Chapter 1

Author's note: This is loosely based on the Paramore song 'The Only Exception' (hints the title). It is also somewhat based on the movie 'The Perfect Man' and possibly "She's all that' in later chapters. I do not own anything except to idea (although it is based somewhat on some movies). Even though it was inspired by the movies and the song it will have its own storyline. I hope you guys enjoy it!

She was moving…again. This was the third time in a year and a half. It was always the same situation, her mother fell in love, got her heart broken, and decided to move to a place. She hated moving from place to place. It wasn't that she didn't like the adventure, she did, but she wanted to stay in one place long enough to make some really friends. That was the worst part about moving, meeting people and then packing up and leaving before she had a chance to get to know them. When she did make friends it always ended the same. It was always, I'll write, I'll call, email, or some other form of communication, but it never happened. The past couple of moves she had decided to not even bother trying to make friends. What was the point when she was going to move six months later?

"We are almost to Los Angeles," her mother informed her, breaking her from her thoughts. "Isn't this exciting? Her mother always seemed to find moving exciting, a new adventure, and a fresh start. Kate, however, thought of it as running from all their problems.

"Not really," Kate replied, refusing to look over, keeping her focus on the scenery outside of the car window. "The excitement wore off after the first two times."

"Katherine, where is your sense of adventure?" Diane asked her teenage daughter. Diane had always been the adventurous one, running seemed to solve all of her problems, except her broken relationship with Kate.

"Sorry, fresh out," Kate snapped back, not breaking her gaze from the window. All she could do was look out the scenery and try to tune out her mother, but she was making that difficult.

"You can be anyone you want to be," her mother told, reaching over to brush a stray hair out of Kate's face. Diane hated it when her daughter acted this way, but she knew that she was to blame.

"I've been everyone that I want to be," Kate shot back, crossing her arms across her chest. "Look, mom I just don't want to talk about this right now."

It wasn't that she didn't love her mother, she did. It was that she was tired of being the adult in the relationship. She was only sixteen and she had already been playing the role of a mom for years. Every time her mother got her heart broken, Kate had to be there to pick up the pieces. When her mom was dating someone, she was left in charge of doing the housework, grocery shopping, and waiting up way too late for her mother to come back home. Diane wasn't a bad mother; she just got too wrapped up in love.

Kate knew that there was nothing new about this move. Within a week Diane would meet some loser and fall in love, only to be dumped again. It was always the same old story. It was like her mother had some dating disease, like she had to be with someone for her life to have any value. It had been this way since Diane and Kate's father Sam had gotten a divorce. Kate was twelve when her parents officially separated and ever since then Kate and Diane had been moving around from place to place. The first time they moved was two months after the divorced was finalized. They had packed up their house in Iowa and headed off to a small town in Ohio. It was there that her mother had met Wayne, a small town bar owner. It was the longest relationship that her mother had been in other than with Sam. After a year of dating Wayne had asked Diane to marry him. Everything seemed perfect for a while until six months later when Diane walked in on Wayne with another woman. Her mother was completely heartbroken, and so they packed up and headed towards Arkansas.

David was the next man on Diane's long list. He was a big time southern lawyer, a decent man by Kate's standards. The relationship lasted almost a year, but ended when David decided that it was going nowhere. Diane didn't seem too heartbroken over David because she too realized that they had no future together.

This didn't stop her from wanting to move to a new place, so they decided Georgia sounded like a nice place to live. They settled in a small town just outside of Atlanta. A few weeks after arriving Diane met Jim, the local grocery store owner. By this time, Diane had become one of those women who were just too clingy. The relationship lasted all of six months before she ended up smothering the poor guy and he broke things off between them.

From there it was south to Florida, it had always been one of Diane's favorite states, so it only made sense that they should live there. Kate loved Florida. They lived close to the beach, so Kate would go hang out there after school. It wasn't too long after they arrived in Florida when Diane met John, a CEO of his own business.

Everything was going really good until Wayne found them and begged Diane to take him back. She did and they ended up moving back to Ohio. Their reunion lasted six months until Wayne went back to his old ways. Once a cheater, always a cheater.

It had been a long hard road full of heartbreaks and heartaches. It was now taking them to California, Los Angeles to be exact. Diane had said that she always wanted to live in the big city. One of Diane's childhood friends just happened to live here and had offered Diane a job with her catering company.

"Look, Katherine, the Hollywood sign!" Diane exclaimed, once again snapping Kate out of her thoughts. Diane seemed to enjoy stuff like this, so it didn't surprise Kate when she wanted Kate to share her enthusiasm.

"Wow…so cool," Kate said, her voice full of sarcasm. It was hard for her to find it exciting when she knew that it was only a matter of time before they moved away. If Kate had to guess, she would have said six months because that was usually how long Diane's relationships lasted.

"Katherine, please cheer up," Diane begged her, placing her hand on Kate's. "Aren't you at least a little excited?"

"I'm sorry mom, it's just hard to be excited about this when I know that we aren't going to be here that long," Kate apologized, but her voice still contained a hint of sarcasm.

"This time it is going to be different, sweetheart," her mother said giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. "I just know that this time it is all going to work out."

"I'm not going to hold m breath on that one," Kate replied harshly, turning her face back towards the window. "It will be six months and we will be having this same conversation again."

"We will not," her mother told her, trying to defend herself. "You'll see, we are going to be here for a long time. Maybe this time you will even fall in love."

"Haha, that's a funny joke, mom," Kate laughed, knowing that it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. "I don't believe in love," Kate informed her mother in a very serious tone.

"Of course you do, you just don't know it yet," Diane responded, wondering why her daughter had to be so stubborn all the time. It was something that Kate had inherited from Sam, he was just as hardheaded as she was.

"I think you have been in love enough for the both of us," Kate spat back, giving her mom the cold shoulder. Her mother had always been a hopeless romantic and believed that everyone was the same way.

It was true that Kate didn't believe in love, or at least not anymore. After watching her mom get hurt so many times, it was hard to believe that true love still existed. She had made herself a promise to never fall in love, not ever. She had watched love destroy her father and consume her mother's every thought, and she decided that she wanted no part in any of that.

"Just promise me that when love comes knocking on your door, you won't turn it away," Diane said, looking over towards Kate.

"Well that is not a hard promise to make since true love doesn't exist," Kate replied, her voice once again full of sarcasm and annoyance.

"Oh, Katherine, what am I going to do with you?" her mother asked, shaking her head and letting off a small sigh.

"Just stop trying to push your stupid beliefs about love on me," Kate replied, trying hard not to raise her voice, but still trying to get her point across.

"Let's talk about something else," her mother suggested, finally getting the message. She decided it was best to change the subject so she could avoid a fight with her daughter. "Are you excited about starting school tomorrow?"

"I'm starting tomorrow?" Kate questioned, anxiety filled her voice as well as her face. She hadn't even thought about starting a new school and starting in the middle of the semester. It was hard enough to be the weird new kid at the beginning of school, but being the new kid in the middle of semester was just cruel and unusual punishment.

"I don't want you to miss any more time than you have to," Diane answered, giving her daughter a somewhat sympathetic look.

"I guess that makes sense," Kate answered, "but to answer your question, no, I'm not excited about starting school. I'm not excited about going to a school full of snotty rich California kids."

"Katherine, don't be so judgmental, you don't know anything about these people," her mother scolded.

"I'm sorry, but high schools are always the same and this one is in Los Angeles, so they are probably all rich," Kate told her, knowing that her mother was right, but also wanting to be a rebellious teenager at the moment.

She had been acting out for almost a year now. She wore all black, refusing to wear anything with color because she didn't want to look happy. Her mother hated it and tried to get her to wear other colors, but this only made Kate want to wear black even more. She didn't know why she wanted to act out, but she did. Perhaps it was because it was the one thing in her life that she had control over. Maybe she wanted to come off a edgy or even scary, so people would leave her alone. Whatever the reason, she just wanted to act out. Anyone who met her would assume that she was cold and heartless because she refused to show any emotion, but underneath all that she really was a caring person. She didn't want to open up to people because it always ended with her getting hurt. Her mother had told her many times before that this was no way to live, but this is how Kate wanted it.

"Please try to have an open mind," her mother pleaded after a few minutes of awkward silence between them.

"I'll try," Kate sighed. She didn't feel like fighting with her mother right now. They only had each other and so they had to mange to get along, at least for now.

Author's note: Please review and let me know what you think. : )