Forget that he was born

(I know Star might not be the smartest in the bunch, but i pictured her to be very sociable and friendly so she would most definitely take an interest in school activities. i decided one could be the student council. I know these posts are out of order, but i tend to think of an ending first. i may arrange these later, but as of now, they are as is. Star, being on the student council, makes it possible for that open-mike night scene you already read about. So, this is supposed to come before that, obviously. Again, sorry for confusion.)

Star filed into the business and marketing classroom during the lunch hour, as the other student council members headed in with her. She sat down at her designated seat as Junior class president.

Dean and I have been broken up for three weeks and it still seems so surreal, she thought. has it even hit me yet?

It was like the fourth of July fireworks in Eagle Park. You saw a blast of colored sparks first, but felt and heard the boom much later.

The aftershock of the breakup hadn't even touched her yet. It had to be coming soon. All of a sudden, she'd break down, probably in the middle of school if luck was still eluding her. Her dad would lock her up in a mental institution, and when she came back to school, everyone would whisper as she strolled down the halls.

She'd graduate from high school-her parents would make her-but afterwards, she'd adopt ten cats and move out into the woods into a kitschy cottage on a river somewhere. She'd grow tomatoes in a garden, and lettuce and potatoes. She'd hunt rabbits with a bow.

After the first year, she'd speak only cat and maybe some dog, since a stray would have attached itself to her by then and-

"Star?"

Star looked up at Kevin across the table from her. He was the senior class president. He always started the meetings off.

"Yes?" she said.

"Have you heard anything i just said?" Irritation furrowed his brow. He thought he was so much better than the rest of the student council members. Hell, the rest of the school, really, the smug little bastard.

"Kevin," she said, face impassive, "I try to tune you out sometimes. You do have such a dreadful voice, a little nasal." She pinched her nose to demonstrate. "You know? It hurts my ears sometimes."

That would teach him to talk down to her.

And break up with her best friend!

Honestly, what did Cheyenne ever see in this guy?

Kevin sighed as if he expected this kind of immaturity from people beneath him. "I was saying that Mr. Thomas has brought to our attention the severe need for new marching band uniforms. We were thinking of running a fund-raiser. Might you have any suggestions?"

She hated how he talked all prim and proper as if they were in a seventeenth-century movie. It's the seventies, chump.

Tapping the end of her pen against her notebook, she ran a few things through her head. There were the usual fundraisers: car wash, bake sale, dance. The car wash was out; it was too cold. The bake sale was a good idea, but those things never generated enough cash. Dances were never well attended.

"How about an open-mike night? she said, thinking that Dean and his band could be a good attraction. "With a cover charge? It's something different. And it'll give amateur artists good exposure." Like Dean. Why was she helping him? Well, it was more like she was helping him help her, you know?

A few murmurs swept through the room, people nodded at the idea.

"And a bake sale," she added. "All in one place."

"I like that idea," Lisa the treasurer said. "The cover charge will bring in a good amount and people can come just to have fun. The bake sale will be an added profit."

"Who will bake?" Kevin asked, doubt clearly in his voice.

"All of us." Star waved at the people in the room. "If everyone makes two dozen of something, it should give us enough baked goods. And i know my friends will make something, too, if i ask."

"Where would we have it?" Kevin asked. "Renting a place out would cost us more money than we'll make."

Star hadn't thought about that. She groaned inwardly when she saw the condescending quirk in Kevin's lips. He always seemed to get some sort of perverse pleasure out of besting her.

"Maybe someone in town would donate their space," Lisa interjected. "It's for the school's benefit, after all."

A satisfied smile spread over Star's face. The first smile in so many days. "Yes. I bet Jeanette's mom would let us use her shop. It's the perfect spot."

More murmurs of agreement spread through the room.

Kevin even looked slightly convinced. "Put it to a vote. All in favor of an open-mike night/bake sale at Scrappe, raise your hands and say, 'Aye'."

Every hand went up around the tables as people voiced their agreement.

"It's decided then," Kevin said, making note of it in his workbook. "Star, for now, you're in charge of securing Scrappe for the event. Can you let me know in a week what's going on?"

"Sure."

"Why don't you shoot for March thirty-first?"

Dean's birthday was March eighteenth.

In all the chaos between them in the last three weeks, she'd forgotten his birthday was coming up. She'd bought him a gift weeks ago. The gift was now a three-hundred-dollar purchase sitting in her desk at home, unusable. She couldn't take it back.

"Star," Kevin said, plainly more annoyed than he had been the first time she'd spaced out. This probably wasn't good for her brain, thinking about Dean so much. And she didn't even want to think about how low she was feeling.

"I heard you," she muttered. "The thirty-first. Got it."

"Aren't you going to write it down?"

"I won't forget." It'd be the first weekend after Dean's birthday and more than two months since their break up. Thinking of all that time spent with a broken heart and without Dean made something slip in her chest.