Senior Year Memories Ch. 48

(Usual Disclaimer Time: Even though this story almost entirely takes place in a high school setting, all the characters in this story are 18 years old or older, and since we're living in the wide wonderful world of porno-land here, where clichés roam free and things might get a little unrealistic from time to time, please remember it's all in good fun. This story is highly serialized, and though it's not 100% necessary to have read the whole story up until this point to enjoy the content of the chapter, it's definitely advisable to understand the many ongoing plots.)

Author's Note: First off, as ever, I want to thank you all for the kind words and support! This chapter took a little longer than I expected it to as I wanted to get the character beats right, but I think the ultimate result is fun, and I hope you enjoy it as well! And, of course, I want to give special thanks to all of those who took the time to vote on who'd win the role of Audrey in the spring musical!

Previously, on Senior Year Memories: With the bullying and threats of drama club asshole, Micah Burke, eating away at 18-year-old Ryan Collins' senior year, he took up a mysterious offer of help in dealing with him. Meeting at a local boxing gym with beautiful, black drama club girl, 18-year-old Cecilia Dunwich, Ryan considered her offer and advice, while unable to stop admiring her easy confidence and amazing good looks. Though figuring that boxing was not his best approach to the Micah threat, he did enjoy Cecilia's company, and was certainly enticed by an offer to leave the gym with Cecilia and her two best friends, 18-year-old Scarlett Bishop and 18-year-old Lexa Reynard. Surrounded by three beautiful black girls and a whole lot of sexual tension, Ryan enjoyed some hot tub truth or dare, and a whole lot of sex with the trio of girls before deciding that he needed to find a way of dealing with Micah once and for all...

***

***

NOW

***

I stood on the silent, dark stage of our school's main auditorium, feeling completely and utterly alone in the blackness. If my feet weren't anchored to the ground, I could have been floating in space for how isolated I felt... but I was here in Regan Hills High School, and I wouldn't be alone here much longer.

Nervous as I was, I knew I had no one to blame but myself for my being here. This was my idea, I had set the terms and the location and even goaded him into coming, but perhaps I should have also been a little more dramatic and set some of the lights as well. Standing here like I was, I couldn't help but feel like the world was pulling away from me by inches with every passing moment... but balling my fists, I forced myself to have patience and let this scene play out.

As with everything else that had happened this year, nothing was quite so simple as my primal fears might have wanted to believe, but the fact that I had always done as much as possible to avoid confrontation and was now actively courting it wasn't lost on me. Even as I was prepared for whatever fight must come next, I stood there on the stage with my hands shaking, every so often checking my phone to make sure my messages to my tormentor had gone through.

As was always the case when I questioned my sanity over whether I'd sent a text, I had, and he had certainly seen them, but with no response from him I was left here on my own to play the waiting game while he... well, I was sure he was enjoying being fashionably late and keeping me twisting in the wind.

After all, he was an actor, and he certainly had a flair for the dramatic.

Stage lights snapped on above me, bright and overpowering and bringing the entire empty stage to life. It didn't seem so big and empty now that I could see all of it, but that didn't stop me from feeling vulnerable and alone.

But I wasn't alone... not here, not on this stage. I looked around, still blinking and squinting as my eyes got used to the light, holding a hand to shade my eyes so I could better see what was going on and see what direction the attack might come from.

Unsurprisingly, he walked out of the darkness with a slow clap, smiling that stupid, superior smirk of his that I so desperately wanted to smack off his face as he appeared before me.

"I got your messages... and I'm glad you finally decided to man up and face me directly," he said, still slow-clapping. "Of course, if it were up to me, given this venue for battle, I'd have dropped a chandelier on your head and been done with it... but alas, there are no chandeliers to be found, and even if there were, my hands are meant for much better things than untying knots. Lucky for you."

As my eyes finally adjusted, Micah Burke came into proper focus before me. As ever, the handsome, blonde 18-year-old kept this meticulous look about him, one that was meant to look effortlessly casual and somehow managed to look perfectly calculated. His shoulder-length, wavy blonde hair was swept behind his ears and shimmering with a number of products, and as ever his clothes were slightly too high-end, but never *too* too high-end, for our school, giving him that look of an amicable beach bum who might have been preppy once upon a time, at least until you got a good look at his face. While he had the kind of face you could have easily seen belonging to a leading man on a movie poster, there was an undeniable emptiness to his eyes and that smile he always kept plastered to his face that kept him from looking as charming as he thought he was.

He wasn't smiling today, though, looking unusually focused as he approached me. Considering everything that had happened between us since I was assigned to write an article on the upcoming spring musical, that made sense, as we had built up a decent animosity over the past month between us. As was often the case this year, I'd spent my time within the drama club getting into any number of naughty misadventures with the beautiful girls I'd met within. Micah, possessive of these drama club girls as if they were his property, had made it clear that he didn't appreciate the time I'd spent with them, first threatening me and then ultimately trying to get me in trouble with Principal Carpenter.

There had been some close calls, but I'd always had friends and allies help me out of those problems. Knowing this confrontation to be inevitable, I'd set this meeting up between us, and now stood alone on the stage, watching Micah cautiously as he approached.

"Lucky me," I replied, pushing my glasses up my nose as I took in a breath. "I wanted to sort this out before it got out of hand."

"It's already out of hand..." he said threateningly. "It got out of hand the moment you didn't give me what I wanted and tried to take what was mine."

Careful to keep my eyes on him, I backed away and remembered my lines. "I don't want to fight you... I just want to end this. We don't have to resort to violence."

Grinning, Micah methodically unbuttoned, then rolled up each of his sleeves to the elbow to expose his lean, well-muscled arms. "This will end soon, once and for all, but if you thought you were going to get out of this without violence, well... then you're an even bigger fool than you look."

Quickly, he flexed each of his arms, punching out to each side like he was reloading his fists, before holding them up in a mock boxing position. Whatever false bravado came with the gesture, I could tell by the way that he carried himself that he *did* know at least a little of what he was doing here, which, whether I liked it or not, made him dangerous.

"Alright, let's do this," he said, trying on his best intimidating voice.

To be fair to him, it was decently intimidating... but I'd been intimidated by scarier bullies than Micah in the past. If I didn't lose my head here, I could easily come out on top of this situation.

"You sure you don't want to sort this out with words? Because you seem like the kinda guy who likes words, and I'm *definitely* a guy who likes words... so maybe we could banter a little first, exchange barbs and witticisms and playful insults before you try to end this by hurting me?" I asked, hoping to stall for at least a little time.

"Fuck words... you wouldn't listen to my words before, you ignored me and everything I had to say, so you pay the price. Nerds like you only understand violence, so for you to understand the true way of things in *my* drama club, violence is what you're going to receive..." Micah said, approaching me with a dark grin. "Though if you've got any last words before we get down to this, I'm always up for a laugh..."

I could've thought of a lot of words for Micah, but I gave him none. I wouldn't give the asshole any more satisfaction than I already had... and I knew I'd given him a lot by this point. No, as he bore down on me, and I again debated how smart an idea this whole silly plan of mine was, I was thinking of four other words that had gotten the ball rolling and led to me standing on this black stage.

***

THEN

***

"I need your help," I said.

The girl I'd accompanied after school to this secondhand store stopped looking at the pieces of used furniture she'd been sent here to scout out, standing up and surveying me with those piercing, ever-perceptive eyes of hers. As ever, she stared at me with such a no-nonsense plainness that I immediately found myself feeling almost embarrassed for having taken this long to approach her.

Looking me up and down quickly and nodding with understanding, 18-year-old Olivia Raine-Goldblum replied, "That's for damn sure."

At 5'9", this pale girl with shoulder-length, shimmering black hair could look me in the eye more easily than most, and when her haunting hazel eyes unhesitatingly stared into my own, I knew she also understood me better than most as well. Though she often hid away behind her hoodie in the hopes of blending into the background, I knew her to be perceptive and clever in her own intensely sarcastic way. I had been unofficially working with her under the instruction of drama teacher Mrs. Wanda Harker, and had come to know Olivia as someone I could trust, even if our friendship status was still uniquely questionable. There was something in her cleverness, a certain fire she kept buried deep that drew me to her, and given how she'd gone out of her way to save me with Micah in the principal's office, well, you could say I rather liked having her in my life.

That she was cute as hell, and a good kisser that one time she kissed me, was icing on the cake. Though she rarely smiled, her pale face, intent eyes and pouty lips gave her a kind of Wednesday Addams vibe I couldn't help but find attractive as hell, while her usual hoodie and jeans outfit couldn't hide the fact that her curves, while modest, were certainly enticing.

Perhaps most important to my current situation was that, as a member of our school's stage crew, Olivia was used to getting things done and dealing with problems among the drama kids, and not wanting to trouble any of my girlfriends with all this drama drama, there was no question that Olivia was the first person that I had to talk to here to wrap this up.

"Micah's not going to go away," I said.

"Correct," Olivia said, scoffing at the price tag on a small table and shaking her head. "He is a persistent infection that must be burned out at the source, though unfortunately antibiotics have little effect on something his size."

I snorted a laugh away, keeping up with her as she continued on down the aisle of secondhand furniture.

"So, if he's not going to go away, then I'm gonna have to do something about him instead. Something... *conclusive*," I continued.

"Also correct, though after your adventure in the principal's office, I assume you have already come to the conclusion that violence is not going to be your best option?" she replied.

I sighed. "Yeah... yeah, I've gotten there, too. If I start a physical fight with him, I'll probably lose, and almost certainly get expelled if we're caught. After that close call with Principal Carpenter... no, I can't risk that again."

"For whatever consolation it's worth, you'd likely take him down with you, at least... if you take the zero-tolerance policy into account. Which could have its uses if appropriately exploited, but likely is not the kind of event you'd wish your scholastic future to contain," Olivia said, her tone thoughtful.

"Yeah, I'd like to avoid expulsion if at all possible," I replied. "And preferably a fight... I mean, if I have to, I will, but I'm not exactly known for my ability to take a punch."

"No, you're not... hurm," she said thoughtfully, snapping a couple pictures of some nearby pieces with her phone. "So, you would like to wrap up the Micah Burke plotline, but you would like to do so in a manner that would avoid your own expulsion. A difficult proposition, but not an impossible one. It's just a trickier needle to thread than you would no doubt like..."

Taking a breath, I shared what little brainstorming on the subject I'd already done, "I was thinking some kind of humiliation? It worked so well at Homecoming; I was wondering if I could do something like that for Micah as well?"

Quickly, Olivia replied, "For humiliation to work, you have to make sure that your target can actually be humiliated, and unfortunately for you, Micah is famously shameless, and skilled at playing the victim at that. Most attempts at humiliating him would likely end up in him being able to spin matters to his favor and make you look the villain, putting you back in that position you would rather not be in."

Thinking back to the principal's office and that false look of fear on his face as Micah tried to frame me for bullying, I glowered.

"Well, at least he's lost some credit with Principal Carpenter, after you exposed him," I said, hopeful.

She shook her head. "A temporary setback for him, but with enough theatrics and shamelessness, he will no doubt find himself back within the administration's good graces sooner rather than later, spinning that loss into a victory."

Damn. I'd really hoped that that victory would at least give us some kind of advantage we could use, but it made an annoying amount of sense that Micah wouldn't easily be held back by something like that.

"So, we need to take his advantages away from him. Find some way of making it clear to everyone who, and *what*, he is, in a way that cannot be ignored or spun," I said.

Olivia nodded thoughtfully, then said, "That would be the goal... but I think that if you want to truly be noticed, you'll have to do something, dare I say, *theatrical*."

She bent over at the waist, checking the price of a chair. Even in my current distracted state, I couldn't help but enjoy the view as her tight jeans stretched over her ass. For a girl with hips as narrow as hers, she had a nice and round, if still modest, butt... but that wasn't why I was here. I shook my head, trying to refocus myself.

"How theatrical are we talking here?" I asked.

Standing back up, her eyes darting to me quickly as if testing whether I was checking her out before looking away again, Olivia said, "There are many degrees of theatricality that could be employed to send a message. Were it my revenge to plan, I would think a little Shakespeare, a little Christie... something dramatic that cuts to the core of who he is and everything he holds dear and strips away his advantages. Take away these assets until he has nothing to fight you with and you've broken his will, and the world and its institutions could only ever possibly take your side in the conflict."

I ran a hand through my hair, surprised at her blunt vehemence. "Fuck, Olivia, I'm just trying to take on a bully, not overthrow a country."

"He made this war when he attacked you, and if you do not treat it as one while he continues to, then he has already defeated you," Olivia replied, her tone steady yet carrying a slight harshness to it that cut to the point.

Chastened, I replied, "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," she said, considering. "He is the aggressor... you have nothing to be sorry for. I only want you to prepare to do what must be done, no matter how dramatic it might get."

I was beginning to understand that Olivia probably had more of a history with Micah than she'd already detailed to me, and one that I was probably better off not exploring at this moment. This was something more than just her helping me with a bully... she had wrongs to right by taking on Micah as well, and whatever victory came from this was going to be ours to share.

Nodding as I thought all this out, I asked, "So, do you have anything in mind for something dramatic?"

"Perhaps... but I would need to know what you count among your assets," Olivia continued, her thoughtful eyes boring into me.

Amused at her word choice, I replied, "Lamentably, I can't count a wheelbarrow among them."

Olivia looked at me completely deadpan, and I understood quickly that this was likely not the best time for movie references.

"I've made friends with a handful of the girls from drama club, as you know," I explained, trying to count them off on my fingers. "Cecilia, Chloe, Doreen, Zahra... maybe Faith and Amy, and if I'm stretching possibly Mikayla..."

"Don't forget your network of girls outside of drama club; if rumor control is necessary, you have access to a web of potential propagandists who would no doubt happily help turn the tide of public opinion in your favor," she said, her voice quick and methodical.

While I didn't like to think of any of the women in my life like that, it was hard arguing Olivia's point.

"And you think it will come to that?" I asked.

"Not sure," Olivia admitted, looking off into space as she took in all the information. "But it never hurts to have a complete accounting of what you would count among your assets."

"Well, I've got *you* on that list, too, then," I said.

"Obviously," she replied, a faint glimmer of a smile on her lips. "But my influence in these circles is limited. I'm not exactly well-known, and not particularly liked by those who do happen to know me."

"Well, *I* like you, for whatever it's worth," I said, smiling warmly.

Olivia looked back at me with a faint look of surprise, that hint of a smile on her deliciously pouty lips growing for a moment, before disappearing just as quickly.

"While that is certainly... welcome, it hardly helps us in our current conundrum," Olivia said, sighing dramatically. "If only we had a better in with Mrs. Harker..."

I raised my eyebrow at this. "I thought we did... I mean, she asked us to be her second sets of eyes on all this drama drama... couldn't we just both go to her, tell her everything we know, get down on our knees and beg and plead if we have to and ensure that Micah doesn't get anywhere near the roles he wants? That would certainly be a powerful humiliation for him."

"We could try," she said, thoughtful. "But whether she would listen is another matter entirely. By my best understanding, she mostly wanted our input on who would get the role of Audrey... she's otherwise rather set on Micah as Seymour, I believe, because he is exceptionally good at sucking up and otherwise talented in all the relevant ways that would help him succeed on stage. It's gotten to a point where few others are even attempting to challenge him, and what challenges there are have been halfhearted at best."

I thought about the potential contenders among the drama boys that I knew, and couldn't deny they were few and far between, but as a friendly face came into focus, I suggested, "What about Tommy Jarvis?"

Olivia looked somewhat surprised at my suggestion of the good-hearted and giant walking teddy bear of a member of the drama club. "I'm not sure of his interest in the part... no doubt he tried out for it, but most likely because it was expected. Nevertheless, he's got the talent. He could provide a decent challenge to Micah with the right persuasion."