A/N: I woke up this morning and turned on my computer only to find that...I have over 40 e-mails in my inbox. Thank you gracious reviewers! I love you all!

This chapter is dedicated to DarkAngel2098, SparkDazzleDuez, Angelwings228, eternalsmiles, Rixclassa, and renesmeecullenisme (hi Twilight fan...took me five seconds to dissect your name...XD),

Enjoy the next chapter!

Chapter 3: Making Amends

I spent the rest of the day with Sakura and Ino. We went to get me a new backpack at the mall before we decided to hang out in the food court. They were chattering constantly about Neji the whole time. I was only half listening.

"Neji!" I called after him.

He turned and looked at me.

"Are you really, I mean...are you-"

"No I am not the actor." He turned and headed for the door again.

"It's because you quit, isn't it?" I asked, jogging after him.

"Why are you so persistent?" He looked at me.

"Because if you don't tell me it's going to kill me until I find out the truth."

"Well then dig yourself a grave."

I sighed. Why had he acted like that? Was he playing dumb? Or playing defensive? I ran my mind over the words again.

"Well then dig yourself a grave."

I closed my eyes. There...right there...there's a hidden meaning in that sentence. I ran the words through my head a few more times.

"Yoo hoo! Tennie!" Ino waved her hand in my face.

"Who, what?" I said stupidly.

"You're completely zoning out!" Ino put her elbows on the table and looked at me with her big blue eyes. "Is there something you're not telling us?"

I shook my head. "No."

Sakura was watching me now too. "Did Neji say something to you?"

I stared at her. "What makes you think he did?" A simple lie, but hey, I could pull it off.

Sakura shrugged. Mission accomplished.

.oOo.

I spent another hour with Sakura and Ino before I went home. I did what I always do at the end of the day. I watched a bit of television, I ate dinner, and I watched a little more television and I went to bed. But it's usually at night when my true inspiration comes.

I ran Neji's words through my head again and again while I stared at the ceiling. Next thing I knew, it hit me.

"Because if you don't tell me it's going to kill me until I find out the truth."

"Well then dig yourself a grave."

I understood. He didn't want to tell me he was the actor. He was pretending he wasn't for some reason. He was pretending he never was. There was a reason Neji Hyuuga was in my school. I didn't know what it was, but he didn't want to tell anyone why. There was a reason for that too.

"Damn, I'm such an idiot!" I hissed to myself. What a fool I was, confronting him like that. I should've known he wouldn't want a confrontation.

.oOo.

When I got to school the first thing I did was look for Neji. I found him with his nose in a book in the library. Note to self: If someone's favourite thing to do is read, chances are, you'll find them in the library.

I sat down in the chair across from him. My stomach twisted with nerves. I began to take those stage skills I had learned from my two years of drama class and put them to work. Just do it.

"Neji?" I said suddenly.

He looked up from his book. I could see the expression on his face shift from serenity to slight annoyance in half a second. I knew I would lose his attention in another half a second, so I immediately continued on with my speech.

"I'm sorry about yesterday." I said simply.

The annoyance on his face shifted to confusion.

"I..." I sighed. "You're here for your own reasons, and none of that is my business, so I'm sorry for asking you such personal questions."

Neji watched me calmly.

"So..." I stuck my hand out and smiled. "Let's start over! Hi! I'm Tenten Akiyama!"

To my surprise, he smiled right back and shook my hand.

"Hi. I'm Neji Hyuuga." He said.

After that, he went back to his book. I decided not to bother him again. I stood up myself and began going through the book shelves. I eventually pulled a book called Graceling off the shelf. I liked the description of it. People with talents called Graces who are identified by the fact that their eyes are two different colours. For example, their left eye is blue, the other is green.

I checked the book out and sat back down in the chair to read it. The bell rang and I immediately stood up to head for math class. When I got to math class, I took my seat beside Ino. Ino was still chattering about Neji Hyuuga being in the school. For the first time, it annoyed me.

Just leave him alone! I screamed at them in my head.

Mr. Umino started the lesson once the bell rang again to start the class. I was grateful for the distraction. When I was doing math, my brain would go completely blank and focus entirely on the math in front of me. When I was done, I would look around at the sound of all the noise and be like, you guys aren't done yet? It was amusing. For me at least.

I handed in my work and pulled out my book again. After another twenty pages worth of the book, the bell rang. I packed up my stuff and headed for drama class. When I got there, I sat down in the circle of chairs and proceeded to sit and wait. I watched people come in and I attempted to put names to the faces of the people. I realized that Sasuke was in my drama class. How on earth did I miss that? Oh yeah...because he was after Neji and I was too busy thinking about his hobby to realize he was in the class.

I felt bad for Neji when he walked in. He sat down in a chair and next thing he knew, he was being bombarded by bold females who wanted to sit beside him. While they scrapped, Neji literally stood up and walked across the room. Even more surprising, he took the seat right beside me.

"What's up?" he asked.

I almost laughed at how casual it was.

"Not much," I replied. "You?"

"The usual." He sighed. "Too much attention...not enough peace..."

I laughed. "Sucks to be you."

He looked at me strangely. "Was that an insult, or sarcasm?"

I shrugged. "A tease I guess."

"So basically you were laughing at me."

I bobbed my head around for a second. "Sure, let's go with that."

He chuckled.

Miss. Yuhi started the class. She began to explain the basics of miming. I smiled. I remembered miming from grade 10. I have never had more fun with anything until we were being taught how to mime. The trick was to pretend everything was there. I learned how to pretend you were walking down the stairs, and how to do an elevator. However, to do those things you needed something called a mime elevator. Basically, all a mime elevator is, is a pole that's held off the ground so it's at about waist level. After that, put a blanket or something over said pole and whammo! You have a mime elevator. Now you just need to learn the technique for making it work. It's hard to describe so I won't go into detail, but basically all you have to do is keep one foot flat on the ground, and keep all your weight on that leg. The other leg has to be bent as if you were about to do the moonwalk. Then you slowly bend the leg that is straight, and slide down smoothly onto one knee so it appears as if you were going down an elevator. To do the stairs, you walk into the mime elevator and bob up and down while slowly going down. To do an escalator, just walk and go down smoothly. It's a lot of fun.

"I've never mimed before."

I shot Neji a shocked look. He was an actor, but he's never mimed?

"You've been missing out. It's a hell of a lot of fun!" I told him.

For this first day, we basically got into groups and began to create a skit involving miming. The rules were that we had to use three different mime techniques involving the mime elevator in a skit that was to be presented today. I felt bad for Neji. People wanted to be in his group really bad.

"Hey, it's Tenten right?"

I whipped around and guess who I saw. No it wasn't Neji, it was Sasuke! He was with a blonde boy that I recognized as the one who he was calling 'dobe' in yesterdays' English class.

"Oh hey, Sasuke. What's up?"

"Do you have a group?"

I shook my head.

"You can join ours if you want."

Neji finally managed to shake off all the people asking to be in his group.

"Yeah, sure," I said. I looked towards Neji.

"Sick, we get Hyuuga!" The blonde cried.

Neji rolled his eyes.

"Shut up dobe." Sasuke growled.

"Teme!"

Sasuke didn't give his response. He just grabbed a chair and sat down in it. Neji, Dobe and I sat in a circle with him.

"Okay, ideas." I began, taking the lead immediately. "What three techniques should we use?"

"Elevator!" Dobe cried. Okay, I had to stop calling him dobe, but I didn't know his name.

"Stairs." Sasuke said in a monotone.

"Quicksand pit."

Everyone shot Neji a look. Sasuke was actually showing emotion. He looked like he was shocked.

"You are a genius." Sasuke stated.

Quicksand pit wasn't even in the list the teacher gave us. But we totally could pull it off with the miming elevator.

"Okay," I stated. "But how are we going to incorporate a quicksand pit into a mime skit?"

"We go on an expedition in the jungle." Neji stated. "Or we re-enact Indiana Jones."

"Thinking about that...we could probably do a car in the mime elevator!" I cried. I stood up and began to bob jerkily up and down as if I was in a car on a bumpy road.

"Yeah!" Dobe cried. He held his hand up for a high five. I slapped it.

"What's your name by the way?" I asked him.

"Naruto Uzumaki!" he cried enthusiastically.

Okay, so now I didn't have to subconsciously call him 'dobe'.

"We can do the canoe as well." Sasuke said simply.

"No, there's four of us." I murmured, thinking about my canoe mishap last year. "It would be hard to sync up all four of us."

"True..." Sasuke murmured.

"We'll do stairs!" I cried. "As if we were going into a temple!"

"Yes!" Naruto cried.

"Now we're getting somewhere." Neji murmured.

"Okay, what order?" I asked.

The group went silent. Neji broke it a few seconds later.

"We start with the car as if we were going into the bush, then we have to get out, we walk around for a bit, then one of us ends up in the quicksand pit, the others pull them out, then we find the temple and go up the stairs." Neji stated easily.

"Will we be allowed to use the quicksand and the car?" Naruto asked. "I mean, it is pretty original, and nobody would've thought of it."

"I'll ask." I stood up and went over to Miss. Yuhi. I told her about our idea and she thought it was really good and approved of it. Once I returned to the group, we began casting.

"Neji you be Indiana Jones." Sasuke ordered. "The rest of us will be the followers, and you'll be the one getting stuck in a quicksand pit."

"Fine, fine." Neji muttered. "Are you going to pull me out with a snake?"

The group laughed.

"Yes!" Naruto cried.

After that, we began to create the dialogue.

"Five more minutes!" Miss. Yuhi called.

"Oh so we're presenting today?" Naruto asked as if he was shocked.

"Weren't you paying attention, dobe?" Sasuke muttered.

For the last five minutes, everyone was in the back looking for costumes. Neji threw on a brown leather jacket, and an Indiana Jones hat. The rest of us dressed casually in safari vests and hats. We emerged with the costumes under our arms so nobody would know what we were doing.

The first group consisted of a group of five girls. Their mime was merely functional. They didn't have anything going. The second group had a lot of humour. There were only four words to describe it: Panic in an Elevator. Two people were in the elevator, and it broke, causing them to drop to the ground. They stood back up again shaken up, but only able to get their heads over the mime elevator, signalling that they were stuck. Their arms waved frantically as they mimed screaming at each other.

The next group went up, and all you could see was a bunch of randomness to the point you had no idea what was going on.

Now it was our turn. When we went backstage, we briefed each other on just what was going on, and how we were going to be doing the car scene. In ten seconds flat we created a wave motion that helped with bumps. We finally began our skit. I had asked Ms. Yuhi if we could talk during our presentation and she had said yes, just as long as you pretend everything is happening.

Naruto, Sasuke and I stood on the stage as if we were waiting. Sasuke was tapping his foot impatiently. After another few seconds, Neji jumped onto the stage dramatically.

"G'day, tourists!" Neji said dramatically. "I am Nejiana Jones, and I will be your tour guide!"

"What took you so long?" Naruto cried.

"We paid good money to come here!" I cried.

"I ought to report you to the tourist station!" Sasuke cried.

As the words flew at him, Neji looked like he was deflating. He adjusted his hat and stuck his chest out again.

"Well, why are we sitting around fighting? Off we go!" Neji walked dramatically towards the 'car'. He pretended to step into it and looked back at us who were just standing there. "Come on, I'm here now, so I'll make it up to you by taking you to the Anouki Temple!"

"Anouki Temple?" I asked.

"It's better if I just show you. Now COME ON!" Neji made a wild motion with his hand.

Naruto, Sasuke and I jumped into the car with him. Neji pretended to turn a key and grip a steering wheel. We all went backwards in sync as Neji took off and began to bounce around. There were a few gasps of surprise at our 'expertise'.

"W-Wait, where is th-this Temple?" Sasuke asked while we bounced around.

"The temple is LOcated in the north eastern part of the jungle. We're going to drive three quarters of the way, but then we'll come into some dense BUSH and have to walk the rest of the way." Neji said, his voice lurching with the bumps.

"We have to WALK?" I screeched.

"It's not so bad. Don't worry." Neji stated.

"Are there lions?" Naruto asked.

"Or tigers?" I asked.

"Or...B-Bears?" Sasuke whispered.

"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my." Neji mocked, quoting The Wizard of Oz, earning a laugh from the people who had seen the movie, including Miss. Yuhi.

"There are no lions, as this is not Africa, there are no bears, but there are tigers." Neji stated. The bumps were slowing down. "Watch your head! We've got-"

"AH!" I cried, throwing myself backwards, pretending to get hit by a branch.

"Branches that will hit you..." Neji trailed off.

"Are we there yet?" Sasuke whined.

"Don't make me make you walk." Neji spat.

Neji made a few motions with his hands after we all flew forwards as if to stop the car.

"All right, everyone out!" Neji called. We all got out of the 'car' and began to walk.

"Are there snakes in here?" Sasuke asked, treading lightly.

Neji whipped around and stared at him. "Do...Not...Mention...Snakes..."

"Are you afraid of snakes?" I cried.

Neji turned around and began to walk. We chattered aimlessly while we pretended to leap over obstacles. Then, Neji stepped behind the mime elevator again and began to pretend to sink.

"You're sinking!" Naruto cried.

"Ah, I stepped in quicksand!" Neji cried. He was acting the sinking part well. "Help!" He put his arms up as his chest disappeared behind the curtain. Sasuke pretended to grab something.

"Grab the vine!" Sasuke cried.

"That's no vine, that's a-" I began.

"SNAAAAAKE!" Neji cried.

The room laughed.

"No! No! Pretend it's not a snake!" Sasuke cried. "It's a rope! A ROPE!"

Now, only Neji's arms were visible.

"Just grab the rope!" Naruto cried.

"Noooo!" Neji cried.

"Do you want to die?" Sasuke cried.

"No!"

"Then grab the rope!"

Neji eventually grabbed the invisible snake-rope and we all mimed pulling him out. He literally slid from behind the elevator on the ground. Then we continued on our expedition by fast forwarding it to the fact that we had just arrived at the temple. We walked up the 'stairs' and stupid Naruto at the end triggered the giant boulder which we ran from off the stage and yelled "SCENE!" earning us a round of applause.

The bell rang just seconds after we finished.

I practically danced off to lunch, totally ready to brag about the fact that I had just done a skit with Neji. I sat down at our usual table to be joined by Ino and Sakura, and soon after, Sasuke. Surprisingly, Naruto followed Sasuke to our table, and our circle of friends grew to five.

"That was sooo fun, eh?" Naruto asked, looking at me.

"Yeah!" I cried.

"What was fun?" Sakura asked.

"We did a mime skit with Neji in drama class." Sasuke said smugly.

"NO WAY!" Ino cried. "Damn I should've taken drama!"

"Oh, and I asked him if he wanted to sit with us at lunch." Naruto said with a shrug.

"You're forgiven!" Ino cried.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, in comes Neji.

"Yo." He said calmly as he sat down.

I wanted to punch Ino for ogling at him. We all ended up introducing ourselves to him, but Ino wouldn't stop staring at him, causing Neji to blatantly ignore her for the duration of the lunch period. We chatted casually with each other, and heck, Neji was good company. He loved listening to our random topics. At least I thought he did. He seemed pretty interested in the stories we had to tell.

When the bell rang, Neji, Sasuke, Naruto and I took off for English class.

"I swear, if he's still reading that book I'm not going to let him live it down." Neji sniggered. We all laughed.

It turned out that Mr. Hatake was writing something on the board when we walked in. We took our seats as everyone filed in. English class was mostly uneventful. We had to write a short story as a diagnostic to see where we were with our writing, and read a short story in our textbook and answer a bunch of questions.

Gym...was just plain insanity. Anko and the boys teacher, who we now just found out was Mr. Guy, loved pitting us against each other. It wasn't supposed to be a co-ed gym class, but Anko and Guy were sure as hell making it co-ed. We had a dodge ball war, and we played the favourite: Boing (1). In the end, the girls won the dodge ball game, and the boys won the Boing game. Heck, I was the ultimate at dodge ball! When everyone on my team got knocked off, I went head to head with Neji and eventually clobbered him with an expertly thrown pair of balls. When he moved to dodge the first one the other was already out of my hand and flying towards where he was heading and it smacked him in the chest. The look on his face was priceless.

A/N: Left you hanging didn't I? Hehe. I know where I'm going with this story, but I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to get there. Be patient with me as I do my best to take it slow, yet not too slow as to bore you.

(1)Boing is a game I play in gym class. It is incredibly fun! Basically it's like basket ball when it comes to the invasion tactic, but it's more like Ultimate Frisbee. Basically, there's this trampoline like thing on either side of the gym in the basketball key. The trampoline is tilted on an angle. You and your team have to get the ball across the gym to that trampoline and throw a ball at the trampoline so that it bounces off of it. Then, the ball has to leave the basketball key and bounce off the ground. If the ball lands in the key, no point. If someone catches the ball before it hits the ground, no point. However, you can only throw the ball three times, then you have to take a shot, no matter how close you are. So you could be halfway across the gym and still score a point if you're really good.