"Reckless behavior" was really the only way to describe it, and it's funny how those two little words can change so many things. It wasn't like I'd attempted suicide (intentionally, anyways), and I wasn't a cutter, either. I can see how they might have been paranoid after what happened to Cassandra, but it wasn't even as though we were related. I may have been upset, but I was not manic-depressive (as my father apparently seemed to think I was.). To tell the truth, if I had been him, I would have been more worried if my daughter hadn't started doing something crazy. Personally, I think that I was perfectly justified in acting the way that I did-- I have never met anyone who's happy about a parent dying, and I, as strange as I can be, am no exception. And it wasn't as though I did anything too terrible-- skipping school for a month is small compared to so many of the other things that I could do-- but I think it was the last drunken party (Which I wasn't actually drunk at, incidentally) was the last straw.

I wasn't supposed to go back home. Ever. When Mom died in March, my father agreed to let me stay in New York, provided I checked in with the older couple next door at least once a day. I was supposed to stay there and finish high school, and come back to California during my vacations. Or at least, that was the idea. After I skipped classes for most of May, though, I think the idea of me being on the East Coast without direct parental supervision started to creep my father out a bit. When he heard about the things I'd done while I'd skipped school, my father really started to doubt my brilliant plan. Oh, I didn't do anything terrible-- throwing things at passersby, spray-painting my downstairs neighbor's dog green, flinging spaghetti at this one girl who was so fake-tanned it was almost painful-- but it was enough to catch my dad's attention and get him a little worried about me. Even so, he let me stay on the East Coast for the summer. And that was when I kind of lost control of myself. I didn't become a promiscuous slut like my cousin, Robynne, but I couldn't seem to help telling the grief counselor that her face looked as though her mother was a pug and her father was a mule, and I wasn't exactly in the mood to stop for a speeding taxi. But, in the grand scheme of things, I guess the things I did over the summer weren't particularly terrible, either. Until the incident with the drunken party, that is.

To set the record, I wasn't actually drunk at that party, I only smelled like alcohol because some asshole had sloshed beer all down my back. But, honestly, you try telling that to my dad. I'd been dancing up on a table as a joke, and, when the police came in to break the party up, I hopped off. Since I'm not the most graceful person on the face of this earth, I understandably staggered a little bit, and that was enough for a friend of mine to think I was completely smashed. She called my neighbors, who came and picked me up and told my dad that I was obviously not able to deal with my grief. And no matter how many times I tried to tell them that I was sober, they refused to believe me. I'd known that they'd sworn up and down to take care of me, but, honestly, it was overkill. And by the time they figured out that I wasn't lying, my dad had already booked a flight to New York, and he was determined to have me home before the next morning.

This little incident explained why I found myself sitting in a kitchen in California the week before school was due to start, my dad across the table from me and my brother to my right. My dad obviously had something to say to me, but I could tell by his tense form that he had no idea how he was going to even talk to me. Considering we'd barely even talked since my parents' divorce nearly five years ago, it was understandable. My brother, Bryce, was acting as though this were a perfectly normal occurrence, to be sitting in the kitchen in complete silence at three o'clock on a Thursday morning. He pointedly avoided catching my eye, though, so I knew that whatever was going to happen next wasn't going to be something I would like.

We were sitting at the table for a good ten or fifteen minutes before my dad finally figured out just what it was that he wanted to say. "So, Evie, how was your party?" he asked in an icy voice.

I stiffened. I was not going to like what would come out of his mouth. On the upside, it wouldn’t matter what I said at this point, seeing as anything I could tell him would get me in trouble. “It was very nice,” I replied cautiously.

“Well, dear, I’m glad you had a good time. You should try and hang on to those pleasant memories, though, since I’m sure it’s the last party you’ll be attending for a while.” His smile was starting to look genuinely happy, and I knew that I was screwed. “Though you claim you did nothing wrong, this incident has shown me that a sixteen-year-old girl cannot be expected to have any type of responsibility, and I believe that I will have to take away your freedom. And please,” he said, holding up his hand in my direction when he heard the beginnings of my protest, “don’t speak until I’m finished. You will have to stay here, in California. You brought most of your clothes, and your more important things, and I will make sure that the rest of your things arrive by the end of the week. And on Friday—“

“Today, you mean,” Bryce said, pointing towards the clock.

My father glared darkly at him and muttered something about disrespectful teenagers before he went on. “—you will start classes at Stark Academy. It is a boarding school, and they are very strict. Hopefully they can help curb your reckless behavior, and stop this downward spiral you’re headed on.”

“But I don’t know anyone there!” I protested. “How am I supposed to live with complete strangers?”

Wearily, he sighed, and told me, “You know your brother, obviously. And Robynne goes there as well. And don’t the twins go to school with you, Bryce?”

Bryce nodded, and I rolled my eyes. Robynne was my slut of a cousin, and, while I didn’t mind my brother, Robynne was a little more than any human should be expected to stand. I sometimes think that her sole ambition in life is to become famous for screwing things (Like Anna Nicole, only… No, exactly like Anna Nicole). Mikey and Parker, the twins, had been my friends when I was younger. Had being the operative term. From what Bryce had told me, they had turned into normal teenage boys, and I assumed that they had become thoroughly annoying, like all teenage boys. So I supposed knowing Bryce, the twins, and Robynne was better than nothing, but, honestly, I would only be talking to my brother. And, as my brother was (and still is) one of the most antisocial people I know, knowing him would be almost like knowing absolutely no one.

“I’m not doing it to be cruel, you know,” my dad said, softening somewhat. “I only want what’s best for you, Evie.”

I shot him a glare before leaving the kitchen.

Early Friday morning, I stood in front of the dorm building waiting for Bryce to show up. My eyes were half-closed, and I had to fight off the urge not to let them drop all the way closed. My father had timed my arrival perfectly-- after about three hours of sleep on Thursday morning, he shook me awake so that we could make the seven-hour drive to Stark for the orientation. I knew I should have spent my time trying to learn the layout of the school during the tour of the school, but I had been too busy trying to stay awake through the speeches to memorize the halls and rooms we passed. By the time I returned from the orientation, my suitcases and bags were already in my dorm room, though none of them were unpacked. Tiredly, I'd glanced over towards the other side of the room to find the bed had been remade with a blood-red comforter and matching silk sheets, and the shelves had been filled with large, black-bound books. I squinted to make out some of the titles-- all of the Lord of the Rings books, a few by Stephen King, a few more by Isaac Asimov, and a few with the word "blood" in the title. After I saw that, I figured that I had seen more than I'd wanted to, and I'd shot under the school-issued blankets and turned off the lights before my roomate could come back and turn out to be a Satanist or a Neo-Nazi (It's not that I particularly hate either group, it's just that Satanists are almost always annoying, and Neo-Nazis tend to hate biracial girls like me.). Even though I hadn't come back to the dorm until eleven-thirty, I'd woken up at five, hopped into the shower, and had spent about an hour getting ready. Bryce had told me not to worry about getting breakfast, and that I could eat after the morning break. Though we were in the same grade, he was nearly two years older than I was, not to mention that he'd been at Stark for the past three years, so I was prepared to listen to his ideas. Thanks to his plan, I'd had extra time to make sure that I had all of my things together and that my waist-length curls were completely dry before I left (That way, they didn't soak through the white uniform blouse. Let me tell you, wet hair + white shirt unpleasant experience.). We'd agreed to meet at seven-thirty, and I realized that it was nearly seven fourty-five, and there was no sign of my brother. This was even better for me than the complimentary coffee I'd snagged on my way out of the dorm building-- when I realized that I might be late, or that I might get lost on my way to the school building and be found months later, my eyes snapped open, and it took a few minutes for me to calm myself down. By the time I'd decided to go storming into the guy's dormitories to wake up my brother, though, I realized that I wasn't alone in the empty space in front of the building. I heard footsteps approaching behind me, and I tensed, ready to turn around and bash the footsteps' owner with my backpack if they tried to attack me. And while the thought of a five-foot ten, one hundred-twenty-pound girl attacking anything may sound pretty funny, my bag weighed about as much as I did, and I figured I could do some pretty serious damage with it.

When the footsteps stopped behind me, and I felt a hand on my shoulder, I instantly turned around and swung my backpack right into someone's stomach.

"Well, I was going to ask if you wanted any help," choked out a guy's voice, "but if you're this violent before we've even met, then I'll have to pass." He was clutching his stomach in a gesture of mock anger, a smirk gracing his face. He had long black bangs swept in front of his eyes, but, going by what I knew about him so far, the rest of his face would have been twisted into a somewhat sadistic smile.

Even though I barely knew him, this boy's smirk was starting to get on my nerves. I opened my mouth, meaning to wipe the smirk off his face with a great comeback, but Bryce completely killed my timing by suddenly popping up and saying, "Man, it's too early in the morning to be picking up on girls like that. And I don't think she goes for guys like you, anyways."

The smirking boy laughed at that comment, and turned towards the school.

"Sorry I was so late," Bryce apologized. "I lost my jersey, and I had to try and find it before I left. I forgot to return it last year, and Coach would kill me if I kept it any longer than I already have."

Rolling my eyes at Bryce, I followed him towards the school building.

When we stepped through the doors of the school building, it seemed as though most of the school's students had decided that it would be a great idea to stand out in the halls while they were waiting for classes to start. Even though I knew there were only five or six hundred students in the school, it seemed like there were half a million teenagers walking around and simply making life difficult for me by separating me from Bryce. Apparently, since I'd left California, Bryce had become wildly popular, since it seemed like we couldn't walk more than three feet without someone shoving me away from him so they could find out how his summer had gone. After we'd been walking through the crowd for maybe two minutes (and after we'd moved maybe twenty feet down the hall), I think Bryce figured out that I was pretty uncomfortable, and he slung an arm over my shoulder and started pulling me through the hall with him. This earned me a few dirty looks from the girls who walked up to talk to Bryce and apparently mistook me for his girlfriend, but I just stuck my tongue out at them when he wasn't looking, and poked him in the side if he stopped for too long.

Eventually, we made it to the office, and Bryce was in the process of explaining how I should get my schedule, and how I should try not to piss the principal, Mr. Gianetti, off too badly, when a loud bell rang.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and said, "Shit, Evie, I hate to leave you on your own like this--"

"Technically," I pointed out, "I'm not alone, since the secretary is sitting right--"

"Evie, just shut up, okay?" I closed my mouth with a sigh, and he went on. "So anyways, I don't want to leave you alone like this, but I have to run to my first class before I'm late. I think Mr. Gianetti is talking to someone right now-- when he's done, just go in and ask for your schedule, and then ask if he can have someone show you around today. I'll meet you right in front of this office at break, alright?"

I rolled my eyes at him mockingly before I nodded my agreement. I watched him as he left, and then I sank down into one of the faux-leather armchairs. I had almost fallen asleep for the second time that morning when the door opened and a paunchy, middle-aged man stepped out, followed by a boy with a mess of black hair and his school uniform shirt untucked, his tie undone, and his top two or three buttons undone, the school-issue clothes hardly concealing the fact that he was attractive. Though he was tall and thin, it was obvious that he was muscular. Combined with the beginning of a tatoo on his hand, those muscles made him look like the type of guy you wouldn't want to bring home to your mother. His black hair fell in front of his face before brushing his collar, and I thought that he looked familiar, but I couldn't see his face well enough to figure out how I knew him.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Owens. I hope I don't have to see you in here too much this year-- as delightful as your face is, looking at it every day is far too much for me to stand," said the middle-aged man, presumably Mr. Gianetti, as he held the door of his office open and ushered the boy out.

He walked out obidiently, saying to Mr. Gianetti as he went, "Well, Mr. Gianetti, it was wonderful talking to you, but, hopefully, we won't be seeing so much of each other this year. It appears that this young lady here is in need of guidance-- and I know for a fact that her soul is in more urgent need of salvation than mine." As he spoke, he flicked his hair back from his face, and I caught a glimpse of pale skin, an eyebrow piercing, a lip ring, and two green eyes-- and I realized how I'd recognized him. It was the smirking boy from this morning, and he had plastered the same expression on his face, and was looking straight at me.

I still had no control over my actions, so I shot him a glare and stuck my tongue out at him.

Mr. Gianetti shook his head at us, muttering something about how kids could not control themselves these days (which was, in my case, true) before turning fully towards me. "So, young lady," he began, "is there anything that you need?"

His tone was obnoxiously condescending, and I was kind of pissed at the world in general, so I think I came across as sounding kind of annoyed. "I would like to have my schedule, but you know, it's not strictly essential. If I'm lucky, I can make it to all my other classes without it."

I regretted saying that as soon as it popped out of my mouth, but he was, apparently, amused by it. He double-checked that he had my name right, whipped out my schedule, and passed it to the smirking boy, who dropped his grin and shot the principal a confused look. Mr. Gianetti geave us each a smile that was so demented, I almost expected him to start cackling, before he turned to me and said, "Well, Miss Collins, it seems that today is your lucky day. I'll give Mr. Owens here your schedule, and you can get to your classes without it, since he'll be showing you around!"

"Um, Mr. Gianetti, don't you think that showing this loveley"-- here, he rolled his eyes--"young lady around just might make me late to some of my classes?"

The principal nodded, a smile plastered on his face.

"And don't you think," the smirking boy went on, "that I would get detention for being late unless someone gave me a pass?"

The principal nodded again, his grin widening.

And finally, the smirk was wiped right off his face. "I'm not going to get a pass, am I?"

Mr. Gianetti shook his head and shoved us out of the office, closing the door behind us. At least he was nice enough to wait until the door had slammed behind us to start laughing maniacally.

The smirking boy rolled his eyes again before shooting a grin in my direction and taking off down the hall. I was a bit stunned, and it took me a moment to get going after him. "Wait up!" I called, putting my head down to give myself a little more speed. While I wasn't particularly paying attention, I ran smack into something solid-- his chest-- and bounced off of it. I nearly fell to the floor, but he caught me a moment before I hit the ground. He had cradled my body to his, and he was staring straight at me with a pair of soft green eyes. Neither of us said anything for a moment, our heavy breathing the only sound in the quiet hall. The silence started to get a little strained, and I broke it by saying, "Well, this is awkward, don't you think?"

"This is awkward?" he asked, an arrogant smirk back on his face. "What about this?" He easily set me upright, and, putting his hands on my waist, tugged me closer to him.

Before I tell you the rest of what happened, I need to defend myself. After my mother died, I stopped being able to control the things I did, and one thing I'd always enjoyed doing was freaking people out, though I hadn't done it very often before her death. So everything that happened next was simply me trying to scare him, not me being a slut. I swear.

But anyways.

I rolled my eyes, wrapped my arms around his neck, and asked "Well how about this?"

His smirk only widened, and I should have known then that this entire incident could get a little awkward. Instead of running like any sane girl would have, I let him push me against the nearby wall, only a few inches separating our bodies. "Awkward enough for you yet?" he asked, breathing down into my face.

Laughing, I replied, "Not yet," and, hooking my fingers into his beltloops, I pulled his body towards mine so that there was no space between our hips. "How about you?"

Even though there was so little space between our bodies, his smirk was still six or seven inches from me, but that distance shrunk as he bent his arms and lowered his face closer to mine. I felt his breath across my face as he murmured, "Feeling uncomfortable yet, babe?"

I laughed at his smirk and answered, "Of course not."

As we've already established, I wasn't thoroughly thinking about what I was doing, and, whether it was because of that smirk, or because I was just in one of my annoying moods, I had this obscene, overpowering desire to beat him at the little twerp at the game we were playing, and, at the time, there were only three options I could take. The first was to just end it by ripping off all my clothes and streaking down the hall while he was still in shock, but, really, I'm not an exhibitionist. The second option was to forfeit and run down the hall-- sensible, yes. Possible, no. Though my ego probably could stand losing this contest, he had me pinned to the wall with his body. So to get away, I would have to scare him away from me, or at least make him uncomfortable, and I did that the best way I could think of.

I kissed him.

The kiss was short-- though I kissed him on the lips, there were no tongues involved. Even so, I'd figured that it would be enough to scare him off, or at least enough to shock him for the time it would take for me to get away. But when I drew back, his smirk was wider than ever. "Nice try, babe," he told me, "but if you were trying to make me uncomfortable, this might have been better."

I opened my mouth to reply, but his mouth came down over mine. I'll spare you the gory details, and I'll just say that I found out that, besides an eyebrow piercing and a lip ring, he had a tongue piercing. It was a moment before he pulled away slightly for breath and when he did, I pushed him away and ducked under his arms, taking a few steps back before I stopped. Putting on a smirk of my own when I saw the shocked expression on his face, I said lightly, "I would try to beat that, but I must say that I hate stripping in public places."

"Well," he said with a shrug, "we could go somewhere pri--"

"No," I said, cutting him off. "We are not going anywhere private, and, if you must know, it's not stripping in public that I'm opposed to-- it's stripping for morons that I barely know that really bothers me."

He rolled his eyes, swinging an arm around my shoulder and guiding me in the direction of my class (or, at least, I hoped so). It was funny how I was walking and talking to this guy like I'd known him for most of my life, when I'd known him for all of five minutes, and I didn't even know his name.

He'd been talking about some demented fantasy world as I walked, where, apparently, we were in love (as I said, it was a demented fantasy), and I had mostly zoned him out. The arm that wasn't around my shoulder was gesturing wildly, and he was still talking, so I doubted he'd noticed I hadn't been paying attention. He'd simply kept on talking, and now he was saying, "... and then, you can be Mrs. Michael Owens, and we'l be the type of disgusting newlyweds that make out in restaurants and-- hey, are you alright?"

My mind barely registered what he had asked-- I'd stopped paying attention to him altogether when he'd said his name was Michael Owens. Without answering his question, I asked him weakly, "So your name is Michael Owens, then?"

"Yeah..." he answered, looking at me suspiciously, "but I never knew it was that disgusting..."

"And your middle name is Orestes, so your initials spell 'MOO'--"

"Yeah... wait, how the hell do you know that?"

"--but you think that's better than your brother, because his middle name is Orpheus, and even though Orpheus is the better name than Orestes, it means that his initials spell 'POO'--"

"This would be impressive if you weren't coming off as so stalkerly," he muttered.

"--and this definitely isn't the first time we've done that," I continued, too hysterical to be paying much attention to him, or to make complete sentences, "and why is it that every time we kiss, you have to be trying to freak me out?"

There was a moment of silence as, hand still around my shoulder, he stared at me like I was a freak of nature. "Um," he asked intelligently, "do I even know you? Because Bryce is the only one here who knows my middle name, and Evie's the only other one who knows it, and she's in New York. And since I know all the girls that Bryce would telll anything to, I know you're not one of them. So that means you're either a stalker or Evie, and, like I already said, Evie's in New York, so that makes you a STALKER!" He leapt away from me, pointing wildly in my direction.

"But what if I told you that Evie's not in New York?" I asked him with a smirk.

He shrugged. "Why would Evie be here? She hates her dad, and she'd only come if her mom died... Oh, huh, the other Cassandra did die. But still. You're a stalker."

"Last time I checked, my name was 'Evie,' not 'Stalker.'" I smiled sweetly at him. He was pretty amusing to freak out.

"B--B--But... I... OH MY GOD, COULD YOU BE ANY MORE CONFUSING?" he shouted, falling down on his knees and banging the floor in frustration.

"Yeah, if you want me to," I said lightly, examining my nails and ignoring his dramatics. "But if you want me to make things easy on you, then my name is Evelyn Collins, I'm sixteen years old, and we grew up together. Capisce?"

He looked up. "Really?" he asked, happily.

"Really, really."

"Alice!" he shouted, jumping up to wrap me in a tight embrace. "I was thinking I was going to have to fly all the way to New York just to piss you off!"

"Well, isn't it your lucky day," I said, drily. "Now do you want to let me go? I'm going to miss my first class entirely, and, also, your hand really shouldn't be on my ass."

Reluctantly letting go of me, he shrugged. "You're going to hate the teacher, so I don't see why you want to go. What do you say about getting some coffee or something instead?"

I figured it wouldn't kill me, so I said, "Sure, why not."

As he slung an arm back around my shoulder and headed towards a nearby exit, he muttered defensively, "And it's not like I could help it. It's a nice ass."

A/N:

So I'd promised myself a while ago that I was going to keep on with this story, and I haven't broken that promise. Not technically, anyways. As a birthday present to myself (Okay, so it's not 'till Dec. 6, but whatever.), I'm allowing myself to redo the story, so that it makes something resembling actual the plot is still the same as the last time, well, I actually know what I'm doing and where I'm going this time around-- no more random story ideas that eat the plot here! Because last time, I just let the story write itself, which was why, at many points, I felt that the events happening didn't really work with the story. The only differences will really be a quicker progression (none of those "oh, let's devote eighty pages to a single day"-type things), a more coherent plot, and fewer, but longer, chapters (the original had around 60 chapters in its outline, this one should have fewer than forty.). Oh, and shorter A/Ns-- I hope.

Also, thank you for all your reviews and support-- I hope it continues with this version!