A/N: Alright, so here's my first story, I Hate Everything About You. It's told from Ryan's point of view as she makes her way from fifth year to graduation. I appreciate constructive criticism. If you see any grammar mistakes or misspellings or stuff like that, just drop a review :) Anyway, here's chapter one, I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoy writing it!

Chapter 1—Sirius the Cookie

I was running out of time. "Lily, listen, I really have to go now, okay? Promise you'll be over in like," I glanced at my electric watch, "ten minutes?"

"Yeah," Her muffled voice promised from the other end of the phone.

I chucked the phone onto my bed and raced downstairs, skipping the last two steps. I was going to be too late; I was going to be too late! I skidded into the kitchen in sock feet, too worried to go back and try it again. (Not that I wasn't going to have a sock sliding contest with Lily later.)

Huh. Lily. Later. ALLITERATION!… Ahem.

So of course by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I had wasted too much time. The smile slid off my face. Actually it probably jumped off my face and fled screaming for the hills, because I was angry and my smile knew how dangerous that was.

Kyle sat calmly at the table, reading some novel. Funny way to spend your last few minutes on earth. My smile came creeping back and slid onto my face.

Dad couldn't blame me now for murdering him. I'd been waiting so long, but it was always, "No Ryan, you can't kill your brother."

Yes, Kyle is my brother. You're probably wondering, in that case, why I'm rejoicing over his imminent death. That, my friends, can be explained by the innocent looking, rectangular metal sheet sitting on the counter inconspicuously in front of him.

It was a cookie sheet. Doesn't make any sense? Wait, watch, and learn.

I stormed up to Kyle and slammed his book shut. Of course, his hand was in the book, so I didn't manage to lose his place like I'd been trying to do, but he still looked up.

"Your cookies were about to start burning Ray, so I took them out for you."

Only Kyle is allowed to call me Ray. When I was younger, and I was learning to spell my name, the "y" confused me, so I told my parents that they were pronouncing my name wrong, and it was really "Rayon."

Kyle found this hilarious, and that was around the time that Dad started calling me his "Little Ray of Sunshine," so it stuck.

He wouldn't be alive much longer to call me Ray, though.

"Kyle, do you know what happens when I bake?" Kyle rolled his eyes. He probably knew what was coming.

"The rest of us foolishly forget to barricade ourselves in a bomb shelter and wait until your mental lapse in sanity has been cured?"

I ignored this verbal barb and launched into my lecture. "Something goes wrong. Something always goes wrong-"

"No way, really?" He asked sarcastically. I plowed on.

"I forgot the flour in that bread, and then half of that fudge, you know the half I gave to everyone at school including the teachers, tasted like soap because I didn't shake up the condensed milk, and then I burnt those cookies so bad we had to use magic to get them off the pan, and-"

"I always end up cleaning up your messes and helping you fix your, er, food, so it's edible?"

"EXACTLY!" I cried. He realized the error of his ways.

"So shouldn't you be thanking me?" Or not.

"Kyle, Kyle, Kyle." I shook my head sadly. "I finally made something good and you took them out of the oven! I was making something good by myself and you meddled in my affairs! Like when we're done cooking, you always lick the bowl, and you always put the icing on the cupcakes, and you always put the sprinkles on the ice cream, and now you took my cookies OUT OF THE OVEN! I wanted to do that," I whined, glancing longingly at the closed oven.

Kyle had a strange look on his face. And then he burst out laughing. On his way out of the room he turned back and said, "Alright Ray. Next time, I'll let you take the cookies out of the oven. You can take all the credit when your friends come over, 'kay?"

I nodded desolately. That would have to do. And then my smile jumped on my face again.

My three best friends in the world would be here soon! I leapt for the spatula and commenced in coaxing the cookies off of the tray. I had so much to tell them!

Molly was the first to make it. I beamed at her when I opened the door. "Molly, I've missed you so! I haven't seen you for-"

"A week?" she said flatly. A grin broke out on her face. She was the same as always.

Molly VanWagner was on the short side. She wasn't overweight at all, but her face still held on to some of her baby fat. Her cheeks were generally flushed for some reason or another, and her bright red hair refused to lay flat. She had beautiful clear blue eyes, but she hated her splotchy, pale skin.

She didn't seem like it, but she was the most organized of us all, except maybe Andromeda, and grades came above everything else. Grades were of equal (or slightly greater) importance to quidditch, though. She played Chaser for the Gryffindor team, and she was very athletic.

I was almost jealous of her. It seemed like everything came easy to her.

She had perfect, above average grades, she was an amazing chaser, (she even played basketball with her muggle friends over the summer to keep in shape) the professors loved her, she was always organized, she was great with children, and she had the perfect family.

Her older brothers had moved out, and she lived like an only child.

I pulled back from our spontaneous embrace and eyed the empty driveway behind her.

"They're late, every one of them!" I exclaimed in astonishment. Okay, so it wasn't that unusual.

Molly rolled her eyes and tugged me in the door behind her. "There's this miraculous invention called a doorbell. We'll know when they're here, let's go wait in the kitchen."

The Voice of Reason herself dragged me away from my perch by the front window.

Hey. The Voice of Reason. I could call her that. We've been trying to land Molly with a nickname for a while, 'cause Moll just sounded wrong, but the rest of us have a nickname (even though mine is forbidden to everyone but Kyle.)

We could call her T.V.R. for short. Or just T.V.! It's creative, and completely fits her, and it's just mysterious enough that it makes people wonder why we call her T.V.

Mysteriousness is essential to an individual's personality. Since I am the Master of Mysteriousness, I have taken it upon myself to make sure my friends have that element of mystery about them.

I voiced my thinking process to Molly, who just proceeded to roll her eyes again. Of course.

Just then, the doorbell rang. I sprinted to the door and peered through the peep hole. I loved that thing. No one could surprise you when you opened the door, and it was like you knew who was on the other side of the door, but they didn't know who would answer.

As I squinted through the tiny peep hole, trying to make out the twisted blob standing on my porch, (I mean really, couldn't they make these things bigger?) Molly simply tugged me away from the door and opened it calmly, muttering something that sounded like, "Trust Andromeda to be fashionably late."

I agitatedly flung her aside and screamed, "Andy!" I proceeded to serenade the girl with a song of my own making. It was brilliant. "Andy, oh Andy, I-"

"Please do not finish that song Ryan."

"What were you expecting?" Molly interrupted. "A normal hello, haven't seen you in three days, how've you been? You weren't planning on making it through the visit without a song, were you Rommy?" She grinned evilly at her new twist on Andy's name.

We both knew that Andy hated having such a long, formal name. She had about ten potential different nicknames, so she asked Lily to come up with a normal nickname at least two syllables shorter.

So Lily came up with "Andy," and she had been dubbed so ever since. (Is that even grammatically correct? Oh well, since when have I cared?)

Sometimes, just to annoy her, we found other fun ways to twist her wonderfully nickname-able name into a fun word. Like Rommy. It sounds poetic, I think.

I don't think Rommy, aka Andy, found it very poetic, judging from the glare she was shooting Molly. Oh well, we all know that I'm the writer of the group. I mean, who else can rhyme meatball and Menthol?

That's right, bow before my brilliance.

Any-who, Lily chose this moment to burst through the door, whacking Molly (aka T.V.) in the forehead.

"Sorry Molly! So sorry, didn't see you there, Ryan, hello!" Lily is my best friend out of the three. Well, her and Andy, I guess. But don't tell Molly. Everybody, including the professors at school, think that Molly is my best friend. She was my first friend, after all, and pretty much my only friend first year.

Lily never had the same schedule as me, and Andy was cool and distant from those who didn't know her, so Molly and I, along with everyone else, were just assumed best friends. ABF's.

But it was Lily that I really admired. She didn't care what anyone else thought, and she was possibly slightly crazy. She was an amazing dancer, and a little too modest for her own good. She hated compliments, and tended not to believe them.

She was beautiful too, something I had always envied. Not that I was going to tell her that. The envying part, not the beautiful part. I told her the beautiful part a while ago.

Lily worked hard at her schoolwork, but she occasionally forgot things too. Unlike me.

I always forgot everything. I was so flustered first year, I even forgot my trunk and McGonagall had to get it for me. Don't judge me.

I snapped back to the present and helped Molly off the floor where she sat in an unceremonious heap.

Molly hauled herself up and pretended to glare at Lily, who shrugged. "I didn't want to be too late. Dad's car broke down and Mum has no idea how to jumpstart it, so she tried magic, but that is apparently a bad idea, so—"

"Lily, that is like, the worst excuse ever; you live across the street." Andy moaned.

"Yeah, well if it wasn't Ryan's own house, she would have been even later and forgotten something and had to go back to get it!"

"Like her shirt?" Molly sniggered.

"I resent that!" I cried over their laughter. Really, don't ask. You don't want to know. Hmph, some friends they are, bringing that up again…

"Anyway, you're one to talk, Lily." Andy stated smugly.

"So are you? You've never been on time in your life, Rom!" Lily said indignantly.

"I'm going to ignore that idiotic nickname for the time being to explain that I am always fashionably late, whereas Lily is consistently just plain late."

"Is there a difference?" Molly muttered at the same time Lily exclaimed, "Why do you need to be fashionably late to your friends house?"

I rolled my eyes at their childishness. Arguing while there were cookies to be eaten?

"You have much to learn." I stated calmly.

They all turned to look at me strangely. "Um, Ryan, do we want to know what you're talking about?"

"She's referring to the cookies she made 'all by herself' that are sitting on the kitchen counter in, what do you call it Ray, a pool of deliciousness." Kyle thumped down the stairs, skipping every other.

"How dare you air quote my cookies deliciousness? Out! This is a girl's night only!"

Kyle looked confusedly between the four of us. "It's daytime, Ryan."

"It's alright, Ryan, he can stay if he wants. It's not as if you can kick him out of his own kitchen." Everyone knew Molly had a crush on Kyle. Everyone except Kyle, that is. Kyle is a member of the male species, and therefore oblivious to almost everything.

"Actually, I can. Kyle, MOVE!" I turned him around and shoved him back up the stairs. He grinned and saluted my friends. "Ladies," And with that he jogged up to his bedroom. I glared at his smirking face in the doorway and maturely stuck my tongue out.

I turned. "Now, my pretties, COMMENCE WORLD DOMINATION PLAN! TO THE KITCHEN!" I skipped toward the kitchen and my pile of deliciousness that waited there. Cause who doesn't like skipping places, huh? You can't help but be happy when you skip.

"Ryan, we were never planning to take over the world." Molly rolled her eyes again. She's getting quite professional, if I do say so myself.

I smiled at her approvingly. "Very good, T.V., never forget that the walls have ears named Kyle."

She rolled her eyes again and sighed. Andy was currently picking up a cookie carefully as if it might bite her head off or lay mini cookie eggs in her brain. "Are these, well, you know, Ryan… safe?"

I glared. "I made them, of course they're safe!"

"That's why she asked; because you made them are they safe?"

"Yes!" I snapped, feeling very betrayed. What kind of friends question your cookie-making abilities? I picked up a cookie to prove myself and handed it to Lily.

"Here, you eat James,"

"You name my cookie James?" Lily looked slightly alarmed.

I rolled my eyes. "Well duh. What better way to vent your anger at someone than to eat their cookie counterpart?"

"She probably named hers Sirius," Molly sniggered, smirking at me.

"Shut up," I huffed, taking a bite out of Sirius the cookie.

My friends knew how much I hated Sirius Black, and not with a passion, because that implies that it's one of those cheesy romances where the main characters hate each other with a passion that turns into love.

I am not passionate about Black.

No, I hate him with a determination, the determination of a thousand turtles, actually, because those things must be pretty dang determined and focused since they move about an inch a year. Or something like that.

Andy grinned evilly . "What you're saying Ryan, is that you want to eat Sirius? Not that girls don't want to snog his face off already, but I never thought-"

"EW! Gross, bad mental image Andy! I do not want to eat Sirius Black!"
I chucked Sirius at her face. That was satisfying.

Middle_of_September

P.S. From now on, all my authors notes will be at the end; you don't have to read them, but sometimes I'll have polls or something on the story. Oh, and the chapters will get longer, I promise.