[Insert Witty Title Here]

Hi. So I decided to get over my fear that if I put opinions online future employers will refuse to hire me. I'm looking into making this my only blog again. To explain why I made that other one would be impossible, as I have come to the conclusion I am not that great at putting my thoughts into words. I'll transfer over some of the posts, so don't let that confuse you. That is all for this announcement today. Carry on.

Chapter 23: Hair

Whoa! I wrote a new chapter. I know, crazy, right? It's a short one that pretty much summarizes my feelings toward mustaches and mullets. Enjoy!


“Blue, give me your hands,” Teddy said, holding out his own hands for Blue. His best friend scowled at him; this proposition could only mean bad news. For this reason, Blue wrinkled her nose at Teddy as he guided them to a seated position on a couch in the lounge on their dorm floor.
“What?” she whispered softly, hoping if Teddy couldn’t hear her he wouldn’t say what he was planning on saying.
“I know it’s important to you that I let you know about these things, so…I’m going to inform you that on Friday I’m leaving and I’m going to be gone for two weeks,” he said in one breath, and Blue’s bottom jaw fell open and left her dumbstruck. This was terrible news! Teddy continued on, assuring her, “I know it sounds like a long time but it’s not that bad. And I talked to Pablo and he’s going to make sure you’re well taken care of. Also you have Malik, of course. You’ll be in good hands. I’ll text every day.”
Blue considered accusing him of hating her, but she decided to go with that weird logical part of her brain she didn’t like to listen to that posed a different question, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to visit some schools and talk to people, and…It’s hard to explain, uh…Blue, suffice it to say, I’m going to Canada,” he said.
“Canada?” Blue shrieked. “I hate Canada!”
“It’s not Canada’s fault,” Teddy insisted.
Nonetheless, as soon as Teddy left “I hate Canada” became Blue’s mantra. Her other mantra during this time was, “Malik your face looks stupid.” The reason for this was because Malik had gotten some crazy notion into his mind that he should grow a mustache. Miss Allberry took a poll on it the third day she noticed it.
“All those in favor of Malik’s mustache being dumb, raise your hands,” she said. Blue’s hand shot up immediately, and Gerda, Austin, Rashida, Evan, Ewan, Estela, and Jenny backed her up. “All those who think it’s acceptable looking, raise your hands,” she requested. Kip raised his hand and gave Malik an “I got you, man” wink as he and Malik raised their hands, and Pablo and Kakahi backed them up.
Blue gaped at her two friends (Pablo and Kakahi, that is, she knew Kip was just being a good friend to Malik and probably despised the mustache too), who she never would have thought would betray her in such a way. The poll had been her idea, after all, so it was obvious which side anyone who was friends with her should fall on. Teddy had assured her Pablo would be her temporary best friend, after all. He was not doing a good job. Miss Allberry was far too wrapped up in her strange relationship with Hammy’s younger brother to press the issue, but she made it clear she fell on Blue’s side of the debate.
As the group walked back to the dorms together, Gerda grabbed Blue’s elbow to get her attention, and they fell into step as they walked back to the dorms together. The Swede spoke to her casual friend, “I agree with your feelings about the creature on Malik’s face. It is unsightly.”
“Thank you!” Blue shouted. Malik apparently overheard them and started walking away quickly, not wanting to hear the conversation.
“Why has he decided to do this?” Gerda asked, and Blue folded her arms and scowled.
“Well next week is his birthday and Teddy’s going to miss it because Canada is stupid and I guess they’ve been together for every birthday since ever and so somehow he thinks that means he should grow a mustache!” Blue explained, waving her arms wildly for emphasis.
“Yes, yes,” Gerda replied, “I do not understand. Hakan has seen this mustache and now has decided he should also grow one. I am wondering, is it a disease, do you think?”
“Yes!” Blue shrieked. “It must be! And now it’s spreading! We must put a stop to it!” The teen ran off in the direction Malik went, leaving an amused Swede in her wake. Malik just stared at her as she shrieked on and on about people becoming completely covered in hair head to toe and mustache diseases. When he didn’t seem to understand what she was saying, she grabbed a pair of scissors (there were no razors close, and this was symbolic) and made snipping motions. In the middle of her shouts, Hakan ran into the room without announcing himself.
“How do you like X’s mustache Malik? Awesome? EXTREME?” he shouted, pushing past Blue. Unfortunately for the mulleted teen, the girl was still making snipping motions, and one those snips found its way to his party in the back. Malik and Blue froze as the hair fell to the ground, staring at each other in shock. Hakan looked confused, before asking, “Why is X’s head suddenly lighter?”
Malik blinked and searched for a pleasant way to tell Hakan what had happened as Blue fled the room. The shrieks of despair Blue heard moments after confirmed Malik had informed him of the tragic events that transpired.
“I’m so sorry!” Blue yelled from down the hallway, but it didn’t soothe the whale-like wailing emanating from Malik’s room. Gerda ran past her down the hallway, saw what had happened, and walked back to Blue calmly.
“Do not tell Hakan I have told you this, but I would like to thank you. His hair was unsightly. Now I owe you and must take care of the creature on Malik’s face?” she asked, and Blue nodded exuberantly, snatching the opportunity up as quickly as possible. In the meantime, she decided to go find somewhere to hide from Hakan’s shrieks of despair, deciding to stalk Pablo’s dance class and glare at him about siding with Malik on the mustache issue. She’d glare at Kakahi later, of course, but she figured Pablo was an easier first target.
He seemed pretty confused when he saw her. Blue went into stealth mode then, sending him mean thoughts like how he should stumble a little bit or something. But not full out trip though. Because that sounded dangerous, and Blue didn’t want Pablo to get hurt, just be embarrassed. Then, as she stared at Pablo, an unsettling feeling sneaked up on her. She tried to ignore it, she really did, but images of Hakan sobbing and threatening to throw out all his cool gadgets and go into hiding due to depression flooded her mind, and she finally decided to go back and properly apologize to Hakan.
She arrived outside of Hakan’s room and knocked on the door. Kendrick answered it and surprised Blue with what he said, “Did you have to cut off his hair?” After that his words got a little anti-Semitic, so Blue just decided to walk away, finding Hakan wasn’t present in his room. Her next thought was Gerda’s room, so she walked over to it, took a deep breath, made her most apologetic face, and knocked on the door.
Jenny opened it, sighed, and pointed behind her. Hakan was sitting on Gerda’s bed, cradling the leftover part of his hair, though Gerda was nowhere to be found. Blue shuffled over to the distraught teen and sat next to him on Gerda’s bed. When he saw her, he waved her away and whimpered, “Be gone, heathen! X doesn’t want to see you! You killed X’s dreams and X’s hair all at once!”
“I’m very, very sorry X. It was an accident,” Blue mumbled, twiddling her thumbs and sticking out her bottom lip. Because that makes you look sad, right? Right, Blue’s an actress, she knows these things.
“That changes nothing! Do you have any idea how long it took X to grow that?” Hakan snapped.
“Probably, like…a few years, maybe,” Blue replied with a shrug, sticking to her pouty lip guns in case Hakan looked at her.
Hakan glanced up at last, and couldn’t stop himself from laughing, “You look dumb.”
“No way!” Blue shouted back at him, folding her arms and glaring. They sat for a moment as the heaviness between them finally lifted, and Blue suggested, “Maybe you could superglue it back on? It’s not like it grows from the bottom, so…”
“Yes! Good idea! X will find some superglue!” Hakan shouted, bolting from the bed and ostensibly running all the way back to his room. Jenny looked over at Blue and shook her head then. This was a little confusing to Blue, and she knew the obvious answer was that Jenny was showing disapproval for her idea, but Blue never trusted the obvious. Logically, Blue worked through it to get to her real meaning. Jenny was friends with Malik, Gerda was missing, Gerda was sketchy sometimes, therefore Gerda was going to murder Malik to rid him of his mustache! With the sudden realization, Blue ran out of the room straight to Malik’s room.
Not bothering to knock, Blue burst onto the scene, expecting to come across a murder in progress. What she came across instead shocked nay appalled her! Malik and Kip were sitting on their little futon, watching something on their tiny TV with unicorns in it! One of Blue’s rules when she and Malik started dating was that if Malik did anything involving unicorns he would tell Blue about it.
“How could you?” she shrieked. Malik turned to look at her, and she laughed as he did. “I can’t stay mad, even, when your face looks so ridiculous!” she yelled indignantly.
“For the record, I just texted you we were going to be watching this, so no rules were broken,” Malik insisted, but Blue didn’t really hear it, because she was too busy staring at Malik’s mustache.
“It’s like…It just grew up out of nowhere,” she mumbled to herself, approaching Malik very slowly as if the mustache might make a move to attack her, “Gerda was definitely onto something…Probably a disease…It’s crazy how Mr. Mustache looks awesome with his mustache, but you just look like a pedophile…if Teddy were here he would know how to solve this…Oh! I could Skpertize him! Bye Malik, I have to go Skypertize Teddy!”
Malik blinked over to Kip, scowling, “Do I really look like a pedophile?” Kip pulled a strange face and proceeded to hold his fingers up to convey that Malik did indeed look a little bit pedophiliac.
Teddy wasn’t online, but Blue texted him that she had an emergency, so he got online pretty quickly. Once she informed him of the problem, she carried her laptop over to Malik and Kip’s room, then faced Teddy toward them. Her blond best friend snickered immediately, and Malik glared.
“Malik, Malik!” Teddy said excitedly, waving at him from the laptop screen. His best straight boy friend waved back at him reluctantly, not excited to hear how he felt about Malik’s newly grown facial hair. “I mustache you a question, Malik,” Teddy said delightedly, “but I’ll shave it for later.” Taken by surprise by the hilarious joke, Blue dropped her laptop as she doubled over in laughter. Luckily, Gerda strolled in at that moment and caught it, looking confused and like she might even have caught it by accident. Handing it back to Blue, Gerda took a careful look at Malik and the arrangement of the room, and then walked out.
“Oh!” Blue gasped, “I have to go help Hakan glue his hair back on! Watch my laptop and discuss this mustache thing with Teddy! He, heehee…He mustache you a question, and he, heeeeehee, can’t shave it for later.” Blue handed her laptop to her boyfriend before she turned back around and ran back to Gerda’s room, where she assumed Hakan was.
As she went she could faintly hear, “Wait what’s this about gluing hair on Hakan?” from Teddy on the computer.
Rushing back to the room, Blue returned just in time to see Gerda pluck the superglue from Hakan’s hands and shake her head sternly. The Swede explained Hakan’s options to him as she set the superglue aside, “You can tidy up your hair or get extensions. I will cut it for you so it looks acceptable if you would like that.” Hakan pouted as he looked between his detached hair and the superglue Gerda took away from him.
Finally, he relented, “X guesses you can cut it.” Without letting Hakan see, Gerda shot Blue an appreciative smile and waved her out of the room. Since she clearly wasn’t wanted there, Blue trekked back to Malik and Kip’s room to whine about Malik’s mustache and missing Teddy. It continued much in the same way for the next week, proving Teddy failed to convince Malik to shave. Blue made a “no kissing with that thing on your face” rule, but Malik still refused to shave it off. Eventually Blue gave up on her campaign against it, but not before she made posters and commercials.
Blue showed Malik the commercial Wednesday night, two days before his Friday birthday (February 25th), and he laughed at it like it was a joke. It opened up on a warning stating, “Viewer discretion is advised. This video contains images that some viewers may find disturbing.” It proceeded to an image of Malik smiling with a cleanly shaven face and then some cheesy effects faded the picture into one where Malik had a mustache and the image was dripping with blood. Some music Malik suspected was intended for a horror movie played in the background. The screen faded out to black and faded back in to a somber-faced Blue at a desk.
Shifting some empty papers around, she spoke very seriously, “Recently a tragedy has struck Baylor School for the Arts. I speak, of course, of the rampant disregard for human decency displayed on the face of one Malik Green. The disturbance very nearly caught on with other students, for example Hakan ‘X’ Harjo, who almost didn’t shave for a week after seeing the poor example Mr. Green set. Luckily Mr. Harjo was saved this fate when his mullet was accidentally cut off. He now sees the light that mullets are bad, just like mustaches, and says of his new haircut, ‘X’s head is very light. Also, X requires less shampoo. Less shampoo is a plus.’ When asked why he didn’t grow a mustache, Mr. Harjo replied, ‘Well, Gerda said they might be diseased, so it didn’t seem right. Also, X can do more dangerous fire related things with less hair and no mustache, so X is happy.’ Mr. Harjo ran away from me after that, and later burned off his eyebrows. It is clear that his consideration of growing a mustache was the cause of this accident. Mustaches are an epidemic that must be stopped. Please don’t let your beautiful boyfriend turn into a Malik Green. He was so pretty…now look at him.” The image of Blue faded into another picture of Malik, this time drawn on with sharpie. A mustache was drawn on him, since Blue really only had that one picture of Malik with the mustache. Other additions to the picture included the blacking out of a couple of his teeth, an arrow saying ‘the abs are negated by the mustache’ pointing toward his stomach area, and an eye patch over one of his eyes.
Credits rolled at the end of the video, listing Blue as the writer, director, and star, the cameraperson as Gerda, the special effects as done by Hakan, and a little sentence claiming, “Paid for by the CAMRD (Commission Against Mustache Related Diseases).” Finally, the credits concluded by listing “the mustache guy” as Malik Green.
One appreciative laugh later, Malik asked Blue, “When did you make this?” Blue sighed, realizing she had failed yet again to convince Malik to shave. After this last effort, she decided to try what Teddy had recommended (did Blue mention she hated Canada?) and just ignore the mustache. Instead she planned out his surprised party. See Teddy told Blue he’d managed to rearrange his schedule to come back in time for Malik’s birthday and since Blue was basically a ninja, she arranged a whole party to surprise Malik with this fact on his birthday.
Basically she was an evil genius. Teddy arrived at Blue’s room just before the party was going to start, hosted at Kakahi’s house, so she didn’t get time to take a look at him before they hurried over to their friend’s house. If she had, she wouldn’t have been nearly so shocked when she realized Teddy had the saddest attempt at a mustache ever on his face.
“I know, I know,” he sighed, “now it’s clear I’m a bottle blond. Also testosterone isn’t my friend. I have a point with this Blue, trust me.” Blue trusted Teddy, of course, when his mind wasn’t being controlled by an evil mustache disease. As she closed her eyes and waited for Malik to show up, Blue could practically see the thing on Teddy’s face (barely a mustache due to Teddy barely needing to shave yet so a very awkward creature indeed) giving him orders to spread the disease to more people. After trying to picture everyone in the room with mustaches, Blue sighed and wondered whether Gerda had found a solution. A clicking noise got her attention, and she and everyone else pounced when Kakahi led Malik through the door of her house. Initially, Malik looked like he was either going to cry or punch someone, proving he wasn’t joking when he told Blue he didn’t like surprises. Then he looked excited to see Teddy, and he ran over to hug his blond friend but stopped short.
Malik stared at Teddy’s mustache attempt, wrinkled his noise, and looked disturbed. Despite this, he managed to lean forward and give his increasingly tall friend a hug. After that they had cake and ice cream and played games. Malik opened his presents from Blue and Teddy, the only two to bring presents, and a joke present from the both of them. The former were a set of coffee mugs with pop culture quotes on them, and the latter happened to be a pair of razors and some shaving cream.
As he stared in the box, Malik laughed quietly before looking up at Teddy, widening his eyes, offering Teddy a razor and taking the other one for himself. Kakahi dutifully pointed toward the bathroom and instructed the guys to clean up after they finished shaving because facial hair in the sink grossed her out. Blue figured out Teddy’s tactic while they were gone, namely that he wouldn’t shave until Malik did, and decided her friend could be forgiven for leaving her for two weeks. When the pair came back clean shaven, Blue pounced on her boyfriend, and he smiled into the kiss she planted on his mouth.
“Oh, I did miss that,” he sighed as they pulled apart. “If me having a mustache makes you feel how Teddy having a mustache makes me feel, I have to say…I’m very sorry. It was selfish of me. I love you, though, and eventually it was just funny to see what you’d come up with to convince me to get rid of it.”
Blue nodded, shot a thumbs up at Teddy, who apparently nicked himself while shaving and was pouting as Pablo comforted him, and turned her attention back to Malik. “Never again. Promise?”
“All right,” Malik agreed, “never again.”
And thus all was right in the land of facial hair once again, and the unsightly mullet Hakan thought he liked was finally, once and for all, taken care of. What happened to Gerda’s promise to help Blue out with Malik’s mustache? Well, in this case, never again was a bit more permanent than Malik had anticipated. When questioned, Gerda would pretend to forget English and act like she thought they were talking about sharing. Everyone was grateful to Gerda deep down, since she had prevented Malik from becoming “mustache guy” ever again, because mustache disease is a serious thing. If someone you know grows a mustache, be vigilant. If it appears to be spreading you know what to do: find the person who would look most ridiculous with a mustache and make him grow one. This will deter all others from the pursuit. Good luck and Godspeed in the war against mustaches. [This message paid for by the CAMRD (Commission Against Mustache Related Diseases).]

Chapter 22: Miss Allberry Gets a Date

Whoa! That was quick, huh? Yeah, I had this one started a while back Whoo! All right, so this one has a kind of weird relationship thing happen. You'll know it when you read it. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, it just did. It seemed right. You could tell me what you think about it? Cool. Cool cool cool. OK, here we go!

“Hey class! Good afternoon,” Miss Allberry greeted with a strangely manic grin. “As you all know, Valentine’s Day is coming up fast so I have an assignment for you all!” The class stared at her expectantly as she waited for it her news to sink in for some reason, as if it might be a hard concept to grasp. Eventually she went on, “Everyone is going to get a partner, and then you and your partner will act out a romantic scene! Because romantic scenes are a part of acting. So…You know. You’re going to do them!” Blue raised her eyebrows up and down at Malik, signifying her desire to partner with him. Miss Allberry stopped her eyebrows mid-range by declaring, “And I pick the partners!”

“Crazypants, not to, uh, dispute you or anything, but…How about no?” Teddy suggested. One of Miss Allberry’s eyes twitched. Teddy decided to sit quietly and try to turn invisible.

“The choice will be at random,” Miss Allberry stated, “I will draw sticks. No complaining if straighties get paired with same sexies. It happens. Deal with it. This is acting! OK, let’s begin!” Producing a cup with popsicle sticks from inside a drawer, the teacher began the drawing, “OK, first we have…Green! To be paired with Green, we have…Hispan…! Aw, lame…Well, can’t dispute the powers of the cup. Hispanesbian and Green you’re paired together. Please take the top scene on my stack of scenes.” The pair shot each other grins and held hands as they walked up to the front and grabbed the papers. “Next up we have…Jennay! All right, let’s see who Jennay is paired up with…Mindfreak! Wow that’s going to be kind of weird. Just what I was hoping for! I mean what? Next packet in the stack please!” Jenny and Pablo gave each other weary glances as they walked to the front of the room to pick up their assignments. Pablo shot puppy eyes at Teddy as a thought struck the blond. He raised his hand, and spoke despite the death glare Miss Allberry shot him.

“Two things,” he said, calmly ignoring Miss Allberry’s clear desire to murder him, “Number one: there are thirteen of us. Number two: are the Twingers still on just one stick?”

Miss Allberry paused in a moment of slight panic, opened her mouth, shut it, searched for and pulled a popsicle stick out of the cup, then replaced it with two that she quickly scribbled on. “I would have left it but incest is soooo weird. Also I guess one of you will just have to double up, then! I nominate Teddy because he pointed it out!”

“Not fair!” Teddy protested.

“Don’t care,” Miss Allberry replied, then congratulated herself on her rhyme. “Let’s move on! Next is Condy with…Jasmine! Oh, well…I feel like that’ll be…Well, just pick up your scenes. Next we have…Oh look who it is, it’s Jack the points-out-my-mistakes-all-the-time! Who will he be paired with? Let’s see now…Flicka! And…Uh…Little ginger? A Twinger…That’s kind of weird…Anyway, the answer is Evan Twinger! Cause see I wrote Twinger like Tvinger instead for the V twin.” Gerda moved to the front of the class in her very elegant way, followed by Teddy, who took two packets for himself. Evan sat with wide eyes in his seat next to his brother, so Teddy grabbed his packet for him and brought it over.

He spoke softly to Evan as Miss Allberry assigned Austin and Ewan to a group, made a disgusted noise, and switched the group to Austin and Kip. “It won’t be that bad,” he insisted, “I mean, I’m not that gross. I thought you…liked…me…”

“I…,” Evan mumbled, looking over the script and searching for the words to describe what he was feeling. Before he found them he gasped, “Wait do we have to kiss?”

“Er…Let me ask, yeah?” Teddy replied, not sure why exactly Evan had gone semi-catatonic. Miss Allberry finished the assigning by pairing Ewan and Blue, who both shrugged and accepted the pairing. The teacher went to speak, but Teddy’s raised hand stopped her.

“What this time, Jack?” she asked.

“Do we have to follow the script exactly?” he asked, and she raised her eyebrows at him in question. “Like, if in the script it says,” Teddy paused and looked down at the script, reading it aloud, “’Cassie and Dean stare longing into each other’s eyes, locked in a deeply romantic stare. Suddenly, Dean leans down and kisses Cassie, who melts into the kiss and pours all the passion of five years of pining into it.’ Does that mean we really have to kiss?”

“Of course Jack,” Miss Allberry replied. “Follow the script exactly. You guys got the best one, too…None of the rest require quite so much believability. Which I will be grading! OK guys. Get to work then and I’m not answering any more of your questions, Jack! Present your scripts a week from today. That means next Tuesday!”

Teddy and Gerda discussed their script for the rest of the class, hoping Evan would have some time to sort through whatever emotions he was feeling. Blue and Ewan excitedly planned for costumes and noted that they, unlike their twins (cause Blue and Teddy are still brain twins, remember) would not have to kiss. Once the class ended, Evan bolted from the room, his twin following him very closely and speaking to him in hard to follow references.

“That was kind of weird,” Malik declared, as he and Blue looked at each other, then at Teddy.

“I, uh…I should be less bothered by this, right?” Teddy mumbled, looking utterly disheartened.

“Maybe he thinks it’ll be too much awesome!” Blue suggested as the trio walked back to the dorms together.

“I was kind of hoping for a girl…So Pablo wouldn’t get jealous,” Teddy admitted. “But, I mean…Evan is…Well, with Gerda it’s fine, because she’s fine with it, but…” The genius sighed and sped up his walk, and Blue and Malik glanced at each other tensely.

“No awkwardness, yeah?” Malik asked, and Blue nodded.

“If we’re going to be famous actors, we’ll have to get used to it, right? And Twinger and I don’t even have to kiss,” Blue said with delight. Then she narrowed her eyes, “You don’t have to kiss Radish, right?”

“Uh…,” Malik stuttered, “well, we could…I’m sorry Blue it won’t mean anything, you have to understand!” Blue glared at Malik and stormed off as her boyfriend called, “This is Miss Allberry’s fault! Don’t take it out on me!”

Blue walked into her room, surprised to see Teddy sitting across from Kendall mumbling something about secret insecurity. Jumping down on to the bed, she laid her head on Teddy’s lap. “Why is Miss Allberry doing this?” she asked, and Teddy scowled and wrinkled his nose. He covered it when he realized she was underneath him and didn’t want her to be looking up his nose, so he spoke in a strange voice.

“Well, she hates love. Always has,” he insisted, “so Valentine’s Day is like…is like, uh…Some kind of…Bad…I’m sorry, I’m having trouble braining—uh—thinking right now. Am I ugly or smelly or unappealing in some way?”

“No!” Blue shouted, then, to prove her point, leaned up and attempted to plant a kiss on Teddy’s mouth. Her friend reacted in fright and jerked his head backward, hitting it against a bar above his head.

“Ow!” he whined, rolling onto the floor, effectively knocking Blue onto the floor with him.

“Ow!” Blue parroted as she hit the ground with a thud. The only thing that stopped the pair from whining and rolling around on the floor as Kendall watched them was the sound of people walking into the room. Teddy and Blue collected themselves and looked up at Malik and Ewan with interest.

“So, Teddy,” Ewan said, trying to sound casual, “so the thing is, you know Evan and I have never dated anyone, yeah?” Teddy nodded as he kept rubbing his head. To his right, Blue rubbed her hip where she’d landed on the floor. “Evan has—well both of us really—never kissed anyone before. So he’s kind of understandably nervous, right? I mean you can talk to him…He says that’s OK. So, I mean, yeah, you want to do that?”

“In a minute,” Teddy dismissed, then addressed Malik, “Malik, are you here to convince Blue she shouldn’t be mad at you?” His best friend nodded, so Teddy went on, “I thought of a perfect sit-commy solution to all our problems!” he announced. Despite his announcement, Teddy stood still and didn’t elaborate. After a few awkward minutes waiting, it was Kendall who broke the silence.

“What is it?” she asked, and Teddy laughed awkwardly.

“Oh sorry, I just thought we would…Cut to that scene…Uh sorry, anyway, the plan is to put our heads together and find a date for Miss Allberry! Then her bitterness won’t overshadow the holiday of emotions I wish I…The holiday of love!” He declared, well aware everyone was focused on the part of his sentence he’d trailed off at. As a distraction, he shooed Malik, Blue, and Ewan out of the room to go report the plan to everyone else who might be interested in helping them. “My mind to mouth filter is really letting me down right now,” he mumbled to Kendall, who nodded in sympathy.

“No sleep last night, right?” she asked in her creepiest voice to date.

“Well, I would ask how you know that but I’m just not going to,” Teddy sighed, “thanks for your creepiness. You make the world a more aware of everything they do place.”

“That didn’t make sense,” Kendall informed him, as Teddy turned to leave the room.

“Your face doesn’t make any…Leave me alone, stuff is hard and…stuff,” Teddy trailed off before scampering out of the room. “That’s not what she said!” he shouted back to Kendall, who was snickering to herself.

Blue, Malik, and Ewan were apparently more convincing than Teddy expected. Or maybe everyone just wanted to avoid their homework. Gerda, Hakan (still constantly mumbling bitter words about Kendrick), Kip, Rashida, and Evan rounded out the group. Admittedly, Evan had mostly agreed to help because he wanted to talk to Teddy. The ringleader in the operation then divided up tasks, and when everyone had a job sent them on their way. Malik pulled Blue away when she kept lingering around while Evan clearly wanted to speak with Teddy privately.

Finally, after Blue wailed that Malik trying to keep her apart from Teddy was just like “Smelly Kid,” someone she claimed stole one of her toys when she was in elementary school, Evan and Teddy were alone. Evan laughed and joked, “So you’re a toy to her then?”

“It would explain a lot,” Teddy replied with an appreciative smile. Awkward silence fell over them, which Teddy surely would have broken sooner if he wasn’t totally exhausted from not sleeping for totally normal reasons. The ginger sitting across from him in the lounge finally couldn’t handle it any longer.

“I mean kissing is so weird anyway it’s like why do we shove our mouths up into each other? Like here, here’s where I eat my food, I’m going to connect it with where you eat yours and maybe those things we have with taste buds will come into play and we’ll, like French…Which is really weird though, right, because, like, because, what? French people invented it? I bet they have bad breath and—!” Teddy finally took pity on the older twin and cut him off.

“Until you kiss someone it seems pretty weird yeah. I think it’s because lips are one of the most sensitive areas of our bodies apart from, you know…And kissing feels good…And there’s a pheromone exchange to see if you’re suitable partners…So that’s kind of…that…Anyway, I know I’m doing this whole finding a date for Miss Allberry thing, but…The reality is, we’ll probably still have to do the assignment. She does have a point. This kind of thing is a part of acting.”

“Yeah, I…I guess,” Evan mumbled.

“However,” Teddy interjected, grabbing one of Evan’s hands and looking into his very blue eyes, “I don’t want to do anything that’ll be uncomfortable for you. We can just explain that you should be put with a girl. You could go with Gerda and I could just fail, you know?”

“No!” Evan shouted, and Teddy raised his eyebrows, “That would…that would be so much worse, I…I’d prefer…” He trailed off; staring at where Teddy still held his hand and trying to ignore the increasing flush of his face. When Teddy realized the effect he was having, he pulled his hands back and smiled supportively.

“As long as Pablo doesn’t freak out, I think we can handle this,” he promised. Evan nodded, though nothing was really solved, which Teddy realized as Evan turned to leave. “Listen, if it’s that bad, we can stage kiss or something. There are ways to do that. I assume.” (Upon asking, stage kissing was “No! I want some man on man action! It’s happening, man, better get used to it.”) Evan nodded, but was apparently too embarrassed to stay near him any longer as he ran off.

Pablo was not amused by the situation. Though Teddy managed to convince him acting was acting, Pablo admitted he wished the person Teddy was partnered with was “someone who doesn’t obviously have a man crush on you.” Despite his reservations, Pablo gave his blessing, prompting Blue to shout out that she was OK with Malik being paired with Rashida too, as if it was a competition. With that settled, they got to work on learning their lines and what they figured was secretly a good will mission meant mainly to keep their grades high, not alter their assignment at all.

The next day, Teddy and Blue decided to seek the counsel of an expert on all things Miss Allberry. Their former teacher greeted both of them with eager grins when they walked through his door, “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever, Blue!”

“IT HAS BEEN LITERALLY FOREVER!” Blue shrieked, and Hammy and Teddy both twitched their heads away from the loud noise.

Hammy decided to just move on, “No tall, dark, and handsome today?”

“Nah, Malik’s busy with some…Uh, something,” Teddy mumbled.

Blue scowled at him and elaborated, “He’s practicing a dance for a class. Hee. He’s not a very good dancer.”

“Right,” Teddy mumbled, “anyway, we came to talk about Crazypants.”

Hammy raised an eyebrow at his young friend before responding, “Well they’d probably be bad. I saw a cartoon with some once…?”

“No, our teacher, she…Uh, Miss…,” Teddy rubbed the back of his neck, and Blue made an overly dramatic shocked face at him.

“Miss Allberry!” she filled in and Hammy nodded. Blue figured she should just explain the situation to Hammy, since Teddy’s brain had apparently suffered a stupidening (a real thing, Blue thought, that she didn’t make up). After she summed up the situation, Hammy offered his thoughts.

“Yeah, I can try to find some people to set her up with. I’ve tried before, but she always manages to find some excuse to not be able to go on a blind date. I’ll get Reg to help too, it sounds like a good idea. Frankly, she’s kind of insufferable around Valentine’s Day,” Hammy replied, shaking his head as he thought of Valentine’s Days of the past. “I didn’t know candy hearts could spell something so mean…,” he trailed off, shaking his head to rid his mind of the thought.

It was on that Saturday afternoon that Blue, Teddy, Malik, and Hammy gathered to evaluate the twenty or so candidates the group had somehow assembled. Reg and Pablo had been assigned to street duty i.e. screening for any randomly walking men who looked acceptable for Miss Allberry. Kakahi had insisted she be part of the security team, so she ended up being the whole team. The strange brunette called the first man into the room. A nervous blond man walked into the room. Everyone stared. He coughed and shuffled back out.

Silence settled over the group, until Blue finally asked, “You have a cloning machine and you didn’t share?” Hammy shook his head, running out of the room without saying anything and chasing after the young man.

Malik and Blue looked to Teddy to explain, and he blinked it confusion before mumbling, “Oh, yeah, that was clearly a brother or something. He’s got younger brothers, right? I guess that’s one of them…Hell of an entrance…Seemed like an accident…Hope him having an actual brother around doesn’t change our relationship…God, my filter is just gone, huh?”

Kakahi led the next candidate into the room as Teddy coughed awkwardly, and they went on despite Teddy’s brain brokenness and the absence of the person who knew Miss Allberry best. They interviewed the seventeen (wow!) men thoroughly, with such question as “What do you think of the apocalypse?” and “If you had a pop culture related nickname, what would it be?” and “Land fish or kitten of the sea?” At the end of the day, they narrowed it down to five people. Of the eighteen that showed up, they deemed ten to be just looking for a desperate woman on Valentine’s Day. Of the other three, one was apparently Hammy’s brother, one was a psychologist and that just didn’t seem right, and the last was nearly eighty. They weren’t sure where to go from there. Eventually Blue suggested they all ask Miss Allberry out and see which one she picked. When Malik thought this was a bad idea he looked to Teddy to explain why.

“Well, because…sit-coms…,” Teddy mumbled in response, then got frustrated with himself and hit his head against the judging table they all sat at. Malik and Blue decided to let him be, and left him by himself after informing the five candidates of how best to woo Miss Allberry. The couple went off to learn their lines then, each reading for the opposite’s partners because they could. Kakahi tapped Teddy on the shoulder eventually and told him he should probably leave because “the jumpers” were coming. For the life of him, Teddy couldn’t figure out what “the jumpers” meant, but he went along with Kakahi anyway.

Pablo was waiting for him when he got back to his room. If there was anyone Alec liked less than Teddy it was Pablo, due mostly to his singing and dancing and the general happiness he exuded. Teddy’s roommate shot Teddy the dirtiest look he had ever seen when he arrived back at his room to see Pablo singing into one of Teddy’s pens. Kakahi, who had insisted on escorting him back to his room in case he ran into trouble, asked if Alec was “going to be a problem.” Insisting she could “take care of it,” the genius violinist stepped toward the Brit.

“It’s fine, Kahi,” Teddy dismissed, but Kakahi frowned at him and gave Alec the symbol for “I’m watching you,” just in case before she left. “What’s up?” Teddy asked Pablo, flopping face first onto his bed as Pablo set down his pen.

“I decided I don’t like the idea of you kissing that Twinger kid,” he stated. Teddy sighed and rolled over, preparing for a serious conversation with his boyfriend instead of the nap he was hoping for. He ushered Pablo to another room so they could get some privacy from Alec, and the two discussed the situation.

Back in Malik’s room, Blue and her boyfriend were having a similar conversation, which ended in both promising they weren’t jealous types then moving on to the topic of Valentine’s Day. Blue wanted to rent a helicopter and fly it around while dropping stuff on people, but Malik rejected the idea and informed Blue the speed those things might fall at could kill someone. Blue apologized to no one in particular, and Malik suggested they go for a nice walk in the park and go out to eat.

On Sunday, Teddy had memorized both his scenes, and he and Gerda ran through theirs with no issues. This left him and Evan to practice their scene. Ewan graciously vacated him and his twin’s room to practice with Blue. It wasn’t hard to see how uncomfortable Evan was as Teddy sat on the twins’ futon, but the blond shot him a grin.

“So, uh, what’s the decision here?” Evan asked. They’d run through the words plenty of times over, but always sort of blurred through the kissing part. Finally they’d arrived at an impasse: Evan had his lines memorized as well as Teddy, and the two didn’t stumble through the dialogue at all. They’d even managed to have a conversation about how it wasn’t them kissing but their characters kissing. For quite a while they did getting into character exercises and created backstories for their characters. Soon they were both feeling very much like they were actually their respective characters who were just being reunited after thinking each other had died. This still brought them back to Evan’s question.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Teddy announced. Before Evan got the chance to question it, the blond genius’ lips were on his. Evan flailed in Teddy’s grip, but settled into the kiss just in time for it to end. Teddy’s eyes slid open to see Evan watching him with a doe-eyed stare, and he laughed.

Neither moved back from the other, as Evan breathed and spoke softly, “That was…intimate.”

“Tends to be,” Teddy laughed. They paused, and Evan took a deep breath.

“Can I get a second try?” he asked sheepishly. Teddy nodded and they leaned in again. Their second try went much smoother than the first. In fact, it went so well that it led to more practice kisses, and their practicing only stopped when Teddy joltingly remembered he was in a relationship and suggested Evan had it down. They laughed awkwardly and called it a night.

Monday was fairly uneventful, and all the groups practiced running through their scripts and waited for Miss Allberry to tell them whether or not she had a date for Valentine’s Day. All she did was giggle and change the subject when asked, so they figured it was a yes. Teddy at some point admitted he hadn’t been sleeping because he got addicted to a really good TV show and couldn’t stop watching. Once he got through season four, the newest season, his intelligence rebounded to normal levels.

On Tuesday they performed their scenes. Blue couldn’t watch when Malik and Rashida performed (first), and Malik actually scowled intensely for the entirety of Blue and Ewan’s (second) and dug his fingers into Teddy’s leg. Miss Allberry was handing out A’s left and right, except for a very lackluster performance from Pablo and Jenny (third) which earned an “A for Jennay, B for Mindfreak because I didn’t feel the loveeee.” Teddy and Gerda (fourth) were up next, and they earned a new grade, “You look related, A for acting F for making me think of incest. So…I guess you can have an A. But like…A tainted A. Tainted with incest.” Gerda laughed and sat down while Teddy rolled his eyes. Austin and Kip were up next (fifth) and received an A as well. Estela and Kakahi went next (sixth) and received an A and a commendation, “I could actually feel the love between these two. Unlike the rest of you lame people.” The actual couple laughed off her comments, but most of the rest of the class acted offended. Finally, it was Teddy and Evan’s turn. As soon as they started their scene, Pablo decided he would leave the room. Ewan and Austin both opted to follow, citing “general weirdness” as their reason (Evan had made an uncomfortable face during the whole of Ewan’s scene, and then informed his brother “That was really weird to watch.” Austin felt similarly).

The scene went off well. So well, in fact, that Miss Allberry spontaneously applauded at the end when the kiss happened, “That’s how you fake real love! I mean really, I could feel the love. It was all in the chemistry. These two clearly have it. I don’t know why the rest of you don’t, you should work on that…You can stop kissing!” It took a moment for the pair to realize her words, and they pulled apart sharply with blushes on their faces. “Extra credit for man kissing for you two! I liked it. Quite. Yum.”

“I’d like to credit staying really ridiculously in character,” Evan stated, giving a slight smile and slinking back to his seat. Teddy followed and flopped into his seat next to Malik, who tilted his head at his friend and received a slightly confused shrug in response. They got to the end of class pretty quickly once the other two Connellies and Pablo returned, and as they turned to leave they heard a knock on the door. Miss Allberry skipped over to it with a grin, pulling it open.

“Oh,” Teddy mumbled, as all those who had picked matches out for her were sorely disappointed. As they wondered what had happened to their choices, Miss Allberry moved to introduce the young man.

“This is Abram Paddington,” she said, and the blond man gave an awkward wave.

“We know that name,” Kip mumbled, as if trying to think of why. “A teacher you guys had?” he offered to Malik, Blue and Teddy. They nodded.

Teddy stood and shot straight over to him, “I adore your big brother like only a little brother can. Let’s be little brothers together.”

“Uh, you must be Teddy?” he replied, and Teddy nodded and offered his hand to shake. Abram shook it slowly, his discomfort fading and being replaced by a smile as he did. “Hamilton is fond of you. I would love to stay to talk, but I promised Today we could go to the park and…?” he trailed off, glancing at Miss Allberry to finish his sentence.

“Try to break the ice on the lake!” Miss Allberry cheered, pulling her winter coat on and running outside excitedly. Abram laughed affectionately at her, and Blue noticed the face reflected the one Malik made when she had a brilliant idea like Miss Allberry’s ice breaking one. It was brilliant on so many levels, Blue tried to explain, but no one cared except Malik, but he just ruffled her hair and shot her that smile he did.

“So I will get to know you at a later date, you have my word,” Abram promised, turning and following after Miss Allberry with a wave.

The group spent the walk back talking about how their picks must have decided to make a five way relationship or were in one big car crash and that’s why they weren’t picked. These were the only logical options. Pablo skipped dance class just for this one day to hang out with Teddy, and he grinned at his boyfriend as they walked hand-in-hand. Both the Twingers thoroughly avoided Teddy’s glances even though they walked nearby, and he made a mental note that something weird might be happening. The couples separated to exchange gifts before they planned on going on a double date.

Teddy sat Pablo down, admitted he sort of made out with Evan in practicing kissing, but cited being “in character” for defense. After Pablo was assured that Evan wasn’t into him (Teddy decided his statement after their scene was meant to explain that), and Teddy wasn’t into Evan, he forgave his boyfriend. In the spirit of the holiday, Teddy handed over a small box and Pablo gave him one in exchange. In a show of weird planning, they gave each other identical looking rainbow bracelets and laughed. Pablo kissed Teddy hesitantly, but Teddy smiled into the kiss and deepened it, reassuring his boyfriend.

A knock on the door interrupted them, and Blue bounded into the room, “Malik got me a helicopter to fly he’s the best come fly it with me!” Teddy and Pablo stood excitedly and followed Blue as she ran outside with the remote controlled helicopter, Malik tailing the group with a proud smile on his face. Only he noticed the strange sight of Ewan sitting in the lounge by himself and stopped to talk with him to figure out why he was alone.

“You’re, er…?” he trailed off, and Ewan shared which twin he was quickly. They spoke shortly, and Ewan swore Malik to secrecy before he sighed and decided he should probably head back to his room. Malik shrugged to himself about the conversation as he headed outside to find Teddy and Pablo playing with the helicopter, running around and generally having fun. The couple ended up in a tackle as Blue stole it and flew it above their heads. Malik’s girlfriend walked over to him and hugged him when she spotted him, letting the helicopter fall to the ground in the process. Apparently it landed on Pablo and Teddy, because they protested loudly.

After they argued for a while about Blue doing it on purpose, Teddy and Pablo gave up and tried to race the helicopter, which was pretty easy, since Blue was actually terrible at steering. When they got tired of the helicopter, they decided to go to the park to check on Abram and Miss Allberry. The pair was keeping a distance between them, but they did seem to be getting along well as Miss Allberry kicked at ice and Abram laughed.  Eventually Hammy and Reg showed up to meet them, so Blue, Malik, Pablo, and Teddy hid out of sight so as not to look like stalkers.

“All in all,” Teddy said, motioning Abram, “he’s probably the best choice. So, operation ‘Get a date for Crazypants,’ we agree? Success?”

“Success,” the others replied with grins.

So that happened. Tell me what you think?

Chapter 21: Living With Your Nemesis

 Hi. I wrote a new chapter. It's kind of slow, not much happens I don't think.  But yeah I finished it! Whoo! Amy's not here to read it though...She'll read it later. :)



Blue sat in her new room across from her new roommate. She and Kendall had been sharing a room for almost a month, but nothing had really changed in their relationship. All Blue wanted was to have a fun roommate relationship, like she’d had with Alec, where she wasn’t quite sure that Alec liked her at all but he was still sometimes nice to her. Kendall pretty much just mumbled creepy statements and acted uncomfortable when Blue tried to change in front of her. For this reason, Blue decided to migrate to the closet for changing clothes, as she had in her old room. Despite Kendall’s awkward nature, Blue was determined to befriend the Justin Bieber lookalike.

            “So, Kendall,” she said as they lay in their room one Friday afternoon. Kendall glanced toward her, tilting her head in curiosity, “what do you do for fun?” The other teen’s eyes lit up brightly, and she stood from where she’d been lying and watching Blue as she played games on her phone.

            It didn’t take Blue long to understand why Kendall did what she did all the time; spying on people was fun! Their first target was Hakan, who was ranting rather loudly in Gerda’s room about Kendrick, the door just slightly ajar.

            “And he, like…He wakes up at 5:00 every morning! Then he does all these stretches and X can barely stand it! He always calls me…I’m taking a break, OK? He always calls me mean names and I want to punch him so bad but I’m not supposed to apparently…You say I’m not allowed…But, one punch could do him some good! Please let me? Please?”

            “Hakan,” Gerda said patiently, “violence is not the answer. You must simply learn to live with him. People will be mean to you in this business you have chosen, you know. He will be a learning experience for you.”

            “X doesn’t want to learn! X wants to punch!” Hakan declared, returning to his regular ways of speech. Something made a loud clanging noise in the room after he spoke, but neither acknowledged it.

            “Do not worry, Hakan,” Gerda replied. “I will take care of it. You must continue to learn to tolerate him.”

            Hakan grunted, but fell silent after that. When the silence continued for a couple more minutes, Kendall motioned another open door, and she and Blue stalked off toward it.

            “No way. I will not let you start wearing bowties,” Evan said through the door.

            “But bowties are cool. You dare defy The Doctor?” Ewan countered, probably waving his arms around extravagantly.

            “No, no, his wisdom is the words I live by, of course. But dude, Ewan, little brother twin, they choke your neck. I’m just thinking of your neck!” Evan insisted loudly.

            “You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my mom!” Ewan shouted back, in an obviously joking tone. The twins laughed together, but their laughter tapered off into something less recognizable that was almost laughter but sounded more sad than happy.

            “Speaking of Mom,” Evan muttered, quiet enough Blue barely heard him, “she said something about auditioning for something the other day…”

            “Ah,” Ewan replied, as if he had no desire whatsoever to continue the conversation. “You told her no, right?” Evan probably nodded, because his brother quickly changed the subject, “Did you see Jenny’s hair today? Looking nice. That’s how I’d do my hair if I was a girl.”

            “Yeah, it was nice…Teddy, though, Teddy’s got some of the best hair around,” Evan replied.

            “But Teddy’s hair always looks nice. I mean…He’s Teddy,” Ewan responded, probably smiling as he thought about the blond genius. Blue snickered to herself at the twins’ obvious twin crush on Teddy. Ewan refocused the conversation, “So anyway. I bought a bowtie, and I’m wearing it sometime! Once I get some suspenders…And a beautiful face…”

            “Oh come now,” Evan argued, “you already have a beautiful face. You take after your big brother, who I hear is gorgeous.”

            “Har har,” Ewan replied, with a very definite eye rolling sort of tone. “Anyway, you should get a bowtie too. And suspenders.”

            “No, I’ll get a suit and some converse,” Evan replied. None of this conversation was making sense to Blue at all.

            “Oh! OK, we can do that,” Ewan said with a probable smile.

            “The real Doctor would be so jealous of our gingerness,” Evan said in a bragging tone, and he and Ewan laughed again, this time sounding weirdly smug. Suddenly someone tapped Blue’s shoulder, and she jumped.

            “What are you doing, Blue?” Teddy asked, and Blue shrugged and looked around for support from Kendall. Her roommate had completely vanished.

            “I was bonding with Kendall,” she mumbled. “But Kendall is better at being sneaky than I am, I guess…” Teddy nodded and rolled his eyes at Blue, but didn’t say anything in response. “What are you doing, Teddy?”

            “Uh,” he replied. “Walking around…Standing now…breathing…Uh, probably digesting food…my heart is pumping blood around my body…,” he probably would have continued, but Blue cut him off.

            “No, no, why are you here?” she asked, standing from her crouched position as Teddy looked around the room as if trying to find something to distract Blue with.

            When he came up empty, he finally admitted, “Well, you and Malik and everyone are busy, but I didn’t want to stay in my room, because…Because Alec. So I’m just wandering around.”

            “You still don’t get along with him?” Blue asked. Teddy shook his head, and Blue sighed. “I thought he was scary at first but he’s not scary at all. Do you think he’s scary?”

            “I’m not scared of him,” Teddy denied, “it’s just…complicated.”

            “Complicated how? Cause he’s your nemesis?” Blue asked, as she and Teddy began to walk back toward her room naturally.

            “Yeah, something like that,” he replied. Blue stopped suddenly and grinned at him.

            “I have an idea!” she declared, dragging Teddy back in the direction of her old room. Her best friend squeaked some form of protest, but Blue ignored him as she knocked on the door to the room. The door swung open with only Scamps behind it to explain how it did so, and Blue and Teddy saw Alec sitting at his computer as always. The Brit spoke darkly as they walked in.

            “I told you to leave, Albrecht,” he growled.

            “It’s Blue and Teddy! Bleddy? Uh, Teblue…,” Blue trailed off. “Well, couple names are hard, but the point is yay it’s both of us!”

            “Oh,” Alec mumbled, turning around in his rolling chair and staring at them. “What do you want?”

            “We’re going to bond!” Blue declared. Alec and Teddy both shot her questioning looks before Alec turned back to his computer and Teddy started to back out of the room. “Wait!” Blue called, and both spun back to look at her. “You have to listen to me!”

            “What?” Alec and Teddy asked in unison. While they glared at each other, Blue tried to figure out what to tell them to get them to do what she wanted.

            “I think maybe we should play a game together,” she suggested. The blond geniuses glared at her, rolled their eyes, and turned their attention away from her. Thinking quickly, Blue moved in Teddy’s way. “Can’t leave, nope! You’re going to get over your differences. Ready go!”

            “You’re not going to let me out?” Teddy asked, and Blue shook her head excitedly.

            “Not until you work things out with Alec!” she insisted, and Teddy frowned at her in response.

            “There’s nothing to work out,” he argued. Blue just glared at him and pursed her lips.

            “Obviously there is! Now maybe you just need to talk it out,” Blue countered. Scamps was getting dangerously close to her then, and Alec was glaring in her general direction. Tossing something from her pocket toward Alec, Blue managed to distract the rat and his owner alike. Unfortunately for her, Teddy moved toward her at that moment and wrapped his arms around her back. Before she got the chance to protest that they both had boyfriends and Teddy was gay, the blond lifted her out of the way of the door and slid out of the room. Blue stood and stared at a smirking Alec momentarily before huffing and turning to follow Teddy.

            “But Teddy!” she whined. “I know he’s your nemesis and all, but…Where…Teddy?” Blue squeaked in surprise when Teddy was nowhere to be found. A pair of nearly identical cackling told her who the culprits were, but she wasn’t sure where they were, so she just sighed and headed back to her room.

            Kendall waved at her as she walked in, and they then discussed how Blue needed to work on being sneaky. Their conversation was surprisingly genial, so Blue suggested they go out and try again. Kendall rejected this idea, and told Blue she would need to go to ninja boot camp before they tried again. To Blue this sounded totally awesome, so she eagerly asked when they could get started. Her roommate told her Saturday would be the soonest possible time, so Blue decided to wander around to try to find Malik. He was at a gym playing basketball with Kip and a couple other athletically inclined students, including Estela, Kakahi, and Pablo. Both Estela and Kakahi were strangely good at basketball and able to keep up fairly well with the others. Despite initially wanting to play, Blue and Teddy had gotten very bored within a few minutes and walked off, because Blue was terrible and Teddy kept running into a large smelly guy. Blue was pretty sure he was trying to flirt with Teddy, and so Pablo started glaring at him and playing terribly in reaction. It was just better that Teddy quit.

            Now she was just bored, so she stopped by the Twingers’ room to see if Teddy wanted to go see how the game was going with her. Deciding knocking was lame, Blue barged into the room to see Teddy with two tiny pigtails in his hair. One of the twins was sitting behind him and looked to be in the process of giving Teddy a third pigtail.

            “Um?” she asked to the other twin, who smiled at her in that cat-like way of theirs and stood from their futon. By his walk Blue identified him as Ewan.

“Would you like to play a game with us?” Ewan asked. Blue shrugged and nodded, and was introduced to a very strange game the twins had created. The twins split up the teams, with Blue and Ewan making one team and Teddy and Evan in the other. Somehow, and Blue didn’t know how, she and Ewan won the game. Once the game was over and Teddy and Evan vowed revenge, Malik knocked on the door.

            “Hey,” he greeted when Blue opened the door, “Gerda said you guys were in here. We’re going to watch a movie if you want to join us.”

            “Yeah!” Blue cheered, attaching herself to Malik’s arm. Teddy attached himself to Malik’s other arm with a grin, and Malik rolled his eyes at both with a smile. It wasn’t until they were all in the lounge they noticed the twins hadn’t followed them. They shrugged it off and flopped onto the couch together in a heap. The movie started, but Blue was bored of it and fell asleep against Malik’s shoulder. She woke up in her bed halfway through the night, blinked a couple times, and went back to sleep.

            The next time she woke up it was the morning and Kendall was staring at her expectantly. “Ninja lessons?” she cheered, and then proceeded to get ready to go in record time. Once Blue was comfortably dressed in dark wash jeans and a long sleeved black t-shirt, Kendall led her out of their room.

            “First I need to tell you the rules,” Kendall explained in her quiet, low voice. “Rule number one of being a ninja: move quietly. Rule number two: scout out hiding places before people arrive, so you can, you know…wait there for them. Rule number three: breathing doesn’t have to make sound. Rule four: you never go wrong in black. Rule five: umm…if you’re caught act like you’ve done nothing wrong.”

            “OK let’s goooo!” Blue shouted, pumping her fist in the air excitedly.

            “Rule number six: your voice should always be low volume so as not to attract attention to yourself,” Kendall reprimanded, and added, “and rule number eight: don’t ever admit to creeping on purpose…Which is sort of a subset of rule five, I guess…”

            “Ok let’s gooooo!” Blue whisper-shouted as a compromise, as Kendall led her out of their room. “Also you missed rule seven,” Blue added as locked the door, and turned around to find Kendall had vanished.

            “Rule seven was so sneaky you missed it,” a quiet voice stated, making Blue jump despite how low in volume it was. The training session then began. Blue didn’t make a very good ninja at all, but she did make a very spirited one. Walls were hard to avoid, and Blue made a lot of loud noises by running into them instead of walking quietly next to them. While they were practicing sitting silently, Blue started daydreaming. When Blue started mumbling, “No, no, Uni, koalas are friends not food,” Kendall gave up on teaching Blue her sneaky ways.

            Blue fancied herself an expert anyway after like four hours of practice, so she got to work on choosing someone to spy on. Kendall laughed at her and wished her good luck before disappearing somewhere unknown. Her first target was Malik, because he wouldn’t be mad if he caught her. After that, she figured she’d move on to bigger game as she got more real world experience and therefore got even better at being a ninja.

            Malik was still sleeping. Or he was napping. Kip wasn’t sure, as he explained when he let Blue into the room. When Kip left in the morning Malik was asleep, and when he came back four hours later Malik was also asleep. Kip granted her permission to sit in the room and stare at Malik, graciously not asking why Blue wanted to. It turned out watching people sleep was boring. So, so boring. Blue ended up talking to Kip out of boredom and waking Malik up in the process because wow so boring. Kip was sitting looking glum and bored while he clicked through webpages. A quick inquiry later Blue wished she didn’t ask Kip what he was doing.

            “Well I’m on a website called Reddit, and I’m looking at memes mostly right now,” he explained. Proceeding to keep telling Blue things she found boring, Kip somehow missed the dozen or so yawns she faked to get him to stop.

            “Space Invader!” she interrupted, and Kip blinked at her as Malik twitched. Whatever she was going to say flew out of her brain as she focused on Malik. Diving under Kip’s desk, she peered up at her boyfriend and watched him very carefully.

            The young man startled awake and sat up in his bed, shooting a groggy-eyed look down at Kip. His eyes met Blue’s and she shrieked, “Nooo!”

            Malik smiled at her in a very tired way, “Good morning Blue. Why are you in that relative position to my roommate?”

            Kip smirked and twitched his head strangely, “Oh you know why.”

            “Making a move on my girlfriend?” Malik asked, with a glare.

            “I’d says she’s making a move on me,” Kip countered, as Blue crawled out from under the desk and stared at the ground in shame.

            “Whoa! That sounds to me like it’s time for a battle to remind you why I’m better than you and Blue will always choose me,” Malik challenged, climbing down off his bed and pointing an accusatory finger at Kip. Blue quietly slipped out of the room as the pair began to shoot at each other with Nerf guns.

            Blue decided she should try again, since Kip was obviously to blame for what happened. After shaking her fist at the air and shouting, “Space Invader!” because she was pretty sure she needed to, Blue tiptoed over to Teddy and Alec’s nearby room. Pushing the door open slightly, she somehow managed not to alert the two smart blonds to her presence, despite the loud click of the handle turning. Blue’s best friend and her former roommate seemed to be having a very strange conversation.

            “Yes, I know and I get that you have loyalty to them, but that doesn’t mean you have to treat me like a piece of shit,” Teddy was saying. Blue bleeped him silently, and got back to listening.

            “Oh come on, don’t put this on me Albrecht,” Alec argued, “you’re the one who turned down our offer to stay with your weird state organization.”

            “I turned you down; it should not have offended you this much! It was nothing to do with you,” Teddy retorted. Suddenly Blue noticed a little rat nose poking out from the inside of the room.

            “It was an insult to everything I stand for and therefore you are an insult to everything I stand for,” Alec growled. Teddy sighed so loud Blue could hear it clearly through the barely open door, as she shook her head at Scamps when he saw her. The rat didn’t seem to care that she didn’t want him to go report his findings back to Alec as he turned around and scurried back into the room.

            “Potts—Alec, we’re more similar than different we should be able to find some common ground here,” Teddy insisted. Blue guessed Alec wasn’t listening when he spoke to his rat instead of replying to Teddy.

            “What’s over there?” he asked. Scamps reported back in rat-language which Alec somehow understood, and Blue scampered away to avoid getting caught. Next in her mental list of people to spy on was Grumpers. Ever since she met her, Blue had been intrigued by how Grumpers managed to stay so grumpy all the time.

            Trotting back to the stupid “girls’ hall,” Blue parked herself outside the door to Austin and Rashida’s room. This door was somehow much louder than Teddy and Alec’s, and it got pushed shut by an eye-rolling ginger before Blue got the chance to spy.

Blue heard Rashida’s voice faintly through the door, “Blue is welcome to come in if she wants to.”

“She doesn’t,” Austin replied dully, “she’s just weird. She’s probably eavesdropping or something. Just because she’s weird.” Rashida opened the door anyway, but Blue was busy fleeing the scene. Not getting caught was much harder than she was hoping. Despite her dampened spirits, Blue trekked on to go spy on the next person on her list, Hakan. Throwing a roll in there for good measure, Blue hit her head against the wall. When she stood up, Teddy and Alec were standing behind her, both with arms crossed and skeptical looks on their faces.

“Eavesdropping, Blue?” Teddy asked.

“I’m disappointed,” Alec added. Blue gave each of them an ashamed glance as they lectured.

“You should know better than this,” Teddy went on.

“Listening in on people’s conversations is a violation of their privacy rights,” Alec explained, “You want to be like your government?”

“Go to your room and think about what you’ve done,” Teddy ordered. Blue nodded and shuffled back to her room, sitting down on her bed and sighing. After recounting a tale that grossly overestimated her sneaking abilities to Kendall, Blue settled in for boredom as she waited for Malik to come hang out with her.

Blue’s boyfriend knocked on her door a little while later, and she greeted him with a question, “Do you think Alec and Teddy are secretly married?”