Hi everyone. Personally, I prefer this way more than my other story on here, since that was written a year ago and... I dunno. I just love writing this story. I have this posted on another site (it's not finished yet though), and people seemed to like it there, so I hope you all do too :) Anyway, please review, because I love reading reviews. Even if it's CC (Well, as long as it's not 'fuck you, this story's shit', because that would be a bit mean) I'd be really grateful to hear from you. Anyway, hope you enjoy :)

Chapter 1: Bad First Impressions

Sine. Cosine. And Tangent: All measurements to use when doing Trigonometry, and relatively easy to get an answer once you understand it all. Life, I have discovered, is not so simple. There is no one answer, and there is no one question. It's fucked up.

"If you do that to me one more time, I'll fuck you up so bad that you'll think your mum's your girlfriend." I growl at Jason, a member of the football team who thinks that it's funny to throw a tennis ball at my head every time he sees me. He's one of the many people I hate in this godforsaken shit hole.

"Chillax Hayday," he sneers irritatingly, pausing to wink at a couple of girls that walked past. Who the hell does he think he is? Someone good looking? He turns back to me, eyes flicking from my feet to face. "You may have gotten taller over the summer, but that don't mean ya gonna get into the team again this year. We all know that last time was a fuckin' loada luck."

I narrow my eyes at him. "One, my name is Hayden, you prick. And two, if I remember correctly, you were a sub at first, whereas I got in straight away." It's my turn to leer at the moron, his muscle-built arms and strong build not making me quiver in the slightest. "If anyone was lucky to be in the team last year, it would have been you, right?"

He glares at me beneath his flop of beach blonde hair and retaliates back by stating "Well, we'll see tomorrow at trials, won't we?" before striding off in an opposite direction.

Fuckin' dick. I'd show him. I throw my books into my locker and slam it closed, locking it with my padlock before having my vision blackened by a pair of small, cold hands. "Guess who!"

I sigh. "Jesus?"

"No!" A voice whines. "Guess again!"

"Angelica, please get your freezing hands off my face." Thankfully, they drop away, allowing me to see again. I turn around to a small, cocoa-skinned, dark-haired girl, her arms comically folded across her chest.

"How many times have I told you to call me Jelli, Hayden?" She demands.

I lift up one shoulder in a half-shrug as I shove some of my textbooks into by charcoal Nike bag. "Jelli sounds like a stupid name."

She mock gasps, slapping me lightly on the arm, the harsh intensity value of an animal lover stroking a cat. "That's so mean Hayden! I thought it was a good name!"

"Well it isn't." I begin walking off down the corridor, and she runs to keep up with my long strides. I'm a lot taller than I used to be, you see, so it's quite cool being able to go faster, and use less energy doing so at the same time.

"How about 'Ange'?" She asks eagerly before bumping into someone and apologising. I keep going, so she has to jog again to catch up.

"Still crap."

"'Angie'?"

"Same crap."

"'Ica'?"

I pause in the middle of the hallway, knitting my eyebrows together. "Why the hell'd you wanna call yourself 'Ica'?"

"At least it's different!" She exclaims. "I want to be different!"

"Well," I comment as I carry on pacing, "if you call yourself 'Ica', I'll be forced to never speak to you again."

She giggles before I open and close my form door behind me. While she is one of the more decent people here, she also happens to be one of the most irritating… I mean, just 'cos I got off with her at some shitty party doesn't mean that I've signed my soul over to her. Since that time, she's been clinging to me like an amoeba.

No one else is in the room yet apart from a guy with glasses and mousy hair sitting at the front of the class, jotting down something in a notebook. To be honest, I should know his name since I've been in his form for a year now, but it just won't spring up. He doesn't really speak, so I guess that's why.

I slouch in a chair at the back and begin to stare outside at the ashen buildings across the road from where our school was situated, the dribbles of rain not making the view any more pleasant. The tower block looms over most of the council houses sitting at its feet, its dingy, sombre personality melting in the, altogether, shitty neighbourhood. The sad thing is, I live there.

I hear people filtering into the class, a couple of gazes lingering on me for a second before turning to their mates and chatting. It's fair to say that in Blyton Green Secondary School, I am not very well liked. In fact, apart from Lewis (and maybe Angelica) I don't think anyone remotely likes me. Which, to be honest, is not very surprising since I am not exactly the most cuddly person; in fact, Lewis often refers to me as 'The Hedgehog'.

People seem to have settled down, but I don't really take notice, and just call 'here' when my name is called for the register. You see, I bet because now that you've heard that I'm an anti-social reject, you'll think that that correlates with the fact that I live in a council estate and you'll now assume I have a crappy mother and a stepfather who beats the hell out of me. Well, no. My mum's cool and there's nothing wrong with her. I do have a stepfather, but he hasn't got a few belts stored in his cupboard that he whips me with; he's probably the gentlest guy I know. We're poor, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I can't get on with people. I just don't like people. End of story, sentence, whatever.

Talking of people, I wonder where Lewis is… My eyes briefly scan the room, but he's not here which is odd because he's usually here before me, since he's pretty obsessed with staring at Mr. Lee's abs through his tight black shirt. I'm not saying this description through my words: his not mine. I've just become so accustomed to him saying it while I'm not listening properly that the words implant themselves evilly on my brain.

"Hayden?" Someone asks to my right. I glance up to see a guy from my Biology class: medium height, skinny with copper hair and a splatter of freckles on his nose. "Have you got Bio notes from last term?" I'm surprised he even bothered asking.

"No." I answer before turning away from him and hearing the mumbling of "I told you that you shouldn't have asked him." What I don't understand is why people would expect that I'd give out my notes to people who I don't give two shits about.

Now where is Lewis?

Speak of the devil. The door bursts open. Well, 'bursts open' is a strong phrase, but you get what I mean. Anyway he stands there, lanky as ever, with his long sandy hair and stretched smile, not fake or anything because that's just how he is. Next to him, however, is another guy and he's pissing me off already: dark hair, tall, lean and an arrogant smirk printed on his seemingly perfect face. I haven't even spoken to him yet and he's irritating me.

"This is Jude Theroux." Lewis tells Mr. Lee as he gestures to the guy, hands in pockets as he smiles casually at our form tutor and nods lazily. Everyone already seems fixated with him, eyes glued on him like he's a god or something. "He just moved here and didn't know the way to form, so I showed him." And by the way that Lewis keeps staring at him, Lewis seems to feel the same. Damn his stupid gay hormones.

I find myself rolling my eyes and turning back to the window out of boredom. I hear Mr Lee telling him to sit down before I hear the scraping of a chair behind me as Lewis sits on his own chair beside me. Before my best friend can say anything, I hear a smooth voice ooze out behind me. "So who's this friend of yours, Lou?" Why the fuck is he calling him Lou?

"Oh yeah, I forgot to introduce you both." Lewis says brightly, making me shift around so my back is to the window and I'm facing both of them. The rest of the class is talking too, but I see a few eyes wander to us but when they realise that I've noticed them watching us, they quickly duck their heads away. "Jude, this is Hayden Paretski, my best mate."

The smirk seems to be permanently printed on his smug face. He extends his hand out to me. "Hey there."

I say hi but don't shake his hand. It hovers in the air for a second or two before it drops. I can already hear Lewis frowning at me before apologising to this Jude guy, saying that I'm always grumpy in the morning. Jude chuckles lightly, humour in his voice as he says that he noticed that.

The bell rings and I'm out of that door, with Lewis following me close behind. "Can't you try and be a bit more polite, Hayden?" He asks me pointedly. "If you're like that with everyone that you meet, how're you supposed to make friends?"

I shrug. "Maybe I don't want to 'make friends'. It's not primary school anymore, Lewis."

"Isn't politeness even in your vocabulary?" He asks in a sigh as we head towards the Science corridor.

"Not to ignorant idiots."

"Ignorant idiots?" He echoes is disbelief. "Where did you get that from? You haven't even spoken to him yet and you're already making assumptions about him."

"And you have?" I query, raising an eyebrow. "How do you know he's not an ignorant idiot?"

"I did talk to him, in fact." He replies indignantly, combing his hair with his fingers. "On the way to form. He seemed really nice."

"You mean he looked really nice." I correct him, pushing through the crowds of people filtering out of the classrooms.

"Well, that too…" He agrees sheepishly. "But he was a really nice guy too."

I shake my head at him. "You think the best of people too much."

"You think the worst of people too much." He retorts.

At that I laugh and lean on the cream-coloured wall to my right beside my Biology class. "For good reason."

He rolls his eyes at me, knowing that he won't change my mind since we've argued about this subject for the many years that we've been friends. Most people think it's weird, I guess, that we're mates since we're complete polar opposites; he's like the sun and I'm like a black hole. But somehow we get along well. I guess that's because he's not fake like most of the people in this goddamn world.

I stare at my lone apple, tilted on its side on the plastic canteen table for one last second before I grab my Chemistry book out and start revising for the test next period. I don't know how, but I'm able to block out everyone else's chatter and focus on it. Lewis says that it's a real skill to be able to do that; he says he couldn't do it for shit… but then again, Lewis gets distracted by anything.

An unwelcome presence stands opposite. I ignore him hoping that he'll go away, but he sits down instead. fucking idiot-can't he tell that he's not wanted? He's probably so used to everyone pulling them to their tables that he thinks he's got a VIP pass to every bloody table.

"You ought to be careful." He says, causing me to glance up from my book.

"Huh?"

"You're gonna ruin your textbook if you keep glaring at it like that. It seems like you're trying to turn it to charcoal." I narrow my eyes at him, only making him laugh more. I turn back to it. "Y'know, it's weird to see you without Lou-boy; it's like you're joined at the hip with that guy. Where is he?" He's laid his legs across the metal bench he's sitting at, slouched and comfortable as he lays his arm out across the table. The grin is still planted on his face beneath his hazelnut eyes and ruffled coffee hair.

"Why don't you find out for yourself rather than irritate me?" I say mildly, flicking over the page of my textbook to the periodic table.

He raises an eyebrow at me. "You don't like me very much, do you?"

"I don't care either way about you."

The right corner of his mouth turns up higher than the other, creating a lop-sided smile as his eyes dance with a sudden burst of interest. "Don't you want to know more about me? I'm the new kid after all."

"Not particularly." God, doesn't this guy take a hint?

"I'm gay."

I don't even bother looking up. "So?" Does he think that that's going to make me gasp? I mean, seriously. Are we bloody five years old?

His grin's even wider now, showing all of his pearly white teeth. "Are you gay?"

I sigh heavily, closing my textbook because, despite trying my hardest to revise, I just can't with this moron sitting opposite me. My eyes glance over to his in a bored fashion; I'm so used to this question that I could answer it in my sleep. Everyone always assumes that if you hang out with a gay guy, it automatically makes you gay. "No."

"Really?"

"Yes."

He smirks at me, as though he knows something I don't. "You're such a closet case."

"Whatever." I say, pushing myself up from the table. A couple of guys are calling him from the other side, but he stays there, watching me. I spin away from him and walk out of the cafeteria.

Even if I was gay, I would never in a million years like an arrogant asshole like him.

AN: So, was it ok?