---- Raven ----
I pulled my naturally blond hair up into a high ponytail, leaving one strand of long, elbow length hair hanging down on the left side of my pointed face. I grabbed a neon green object that resembled mascara, only, inside was neon green goop and it was for my hair strand that I had left out. I coloured that strand of hair a different colour every day, to coordinate with what I was wearing, it was just another quirk in my personality. The neon green made my grey-green eyes seem more green and alive then they normally looked. I was wearing a pair of flared black cargo pants, a neon green tank and a black zip hoodie, hence the neon green hair dye. I grabbed my black backpack and threw my text books haphazardly into the bag, ran downstairs, threw together a lunch that resembled the perfect heart attack waiting to happen, threw it in too and then headed for the door, not bothering for breakfast -I never ate it on school days.
I hissed when I saw that my brother's car was already gone, not that it really surprised me, if I were a popular jock I wouldn't have waited for my ever so unpopular, anti-social being of a sister either. Instead I walked the two blocks to the bus stop and regretfully boarded the yellow hulk that barely made it up the hills every morning and afternoon. I took the first seat I came across and told myself not to hyperventilate due to all the people surrounding me. I was anti-social. Period. I didn't like people. I had maybe four friends, and even then, I couldn't stand them for very long.
I gulped as I realized why the girl I didn't recognize was smiling hesitantly at me, the rest of the bus was full. Full, except for the only remaining seat, the one beside me. Great. Just what I needed. Not. I reluctantly scotched over and pressed myself up to the cool aluminium side of the bus, making sure I looked as unwelcoming as I could, hoping she would get the message that I didn't want to talk. She was either blind or didn't care.
"Hi. I'm new here." I could have told her that. Our school wasn't a large one by any means, it was actually rather small, maybe five hundred people from grade eight and up. And I was considered the infamous loner, even in my little loner group I sometimes hung with. Nobody talked to me, for a good reason, I tended to be sarcastic almost ninety nine percent of the time, and not many people enjoyed my witty, thorn wielding comments. Poor girl, I almost pitied her, until she spoke again.
"My name's Mary, what's yours? Why is your hair dyed green in only one spot? Is it some kind of special day at school and the lady at the office -Mrs. Rieds I think it was- didn't tell me?" A few people around us had stopped talking to stare at the girl, everyone had pretty much figured that they didn't talk to me unless they wanted to end up hurt emotionally or physically, plus I was one of the very few social outcasts. I just stared at the girl, what kind of name was Mary, and who the hell remembered the office secretary's name before they even went to the school. A popular girl named Shelly, but who went by Elly took pity on the now squirming Mary and tapped her on the shoulder.
"I wouldn't talk to her if I were you, she doesn't like people, besides, if you want to get along around here she's the last person you want to talk to. I'm Elly by the way, you're Mary right?"
Mary beamed, it was obvious that she had been at least slightly popular in her old school by the way she instantly blocked me out when she learned that I was 'uncool' not that I minded.
"Oh, thanks, ya, it's Mary. I love your name, is it short for anything?" Elly gushed, liking the new found attention, and her other friends were looking at Mary as though they saw a lot of potential in the girl. Not that it surprised me, the girl was wearing very expensive looking clothing, designer clothing, probably the same brand my mother spent fortunes on. I doubted that Mary was as nice and soft spoken as she had come off as, she probably just wanted to figure out who was the leader of the school before she became her normal self, she was probably just acting so that she knew who not to piss off.
The queen of our school was a girl named Alicia, I didn't like her, and not because she was popular and I wasn't, but more because my brother had been dating her for the past few months. The girl was a snob, and she just grated on my nerves, not to mention my brother got on my case when Alicia whined to him because I was rude to her in response to her snobby little comments. What could I say? My brother had terrible taste in women. Even our mother didn't like Alicia, and she tended to like everyone, if not a little too readily.
Me and my brother were in the same grade, eleven. We weren't twins, and he was older than me, by nine months exactly. Either there was an unlikely even of our parents wanting two kids right away, which, was something I doubted, or they had gone at it like wild rabbits after my brother Nick was born. Nine months later and little old me came along. So we were in the same grade, and, even though my brother forcefully denied having any family ties with me everybody knew that he had a loser, anti-social sister, one that it was wise to stay away from at all costs.
I couldn't really help it, I just didn't like others, I never really had, I mean, sure, I had a few friends over the years, but I never let any of them get very close. And when I had gone to our small school it had been no different. There were five of us, including me in our little looser group. I think that we banded together more for a need to at least look like we belonged than to actually be friends, but we had all slowly become friends, some of us closer than others. There had originally been seven of us, but one had become popular and never even looked our way anymore, she was at least kind enough not to sneer at us or make rude comments, probably because we knew a few embarrassing thing about her but still. I think Kelly's moving up was almost kinder than Carol's move up the popularity chain.
The problem with Carol was that she was actually friends with everybody in our group, but she had gotten a boyfriend, a popular boyfriend, and suddenly she had been sitting with the popular crowd at lunch. But her jock of a boyfriend, Michael, was head over heels for her, and would have done anything in the world for her, so when she decided that she still wanted to have lunch with her unpopular friends sometimes, he came out of the goodness of his heart. And naturally, him being popular and having a bunch of guy buddies, they decided to tag along, the popular girls couldn't be without their popular boyfriends so they too came. And suddenly the remaining five of our little band of unpopulars were surrounded by populars, who were talking around us like they had always been there, like we weren't there first.
And it made us mad. Why the hell would she had brought over all her new friends, talk to them, ignore us along with them and then get mad at us when we left, not wanting to be there any longer. Carol still tried to talk to us sometimes, but hearing nothing but the goings on of those who were currently popular was the last thing anyone of our non-popular group wanted to hear, at least she didn't try to eat lunch with us anymore. The only ones left in out group now were me, three girls named Katie, Heather, and Amy, and one guy named Peter. We were all social outcasts, and for some reason they enjoyed my witty, sarcastic comments. So I considered them friends, even though I rarely saw them outside of school, but still, they were the closest friends someone as anti-social as me could have.
The bus stopped at the school, finally letting everyone off, only, Mary was still talking to Elly, and she was blocking my way off.
"Oh, no, I have four other brothers, one of them is in the twelfth grade, and then the twins are in the eleventh grade, our grade, and then the last one is also in our grade because he failed the eleventh grade last year." Elly gushed and told Mary she wanted to meet her brothers. I realized that Mary was also in my grade, along with three of her brothers, okay, so maybe my parents weren't the only ones that had gone at it like crazy rabbits. Oh well, what could one do about things past. Mary went on to tell Elly about her entire life, to tell her that her mother had passed away when she was twelve, that her brothers were all really good looking, that they were all really close, and that they hadn't taken the bus because they all drove, and that she had wanted to meet people on the bus instead of driving, and that, yes, she would love to eat lunch with Elly, how kind of her. By this time even the bus driver was looking rather pissed with Mary and Elly. Finally I gave up, who cared if she was new? She would have to learn sooner or later to stay out of my way.
"Look, Mary, while I'm sure your life seems to be more interesting than a broken tea cup, some of us have things to do, places to be, Advil to take, and while I would love nothing more than to listen to your monosyllabic life, I want to get off this bus, so move out of my way before you spend your first day of school in the nurse's office. And who the hell transfers in the last month anyway?" Mary looked a little shocked, I couldn't see why, I had been as nice as possible, maybe she wasn't used to being threatened?
"You'd better move Mary, she means what she said about hurting you. Raven Monroe is a psychotic freak, I'd stay away from her if I were you." Mary just stared at Elly and I huffed and pushed the stupid girl roughly out of my way, not enough to hurt her, but enough to give myself enough room to get off the smelly bus.
The rest of my day was no better, my first period history class was fine, except for the fact that Jeremy Renolds sat next to me, and for some reason he thought that my anti-social ways screamed at him to talk to me, harass me, and repeatedly make lewd comments. After hearing him tell me that he knew I dreamed about him at night I had kicked him forcefully in the shin and told him that if he wanted to still be able to call himself a pathetic excuse for a man he would fuck off. He had laughed, but the hard glint in my eyes must have warned him off a little because the rest of my day had been Jeremy free to my great relief. At lunch I learned that a football jock had tried to force Katie into having sex with him after school. While I may have been anti-social I was extremely over protective of my friends, and Katie was the one I was closest too, the one that was most like me, even if it was in a quieter, gentler way.
But seeing her cry made me extremely pissed, so I had threatened the jock, and given him a souvenir of a black eye. And then I had become even more pissed when the guy's girlfriend had the nerve to yell and bitch at Katie, saying that Katie had hit on her boyfriend. I had stalked the girl off campus in the third period and beat the crap out of her, after threatening her several times. The guys I would beat up on campus to be sure, they wouldn't run to the teacher, they would never even admit that a girl had beaten them up, let alone one as scrawny and thin as me.
The girl on the other hand, I think her name was Nicole, she, I knew would tell, but if it was off campus there was nothing the school could do about it, and I hadn't really hurt her, sure, I kicked her in the shin a couple times -something I tended to do often- but mostly I just threatened her enough that she went a little pale and swore to leave Katie alone. After that my that had gone by fairly smoothly, I had cajoled my brother into giving me a lift home so that I wouldn't have to take the bus again, and while he denied being my brother he was still okay, so he had agreed albeit reluctantly. And then the end of the day came.
---- Sean ----
The new school was small, maybe five hundred people. It didn't really bother me but it did mean that there were less people, which mean that first impressions were key, not that I, or any of my siblings for that matter, and problems with first impressions. My father owned his own law firm, a very upstanding law firm, so our family was no where near short on cash, in fact, every one of us had our own car, and it wasn't like they weren't nice cars either. All of us except for Mary were driving in, and I was happily driving my silver Mercedes-Benz Cabriolet into school, loving the way everybody's mouths dropped, not that it surprised me really, looking around I couldn't see a nicer car than mine, but then again, the rest of my brother's hadn't gotten to school yet. I grabbed my book bag from the passenger seat and got out. Then I noticed the red Shelby Cobra glide into the parking lot and let out a low whistle.
The guy that got out of the car looked appreciatively at my Cabriolet, just as I looked at his Shelby Cobra, then he smiled and stuck out a hand.
"Hi, I'm Nick, Nick Monroe. You must be new here, because I'd definitely remember your car." I smiled and shook his hand.
"Nice to meet you. Ya, I'm new, the name's Sean Sanders." He smiled at me and locked his car.
"Well come on then Sean, I'll show you the ropes. So do you have any siblings?" I laughed.
"Ya, I've got a twin brother named Aaron, two other brother's named Leo and Cliff, and a sister named Mary. How about you?" Nick gave a low whistle.
"That's a lot of siblings, and here I thought having a sister was bad enough." I laughed.
"The brothers I can handle, but it's my sister that drives me crazy." Nick laughed and nodded his head.
"Tell me about it. So do you already know which classes you got stuck in, I'm betting they didn't really give you a choice seeing as how there's only a month left in the school year." I nodded my confirmation and walked with Nick into the school, knowing that I had probably met one of the most popular guys in the school.
Everything had been going well, my other three brothers had come to school and I had introduced them all to Nick, Leo, who was the only one of us in twelfth grade had said hi and then left to go talk to the guys in his class that he had already become acquainted with, Cliff had been polite but had then left, a group of girl following him. Cliff was supposed to be in the twelfth grade, but he had failed in eleventh grade so he was repeating it, something I didn't understand since he was brilliant. The girls liked him because he was one of those angst ridden guys the girls all found to be mysterious. Leo too had a surrounding of girls already, he was a football player and you could tell that just by looking at him.
Sometime around lunch Mary had come up to be whining about being threatened by some chick. Personally I thought Mary was alright, a little whiny to be sure, but she generally didn't get into trouble, so I figured that the girl who had threatened her was being a bitch. Mary described the girl to me and begged me to make sure it didn't happen again. I wasn't about to go a beat up a girl just because Mary got threatened, but I could tell who-ever it was to lay off my sister. Nick and I shared the same classes for the first two periods, but the third and fourth periods after lunch I was on my own.
Luckily Nick had introduced me to a bunch of his friends and a few of them were in my Calculus class, so I asked them about the mysterious girl who got off on threatening my sister.
"Hey. Matt, do you know someone that has long blond hair, with a strand dyed green?" Matt looked at me kind of warily, something that surprised me because he had seemed really open.
"Why?" Maybe the girl was his girlfriend, but, family came first I told myself, even though I was hoping that Matt was just curious and that the girl wasn't his girlfriend.
"Well, apparently she threatened and pushed my sister this morning on the bus and I wanted to find her just to tell her to leave my sister alone." Matt looked warier if possible.
"What did your sister do?" I gaped at him.
"What?" Matt sighed.
"Well, I'll admit that Raven is a bitch, and she'll pretty much threaten anybody that gets in her way, but she tends to only use physical violence if it's required." I sighed, Mary hadn't said anything, but I knew Mary, and I doubted she'd do something rude, at least, not on her first day.
"Look, I don't know, I just wanted to ask her to leave Mary alone, it's not like I'd actually do anything to her." Matt laughed. I arched an eyebrow. Matt sobered up a little bit, but he was still grinning.
"Sorry. It's just, the fact that you actually want to find Raven of all people just amuses me, most people go out of their way to leave her alone." I frowned.
"Is she that mean to people?" Matt frowned.
"No, Not especially, I mean, she sarcastic, and I guess she's kind of snippy, but she just doesn't like most people. But mean? Not especially, she usually just leaves people alone, some times she'll get mad and threaten people, but it's usually only if they annoy her into saying something." I nodded.
"It kind of sounds like you like her, are you two going out or something?" Matt laughed.
"No, I mean, sure, I guess she's a nice enough person once you get around all the isolation shit, I mean, her friends seem to like her, but I don't like her in that way, and she sure as hell isn't my girlfriend. She's just one of those weird people you can't help but notice." I nodded and then turned to face the front when the teacher walked in. I was glad Matt wasn't going out with her, in my experience girls tended to run tot their boyfriends when threatened or upset at someone, and I didn't feel like beating Matt up because I liked the guy.
After the fourth period ended I sighed in relief, only then did I realize that I still had no clue as to where Raven -such a strange name- was located at. I asked a few people in the hallways and they all gave me funny stares but pointed me in the direction. I also got a few warnings, telling me that Raven was not a person I wanted to make friends with, and that I should just leave her alone. After five minutes of searching I finally spotted a girl with long blond hair thrown into a ponytail and one lone lock of hair dyed green. I had, at last, found Raven, the girl who had threatened my sister.
As I got closer to the girl I wondered if Mary had given me the wrong description, or if she was lying. The girl looked extremely thin, and very, very frail. If it weren't for the chocolate bar she was shoving into her mouth as she threw her books into her bag I would have thought she was anorexic. Maybe she was bulimic? I didn't think anyone could be that thin, or pale for that matter. Her skin was white, like she hadn't seen the sun for a few years, she was fairly tall though, probably around five foot six. When she turned around after slamming her locker I could see that her large, almond shaped eyes were a green-grey, and her sharp face somehow made how thin she was seem slightly more normal.
"Excuse me, are you Raven?" She stopped moving forwards to stare at me, frowning. She didn't reply, only nodded.
"Look, normally I wouldn't have bothered you, it's just, my sister said you threatened her today and-" Her face clouded up.
"Look pal, if you're Nicole's brother you can just fuck off, the bitch had it coming. Besides it's not like I said that much-"
"No. I'm Mary's brother, she said something about being on the bus." She frowned, and I wondered who Nicole was.
"Oh. Um, brown haired girl, a little shorter than me, likes to talk a lot." I frowned at her description, it could have been anybody.
"Maybe, look, all I know is she said you threatened to send her to the nurse's office and you pushed her." She nodded slowly.
"Ya, I remember her, what about it?" Her eyes flashed and I remembered Matt asking me what my sister had done. I shook my head, Mary had never hurt anyone, nor would she ever provoke someone into pushing her.
"Look, I just wanted to ask you if you could leave my sister alone, she didn't do anything to you, and it's her first day here, I mean, was it really necessary to threaten her like that?" Raven looked bored.
"Ya, great, so sorry her delicate little sensibilities were exposed to the real world, but unless your looking for a fight, something I seriously doubt since I'm betting you don't hit girls, considering the way your sister was stunned that I pushed her out of the way a little, so terribly sorry if I wanted to get off the bus and interrupted her life's story, but really now, I have to go catch the ride from my brother that I made him give me, and if I show up later than him it'll just look weird.
"Oh, and uh, do me a favour and tell your sister to just save you the trouble of having to find me, and to just stay away from me okay." She took off, leaving me gaping. She was insane, why would she even talk about a fight, she looked like she would lose even to my sister. Which just made me feel stupid because Mary had been so upset, I loved my sister but sometimes the things she worried over were insanely stupid. The girl was obviously no threat, she seemed a little loopy and obviously lacked social skills but I doubted Mary had wanted to make her a friend anyway.
The next day at lunch me and Nick were happily talking about hockey and I was seriously considering joining Nick's hockey team when I blurted out something I had been wondering.
"Hey, who's Nicole?" Nick arched an eyebrow and shook his hear.
"Nicole Leevac? Dude, trust me when I tell you, you don't want to hook up with her, one, she's already dating someone and two, she's the world's biggest bitch. Why do you ask anyway? It's hard to believe someone would suggest her if you're looking to hook up." I shook my head.
"No, it's just that yesterday my sister was all upset because some girl threatened her on the bus so I went to go tell her lay off and she told be that if I was Nicole's brother I could fuck off, and-" Nick raised a hand, almost wincing as though he were in pain.
"You aren't by chance talking about Raven are you?" I stared at him, wondering why he was wincing.
"Ya, I don't know her last name though, but she had long blond hair-"
"And a piece of coloured hair, I think it was green or something yesterday." I nodded. He sighed.
"Sorry about her, she's just-"
"Anti-social, she's just anti-social is the word I believe you're looking for Nick." Raven chimed in and sat down across from Nick and next to me. Nick sighed.
"Sean this is my sister Raven, Raven, Sean, although you two already met." I stared at Nick, completely dumbfounded, they were completely different, but when I looked closer I noted that they both had blond hair and grey-green eyes. I also noted that Raven's lock of hair was no longer green and instead it was purple to match the long sleeved shirt she was wearing.
"Ya, that's great Nick, look, I need a ride." Nick shook his head.
"No way, I gave you a ride yesterday and I have hockey after school." Raven shrugged.
"So? I need a ride, and I know for a fact that you left your hockey bag at the front door, which means that you can take me with you when you go to pick it up. Nick shook his head again.
"No way. Take the bus, that's what it's there for." Raven frowned.
"No, not a chance. Alicia is riding the bus for the rest of the week because her car is in the shop, and while I realize that you dear brother, enjoy listening to her high nasal voice I would rather live without the pain of it." Nick glared at his sister.
"Ride the bus, Raven, insulting my girlfriend isn't going to help you any." Raven sighed.
"It's raining."
"So? You've walked to and from the bus in rain before."
"Nick, just give me a damn ride."
"No, besides, I already told Sean I'd give him a ride today." I stared at Nick, he had done no such thing, besides, I had my own damn car, why was he so set against giving his sister a ride? It didn't sound like it was out of his way at all, I didn't get it. Raven sighed and tucked the purple strand of hair behind her ear and bit her lip. Suddenly Nick leaned back, looked slightly worried, I wondered why.
"Please Nick. I mean, come on, can't you be a nice brother for once and give me a ride, besides, I'm anti-social, not stupid, I know full well that he doesn't need a ride." Nick sighed.
"Raven, just ride the bus, it's not like you get home any faster when you ride with me." Raven frowned.
"True, but at least when I ride with you I don't have to deal with Jeremy Renolds being on the bus." Nick frowned.
"Raven, he doesn't ride the bus, he rides with Alicia…and her car is in the shop…right, got it. Fine, you can catch a ride with me."
Raven gave him a brilliant smile before her face returned to it's bored look.
"Great, thanks, I knew you'd come around Nick, keys please." She held out her hand and Nick grumbled to himself and pulled out his keys, handing them over. I stared incredulously at him. Sure, I though he was a little rude for not giving his sister a ride, but even I would never give my sister the keys to my car. Raven took the keys and bounded off to her own table somewhere in the cafeteria, I didn't see where she went, I just continued to stare at Nick.
"You gave her your keys." Nick nodded.
"Ya, well, she wanted a ride with me so I kind of had to." I frowned.
"Is she going to drive or something?"
"No, Raven doesn't drive." I frowned.
"Is she too young, because, you know, even if she's too young, she could still total your car, I wouldn't have given my sister my keys." Nick snorted and shook his head.
"No, she's old enough to drive, she's in our grade, she just doesn't drive, she's terrified of driving on her own, she refuses to get her licence…or learners for that matter, I don't know, she's crazy." I frowned.
"Still, why would you give her your keys?" Nick sighed.
"Because she'll get to the car way before me and she has a short attention span, meaning that if she has to wait for more than two minutes she'll come and find me and bug me until I come and open the car. I tend to stick around after school for a while so it's easier if I just give her the keys so she can get in and occupy herself with listening to the radio."
I nodded, it sort of made sense, but I would still never willingly hand my keys over to anyone, no matter how much they didn't want to drive. The bell rang and we got up.
"Alright, well I'll see you later Sean, I was serious about you coming to try out for the hockey team, from what I saw in gym yesterday you'd probably make the team easy, and it's fun." I nodded.
"I probably will, I used to play before we moved here, and I enjoyed it, so I guess I will see you at the rink tonight. What time did you want me to be there by?" Nick shrugged.
"Probably around five, that's when everybody starts showing up." I nodded.
"Cool, alright, I'll see you later then."
"Ya, bye." And with that I walked all the way to my locker to grab my calculus book, smiling at the prospect of hockey.
Okay, so I hope you liked this, it was just something tha popped into my head and I felt like writting it out, it's a lot longer than any of the other chapter in my other story. So ya, comments, concerns, speaches if you want to type that much, editting comments, anything like that just leave me a review! Okay, well thanks for reading the first chapter. Hopefully I can get a second one out soon. See ya.
-Etsuko
Okay, I would also like to give a big thanks to monichi for pointing out all my mistakes, thanks a bunch! I hope I got rid of them all!