Slade stared stonily at the display in front of him. He was standing in the back of one of the many Hot Topics in the area. He was staring at a pair of checkered Vans as if he was thinking about trying them on, or straightening them. Of course, Slade was actually paying no attention at all lto the Vans in front of them. For all he knew there was a dinosaur sitting there. He was in deep thought.

There were four people working there that day. Slade being one of them. Slade was one of the two assistant managers of that particular store. The other one, Kieran, was also working there on that day. Kieran happened to be Slade's best friend. She was a very beautiful girl. She had very long dark hair. On that day she had it up in a bun, but instead of having chopsticks through the bun she had a drum stick. Kieran didn't play the drums but she loved using drumsticks in her hair for some reason. She had extremely pale skin, and it was amazingly clear, not one blemish was seen, which may have been because of the extreme ammount of makeup she was wearing.

She also had on quite a lot of dark red lipstick, and a lot of mascara and black eyeliner around her piercing blue eyes as well. But her makeup didn't stop there. She was wearing lipliner, dark gray eyeshadow, and body glitter on her eyelids.

Slade couldn't help but stare at her every now and again. She was wearing a long black dress that she made herself. On the front was a coffin, with a picture of Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas on it. Beautiful craftsmanship, and it fit her beautifully. She had also worn white satin gloves, and black and white "The Nightmare Before Christmas" knee socks. She had on red and black Mary Janes to complete the outfit. She was stunning, most people would have been intimidated by her many piercings (around 10 in each ear, including cartilage piercings) she also had a small nose ring and a hoop in her lip. Her tongue had a small stud, and her eyebrow had a small pink spike.

As you can tell, Kieran was the object of much of Slade's affection. It was wasted on her though. Don't get me wrong, Slade was a very good looking guy. He had shaggy black hair that featured very strokable looking bangs that hung perfectly over his forehead. He also had dark brown 'puppy dog' eyes. He was wearing some eyeliner. He was around 5'1l and very slim. His teeth were perfect, and he was built well. His outfit was a black hoodie, a black band t-shirt under that, and some black pants, and black and hot pink Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

The fact of the matter was, Kieran had a boyfriend. Her boyfriend was named Lirit. To tell the truth, he had all of the same features as Slade, except Lirit was a bit smaller, and his eyes were lighter. His face had an elfish look to it as well. Kieran and Lirit were completely in love and Slade loved them both to death, but he wasn't completely happy with their relationship.

Anyway, the other two people working that day were Amanda, who was a very political girl with many piercings and purple hair, who Slade and Kieran both got along with, but weren't friends with outside of work, and Monica, a small blonde girl who was on her first day of work.

"Slade" Kieran said, touching his shoulder. Slade turned and looked at her quickly.

"Hello" he answered.

"OK, good, you are alive! You've been standing at those shoes for around 10 minutes, and every time I called your name you didn't even move" Kieran told him. He looked at her wordlessly for a minute and then laughed.

"Sorry" he answered, and he moved away from the shoes. At that moment someone walked into the door for the first time that morning. It was so cold in the store that the customer immediatly pulled their jacket from around their waist and put it on. The customer was a man, but before Slade could decide who it was (they rarely had new customers) Monica had bombarded him.

"I'm Monica, I work here. I'm on my first day here so if you need anything please ask me so I can get some experience. We have a sale on all band merchandise, and and on shoes, we just got a new shipment of--" but before she could continue the guy had smiled and walked away. Monica looked at him in shock. The guy walked over to the counter and tapped on it.

Kieran, who had been standing behind it turned around to face the man. Her face lit up and she ran ran around the counter and hugged him. "Lirit!" she practically shrieked.

"Hey babe" Lirit whispered, kissing her cheek. She grinned. "Having a slow day?" he asked, looking around.

"Yeah, Amanda still hasn't turned up though" she answered him. At that moment the purple-haired girl entered.

"Sorry I'm late" she muttered. Her eye was swolen and purple. Kieran let go of Lirit's waist.

"What happened?" she asked

"Rough night" Amanda answered, touching her eye gingerly. "Brett decided he'd rather punch me a few times than go to sleep. I left him, thats why I'm late" she concluded.

"I'm sorry" Kieran said. Slade walked behind the counter and handed her an icebag.

"Here, sit in the back room and hold this on your eye, rest, I doubt we'll be busy today anyway" he said. Amanda smiled.

"Thanks" she said going into the back room.

"I can help if it gets busy anyway" Lirit told them.

"Don't you work at Pac Sun or something?" Slade asked him.

"I did, I quit. I couldn't stand being down there in that part of the mall with all of the surf shops" he told Slade. "Plus, I'm starting work at Spencers in a couple of days" he said pointing across outside. Spencer's happened to be right across from Hot Topic.

At that moment the first real customer of the day came in so everyone went back to their jobs. Monica immediatley resumed firing questions and answers.

Later

Finally the day of work was over, and Lirit, Slade, and Kieran all headed home seperately for the first time in a while. Lirit had to go to a family gathering he couldn't get out of and Kieran had to babysit her younger sister.

Slade went home and sat on his bed, staring at the ceiling unhappily. Slade was 20 years old. Kieran was 17 and Lirit was 19. Kieran had finished school just a few weeks before and she was planning on going to Harvard when school started again. Luckily she happened to live very close to Boston (around an hour away) so she was planning on living with her parents anyway. Neither Slade or Lirit went to college. Lirit didn't go because he really wasn't the smartest person on earth, I mean, he was smart but school just wasn't his thing. Slade was very smart, but his family had fallen apart before he could actually go to college so he lost the will to make it.

Slade's parents had gotten a divorce when he was 12. Slade had gone to live with his father and his sisters Gerda and Lexi had gone to live with his mother. At fifteen his father died and Slade was left extremely depressed. He'd moved to the town next to Boston to live with his mother and sisters. Shortly after that his mother had died in a car accident. So at 16 he was living with his 18 year old sister Lexi, who had to drop out of college to support her siblings, and his younger sister Gerda who was only 5. The next year Lexi overdosed on anti-depressants. Slade met Kieran and Lirit at his sister's funeral because they had siblings who had been friends of hers, and they became friends. Slade's sister Gerda was taken away from him because he couldn't support her.

So at this point in time Slade's life was pretty much completely ruined. On top of that he fell in love with one of his best friends who happened to have a boyfriend. Then when he got a job and was old enough to take his sister back he found out she'd been adopted.

Fortunately Slade really wasn't the type of person to just feel sorry about himself, so he kept going with his everyday life and just hoped that his life would get better. It hadn't happened yet though.

Anyway, back to the story. Slade stood at his stove and stirred Ramen noodles in the pot. He watched them as they boiled and he breathed a deep sigh. At that moment the phone rang. He answered it. It was Kieran.

"Hey babe" Kieran said sweetly into the phone.

"Hey Ky, aren't you babysitting?" he asked.

"Yeah, but Mae came home and took Rhoswen out to a movie so I figured I'd call you" Kieran answered. (Mae being her older sister who had been friends with Lexi, and Rhoswen being her younger sister that she'd been babysitting)

"Cool, I'm fixing Ramen noodles. Care to join me?" he asked.

"Sure!" Kieran answered. "I'll rent a video if you want"

"OK, pick something, I don't care" Slade told her. "Bye" he ended the conversation, and hung the phone up. "She's coming over" he whispered to himself sadly. He was wishing that her coming over didn't mean so much to him when he could never have her anyway.

Author's Note- I know I know I know, I've got 3 new stories, and 3 old ones that need to be updated badly. I'm sorry! I'm going to try to work on some of them and I may actually delete a couple of the older ones (I'm thinking it will most likely be the one about Aubrey and maybe Kylie but I'm not sure yet) so I hope you liked this story. It has been forming in my head forever and I really needed to write it out. I'll love anyone who reviews and I'll be their best friend!

-Edit- I got a review from Res En Tar about some mistakes in the story so for probably the first time in my whole entire life I've actually gone back and edited something. You guys know me, I write and as soon as I'm finished I read it, I correct what I see, then I upload it. So I rarely edit anything, and I don't use spell check (mostly because there isn't one on Word Pad which is the only word processing program I have besides notepad) and I don't have grammar check. Anyway, I was extremely bored so I fixed a few things. However, I didn't do anything about my lack of complex sentences. Mostly because I didn't feel like changing anything, and as far as I'm concerned 10 words a sentence is pretty good. So thanks for the help!