A/N: Hello everyone. It's been a while since I have been here and this author's note is beginning to seem like group therapy. Have fun ripping this piece up. It still needs a lot of help before it gets to be a better story. Alright then, have oodles of fun reading my lovelies!!!

I stared at the blank piece of paper in front of me. There was nothing on it, obviously, but there was something odd about that certain piece of paper. Don't go jumping to conclusions that I am just some insane teenager, but you have to understand what I have been through. (My mother left me when I was eight, my father is a drunk, and everyone in my school hates me. I get through it, it's not like other kids don't go through the same thing too.) That's why I am a little wary about that certain piece of paper.

One of the jocks in my class was passing out the paper (as usual) and (as usual) had purposely not given me one. Then something strange happened. The new girl had turned around called him an ass and had gotten up and gave me the paper in front of me.

And now we are at the beginning.

Please understand the supposed 'reasoning' behind their discrimination of me. I live in a very poor neighborhood. There are fights on my street and in front of my house all of the time, gunshots? Nothing new to me. Death, fire, destruction, and any other possible thing that could possibly go wrong? Just another day in my town. Last year, I got a scholarship to this high-strung school in the West side and I obviously went, eager to learn everything that I couldn't where I live.

Unfortunately, everything didn't go according to plan.

When I got into school that day after I got the scholarship, I had a pile of fan mail in my locker. I didn't even know my locker combination yet, and I had enemies. They didn't like the lower class from the East side coming into their territory of Corvettes, drinking booze, and smoking some very expensive crack. In all actuality, there is no difference between the West and East side of town. The only difference is that the one has more money than the other.

But getting back to the point of this….

Not even in the school for more than ten minutes, I had a black eye. Some stupid kid had decided to just calmly walk up to me and punch me in the eye. A great start to the rest of my life, right?

As if being a kid from the East side wasn't enough of a reason for them to jump me almost everyday, I was a bit of a goth. I liked the color black. It seems very slimming to me. The people here apparently don't approve of people being different than the other people that they have. I stuck out like a sore thumb my first day there.

There was everyone. They were all dressed in their preppy clothes with their expensive jewelry and toys. They all had pastels on and they all made themselves pretty with their make-up and almost anorexic bodies (boys included on this one). The jocks were dressed in the things that their girlfriends had picked out the night before so that they would match on the first day of school. (This meant to any new person that this was that girl's boyfriend. If you try to take him, then faces the consequences. It's almost like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. They're marking their territory. It's essentially the same thing… except with matching outfits and not urinal waste.)

Then there was me.

I was dressed in my favorite skirt, a vivid purple that had slits cut out and had a piece of chiffon-like fabric with a wild array of colors on it. Strips of that random fabric hung freely from the tops of the slits. I had a black v-necked tank top and a black blouse over it. I had my worn out combat boots and black dance tights on. I wore that outfit on special occasions only; I didn't want anything to ruin it. I loved it way to much.

Everyone just stared at me as I walked into the school. This was the nicest outfit I had, and I rarely ever wore an actual skirt (skirts are impractical when you're trying to fight for your life. Also, they put thoughts into some people's heads, and that's never good.). They talked about me when I was standing right in front of them, at one point I turned around and flipped out.

"If you want to make a jest about the way I dress, I would much rather you do it to my face instead of behind me. And don't look so shocked, you were talking quite loudly, and it just so happens I forgot to turn off my ears this morning. My mistake." I snarled and walked into the brightly lit principal's office. A young secretary looked up and saw me there, she smiled cheesily.

"Sorry deary, you must have the wrong school. How about you call your Mommy and Daddy and ask them to pick you up. Do you know where they work?" she asked me and started to get out a bottle that was filled with lollipops. I was appalled.

"Sorry ma'am, but I do belong here. I was told to come and collect my class schedule and slip. I am the scholarship student." I smiled warmly at her. She kept up the smile, but her eye was twitching. It was quite funny. She looked like Barbie, except this one was Homicidal Barbie.

Miss. Squalie handed me the important papers that I needed, but she did it in such a fashion that she wouldn't have to touch me. Not even the adults here are willing to touch the East-sider. Go figure.

My thoughts were snapped back to the present when I heard the door slam shut. It was my favorite class of the day, with the teacher from hell who hates me with such a passion that he is purposely failing me. Purposely! The teacher's name: Mr. Headkin, I liked to call him Satan's Minion. (Beelzebub was already taken… that is what I call my neighbors dog.)

He chose to see what he wanted, and he sometimes even made things up to got girls to have detention with him. If you're a girl and you wear a really short skirt and skimpy top on the day of a test, then he just gives you an A. Truly and absolutely serious. He actually got sited because a girl reported him for sexually harassing her, unfortunately, there wasn't enough evidence to get him fired and put in prison. The girl transferred to another school in the beginning of the year because she had gotten him again.

Today we had our first lesson on the ancient Greeks. No matter what anyone says about how stupid they think I am, I love history. Especially the Greek and Roman empires. They made so many advancements, and they lived in ancient times, and we can't even compare to the tiniest bit of what they did. Isn't it amazing? The people back in ancient times who are consider 'primitive', made the basis of what we go by today.

Mr. Headkin was starting to put the notes on the board when I had brought out my notebook for a moment. It was my random insanity notebook, a place where I can keep my thoughts, my stories, poems, songs, and deepest secrets. One of the jocks (who claimed one of the back seats before I could, and had already made his permanent slouching kingdom) looked over my shoulder. I knew he was because of two reasons, one is that I can tell when someone is reading over my shoulder, and two… well he isn't any ninja I have ever met.

I turned around to face him. "Can I help you in some way? Do you feel a need to look over my shoulder and annoy me?"

He smiled and didn't reply.

Aggravated, I turned back around and jotted something very quickly on the very few blank pages I had left in my notebook. Before Headkin could turn around and accuse me of disrupting the educational process, I threw it underneath my desk. He had turned around to see what the commotion was, and I could feel his eyes on me. Brazenly, I looked up and stared back, almost urging him to go on with the lesson that we were supposed to be doing. He glared at me for another moment then turned to face the chalkboard again, talking about the advancements that people like Thales, Aristotle, Pythagorus, and many more made.

The only sounds that could be heard were the squeakings of the felt pen on the whiteboard, a sudden ripping sound exploded from behind me like a gunshot. My face blanched and I thought I was going to be sick. No one was suicidal enough to rip up their notes for Headkin's class, and no one else had paper with them, so I used my deductive reasoning to figure out what it was.

Since I was in a rush to hide my notebook before Headkin could see it and confiscate it, I hadn't put it under my desk completely; this foolishness lead to the pea-brained Sloucher-Jock to realize that he could get to it easily. Brian (that was the bastards name), got up and stood in front me, ripping piece after piece out of my notebook and then ripping them further. He laughed and began to read the words off of the page to the class in a mocking voice and I could do nothing but stare at the notebook that was being mutilated beyond recognition. I looked up to see Headkin smiling to the board and continuing with the lesson. As I saw page after page being torn out, I figured that if I couldn't hear that destructive sound anymore, then it would all go away. I pulled out my ancient CD player and headphones, cranked up the volume, and let the lead singer scream the words I couldn't find to drown out the sound of ripping paper and lost memories.

When Headkin heard my music playing, he started to yell, people turned around to look at me and they laughed, Brian was still ripping pages from my notebook, and some people had begun to read the broken words on the cold floor. All of those noises were too loud and my music wasn't drowning them out. I kept turning it louder and louder, people kept yelling, laughing, talking, and ripping. My head was filling with all of the noises of the class and past memories. The times that my father said I was worthless, when classmates had told me that I should go back to where I belonged and to die, my mother's final words to me… telling me that I could be great if I tried. I wanted to cry then and there, but that would have been even worse, so I just concentrated on the music. Music is my sanctuary, and no one could take that away from me.

The jock behind me and the girl who had given me the piece of paper at the beginning of class both stood up. Paper Girl started to yell at Headkin for not making Brian stop ripping my notebook, and Ninja Boy took the back my mutilated and marred notebook and started to yell at Brian for doing that in the first place. With those two scolding and yelling, holding their ground to help me when I wasn't even going to help myself, I was surprised. No one, not my parents, not any adult I have ever met… hell, any person that I have met, has ever done something like that before.

"DETENTION! ALL THREE OF YOU! DETENTION, DETENTION, DETENTION! SIT DOWN!" Headkin yelled. When he did, everyone shut up, just then the bell rang, and people were stepping on my papers, shoving them this way and that so that I would be late for my next class.

I sighed, people annoy.

"I expect to see the three of you in this classroom at the end of seventh period to discuss your problematic behavior. Miss. Luding I will forgive you since you are new, but I thought that I would see more rational behavior from you, Mr. Greene. I will not write you a pass for your next class if you are staying behind. Don't stay too long, I still need to disinfect the desk that has been sullied. Miss. Synergy please refrain yourself from defacing school property with your pen. Save it for the schools that don't have enough funding to have new desks. Seventh period. No skips." Mr. Headkin said and stalked out the room, searching for some unsuspecting student to yell and scream at.

Turning off my music, I stuffed my headsets back in my bag and got on my hands and knees, trying to catch the papers before the wind blew from the window. Another surprising thing happened (Two miracles in one day! If there is a third one, does that mean that Jesus comes back to life?); Paper Girl and Ninja Boy stayed behind and helped me clean up the papers. Both of them smiled at me, and I gave a half smile back. Ninja Boy was shocked, ever since I got to this school I had never before cracked any kind of smile, besides the sarcastic ones and the grimaces of pain.

"I hope that you both know you have officially resigned your status by helping me. You better be ready to live with the consequences…. Which usually involve a lot of pain, if you want to get technical." I warned them, they were nice people. But I think that they should have gotten back to reality about the situation at hand. I mean really, how many people would go and help the person who never showed any sort of emotion or dressed the way that everyone else did? Who would want to help the one dressed in black and that enjoyed things normal teenage girls didn't find appealing?

Paper Girl looked as if I had just slapped her in the face. "What they did to you was very wrong. And I may be new here, but I am not stupid. I can tell that becoming friends with that crowd would be the biggest mistake of my life. You, on the other hand, you are like a breath of fresh air for this place. Those butt-munches just don't know it yet." I gave a quiet chuckle at 'butt-munches'. She put down the papers she was trying (and failing) to organize and held out a hand. "My name is Charlotte. Charlotte Luding."

I looked at the offered hand and decided that I could show a little compassion after she just tried to save my notebook, so I smiled an overly-cheesy smile and replied, "Jade Synergy."

Ninja Boy took that time to trip over a chair leg and ruined the moment. I laughed, and he looked surprised, but then started to laugh too, as did Charlotte. I was laughing at everything that had happened. At the situation that I was in, the fact that I had slightly opened up to two people that I didn't know, and that my notebook… the notebook that served as my counsel, was dead. He noticed the far-away look in my eyes, put the papers inside my anorexic notebook and held out a hand also. "The name is Jack, Jack Greene."

"Jade Synergy, glad that we could have a proper introduction." I smiled (this time a slightly normal smile) at him and he smiled back.

That was when I began to realize something. When I picked myself off the cold, unforgiving linoleum floor and looked at the doorway, I decided to make a stand. Charlotte and Jack had showed me that things couldn't really get much worse if I put my own two cents in. I knew that the two would begin to try and get me to get out of my "shell" and begin to fight back, I knew that they would try to befriend me, I knew that they would try and make me a better person. Really, they could have left me there and I would have still come to the same understanding of a new way of thinking.

I walked out of the room with a smirk on my face. They made their final blow of trying to break me, trying to make me into one of them or leave. Now… now, it was my turn to retaliate.