Chapter One

My Friends and Larry the Stupid Little Vegetable

"Willow! Get dressed! You're going to be late!" a shrill female voice echoed up the stairs that early Monday morning.

I groaned, flipping over onto my stomach so I could place my pillow over my head, but not even that could drown out the sudden music from my cell phone. 6:00am had come too early once again... Blindly, I pulled one hand from out of the covers and groped for my phone, silencing Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down" once I had found it and shut it off. Without the music now, I seemed just that much more reluctant to get up, but I eventually found my way out of the warmth of the covers and over to my mirror. I looked the same as I did every morning: Dead with a zombie-ish tone around my eye area. Ah well, nothing a little make-up couldn't fix!

I rummaged through my drawers and closet, pulling out a pair of gray skinnies and a black shirt that declared to the world that I was obsessed with Pete Wentz, the bassist of Fall Out Boy. It was my other dream to meet him one day besides becoming a rock star...or the manager of the bakery... Whatever.

As soon as I was ready, I followed the aroma of waffles down the stairs and into the kitchen where my two sisters of twelve, Amy and Annabelle, were daintily cutting their waffles into tiny squares. They looked up and grinned when they saw me enter.

"Morning, Willow!" they chirped in unison and watched as I took a seat at the table across from them.

"Good morning, you two," I said with a grin of my own while I reached across the table and grabbed a couple waffles and the syrup. The twins giggled as Mom cast me a stern look from her seat beside me. "What?" I asked, picking up my knife and fork and shovelling a good sized piece of the waffle into my mouth.

"Next time, ask for the waffles, or anything that's across the table. It's rude to just reach. And take smaller bites, for goodness sake! You weren't raised in a barn, Willow," she said, her already thin lips pursed together in a tiny line.

I merely rolled my eyes in reply. "Sorry, mom. I'll try and remember next time," I said, a little too sarcastic sounding. I heard mom sigh and I knew what was coming. But it wasn't just any lecture that was coming. Oh no. It was 'The Lecture'.

"You know, I sometimes just don't know what to do with you anymore. I don't understand why you can't just act like the normal girls do and..."

"Dress in overpriced designer clothes, go to parties, get drunk, have sex, get pregnant?" I finished for her, raising an eyebrow. The twins giggled some more while Mom just looked plain pissed. I had probably gone over the line there with my little interrupting act, but that seemed like that was what all the girls were doing these days and I was damn glad I wasn't a part of that crowd, nor would I ever be.

"We'll finish this discussion when you get home from school. If you don't hurry, you'll miss the bus again and have to walk. I'm tired on wasting gas driving you to school because your lazy behind can't get up in the morning."

I sighed. "Yes, mom. Love you, too," I said, then winked at the twins and grabbed my bag which was by my chair before slipping on my shoes and hurrying out the door.

I know I mentioned before that my life was perfect, but I didn't mean that in a sense that everyone in my family was sugar-coated like those people in those crappy cereal commercials. I mean, who were those producers kidding? Those commercials weren't fooling me, or anyone else. What was a perfect family without a little drama to spice up our boring lives?

The bus stop wasn't all that far from where I lived. A couple houses down and I was there...by myself. I found it somewhat scary that I was the only kid on my street that goes to Thistlewood High, but I wasn't complaining. At least I wasn't the loser on the bus that has to wait a million bus stops before his or her friend finally got on. That spot was already claimed by one of my best friends, Caden Cline. He was the first one to get on, and the last one to get off, but he always managed to get the seat in the back that's made for three so that when our other friend Sam came three stops later, she could sit with us.

The bus chugged in a few minutes later and opened the doors for me. Larry, the very obese, insulting, obnoxious bus driver, made a face when I came on and I returned it with a sour one of my own.

"Decide to join us today, Ms. Airedale Terrier?" he asked, using the joke that he used every morning in comparing my last name to that very ugly dog. Y'know, take the 'er' out of Terrier and 'air" out of Airedale, then smoosh what's left together and you get Terridale... Yeah, I don't get what's so funny about it either...

Larry smirked when my face scrunched up and shut the doors behind me, moving the bus before I had a chance to sit down.

"Yeah, mom's not too happy about driving me to school these days," I said with a dramatic sigh. "Thought I'd try bussing it again, but the only thing I hate is getting up really early."

"Save the sap, sister. When you work a nine hour shift and have to wake up every morning at 4:00am, then we'll talk. Until then, take a seat. Ms. Cline back there doesn't know what to do with herself until you get on the bus," Larry said with a small laugh.

My mood darkened instantly, but I didn't say anything back to Larry. Caden was 100% a boy, but he was also gayer than the cast of Glee and Lord of the Rings, making him the target of Larry's jokes besides me. Like Larry should even be talking. The man was a walking tomato. With cheeks as red as my grandma's lips when she overused her bright red hooker lipstick, and a beer belly the size of Kansas, he wasn't the type to be judging other people, but like every jerk, he needed someone to pick on so that he could feel good about himself. What a stupid little, er...large vegetable.

Fighting back the urge to knock his hat off of his head, I made my way down the walkway and down to Caden who slipped off his headphones and draped them around his neck when he saw me. Already his big brown eyes seemed a bit brighter and his full lips turned up in a grin.

"Well doesn't someone look just a little grumpy this morning," he commented in that cute little gay-boy voice of his (lisp and all), noticing the dark look that was still plastered on my face. "What's up, Hun? Trouble with your mom?"

I yawned and ran a hand through my long auburn hair before replying. "Nah, just a little tired. And because of Dickhead Larry up there," I said.

"Oh, tell me about it!" Caden exclaimed dramatically with an eye roll. "Sometimes I wonder how he even has a wife. If I were married to him, I would have, like, divorced him a LONG time ago. Mmhmm," he said with a nod, folding his arms across his chest.

I had to laugh. "Oh, what would I ever do without you, Caden?" I said.

Caden shrugged at the hypothetical question, wiping a non existent piece of fluff off his shirt. "Well you couldn't exactly get a replacement now, could you? Not too many boys like me around here, that's for sure," he said with a somewhat sad sigh.

By 'boys like me', he meant that there were really no other gay boys that went to our school, or the surrounding ones. I felt kind of bad for him, but there was always a slim chance that one would turn up one day and Sam would probably take the roll of being the matchmaker of that. It was what she did best and loved doing. I suggested that she should start charging people for her services, but she did the whole Sam thing.

"Oooh, I don't know about that. I love doing it because I want to help people. I don't need their money," was what she said to me that one day. That was a load of crap. After all, it was her that kept complaining that she didn't have enough money to go on the Europe trip that was happening in a few months. That girl needed some sense knocked into her, but that would come later and I turned my attention back to Caden, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and giving him a little reassuring squeeze.

"Just you wait. One day, that guy is gonna pop up. Or..." I said with a grin, making Caden glance at me with a weird expression on his face. "Maybe he's already at our school and he just hasn't, you know, come out of the closet yet," I said.

Caden's face brightened slightly, but that quickly faded as the bus came to a stop and Adam, the quarterback of our school's football team, came aboard with the rest of the football team and threw a rather disgusting looking sandwich at Caden's head at an inhuman speed. I pulled Caden off to the side so he wouldn't get hit.

Adam chuckled. "Morning, you little homo," he said, his buddies that followed him chortling their big throaty laughs. Oooh, how I could have hurt them...

"If I were him, I would stay in the closet," Caden whispered to me.

We stayed hidden from the football team for the next few stops until Sam finally came on the bus in her ratty hippie clothing, skipping happily down the isle with her dreadlocks bouncing behind her. She smiled when she saw us and took a seat next to Caden.

"Hey guys! Lovely morning, isn't it?" she said in her usual happy-go-lucky tone.

Both Caden and I raised an eyebrow at her as if she were joking.

"No morning is lovely until we're off the bus," I said under my breath.

"No arguing with you there, Hun," Caden agreed with a nod, toying with a piece of his hair. "I can't stand this bus and that filth up there."

Sam and I laughed and agreed, chatting about our weekends while the bus kept rolling along until we pulled up beside the school. As we did every day, we waited for everyone to get off before we finally did. Larry never seemed to understand why we did that, but it aggravated him so much that we made a habit of it, just to have a little fun with the stupid little vegetable.

"You'll be happy to know that I won't be on the return trip," I said to him with a wink as we filed off the bus.

"Hallelujah," Larry muttered and rolled his beady eyes before slamming the bus doors in my face and chugging off, making sure the exhaust blew at my face. What a dick, but that was the joy of teasing Larry the stupid little vegetable.