A/N: THIS STORY HAS BEEN REMOVED.

YEAR OF THE RABBIT

Bunny Fact 01: Smashed Egg Equals Smashed Face

April 16th, 2006.

Easter Monday.

Otherwise known as: the day I was attacked by the Easter Bunny.

Would I have made something as farfetched as that up? Would I have been able to pull something as bizarre as that out of my ass? Definitely not. I wasn't that creative, and if I were to use some folklore creature, I would have picked Santa Claus, only because then I would get presents by that jolly fat man.

All the Easter Bunny had given me was a rather unflattering black eye and mental trauma.

An average Monday for an average girl—that would be me, by the way. An average walk beside an average boy named Marcus, who I preferred to call Marc, because his full name reminded me of Medieval times, and Medieval times were. . . well. . . you know. Evil. What with the whole brutal wars, starvation, feudalism. But anywho—what was I getting at?

Ah. The day. Not like I cared about the day, but I really had nothing else to think about. Marc was shuffling along beside me, hands dug deep into his pockets, head bowed like some depressed teenager. This comparison wasn't too far off, seeing as he was a teenager. Grade 12, his last year—the lucky piece of shit.

I, on the other hand, was two grades below. Because of my youthfulness in contrast to his, uhm, elderly self, he seemed to think it would be entirely appropriate, perhaps even his role, to act like the mature one out of the duo we created.

I walked with a bounce in my step; he walked with a slouch.

He was quite boring today, actually. Maybe that was because it was a holiday. A lot of people became extremely bubbly and almost so hyper that I feared they would explode into millions of bloody pieces when a holiday greeted them. Then there were the people like Marc: the broody, scowl-stricken type, who quietly cursed the day in their minds, over and over until their cynicism bothered people like me:

Ridiculously awesome and amazing people.

"You're annoying me," I thought he should know, so I shared, making it so I sounded as enthusiastic as the man across the street, who was mechanically poking at a dead bird with his walking stick. We passed the man, and he waved half-heartedly when he saw my attention was on him. I waved back with a smile.

Marc sighed from beside me. "Must you be so infuriatingly pesky? You call me annoying, yet you prance about in this repulsively flimsy manner."

Marc had an awkward way of talking. Instead of simply asking, "why are you so annoying, yourself?" it was all—"infuriatingly" and "repulsively" and "flimsy". His way of speaking often drove me up the wall.

Without any intentions of replying, as I was pretending to be rather wounded by his miniature outburst, I began to inspect the handle of my Easter basket. My friend, Mini, had given me and a few of our other friends Easter baskets. She was one of those holiday-upbeat people, and I enjoyed her enthusiasm, because I shared it, just not as dramatically.

I picked out a chocolate egg and unwrapped the shiny pink wrapping, then popped the creamy chocolate into my mouth. Chocolate was my weakness. I shared this weakness with a lot of my friends. I wondered if Marc had a similar secret.

I held a chocolate in front of him, this one glimmering from the rays of the run.

He glanced at it, then adjusted his glasses on his nose, as they had been falling a bit. His dark eyebrows furrowed, and slowly, his gaze fell upon me. "What?"

"I'm giving you a present," I explained. Not like that wasn't obvious enough already.

He scoffed. "I'm okay."

I slung myself in front of him and he was forced to stop, nearly bumping into me. If he would have hit me, I would have fallen unpleasantly to the street and would have harboured a few unfortunate bruises. Thankfully, he was quicker than this.

"What the hell?" he uttered out, confused.

I held the egg back up and lifted my eyebrows expectantly. "I'm giving you a present—an Easter present. You can't just decline, Marc." It was like telling Santa Claus (or your parents, more like) that their gifts were wasted. Sure, a small bit of chocolate compared to a new stereo was pretty much a gyp, but what could ya' do?

He rolled his eyes, shook a hand out of his pocket (apparently, it had been stuck), and took the chocolate from me. He offered a highly sarcastic smile, and then brushed by me. Before he could get far, however, a loud shriek caught both of our attentions.

We turned in the direction the sound had come from.

"Get out of my house, you freak!" a lady was screaming out her door, standing on the porch and shaking her fist madly. I averted my gaze to see who she was yelling at. A boy with platinum blond hair was set in a heap at the bottom of her steps. He slowly uncurled from the painful position, groaning softly though his lips, and he lifted a hand to rub his shoulder.

"I said get awaaay!" the woman shrieked, and then revealed that she was holding a frying pan.

The boy's expression clearly said: holyshit. He scrambled to his feet, pausing only to frantically pick something up off the neatly trimmed grass, and then he ran out of her yard, setting the object he had picked up on top of his head.

I gawked at him when I realized what it was.

He stopped by her gate and peered warily back at her. She chucked the frying pan, and he let out a choked cry as he dove for the sidewalk in order to dodge the object. It went sailing over his head, landing loudly on the street.

He remained in a curled up, defensive position for some time, before I cautiously took a step toward him.

"A-are you okay?" I asked, concerned. I probably would have been afraid of him—after all, he had provoked a middle-aged woman to scream and throw things at him—but the pink and white bunny-ear band on his head just completely killed the whole outlaw impression I had been under.

He slowly looked up at me, lips parted slightly. He had. . . impossible eyes. They were pink. Who the hell would get themselves pink contacts?

His shoulders slumped momentarily before he lifted himself onto his knees and continued to gaze up at me, rabbit ears falling awkwardly around his head. He felt their awkwardness and reached his hands up to fix them, bending the wire inside of them to the appropriate places until they stood up, lolling only at the middles.

And then he cleared his throat, brushing his front off. His blue cargoes were grass-stained and wrinkled, while his yellow and green muscle-shirt seemed perfectly fine. I inspected him for a little while longer, and he apparently returned the gesture.

"Yes," he finally said, voice surprisingly husky.

I started. "Yes, what?"

His eyes narrowed a bit, and he shook himself out, as if he had gotten the shivers. "Yes, I'm alright. You asked."

"Oh, right!" I nodded, and then smiled a bit. This was so awkward. "I, uh. I like your ears." Yeah. I should have been excusing myself by now, but I still wanted to ask him about his contacts, and especially about why that chick had tossed him off her doorstep.

He protectively felt along one of the ears. "Oh," he said, softly, "yeah. They like you, too."

I stared at him, and then felt myself holding back a laugh.

He suddenly held out a painted egg to me, and I didn't have much time to wonder where it had come from. "Egg?" he inquired. It was painted with startling perfection. The colours were all bright, all beautiful, and the patterns, shapes, and designs, gave off a positive effect. When I didn't make a move to take the egg, the boy turned to Marc, who was standing beside me, silent.

Marc uncertainly accepted the egg and examined it as if it were something alien. He hesitated, and then said, "Thanks," in a rather shifty tone.

The strange boy began to smile.

"So," I glanced back at him, "what were you doing in that woman's house?"

He took a defensive step away, immediately becoming more closed. "N-nothing."

Not suspicious at all. . .

The strange boy narrowed his peculiar eyes at the frying pan, which sat innocently in the middle of the street, and then he shrugged, still on the defensive. He held out a second egg and jerked it towards me, insistently.

"I'm okay," I declined, showing him my basket of treats. "I already have Easter things." Just because I didn't like people not accepting my gifts, didn't mean I immediately accepted gifts from others. Especially from suspicious pink-eyed boys who wore bunny-ear bands.

He blinked at me, inching towards the basket. He peered in it, then began to shuffle through the various chocolates in there. I watched him, partially shocked by his boldness, and then he stepped back and held the egg out to me again, lips set determinedly.

"I said I have stuff," I frowned at him. The way he was looking at me was very aggressive.

"You don't have an egg," he said, stubbornly.

I hesitated. "Really, it's okay."

He carefully set the egg in my basket. "You have an egg now." He was a very. . . ambitious guy. His unrelenting nature made me feel as if he wasn't someone to be trusted. Was there. . . a bomb in the egg?

I stiffened and gazed anxiously down into my basket.

Marcus was turning the egg he had received around in his hands. "It's really. . . artistically made, for an egg."

"For an egg?" the boy took a threatening step towards Marcus, and then when he realized he was acting like a loony, he cleared his throat and stepped back. "Well, thanks, anyhow."

"You made these?" Marcus carefully asked.

The boy nodded enthusiastically, and then stiffly turned around and began to carefully adjust the ears atop his head. Afterwards, he milled off into the driveway of the house next door of the one he had been thrown out of. I guessed that was it, then. Marcus and I watched him, perplexed and worried for his sanity.

"Well, that's. . . cute," I decided.

Marcus sighed. "That was weird. Let's go."

I nodded and began to trail after him. I reached inside my basket and picked up the egg the boy had painted himself, beginning to inspect it. This one was beautifully painted, also. The designs were unique and eye-catching. As I held it in my hand, I realized just how fragile the egg was—and just as I thought this, I heard a crunch and I stopped walking.

I had accidently broken it.

Guilt was immediately forgotten when an enraged roar sounded from behind me. Before I knew it, I was on the ground, my hand being gouged at. My back and elbows stung from the pain and I clenched my teeth, hissing through them. My eye and cheekbone throbbed.

"You elbowed me in the eye!" I fretted angrily as the weird boy held up the shattered egg. He had tackled me to the ground the minute the egg had cracked, and was now sitting on his knees, looking like a pathetic, desperate mess, the broken egg shell cupped in his hands.

"You broke my egg!" he practically wailed. He fragilely set the pieces down on the pavement, shot to his feet, and began yelling obscenities to the sky. I stared at him, still on the ground, and decided it would be best if I stayed perfectly still. Marc, from a few feet away, was staring, wide-eyed, at the event taking place before him.

Eventually, the bunny-boy calmed himself down, bowed his head and sulked, and then wandered away, back towards the house he had been heading towards only a moment earlier.

Marc just stared at me, not even offering to help me up and not bothering to ask if I was alright.

Scowling, I rose, snatched up my basket (which was now practically empty; chocolate littered the sidewalk), and stomped past him. My eye throbbed.

I shot a cool glance over my shoulder to glare at the odd boy, but he was nowhere in sight. Coming to the conclusion that he had sensed my oncoming glare, he had hidden himself in a bush or something.

With a sigh, I continued my way home, Marc trailing behind me, silent.

A/N: THIS STORY HAS BEEN REMOVED.