A/N: Inspiration always jumps up and bites me in the ass when I least expect it. This time it happened while I was baking a chicken pot pie for myself, as my parents were out to dinner and my brother off smoking with some friends.  This story is somewhat odd and many of the situations are based on experiences I've encountered, while the main character is some type of simmered-down manifestation of me.  This first chapter is, indeed, quite boring, but it WILL get better if ya give it a chance. Maybe. Well, anyway, I'll let ya get on with it.

"Some Suburban Fairy Tale"

Introduction

I once heard somewhere that stereotyping in anything you do, whether for the purpose of a story you need to get done by the deadline or in every-day social contact, reveals your own bigotry.  (That person was such a nerd.)

Well, I guess it's true, and that makes us all bigots.

My name's Crystal. I'm almost sixteen years old and I live in the suburbs of Southern California. 

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Maybe a lot of you out there live in these suburbs, but most of you don't.  Contrary to popular belief, not all of it is exactly like Orange County, the movie.  Just most of it.

In our region, yeah, we're all spoiled, whining little bitches who, when something dreadful and disastrous occurs (like a scratch on the Mercedes our rich parents gave us or our 3-week-boy/girlfriends break up with us) we write angst-y poems about how the whole world is out to get us.  We're all like that, though none of us quite as heady and straightforward.  The people who aren't spoiled still live a nice life, but where I go to school, they're all spoiled little whining brats. 

My parents had the greatest honor of sending me to a somewhat-nearby Catholic high school, Saint Paul's High, while most of my friends went to the literally next-door public school, Lakeside High.  I'm grateful that they want me to get a great education, but that doesn't alleviate the pain of wearing plaid, pleated skirts and short collared shirts.  In short, it sucks.

My closest friends also go to the public school, but thankfully I get home at the same time they get out of school, so we all can still hang out together.  I'll introduce them to you later, this first chapter's just the background and setting, I guess.

Anyway… that taken care of, we can go on with the all the boring stuff about me.  I'm going into my sophomore year, and, well, there's not much else. I live with my parents (Tish and Tony) and my senior brother, Jake.  My mother's a housewife (she used to work at a grocery store, but then Dad started makin' lots of money and she didn't have to anymore) while my dad's an attorney.  Jake's been getting into shitloads of trouble and stuff lately, but I don't care to describe that just yet.

Well, life in the suburbs isn't hard at all for us teens. It's mostly have fun, get drunk, get laid, get high, although not for everyone.  I'm one of those ones who don't give a damn about it, but then that just leaves me to muse and sulk about with some people at the local mall or by myself at the park.

We don't have to work and we don't do chores often.  Our parents, of course, have to earn lots of money or the fam's kicked on the streets.  It's really expensive to live here, but we teens don't really give a fuck. Well, I do, but that's because I'm an "oddly mature little girl". (How oxymoronic.)

I'm "oddly mature" because I read too much when I was a little girl and I got into some troubles that eventually led me to where I am now, and I seemed to grasp the seriousness in life.  In other words, I don't always get to have fun with other teens – I'm the voice of reason and the designated driver and alla that crap.  I think too much (apparently) and I dream too much.  But we've strayed too far from the opening topic, stereotyping…

I think stereotyping is what originally got me into the whole mess that I'm in now.  I guess you could say it started in sixth grade, when I went to some sheltered protective little Lutheran school.  I met some people there, we got into mixed stuff, and to put it delicately I was kicked out of school.  The other culprits weren't, which kind of … pissed me off and severed ties.

I met my best friends at the public junior high in seventh grade: John, Clive (call her Sydney or die) and Kayla.  They adapted me to their small group, we hung out, good times.  People stereotyped us as either hippies or punks (how could they confuse the two? I think the only punk in our crowd was Sydney) and we stereotyped everyone else right back.  This kind of thinking eventually became some type of mental block against different types of people by the time I got into high school.  I met lots of other people but the stasis of thinking I was in by then was inhibiting me.  Eventually I pissed off quite a few people, and after a couple of fights things have cooled down, but I'm still on the wanted list by a few people.

That little lesson taught me some stuff about stereotyping and looking at the world honestly in the face.  And I believe that I'm a better person for it now.  And, it also led to something else…

Calvin.