| | Chapter dedicated to SoullessSkin | |

~A/N~

{Zac Efron as Max Green~above}

Hello, my dear reader! :) New update (why do I keep stating the obvious?) and it would be absolutely top-notch if you'd type in a comment or two- I need some feedback from you, my good reader! Characterisations- good or bad? Got better picks? Please don't hesitate to express!!

PBJ_sandwich

~

/// T H R E E ///

*Thursday*

*Zella's POV*

Going to school today was a burden, honestly. My mind was stuffed with all kinds of irritating thoughts and I was pretty sure a bug was making a home up there. Its hundred-odd babies were going haywire.

First of all, I was angry; I had to prepare a party for a bunch of nut-headed jocks on Saturday. Secondly, I was annoyed; that feeling came from my damned hormones going ballistic over Max Green. Thirdly, I was excited; my dad was flying over for the vacation all the way from Germany.

The problem with Scott's party was, my mum had announced that dad's flight was taking off on the night before Saturday, so we were going to be out with him the whole day when he arrived. She fussed about cleaning up the house and tidying our bedrooms before he got here, so I was pretty sure there was no way out of it. I had to cancel the party-planning and the party altogether.

When I trudged myself up to my locker today, I wondered as to why my my bag was feeling heavier than the last time I packed Thursday's books.

And I came to realize it was these damned emotions creating havoc in my mind.

Well, this was why I had a locker, right? I stared blankly at the grey, rusted locker in front of me. I felt that I was missing something as I stood there like I just crawled up from the world of the un-dead, still staring blankly at my locker.

"Hey, Zel," I heard Marcie appear next to me, watching as I continued to stand there with a blank expression. I knew I forgot something... it's somewhere at the back of my mind... just around the corner... if only I could remember... "You know, a locker can only be opened with a pair of-"

"Keys!" I spat at my locker, cutting off Marcie and glaring daggers at the key-hole of my locker. Stupid cheap schools and their cheap lockers. Why couldn't they just have locker combinations? I had forgotten my damned keys!

She gave me a concerned look and slowly continued to talk. "Yeah... keys. What did you think, Zella? Mind-controlling? Telepathy? The Force or something?"

"Yeah... I was thinking more along the lines of the Force actually," I retorted with mock sarcasm. I sighed and turned to her with a sad frown, letting her know with one look that I hadn't meant to sound so mean.

"Well, technically mind-controlling won't do you any good in this sort of situation, so that sort of killed the sarcastic awesomeness of what I said. Anyways, who gives a crap? Sarcasm doesn't make sense in itself, right?" she rambled cluelessly. I didn't want to be that killjoy of a best friend, but honestly- someone from above, hear me and shut that girl up.

"Bad day?" she asked, after registering the burning message that my silence was screaming. She had guessed accurately, looking at me through her thin, blue-rimmed glasses. I realized then that her firey-red hair was in a fishtail today and I wondered what the occasion was; Marcie didn't bother with her hair much. She wore it in a low ponytail or a bun, almost never in anything different. It was either out of extreme elation or a guy was involved, I went with the latter.

I narrowed my eyes at her accusingly and questioned, "What's up with your hair?"

"Oh," she said, looking surprised and hesitantly glancing away from me. "Nothing. Just tried out a new style, ya know?"

"No, I don't know," I dead-panned, "because you never wear fishtails to school. You found them- what was that word you used the other day?"

"Wha-" She started, but I cut her off.

"Immature! Yah, you found them immature. So, what is up with that?" I continued to urge her, happy with the interrogatory conversation.

"Nothing, okay?" She said hurriedly. I was certain she had a good reason and she just didn't want to tell me. When it came to Marcie, it was just too obvious.

"Fine," I snapped and turned back to my locker, grabbing my first period's textbooks and stuffing the extra ones from my bag inside. 

I could tell she was itching to tell me, but something was holding her back. What was it, though? What was so bad that she couldn't tell me something so small, something best friends always tell each other?

I mean, it couldn't have been anything big. I was 99% sure it was a guy who was causing her to change the way her hair looked. She wouldn't care to do that for anything else. Even if she was elated, she despised fishtails. They were too confusing and hard to pull off, she couldn't stand the tightness, either. I felt a bit deceived as I watched from the corner of my eye, her walking away from me.

Oh, well. I will get to know sooner or later.

The bell rang signalling for classes to begin, so I walked away in the opposite direction to Marcie toward Biology which was in the other building.

Great. Now, I was about to get run over by a crowd of animalistic students as they went down and up the stairs. Why, I repeat, why did my locker have to be on the third floor?

I thought this was going to be a plus for me. Not another damned burden.

Nonetheless, I slid between a large, dark-haired girl and a tall, thin boy and let myself get shoved down the stairs toward the ground floor.

----------------------------Time Leap------------------------------

Chemistry. Know why I loved Chemistry on Thursdays? It was the last lesson of the day... and my teacher never took notes.

Want to know why I hated it today? 

Scott.

My teacher, considering that this was the last lesson we were having this term, had decided that we could have a free period. To Scott, that meant 'now I can annoy people and not get screwed for it'.

"Hello, Zee." Scott chirped and plopped himself next to me, on the empty seat I had sat next to for the soul purpose of being left alone. I couldn't believe how thick these boys could be sometimes.

Or maybe he got the message but didn't feel like obliging to the rule. Literally, though. Go make a rule for him, and the most time he'd take to have it broken would be a day.

Despite having chased away my peace, the fact that he referred to me as 'Zee' made me feel slightly taken aback, if not flattered. Zee sounded like a pretty neat nickname- I felt minutely honored, actually.

But, he didn't need to know that.

"Uh, I can't remember giving you an invite to my one-man party. Plus, my name is not Zee." I replied sourly, forcing myself to pay attention to the lesson. I may not have wanted to, but my grades really needed a shove and the least I could do was to pay attention in class, even if I didn't work properly.

"Of course not, I'm crashing it. Plus, I don't care if your name is not Zee, or if it's Cucumber. I like to call you by it... Zee." He shot back at me. I bet he felt all high and mighty, retorting back like that.

"Uh huh, well-" I began.

"I have to tell you something." He cut me off, speaking quickly and hurriedly.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, what?" I asked, exasperated by his bipolar character.

"Um... well, you see..." He stuttered, hesitating. Now, I was getting curious. Scott never tripped over his own words. Not in front of me, anyway. 

Mere peasants are not permitted to witness the weaknesses of their king.

"Spit it out already!" I forced, desperately curious.

"You know what? I'll let you find out." He said abruptly, automatically ending our conversation and moving away from me toward another seat. A seat next to his girlfriend. Ah, typical.

That is not a twinge of jealousy I feel. That is not at all a twinge of jealousy. Not even a smidge. I am not jealous! I have nothing to be jealous of! Not jealous, nope... not, at, all. Nopeddy-nopeddy-nope. NOPE.

I actually wanted to know what he was about to say. Now this was going to torture me for the rest of the freaking day, maybe even more. I need to find out. He said I would find out, so I guess it would be sooner or later before I knew what I wanted to know, right? If he didn't have to tell me, then it was okay. That meant more people knew, so I could find out from those people.

The curiosity was literally killing me. That reminded me; 'curiosity killed the cat', and a small chuckle escaped my lips. I didn't even know why I found that funny.

I stared distantly at the teacher as she droned on in her monotone voice, encouraging myself to listen, but my mind just couldn't stay focused. It wandered off, despite my efforts to be attentive.

I really wonder what Scott looks like in all-pink. He could be a gay Ken... no, he has green eyes, that wouldn't work. Ken has blue eyes. Come to think of it, Ken's pretty ugly. I don't get what Barbie sees in that guy! He's so lame, unlike Scott over here- no, what am I saying? Scott's no better. In fact, Ken is slightly cooler than Scott.

Why am I comparing a boy in my class to Ken? This is so dumb. Of all the places my mind could wander off to. Really, I don't even-

"Ahem." Snapped a voice, piercing between my cloud of thoughts to reveal Mrs Jonas, glaring daggers at me.

"Er- yes, Mrs Jonas?" I asked hastily, picking my head up off of my palm and pushing my glasses up my nose (it was a nervous habit of mine).

Now I'd done it for sure. Way to keep your head in the lesson, Zella.

----------------------------Time Leap------------------------------

"Mum, I can't wait for vacation." I told my mum, devouring a large tangle of spaghetti before jabbing my fork back into the food.

"I can see that." She said hesitantly, eyeing my intense expression and my forceful stabbing.

"When school ends, I'm going to eat till I drop and forget about stupid Mrs Jonas and her stupid negative marks." I spat again, continuing with my infuriated speech.

My mum decided that it was best she just nodded and hummed in agreement to everything I said, so I happily tortured my meal while complaining about my day.

Once I had eaten (more like inhaled) my lunch, I decided to visit Marcie. Considering the fact that she lived five minutes by foot away from my place, I could go there any time I wanted, as long as mum came along with me- my sister was still on a trip with her class in some rainforest.

I didn't even want to know why they scheduled trips so close to the end of term.

My mum and I made our way down the white-tiled pathway that lead up to Marcie's front door. They had a front garden, too, filled with flowers and pot plants. We had what seemed to be a huge, unkept hedge that rimmed the back of our house and sprawled onto the patch of grass that we called the front garden, but it was really a sad excuse of one. Back at our place, the pathway's stones were scrambled unevenly, making it hard to keep your feet on the actual pathway instead of the uncropped grass.

My mum called it 'creative gardening', I called it a 'failed attempt to reach the magazine standard'.

She left me at the door and I waited patiently for Marcie's mum to open the door.

Mrs. Tesser greeted me with a pleasant grin, welcoming me inside.

"Good-afternoon, Rita." I said, seating myself on the couch. Marcie and I had known each other for about two-and-a-half years now, so Mrs. Tesser insisted that I addressed her by her first name and forgot the formalities. It was the same with my mum- Marcie addressed her as Carol instead of Mrs. Stein.

"Good-afternoon, dear." She replied and I waited silently as she finished off her work in the kitchen. The wall-clock in their living room read 3:35 PM, so Marcie was most probably at her swimming club and her dad was obviously at work. Her lesson would be ending in fifteen minutes and the building was ten minutes away, so she'd probably be here in about half-an-hour.

At times like these, I hung with Sam, her older brother. He wasn't that much older, but they had about a two-year gap. For me, that wasn't much, but Marcie claimed that those two years meant they'd never be able to relate to each other since Sam was so much more 'mature'. Nonetheless, we were sort-of friends.

Upstairs, the door to his room was closed, so I made sure to knock. "Sam, you there? It's Zella."

Sure enough, he opened the door, smiling at me.

Sam had hair like Marcie's, but less freckles and was rather tall. Tall for his age, that is. He was well-built, you could say, but he was rather average-looking. For example, he's nothing compared to Max. 

Again with the comparing? Does everything seem to remind you of Max and Scott? Seriously? Stop the stupid comparisons!

I snapped out of my thoughts and looked back at Sam, who was now seated at his computer, playing some sort of game. He was a huge gamerboy, that was for sure.

"Hey, Sam?" I said, walking over to the foot of his bed.

"Yeah?" He asked, still concentrating on his game.

"Have you seen Marcie's hairstyle these days?" I asked, going straight for it.

"Hmm..." He paused his game and thought hard, "Come to think of it, yes. That fishtail thing, right?"

"Mhm... do you know what's up with that?" I asked carefully, crafting my questions to seem more curious than interrogatory.

"I don't, actually." He replied. "I teased her a bit about it, cuz she only does it up when she's trying to-"

"Grab the attention of a guy?" The words tumbled out unintentionally, but now there was nothing I could do about it.

"Yeah. Exactly." He nodded in agreement and hadn't seemed to be fazed by my enthusiasm on discussing his sister.

"Would you mind looking in to it for me?" I asked, testing the waters.

"Yah, sure." He replied casually, but then after a few moments he asked, "Why,hasn't she told you?"

"Uh, no." I admitted. I might as well tell him, he was a friend after all. Plus, he wasn't the type to spread gossip or give away secrets- he was rather care-free.

"That's new." He stated matter-of-factly. "Wanna play Just Dance? It's a dumb game, so it's sure to cheer you up."

He chuckled at his statement, making me smile in return. "Sure. No matter how dumb it is though, I'll still beat you."

"No way, sis." He argued, grabbing the controllers and switching on the Xbox. For the rest of that half-an-hour, we played like mad and of course, I eventually beat him about four times, him winning twice.

I heard a car-door bang shut and an engine dying just as I was about to start a new game with Sam. Marcie had returned and from the force she put into shutting her door, she must be angry.

I hurried down the stairs and walked into the kitchen, the smell of chlorine faintly wafting through the air.

"She made me swim with the beginners, mum! The beginners-" I heard Marcie complaining and her flip-flops squealing with water as she walked around the island. "Oh, hey, Zel."

"Hey, Mar." I greeted back, stifling a chuckle.

"What's so funny?" She snapped at me, glaring across the kitchen.

"Nothing. Can we talk?" I replied, swallowing my laughter with some difficulty.

After Marcie finished complaining about her swimming lesson and changed into some dry clothes, we seated ourselves on her king-sized bed, listening to our favorite songs and conversing about all kinds of different things.

While we talked, Marcie mentioned that I was invited to Max's fifteenth birthday party.

"No way! Really?" I asked in shock.

"Yeah, really. Here, look..." She said, walking over to her school bag and rummaging through it. She brandished a gold-coloured card with the words 'You're invited to Max's 15th b'day' written in white cursive. My name was hand-written at the foot of the card in Max's messy handwriting. 

He had spelt it wrong;

'To: Zellah'.

Yeah, now there is someone who's totally in-love with me. I mean, he can't even remember to spell my name right, which means he totally likes me back. Yeah, right. What an ass.

Marcie chuckled as she followed my eyes and read the way he'd spelt my name. "It's okay, at least he remembered how it sounds...?"

I slapped her arm furiously, anger and disappointment boiling up at the pit of my stomach.

Chill, Zella. At least he invited you. Not everyone gets invited to Max's parties.

We didn't talk about boys very much and I didn't find that topic very entertaining, but I had to tell her about Max... it was just part of the rules of being best friends.

Before I could tell her about Max, I had to find out about her crush first. So, I put the card down and faced her.

"Mar, please tell me who you like because I know you too well to let it slide that you're wearing a hair-do you hate just because." I said quickly, hoping to get it over with.

At that exact moment, the silence was intruded by the sound of soft raindrops falling onto Marcie's rooftop. The air smelled of fresh rainwater, taking me away from reality for just a split second.

"Well, I'll tell you if you tell me." She said reluctantly. What was up with that girl?

"Okay, let's both write it down at the same time." I suggested. It was how we exchanged secrets without anyone of us getting away without telling theirs.

Quickly, we grabbed a piece of paper and took half of it for each of us. I wrote Max slowly, watching her speculatively as she wrote hers. It was longer than the name I had written. It was a name I wasn't expecting to see at all.

Scott.

"Oh my God! You like Scott?!" I exclaimed staring at her as she finished the last 't'.

"How'd you finish so fa-" she halted in between her words, "You like Max?!"

We were both were shocked, apparently.

"I thought you liked quiet, innocent guys." I voiced my thoughts, happy that I finally new who she liked.

"I know, Zel. It's just the age, I guess." She replied, a helpless tone in her voice. "But, I thought you still liked him?"

"Ew, no. He's way in the past, Mar. Way, way, way back in the past." I said confidently- more confidently than I felt.

Do you like Scott, Zella? Do you?

No! No, I don't! Shh...

----------------------------Time Leap------------------------------  

Later that day, at about 5:30, I returned home with my mum, carrying the invite in my hand.

There was one problem. The party was on Monday night, which meant I had school the day after. There was a big chance my mum wouldn't let me go.

I hid the card in the pocket of my shorts, deciding that I'd tell her tomorrow instead. Who knew? Maybe this was just a prank and there was no party after all.

But, it made sense that there was. I recalled Max's birthday being on a day close to the end of November from when he told us last year. November 25th or something like that.

Scott's birthday is on August 12th.

Shut up, conscience. I don't care. And it's just a coincidence that I remember.

Just a total coincidence.

-----------------------------------END OF CHAPTER ---------------------------------

~A/N~

Hi, hi, hi! *feeling pumped up bout the chapters ahead* Ahahaha, so waddup, amigos? I got plans for Zel, Mar, Scott and Max, don't you worry. Anyways, I feel like I should ask questions about BP so far, sooo-

Question of the chapter;

1|| Who do you think suits Zella best?

Other questions for fun;

2|| Do you like Marcie's character? Why?

3|| Who do you fancy more- Max or Scott?

Extra question irrelated to BP:

4|| Who here plays basketball and loves it??

*raises hand* I do!! XD

That's all, my lovely readers!! <3 xox

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