Summary: Nathaniel should have known. Nothing good ever happened on a Monday.

Author note: Hmm the excuse for this… opposites attract maybe? Ah, take the relationship however you want in your own hearts. For once… no new character profile! I'm making her with only her looks and throwing her to the wolves to develop her own personality as I write her!

Disclaimer: I wish but then I don't. So I only own Lizzie.

Chapter start

There was no way to know. For the years to come that would be Nathaniel's defense against that school year. He couldn't have known.

It had started off just like any regular day in Sweet Amoris. His sister woke him up with her shrill voice and stomping around in her room. If he was like Castiel he'd have some choice words for her and the fact the walls were paper thin in the home they had.

Nathaniel sighed as he opened his golden eyes, wincing when the light pierced his foggy brain. The shower was on. He registered it dimly.

As he woke up further he became aware of the smells of cooking food. This was enough to tell him his parents were up. A small shudder went down his back as he pictured the scene. His mother would be at the stove. His father would be at the table reading the paper or going over business documents.

Eventually he and Amber would join the scene. And with the four of them they would make a total mockery of a kind and loving family. His mother too nervous and withdrawn to make any ripples, his father waiting like a lion to pounce on him, Amber taking advantage of the situations. Nobody would see that though outside of the home.

He didn't blame Amber. It was his fault after all. He had been the one who used to pick and needle at her, earning his father's distrust and 'special attention.'

Nathaniel rolled from his bed and gathered his clothes, while he waited for the shower he checked over his homework. It took him exactly an hour to shower, dress, handle his toiletries, and be at the table.

Amber was chattering away excitedly about something. Nathaniel picked at his food dutifully and his mother sat quietly.

Their Father drove them to school daily. Nathaniel had his license but he wasn't considered mature enough to have a car. Nathaniel didn't know what he could do to force a change in the way the older man viewed his son but he was giving up.

Blood was supposed to be thicker than water. That was the biggest joke of them all.

He didn't waste time vaulting from the car. Amber stayed behind to talk to their father. By the time she was out of the car he was in the building and maneuvering carefully between the heavy throng of students.

When he finally made it to the council room he breathed a sigh of relief. If only he had known then what he knew now he would have made a run for the hills.

"Ah Nathaniel you're here." Melody was standing beside a student who was sitting, feet propped up on the table and the chair tipped back on two legs.

There was a swift impression of fluffy blond hair and ice blue eyes set in a smiling face. Nathaniel focused on Melody who fluttered her hands before her and bit her lip.

"Hello! My name's Lizzie. It's a pleasure."

Nathaniel furrowed his brow as he tried to recall anything about a meeting. Then it hit him. The new student that had been scheduled to appear three days ago. There was no way she could be anyone else.

The term delinquent circled his mind as Nathaniel expelled his breath softly. As if he needed another one. And he hardly needed the paperwork either.

It wasn't that Nathaniel hated people. He just hated idiots and troublemakers. And there were a disheartening number of them in the school. It was rather disheartening to meet so many people his age who didn't know the importance of being on schedule and having good grammar… good god, how many people had terrible grammar here.

"Melody I'll handle this. You can go to class," Nathaniel said as he turned eyes to the new student. "Please get your shoes off the table."

During the brief meeting Lizzie kept quiet but the smile didn't leave her face. Nathaniel wondered if she was excited to be here or if she was just one of those chipper people.

It was early spring when she arrived. Nathaniel didn't pay her much attention. So there was no way it was his fault.

A week passed with no notable changes. Nathaniel spent his time in similar fashion on a daily basis. He would eat lunch in the student council room with Melody; spend his time divided between helping students and reviewing papers.

On occasion he would flicker his gaze to Lizzie. They shared a few classes together and she generally was seated close to him. Not close enough for there to ever be a need to socialize together though. On occasion he would hear one of the other students give her an invitation. He already knew all her excuses.

"Hey Lizzie want to eat lunch with us?" one would ask.

"Forgot my lunch money, sorry! You go on." Lizzie would smile and wave them through the door before vanishing or sleeping at her desk.

"There's this new store opening up. Want to come?"

"I have plans. Next time, okay?"

Nathaniel supposed he would have been curious if he cared. She seemed genuinely amiable and her friendly, approachable manner made most students tolerable of her if not friendly. Yet she refused to socialize with anyone deeper than being just classmates. She waved them off and deflected them with sugar coated smiles so that no one could ever hate her. So that no one could ever get close enough to touch her.

Then it changed.

Melody had taken ill earlier that day. Nathaniel had no papers that needed grading and he didn't feel like wandering from the classroom. He wondered briefly if he had caught the illness his friend had.

He waved it off because he felt a little hunger pain. Melody had been having violent tosses of her stomach even at the mention of food. As he briefly debated going to wrestle some food from the cafeteria there was something shoved under his nose.

It startled Nathaniel from his reverie and he blinked as he turned his head to see who was offering him food. One look at the fluffy hair was all it took and it threw him off more.

"Want some?" Lizzie asked, plopping herself onto the desk in front of him cross legged.

Nathaniel blinked again as looked at the sandwich in her outstretched hand. It looked like two pieces of white bread with some sort of rainbow, brightly colored things between them.

"What on earth is that?" He felt compelled to ask, first mistake.

"A gummi bear sandwich of course," Lizzie smiled brightly, "don't you want to try it?"

"Of course." Nathaniel echoed, his eyes narrowing in distaste. He wondered if wherever she came from actually had such a regular diet of gelatin sweets, resolving never to wander there.

"What?" He asked when she continued to stare at him with her hand reaching.

"Who are you again?" Lizzie asked with the obscene cheerfulness that carried her through the days.

He didn't take offense. They had never socialized beyond the first meeting and they didn't belong to the same crowd. So he told her his name. Mistake number two.

"Hmm well then Natty-catty do you want some or not?"

Cold water would have been less shocking.

"I have more stuff too. Tabasco cookies, some chocolate apples-"

"Listen-"Before Nathaniel could finish he found his mouth full of the most sickeningly sweet thing he had ever had the misfortune of having against his taste buds.

He recoiled away with a bite of the gummi bear sandwich. It tasted vile, absolutely vile; his teeth ached just from thinking about it let alone tasting it. He longed to spit it out but he couldn't since it would be rude in front of the horrified students remaining in the class. He wanted to yell at Lizzie and strangle her but reined the urge in because she was a girl.

"Good isn't it?" Lizzie asked with a smile.

Nathaniel forced himself to swallow and stood in shock, torn between commenting on her audacity and removing himself from the situation. Finally he shook himself from his shock and left the room.

It settled down after that. Weeks passed and she didn't bother him again and he put it down to a freak occurrence. He should have paid more attention. Maybe if he had he could have foreseen that Lizzie had an evil mind and she had targeted him.

It was during the beginning he regretted being the president. Because every stupidity she involved herself with he was the one who had to be present as she was reamed and scolded by the principal and teachers. It got to the point when he was called to the council room or teachers lounge he would only sigh and clutch his clipboard.

To list all of her stupid actions would take a year. The ones that stuck in his mind though and replayed where these:

Throwing all the clocks off the school roof. Lizzie hadn't even tried to run. She had been found looking over the roof and staring down at the shattered clocks. When dragged to the teachers lounge she had grinned disarmingly at the principal and said she wanted to see time fly.

She was told to pay for all the school clocks she had destroyed. She never did.

Then she filled the swimming pool with fish. In this one she had never been caught but Nathaniel knew it was her. A week earlier she had asked him casually what he thought about all the poor stray starving cats around the neighborhood.

He might not have made the connection if she hadn't let loose a sack full of cats to prey on the fish. She took his scolding in stride and said that even cats deserved a buffet every now and again.

She somehow stole the cafeterias supply of muffins for three days straight in order to make a life sized muffin man, while whistling the muffin man song. She would have made a muffin woman and child if the teachers hadn't shown up to haul her off.

Each of these times Nathaniel trailed behind to the teachers' lounge wondering what god he had offended.

On the day she was to serve her detention for one of her long list of idiocies he was the one responsible for watching her. The first half went smoothly if one could ignore her frequent "I'm bored" and random interjections. Then Nathaniel recalled he had forgotten to put back an important file in the council room.

"If I leave you in here for a few minutes can you stay out o trouble?" He asked Lizzie seriously.

The salute and cheerful grin weren't very reassuring. Regardless Nathaniel rushed to return the file. He returned a few minutes later to find an empty classroom.

It made him feel slightly sick. How could anyone be this much trouble? If he wanted this then he would have stayed close to Castiel.

He searched the halls for about ten minutes before finding the door to the roof standing wide open. Nathaniel sighed. Either she had gotten hold of the keys again or Castiel had and was being careless about hiding it. They wee the only two who liked the roof.

He noticed her the minute he set foot on the roof. She turned to him when he said her name sharply. He noticed, he would be less than a male if he didn't notice; she had removed her jacket and pulled off her over shirt, leaving her in a spaghetti strap. Strands of hair swished across her face as the wind blew around them.

"What are you doing up here?" Nathaniel demanded.

"I like it up here," Lizzie replied blithely, "What are you doing here?"

Nathaniel grimaced a little as he stepped closer. "Chasing after you. You're supposed to be in detention."

Lizzie shrugged and turned back to the rail, eyes opened up to the sky. "Doesn't being up here make you want to sing at the top of your lungs?"

"No."

Lizzie must not have been listening to him. Before he could demand her return to the classroom to finish her detention she gave him a wild grin and vaulted up and over the rail. Nathaniel gaped at her as she found a precarious balance on the paper thin ledge, hands grasping the rails behind her, bellowing at the top of her lungs.

"I have to go oooouuuuut tonight!"

Nathaniel winced and resisted the urge to cover his ears. She sounded appalling. It was worse than a million cats being run over by a car repeatedly.

"Would you cut that out?" He snapped.

She ignored him in favor of bellowing out words to cell block tango, leaning out and keeping only one hand on the rails now.

"Lizzie you need to come face your responsibilities." Nathaniel coughed uncomfortably, covering his face with his hand to rub his forehead.

"-if you'd a seen it! I bet ya you would have-"She stopped suddenly.

Nathaniel had a split second to react. He barely lunged in time, just as her foot slipped from the edge. After he didn't know whether to categorize it as mistake number three or success number one.

"You idiot." He said.

He felt a curious mixture of anger and exhaustion, wondering what would have happened had he not made it in time. What would have happened if he hadn't grabbed her wrist in time or if he hadn't been able to pull her back?

He hauled her back over and they went flying across the roof where they lay panting for breath. Nathaniel cursed inside his head and felt his heart continue to race from adrenaline. He was almost paralyzed with stun at how fast it beat and the fact he was feeling that fear.

Yet close to him he heard no wheezing breaths. He heard tiny chuckles. Tiny chuckles that quickly turned to snorts and then big blown out laughs.

"That was fun!"

"Fun?" Nathaniel shot up in surprise. "You almost died!"

It was then that Nathaniel realized the core of why she made him uneasy and exhausted him. It wasn't just she gave him mountains of paperwork with all her stunts or that she had taken up bothering him for random things. They were part of it. But it was so much more than that that annoyed him.

Lizzie had a total disregard for life.

If Nathaniel had not been there to catch her, she would have plunged to her death still laughing at the top of her lungs. She didn't seem to care if she died or not, didn't care what happened around her. He couldn't understand whether everything was just deliriously fun to her that she couldn't tell when she was spinning close to oblivion or if she had just been desensitized to everything until there was no longer a sense of danger.

"Detentions over," she said with a wicked smile at him, "Unless you're gonna make me stay late?"

"I can't see much point in it," Nathaniel sighed and pushed himself into a sitting position.

Despite the fact he was aware he needed to get home he made no move to get up. Lizzie was digging around in her bag.

"Something wrong," She asked when she had finished her rummaging to pull out a sandwich.

Pure curiosity made him look at it and he again felt revulsion. Some sort of red sauce was oozing between the bread. It didn't smell like ketchup though. Not that he would have found it any less repulsive or her any saner. It smelled like an acrid spice, making him think Tabasco.

"How can you eat that stuff?" He asked after he got over the initial shock of the fact she had taken a huge chunk of it off and was chewing it with relish.

"It's good. Wanna try?"

Nathaniel shook his head and scooted a little away before she pulled another stunt of shoving it in his mouth.

"So… family problems?" She asked knowingly.

"What?"

"You're still sitting here," she swallowed her food, "So you must not wanna go."

"So are you." He pointed out.

"My Aunt lets me do whatever I want!"

It was a good thing she had the attention span of a goldfish because she didn't press and didn't notice the way his eyes slid away, his mind turning to his father.

If only he knew then that the fluffy blond paid more attention to things then anyone thought her capable.

End chapter

Author note: For once I don't even have words for this. I never made a character like her before… not to this degree at least. Can you all tell I'm challenging myself to improve my writing range lately? Anyway I hope you all liked!

She's singing Mia's song "out tonight" and then cell block tango by the way…