AN: As always, thanks are due to all who have read and reviewed. I hope you continue to enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoy writing it

Monday morning at school consisted mainly of being congratulated. Teachers, students, everyone seemed to have loved the production that we'd put on. By our lockers I met up with an extremely relaxed and contented-looking Jade, I'm guessing her Saturday night went as well as mine did.

"So Tori, how was the rest of your weekend?" she asked me.

"Fantastic" I answered dreamily. Her eyes widened.

"No way, you and Freddie really did it?" she asked, shocked. "Wow Tori, who'd have thought that you had it in you?"

I turned bright red at her words and she fixed me with her glare as the double entendre hit her.

"Hey Vega, get your mind out of the sewer" she told me, just a hint of amused playfulness in her voice.

My first class of the day was make-up. Today would be a practical class, we weren't onto special effects yet (so no danger of a repeat of the great zombie disaster of a couple of years ago), we'd simply covered the basics of using make-up to produce a "natural" look under lights or on camera and would be practising on our class-mates, using simple foundations etc. to see how well we could get the 'perfect-yet-natural' appearance that we routinely see on stage and screen.

In readiness for today's class I had tried to absorb everything I could from the experience of my own make-up being applied for the show we'd just done: which areas to focus on, what colours to use, how much to apply – things like that, then I'd tried to match it up to the theory we'd covered in previous classes.

My partner for today's class was a 10th grade girl, Alicia (I was the only senior in the room – most kids at Hollywood Arts do this class earlier but as a transfer student it was one of those that I still had to try to cram in before the end of the year). She spoke effusively about the show, having been in the audience for opening night, so much so that I had to cut her off because we really needed to get on with the make-up assignment and get it done before class finished. I felt kinda bad about it though so I suggested that if she wanted to talk about that side of school life a little more then we could do so at break. She agreed and we turned our attention to the task at hand, spending the rest of the hour trying to get the make-up look right.

I received the best score in the class, clearly something had sunk in, and I felt that this was something else that I could use to add to the overall experience when I got round to having to put on my own short play later in the semester. All in all it was with an extra spring in my step that I headed to Sikowitz's class.

Sikowitz used his class as an opportunity to go over the opening night performance: making it an unusually serious lesson. Reviewing an edited video of the play he praised many aspects of it, though he drew particular attention to a scene between Cat and Robbie. He called them to the raised stage at the front of his room and put them through the scene three times – each time he highlighted something different for them to work on. He then split the class into pairs (I was partnering Eli) and tasked us with performing the scene perfectly – trying to eliminate the minor issues Sikowitz had complained about.

It seemed rather unfair, to me anyway, that he focussed so much on the Carly and Robbie scene, I'm sure he could have found issues with far more of the play had he wanted to, but he seemed happy to just work on that scene for now. I could tell Robbie was aggrieved by this, while Cat's natural bounce and sparkle seemed more than a little diminished at what many of us felt was her and Robbie being perceived as the weak links of the cast. The atmosphere was decidedly uncomfortable throughout the remainder of the class. I did feel the exercise helped improve certain aspects of my own acting, though nothing that I'd particularly want to try to use for the role I was currently performing (not least because the next performance was tomorrow night). All in all it was a relieved class that filed out of his room for break, some mutinous mutterings emanating from many of us, who felt that Cat and Robbie had been unfairly maligned.

Much as I wanted to cheer Cat up, I had to meet Alicia, so I left my red-haired friend in the company of André, Beck and Jade (Rex was busy berating Robbie so we'd left 'them' to it for now). Alicia was sat alone at a different table in the Asphalt Café so I bade goodbye to my friends and headed over to join her.

We began by discussing the play, her opinion of some of the performances (she had no complaints about Robbie or Cat's acting) and some wider discussion of acting and singing, tips I could pass on from my own time and experience of being at school here but it turned out that what she really wanted to talk about was Freddie: she had been an iCarly fan for a long time, knew that we were a couple and wanted details on what happened regarding the show's demise, the girls' criticism of him, the current status of any friendship between him and them and, of course, what it was like to date him. I wasn't prepared to go into too many details with a girl I didn't know that well so I kept it simple, talked about how great Freddie was, how Carly and Sam had misrepresented a lot of what had happened to gloss over their own part in it and how all Freddie had really done to upset them was to get into UCLA.

After break I headed to my directing class. Talking about Freddie, however much I skirted around any sort of intimate details, brought thoughts of Saturday night back into the front of my mind, with all sorts of things racing through my head. I sat in a bit of a daze for the first few minutes of class until I was snapped out of my memories when the teacher informed me that, with the play having been performed, I now had no excuses for not starting to plan my own production. It was time to start thinking about subjects, scripts and everything else that I'd need. I decided that I would ask Freddie, to see if he had any ideas from his iCarly days that I could adapt into something that would do the job.

At lunch I finally got to talk to Cat about the events of this morning. She was still a little bit down, compared to her normal, ebullient self, but she was smiling at least. André and the others had managed to cheer her a little since Sikowitz's class and as I joined the usual crowd lunch table, turkey wrap in hand, the atmosphere was clearly more relaxed than it had been on leaving the unorthodox teacher's room.

Conversation was light and jovial. After they saw me head off at morning break I was asked about my "new friend" so I supplied such details as I had, that she was a classmate, that I was her partner in make-up class, that she wanted some tips on performing – and that she wanted the low-down on me and Freddie. Jade and I exchanged a subtle but meaningful look at this revelation.

"She asked the usual questions, what it's like to date a celebrity" I elaborated with a small laugh – Freddie was so down to earth that he never considered himself famous or a celebrity. "And she wanted the real story on the whole demise of iCarly, who was really to blame, what went down, stuff like that."

"How much did you tell her?" Jade asked, with an abruptness that caused all eyes to turn to her. There was no suggestion in her voice, nothing implicit that I could detect, just a very blunt question.

"The basics" I said, "I tried not to make anyone the villain, but I made sure that she knew Freddie wasn't the bad guy in it all." I thought back to the offending video. My friends nodded, doubtless having the same thoughts, the look in Jade's eye suggesting we'd be having a conversation a little later.

The rest of lunch was spent with me catching up on their discussion from break, what they'd said to Cat, and about Sikowitz, which was overwhelmingly negative. We were used to his "shock value pronouncements", but they felt, and I agreed, that he'd gone too far with his critique here.

The bell sounded and we began to make our way to class, until Jade, lagging behind, caught hold of my arm and, gently but firmly, pulled me back from the group.

"So" she began in a low whisper, "you didn't go into too many details with her then?"

"No way" I replied in kind. "I've only just met her." Then I smiled at her. "Despite the fact that you've hated the ground I've walked on ever since I arrived here; you're the only one I trust with this sort of stuff."

Jade smirked and raised an eyebrow.

"I'll remember to use that to my advantage" she said wickedly.

At the end of the school day we had a rehearsal: we still had three performances to go (tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday's final show) so the teachers had decided to put on a rehearsal today. Unfortunately this meant a completely Freddie-free day for me as we would be quite late in finishing. Once we HAD finished (and everyone there noticed the lacklustre performances from Cat and Robbie: clearly the after-effects of Sikowitz's treatment were still being felt by the pair and this was something we needed to address before tomorrow night's next show) we headed to The Grove for a casual evening of hanging out.

On reaching The Grove we ordered food (burgers, hot dogs, fries, that sort of stuff) and just relaxed as a group. Cat's spirits seemed to lift as the evening wore on and she was almost back to her usual self by the time we ended the evening and went our separate ways.

I got back home and flopped on the couch next to my parents. We traded small talk about our days and the weekends we'd had (they had returned late last night from their weekend away). I gave a blow-by-blow account of the play and today's events at school but decided not to go into detail about Saturday night with Freddie, merely informing them that he'd been at opening night, we had met up afterwards and that we'd seen each other yesterday as well (hey I might have misled them a little but I didn't lie). The movie they were watching was about over so we stayed for the end of it and then I went to bed, missing Freddie and dreaming of being back in his arms.