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"I WILL RIP YOUR BALLS OUT AND FEED THEM TO CROWS IF YOU DON'T GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT," I yelled as I chased Candy around the house.

Boisterous laughter echoed in the halls and I tried to increase my speed.

'Tried' being the key word here. No matter how much I tried to run, the sad fact was that I wasn't in any position to outrun a soccer player.

So I did the best possible thing to catch him. I shut my mouth and sat down behind the staircase, effectively shielding myself from majority of the house.

I shook my head. And to think being in a relationship would change everything.

Honesty, I hadn't even given it a thought. Being in love, was something I'd only read about so, naturally I ignored whatever I was feeling until yesterday morning.

After Candy had told me about his date, I'd not been able to catch a good night's sleep. I kept thinking about the girl he would take out, where he would take her, if the date would be romantic or not.

My mind kept clogging these thoughts which had me thoroughly annoyed and irritated by the next morning.

So much so that when Sam came, I did nothing but rant about it. Thinking about seeing Candy with any other girl had my claws ready for a scratch match.

Apparently when I'd exceeded my rant time of one and a half hour, annoying Sam to her limit, she nearly slapped me. It was after we had practised for the competition.

She made me sit on the bed and slapped some common sense into me. I'd been so absorbed by the world of fiction that I had forgotten that love could exist in real life too.

But I still had one confusion.

If I loved Candy in that way, how come I never felt jealous when he was with Shelley?

"That's because you subconsciously knew that that relationship was never going to last at all," was Sam's answer.

After she left me to go check on Nate, then my thinking powers got to work.

I didn't want to go talk to mom about it because let's face it, if what Sam was saying was true, it would be plain embarrassing.

After thinking for a whole lot of time, I called the next best person I could've thought of. Nate.

Honestly, he was the one who made me realise the true facts. And that was done purely by torturing me

How, you might ask?

He made me imagine all sorts of scenarios where there were other nice girls who would win Candy's heart and then he'd spend his time with his girlfriend instead of me and then I'd have to go through their cuddling sessions and open PDA and then after a few years he'd get married and then nothing would be the same at all.

This whole imagination irked me a lot. My jaw clenched as I imagined him cuddling with anyone else on our movie nights.

So after pure torturous scenarios, it dawned upon me that I was actually in love with my best friend.

And yesterday what happened with Nick, it was beyond enraging.

I'd seen Candy with Lisa when he was trying to duck behind the popcorn stand.

That is why I tried to pretend to have fun with Nick even though my entire attention was on how Lisa had her hands wrapped around Candy's arm.

I just wanted a reaction to see if the feelings were mutual. And they were.

Even though I had to find it from someone else's mouth.

It's a good thing that Lisa got her boy too. He'd actually thought that she was the one who had kissed Aaron and came barging in.

It was pretty comical.

Red crept up my mind as I remembered what I'd done in adrenaline rush.

Oh God!

But even I can't deny that it was for the better.

"Why are you blushing, sitting in a corner?" Candy looked down at me before sitting down beside me.

"N-Nothing," I replied, averting my eyes.

"Oh I get it. You were thinking about how gorgeous your real boyfriend is, weren't you?" He smirked.

I rolled my eyes at that before composing my face into a teasing expression.

"No, I was just thinking of how long it would've taken for you to confess your feelings," I smirked, making him go red.

"Hey give me a break. Do you know how hard was it for me to consider telling you? I didn't know that you felt the same way at all and I just didn't want to lose you completely."

Aww.

"Don't worry. You got me now," I smiled at him.

He returned the smile and his smile sent butterflies exploding in my stomach.

He leaned forward and pecked me on my lips. "Yeah, I got you." He whispered against my lips, making me blush.

"Okay, now since that's established, give me back my journal," I said, referring to the pink book in his hand.

It had my most embarrassing wishes and thoughts that I had during the starting of my puberty. And they were not supposed to be read by anyone.

Not even Candy.

"Nope," he refused and got up.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I'm not going to chase you again."

He smirked, fishing out his phone. "It's okay. You don't have to. I'll just call my friends and read it out to them. They'll have a good laugh," he threatened and I slowly got up.

Even though I liked his friends, minus Nick, I wasn't going to let him ruin my reputation in front of them.

"You wouldn't," I said, slowly.

He pressed the call button in reply. "Hey Jon. Listen to this, okay and put it on speaker so that others can too," he started and I leapt on him, snatching his phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Allie, right? Whats up?"

"Yeah. Nothing much just hanging out with Aaron," I replied and dodged Candy as he tried to take his phone back.

"So what did Aaron want to tell us?"

"Uh-he wanted to tell you guys that...um, that he has a bad case of diarrhoea and that...he's basically smelling so um, you all shouldn't come near him for the next cou-," I spoke but before I could complete my sentence, the phone was snatched from my hands.

"She's lying. It's not li- stop laughing!" He continued to try to explain that I had lied.

I burst out laughing at his frustrated face. He was nearly pulling his hair out as he turned to glare at me.

"I'm going to get back at you," Candy warned and I just laughed it off.

"Sure. But right now, I have a competition to prepare for," I said and sauntered to my room to get ready.

*****

"You ready?" Candy asked as I took deep breaths to calm my nerves down.

"Yeah. Almost. Where the hell is Sam?" I asked, looking around for the auburn-haired girl.

It was almost time for my performance and she was no where to be seen. I had practised a couple of times for the performance, setting the beats for the songs and all. I just hope it went well.

I wore a white tank top with black skinny jeans and dark brown leather boots. I had on a short blue blazer with a silver line of sequins right where the the blazer opened.

"Don't you have your competition too?" I asked him.

"Yeah but I still have fifteen minutes to go," he replied.

"Candy, I really think that you should go. I'll be fine here," I said, trying to push him towards the exit but he didn't budge.

Candy was about to answer when a very out of breath Sam came running to where I was.

By the looks of her state, one would say that she ran a marathon.

"Sorry I'm late. Couldn't find my lucky headphones," she said and I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah it's okay. So found them now?" I asked while she regained her breath.

A small frown etched it's way onto her face. "No."

"Hey don't worry, we'll rock it," I said smiling.

She smiled back and I returned my gaze to the stage where Shelley was performing with one of the dance participants.

She was currently singing 'Party in the USA' by Miley Cyrus and dancing along with it.

It was actually good.

She had her overly sparkly mic with her which she had specially customised from abroad. Or so she claimed.

Once she finished, she gave a good bow and exited the stage.

That's when my nerves came back. It was my turn now.

"Hey, you be awesome. I know it," Candy said pulling me into a hug.

I cherished the warmth that his body was emitting. It felt really nice to be in his arms. My nerves calmed down and I relaxed in his arms.

He pecked my nose lightly before letting me go.

"Go rock it like I know you will," he said smiling.

"Go win for me too," I said before giving him a nice jerk towards the exit. "Now GO!"

He chuckled before obeying.

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the mic in my hand and started my way towards the stage but before I could go, a hard shove had me stumbling towards the wall.

The mic dropped from my hand and fell down, breaking the lower portion of it.

"Shit," I cursed as I looked towards the culprit.

Shelley.

"Oh my god Allie, now what we you going to do? I heard they don't have any more mics" She faked concern.

I gritted my teeth before picking the mic up. I tried switching it on but the mic wasn't working.

Great.

I rolled my eyes at her. "Seriously Shelley? You couldn't handle getting beaten by me so you did the next best thing to prevent me from going on the stage. You broke my mic," I taunted her to which she scowled.

"JARED!" she barked at her personal slave. "Fix the little tramp's mic."

I rolled my eyes and saw Jared quickly fix it. In about three minutes, I was ready to go.

"Good luck, bitch. You really need it."

I rolled my eyes and started my way towards the stage. Taking a deep breath, I brought the mic to my lips.

I signalled Sam to give me the initial beats and she nodded, flashing me a grin.

Here we go.

"What the heart wants,

What the heart wants,

What the heart wants," I began singing, getting lost to the beat of the music.

You got me sippin' on something

I can't compare to nothing

I've ever known, I'm hoping

That after this fever I'll survive

I know I'm acting a bit crazy

Strung out, a little bit hazy

Hand over heart, I'm praying

That I'm gonna make it out alive

The bed's getting cold and you're not here

The future that we hold is so unclear

But I'm not alive until you call

And I'll bet the odds against it all

Save your advice 'cause I won't hear

You might be right but I don't care

There's a million reasons why I should give you up

But the heart wants what it wants," I sang as if I was the only one here.

I forgot that I was on a stage, performing in front of an audience. I gently swayed to the music and shut my eyes in peace.

That is, until it stopped.

My eyes flew open and I snapped my head towards Sam who was pushed aside by none other than Shelley.

I looked at her in confusion but she sent me a smirk before grabbing her sparkly mic and uttering the words that left me shocked to no end.

"Sorry guys but Alyssa here has been detected using auto tune."

That is when commotion erupted.

And that's how I know that Shelley knows how to give a shock like a thunderbolt

*****