Song of the chapter- 'Bohemian Rhapsody (cover)' by Pentatonix ❤ (originally performed by Queen)

'Any way the wind blows'

"Alright, so let's get started, shall we?" Josh's bright face greets me with what is evolving to be his characteristic satisfactory smile.

"By all means, lead the way, sir!" I curtsey, encouraging him to go ahead.

He confidently struts ahead as if he's either on a very important mission or he is an important person, well, that is, until he turns around with a grin spilling out of his face and admits he doesn't know what we're doing right now. Rolling my eyes, I pull him along so we can get on to practice considering the fact that we don't have a whole lot of time.

At the time we left from the restaurant, we barely had three hours left and we somehow managed to waste another half hour getting here despite having taken not more than five to ten minutes when we went to the restaurant. The older girls' snide remarks about Josh and I escaped neither of our ears and, while I had just rolled my eyes and ignored them, he had turned an adorable shade of baby pink that Ros, Nat, Thia and I couldn't help laughing at. He walked ahead of us for ten minutes following which he began to cast longing looks to the back of the group and eventually gave up and joined us as we spoke about totally random stuff.

At some point of time, Lau brought up how good Thia looks with her brand new red hair and she blushed, leading Ros and I to gasp loudly at once as Nat gave me a dirty look. While she was grateful for us to have left there, she'd been super annoyed whenever Ros and I did something together. It's certainly not my fault that Ros and I have a pretty similar thought process though, and Nat has been far too possessive of Saly, as she calls her.

Josh just so happened to say that Cynthia's hair does look good and all hell broke loose with Ros letting out wolf howls and Nat joining in. Cynthia suddenly found interest in talking to Tracie as she sped up to talk to the girl while Lauren quietly asked a reddening Josh if he would be interested in dating Cynthia.

Had he been ingesting anything, he would have spit out all the contents in his mouth but luckily only words filled his mouth and spilled out as he stuttered and stammered until he wound up saying, "I'm not into dark redheads."

That was every bit the wrong thing to say as the situation instantaneously wound up into one where Ros and Nat had to hold Lauren back from slapping the guy as I pushed him behind me. He seemed to be on the verge of breaking down as I could easily observe the blood rushing to his face as his pale skin became blotted with pinkness and perspiration.

"I'm so sorry, that wasn't how it was meant to come out. I meant to say I already like a girl a lot and she's not a dark redhead," he quickly blurted out before smacking his own forehead as he grumbled.

"Oh, really? If so, how's her complexion?" Lauren snapped, her own face resembling an artist speed-painting their canvas with pink, her complexion being no different from Josh's.

Josh's eyebrows furrowed deeply as he responded, "Her skin's more russet than olive but it's also kind of a little lighter than the typical russet. Look, I'm not discriminating against her or anything, that shade of red does look plenty gorgeous with her skin, that's absolutely not what I meant! Honest to God, I don't discriminate like that! Please, you've got to believe me!"

"Geez, it's not like we're the only friends you have so you don't really have to cling on to us or anything, you know?" Nat quipped, making Ros elbow her in the ribs.

The sight of the crestfallen expression on his face as he slightly slouched in defeat brought me to bring everyone to a halt, "Lauren, he didn't mean it as he's clearly mentioned. Thia, shut your face and get here, things won't be too awkward. Ros and Nat, it isn't always prudent to assume things about someone and make insulting jokes."

"You know, sometimes, I forget that you're twelve," Cynthia chuckled after an awkward silence ensued.

"Sometimes I forget too," I added with a light grin, it disappearing right off my face at the sight of the sorrow on his face.

"Josh, they just love messing around with people's minds, that gives them some sort of sadistic joy. Don't you listen to them, alright?" I told him, his face still remaining crestfallen when I lost my temper and stormed off to Lauren's side.

Rosaly and Nat rushed to hold me back as I glared at Lauren before simply walking over to Tracie and striking up the most random conversation with her. I was annoyed beyond belief and definitely cranky from the lack of sleep, as I still am. Now here we are, unsure of what to do and both of us being extremely tired certainly doesn't ease it in any way for either of us. Heck, we haven't even picked a song yet, and here we are, roaming the halls.

"Josh, we're running out of time now! Would you please hurry up and not be so picky about a dang room you're not going to be in for any longer than a few hours?" I exclaim irritably after he has eliminated another room for 'having bad acoustics'.

"Right, I think this ought to do," he visibly swallows as he throws open another door and we enter.

It just happens to be our luck that he chose an occupied room, with a wild Generica nearly pulling her hair out. She looks up at us at the commotion the door slammed open must've undoubtedly caused and a wide smile creeps onto her face. She jumps up to her feet and quickly nears us, her actions not unlike those of a predator nearing its prey. She begins to shake Josh by the front of his shirt as though she were shaking his collar even though he's wearing a collarless shirt as she's rambling on.

Her words click in my head after a while, "I'm singing today with you, I've already registered your name with mine!"

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Hey there! Thank you so much for reading this and, I'm really sorry for the delay in posting this. The thing is that I, at the moment, don't have any pre-written chapters to post and there's also college on my back, leaving me extremely tired way earlier than before. I will be doing my best to post as much as I can, and I'm still going to finish this book by the end of this year (fingers crossed) so yay!

Thoughts on 'Generica'? Josh's reaction to the girls taunting him? Val in general? Anything else in or about this chapter?

Also, I kind of intended to publish this earlier because I was going to talk about how I absolutely love 'Ptx, Vol. IV- Classics'. I really do! 'Take on Me', 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' are my favourites off it! Plus the video for their cover of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' gives me life!

Anyways, see you in the next update, and I also have another announcement I'm excited to share that I will post to my message board soon and in the AN of the next chapter so there's that! Now, I'mma be off to sleep... 😴 😴

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