A\N: Well, people , this is my story. Merry Christmas to you all! If you guys like this story, then I'll write some more and put some more up. Yeah. ...come on, read now!

It was a peaceful morning on a little street in Hermosa Beach. The sun was just coming up, all the inhabitants were asleep, and there was even a bird or two singing! All the wild parties of the previous night were over; all the teenagers who usually disturbed the peace with obnoxious rap and hip-hop music had gone home and been punished by their parents….yes, it truly was a lovely morning.

Too bad it wouldn't stay that way for long.

Suddenly, out of the blue, there came a distant sound from one of the houses near the end of the street. People began to wake up, wondering what it was…what could be making that god-awful sound? As the sound intensified in volume, several people sat up in bed and stared out their windows, trying to think of what the noise reminded them of. Little children rushed to their television sets, thinking they heard the unmistakable sounds of a cartoon playing. And then, simultaneously, all the people on the street knew immediately what the sound was----

Giggling.

Laurel Andersen was standing by her window, the curtains thrown open, giggling. No, not even giggling---laughing. Hysterically laughing.

The neighbors rolled their eyes. They should have known: today was July 5th, the worst possible day to be up at 6 o'clock in the morning because of the sound that always was coming from this particular house. They quickly reached for their earplugs and carried them back to bed…it was going to be a long, annoying morning once again.

Laurel paused in her almost manical laughter for a moment to sigh rather loudly and shout to the world "I love this day!"

"SHUT UP!" someone in the next house over cried.

Blushing, Laurel quickly closed her window and shut her mouth. She rushed over to her boom-box and started to play some music extremely loudly. She threw open her closet doors and laughed, singing along with the music. "Video killed the radio star! Video killed the radio star!"

Today was a good day….a very good day. Today was the first day of Drama Camp.

-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Laurel was feeling rather bouncy that morning. She bounced into her clothes, into the kitchen, and to the cabinet, where she bounced up and grabbed a can of strawberry-banana juice. She bounced to the chair, seized her backpack, and then bounced up and down for a few extra seconds while her exhausted mother tiredly prepared her lunch and handed the brown paper bag to her daughter. Laurel grabbed the keys to the car from her mother, bounced out the door, down the steps, and to the car, squealing excitedly all the way.

Even on the drive to Drama Camp, Laurel bounced up and down eagerly in the passenger seat, clutching her backpack to her chest. "Iiiiiiiit's aaaaa typical daaaay…." she sang, "in Doooogpaaaaaatch U.S.AAAAA…."

Her mother sighed as she pulled into the driveway of the theatre where Drama Camp took place. "Hee-re you go, honey," she whined, as Laurel got out of the car. "Ha-ave a nice….day…." and, even whilst struggling to keep her eyes open, Laurel's mother drove away and she was left before the doors of Drama Camp.

Whistling happily, Laurel strutted through the door of the Dance Room, the first room that one had to pass through at the camp. She stared around the room, looking to see if any of her friends had already arrived there, and was rewarded with the sight of two of her friends, Arielle and Sara. "HI PEOPLE!" she yelled at them.

"HI LAUREL," they yelled back.

"HOW ARE YOU GUYS?"

"FINE, BUT CAN WE STOP YELLING NOW?"

"Sure." Laurel walked over to the two, grinning broadly. "So, have you guys picked up your scripts yet?"

"Yeah…we're pretty much finished filling out all the forms and getting all the stuff we need," admitted Arielle. "We came a whole fifteen minutes ago."

Laurel looked at her watch, seeing it to be 8:15, fifteen minutes before Camp started. "Oh well, I came late this year I guess. I'll see you guys later." She walked off to one of the tables that had been set up and got in line to get her script.

As soon as she had gotten her script and filled out all of the necessary forms, Laurel walked out of the dance room and went to sit on a bench outside so she could look through her script. She was surprised to find that Pam, the director, was actually going to do the whole "Point of No Return" scene. Sure, Pam liked taking risks with her shows…but this was only Drama Camp, after all. Since when had a Drama Camp show been PG13 rated?

Laurel was interrupted from her musings by the unsettling feeling that someone was watching her. Slowly, she lifted her head from the crisp, new pages of her script and peered curiously around her. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a boy, obviously new to Drama Camp for she had never seen him before. God, she thought, We certainly don't get a lot of types like him.

The bottom line was, he was unexplainably, uncontrollably….hot. Laurel usually didn't make observations like this, but it wasn't very often that guys looking like this showed up to Drama Camp. He had lovely dark brown hair, (not too long and not too short,) and striking blue eyes that seemed to twinkle when the light hit them. He was tall and slender, and had almost painfully white teeth that were now smiling at Laurel as if she was the best thing he had seen all day. She couldn't help but blush.

"Hi," he said.

What was she supposed to say? All intelligent thought had suddenly fled Laurel's brain. Witty response! Witty response!

"Er…hi."

Smooth.

"Sorry if I was interrupting anything you were doing…I just wanted to say hello. I'm new." There was that smile again. Damn! She couldn't think when he smiled at her like that. Finally, she gathered up enough courage within herself to respond.

"Oh, no, it's fine, I wasn't doing anything except looking through the script. I'm Laurel, by the way." She smiled at him, hoping she didn't look as stupid as she felt.

"David. It's really nice to meet you, Laurel." Suddenly, out of the blue—no pun intended---a tall, gangly boy with a blue Mohawk ran up to David and wrapped his arms around the other boy's waist.

"Aww, DAVIDYKINS," yelled the boy in a baby-voice, "IT'S BEEN TOOOOOO LONG!"

"Yeah, sure, Stu," David laughed, returning his hug.

The way the two boys were holding each other made something click in Laurel's head. All the nervousness that she usually had around all the straight guys she knew almost instantly evaporated. Thank god, she found herself thinking.

"And this is…?" she asked, giggling as she poked Stu's Mohawk.

"Hey!" cried Stu, breaking apart from David and patting his outrageous hairdo, "Do not touch the hair."

David laughed and punched his friend's arm. "Well, Laurel, this is Stewart, my friend from grade school."

"Nice to meet you guys. Both of you." The words were flowing smoothly now…why did she have so much trouble around straight guys? Why did she have to be so shy?

All three of them heard a woman's voice calling "Everyone in the theatre!" The doors to the Playhouse officially opened, and the Drama campers began piling inside.

"Oh, well, I guess I'll meet up with you guys later, I'm going to go meet my friends," Laurel told the two guys before her.

"Umm….k. Bye, Laurel," replied David. It wasn't until he was sure that Laurel was out of sight that he sighed, saying to his friend, "God, Stu, how could I ever have thought a girl like that…would like a guy like me."

"Come ON, stupid, you've just met her. You've got seven weeks to make her crazy for you!" Stu said, clapping his friend on the back. "By all the spikes on my pointy blue head, this girl will like you before the week is through."

David shook his head, and the two friends headed inside the theatre to join the rest of Drama Camp. Little did they know that someone else had his eye on Laurel----and he was determined to have her, whatever the cost.

This unknown onlooker was not like any of the other teens at camp---you could say he had an almost...ghostly persona...