May was ticked off when she found out that she had to go live with her filthy rich Aunt and Uncle for tenth grade. Now, what if you meet your new neighbor—who happens to be an arrogant, famous teen idol—at the mailbox while you're in penguin pajamas?

Chapter One:

The Girl In The Penguin Pajamas

Waking up late on the first day of school—not to mention in a new school—was probably one of the worst things that could have happened, besides falling in a mud puddle and looking like you wet yourself and had brown stains on the back of your jeans. She quickly erased that thought from her mind; thinking things like that may jinx her.

Two days ago she had been on a plane for six hours, so she was still pretty exhausted from the trip. If she had been back at home, her mother or father would've waken her up eventually if she didn't hear her alarm, even pulling her out of bed if that was what it took. And here she thought that one lousy little alarm clock would wake her up. She was right; it did wake her up, but she slammed her fist angrily against the snooze button multiple times until it shut the hell up and left her alone.

And now she was late. More than ten minutes late, so homeroom was likely to be over soon. Luckily she didn't look like she had just gotten out of bed, even though she had, since she had taken a shower the night before. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which was what she would usually wear. She wasn't the type of person who dressed-up for high school, so she only wore a little bit of make-up. She didn't like to stand out too much.

The school wasn't too much further and soon she was approaching the gates, running as quickly as she could so maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't be marked absent. But most likely the teacher had already taken attendance and she would have to get a tardy slip.

Crap. Her parents wouldn't be happy to hear this. Hopefully her Aunt and Uncle wouldn't tell them.

She approached the office and the lady at the desk paused from typing on her computer to look at her. "What do you want?"

May gulped and suddenly became interested in a piece of tape stuck onto the desk. She stared at it for a while and the lady impatiently clicked her tongue as if to say, Hurry the hell up so I can get back to my work! I'm busy!

"Uh, I'm new here. I'm . . . late," she said lamely. Why did she have to be so shy? She mentally slapped her forehead but continued staring at the piece of tape. She tried to maintain eye contact with the lady, but the lady was staring at her as if she had four heads.

"So you're asking for a late pass?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The woman quickly scribbled something on a piece of orange paper that was on a stack near her desk. "What's your name?"

"May Sullivan," she replied and spelled it out for the woman. The woman wrote it down and handed the note to her, an obvious fake smile plastered on her face.

"First period starts in a few minutes, so you should just head there. You have your schedule, don't you?"

"Yes." She had Biology first, so she bid farewell to the secretary and left, wishing that she had asked for a map of the school, but luckily she arrived in class before the bell rang.

May sat down in a seat towards the middle of the classroom, and a few students entered after the bell rang but the teacher didn't say anything since he was writing something on the board.

After a few minutes, he turned around to face the class. "Hello, I'm Mr. Evans. I'm going to be your science teacher this semester. Shall we begin?"

The rest of the classes passed by slowly; all the teachers did was introduce themselves, go over the rules, hand out textbooks, and then it was pretty much the same for the next class and the class after that. It was pretty boring actually, and by lunch, only one or two people had spoken to her and she was in the lunch line. She feared she may end up sitting alone and that was pretty much a nightmare for any tenth grader—or any new student, for that matter—on their first day.

She sat down at a table alone, and began eating her lunch. It sucked, and suddenly she felt a lot worse being alone for the rest of the lunch period. She wished she could go back home. She missed her old friends, her old school, and her old house. She never really wanted to go here to live with her Aunt and Uncle. She felt angry just like she had been when she first heard the news.

After almost fifteen minutes, May heard her table shift slightly and looked up to see six girls sitting down at the table. Her eyes widened but she didn't say anything.

"Hey there, you're May, right?" A girl with straight blond hair and dark brown eyes spoke, setting her tray down on the table on her right side. "I think you're in my History class. You looked kind of lonely; it is alright if we sit here . . .," she said. It didn't really sound like a question, but it wasn't quite a statement either.

May nodded her head and another girl with curly brown hair sat down on her left. "I'm Emma."

"Oh," the blond girl said, "I'm Lizzie. I bet you're new, aren't you? Where did you move from?"

"Pennsylvania," she responded.

"Pennsylvania! All the way to Los Angeles! Jeez! Am I being nosy if I ask why?" Lizzie inquired.

May shook her head and smiled. "My parents. They have to move around a lot this year for their job, so they sent me to live with my Aunt and Uncle." In their huge mansion! She almost said. They were extremely wealthy; her Uncle owned a large computer company so they made tons of money, apparently. It was beautiful, but it was also pretty easy to get lost in.

"I see," Emma said. They didn't press her for information any further and soon, towards the end of the conversation, she had been introduced to the rest of the group: Jade, Crystal, Sara, and Lola.

So now the girls were telling May about anything that they thought she should know about the school; the nicest teachers, the meanest teachers, where some places are, and some of the students.

"Watch out for Kay and Tay; they're the typical popular girls in the school. If they try to be friends with you, just try and ignore them. Either they'll make you into one of them, or they'll end up spreading rumors around the whole school," Lola warned. "I know from experience."

May nodded her head and poked at her food with her fork. The food was pretty disgusting. "Is it just me or does this chicken taste funny?"

Sara clasped a hand over her mouth. "Ugh! You're right! Ick! I think I'm going to throw up."

"Water?" Jade offered.

Sara eagerly took it and drank the entire bottle. She sighed. "I feel better."

"They're trying to poison us," Crystal said, her eyes looking absolutely horrified, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "I bet we're their little guinea pigs!"

"I prefer laboratory mice," May said, which caused the rest of the group to burst out laughing.

"Did you guys see Leon today?" Jade asked, eyes glistening.

Everyone shook their heads.

"Who's Leon?" May voiced her thoughts.

Everyone looked at her shocked for a moment, before they remembered that she was new.

"He's in our year, and he's the hottest guy in our school, but—" Lola began.

"He's a jerk! Leon Price is the biggest jerk in our school!" Emma said, a little too loudly. Some people looked over in their direction for a second, but then they returned to their friend's conversations. "I dated him in eighth grade, but he cheated on me with—" She paused for dramatic effect. "—that slut, Kay."

Lola groaned. "I was getting to that! He's another person you should definitely stay away from."

May nodded her head once again.

"Stay away from the bathroom near the library. A girl died in there, and you can hear her voice," Crystal said.

Sara rolled her eyes. "Shut up Crystal. No one died."

May laughed and together they enjoyed the rest of their lunch period, happily chatting away and soon May had made six . . . acquaintances, since she had just met them they weren't quite friends. On her first day; now that, that was lucky.

"So how was your day?"

May looked over at her Aunt—who preferred to be called Amy—who was on the couch, flipping through a book on her lap. Amy patted down a seat on the couch, and May walked over and sat next to her.

"Fine. Uh, what are you reading?"

Amy looked down at the book in her lap. "This? Oh. This is going to sound really stupid but it's a book that I wrote, and I'm reading it."

"You published a book!" May looked at her in amazement.

Amy laughed. "Several, actually."

May's mouth dropped open, but before she had the chance to say anything the door opened and in walked her Uncle—who liked to be called Michael—and two children ran in right behind him. The two of them, a boy around eight and a girl about eleven, rushed over to her and hugged her.

Amy laughed and after noticing that May looked slightly confused, shooed them away and they ran over to Michael. "Sorry! Those are my children. They were at their grandparents house for the weekend, since school doesn't start for them until next week. May, this is Allie and Joey."

May thought that Amy had children, but when she hadn't seen them, she thought that maybe she had misunderstood when her mother had told her that a while ago. "Hi," she said. She wasn't sure what else to say after that, but luckily Joey starting saying something about his action figure collection and how she should definitely go to his room and see it. She promised him she would later.

"Dinner's ready," a woman's voice said from out in the kitchen. The woman poked her head out and smiled. That was their chef, a polite, middle-aged woman who cooked very well judging from the meals from the past two days that she had been there.

They ate dinner together, and eventually Amy and Michael went somewhere else and Joey was walking up the stairs to go to his room to watch a TV show, which left May and Allie alone. Before even a minute had passed, Allie was already talking.

Allie grinned. "I want to show you something!"

So Allie pulled May up the stairs and lead her to her bedroom. The first thing May noticed was that it was completely pink. She probably wouldn't like this room since she wasn't really the definition of girly, but she had to admit it looked pretty nice. The second thing she noticed was that there were tons of posters on the wall, all of them with the same person.

"You like Jason Knight?" May asked Allie.

Allie looked as if she were about to faint. "Like him! That's like the understatement of the century! He's so hot! Do you like him?"

"He's okay." Jason Knight was probably the most well-known singer and actor of their generation. He was the lead singer of the band Jagged Expedition and wrote all of their lyrics; their music was pretty good, but it wasn't really her favorite band in the world. He was a good actor too, and most of the movies he was in had won awards. The movies he starred in ranged from romantic comedies to movies about a serial killer in some city that cut off the heads of anyone who walked in his path. It seemed most companies chose him only because he was so popular.

He was also pretty attractive, which was why he was pretty much an idol to most teenage girls, and some guys, too. His hair was bright blond and his eyes were hazel, and he also seemed to be pretty tall and somewhat muscular.

"He's better than okay. And guess what? I would consider us close friends," Allie said, putting a hand over her heart. "He's going to be my future husband, you know. I already met him a few times. I think he might ask me out soon."

"He's like nineteen, isn't he?" May didn't know much about him, but she knew that he was a lot older than Allie. He was even old for someone her age; a fifteen year old and a nineteen year old dating would probably get some strange glances.

"Eighteen. He turns nineteen in a few months, I think. January maybe?"

May didn't want to burst the girls' bubble of getting married to him or dating him. She remembered when she was younger and had a crush on a celebrity, so she didn't say anything to Allie.

Later on that night, at about ten-thirty, May was curled up on the nice, black, leather couch with a blanket over her in the living room. She was watching the huge, flat screen TV on the wall while Michael was sitting on a chair, writing something in a notebook.

She was bored, but she didn't want to bother him with whatever it was that he was doing. She guessed that owning your own company must be pretty tough, and he was probably busy enough with having two kids of his own.

As promised, May played with Joey's action figures with him for a little while until he became bored with them and went to go do something else that she didn't know.

Allie and Joey had both been asleep for about an hour now. At first, Allie had refused to go upstairs since 'May gets to stay up late!' But after a while, the young girl became tired and had given up and had tiredly walked upstairs.

May was also starting to become tired and she planned on going upstairs in a little while to the bedroom that Amy and Michael had given her while she stayed in their mansion. It was a really nice room, and it was mostly purple, not that she really minded but all the rooms in the house seemed to be primarily one color.

She still didn't have all of her clothes yet; she packed the clothes she mostly wore but had forgotten to pack more than one pair of pajamas, so Amy had loaned her a pair until the rest of May's clothes were shipped to the house. Amy had said that May could even have the pajamas if she wanted, since her grandmother had bought them for her several years ago and she had never ever wore them. May wasn't surprised, either. They were cute, but they were the type of pajamas that you wouldn't want to walk down the street in.

They were dark blue, and had little penguins all over them. Each of the penguins were wearing different colored baseball caps. It had long sleeves, but it wasn't too warm in the house or outside so it felt comfortable wearing them. Luckily, they weren't the pajamas with the feet attached, or she would've taken a pair of scissors to them.

"Mikey?" Amy said as she walked into the living room and saw her husband writing. He looked up at her and smiled, and suddenly May felt like she should probably go upstairs in case they wanted to . . . she didn't even want to think about it. Amy's eyes traveled to May's direction, and she smiled. "Michael, did you get the mail today?"

He groaned. "No, I forgot. I'll go—"

"I'll get it!" May announced. She hadn't really done too much since she arrived, so she figured that getting the mail would at least help somewhat. She briefly wondered why they didn't have someone get the mail for them. Maybe they were paranoid and didn't want them to possibly look through their stuff? Good enough reason, she decided.

"No, you don't have to, sweetheart," Amy said.

"It's no trouble. I need some fresh air, anyway." She stood up and tossed the blanket aside, and headed towards the door. When she was already outside, she remembered what she was wearing and quickened her pace. It would be stupid to go back inside and change, and it would take too much time when she could be back in less than two minutes from the mailbox. She hoped that no one would see her, but there were only two other mansions—she realized this must have been a rich area—on this part of the street, so hopefully her new neighbors were busy or asleep.

She opened the mailbox and reached in to grab the envelopes when she heard a rustling sound. She assumed it was the wind and didn't pay much attention to it. She finally grabbed the envelopes and was about to close the mailbox when—

"Those are some pretty sexy pajamas."

May nearly screamed, but instead she jumped what felt like a foot in the air and the envelopes went flying out of her hand and onto the ground, which was luckily dry. The deep voice—a guy, she realized—that had made the comment was laughing behind her, so she turned around. Now in front of her was a man who was at least six feet tall, with blond hair, and . . . Oh God.

It was Jason Knight.

A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed it. :) I know it's not realistic, but I had to make it work somehow. Ha ha. Reviews are greatly appreciated, and so is constructive criticism. Just be sure that you're nice about it, though. Thanks for reading! :D