Fic: Cold, Hard, Shiny Plastic [Part 2]
( Part 1 )
News travelled pretty quickly about the break up, and Chad was devastated, insisting that Jensen, Tommy and Mike came back with him to his house, holding Tommy’s and Mike’s hands as he sobbed.
"Did he say why he broke up with you?" Tommy asked, glancing at Jensen.
"He said someone off the baseball team told him." Chad sniffled
"You wanna do something fun?" Mike asked. "You wanna go to Taco Bell?"
"I can’t go to Taco Bell, Mike! I’m on an all carb diet. God, you are so stupid!" Chad pushed his way to his ensuite, Tommy on his heels.
"You’re not stupid, Mike." Jensen said, sitting next to Mike on the bed.
"No, I am actually. I’m failing almost everything." Mike explained.
"You must be good at something." Jensen said.
"I can fit my whole fist in my mouth, you wanna see?" Mike asked, making his hand into a fist and moving it towards his mouth.
"No." Jensen said, grabbing Mike’s hand.
"Well, I’m kinda psychic." Mike explained. "I have a fifth sense." He tapped his temples.
"What do you mean?"
"It’s like I have ESPN or something. I can always tell when it’s going to rain."
"Really? That’s amazing." Jensen said, unbelieving.
"Well, I can tell when it’s raining." Mike said
Jensen was mildly horrified when Jared didn’t immediately ask him out, after all, Chad had moved on, he was with Shane and showing even more public displays of affection than he did with Jared.
Jensen didn’t mind too much, he knew Jared would probably need some time to get over Chad, after all, four months was a long relationship to get over. Jensen shrugged it off, moving with his lunch tray to their table, sitting with Chad on one side of the table.
"Chad, we need to talk." Mike said.
"You’re wearing sweat pants, it’s Tuesday." Tommy explained.
"So?" Chad took a big bite of a French Stick.
"So, it’s against the rules and you can’t sit with us." Mike said.
"Those rules aren’t real." Chad grabbed a handful of Doritos.
"They were real that day I wore a vest!" Mike exclaimed.
"That’s because that vest was ugly." Chad retorted.
"You can’t sit with us!" Tommy shrieked.
Chad stood, grabbing his tray. "The sweat pants are all that fit right now."
Tommy and Mike turned to look away from Chad, avoiding his gaze.
"Whatever bitches, you can walk home." Chad stepped away from the table and into the walkway, bumping into one of the girls in their grade.
"Watch what you’re doing fat ass!" She exclaimed before walking from him, the rest of the cafeteria laughing at Chad.
It was official. Chad’s rein over the school was over.
Tommy and Mike followed Jensen all day, meeting him outside of class and walking him to where his mom was waiting to pick him up.
"What are we doing this weekend?" Tommy asked, as they walked towards the road.
"Yeah, what are we doing?" Mike copied.
"Oh, I’m busy." Jensen said, turning back towards the road.
Tommy and Chad made confused noises.
"I have tickets for this thing." Jensen explained.
"What?" Tommy asked.
"I could cancel?" Jensen said, although it was more of a question.
"Yeah." Mike and Tommy agreed.
"I’ll call later." Jensen said, as he got into his mom’s car.
"I promised my friend I would go to her art show." Jensen said, remembering his promise to Sandy, and feeling a slight pang of guilt.
"It’s only one night." Jensen’s dad said, agreeing. Jensen smiled.
"Fine." His mom said, "but no parties."
"So, I got enough cheese and crackers for eight people." Jensen said, admiring his ass in the new Guess pants he bought. "You think that’s going to be enough?"
"Totally." Tommy said, stood in Jensen’s house’s hallway.
Soon the guests started to arrive to Jensen’s 'small get together', and it was obvious that the news had got around about the party. There were at least fifty people roaming the house, throwing vases and looking through CDs.
"Have you seen Jared?" Jensen asked Mike and Tommy when he found them.
"No." They said apologetically.
Jensen grabbed a shot and resumed his search for Jared, convinced that he must be avoiding him.
Chad groaned, his car pulling up outside Jensen’s house. "How dare he have a party and not invite me! I practically made him!" He exclaimed, slamming his door as he got out.
"I know, hun." Shane agreed, following Chad into the house.
Jensen made his way upstairs, suddenly desperate for the toilet (presumably after so much alcohol). He pushed into his bedroom (the door suddenly really heavy) and ran for the toilet, not noticing the male already in his bedroom.
"Jensen?" The male said, grabbing the attention of Jensen.
Jensen turned suddenly. "I’ve been looking for you everywhere." He said, moving to sit next to Jared on the bed, crossing his legs towards him.
"I had to get out of there, you know?" Jared said, and Jensen wasn’t sure if he was talking about the party or his relationship with Chad. "He was wrong for me, you know? I’m sick of all the liars."
"I would never lie to you." Jensen said, and then laughed. "Well, I did lie to you once, but you’ll totally laugh about it."
"What?" Jared said, smiling.
"I pretended to be bad at math so you would talk to me. I’m not bad at math, you’re kinda bad at math. But anyway, now I’m failing, isn’t that funny?"
"Wait, you’re failing? That’s stupid. You should have just talked to me."
"I couldn’t, you were like Chad’s property."
"His property?" Jared stopped laughing. "I’m not his property."
"Wait, shut up, I didn’t say that."
"Don’t tell me to shut up. God, you are just like a clone of Chad." Jared stood up.
"Don’t go." Jensen moved to stand up, but something inside of him lurched, and he vomited, all over Jared’s shoes.
"What is going on here?" Chad pushed into the room, surveying the scene.
Jared pushed past him, and out of the room, kicking the vomit off his shoes.
It took Jensen a few minutes to catch up with Jared, who was striding down the road towards his house.
"Jared!" Jensen called, running after Jared as well as he could in his pants.
"Did you have an awesome time?" Jensen turned from Jared to look into the road, seeing Sandy hanging out of the window of Steve’s mom’s car. "Did you drink awesome shooters and just soak up each other’s awesomeness?"
"I wanted to tell you!" Jensen said. "But I had to pretend to be plastic."
"Oh, you’re not pretending any more, you’re Plastic, cold, hard, shiny Plastic." Sandy spat back. "Have this." She threw something at Jensen. "It won a prize."
Jensen sighed. He had overthrown Chad's empire, but nothing good had come of it. He had lost Jared, Sandy and Steve were no longer speaking to him, and his grade point average had gone down the toilet. The only thing he had left was a trashed house and Tommy and Mike, who left after saying how great the party was. He threw a couple of empties in a black trash sack.
The next day at school things were unusually quite on the Chad front. Chad hadn't ambushed Jensen demanding an explanation for his actions, and he hadn't been in any of Jensen's lessons.
"Jensen Ackles, report to the Principal's office." Coach Singer announced during their Health class.
Jensen rolled his eyes, stepping out from the desk and smoothing down his pants before making his way out of the room.
"What's going on?" Jensen asked as he joined Mike and Tommy in Principal Kripke's office.
"Take a seat, Mr Ackles." Kripke said, sitting behind his desk, before leaning to pick something up. "Have you seen this before?" he held up the Burn Book.
"No." Jensen lied. "I mean yes, it's Chad's."
"You better get your story straight because I am not messing around." Kripke said, putting the book on his desk.
"Whoever wrote it probably didn't think anyone was ever going to see it?" Mike said.
"You better hope nobody does see this." Principle Kripke looked annoyed. He slammed the book on the table.
Chad's trying to make it look like we wrote it, when really he did." Tom said, with his publicity smile for added effect.
"Why would Mr Murray refer to himself as a 'fugly slut'?" Kripke asked, reading aloud from the book. Mike stifled a giggle. Kripke glared.
"Like Tom said, Chad's trying to pin this on us." Jensen said, desperately trying to clear his name.
"Anything else you'd like to add?" Kripke asked.
"Oh no. My dad says I can't answer anymore questions without a parent or lawyer present." Tom said before placing his hands in his lap.
There was a knock on Kripke's door and his secretary pushed into the room. "Eric, come quickly. They've gone mad. They've all gone mad!" Kripke grabbed a baseball bat and made his way into the hallway. Everyone was fighting, pages from the burn book flying everywhere.
Jensen looked around. He blinked, it wouldn't go away. He was vaguely aware of Kripke saying something, before Tom and Mike pushed him towards the gym.
Jensen stared at Ms Gamble in the middle of the gym. It seemed like each clique had it's own problems.
"Let me just say that some of us shouldn't have to do this workshop because we're just victims in all of this." Chad was stood, his hands on his hips.
"You're probably right." Ms Gamble said. "Raise your hand if you've been personally victimised by Chad Murray." She instructed.
Jensen raised his hand with the rest of the class.
"Sit down Chad." Ms Gamble said before turning to the rest of the class. "I don't know who wrote this, but you've got to stop calling each other names. It just makes it okay for people you don't know to call you names." She continued before handing out note cards. "I want you all to write out an apology before reading it to the rest of the group."
Jensen stood in line as everyone read their apologies. The line got shorter and shorter before Jensen backed out, moving to the back of the line.
"Okay, okay." Jensen looked up, Sandy was on the stage. "So I have a friend who was a new student this year, and we decided it would be a fun little experiment to mess up Chad Murray's life. We turned his best friends against him," Tom and Mike looked at each other, "we gave his theses candy bars to make him gain weight, oh, and my friend Jensen," Jensen looked horrified, "He made out with Chad's boyfriend and convinced him to break up with him." Everyone started to laugh. "I don't know why we did it, but God, I am so sorry." She ended sarcastically before stepping off the stage.
Jensen ran after Chad, trying to catch up with him as he strolled out of the gym. "Chad!" He called, before finally reaching him.
"Don't even speak to me!" Chad yelled. "Do you know what it's like to find out that everybody hates you? Do you even know what they say about you? Hmm? They say you're a less hot version of me. So you can take that fake apology and shove it straight up your hairy-"
Chad never got the chance to finish his sentence as he was hit by a yellow school bus.
Jensen looked back at the people that had followed them outside. Somewhere saying they had seen Chad's head spin all the way around. Others were saying they saw Jensen push Chad. But they were just rumours.
Unfortunately news had got back to Jensen's parents, who promptly grounded him and said he couldn't attend the Spring Fling dance, even if he was in the running for Spring Fling King. Jensen looked at the pictures placed around his room, the mixture of photo's from Africa and those of him with the Plastics. He stepped around the room, taking the photos of him with Tom, Mike and Chad and placing them in a box. Being Plastic hadn't made him any better of a person; in fact it had done the opposite. It had turned him into a bitch, who'd step on anyone to get to the top. Jensen didn't want to be that sort of person, he just wanted to be normal, with friends. He felt a pang of regret, Sandy and Steve had helped him, they were true friends, and he let them down. Jensen knew what he had to do.
Jensen apologised to Chad, taking him flowers and listening to Chad's story of his near death experience. He also apologised to Mike and Tom, for deceiving them and turning them against Chad. Sandy and Steve were harder to get hold of, both of them blocking his calls and pretending to be out whenever Jensen called by their houses.
Ms Gamble had dealt Jensen her own special punishment for his involvement in the Burn Book, making him join the Mathletes to work back extra credit. It wasn't too bad, Jensen reflected, as they piled into the mini van that would take them to the state Mathlete's championship. He had made new friends and was beginning to get his life back on track.
The mini van dropped the Mathletes back at the school when the championship had finished, gold medals around the neck of each member of the club.
"Come on Africa," One of the members called as the walked towards the school to go to the Spring Fling.
"I can't, I'm grounded." Jensen called back, about to grab his cell phone to call his parents.
"You're already out." Ms Gamble argued, and Jensen figured she was right. Plus it was a good opportunity to find Sandy and Steve.
They walked into the dance as Mr Kripke was doing the final call for all nominees for Spring Fling King and Queen. Jensen walked a few steps towards the stage when he saw his parents, looking murderous and calling him over. Jensen turned and made his way towards them before he heard his name being called. He looked towards the stage where Kripke was calling him over, and walked towards him quickly, knowing what he should do.
Kripke placed the crown on Jensen's head before Jensen moved to the microphone. "I know it's not really traditional to say something, but this wont last long. I don't really deserve this." He said, indicating to the crown on his head. "People only voted for me because they think I pushed someone in front of a bus. I didn't. People work so hard to get their hands on this thing." He took the crown from his head. "It's just a piece of plastic, we should just share it." Jensen broke the crown into small pieces. "A piece for Tom Welling, partial Spring Fling King," He tossed a piece to Tom, before tossing one to Chad. "A piece for Chad Murray, who fractured his spine and still looks like a rock star." Jensen smiled. "And a piece for everyone else." The rest of the crown was thrown into the audience before Jensen stepped back and smiled at Sandy and Steve before making his way back to the dance floor.
"Are we friends?" Jensen asked Sandy and Steve as he caught up with them.
"That depends, are you still an ass?" Sandy asked. Jensen shook his head. "Then we're friends." Jensen pulled them into a hug.
"Man candy, ten o clock." Steve said, before pulling Sandy towards the drinks table. Jensen looked around, before his eyes settled on Jared.
"Here's your prize, for being Spring Fling King." Jared said, holding out an envelope. "It's two certificates to the Pancake House." Jared smiled, and Jensen took it as a good sign.
"I'm sorry for everything I put you through." Jensen said.
"Don't worry about it." Jared said, wrapping his arms around Jensen as a slow song was played. "Congratulations on making State."
"Thanks." Jensen said before Jared's lips touched his, pulling him into an unexpected kiss.
In case you're wondering, the Plastics broke up. Chad's physiotherapist taught him to channel his rage into competitive sport, which was great because the jocks weren't afraid of him. Tom found a new clique, and a new queen bee to serve, and Mike uses his special talents to host the morning weather announcement. Jensen went from being home-schooled jungle freak, to most popular person, to most hated person and finally back to normal. Jared graduated and got a scholarship at the local college, so Jensen still gets to see him on weekends. Everything was finally at peace, sure there were still cliques, but the drama associated had vanished.
News travelled pretty quickly about the break up, and Chad was devastated, insisting that Jensen, Tommy and Mike came back with him to his house, holding Tommy’s and Mike’s hands as he sobbed.
"Did he say why he broke up with you?" Tommy asked, glancing at Jensen.
"He said someone off the baseball team told him." Chad sniffled
"You wanna do something fun?" Mike asked. "You wanna go to Taco Bell?"
"I can’t go to Taco Bell, Mike! I’m on an all carb diet. God, you are so stupid!" Chad pushed his way to his ensuite, Tommy on his heels.
"You’re not stupid, Mike." Jensen said, sitting next to Mike on the bed.
"No, I am actually. I’m failing almost everything." Mike explained.
"You must be good at something." Jensen said.
"I can fit my whole fist in my mouth, you wanna see?" Mike asked, making his hand into a fist and moving it towards his mouth.
"No." Jensen said, grabbing Mike’s hand.
"Well, I’m kinda psychic." Mike explained. "I have a fifth sense." He tapped his temples.
"What do you mean?"
"It’s like I have ESPN or something. I can always tell when it’s going to rain."
"Really? That’s amazing." Jensen said, unbelieving.
"Well, I can tell when it’s raining." Mike said
Jensen was mildly horrified when Jared didn’t immediately ask him out, after all, Chad had moved on, he was with Shane and showing even more public displays of affection than he did with Jared.
Jensen didn’t mind too much, he knew Jared would probably need some time to get over Chad, after all, four months was a long relationship to get over. Jensen shrugged it off, moving with his lunch tray to their table, sitting with Chad on one side of the table.
"Chad, we need to talk." Mike said.
"You’re wearing sweat pants, it’s Tuesday." Tommy explained.
"So?" Chad took a big bite of a French Stick.
"So, it’s against the rules and you can’t sit with us." Mike said.
"Those rules aren’t real." Chad grabbed a handful of Doritos.
"They were real that day I wore a vest!" Mike exclaimed.
"That’s because that vest was ugly." Chad retorted.
"You can’t sit with us!" Tommy shrieked.
Chad stood, grabbing his tray. "The sweat pants are all that fit right now."
Tommy and Mike turned to look away from Chad, avoiding his gaze.
"Whatever bitches, you can walk home." Chad stepped away from the table and into the walkway, bumping into one of the girls in their grade.
"Watch what you’re doing fat ass!" She exclaimed before walking from him, the rest of the cafeteria laughing at Chad.
It was official. Chad’s rein over the school was over.
Tommy and Mike followed Jensen all day, meeting him outside of class and walking him to where his mom was waiting to pick him up.
"What are we doing this weekend?" Tommy asked, as they walked towards the road.
"Yeah, what are we doing?" Mike copied.
"Oh, I’m busy." Jensen said, turning back towards the road.
Tommy and Chad made confused noises.
"I have tickets for this thing." Jensen explained.
"What?" Tommy asked.
"I could cancel?" Jensen said, although it was more of a question.
"Yeah." Mike and Tommy agreed.
"I’ll call later." Jensen said, as he got into his mom’s car.
"I promised my friend I would go to her art show." Jensen said, remembering his promise to Sandy, and feeling a slight pang of guilt.
"It’s only one night." Jensen’s dad said, agreeing. Jensen smiled.
"Fine." His mom said, "but no parties."
"So, I got enough cheese and crackers for eight people." Jensen said, admiring his ass in the new Guess pants he bought. "You think that’s going to be enough?"
"Totally." Tommy said, stood in Jensen’s house’s hallway.
Soon the guests started to arrive to Jensen’s 'small get together', and it was obvious that the news had got around about the party. There were at least fifty people roaming the house, throwing vases and looking through CDs.
"Have you seen Jared?" Jensen asked Mike and Tommy when he found them.
"No." They said apologetically.
Jensen grabbed a shot and resumed his search for Jared, convinced that he must be avoiding him.
Chad groaned, his car pulling up outside Jensen’s house. "How dare he have a party and not invite me! I practically made him!" He exclaimed, slamming his door as he got out.
"I know, hun." Shane agreed, following Chad into the house.
Jensen made his way upstairs, suddenly desperate for the toilet (presumably after so much alcohol). He pushed into his bedroom (the door suddenly really heavy) and ran for the toilet, not noticing the male already in his bedroom.
"Jensen?" The male said, grabbing the attention of Jensen.
Jensen turned suddenly. "I’ve been looking for you everywhere." He said, moving to sit next to Jared on the bed, crossing his legs towards him.
"I had to get out of there, you know?" Jared said, and Jensen wasn’t sure if he was talking about the party or his relationship with Chad. "He was wrong for me, you know? I’m sick of all the liars."
"I would never lie to you." Jensen said, and then laughed. "Well, I did lie to you once, but you’ll totally laugh about it."
"What?" Jared said, smiling.
"I pretended to be bad at math so you would talk to me. I’m not bad at math, you’re kinda bad at math. But anyway, now I’m failing, isn’t that funny?"
"Wait, you’re failing? That’s stupid. You should have just talked to me."
"I couldn’t, you were like Chad’s property."
"His property?" Jared stopped laughing. "I’m not his property."
"Wait, shut up, I didn’t say that."
"Don’t tell me to shut up. God, you are just like a clone of Chad." Jared stood up.
"Don’t go." Jensen moved to stand up, but something inside of him lurched, and he vomited, all over Jared’s shoes.
"What is going on here?" Chad pushed into the room, surveying the scene.
Jared pushed past him, and out of the room, kicking the vomit off his shoes.
It took Jensen a few minutes to catch up with Jared, who was striding down the road towards his house.
"Jared!" Jensen called, running after Jared as well as he could in his pants.
"Did you have an awesome time?" Jensen turned from Jared to look into the road, seeing Sandy hanging out of the window of Steve’s mom’s car. "Did you drink awesome shooters and just soak up each other’s awesomeness?"
"I wanted to tell you!" Jensen said. "But I had to pretend to be plastic."
"Oh, you’re not pretending any more, you’re Plastic, cold, hard, shiny Plastic." Sandy spat back. "Have this." She threw something at Jensen. "It won a prize."
Jensen sighed. He had overthrown Chad's empire, but nothing good had come of it. He had lost Jared, Sandy and Steve were no longer speaking to him, and his grade point average had gone down the toilet. The only thing he had left was a trashed house and Tommy and Mike, who left after saying how great the party was. He threw a couple of empties in a black trash sack.
The next day at school things were unusually quite on the Chad front. Chad hadn't ambushed Jensen demanding an explanation for his actions, and he hadn't been in any of Jensen's lessons.
"Jensen Ackles, report to the Principal's office." Coach Singer announced during their Health class.
Jensen rolled his eyes, stepping out from the desk and smoothing down his pants before making his way out of the room.
"What's going on?" Jensen asked as he joined Mike and Tommy in Principal Kripke's office.
"Take a seat, Mr Ackles." Kripke said, sitting behind his desk, before leaning to pick something up. "Have you seen this before?" he held up the Burn Book.
"No." Jensen lied. "I mean yes, it's Chad's."
"You better get your story straight because I am not messing around." Kripke said, putting the book on his desk.
"Whoever wrote it probably didn't think anyone was ever going to see it?" Mike said.
"You better hope nobody does see this." Principle Kripke looked annoyed. He slammed the book on the table.
Chad's trying to make it look like we wrote it, when really he did." Tom said, with his publicity smile for added effect.
"Why would Mr Murray refer to himself as a 'fugly slut'?" Kripke asked, reading aloud from the book. Mike stifled a giggle. Kripke glared.
"Like Tom said, Chad's trying to pin this on us." Jensen said, desperately trying to clear his name.
"Anything else you'd like to add?" Kripke asked.
"Oh no. My dad says I can't answer anymore questions without a parent or lawyer present." Tom said before placing his hands in his lap.
There was a knock on Kripke's door and his secretary pushed into the room. "Eric, come quickly. They've gone mad. They've all gone mad!" Kripke grabbed a baseball bat and made his way into the hallway. Everyone was fighting, pages from the burn book flying everywhere.
Jensen looked around. He blinked, it wouldn't go away. He was vaguely aware of Kripke saying something, before Tom and Mike pushed him towards the gym.
Jensen stared at Ms Gamble in the middle of the gym. It seemed like each clique had it's own problems.
"Let me just say that some of us shouldn't have to do this workshop because we're just victims in all of this." Chad was stood, his hands on his hips.
"You're probably right." Ms Gamble said. "Raise your hand if you've been personally victimised by Chad Murray." She instructed.
Jensen raised his hand with the rest of the class.
"Sit down Chad." Ms Gamble said before turning to the rest of the class. "I don't know who wrote this, but you've got to stop calling each other names. It just makes it okay for people you don't know to call you names." She continued before handing out note cards. "I want you all to write out an apology before reading it to the rest of the group."
Jensen stood in line as everyone read their apologies. The line got shorter and shorter before Jensen backed out, moving to the back of the line.
"Okay, okay." Jensen looked up, Sandy was on the stage. "So I have a friend who was a new student this year, and we decided it would be a fun little experiment to mess up Chad Murray's life. We turned his best friends against him," Tom and Mike looked at each other, "we gave his theses candy bars to make him gain weight, oh, and my friend Jensen," Jensen looked horrified, "He made out with Chad's boyfriend and convinced him to break up with him." Everyone started to laugh. "I don't know why we did it, but God, I am so sorry." She ended sarcastically before stepping off the stage.
Jensen ran after Chad, trying to catch up with him as he strolled out of the gym. "Chad!" He called, before finally reaching him.
"Don't even speak to me!" Chad yelled. "Do you know what it's like to find out that everybody hates you? Do you even know what they say about you? Hmm? They say you're a less hot version of me. So you can take that fake apology and shove it straight up your hairy-"
Chad never got the chance to finish his sentence as he was hit by a yellow school bus.
Jensen looked back at the people that had followed them outside. Somewhere saying they had seen Chad's head spin all the way around. Others were saying they saw Jensen push Chad. But they were just rumours.
Unfortunately news had got back to Jensen's parents, who promptly grounded him and said he couldn't attend the Spring Fling dance, even if he was in the running for Spring Fling King. Jensen looked at the pictures placed around his room, the mixture of photo's from Africa and those of him with the Plastics. He stepped around the room, taking the photos of him with Tom, Mike and Chad and placing them in a box. Being Plastic hadn't made him any better of a person; in fact it had done the opposite. It had turned him into a bitch, who'd step on anyone to get to the top. Jensen didn't want to be that sort of person, he just wanted to be normal, with friends. He felt a pang of regret, Sandy and Steve had helped him, they were true friends, and he let them down. Jensen knew what he had to do.
Jensen apologised to Chad, taking him flowers and listening to Chad's story of his near death experience. He also apologised to Mike and Tom, for deceiving them and turning them against Chad. Sandy and Steve were harder to get hold of, both of them blocking his calls and pretending to be out whenever Jensen called by their houses.
Ms Gamble had dealt Jensen her own special punishment for his involvement in the Burn Book, making him join the Mathletes to work back extra credit. It wasn't too bad, Jensen reflected, as they piled into the mini van that would take them to the state Mathlete's championship. He had made new friends and was beginning to get his life back on track.
The mini van dropped the Mathletes back at the school when the championship had finished, gold medals around the neck of each member of the club.
"Come on Africa," One of the members called as the walked towards the school to go to the Spring Fling.
"I can't, I'm grounded." Jensen called back, about to grab his cell phone to call his parents.
"You're already out." Ms Gamble argued, and Jensen figured she was right. Plus it was a good opportunity to find Sandy and Steve.
They walked into the dance as Mr Kripke was doing the final call for all nominees for Spring Fling King and Queen. Jensen walked a few steps towards the stage when he saw his parents, looking murderous and calling him over. Jensen turned and made his way towards them before he heard his name being called. He looked towards the stage where Kripke was calling him over, and walked towards him quickly, knowing what he should do.
Kripke placed the crown on Jensen's head before Jensen moved to the microphone. "I know it's not really traditional to say something, but this wont last long. I don't really deserve this." He said, indicating to the crown on his head. "People only voted for me because they think I pushed someone in front of a bus. I didn't. People work so hard to get their hands on this thing." He took the crown from his head. "It's just a piece of plastic, we should just share it." Jensen broke the crown into small pieces. "A piece for Tom Welling, partial Spring Fling King," He tossed a piece to Tom, before tossing one to Chad. "A piece for Chad Murray, who fractured his spine and still looks like a rock star." Jensen smiled. "And a piece for everyone else." The rest of the crown was thrown into the audience before Jensen stepped back and smiled at Sandy and Steve before making his way back to the dance floor.
"Are we friends?" Jensen asked Sandy and Steve as he caught up with them.
"That depends, are you still an ass?" Sandy asked. Jensen shook his head. "Then we're friends." Jensen pulled them into a hug.
"Man candy, ten o clock." Steve said, before pulling Sandy towards the drinks table. Jensen looked around, before his eyes settled on Jared.
"Here's your prize, for being Spring Fling King." Jared said, holding out an envelope. "It's two certificates to the Pancake House." Jared smiled, and Jensen took it as a good sign.
"I'm sorry for everything I put you through." Jensen said.
"Don't worry about it." Jared said, wrapping his arms around Jensen as a slow song was played. "Congratulations on making State."
"Thanks." Jensen said before Jared's lips touched his, pulling him into an unexpected kiss.
In case you're wondering, the Plastics broke up. Chad's physiotherapist taught him to channel his rage into competitive sport, which was great because the jocks weren't afraid of him. Tom found a new clique, and a new queen bee to serve, and Mike uses his special talents to host the morning weather announcement. Jensen went from being home-schooled jungle freak, to most popular person, to most hated person and finally back to normal. Jared graduated and got a scholarship at the local college, so Jensen still gets to see him on weekends. Everything was finally at peace, sure there were still cliques, but the drama associated had vanished.