OH MY ROWLING! You guys are the best! Thank you everyone for your reviews, subscriptions, etc.! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Okay, odds are that this story will be ten to fifteen chapters, but that's just for now; it depends if I think of more to add. Alright, here's the next chapter. Read, review, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi or Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Chapter Seven

Shaking, Imogen went straight to the girl's bathroom. She tried to just walk at a fast pace instead of running, but ultimately she was moving as quickly as possible until she was in the bathroom. She noticed Katie Matlin and Marisol Lewis standing there talking, but they instantly averted their attention to Imogen. These two had always picked on her because of how different she was, but she had learned to live with it. Today, however, she was not in the mood to deal with ridicule. Trying not to cry, she shoved passed the girls and went into a stall.

She wanted to cry, but she knew that doing that with those two out there would just give them the ammunition they needed to attack her. She leaned against the locked door, wishing that Katie and Marisol would leave soon so she could bawl her eyes out. Imogen took in many breaths in hope that they would evacuate the bathroom so she could be alone.

"What's the matter with her?" she heard Marisol say, not really bothering to keep her voice down too low.

"Who knows," Katie said. "She and Fiona probably got into a fight."

"Ha! Well, I guess that's . . ."

Marisol trailed off, although Imogen did not know why; she did not care, either. With the state she was in, she did even want to find out what Marisol had to say. What Imogen did not know, however, was that another person had come into the bathroom. Clare crossed her arms as she stood behind Katie and Marisol; as they saw her reflection in the mirror, they turned around and saw how angry her expression was.

"Get out," she told them.

"Why?" Katie demanded; she and Clare were still not exactly seeing eye-to-eye ever since Katie went on a date with Jake and set her up to spend time with Eli although they had a bad breakup. "All students are allowed to use the bathrooms."

"You're not using the bathroom," Clare corrected. "You're standing around and gossiping about people."

"We can talk in here if we want," Marisol sneered, crossing her arms.

"Alright, then I'm sure you won't mind me telling Simpson how you two spend all your free time in here talking about students when you're supposed to be doing things for Student Council."

The girls glared at Clare, knowing that she had struck a nerve. Displeased, they shoved passed her and then left the restroom. Certain that the bathroom was clear, Clare walked up to the stall that Imogen was hiding in and knocked.

"Imogen? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Imogen lied, tears not coming out of her eyes. She took off her glasses and tried rubbing her eyes so the tears would retreat.

"Do you want to talk?"

"N-No. I'm fine."

"Come on, you and I both know that's the biggest lie in the world."

Imogen was about to respond when an involuntary sob escaped her lips. This surprised and worried Clare; she never figured that Imogen would be a crier, at least not in a public place. Hoping that it would be able to help, she decided that it was time for her to show Imogen that she had her trust; she hoped that by showing that. Imogen could see that Clare was on her side and could be someone to depend on.

"You know you can talk to me, right?"

"Y-Yeah," Imogen replied.

"Well, whenever you want to come out and talk to me about it, you can."

Imogen felt her lips twitch at the corners; pleased that Clare was offering. At the same time, Clare's kindness caused a bit of guilt to form in Imogen's stomach; she had plotted behind her back, stole her diary, and made the attempt to control her love life. Due to this, Imogen did not believe that she deserved Clare's console; however, she was hurting and she was desperate for someone to help her. On most occasions, she would have gone to Fiona, but that was clearly not an option. Eli would have been her second choice, but he was a boy and probably would not understand completely. Clare was the only one she had left.

Taking a deep breath, Imogen came out of the stall to see Clare leaning against the stall across from this one. She put her glasses back on again before turning to Clare.

"Fiona and I had a fight."

"What?" Clare said, raising her eyebrows. Imogen spoke of Fiona often and, as far as she knew, the two of them were not having any kind of problems, so now that they were suddenly fighting out of the blue shocked Clare.

"I think we're over," Imogen informed her, choking on her words.

"Imogen, Fiona cares about you," Clare comforted her. "She wouldn't let you go because of one small fight."

"She said that there's no 'we'. What else is that supposed to mean?"

"Maybe you two should just talk and try to work this out."

"I don't know."

"Okay, is this your first fight?"

Imogen nodded.

"Well, you guys can't let one fight ruin your relationship."

"I don't want it to, but she probably hates me."

"Why?"

Imogen knew that she could not reveal what happened without getting Jake and Fiona into trouble, and that was the last thing she needed to do was give her girlfriend – possibly ex-girlfriend – another reason to despise her. Taking a breath, she faced Clare as she prepared to tell her yet another lie.

"She and I . . . we had different ideas about something and she got really mad and . . . I think she broke up with me."

"You think?" Clare repeated.

Imogen nodded in reply, her heart breaking that her relationship Fiona had probably seen its last days.

"I-I don't know what to do."

"Do you love her?" Clare asked, hoping that the answer would be yes; if it was, she would know how to encourage Imogen to fight for Fiona. To her happiness and relief, Imogen nodded. "Well, then don't give up on her. Just wait for her to calm down a little then try talking to her. After that, you guys should smooth things over, put this behind you, and then continue on."

"It's not going to be that simple," Imogen said, knowing that it was going to take some effort for them to fix what they did. "We messed up a few things."

"But isn't it worth a shot? I mean, do you think you guys would be able to fix what happened? You always tell me that you two work better as a team."

That was true; throughout this whole scheme to get Eli and Clare back together, they always planned together and each of them was able to contribute to a certain extent. They may not have gotten far because Eli was actually over Clare, who was simply made of stone, but they were together all the while and they knew that they never would have gotten this far on their own.

"You're right," she admitted. "I just hope she understands what I did."

"I'm sure she will; just give her time."

After replaying the conversation in her head, Imogen turned to her friend and grinned.

"Thanks, Clare."

"No problem."

Without warning, Imogen began hugging Clare; although slightly surprised, Clare reciprocated the hug since Imogen clearly needed it. For the first time in a while, Imogen Moreno felt safe and comforted; and, although she wished it was Fiona giving her this hug, she was happy that Clare was there for her.

As Imogen thought this, Fiona silently stepped into the bathroom. When she saw Imogen hanging on to Clare, her heart broke and she quickly retreated, not wanting to see anymore.

()()

Fiona was furious and full of jealously all the way into lunch. She and Eli sat at their usual table as she watched Imogen sit with Clare. She noticed how Imogen kept glancing over at her, but she was too enraged to care about the pain in her eyes. She was still upset at Imogen for going behind her back to put a secret admirer note in Clare's locker, but what hurt her more was that Imogen kept clinging to Clare. It was frustrating and she was tired of Clare getting all of Imogen's attention; it had been like this for a while for the sake of their plan, but now it was getting personal and she found it revolting.

"Fiona? Fiona? Fiona!"

"What?" she snapped at Eli, turning her eyes to him.

"Haven't you heard a word I've been saying?" he asked her.

"Sorry, Eli, I have stuff on my mind."

"That 'stuff' wouldn't be Imogen, would it?"

Not wanting to discuss her, Fiona glared down at the food on her tray. All day, Eli had noticed how the couple did not speak and they did not exchange friendly stares as they did on a daily basis. The tension was starting to get to him, considering he could not stand seeing people he cared about being cold towards each other.

"That's it, what is going on with you two?" he demanded of Fiona. "Usually you guys would be all lovey-dovey, but now you guys are acting like you hate each other. What is the deal?"

"None of your business," she nearly shouted. She would not admit it out loud, but she could not help but blame Eli for what happened today; she could not help but think that if maybe he did move on from Clare or something, she and Imogen would not have felt the need to help them and this whole mess could have been avoided.

"Okay," Eli said, raising his hands up in surrender.

"Fiona."

The two of them turned their heads and saw Imogen standing at their table.

"Can we talk?"

"No," she said simply, looking her eyes returning to the table.

"Come on, please? Just for a minute?"

"Why don't you go talk to Clare?"

"Fi, we need to talk and you know it. I know we had our first fight, but –."

"Leave me alone, Imogen!" Fiona barked, glaring at her.

Eli wanted to move, but his legs were made of lead and he did not know if it would be wise to leave in case one of them needed to be held back. Instead, he sat there and hoped that he was just imaging the tears that were in Imogen's eyes.

"Why won't you talk to me?" she asked.

"For one, because you and Jake went behind my back!"

"What?" Eli exclaimed, not seeing what Jake Martin had to do with this situation.

"Not like that," Fiona clarified, knowing that he thought some form of cheating was involved.

Eli, although relieved that Imogen did not cheat on Fiona with Jake, was still highly confused as to what was happening right before his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Imogen said. "I'd fix it if I could, but –."

Not wanting to hear anymore, Fiona sharply stood up from her seat.

"Don't talk to me! Go talk to your new girlfriend!"

"It's not like that! And we would not be in this situation if it wasn't for you and your stupid idea!" Imogen reminded Fiona, the hurt starting to get to her.

"It wasn't just my idea!"

"Alright!" Eli hollered, standing up and stepping in the middle to act as some sort of barrier. "What the hell is going on with you two? And what are you talking about? And what does Jake have to do with this?"

"Butt out, Eli!"

"This isn't his fault," Imogen said, defending him.

"You're right, it's yours!" Fiona said, only half aware of what she was saying as the anger erupted out of her. "If you didn't come along last year and get together with him at the beginning of this year, he could still have feelings for Clare!"

"Hold it!" Eli screamed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

The girls ignored him and continued their argument.

"Don't put this on me! You were the one who set us up in the first place because you were too afraid to tell me how you felt!"

"THAT'S IT!" Eli yelled as loud as he could. "Whatever is going on is not worth you two fighting like this, so come clean right now!"

Fiona and Imogen looked down at their shoes, knowing that it was time to fix what they had done. It was clear that their plan was nothing more than a waste of time and that all it did was cause them pain, so it was time that they gave an explanation for their behavior to Eli; he deserved to know, considering he was the one who had put up with Imogen's sudden absence from their lunch table and they basically pried in a place they did not belong. Hoping that he would not hate them after this, they looked at each other and then to Eli. Fiona sighed, not prepared on how to give this explanation.

"We . . . we thought that you were lonely . . . so . . . we figured that we should set you up with someone."

"What?" he exclaimed.

"You haven't been acting that happy lately," Imogen explained. "We thought that was because you didn't have a girlfriend, so we thought we would help you out."

"You were going to set me up with Clare, weren't you?" he then accused. He saw this as the only plausible explanation for why Imogen would start spending time with Clare.

"You guys are perfect for each other," Fiona said. "And we figured that since you were better now, you two would be able to handle a second relationship."

Eli let out a chuckle that did not have an ounce of humor in it; they both heard this laugh before and it scared them.

"I'm going to say this one more time to both of you: I'm over her!"

"We know," Fiona said. "And we were about to let it go, but . . ."

"We . . . I kind of . . ." Imogen began. "I put a note in her locker saying that a secret admirer was going to meet her for dinner."

Eli dropped his jaw slightly, disbelieved that his best friends had been doing this to him behind his back.

"Then what were you going to do? Lead me to her, we'd have dinner, fall in love again, and live happily-ever-after?"

"We don't know, but we were going to figure something out."

"I don't believe you two! You can't do that to someone! It took me forever to deal with our breakup and then you were just going to throw me back into it?"

"We're sorry, Eli."

"And you should know better than anyone that you shouldn't set me up with people!" he shouted at Fiona.

"We did not mean for –."

"Just . . . leave me alone! Both of you!"

Without another word, Eli picked up his bag and stormed out of the cafeteria, all eyes watching him as he went. Both of the girls looked at the ground, ashamed of themselves. They had hit rock bottom and they knew it . . . but what they did not know what that they were about to go below rock bottom and enter the depths of hell.

"You were going to set Eli up with me?"

The girls turned around and saw a shocked and hurt Clare Edwards. Imogen's heart fell; she had already lost Fiona and Eli today and she knew that she was about to lose Clare as well.

"Eventually," she admitted through her dry throat.

"And . . . you were the one who put the note in my locker?" Clare restated.

Imogen nodded, the pit in her stomach becoming deeper. Disbelieved and heavily disappointed, Clare unwound her arms and shook her head.

"And you were only hanging out with me to get me back together with Eli?"

"I didn't mean for either of you to –."

"I can't believe you would do that!"

"Clare, listen," Fiona stepped in. "We knew that you weren't over Eli, so –."

"How would you two know that?"
Fiona and Imogen looked at each other, knowing that they had to come clean.

"We . . . read your diary and –," Imogen began.

"You what?" Clare snapped, her face reddening with animosity and embarrassment.

"We needed to know! Eli was unhappy and we figured that he would be happy again if he was with you."

"He's over me, Imogen! Everyone knows that!"

"We thought he was in denial," Fiona explained.

"He wasn't! He went out with you!" she said, facing Imogen. "He would not have done that unless he was over me."

"I don't believe that," Imogen stated.

"Well, you were wrong!"

Feeling taken advantage of and heartbroken that someone who she thought was a friend did this to her, Clare turned on her heel and left the cafeteria. She knew that Eli was over her, but hearing it escape his lips made it real and it broke the barrier she built for her tears. For the first time since her and Jake's breakup, she began to cry.

Back in the cafeteria, Fiona and Imogen looked at each other, unsure of how they could fix this . . . and their relationship.

"What do we do now?" Imogen asked.

"I don't know," Fiona said before turning away and also leaving the cafeteria, leaving Imogen standing there alone.

I wrote the majority of the chapter during a three hour car ride, which was great, because I didn't get distracted. So, if you ever need something to do during a car ride, write fanfiction; unless you can't read/write as you drive, then just enjoy the scenery you pass. Ha-ha. Reviews!