Hi! This is my first fan fiction. I've had this idea for a while, and I finally decided to write it. The first few chapters are going to be pretty bumpy, but I have a good plan for later on. If you don't like it, don't read it (please no hate comments).

WARNING: The main plot of this story will be about eating disorders and family stress. If there will be anything else, I'll let you know.

How to Train Your Dragon belongs to Cressida Cowell and Dreamworks.

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Hiccup's POV

I woke up to the smell of frying sausage and a particularly obnoxious beeping alarm clock on my bedside table. I deactivated it with one sleepy hand and rubbed my face with the other. I opened my eyes and stared at the neon green digits: 6:30. School began at 8:00 am and the bus picked me up at 7:30, which gave me exactly and hour to have a shower, take Toothless and Skullcrusher for a short walk, and make up an excuse for why I wasn't going to eat. On the mornings of the days my mom came home, my father sometimes got up about twenty minutes before me and made an enormous "real man" breakfast consisting of sausage, bacon, waffles, and eggs. Sure, his cooking was awesome, but... I didn't eat that much for one meal.

I sat up in bed, yawning, then was immediately knocked down by a large, furry black body.

"Toothless!" I giggled as the large, 2 year-old Bouvier des Flanders (a dog breed that took me a while to figure out how to pronounce) pinned my bony body to the bed and covered my face in happy, GOOD MORNING! doggy kisses.

After a few minutes of wrestling and laughter, I managed to wiggle out from underneath my best friend, wiping the slobber off my face with a pajama sleeve. I walked across the hall to the bathroom, nudging Toothless out with my foot when he tried to follow me inside. I started the shower and undressed. The first thing I noticed when I took off my dark green shirt was my ribs. I stared at them in the mirror over the sink. They stuck out vividly against my pale skin.

It doesn't matter, I assured myself, I'm just scrawny. Always have been always will be. I knew I was pretty light, but I was also short for my age, only five foot four inches. I stopped staring, slipped off my brown plaid flannel pants and underwear and hopped into the shower. I looked down at my skinny thighs as I shampooed my auburn hair. Just scrawny.

I turned off the running water and reached around the shower curtain to grab my towel. I dried off, then wrapped it around my waist and headed back to my room. Just like every morning, Toothless had been sitting by the bathroom door, waiting for me to come out. No one understood why I had named the enormous furry mass Toothless. It was because when my parents and I had gone to get him two years ago, Toothless rarely opened his mouth, and he never bit people or anything (of course, things had changed since then, and the dog's mouth was ready at all times to give someone a good slobbering). And, I don't know, I was a weird thirteen year-old, so I named him something that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

I pulled on a pair of jeans, a green sweater, and my Converse high tops and headed downstairs into the thick scent of breakfast food.

"Hey Dad," I greeted as I sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter.

"Mornin', son," my dad replied as he turned around from the stove, a frying pan full of scrambled eggs in one hand. "Want some eggs?"

"Um, no thanks, I'm going to take Toothless for a little walk." I glanced at the antique clock on the wall that my mother picked out at a resale store when I was a baby: 6:58.

"Alright, you can have some sausage when you get back."

"Sure." Nope.

I grabbed Toothless's red leash off the hook and was about to head out the front door when I heard my dad's booming, Scottish-accented voice call from the kitchen.

"Hiccup! Could you take Skullcrusher with you?"

"Yeah!" I yelled back. I whistled, and our family's loyal Australian Shephard came into the foyer from the living room and sat patiently as I clipped on his green and purple striped leash. We had a cat, too, but Cloudjumper usually went with my mom on her work trips. She was a business consultant, which meant that she traveled around the country and advised businesses on how to do certain stuff. I knew my mom always wanted to see different cities, she could never stay put, but it was still really hard because she was gone for about two weeks every month. My father really missed her, too, and alternated between overly happy and overly distant when she was gone. He worked at a small law firm in downtown Berk, and he was there between the hours of 8:30 am and 9:00 pm on every day except Sunday during her trips. I was alone a lot.

I stepped out into the crisp September air, a leash in each hand. I felt my stomach rumble, but I ignored it. Berk, New York was in the northern part of the state, close to Canada, and was pretty cold all year round. The winters were brutally fierce, and the summer was short and the temperature rarely went over 75 degrees Fahrenheit. I think it's the only place in the state like that. It was a metropolitan city, too, with skyscrapers and a population of about 800,000. We lived about 5 miles away from the main city in a large neighborhood with about three schools in our area. I went to the only high school in Berk that had the honor of being named Berk High School, after the actual city itself. Surprisingly, it wasn't that crowded a school, there were only about a hundred and seventy-five kids in my grade.

I strolled across down the front walk and turned to the right. I usually took Toothless and/or Skullcrusher just around the block, it only took about ten minutes. The leaves were gorgeous in the fall. My eyes wandered around the neighborhood in the early morning, noting that the houses containing children were already bright and lively. When my gaze fell on a particular blue house across the street, and my mind sighed to itself with thoughts of the girl who lived there.

I had had a crush on her since she moved here when we were in second grade.

It was about two months after she moved in. She had been passing my house on her bike when she hit a dip in the sidewalk and toppled over. I (having witnessed the accident from my front window) had grabbed an armful of Band-Aids and ran outside as fast as my little legs could carry me. When I had gotten to her, I was baffled to see that she wasn't even crying. She was simply sitting on the grass and calmly inspecting the bloody scrape on her right knee. I had offered her a bandage awkwardly. She had looked up at me, her blue eyes sparkling in confusion, and I had said, "Um, uh, I saw you fall."

"Thanks," she had reached out and taken it nonchalantly.

"Are you okay?" I had asked, worried and wondering if I needed to go get my parents or her's.

She'd just shrugged. "Yeah, I've got scrapes all over my knees anyway. It's kinda fun when ya get cool scars outta stuff, y'know?"

"Uh, haha, yeah... pain... LOVE IT," I had stuttered like an idiot.

She had squinted at me, stood up, and positioned to get got back on her bike.

"What's your name?" She had asked, half interrogative and half curious.

"Um, Hiccup."

She'd stuck out her hand, which baffled me, since I'd only ever seen adults do that. "I'm Astrid Hofferson. My family just moved into that blue house over there."

I'd reached out to her hand nervously, and when she shook it with the same strong grip as a grown-up.

I can't remember if I'd said something else, or if she had, but I remember that our little meet ended with her saying a short 'bye' and riding away on her bike, off to get more 'cool scars', I guessed.

I saw her around the neighborhood and at school, but rarely spoke to her directly. Thanks to her volleyball skills and fearsome confidence, Astrid was one of the most well-known girls in the softmore class at Berk High School, and I was the lonely, bony, short nerd who couldn't throw a football if my life depended on it.

I finished the lap around the block, and went back inside. I looked up at the clock on top the China cabinet. I had fifteen minutes till the bus arrived. I unclipped the leashes and hung them back up. As I walked back into the kitchen, Toothless stayed at my side and kissed my left hand hanging at my side. I gave him a dog biscuit out of the bag on the counter.

"I packed up some sausage for you to eat on the bus," said my dad, holding up a Ziplock bag. "What took you so long on the walk?"

"Thanks," I said, accepting the sausage, "Toothless saw a squirrel, and when he wants to go, I have to follow."

My dad chuckled. "Don't forget, we've gotta pick up your mother tonight. Her plane lands at seven, and it's a thirty minute drive to the airport, so right when I get home from work, we'll leave, okay?"

I nodded. "Got it."

"Do you want me to take you to school this morning?" offered my dad as I dug my heavy backpack out of the closet in the kitchen. It was only the second week of school, and I already had a ton of homework.

"No, no, it's fine. Thanks, though," I told him. He had been more fatherly than usual the past couple days, just like he always was whenever my mom was about to come home.

I ran upstairs to grab my phone from my nightstand, a little dizzy once I got to the top, but I shook off the feeling, and sat on my bed to check my texts. Toothless, who had of course followed me, jumped up beside me on the bed and nuzzled me with his great, big snout until I reached one hand over and scratched behind his ears.

I only had one text (from Fishlegs, of course). It wasn't even a text, it was link to some website telling about weird, exotic fish that was discovered to live on the bottom of the ocean. I knew that I didn't even have to read it, he would tell me all about it at school.

"Hiccup, the bus is here!"

I hurried downstairs, grabbed my backpack, and sprinted for the front door.

"Wait! Don't forget your sausage!" I snatched the food from him, stuffing it in my school bag with one hand as I opened the front door with the other. Toothless tried to come with me, but I gave him a firm "no" and closed the door behind me.

Thank God that none of the bullies that tormented me rode my bus. Unfortunately, Astrid didn't either, one of her parents always drove her to work. I chose an empty seat amongst the overly-noising adolescents and stared out the window for a couple minutes, then played a game on my phone.

We pulled up in front of Berk High School, and every jostled around as they tried to be the first off the bus. What does it matter? We're all going to the same hellhole, I thought.

I got off last and made my way to the door, taking the sausage out of my pocket and eating one link before I walked through the door and started toward my locker, then I paused. I'm not really hungry for any more, this fills me up, it's enough, I thought. I stared at the remaining three links for a second, then let them fall into the bin with a plop.

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A/N: Yeah, I know, it's a bad first chapter. Valka is alive in this story and will appear! Review if you liked it (and I'm okay with gentle criticism, but please don't be mean.)