Adison Porter sat on her bed, slivers of the morning light flitted into her room, softly illuminating her page. She sometimes enjoyed reading in dim light as it made her feel hidden...safe...from the monsters that were her peers, and even her own family at times. It was just her and the little book that let her escape all reality.

She was reading the latest book from the author Ann Rice when a few knocks transported her back into her personal hell.

"Addie, get to school, you're running late." Said her mother, tired and all business from behind the door. Her mother was hardly happy these days. She roamed the house like a zombie. She drifted room to room, angry, depressed, and miserable. It was the boyfriend's fault, Adison would tell herself, not hers. The boyfriend had moved in last year, and he seemed awfully nice before they got married. Then Frank became a monster in his own right.

He drank,he smoked, and he insulted her mother all the time. He would yell and scream at Adison when she came home late, saying her dancing was a waste of time. Which hurt of course.

Reading and dancing was how Adison kept herself functioning.

She reluctantly placed her book on the night stand, not daring taking it to school. Living in Glenwood Springs was terrible for teens like her. Glenwood was a small town in Colorado, and in small towns, in small high schools, freaks were of a higher caliber, and Adison was a freak.

She wore weird clothing.

She talked funny.

She read books like no other.

She seemed clumsy.

She was obsessed with witch craft and vampires.

She was a very famous person in her school for so many wrong reasons.

She learned that when she took books to school, they never came back.

She sighed and got up, her back cracking from her awkward hunched over position. She went through the morning motions of dressing, brushing her teeth and hair, and slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder. Briefly she wondered how long the day would go before the contents of her bag would be on the ground.

Her mother was waiting in the car then, impatient in her 90s Oldsmobile.

"Adison, your teacher Mr. Finch called me yesterday. Why must you always snap at your teachers? They are there to teach you, because they are smarter than you. You need to respect them." She scolded.
Adison rolled her eyes grudgingly. Her mother has not been in the best of state of mind.

"Yes Mother." She said quickly and sharply. Mother instead of Mom, a formal, non emotionally attaching term in her opinion.

Adison was soon shuffling to class, her nose in one of her decoy books. A book she wasn't as interested in as the ones at home, so if it never came back, no harm done.

She wasn't paying attention to where her shoes were scuffling, as per usual, and she was met with a force that knocked her down.

It was Drake Matthews, the biggest asshole she had ever come into contact with.

He was a handsome guy really, and really nice too if one had make-up caked on and a two-inch skirt, or one had on the Glenwood Football jersey on, otherwise you were a nothing.

You were Adison. His favorite toy to break.

"Watch where you're going Porter." He sneered, his shoe jut so happening to step on her hand.

She gasped in pain and tried to wretch her hand out from under. No luck, he was too heavy.

"Get off you insignificant, moronic worm." She growled.

"There you go with that sophisticated talk. Come on little Addie, I want to hear you cuss me out." His voice was smooth and just as handsome as his face, but Adison could never appreciate his looks or anything when he acted like such a dick. And to think she used to have a crush on him, back when she wasn't Weirdo Addie, and he was the nice little boy next door.

But times have changed.

"I don't curse, it is unnecessary and ridiculous. It only means you have nothing else in your vocabulary...Why am I even talking to you? Get your foot off!" She pulled harder, and god, it hurt badly.

There was a crowd around them now, laughing, egging her on to cuss. It wasn't so much for novelty of hearing something so crude from her mouth, but rather control. They wanted her to give in the will of them, the jocks and their whores.

They had all the other freaks in order. Such as Henry, the math geek. They had broken him down to a spineless sub servant, doing everyone's math home work. One would think the math teacher would catch on to his F and everyone else's suddenly-As. Or perhaps Carrie, the Science prodigy, she was failing as well now, but teachers didn't care. They weren't paid enough to.

However, Adison would not give in, she didn't want to be doing everyone's book reports and English homework. She bit back when they bit her, and they hated her even more for it.

With a final twisting of his shoe on her hand, he lifted it. She whipped her hand back before he changed his mind.

Adison went to grab her bag, but Drake beat her to it.

"Do you have Mrs. Smith's sentence fluency packet finished?" He asked gently.

"No." She quickly lied.

"Sure..." He sneered, rummaging through her bag. He found it and handed it to Max, his best friend and cohort.

They threw her bag at her feet and walked away, and the others followed.

Usually when one copies off another student, they give it back after use. In Adison's case, it always got "lost".

So she always took a second copy, and filled it up with all the wrong answers.

She looked through her bag, and to her despair, she realized Drake took the correct copy, not the decoy.

Drat.

She should have known he'd at least check the first few answers. Drake was actually pretty smart.

"What a waste." Adison thought bitterly. She was on her way to her first class, which was Chemistry.

The rest of the classes dragged on, she dodged paper balls and other projectiles expertly. She sat in the very front, but it wasn't for the teacher's protection, she just knew all the bad kids sat in the very back

Finally it was lunch period. She went to her little spot between two walls, her nose in The Works of Shakespeare.
She heard footsteps, and her heart sunk.
Drake was in front of her smirking slightly. "What's up?"
Adison sighed and leaned her head back against the wall and looked up and saw the ledge her bag usually ended up on.

"My bag in a few seconds?" She droned, annoyed.
"Well aren't you smart. What a waste."
"Why am I a waste?" She figured that if she kept him talking, he'd forget about the bag.
"Because..." He stopped, and looked confused. Why was she a waste? She was smart, she was pretty if she tried, he was sure. Yet she didn't try, and she didn't do anything like him and his friends or think like they did; therefore, a waste of space.

"Your brain would be more useful in a beautiful girl." There was a blow.
Adison looked down, and felt the beginnings of tears. To dance, one had to beautiful, to be in a book, a happy ending, one had to be beautiful. To be loved...you had to be beautiful. They teach you everyday that looks never mattered, but it does. Real life isn't taught on motivational posters.
Was that why it hurt so much? When even worse insults made her laugh at them on the inside?
Drake was actually taken aback, as it has been awhile since Adison would tear up from one of his sessions. He quickly shook the conscience away, as he was taught, there is no point to pity the weak. The weak are meant to be ruled. They couldn't take care of themselves.

He left quietly. Adison never wondered why, as she couldn't see or focus past her tears.
After a brutal day of school, Adison was eager to get home and sleep as usual, but inside her mother berated her for not turning in her huge-chunk-of-grade packet (which was stolen, but mother never cares about 'excuses') and verbally slapped her. Frank screamed at her and forbade her to go to her dance rehearsal for the academic disobedience.

She couldn't take anything anymore. She ran into her room and instead of reaching for the friendly razor in her favorite book, she looked at her reflection.
Ugly, plain, straggly black hair.
Her horrible pale skin and her muddy brown eyes.
Her too skinny body and unflattering clothes.
Drake was right, she thought, I really am hideous. That's why no one loves me. That's why they make fun of me. I don't belong here, in my mother's heart, or in my books of escape. I don't belong anywhere.

Suddenly her reflection showed the stormy grey eyes of Drake Matthews in all his beautiful perfect man glory. How she used to dream about him when they were little. He used to say she was beautiful, when they were friends. Before he went jock and she went goth. To hear him,of all people, tell her she was ugly. It was too much. And her family didn't even care.

She drove her fist into the mirror with an anguished cry, wishing with all her might that he may feel her wounds and her pain. She punched it over and over until she felt fragments burrow into her skin with every blow. She was numb, she didn't feel the blood run down her arm or spatter the floor and the door. And finally she collapsed on the ground, crying and heaving, praying that each breath would be her last.

Soon she fell into a black sleep, and barely registered that no mother and no stepfather ever came in to comfort her, or see why she was screaming bloody murder. She just knew her mother would be angry, as that mirror was passed down for generations, and was expensive.
She awoke the next morning to find the mirror was indeed broken, she was hoping it was just a dream.

She went through her morning motions, but now wrapping her hands in gauze and placing on gloves to cover them, despite it being summer.

She was at school now, trying her best to forget last night; hell, yesterday all together.
She looked up to see Drake walking across her way, for some reason he didn't see her, but kept examining his hands. She found that there was gauze on them as well...and it looked an awful lot like her injuries, because he didn't have his half of them covered, as he had them half unwrapped. It looked like he used to have shards of glass in his hands...

She felt her stomach drop in fearful confusion. It was quite an odd coincidence wasn't it? She then shook it off, why did she care if he had injuries. He certainly did not care about hers.
Adison slouched off to class, not tripping or bumping into anyone as she was much too distracted to read and walk. Her hands were stinging from her cuts and she quietly berated herself for such a stupid thing.

She dropped into the front desk and hit her head on the desk. Despite being out cold for nine hours last night, she was exhausted.

"What happened to your hands?" A voice quietly settled into her ears. The voice was deep and lovely, it sounded like a prince from one of the fairy tales. It seemed caring, yet selfishly so. Confused she looked up and instantly regretted it. She only liked this class as he wasn't in it.
"I hit a mirror." She said emptily, droning like a robot with no sense of life or awareness. Seeing Drake's face made her wish she never thought "prince".

"That's…interesting…" He seemed suspicious and angry now. "You weren't practicing any voodoo were you? Or attacked me in my sleep?"

"If I attacked you in your sleep you would be dead. So stop following me." She droned again, suppressing the slight smirk when he showed slight fear at her threat. She never threatened him before like that.

"Whatever, fucking bitch." He walked away. She saw through his insult, he was truly afraid now, as he had no explanation for the cuts on his hands. He couldn't possibly have no idea though, right? Did he punch glass in his sleep during the same night? Not likely…but nothing else was either. So she decided to let it go and forget about it. She closed her eyelids and pretended to sleep.

Drake walked to his downstairs math and sat down heavily in the back. He looked at his hands again. He unwrapped them and cringed as the gauze stuck to the wounds. How the fuck did this happen? His knuckles were the most damaged, as the skin was torn off and the blaring fresh red skin stung through, and he saw the scabs from razor like cuts and gashes. He was just doing his homework, he looked up to glance at the air condition vent as suddenly the room felt hot, when he looked back down he saw blood smearing and pooling all over his math homework. That was when the pain arrived, luckily, no one was home again to hear his cussing.

It was odd how Adison had the same sort of wounds. He wasn't sure if they were exactly the same as they were covered, but she said she hit a mirror, and if he wasn't mistaken, it looked a lot like he had too.

There was no logical explanation to it, so to save his sanity; he decided to try and forget about it.
The bell rang and it was time to go downstairs for math. Adison groggily got up and shuffled down the hall to the stairs, she brought out her little pocket book about how to write better and began reading about how to use semi colons properly.

Drake placed his textbook on the shelf and wandered off to his Physics class. His friends got bad vibes from him and therefore left him alone. He was just walking past the stair case when he heard:

"Watch out!" A boy shoved hard against the unsuspecting Adison and she crumpled and fell down the stairs. She landed at the bottom on her knees and hands and was shaking in shock and pain. No one made a move to help her and instead laughed or looked away. Drake was about to fake a laugh as oddly he did not find it truly funny. He stopped short as suddenly his hands were suddenly scrapped by concrete and his knees felt like he landed desperately hard upon them, his whole body began to ache as though he too, fell down a concrete staircase.

"Fuck!" He shouted as he started to check himself to find blood running down his arms, he sharply jerked his head up to find that she too was looking at him shocked with blood running down her arms in the exact same pattern.

Her brown eyes were wide and confused as they stared deep into his stormy grey. Adison did the only thing she could think of, she began to cry from the pain and the shock of the whole situation, she dashed away from the scene and was determined to run all the way to the only place that made her safe…

A group of people watched her go and then turned to Drake, they started to ask what happened to him and he was grateful that they were all watching Adison as his wounds suddenly appeared.
"I-uh…I fell down during a practice run, it just started to bleed again is all." He quickly covered.
Luckily, no one was smart enough to know that scrapes and cut don't randomly bleed after a day, so they left him alone.

The hallway was empty and he stared at the book bag innocently tossed to the side. He had to get to the bottom of this…so he picked up the bag and followed the direction of Adison…