Call Me Cliché

Pizza.

Say that, and Janice Erichi Henderson will come running. She'll twirl and leap and prance, and possibly knock you down if you're too close to her beloved pizza.

But other than that, she's a nice girl. Promise.

Living in the four-year sentence most kids call "high school", Janice has learned to fend for herself and her pizza. She's got it down to a simple strategy: ignore other people, have flailing-seal fights with her best friend, Sara, inhale ridiculous amounts of pizza, and resist the urge to decapitate her evil English teacher who's obviously out to get her.

It's worked so far, and Janice thinks her sophomore year might just run smoothly.

Nope.

With a D in English, the only blemish on her otherwise perfect record, Janice finds herself in a tough spot.

Her English teacher, Mr. Butt-head, as she calls him (not to his face, of course), has offered to raise her grade if she gets help from a tutor. Unfortunately, the tutor Mr. Butt-head has in mind, Damian, is kind of a jerk. And is kind of dating the girl Janice despises most. Most of all, he's kind of hot. Which sucks.

See? Told you he was out to get her.

Now throw in another equally-hot guy, Nick, who happens to have avoided the Jerk-itis disease most of the guys in the school have mysteriously caught, and also happens to be one of Damian's best friends, and you've got yourself a typical teenage love story. With a little bit of humor, of course.

However, Janice disagrees. She's read enough books and seen enough movies to know exactly how these sort of stories turn out. Though the odds are against her, Janice is determined to stick to her strategy and keep her life as un-cliché as possible, with her pizza by her side every step of the way.

Will she succeed? Or will she lose her herself, and worse, her pizza?