Dedicated to writerbug44 because I read Little Miss Perfect in one sitting and it was awesomesauce.

Chapter 5

"Do you guys think I'm boring?"

It was Thursday night and I was staying over at Jenny and Allie's so we could finish our AP Math problem set together. Right now, we were taking a break.

Jenny and Allie looked at each other. "Where's this coming from?" Allie finally asked.

"I've just been thinking."

Both of them didn't say anything. I sighed.

"I mean, I don't do all the regular teenage stuff – the partying, the dating. When I'm not studying or hanging out with you two, all I do is read," I paused. "Doesn't that seem kind of ... boring ... to you?"

Jenny smiled. "I still don't see where you think that. You're one of the least boring people I know. I mean, you're smart, funny, really great to talk to -"

"Yeah, plus parties are overrated anyway," Allie continued.

It was easy for Allie to say that; she'd been to a few parties. And while Jenny was never a fan of parties, she had Louis so she had the whole dating thing going for her.

"Yeah, but -" I began but Jenny shook her head at me.

"Well, we still have one year of high school left. It isn't too late to make up for lost time," Jenny said.

"The dance tomorrow is a good start," Allie offered.

I would have talked about it for longer. I would even have told them about what Julian said and confessed about how ridiculous I felt for even giving it this much thought.

But I had a pile of homework to go through and no matter what evil little thought Julian Pitt planted in my mind, I could not ignore my schoolwork for the life of me.

When we stepped into school on Friday, I tried to keep my ears open for gossip. I figured that since Allie partied and Jenny dated, I could gossip – or try to, at least.

I gave up after ten minutes.

Most of what I picked up was about clothes, dating, sex ... Though there was an interesting conversation between a couple of football players about who had the best ass in the school.

They weren't considering me – duh – but they had an actual criteria for it and that was what interested me. It appealed to my not-so-inner nerd.

The general flavor of high school gossip seemed boring to me. I would have to find something else to make me more like a regular teenager, then.

The ones who weren't talking about clothes, dating and sex talked about the Opening Dance that was happening later tonight.

The guys briefly talked about who they were taking and the girls took too much time describing what they were going to wear. The theme, depressingly, was 'So Long, Summer' and a couple of girls were complaining that they couldn't wear bikinis.

Speaking of, Becca hadn't even shown me my dress yet but I already kind of knew what it would look like.

Becca has always lovingly categorized the dresses I wear to school dances as 'Granny Chic'. I don't show up looking like an actual grandma but the dresses I pick out always hit my knee, let me breathe and did not sparkle.

They just didn't look like something any regular teenager would wear.  They were more like something you wore to a business meeting or an event or – as Becca once said – to a funeral.

It made sense that Becca would say that. Hands down, she'd been a party girl in college – she and Adam met when he had to haul her ass up to her fifth-floor dormitory room in a building without an elevator.  She would probably dress me in something like a short, tight-fitting disco ball.

I walked into my last class of the day distracted by a painful mental image of me sparkling brighter than a chest of jewels. The number of people crammed into the room threw the image out of my head.

The Creative Writing elective I had on Thursdays and Fridays was supposed to have only thirty students. Right now, the room had about fifty kids in it and our teacher, Ms. Lyle, was standing up front with Mr. Parker.

Doesn't he teach a Photography elective?

We were, thankfully, in one of the larger classrooms and there were still a few empty desks in the back. Just as I took my seat in one of them, Ms. Lyle began talking.

"Settle down, everyone," Ms. Lyle half-shouted over the chatter of the room.

"You might all be wondering why two classes are sardined into one classroom right now. Well, Creative Writing and Photography are two art forms used to tell stories. Mr. Parker and I thought it would be a good idea to have these two classes come up with a collaborative project."

"It doesn't hurt that there are exactly thirty students in each class," Mr. Parker joked and the class laughed lightly with him.

"We're going to ask one student from each class to pair up with one from the other and after that, we'll tell you more about the project."

I couldn't help but frown. I didn't really know anyone in my Creative Writing class, much less the people in Photography. Most people took these electives when they were juniors and the few seniors in here had already paired off with each other.

I turned around when I heard the door open.

I was hoping for it to be a senior I had talked to at least once in my life – one of Nate's buddies from the football team or someone from my other classes or a kid from the Academics club – anyone but the one actual person who walked through the door: Julian Pitt. What made it worse was, Julian had spotted me.

I panicked and tapped the kid in front of me. He was a junior on the football team and I'd seen him hanging out with Nate a couple of times. "Excuse me," I began but Julian was already talking to me.

"So, Preston, this is the surprise project Parker's been talking about? He and Lyle mashed us all together into one super class?"

I ignored him, and smiled at the junior who'd just turned around. "You're from the Photography class right? You don't have a partner yet, do you?"

He smiled warmly. "No, do you want to -"

"Hold up, Preston. You're not really going to pair up with a junior are you? You don't even know the kid," Julian's eyebrows were furrowed.

"Actually, we do know each other," the junior said. "She might not know my name but I know who she is."

"Ah, your brainy reputation precedes you, Preston," Julian teased as he took his seat right next to me.

"Well, she's smart, yeah ... But that's not why I know her. She's friends with the Captain – with Nate. My name's Emmett," he said the last part to me. "And, sure, I'd love to work with you."

I was about to say thank you when Mr. Parker spoke up. "I was actually thinking about pairing up Sara with Julian, Emmett."

I looked at him like he was bat shit crazy.

"Ms. Lyle showed me your first drafts from last week. I thought you and Julian could work well, based on the first few photographs he's taken. Plus, you're both seniors so wouldn't it be more comfortable working with each other?"

Comfortable, my ass.

Julian sat next to me with a stupid smug smile on his face.

"But -"

"Mr. Parker made a strong case, Sara. I wouldn't have agreed if I didn't think your writing style and the pictures Julian takes wouldn't be a good match. I think you'd even top the class," she smiled warmly at me.

I narrowed her eyes.

If I wasn't mistaken, she was tempting me with the idea of a good grade. I would have said no, that I can get a good grade on my own, thank you very much. But writing is subjective and if Ms. Lyle thought Julian could help rather than hinder me, I'd take the deal.

"Maybe some other time, then," Emmett smiled when he saw I was convinced.

"This project is all about telling a story. Each class will meet on their own once a week so you can still continue the required individual work but every Friday, the classes will join together and you'll work with your partners. At the end of every semester, we'll have a photo-literary exhibit up in the Main Hall so the rest of the school can admire your work," Ms. Lyle explained.

Mr. Parker continued to go into the details but my focus wasn't completely with him. Julian had begun talking to me and I couldn't risk ignoring him.

"This is stupid, don't you think?"

I actually agreed with him on some level. But it was my philosophy to never let Julian think he was right. I smiled warmly at him. "Really? I think it's a brilliant idea."

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you actually want to be writing stories about my pictures."

"Maybe it's you who doesn't want to take photographs for my stories," I pointed out.

"No way, in hell, Preston. For all I know, you might be crap at writing," he complained.

"Or you might be crap at taking photographs," I countered. "Don't worry, Julian, I'll try to keep my boring personality in check while I write."

The look on his face told me he didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Of course he wouldn't remember. I was the only one who was on pins and needles about it.

Why, you might ask, am I so bothered by some small thing Julian Pitt said?

Well, while Julian Pitt didn't always have his motorcycle and get into fights every other day, he'd always been bad to me.

He was mean to me, actually; but you get the point.

Even when he was seven, he knew how to push my buttons and he liked it. The name calling and pinching were his least offensive crimes. He regularly ate my cookies during lunch, told me I couldn't draw if my life depended on it and once painted a good chunk of my hair yellow because he thought brown was a boring hair color. Those are the only ones I can remember. Trust me, there was more.

Ginny told me it was only because he had a little crush on me and I made the mistake of pointing it out to Julian. He laughed in my face and said, for the whole playground to hear.

"Why would anyone like you? You're a snob and you're not even pretty. The only people who like you are the teachers and that's just 'cause you suck up to them."

Before Julian could say anything else, Nate had jumped in front of me and wrestled him to the ground.

All three of us were called to the principal's office.  I wash shaking like a leaf and Julian and Nate  were nursing bruises and black eyes. When the principal found out that the whole thing came down to me versus Julian, we were suddenly kept far, far away from each other.

Until Wednesday's detention, my interaction with Julian Pitt had been kept to a bare minimum. Now, it seemed like I was forced to have to work with him once a week.

Oh, what fresh, lovely hell this is.

When the class and school ended, I was one of the last people who stayed behind. Julian had insisted on reading the drafts I'd written last week 'just to see what all the fuss was about'.

"Not bad," he said when he was done.  A decent person would politely hand the papers back to me and not haphazardly toss them back on my desk.  Julian, of course, doesn't belong to that category.

I narrowed my eyes at him but quietly fixed my things.

"Hey, what's taking you so long?" I heard Allie's voice from the door.

Before I could explain, Julian did it for me. "Sara was just showing me something."

At the sound of his voice, Allie and Jenny's eyes became as wide as dinner plates. I would bet good money that they hadn't thought Julian Pitt had anything to do with my lagging behind.

"Uh ... No problem," Jenny intelligently replied as Julian walked out into the hall.

"What was that?" Allie hissed once he was out of ear shot.

I told them about the project that had us paired together and Allie groaned in frustration.

"First you get paired off with Daniel Tarver in AP Chem and now you get paired up with Julian Pitt too? You should bottle your luck and sell it," she whined as we walked down the hall.

I ignored that and told them to hurry up.

"Becca will kill me if I'm not home in fifteen minutes."

Jenny and Allie were getting ready for the dance at my house. Becca had a collection of makeup products and hair styling tools that any professional would drool over.  It was a plus that she wasn't afraid to share.

"You're late!" was the first thing I heard when I unlocked the door.

I was only two minutes late but Becca had been very hormonal lately and she'd been waiting three years for this moment. I wasn't about to say some glib that could make her unnecessarily angry.

Next thing I knew, I was being dragged upstairs to my room where Becca had everything she needed laid out on a small table next to my dresser. She pulled my messenger bag off of me and shoved me into the bathroom. I'm guessing she would have thrown me in if I wasn't three inches taller than her.

"Shower and then shave your legs," she ordered.

She helped Jenny and Allie with their hair and makeup first so that she could focus all of her attention on me afterwards. The twins hung out in my room as Becca worked like a woman possessed, curling my hair then pulling it back up and putting God-knows-what on my face.

Jenny and Allie changed into their dresses when they saw that Becca was almost done.

Allie wore a sleeveless white lace dress, packed on an assortment of shell bangles and rainbow-colored cloth bracelets, and finished it with strappy bronze-colored sandals. Her hair was a tamer version of its usual bouncy, blond curls and her makeup made her look sun-kissed, as if she'd just been hanging out by the beach.

Unlike her twin sister who kept with the Summer-esque theme, Jenny was in a purple lace dress and black wedge heels. She had on a gold bangle and smaller gold bracelets and her strawberry blond hair was straightened and pulled into a fancy, low ponytail. Her makeup was more dramatic – smokey eyes, a faint coral blush and deep red lips.

When Becca was finally satisfied with the way my hair and face looked, she skipped out of my room to grab the dress and heels that I would be using for the night.

"Ta da!" she proudly announced as she stepped back in, a dress in one hand and a pair of nude colored stiletto heels in another.

Jenny let out an 'Ooh!' while Allie actually squealed, both in delight.

I, on the other hand, nearly destroyed all of Becca's hard work when I very nearly ran my fingers through my hair in panic.

The dress, as I'd predicted earlier, was short and tight. What made it worse was that it sparkled and shone in a way that would have put the whole Cullen family, under a spotlight, to shame.

The Smiles' sister's dresses are to the side (Jenny's is the one on the left and Allie's is on the right). Sara's dress and The Opening Dance in the next chapter!

For those who were keeping tabs on my promise of posting this 2 or 3 days after the last one, you can tell that I didn't really do that *hangs head in shame*.

I have a really good excuse though; I kind of got sucked into reading a few things. 'This is what HAPPY looks like' by Jennifer E. Smith was really good and the guy, Graham, is so swoon-worthy! The second was a little gem on WattPad called 'Little Miss Perfect' by writerbug44.  Again, really good.

Don't forget to vote, comment and spread the word.

Cheers!

- Chompy

P.S. I'd love it if you could throw me suggestions for books and Wattpad stories to read. Thank you!