Candy looked desperately to her friend, pleading with her to have mercy. "Umm…." She stammered, giving herself a few extra seconds. Rebeka sadly nodded, letting her friend know that she was on her own for this one. She could feel their eyes burning through her as she desperately racked her brain for an answer. This had to be the oldest form of torture, dating back centuries. It must have been devised by the cruelest criminal mastermind, by the most evil of people. People like the professor standing before her.
"Well Miss LaVoy? Do you have an answer?" The physics teacher rapped the pencil he had in his hand against the desk.
"Well…" Candy looked to Rebeka again, hoping the girl would have changed her mind by now and be willing to help. Rebeka simply raised her eyebrows in defeat. She wasn't going to help Candy out of this one. She quickly glanced in Darien's direction. He wasn't as smart as Beka, but he could be counted on for an answer every now and then. Please Dari… Candy was getting desperate. She couldn't stall the teacher much longer.
Darien sighed and mouthed 'nine'. Candy smiled and turned back to the professor. "The answer to problem three is nine."
The physics teacher raised a brow. "And I suppose you have Mr. Solski to thank for that one." Darien's head hit his desk. "Detention for both of you. No cheating." Candy slumped back into her chair, fuming. "And next time do you own homework Miss LaVoy."
"You couldn't have been more obvious!" Candy smacked Darien in the arm as they left the physics room.
"You couldn't have done your homework! It was only ten questions for God's sake!" Darien fumed. "Now I'm stuck in detention too. Nice move."
"Oh be quiet both of you." Rebeka added as she walked between them. "Nine wasn't even the correct answer. The answer was to be done to two significant digits, making the answer 9.3"
"Brainiac." Candy muttered as she flung open her locker with a vengeance.
"Hey!" Sara, Michelle and Sammy approached, although it was Sammy who spoke. "Go easy on the school lockers Candy, people do have to use them after you."
"Stow it Sam." Candy grabbed her math textbook and flopped onto the ground.
"Planning on staying there for the rest of the break?" Rebeka smiled as she grabbed her play book. She had English.
"Corse." Michelle grabbed her own math text and flopped beside her friend. "We're moping over math."
"Speaking of which," Sara asked as she flipped through her binder. "Did anybody get number five?"
"Sixteen." Mark, Chris and Jeremy sat down in front of the three girls and opened their own textbooks. "We just came from Mr. Gander's. He went over the answers with us."
"Show me." Sara pulled the teen's binder onto her own lap and compared his work to her's.
"So how was physics today?" Jeremy smiled as he asked the question, knowing full well that Candy had spent last night with him.
"Wonderful. So wonderful I decided to cancel our date after school to stay late and study physics with Sammy." Candy smirked.
"I'm being replaced am I?" Jeremy leaned over and kissed her.
"Get a room!" Kyosei leaned against the lockers and grinned. The girl didn't go to T. J. Pevler High School, like her nine friends did. She was a musical prodigy and therefore went to a private music school. She had second period spare though and often walked over to Pevler High until her afternoon classes started.
"How'd your test go?" Mark asked, attempting to get his book back from Sara. "Did you do as badly as you thought?"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Kyosei laughed, pulling the wrinkles out of her uniform's skirt. "I did okay I guess."
"I'm sure you knocked their socks off." Mark stretched. "I'm heading down to the math room to see if I can get Mrs. Weese to go easy on us today. I just don't get this math stuff."
"It's not that hard," Rebeka knew it was a pointless argument against the math-illiterate teen, but she felt like she had to try.
<"Easy for you to say." Sara finally worked out the problem and returned the book to Mark. "Let's go."
"We'll get together for lunch? We could go uptown, I have the van." Sammy smiled. His van did not seat ten people legally, but that had never posed a problem for the group of friends before.
"Sure." Kyosei nodded, shoving her backpack into Darien's locker.
"Yeah." Michelle muttered as she collected her books. Candy, Sara, Michelle, Chris, Mark and Jeremy all headed off towards the math room.
"I've got a study period since the french teacher's not here." Darien spoke to Kyosei. "Let's hit the caf and see if we can't find something more interesting to do than languages."
"Sure." Kyosei grinned and let her boyfriend put his arm around her. "We should be able to find something." The two walked off, joined at the hip.
Sammy smiled and did a short bow as the bell rang. "Shall I escort you to our English class milady?"
Rebeka grinned. "Forgot your copy of Shakespeare again, didn't you?"
"You read my mind." The two teens followed the swarm of people towards English.
"Maybe you should look at your french." Kyosei smiled. She was sitting on Darien's lap and, needless to say, they hadn't looked at anything but each other. "If Madame whats-her-name is back tomorrow and you didn't finish it she might get mad."
"Let her." Darien kissed her again then quickly slid out from under her and looked into his book. "So how do you conjugate finir again?"
Kyosei was startled, but only for an instant. "Well, it's not like most 'ir' verbs" She said as the teacher walked by. "Is it?" She whispered.
Darien smiled. "Guess I should get a french tutor who knows french."
"Shut up." The two sat silently as the teacher grabbed a muffin and left.
Darien sighed. "We should put a bell on that door so no more teachers can sneak in."
"Shouldn't they be in class?"
"Teachers? Nah." Darien pushed a strand of Kyosei's hair out of her eyes. "Now where were we?"
Kyosei grinned and leaned in until her nose touched his. "Finir."
"What's an alliteration?" Sammy leaned over Rebeka's desk, trying to discover the answer by peering at her notes. Unfortunately for him, Beka had horrible handwriting and he could only make out every other word. "Is that English?"
"Mr. Grant, Miss McCready, quiet!" The English professor returned to her reading.
"Yes it is English." Beka whispered. "And an alliteration is when a sentence has many of the same sounds in it."
"Like?" Sammy was still lost.
"Seven silly snakes squirmed through soft snow." Rebeka returned to her writing.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Sammy was really confused now.
Beka sighed. "Nothing. It was an example of an alliteration."
"Oh."
"Miss McCready, Mr. Grant, if you do not be quiet this instant I shall silence you forever!" The teacher went red in the face.
Sammy grinned. "She has an inbred inclination towards insulting yet interesting intimidations."
"Pray tell Mr. Grant. What are you doing that is just so important you ignore my requests?" The teacher put a hand to her temple as if she had a headache.
"Alliterating."
"I had enough problems with the real numbers," Michelle sighed. "Now we have imaginary ones?"
"I thought they were all imaginary." Mark grinned. "I thought I dreamt them all."
Candy dared to step into his trap. "Why?"
Jeremy finished the joke. "Because every time he's in math class it feels like a nightmare."
"Spoil the punch line." Mark pouted.
"There wasn't much to spoil." Jeremy continued to look over the numbers in front of him. "This can't be right."
"Why not?" Sara asked. "I got 2,456,329 too."
"Because the next question says 'why is your answer to the previous question so small?'" Jeremy sighed.
Candy grinned. "Well, compared to the infinite number of numbers out there two million is small."
"Think they'd accept that?" Sara was hopeful.
"Doubtful." Chris punched a few numbers into his calculator and continued on with his calculations.
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Candy couldn't control the fact that she was really loud. "Chris has the right answers! For all the questions!"
Most of the math class looked in their direction, but luckily the teacher wasn’t in the room so Candy didn't get in trouble for her outburst.
"She's right." Michelle looked over at Chirs' book. "How'd you do that?"
Chris smiled to himself. "I followed the example in the book."
"I've spent the last ten minutes following that example and I'm no where near!" Candy snapped. "Why didn't you tell us you knew how to do the questions?"
Chris blushed slightly. "No one asked."
"My best friend, a genius." Mark grinned. "And nobody bothered to ask him."
"Explain it to us please?" Sara begged.
"It's not hard." Chris started. "You just…" The teacher returned to find Chris teaching his class.
"Pizza!" Sammy demanded. "My van and I say Pizza Hut."
"Some of us have afternoon classes." Kyosei countered. "And we don't want to be late. Pizza Hut takes forever to process your order."
"Than Godfather's." Candy offered. "I could go for some pizza as well."
"Drop Michelle, Rebeka and I off at the Chinese place next door than." Sara said as she followed the others into the overcrowded van. "We have third period spare and I'd prefer real food."
"Pizza is real food." Sammy interjected. "It's the mana of life! The food of the gods! Ambrosia!"
"I thought you slept through Greek Mythology." Jeremy laughed.
"No one asked you." Sammy turned on the beaten up old van and they zoomed off down the street.
"I'll stay with the girls." Chris offered. "Could you pick me up on your way back to school?"
"No prob." Sammy floored it. "What's the vote from you Dari?"
"Pizza's fine." He wasn't normally quiet, but he was having problems breathing with both Kyosei and Michelle on him.
The van screeched to a halt on main street, letting the ten teens pile out. The man working at Godfather's knew Candy, Kyosei, Sammy, Darien, Jeremy and Mark all by first name and favourite toppings. Within minutes they were crowded around a table discussing the upcoming holiday, Halloween.
"I heard that there was going to be a big bash down by the river." Sammy offered. "It might not be the safest place to be on All Hallow's Eve, but it will be the funest."
"You're not going to drag Beka, Michelle and Sara down to the river to scare them." Kyosei added quickly, knowing what was probably on Sammy's mind.
"Yeah." Mark added. "If we do go though, we should all stick together. People get crazy on Halloween night."
"M-mm." Candy nodded, trying to talk with pizza in her mouth. "And we're all going to need rad costumes."
"Aren't we too old to dress up?" Jeremy asked.
"Not if we're going down to the river." Sammy smiled. "And we are going."
Looks of doubt circulated the table.
"C'mon guys!" Sammy pleaded. "It'll be lots of fun."
"Yeah, cause getting wasted beyond all belief is a larf." Mark sarcastically rolled his eyes.
"I believe the person you should be talking to about that is Candy." Kyosei grinned. "You should have seen her at the Frosh Dance."
"I was not that drunk!" Candy protested. "Besides, with you guys around I can't get that drunk. You don't let me."
"Will Michelle, Chris, Beka and Sara even want to go?" Jeremy reminded them of the less adventurous members of their group.
"Let's ask them." Mark stood up and grabbed Sammy by the collar. "We'll just pop over for a chat…and a promise from a certain troublemaker," At that word he shook Sammy, "That they aren't there just to be terrified."
Sammy moped as he was dragged off. "But that's half the fun!"
"Isn't that where that girl was murdered last Halloween?" Leave it to Beka to remember that.
"No." Sammy said with as much conviction as he could muster. "That was on the other side of the river."
"Can't we just throw our own party?" Sara asked. "It could be a lot of fun and no murderer."
"Unless one of us was the murderer." Sammy gave an evil smirk.
"Sam!" Mark swatted him. "He doesn't mean it."
"Let's go." The normally cautious Michelle surprised everyone. "I have a good feeling about it."
"Really?" Sara asked. None of them really believed in magic or anything like that, but they all knew to trust Michelle's hunches. She'd never been wrong.
"Yeah. There probably won't be any problems, I mean the police are probably all over there because of what happened last year."
"The ever wise Michelle has a point." Sammy was glad at least one of the girls was on his side.
Chris made his first comment on the event. "Is it a costume party?"
"Corse." Sammy grinned. "Wouldn't be any fun without costumes."
"No tricks." Rebeka glared at her friend. "I mean it Sammy. No tricks."
"No tricks." Sammy raised his hands in defeat. "I promise."
"I don't know," Sara obviously still had her doubts.
"C'mon Sara." Oddly, it was Mark who pleaded with her. "We're seventeen, we're old enough to go down to the river unsupervised. We're mature."
Beka laughed. "That's debatable, but I think we should go."
"That settles it than." Candy said with a grin as she and the others approached the booth where Sara, Michelle, Rebeka, Chris, Sammy and Mark sat. "Two nights from now we party."
"I have an idea." Jeremy smiled. "No telling what you're going to go as. You have all of tonight and Saturday to get your costumes ready. The party's Saturday night at 10:00pm. Deal?"
The other nine smiled. "Deal."
So who do you want to follow?
Candy
Kyosei
Sara
Michelle
Rebeka
Darien
Sammy
Jeremy
Chris
Mark
Background from All Hallow's Eve Backgrounds.