Chapter 5

Jeff nodded reluctantly and Michelle looked bewildered. She finally sighed and said, "Oh alright, not like I have a choice." Jeff was surprised once again. Any other girl would've been doing cartwheels around the floor. Hanging out with Jeff Orwin? That was probably every girl's dream.

Michelle said, "See you on the morrow, Jen. I'll talk to you later, Jeff." And turned and walked out of the auditorium.

Jenna nodded curtly at Jeff and started fixing her papers. Jeff took this as an invitation to go and ran outside. "Michelle! Hey, Michelle!" He caught her walking out to the parking lot, car keys in her hand.

She stopped when she heard her name. "Yeah?" she asked.

"We're supposed to get together to practice lines right? Well, this week I'm free so maybe we could practice lines now and this week." Jeff said.

Michelle's eyebrow rose yet again and she said, "Do you expect me to just stop practicing lines after a week?"

"No, just it'd be more convenient if we could practice lines so we have a solid start and then if I have sports practice and such, we still won't be unprepared for rehearsals and such." Jeff explained.

Michelle's eyebrow still remained up and she remarked dryly, "You say, 'and such' a lot. But alright, sure. You can follow my car to my house and then we can practice. I don't have any homework 'cause it's the first day."

He nodded as Michelle climbed into a white Jeda. He climbed into his black BMW convertible and followed her out of the parking lot and into a gated community where Michelle turned a couple of times and ended up in a plain house with a really well kept garden in front.

She got out after parking in the driveway and stopped to grab the newspaper off the lawn. Jeff followed and they stopped at the porch, Michelle trying to find her keys in her back pack.

She found them and opened the door, revealing a neat and comfortable house. She put her keys into her bag and beckoned Jeff in. He walked in, almost afraid of making the clean carpet dirty. Michelle, he had noticed, had taken off her shoes and put them on the side of the entering hallway. He did the same and followed Michelle into the kitchen.

"Can I get you something to eat?" she asked, opening the fridge.

"What'd you have?" Jeff asked, pulling up a chair and drumming his fingers against the table.

"Um… Depends. We have OJ, lemonade, water and milk to drink. To eat we have um.. cereal, cookies, a lotta things." She said, her head still in the fridge. She pulled out a bottle of mango lemonade and coke. She got a glass and mixed them.

"What're you doing?" asked Jeff in a curious tone.

Michelle gave him a what-does-it-look-like-I'm-doing stare and said, "Mixing lemonade and coke. Want some?"

He nodded and she got out another glass and made another drink of it then stuck the coke and lemonade in the fridge. She sat at the kitchen table across from Jeff and said, sipping her drink, "Do you know the story?"

Jeff took a sip of the drink and surprisingly, it tasted pretty good. Then he looked up and said, "Oh, um, not really."

Michelle sighed and explained, taking sips of her drink, "Well, it's pretty much a really cliché story. There's this girl, Anna, and she's rather plain but really outspoken. All the nerd people like like her and also the Mr. Popular (Michelle did air quotes when she said this) So, it takes place in his POV and he doesn't know if he should tell her. He had dated a bunch of other girls but none of them were like Anna. He would get all nervous when he was around her and so he got his friend to start a rumor about him like her. And then she confronted him and asked him whether he liked her or not. And he said that he liked her. And so she said that she liked him too. So they became GF and BF but then everyone tried to break them apart. So the antagonist yet also one of the main characters, a cheerleader named Brooke, she was really pretty by the way, she succeeded in breaking them apart and Anna turns away from James and then Brooke gets together with James. End of story."

"That's it?" asked Jeff. "Why didn't Anna go with James? Why didn't Brooke's social status go ca put? It just ends? There's no resolution."

Michelle sighed and explained as if she was talking to an idiot child, "The whole point of the story is to show that the plain Jane never gets with Mr. Popular. The whole point of the story is that if you try to put plain Jane and Mr. Popular together in never works."

Jeff looked at Michelle, one eyebrow raised, "Who wrote this?"

"Jenna wrote the script, I wrote the story and came up with the characters and storyline." Said Michelle, putting her glass in the sink.

"You're a cynic, you know, right?" he said, putting his glass in the sink too.

"So I've been told," said Michelle, walking up the stairs. "C'mon, we can practice in my room where the neighbors won't cause some scandal about me being in the same house as a male my age and not in my family."