Note: A silly high school story because everyone's gotta do one of these sooner or later just to get it out of the system.

The Lone Ranger Rides Again

Brenda Barrett whooped as the last bell rang, jumping up from her seat and fairly flying out of her 10th period AP Psychology class. Ms. Purdy, the tall wide brunette somehow strapped with teaching the class, rolled her eyes.

"Geez, you'd think her pants were on fire or something," she commented to the rest of the students, who were now gathering their things and leaving.

Elizabeth Webber laughed, still sitting in her seat. Lauren "Petey" Pietras, the loud-mouth captain of the varsity softball team, remained in the seat next to her. Behind Lauren, tiny Jessica Kim stretched out languidly, her short, silky jet-black hair falling in her face.

It was no secret that out of all of Elizabeth's classes, she was most comatose in Psychology. She didn't know why. Maybe it was because it was the last period and after a long day, she wanted nothing more than a fifty-minute-nap in a cold, hard, uncomfortable wooden desk. Or perhaps it was the fact that after eighth period, her hasty lunch of fruit and yogurt needed to be digested. Or perhaps it was the fact that the class was simply mindless: the entire period's activities consisted of talking about Ms. Purdy's toddler, Bobby's weekend "trips", or doing asinine surveys in the teen scene magazines.

Whatever the reason, it was always hard for her to get up after the period ended. And some of her friends felt the same way. So, while everyone else made a beeline for their lockers so they could get to the parking lot and off the campus before the rush, Elizabeth, Lauren, and Jessica remained in their seats.

Actually, that wasn't the whole truth. Jessica had a reason to get up: she had someone actually waiting for her.

Turning around, Elizabeth smiled at David Hsieh, the tall, black-haired, nerdy-yet-sooooo-hot captain of the math team. He was one of the first guys she'd talked to when she had transferred to PC High during sophomore year, and she considered him a good friend.

She watched as David lamely shook a still-dozing Jessica. "Come on, Jess," he said, poking her shoulder. "We have to get to Math Team practice."

Jessica looked up at him, her eyes still hazy with sleep. Mumbling, she stooped to pick up her backpack.

"You look tired, Jess," Elizabeth noted. "You okay?"

Jessica nodded, pulling her short hair back only to have it slip right back into her face. "Yeah. It's just been a busy week." She turned to her boyfriend, lightly smacking him on the shoulder as he moved toward the door. "I have to stop off at Orchestra…"

Lauren and Elizabeth watched them go, neither of them moving. Ms. Purdy abandoned her leather stool and waddled toward her desk, pulling her curly auburn locks into a ponytail.

Lauren was the first to stand up, pulling up her cream-colored hemp pants as she did. Her thick chocolate hair fell halfway down her back, and Elizabeth reached out to twirl a piece between her fingers. She played with it for a moment as Lauren grabbed her backpack, finally relinquishing it and grabbing her own Psych book.

"I should probably get up," she mumbled, slowly pulling herself into a standing position. "It's about that time."

"You say that every day," Lauren remarked, shrugging her backpack into a more comfortable position on her back. She carefully tugged her long hair out from underneath the thick straps. "And you never say what you mean by it."

Elizabeth smirked, tugging on one of her own two braids. Balancing her heavy book on her head, she turned to look at the clock. 2:43. Three minutes after the bell. Yup, it was definitely that time.

"I don't mean anything by it, Lauren," she assured, walking toward the door. "Just that it's that hypothetical time."

Waving to Ms. Purdy, Elizabeth stepped into the cool hallway, pretending not to notice Lauren's quizzical glare in her direction.

"You're not a very good liar, Webber," she remarked dryly, flipping one of the smaller brunette's braids. "And I'll find out what you mean by that one of these days."

"Oh, really," Elizabeth drawled playfully. "How, pray tell?"

"Oh, you'll see, Webber," Lauren retorted with a grin. "I have my ways."

The two friends began to walk the few yards to their lockers, still bantering. Reaching her locker, Elizabeth toyed with the combination lock, waiting for the familiar loud voices ascending the stairwell.

"And I had a dream there were…" Lauren began, singing a new song for their daily after school duet.

"Clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee, and.." Elizabeth finished with a smile, opening her locker.

It had become a tradition of theirs; every day as they left their third floor Psychology class and ambled the seven feet to their lockers, they came up with a song to sing. Sometimes it was the theme to the Flintstones, and sometimes it was Tom Jones – the singer, not the 900-page novel by Henry Fielding. And today, it was Carly Simon.

Loud laughter met her ears and Elizabeth glanced sideways at the stairwell. Anticipation made her heart thud loudly, and she couldn't help but let a soft sigh escape her lips even as she sang.

Walking up the staircase like Hercules ascending from Hell, or rather 10th period AP Calculus, was Jason Morgan. Wearing his trademark green shorts with a white button down shirt – nothing underneath – Jason looked as if he were ready to be lounging around at the park on a long summer day, not freezing to death in a 10 degrees Kelvin school with a freshly fallen shroud of snow outside.

Amandeep Sangha, a tall dark-haired basketball player, shoved Jason up the stairs as Josh Minohl tousled his hair. Jason laughed good-naturedly, pretending to swing his Calculus book at his track teammate's head. They dispersed at the top of the stairs, promising to meet up before tonight's basketball game for some pre-victory sandwiches at the local high school hangout, Kelly's.

Jason's friends departed, leaving him at the top of the stairwell. The light from the snow outside cast brilliantly onto the gleaming linoleum, casting a natural – and blinding – spotlight all around the young man. He fiddled with some Calculus handouts, shoving them into his book before balancing it on his head, just like Elizabeth did, and resuming the walk to his locker.

Elizabeth blushed slightly, feeling awkward for watching him. She fiddled with the blue combination lock in her hand, miraculously managing to keep up with Lauren's singing.

"You're so vain." Elizabeth's rich, melodic voice joined her friend's lower pitch. "You probably think this song is about you, you're so vain…"

Lauren looked sideways toward the stairwell, nodding at her friend Jason and noticing the way he glanced quickly at Elizabeth while the oblivious little brunette sang on. With a smirk, Lauren blew a kiss to the cardboard cutout of Peter Frampton taped inside her locker before slamming the beige door shut and locking it.

She waited for Elizabeth, watching as her friend stuffed her AP Calculus notebook in her cream-colored backpack, along with her copy of Tom Jones. She fished her graphing calculator out from among the random papers and textbooks, dropping it in alongside her novel.

The last thing to come out of the cream-colored locker was Elizabeth's prized tin lunch box. While some seniors preferred to leave campus and eat lunch at Kelly's and others preferred to brown-bag it, a choice few still favored their lunch boxes. Most had colorful cloth lunch boxes, insulated contraptions that kept their soda cold and their soup warm.

But Elizabeth had her Lone Ranger lunch box. It was blue and red and made of tin, with lassos and bullets on the sides. A hot pink handle at the top matched the lettering that proclaimed "The Lone Ranger" above a picture of Clayton Moore, disguised and armed, standing firm next to a boulder. She had purchased the lunch box off of an online auction site, and it cost her twelve dollars including shipping and handling. After several months of regular – but careful – use, the lunch box came to be as key a part to Elizabeth's image around school as the two long braided pigtails only she could manage to pull off.

Finished packing her books, the brunette stood up and locked her locker. Lauren waited patiently as Elizabeth adjusted her khaki hip huggers. They fit her well but were a tad loose at the waist, which was probably why she was perpetually tugging on them. She grabbed the hem of her dark green turtleneck sweater, pulling it down over her pants. As Lauren waited, Elizabeth adjusted her necklace, a small, carved wooden elephant head with blue beads on two suede strings.

Lauren grabbed Elizabeth's backpack from the floor, offering it to her. Elizabeth smiled and slung it over her shoulders, pulling her two braided pigtails out from under the straps.

"Ready to go?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Yup." The two started to walk down the hallway, still humming along to Carly Simon.

"You coming to the basketball game tonight?" Lauren asked as they passed a group of underclassmen frantically trying to scurry out of the senior hall. Being the captain of the softball and volleyball team, as well as a former member of the girls' basketball team, Lauren was all about athletics. Elizabeth, on the other hand, wasn't.

But the little brunette nodded anyway, smiling as her friend Michael jogged up the stairs and waved to her before racing off to his girlfriend's locker. "Yeah, I'm coming," she replied.

Lauren whooped, attracting a few glances and several Oh-Petey smiles. "Yeah, Beth! It's about time."

Elizabeth grinned, shaking her head. "Yeah, well. Amandeep practically begged me to, so I couldn't say no."

"Gotta love that Amandeep," sighed the ever-boy-crazy Lauren. "He's hot."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, scoffing.

Her disbelief didn't go unnoticed by Lauren. "What?" she asked, flipping her hair indignantly.

Elizabeth glared pointedly at her. "Lauren," she began in a mock-scolding tone. "I'd be more inclined to take your 'he's so hot' opinions seriously if you didn't say that about everyone."

"I don't say that about everyone," Lauren grinned, denying the allegation even though she recognized it as the truth.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes again despite smiling. "Lauren, you thought Edison was hot, remember? Thomas Edison."

"So?" Lauren challenged. "He was pretty hot when he was young."

Elizabeth threw her hands in the air. "Lauren!" she exclaimed. "That picture you saw was taken five years prior to his death!"

Lauren laughed, knowing she was caught. It was true; she was slightly boy-crazy, but that didn't mean that she labeled just anyone hot. "I don't care – Amandeep's still hot."

Elizabeth laughed. "I guess." She smiled at Ed Baer, who barely managed to look up from his thick AP Biology book in time to keep from colliding with Matt Bulman's open locker. "What are you doing after school today?"

"Lifting," Lauren replied without missing a beat. "Have to get ready for softball season. Tryouts are two weeks away."

The girls passed by Jason's locker, where the slender yet still muscular blonde was pulling on his wool cap while trying to sidekick Brendan Mahoney. Lauren called out to him, smacking his backpack, and Jason smiled back.

Glancing down at the brunette who only came halfway up her elbow, Lauren smirked knowingly. She'd had her suspicions for a while, but every day it just seemed to become more and more obvious: Elizabeth was completely into the track star. Her friend didn't glance in Jason's direction even as Lauren called out hello to him, choosing instead to preoccupy herself with waving to a couple of her fellow newspaper editors directly across the hall.

Lauren stifled a laugh. Elizabeth always played it so cool. She was always Miss Composed, Miss Totally Disgustingly In Charge and On Top Of It. She always kept track of all of her millions of assignments, and managed all of the Quill and Scroll meetings single-handedly. She always took up all the paperwork for the National Honor Society, being the secretary. She was one of the main editors for the Newspaper, coordinating meetings, layout, advertisements, and even the annual Valentine's fund-raiser, only a few days from now.

She was the ideal student, with impeccable grades and an even better record. She was perfect, perfect, perfect. She never failed anything, she was never rude, she never smoke, she never drank…and she never talked about boys.

As strange as it was, Elizabeth was always the first to offer great advice to her friends about their completely flawed boyfriends, and yet Ms. Great Catch herself never talked about guys. In fact, Lauren didn't even think Elizabeth had taken up a boyfriend since she transferred to PCH two years ago.

But now little Elizabeth was caught. The cat was out of the bag and already yowling on the fence. The whole ordeal struck Lauren as tremendously funny: Jason was a great guy, and Elizabeth was a great girl. They'd be perfect for each other. And yet, no one had ever noticed anything.

Offhandedly, Lauren wondered how long it had been going on. How long had Elizabeth been completely infatuated with Jason Morgan, the original Golden Boy himself? What was it that she liked about him?

Still mulling over these thoughts, Lauren began to dream up wonderfully funny and wonderfully awkward situations in which to set the two up. A certain AP Physics experiment gone awry? A shoving war in the already congested hallways? Perhaps a few strategically sent Valentine's Day balloons? Or maybe…

"Hey," she asked, shoving Elizabeth lightly on the shoulder and smiling in amusement as the little girl almost tipped over. "You going to the cross country meet this weekend?"

Elizabeth toyed with one of her braids. "I don't know," she hedged. "I really have a lot of work to do for the Balloon Delivery on Valentine's. It's next Friday, you know. I'm totally swamped, and the database program my mom made me is totally bugging out-"

"Yeah, yeah," Lauren drawled, waving a hand in the air. "You should still come. It's so much fun."

"Really?"

The taller brunette nodded emphatically. "Oh, yeah. It's great. Have you ever seen the runners before the race? They're crazy." She laughed, clapping her hands with glee. "Jason's the best, though."

Elizabeth looked away at the mention of Jason, feeling slightly awkward and embarrassed for no logical reason.

Lauren continued, pretending not to notice. "He has a ritual of playing hackey sack by himself right at the starting line, like, fifteen minutes before the race. And it's always the same blue sack. That thing is so friggin' nasty that it's not even funny – we've dropped it in a billion puddles and thrown it God-knows-where. Oh, and he's always on a Runner's High before the race. How weird is that?"

Elizabeth forced a laugh. "Pretty weird."

Lauren smiled impishly. "And he's the only runner that runs shirtless at each and every meet. Even the indoor ones and the ones during the winter. Shirtless, Beth. The kid's totally insane."

Elizabeth nodded meekly, trying her best not to picture Jason, an all in all tan and cut Adonis, running freely without a shirt. And in those loose track shorts…And sweating…

"He's insane," Lauren continued, pretending not to notice the pink blush that was now spreading across Elizabeth's face. "And after the meet – geez, you should see him! He's a walking laugh riot."

"Really," Elizabeth managed, tugging on a braid. "He certainly sounds funny."

"Plus," Lauren added, "we all go to Kelly's right afterward. It's usually in the evening, and that's sometimes when Jason's sister is working. Did you know that they both work at Kelly's?"

"I didn't," Elizabeth replied.

Lauren nodded. "Yup. They both make pies and stuff."

Images of Jason Morgan and frosting ran through Elizabeth's head, causing her blush to deepen.

"Beth! Petey!" A loud yell ended Elizabeth's sinful train of thought. Looking to their left, the girls saw Sydney Morse standing by her locker, waving them over.

Elizabeth smiled at the other brunette. Sydney was a closer friend of hers than she was of Lauren's, but they all often hung around together after school.

Sydney freed her wavy, shoulder-length hair from her clip as Lexi Cassadine peeked out from behind her. The brunette with blonde highlights smiled and waved, pulling her own hair back into a tight ponytail.

"Beth," she grinned. "Ready to call it a day?"

"Am I ever," Elizabeth groaned, dropping her backpack on the floor and leaning against one of the lockers. "I'm so ridiculously tired today."

She blinked as Lauren waved a hand directly in front of her face. "I'll see you tomorrow, Beth," she said, readjusting her backpack. "I've got to get down to the weight room before Mr. Voves hurts me."

Elizabeth nodded. "See you later, Lauren."

"Bye, guys," the brunette called to the group as she walked away down the still crowded hallway.

"Hey, guys," grinned Johnny O'Brien, a tall Irish junior. Elizabeth vaguely recognized him as one of Sydney and Lexi's friends from band. She personally didn't know him too well and doubted that he knew her, but she smiled anyway.

"Hey, Morse."

"Hey, Johnny," Sydney smiled. Instead of saying anything further, Johnny just grabbed Sydney's combination lock and jammed it into one of the small crevices in the locker door.

"There goes your lock, Morse," he said with a shrug and suppressed small. "Too bad."

Sydney smacked him on the shoulder before trying to wrench the lock out. It took her a few tries, but she managed.

But by the time she had the combination lock in her hand, Johnny had his eyes on her purple scarf.

"Nice scarf," he pointed out, referring to the one Sydney crocheted herself. "It's mine now." With that, he grabbed one end and playfully tried to wrestle it away from the brunette.

Sydney yelped as she always did, trying to tug it back while punching Johnny in the stomach. As Elizabeth watched, Johnny slammed Sydney back against the lockers, maintaining a death grip on the scarf.

Realizing this as Johnny's naturally outgoing – and slightly crazy – nature, Elizabeth just laughed as her friend kept trying to kick the Irish boy while retaining a hold on her scarf. The two struggled against the lockers not five inches away from Elizabeth, who was laughing so hard by now that her sides were beginning to ache.

"Oh, Elizabeth," Lexi began, jabbing her friend on the shoulder. "You took AP Bio last year, right?"

Elizabeth nodded, knowing that most of her friends were taking it this year. "Yup."

"Do you remember dissecting those fetal pigs?" the girl asked excitedly.

Elizabeth just laughed. "Do I ever! That was my favorite part!"

Lexi squealed. "You want to hear what happened to us with our pig today?" she asked excitedly. "I swear, you're not going to believe it."

"Try me," Elizabeth challenged, still laughing at Johnny and Sydney's antics. As she watched them and tried to listen to Lexi, she watched a very familiar figure round the corner towards the lockers she was standing against.

Jason Morgan, his Jesus sandals flapping against the polished linoleum and his wool cap in his hands, spied Sydney and Johnny's wrestling match and walked over, slinging his bag on the floor a few paces away.

Elizabeth's heart skipped a beat with surprise, and she vaguely remembered to make sure her mouth wasn't hanging open, or anything else as embarrassing as that. Her first thought was about how Jason knew Sydney, but then she remembered that they were in Band together. Sydney played percussion instruments, while Jason played the clarinet.

Next to her, Lexi prattled on about how instead of her group's pig's veins being filled with formaldehyde and rubber, like they were supposed to be, they were filled with blood, all of which came squirting out when they made the first cut along the rib cage.

With the blonde's words echoing in Elizabeth's head, she watched as Jason rounded the two sparring friends, smiling wickedly. He stepped only close enough to quickly latch on to Sydney's flailing hand, trying to pry the lock free from her fingers.

Despite herself, Elizabeth kept laughing as she watched him. Normally she clammed up whenever he was around, but now was not one of those times.

Jason smiled at her and clicked the lock shut, dropping it into one of the wide pockets on his shorts. He waited for a moment, but neither Sydney nor Johnny noticed.

Sensing that he was hoping for a reaction, Elizabeth kept watching. Johnny finally relinquished the scarf, and a breathless Sydney – too frazzled to even notice her combo lock was gone – finally turned to her.

Elizabeth laughed as the brunette swept her hair up into a loose bun, fixing her sweatshirt.. "So," Sydney began, still trying to catch her breath. "You going home now, Beth?"

"That would be the plan, Syd," she nodded, still very aware that Jason Morgan was standing right next to her friend.

As she watched, he held out the brunette's lock and laughed at the surprised look on Sydney's face. She quickly snatched it away from him and tossed it toward her backpack, which was lying right next to Elizabeth's feet.

Jason sighed and slammed his back against the lockers, only a few inches away from Elizabeth. He fiddled with his light jacket, shifting a bit more until he was slightly closer to her.

Feeling like a ninny and despising herself for it, Elizabeth could literally hear her own heart thumping in her chest. And she just hoped to God that Jason didn't.

"So, how did you do on the Tom Jones quiz today?" Sydney asked, stuffing her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt.

"I thought I did f-fine," Elizabeth got out. Standing this close to Jason was not boding well for her nerves. "What did you put for the question about Fielding's views on love?"

She listened – or at least tried to listen – as Sydney prattled on about Fielding saying that Love was a disease and would strike the body completely and paralyze the heart's defenses.

But pretty soon she gave up, as Sydney's words just seemed to blend into one hazy string of blah blah blah.

Instead, her awareness turned even more to the tall blonde boy next to her. The one that was patiently listening to Sydney while those sexy fingers of his played with his zipper.

Elizabeth tried to keep her breathing from becoming shallow, but soon gave up. It was a lost cause. She drew in her next breath carefully through her nose, noticing that Jason still smelled of Old Spice.

Very few boys she knew wore Old Spice. They preferred the latest Hilfiger or Nautica cologne, but Jason was one of those men that stuck with the classics. Old Spice was the same cologne her grandfather wore, and Elizabeth was very surprised when she smelled it on Jason the first time.

It was at a National Honor Society meeting, and Elizabeth was waiting for the three other officers to show up so the four of them could start conducting it. But they were late, and her friend Caroline – a good friend of Jason's – had just developed her Homecoming dance pictures.

She and Caroline were seated on one of the long tables and the tall blonde was showing Elizabeth pictures of her and her date at dinner, the dance, and the bowling alley. So immersed was Elizabeth in the pictures that she didn't notice Jason leaning over between her and Carol until the boy spoke.

And that was when her senses shot into overdrive and she nearly went into cardiac arrest. There he was, right next to her. Mere centimeters from her. In fact, his shoulder was practically pressed up against her back in a way that made her heart race. His face, too, was right next to hers as he gazed down at the glossy photos. She could have kissed him right there if she wanted.

That was when she noticed the cologne – the rugged yet sophisticated scent she always associated with older, wealthier men. That was also when she noticed that he had the nicest nose she had ever seen on a guy.

Sydney's laughter jarred her from her thoughts, and Elizabeth looked up to see the girl pointing at Johnny and laughing.

The next few seconds seemed to play out in slow motion, as every horribly mortifying incident always did.

While Sydney was discussing Fielding and Love, Johnny had set his sights on his next target: Lexi.

After being teased and verbally harassed for a few minutes, a laughing Lexi gave in to the urge to punch Johnny, who managed to duck. Instead of punching her back, the Irish boy decided to tickle her instead.

As he tickled her, Lexi shrieked and bent over, half-stumbling into Elizabeth as she stood in front of the lockers.

When Lexi stumbled into her, the normally graceful Elizabeth lost her footing for a moment. That might not have been so bad had Sydney's backpack not been right next to her feet.

The end result was that a very surprised Elizabeth tripped over Sydney's large backpack and ended up sprawled on the floor, flat on her back. Her Calculus book and prized lunch box went flying and probably clattered to the floor, but Elizabeth was too shocked to notice.

Time seemed to stop.

Despite herself, Elizabeth couldn't help laughing at the ordeal. What were the odds that such a terrific and perfectly orchestrated domino effect would end up with her on the floor? It was too ridiculous. And it could only happen to her.

No one else was laughing.

Her friends seemed like statues, all paralyzed after her tumble. Johnny's eyes looked as if they would soon bug out of his head.

"Oh my God," he stammered, shock evident on his face. "I am so sorry. Seriously – I am sooooo sorry."

"It's okay," Elizabeth chuckled. "No big deal; I know you didn't do it on purpose."

The boy didn't seem to hear her. "I am sooo sorry," was all he could repeat.

Another one of her friends, Lisa Kelling, had joined the group sometime during the catastrophe, and all three girls were standing over a still chuckling Elizabeth, their mouths hanging open.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you hurt?"

"Are you all right?"

"Johnny, you ass!"

"How bad did Johnny hurt you?"

"What the hell is wrong with you, man?"

"I am soooo sorry."

Still on the floor, Elizabeth propped herself up on her elbows, her braids swinging with the movement. With everyone literally standing in a circle around her and peering down at her, she didn't have much room to get up.

"I'm fine," she kept repeating with an embarrassed smile. "Really, it's okay, no big deal. I'm not hurt." A dull pain in her hand told her that wasn't the entire truth, and she wondered if she had bumped her fingers into a locker as she fell. It felt like her nail was bruising, judging by the dull and pulsing pain in the fourth digit on her right hand.

Jenny Evrard, one of Elizabeth's co-editors, walked down the hall with her freshman sister, Caitlin. She took one look at the group and shook her head gravely.

"Beth, did you fall down again?"

Smiling at Jenny's serious tone and underhanded attempt to make even more fun of her, Elizabeth called out to her close friend. "You know I did."

Jenny shook her head once more, and then resumed her walk down the hall, knowing that Elizabeth couldn't be hurt if she was already cracking jokes about it.

The girls and Johnny continued to bicker, with him apologizing profusely and them alternating between berating him and asking her if she was okay. None of them had moved, and so Elizabeth still couldn't get up from her awkward position.

Perhaps it was the fact that out of all of them, she was the tiniest. She seemed to bring out the protective tendencies in all of her friends, guys and girls. Also, she was a self-proclaimed nerd, which seemed to add an ironic air of delicacy to her barely five-foot-one figure.

The girls continued to squawk at poor Johnny, not realizing that they were practically smothering Elizabeth. Even though it seemed as if she had been on the floor forever, it had only been a minute or so at most.

She heard shuffling behind her head, and Elizabeth wondered who it could be. And once again, she found out as soon as he spoke.

Jason gently pushed the girls and Johnny out of the way, shaking his head. Elizabeth's face reddened considerably as she heard him kindly say, "Come on, let's help the Little One up."

Under normal circumstances, she would have laughed. It was no secret that she was itty-bitty. That much was obvious. It was the main reason that people generally seemed to try to protect her when they were with her. Strangely enough, it was also the reason that the swearing and cussing in the room significantly decreased once she walked in.

Elizabeth expected Jason to extend a hand so that she could pull herself up from her propped elbows. But what Jason did next after dubbing her the "Little One" – or had he said "Wee One"? She couldn't remember - completely surprised her.

Instead of offering a hand, Jason reached under her propped elbows and grabbed her underneath the arms from behind, much like a person grabs an infant from behind. He then literally plucked her off of the ground.

In one moment she was horizontal, looking up at the ceiling. And in the next, she was vertical, the entirety of her 101 lbs. supported by Jason's arms.

Being rather old-fashioned and admittedly "prim and proper" – not to mention slightly prudish – Elizabeth expected him to help her to her knees so that she could stand up herself.

Again, Jason Morgan completely surprised her. Instead of allowing her the independence and dignity of getting up at least a little by herself, Jason just kept lifting. He lifted her a full six inches off of the ground before he set her down.

At this point, Elizabeth's gracious I-can-laugh-at-myself attitude dissipated and her cheeks flamed up at his forwardness. Wide-eyed, she just stood in place after he set her down and stepped back. Her friends were upon her at once, asking her if she was sure she was okay and if she wanted them to kick Johnny in the balls for her. None of them noticed how red her cheeks were, or how wide her eyes were, or the fact that she had yet to say anything.

Elizabeth numbly turned around when she felt Jason move behind her. Her frazzled eyes fell to his hands, which were holding her Calculus book.

Deftly, she accepted it from him, tucking it under her arm and onto the ridge of her pelvic bone. So frazzled was she that she didn't notice him pick up her lunch box. At that point, she didn't even know where her lunch box had fallen. Hell, she didn't even know she had a lunch box.

He brushed off the lid with what she might have selfishly mistaken as tenderness, clearing off any invisible dust. He grasped it by the hot pink handle and offered it to her, his pink lips curving into an apologetic smile.

"The Lone Ranger's dented."

Elizabeth didn't nod, didn't smile, didn't say anything. She couldn't. She didn't even look at him as he set the box in her hands.

He bent over to grab his backpack, his blonde hair falling in his eyes. He brushed it away as he straightened, his vivid crystal blue eyes meeting hers dead-on for the first time.

Much to her dazed surprise and pleasure, he flashed her a classic Morgan grin and ambled down the hallway to the stairwell.

She watched him leave, dazed and confused. A part of her wondered if that had actually happened to her, if Jason Morgan had actually lifted her in his arms. And the other part knew it did, and was already giddy and doing the Snoopy dance.

A quirked smile rose to her lips as her friends continued to hover over her, making sure she hadn't injured herself. Her bruised ring finger received quite a bit of attention, along with several curses slung in Johnny's direction.

Standing next to her, the young man was still apologizing. "Seriously, Beth," he began, winding an arm around her and hugging her gently. "I am soooo sorry."

She smacked him lightly on the chest, stepping back. Although still flustered by the earlier events, she actually managed to speak this time. "Dude, Johnny, it's okay. Seriously. Drop it."

Her inadvertent pun didn't go unnoticed, and Sydney reached out to pluck her lunch box from Elizabeth's arms. She surveyed the small dent in the corner gravely, running her fingers over. "Poor Clayton Moore is dented, all right."

"Acute observation, Syd," Elizabeth joked, snatching the tin box back. Under normal circumstances, she would have been quite upset at the dented corner. But these circumstances were far from normal. And under normal circumstances, she would have considered whining about her injured finger. But again, normal didn't even come close.

She gripped her lunch box by the handle, dangling it from her middle and ring fingers. There was no real harm done. And besides, if she was really honest with herself, she didn't mind the dent or her new bruise. In all truth, they both reminded her of Jason and the utter craziness of the last few minutes.

"Come on," she said, tipping her head toward the stairwell. "Let's go home."

Their worries assuaged, the girls and Johnny walked alongside Elizabeth. The girls still chattered loudly and happily, while Johnny still continued to apologize.

As the conversation moved to that night's basketball game, Lexi's thoughts drifted, a sly and knowing smile rising to her lips. She bit her bottom lip in excitement, glancing sideways at a still flushed Elizabeth.

Lauren definitely needed to hear about this.