to the story so as to keep original and to avoid being sued by one of the other papers for copy-right and so on, but still, they all got it wrong about what really happen last night at Les Hautes Manger.

One example of just how wrong they got the facts was The Daily News, with their heading Princess and the Pea (Soup), when it wasn't pea soup that fell on Clarisse at all but lobster bisque. Just go to show how much Newspapers care about getting the facts right just as long as they can print a good story.

Another thing that they all got wrong was that in all of the articles about what supposedly happen last night, there was absolutely nothing about Rommel's involvement in it what happen. In fact, in all of them, there is no suggestion whatsoever that the whole thing was the silly dog's fault.

I repeated the story of what really happen last night to Mom and Lil, which had Dad chuckling all over again.

"She brought her dog to the restaurant?" Lil asked with raised eyebrows once I had finished. "Why?"

"I don't know," I said as I stood up from the table, stretching to my full height as I did so, "maybe it's the done thing in France." I said with a shrug as I took my bowl over to the sink, giving a quick rinse before stacking it into the dishwasher.

I headed back to my room, to grab my school bag and to do a few last things before I headed down to the lobby.

As I swung my school bag onto my back, I couldn't help but grin down at Pavlov, who was lying upside down at the end of my bed, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and looking completely adorable in a dorky, dog sort of way.

"Good boy," I said as I bent down and gave him a goodbye scratch under his chin, causing his right back leg to start kicking in his sleep. "I don't have to worry about you causing a mess like that rodent dog did, do I? Nope, I don't because you are the best dog ever!" I gave his chin a final scratch, causing him to whine as he cracked one eye open to look up at me imploringly.

"I gotta go." I said chuckling down at him, "I'll see you this afternoon, after computer club and we'll go for a nice long walk, ok." His tail thumped against my bed madly at the word 'walk'.

He stretched his legs into the air before rolling himself off my bed and landing on my bedroom floor with a slight thump as his front legs gave out on him and he landed on his chin, looking most undignified.

He whined as I laughed at him, scrambling to his feet and eying me in the most dejected sort of way.

"You," I said as I bent down and start scratching his ears, causing once more his tail to thump against the floor along with his right back paw to bounce up and down, "are the King of Guilt Trips! Did you know that?" Pavlov simply whined as he fell against me, begging for his tummy to be scratched. Which I did for a minute or two before it became quite clear from both my watch and Lil's yelling that it was time to go.

"Sorry boy. Gotta go. Be good for Maya, ok." I said as I stood up and wiped his fur off my pants. He gave me another whine before bounding out of my room, walking me to the front door before bouncing off to get his breakfast that I had put out for him in the kitchen.

God, I was going to miss him when I went to Columbia. Why did I have to have a roommate, why couldn't I just have my dog with me instead?

And while I'm at it, couldn't I just take Mia with me too? I thought when I saw her limo pull up out front of my building and she opened the door for us to get in.

"Morning." Mia said as we got in. she looked a little tired, as if she hadn't slept much last night and I felt myself suddenly start to worry that she might be blaming herself for Jangbu dismissal. Which is silly, but something that I know she does, blame herself for things that are beyond her control and are by no means her fault at all.

"Well, your grandmother's certainly done it this time." Lil said almost immediately after she had said good morning.

I saw Mia pull a face and I knew that she was, indeed blaming herself for what had happen. I sat back and listen to Lil inform Mia about it being in every newspaper, even in the Times Metro section, which had Mia's mouth drop in disbelief.

"Haven't they got anything better to report about?" Mia asked, looking thoroughly annoyed. "Must be a really slow news day." She added crankily as she crossed her arms across her chest and scowled out the limo's window.

"What we'll do," Lil started causing Mia to look away from the window and to eye her curiously, though I noted a hint of reservation as well, "is we'll start making signs in Gifted and Talented class, and then we'll go over after school." Mia looked at her blankly before looking at me.

I simply shrugged, already deciding that whatever mad plan Lil has come up with now, I was going to take no part in it. If only it was so easy for Mia, who I knew was going to be dragged into Lil's plan whether she likes it or not.

"Go over where?" Mia asked cautiously as if she too was detecting that this was another one of Lil's mad plans that she wasn't going to like.

"To Les Hautes Manger," Lil exclaimed as if Mia was a simpleton, "To start the protest."

There was a slight pause in the limo, where the rest of us (Mia, Lars and I) simply stared at her, before Mia spluttered out, "What protest?"

It was becoming quite obvious to Lil that Mia wasn't as onboard as she had been obviously hoping she would be about this. But then, Mia seemed to be thinking of other things other than what Lil was talking about.

Sometimes, I really do wish there was a way to read a person minds, because during times like these, I would dearly love to know what Mia is thinking when my sister is more or less shrieking at her.

"The protest against their unfair dismissal of Jangbu Pinasa!" Lil shrieked dragging Mia completely out of whatever had been occupying her thoughts for most of the limo ride to school. Mia stared at her for a moment, looking like she was about to start her own protest, before slouching in her seat and looking crankily out the window again.

"I'm never going to hear the end of this." she grumbled as we all got out of her limo when it arrived at school.

"It might not be so bad." I reassured but she gave me a deadpan expression and pointed to the student body of AEHS who were standing about on the front steps of AEHS, all of them with their heads in a newspaper.

She sighed heavily, bracing herself against the onslaught of comments and jeers that were going to be hauled her direction for a large part of the day.

Sure enough, almost as soon as we reached the front steps the jeers started. Mia ignored them and kept walking up the steps even though she did pick up speed almost as soon as we reached the top and bolting off for her locker before Lil or I could say anything to her.

"Maybe you shouldn't do your protest." I said to Lil as we walked for our respective lockers, "You know that it will only cause them," I gestured to the immature morons around us, "to give Mia more grief over this."

"No."

"Lil, come on. She's your best friend." She started to protest but I continued on, "Look, I know what happen to this guy was really wrong and unfair, but it's Mia who is the one who is suffering the most from what the newspapers are saying."

"But by holding our protest, we'll set the newspapers right and they'll leave her along. We'll bring justice to someone who can't stand up for himself and Mia won't feel bad or that it's her fault about his dismissal. This protest is the best thing that we can do!" Lil exclaimed and I shook my head.

"I doubt that that's how this is all going to turn out, Lil." I said before leaving her to her delusions and headed for my locker.

I was able to ignore most the comments that were circulating around the school about what a drama Mia's Grandmother could make over a little bit of soup (it was actually a large amount soup. I wouldn't have been overly thrilled if I had had a huge bowl of soup, especially lobster bisque, dumped all over me, but I wouldn't be publicising it to the whole flipping world and I wouldn't probably get the busboy who dumped it on me, by accident by means of tripping over my own dog, fired. But then, that's just me.).

I'm lucky that I have friends who find this sort of thing to be amusing rather than a means of teasing me and my girlfriend. They found what happen last night to be simply amusing, but that was how far it went.

But no one was going on about it for as long or as loudly as Lil was, as I saw in G&T where she was sitting at one of the tables in the classroom, her ear pressed to a mobile. A mobile that wasn't hers, that is saying, if she had one, which she doesn't, for the obvious reason of her personality and what she might do if she ever got her hands on one.

"What she doing?" I asked as I came to sit beside Mia, who was looking at my sister with a great deal of irritation.

"Trying to track down Jangbu home phone number." Mia grumbled.

"On your phone?" I guess and she pulled a face at me.

"I haven't even used it." She said looking annoyed and I chuckled as I pulled out my laptop.

I worked on my laptop while Mia did a few algebra equations before she started writing in her journal. Lil alternated between ringing and talking to people on Mia's mobile phone and creating signs for her protest.

After awhile, Lil bumped Mia, causing Mia to look up from her journal as Lil pushed this giant sign in front of her. I tilted to see it before having to fight back a snort as I read what Lil had written on it with a big, black marker.

LES HAUTES MANGER IS UN-AMERICAN!

"Um, Lilly," Mia started slowly as she looked up from the sign to Lil, "everybody already knows that Les Hautes Manger is un-American. It's a French restaurant." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lars laughing silently behind us.

"Just because its owner was born in France is no reason for him to think he does not have to abide our nation's laws and social customs."

"Yeah and I thought one of our laws was that people could pretty much hire and fire who they want. You know, within certain parameters." Mia pointed out.

I leant forward in my chair, over my computer to try and control my laughter at that, because, of course, Mia was right.

Lil shot me a withering look before she snapped at Mia, "Just whose side are you on in this, anyway, Mia?"

"Yours, of course" Mia said quickly and I rolled my eyes in exasperation, "I mean, Jangbu's." she added somewhat sheepishly.

Mia handed Lil back her sign and told her that she wouldn't be able to come to Lil's protest this afternoon because she had princess lessons with her grandmother. Lil's eyes started to narrow and I knew a fight between them was going to break out.

"So, you are more concerned about yourself than you are about Jangbu's three starving children."

Huh? What was Lil on about?

Mia looked just as confused as I felt about that statement.

"How do you know he even has kids? Him having kids wasn't mention in the newspaper and you haven't been able to get in contact with him, so how do you know he even has any?"

"I meant figuratively, not literally." Lil snapped and I heard Mia sigh heavily.

"Look, I'll try and talk Grandmere into talking to the owner of Les Hautes Manger about re-hiring Jangbu." Mia said sighing clearly trying to compromise. It seemed to satisfy Lil for the moment, since she left Mia alone after that and Mia went back to writing in her journal.

"I'm dead." Jude informed me during computer club this afternoon.

"Really?" I said, looking up from the computer I was working on at her in amusement. "cos, you don't look very dead to me. Can't see any rotting flesh at all." She hit me with a spare mouse that had been lying nearby.

"God, where do you keep finding those?" I asked as I pressed my hand to the side of my head where she had hit me with the mouse. Hard, I might add. She started swing the mouse's cord in a threatening manner, making me roll my computer chair a little further away from her. "You know, in a weird way that could have been taken as a compliment, the not rotting flesh part, I mean." I defended weakly, waiting with the surety that I was going to be hit with the mouse again.

Jude simply glared at me, before asking icily, "Do you say those types of things to Mia?"

It was becoming extremely clear that her sense of humour was no longer offering us any company today.

"Yup," I said quickly, "She laughs." Jude continued to simply glare at me, the mouse still hanging threateningly between her fingers.

I eye it for a moment before sighing. "Fine, I'll be good and I'll bite. Why are you dead?"

"We graduate in week's time." Jude said mournfully, while I looked at her as if she was insane. Wasn't graduating from High School supposed to be a good thing? But being the kind and considerate friend that I am, I decided that I would respond to that statement not with a why is that a bad thing, but rather with a smart-ass comment.

"Really? Funny that, because you know, that's generally what happens at the end of high school. We graduate. They trap us here for four years, get whatever value that can get out of us while we're stuck here and then they kick us out into the big, wide world, for us to then discover that everything that they've been teaching us for the past four years is, in fact, a pile of useless crap and that it won't get us anywhere in the world."

"You are a very down person, you know that right?" Jude informed me though I could see the tell-tale signs of a smile starting to creep across her lips.

"No, I'm realistic. But hey, I'm the one looking at the bright side of this; you're the one whose dreading graduation."

She was starting to look mildly amused now as she waited for me to continue.

"For example," I continued as I looked around the computer room that served as the computer club's "base", "all these people that we see every day," I said waving my hand around the lab, "after graduation, will vanish from our lives and we'll never have to see or think or hear from them ever again."

Judith lips twitched into a smile as thought over that.

"I suppose there is that. But that doesn't solve my immediate problem."

"Oh?" because for a moment I had no clue what she was talking about.

She gave me a deadpan look.

"Paul and Felix." She reminded me and I sighed.

"Oh, that." I said with a heavy sigh and she looked at me with exasperation, "You still haven't been able to decide between them huh?" she shook her head miserably.

"Even after going out on dates with both of them?" she shook her head again.

"Still can't, I think those dates just made me like them both even more."

"So what you going to do?" because truthfully this was getting ridiculous and Trevor's suggestion about tossing all three of them into a room to sort it out amongst themselves was becoming a more appealing idea with each passing day.

"Well, I was half expecting them to lose interest by now." Jude defended when she obviously saw something in my look that I was giving her that she didn't like. "Or at least Felix." So had I actually. I mean, Felix hasn't dated someone as long as he's tried to win Jude.

"They like you, a lot." Was all I could think to reply with and she sighed heavily, looking towards where Paul was helping some freshman with a game that they were creating.

"Yeah, I know. I just wish I wasn't in this position. I know, you keep telling me to choose but it's not that easy. It's freaky hard, just when I think I've decided on one the other does something that then tips the scales in his favour. It completely sucks!" she actually looked close to tears.

"Jude." I said moving back to where she was sitting, now that I was fairly sure I wasn't going to be assaulted by the mouse again, "you can't keep this up; you have to either choose one of them or let them both know that things aren't going to change." I said gently.

"Yeah, I know." She whispered softly.

I got home just as Lil did, which surprised me, since she had left school right on the home bell.

"Where have you been?" I asked as we hopped into the elevator and she had pressed the button for our floor.

"None of your business." Lil shot back at me without looking at me. I narrowed my eyes at her.

"What are you up to?" I demanded and she glared up at me.

"Again, none of your business." She replied and I rolled my eyes at her, before I felt a light blub light up in my head.

"The protest?"

Lil rolled her eyes at me in disgust.

"How did it go?" I asked fighting the desire to just roll my eyes back at her. She sniffed and stuck her nose in the air.

"It went quite well, thank you very much."

"Really?" I asked, possibly a tiny bit surprised by this. This was of course not the right thing to say, Lil scowled at me before shoving past me and left the elevator, stomping down corridor for our apartment, with me rolling my eyes after her.

As soon as I got into the apartment, Pavlov greeted me with happy barks.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, walkies time. Just let me get change first." I said to him as I walked, with him on my heels, to my room. I changed out of my uniform and into a pair of jeans and shirt, calling to Maya as I left the apartment that I was taking Pavlov for a walk.

Taking Pavlov for a walk, surprise as this may be, is actually one of my favourite things to do. I don't know why, I just do.

I walked Pavlov for an hour around Central Park, passing by the Plaza, knowing that Mia was in one of the suites on the upper floors, being tortured by her grandmother most likely. I thought about sticking around, but it was getting dark and Pavlov was beginning to whine for his dinner.

"You do realise that you are missing out on seeing Mia, right?" I told him as we walked back in the direction of home. Mia being, after all, Pavlov's most favourite human on the face of the planet. Even though I'm the one who feeds and spends the most time with him over all, he still loves Mia more than me.

When I got back home, I emailed Mia, asking her if she was ok, since she was so quiet during G&T. She replied twenty minutes later.

FtLouie

Hey! I'm fine. Thanks for asking. I'm just can't shake this feeling lately that there's something I've forgotten. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, though. Something to do with this time of year, though, I think…

I honestly had no idea what she was on about, so instead I replied with;

LinuxRulz

Well, judging by the C you got on the quiz today; I'd say you're forgetting is everything we've been going over these past few weeks in Algebra. If you want, I'll come over on Sunday and help you with Monday's assignment.

She replied, thanking me before saying that she was going to go to bed early. Yeah, something is so up, though what? I have no idea. And it wasn't like I could ask Lil, because I doubted she knew.

Mia isn't as big on sharing things with Lil as she used to, which is annoying for me because now I can't ferret out what may be upsetting Mia from Lil. Not that it was an easy task when Mia was still telling Lil everything, but now, it's near impossible.

I swear, one of these days, I'm really going to have to find away to sneak a look into Mia's journal because I swear it's getting harder and harder to know what is going on in that head of hers.