ChapterSix-Ultimatums

October 4th, 2004

  It's now Monday. UTurn are back in school, acting like nothing happened. Andrew and Alyson usually target the performing arts students when they arrive at the school. Alyson, with her Pink Clique, met up with a girl dressed in an odd assortment of clothes: Andrew marches up to a guy who was wearing dressed up clothes.

   Alyson said to the girl in a snobby tone, "Like, OMG, you dress like you live in a garbage can. You need to wear real clothes...oh wait, you can't cuz you're poor!"

   The Pink Clique laughed. Bailey, even though she's in the clique, didn't laugh.

   Andrew taunted, "Hey tux guy! You're in a school, not some fancy event!"

   Then the boy grabbed Andrew's arm, and dragged him.

  At the same time, Alyson noticed Andrew was being dragged by one of the performing arts guys. Before she knew it, the weirdly- dressed girl grabbed Alyson's arm, and dragged her too.

  Then Alyson and Andrew ended up in a dark room. He asked her, whispering, "Aly, what's going on?"

   "How am I supposed to know?" she whispered back,

   The lights turned on, and Andrew and Alyson saw a crowd of the performing arts students.

   Alyson asked sternly, "Why are Andrew and I here?"

  The weirdly-dressed girl said, "My name is Karen, and this guy here is Josh. We auditioned for a TV competition called New England's Teen Superstar. I'm sure you two have heard of it."

  Josh, the dressed-up guy, said, "Almost everyone in the performing arts auditioned, and half of them made it to the callbacks next month."

   Andrew asked in an irritated tone, "And this concerns us because?"

  Karen replied, "Alyson, we saw your Pink bitches auditioning as a girl group, and we heard they made the callbacks. We also saw you two, with Bailey Richardson and Justin Harrison, auditioning together as pop group. And you made the callbacks too."

  At that point, Alyson and Andrew were cornered. She said nervously, "W-We were never there. You just saw people there that looked like us."

  Josh said smugly, "I brought my camera to capture everything at the auditions. And I got a clear view of your band. I heard it's called 'U-Turn'."

  Josh gave the photos to Alyson and Andrew. They couldn't deny it anymore. The four people in the pictures were really them. Andrew asked sternly, "What are you gonna do with these photos?"

  Karen replied, "We, the performing arts students, have an ultimatum for you two."

  Josh added, "We won't leak the photos and tell everyone online that you two, with Justin and Bailey, are a pop band...If you stop bullying us-"

   Alyson said, "I'm not a bully! I'm a mean girl!"

   Karen scoffed, "Is there a difference?"

   Josh said, 'Anyway. If continue insulting us, we'll leak out all the info. And your popularity will sink."

   Alyson said sternly, "You're not gonna get away with this!"

   Karen evilly grinned, "Oh, but we did."

   Andrew asked, "Can we think about this, and give you an answer tomorrow?"

   Josh replied, "Sure, but remember, tomorrow, you give us an answer. It's make-or-break for you."

  It's now afterschool. The UTurn members were at Justin's house for both study and song practice. Alyson and Andrew exchanged looks to go ahead and tell Justin and Bailey about the ultimatum the performing arts students gave them.

  Alyson said, "The performing arts students dragged me and Andrew to another room in the school to tell us that they saw us, UTurn, at the NETS audition a few days ago. They got pictures of us, and you can clearly see it's us."

   Justin asked, "Are they gonna leak the photos?"

  Andrew said, "They won't leak anything about us if we stop insulting them. Otherwise, they'll leak everything, and our status as the most popular kids in school will be taken away from us."

  Bailey said in an irritated tone, "Well, if you two weren't such bitches, you wouldn't be in this position."

   "I'm not a bitch."

   "Look at Justin. He's popular, and he's a great guy. Now compare to you, you're popular, but you were always a jerk. And you never grew out of it."

   Justin said in an irritated tone, "Just because I'm nice doesn't mean I want U-Turn to be leaked out all over the school."

   "I thought you didn't care about what people think of you."

   "Well, I do!"

  Immediately after that, everyone was quiet. After a few minutes, Justin spoke up calmly, "Andrew, Aly, what have you decided?"

  Andrew and Alyson exchanged looks, then spoke up. Andrew said, "We're gonna have to stop insulting the performing arts students."

   Alyson added, "We need to cover up our real reason for doing this."

  "Maybe we say we just got bored bullying them, and we move onto...well, we'll come up with something."

 The next day, Andrew and Alyson walked up to Karen. Alyson whispered to her, "We'll stop bullying you and the rest of the performing arts students, as long you all don't leak anything out concerning U-Turn."

  Karen agreed.