“Trent, wait up!”

Trenton Montague turned around, frustrated, to face his pudgy-faced, blond, blue-eyed six-year-old sister who was huffing and puffing to catch up to him.

“What is it, Cass?”

Cassie caught up to him, grabbing onto his pant leg. “It’s the Capulet boys! They’re right behind me, and I outran them!” Cassie’s face showed her terror, but at her last words, a beam of pride made it’s way through the foggy fright.

“Go on home, Cass,” said Trent. “I’ll talk to these boys.”

Cassie gave her brother a look of pure admiration and scampered off to their house, positive that her brother would take care of things for her.

Trent wasn’t so sure. He had seen the Capulet cousins who terrorized the Montague girls by the park. Not just the girls Cass’s age, but older teenaged girls, too. As a payback, Trent and his cousins often did the same to the Capulet girls, although they never chased them all the way to the gates of their house.

Trent saw the boys running. If it could be called running, as it was more of a leisurely jog. They were so sure that they were going to catch up with their quarry that there was no need for haste.

“Hey!” shouted Trent, sounding braver than he felt. There was one of him and six of them.

“Hey yourself,” retorted the leader. “We’re looking for a little girl, about yea high, blond pigtails…” His voice trailed off when he noticed who Trent was. Then his face contorted into something like a smile.

His pigheaded minions guffawed lazily. Trent only crossed his arms.

“Oh, so it’s the overprotective older brother, eh? Well, I have some news for you.” His face appeared pained. “My girlfriend was so upset by you and your friends that she came home crying. I suppose that makes you happy though, doesn’t it, you sicko?”

Trent felt a pang in his heart, feeling sorry for the girl, but it was quickly replaced by anger. If that girl was with him, those feelings no longer mattered.

“Does that make you the overprotective boyfriend, then?” asked Trent calmly.

“Why, I oughta…” The leader started towards Trent, but his goons held onto his arms.

“Gabrielle is my sister, too, Cam,” said the goon on Cam’s right. “Let’s not get ourselves into anything we’ll regret later, alright? You know what that could do.”
“Yeah, Cam, wouldn’t want anything that would upset little Gabby, now would you?” Trent knew he was taunting them and that every second he stood there was a second closer to being pounded, but he could hear the shouts of his friends in the distance and wanted to hold out a little longer until backup came.

But maybe he waited too long, as both Cam and Gabrielle’s brother started towards him. Trent dodged and shouted. This, in his mind, served two purposes. Purpose A was that maybe the shout would scare them off. He didn’t really think so, but hey, he may as well try. Purpose B was that it (hopefully) alerted his friends to his position.

“Cam, Terry, what are you doing?”

Trent turned around and stared. A girl stood behind them all, her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. If this was Gabrielle, she didn’t look like the type to come home crying. She strode towards them
“I thought we discussed this. We said we didn’t want any more violence. So, care to tell me what the heck you’re doing here?”

Cam and Terry shuffled their feet under Gabrielle’s scrutiny. Trent suppressed a laugh, but that only brought Gabrielle’s attention to him.

“As for you…” She took a menacing step towards him.

Trent took a step back. “Hey, I’m only here to protect my little sister, which isn’t far off from what Cami here seems to be doing.”

Gabrielle whirled on Cam. “What did you tell him?”

“Gabby, hun…”

“What did you tell him?”

Trent took this as his cue to leave, so as soon as he was sure Gabrielle had her back to him, he backed away in the other direction.

When he was out of eyesight, he distinctly heard Gabrielle say, “Oh, great. And I suppose you have a grand explanation for where he went?”

Trent let out his pent up breath. Gabrielle was psychotic, that was one thing for sure, and, unless she had some pretty violent mood swings, she probably wasn’t the one who came home crying.
***
“Trent! Hey, Trent!”

Trent turned around to see his friends Danny and Tristan. “Hey, guys. Whatcha doing?”

“The Capulets are having a huge masked party tonight, and wouldn’t it be great to go and flirt with some of the girls right under their noses?” asked Danny, rocking back and forth on his heels, making it obvious how excited he was.

Trent couldn’t help but grin. Flirting with the ballistic Gabrielle Capulet without her knowing who it was would be a lot of fun…and revenge.

“Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?” said Tristan.

Trent’s smile faded a little. While he had known Tristan since childhood, and he was like Trent’s brother, going to the party with Tristan made him nervous. Tristan had a temper, and Trent couldn’t help but be afraid of him sometimes.

“Sure. But Tris, don’t turn this into something nasty, okay?”

Tristan shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but nodded. Trent’s whole body relaxed.
***
“So.”

Trent gulped. He hadn’t purposely gone up to Gabrielle, but how was he supposed to know it was her under that mask? The one syllable was like a death sentence.

“So what?” He couldn’t resist the lame joke. Maybe she would take that as innocence. Fat chance.

Gabrielle didn’t answer, but looked at him, taking in everything about him, from his borrowed tux to black dress shoes to black mask to blond hair. He didn’t think he looked bad at all, but the way she looked at him made him feel as if he were wearing slimy snake skin. Not that she looked bad. In fact, in her knee-length, spaghetti-strapped, light pink dress, pink mask, silver heels, and her brown hair curled around her shoulders, she actually looked quite stunning.

Unfortunately, Gabrielle noticed him looking at her, and her mouth turned halfway up into a quirky smile.

“Why don’t you follow me? We can have a little chat, just you and me.” She gestured over to a balcony. When Trent looked hesitant, she said, “You know, at any moment I could call for help and you’d be in a lot of trouble, now wouldn’t you?”

He was trapped. So he followed her reluctantly towards the balcony.

“You are a Montague boy, admit it already.”

“And what if I am? I suppose you’ll call Cami and Terry over to chase me out.”

Gabrielle laughed. “As if. Cam and I are only together to make my parents happy. Well, that’s not exactly fair, as he likes me quite a bit, but not vise versa. In fact,” she looked at him shrewdly. “I think I may have to ask you out.”

Trent stared at her, thinking she must be joking. “What?”

“I’m serious. Our families’ feud has gotten to a point of ridiculousness, and there aren’t many ways I can see of fixing it. One, however, would be one of us going out-and maybe marry-one of you. Hopefully marry, because that would force our families to shut up and deal with it. So. I have decided to start it, and since you’re here, and you seem like the most agreeable of the three of you that are here.”

“You know that there are three of us?”

“I’m smarter than you might think,” said Gabrielle with a smile.

“What if it was fake? We could pretend to have eloped, and then, say we got divorced or something.”

“That’s an idea, but hey, I’d like to go out with you, just to see what it’s like.”

“Well,” said Trent, affronted. “I am so glad that you think that I’m interesting enough to consider dating.”

Gabrielle laughed. “Don’t be silly. I’ll meet you at the Pancake House at seven o’clock, kay?”

Trent nodded, bemused as Gabrielle grabbed his hand, said something about dancing and dragged him off to the dance floor.
***
“Gabby, you there?” whispered Trent. He had been extremely surprised how much he had enjoyed Gabrielle’s company at their first date, and they had secretly been going out ever since.

“Yeah, over here.” She stepped out from behind rosebush in the park. The moonlight glinted off her shiny brown hair, and he had a sudden urge to grab her into his arms. He restrained himself, knowing that they were faking it all.

However, she ran into his arms and planted her lips firmly onto his. He staggered back a little, but pulled her even tighter.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Trent broke apart from Gabby and turned towards the voice. Tristan. He stepped out from behind another rosebush, near where Gabby came out from.

“Who would have guessed? My best friend and this scrawny little-”

“That’s enough, Tristan,” growled Trent, a sick feeling blooming in the pit of his stomach.

Tristan only laughed and walked around them. Trent kept turning to face him, trying to block Gabrielle from his previous best friend.

“Hey!”

Trent internally groaned as he heard a voice he had hoped to never hear again. Cam.

“Oi, get away from my girlfriend!”

A derisive laugh escaped from Gabby’s pale lips. “Get real, Cam. We were never together.”

Cam’s voice only showed shock, but he composed himself pretty quickly. “Really? Well, how will you feel about that when your boyfriend’s dying on the ground?” Cam pulled out a gun and pointed it at Trent, who tensed, but otherwise didn’t move. Gabby screamed.

“Hey!” Tristan pulled out a gun and Trent groaned. Tristan pointed the gun at Gabrielle. “Don’t pull the trigger, or I’ll shoot her.”

“Guys, please. This is ridiculous. We’re going to be locked like this forever if you don’t put the guns down,” said Trent, he then whispered to Gabrielle, “The minute they have their guard down, I want you to run, alright?”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I’ll be fine. Just watch for an opening. Tristan won’t care if Cam kills me, if he wants to shoot you, he will.”

Gabby nodded slowly. “But I’ll get help.”

“Tristan,” he said, talking to the gun holding boys now. “Come on, Tris, this is silly. We’ve been friends forever. And Cam, are you really ready to make your girlfriend heartbroken?”

Both looked uncomfortable and lowered their guns a fraction. Trent shoved Gabby in the other direction, and she took off running. But not before two gunshots rent the air.

“No!” shouted Trent. He watched the love of his life fall to the ground after two bullets hit her in the back. “You…you…” He couldn’t think of words strong enough to describe the two awful people in front of him. His brain was cloudy, he couldn’t think. He started towards them without fear. Something must have shown in his face, because Tristan’s face looked panicked as he pulled the trigger.