Title: Some Things Fantastic
Rating: PG-13/R (for language, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc...)
Setting: Fall semester, senior year in high school
Summary: Lex and Jeff return from summer break to make the depressing discovery that both Kate and Fred have found new love interests. Anna and Daniel try to avoid each other despite their obvious attraction, while Kate struggles to be the best girlfriend in the world after she's started dating Chris over the summer.
Feedback: We love reviews, so please do so if you feel the need!
Disclaimer: Lex, Jeff, Anna, Matt, Sammie, Chris, and Anthony all belong to NYgoldfish54. Fred, Kate, and Daniel belong to Cimmy.
Story Notes: The prequel to this story was Cimmy's 2007 NaNoWriMo project, which I nagged her to write but didn't actually help with. It's called Seven Days a Week and you can find it over on Cimmy's account. You don't have to read that story to understand this one, but you should because 1) it's a good story and 2) it's good for background. Cimmy and I have been co-writing together since 2003, and she asked me to work with her on this sequel, though this is our first collaborative effort in quite some time. We love reviews, so please, feel free to drop us a line!

PROLOGUE

The first day of school is always extra eventful and special. This year will be no exception, after the dramatic events that occurred all summer. Okay, fine, it was one week over the summer, but that makes them no less dramatic. Things were left a bit… messy since we all saw each other last.

My best friend Fred had promised Lex, the girl he was in love with, that he would accompany her to this festival that she and her band was playing at. Daniel and I were also forced to come with him, but it turned out to be quite fun in the end. Well, maybe not for everyone.

Daniel had been trying to win Anna over ever since he met her. Now, Daniel's love isn't exactly manifested in the same way as Fred's love is. Daniel acts like a jerk and thinks that will somehow solve all his problems. Until Anna came along, I guess it always worked. Unfortunately, Danny doesn't know how to handle it when a girl shows some genuine interest in him, so he was terribly mean to her several times, hurting her feelings, turning her down and even sleeping with two other girls, even though he was really interested in Anna.

Sammie met some kind of musician during the festival but it was just a summer fling. Matt, however, took offense to this and started messing around with me to retaliate. Okay, I can't say that I minded, as he's quite the hunk, but still. Anyway, Sammie and Matt argued back and forth about this all week. For some reason, they didn't work this out properly, as in getting together in the end. Instead, Matt invited me to come staying with him for the summer. I accepted, but only because I thought he genuinely liked me. At first I thought Jeff would ask me out or something, because he was acting weirdly around me all week, but when he didn't I decided I couldn't wait around for him all summer long.

Fred finally told Lex that he liked her (fine, I did most of the work, but she found out in the end, isn't that the important part?) but after keeping him on the hold for months, it turned out that Lex didn't share his feelings and that she had just pretended not to know so they could still be friends.

Who did I forget? Oh, right, Chris and Anthony. They didn't do much at that point; you'll have to wait a minute.

So, where was I? This summer was such a blur. I was home in Los Angeles for a week until I went back to New York to visit Matt. Jeff and Lex had left for some family vacation in Canada, so at least I didn't have to act normal around Lex. I had been talking on the phone with Fred, but he didn't say much and it was obvious he was still heartbroken as hell. Who can blame the guy, huh?

But since Lex was with Jeff's family, I didn't get to meet Jeff either. He's nice to me, and I could have used some niceness while I was staying there, because Matt was a good host for about two hours until he forgot all about me. Sammie had left her stoner musician back in where-ever-the-hell-we-were so guess who got Matt's undivided attention from there on? It wasn't me, for sure!

One thing led to another and had the result in Chris and I hooking up. I mean, Matt obviously didn't care and Jeff wasn't around, so it kind of just happened. So I'm dating Chris now. I'm actually having a lot of fun with him. He's not fickle like Matt. Okay, he's no Jeff, but who says Jeff is such a catch, really?

Back to other people's boring stories: Sammie was feeling bad for Fred ('cause he was spending all summer shacked up with his brother and Danny and that just isn't fair to anyone as nice as Fred) so she invited him up to New York. This meant some company for me as well. Daniel didn't tag along (he usually does) because he was probably scared to see Anna again after the fiasco at the festival. Seriously.

So, we tried to convince Fred to move on and maybe try to find some other girl instead of Lex. He wasn't too happy about this at all at first, but then he met a girl at the same party Chris and I hooked up at. She goes to the same school as we do, and apparently Chris and the others knew her from before, but I can't remember what the deal was. The rest is, as they say, history. Not sure who says it, but that's what I'm told they say.

Here's where the irony comes in: Lex and Jeff came back from their vacation a few days ago, when we had already returned to school. Apparently, Lex is now completely aware of what a mistake she made at the beginning of the summer and she wants nothing more than to get together with Fred. And Fred is already head over heels in love with this other chick. I don't know whether you should laugh or cry at these kinds of complications.

I suspect that there's going to be lots of drama as soon as we all meet in the hallways of the school. Before this summer, we used to do all kinds of things together, and now everyone's avoiding each other and being angry at someone else and whatnot. Why does life have to be so complicated all the time?

And most important: who the heck will I be eating lunch with all year long?!