Hey guys. This is my shot at redemption after my last train wreck. The first couple chapters of this are basically setting up for things to happen later on. I do not own anything that obviously doesn't belong to me.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been afraid of what I couldn't see and loosing control. When I walked into a room, that light had to be on before I went in there or I had to run my hand along the wall and turn on the lights before I would even walk into the room. I was always afraid to go into the kitchen at night by myself too. I always felt someone was watching me through the sliding glass door and I just couldn't see them. If I was in there by myself, worst case scenarios always ran through my head like, 'what if some psycho bursts through the glass' or 'what if someone tries to shoot me through the window from outside.' I can't even walk through my house at night without getting freaked out when I walk past windows. For some reason, I always think someone is watching me from the outside, just waiting for the perfect moment to do something to me in my own house.

When I was younger, I'd have dreams about people in my house chasing me around trying to hurt me but I always woke up before anything too bad could happen. This fear of mine is something I have never told anyone.

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Thursday, January 15

As Rin walked down the halls of her school, she was on the look out for her friends. She had planed on inviting them over for the weekend so she wouldn't have to be alone when her parents left to celebrate their anniversary over a three day weekend. Finally she found one of them, Ayame, at her locker gathering her books for the morning classes.

"Hey there." Rin said getting Ayame's attention.

"Oh, hey." Ayame said zippering her book bag.

"Are you doing anything important this weekend?" Rin asked as they walked to homeroom together.

"No, I don't think so, why?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to stay over this weekend. You know, you, me, Sango, and Kagome, watch a few movies, do typical girl things."

"Sounds good, I guess I can come over."

"Awesome." Rin said as she and Ayame split up and went to their different homerooms. "Now, all I have to do is ask Sango during homeroom and Kag during second period." she said to herself.

Rin walked into the classroom and immediately went to her seat. She put her book bag on the floor and sat down at the second desk in the third row. Sango was already in her seat with her book bag on the desk and her head on it. She sat in the first row, second desk.

"Sango." she called but didn't receive an answer. Rin sighed and called a little louder. "Hey, Sango!"

Sango stirred and turned her head towards the sound of the voice calling her. "What?"

"Want to come over this weekend? Ayame is and Kag probably is too." Rin asked.

"Uh, sure. Why not?" Sango agreed. "What do you have planned to do?"

"Oh, the usual sleep over agenda." Rin said just before the morning announcements came over the loudspeaker. Rin halfheartedly listened to the announcements since nothing really concerned her. When the people that had earned a detention were called down, she completely stopped listening and went over a mental check list of what she needed for Friday. The bell rang and everyone in the room slowly made their way out of the classroom to get to first period. She walked with Sango until they got outside the room, then Sango had to wait for all the people from the room next to theirs to get out before going in, Rin was waiting for Ayame to come out of the very room. When Ayame came out, she told Rin of everything she had just gone through in the fifteen minutes they were in homeroom.

"…And then they asked why I have earrings in my face." Ayame said, "so I told them that their in my face, so they're not earrings. Then the asked me why I had face rings, which doesn't make much sense at all, but I let it slide, so I said, its only a nose ring and a Monroe." Ayame stopped to take a breath so Rin took the chance to say something.

"Well, they look nice." Rin said as the rounded the corner to the English corridor.

"Yeah.." she said but then her eyes caught sight of the principle, who was very strict the uniform policy: polo shirt, khaki or navy pants, no denim, no shower shoes, no overly baggy clothes, no outrageous hairstyles, and no abnormal piercing, only earrings were considered acceptable. "Oh crap! Marshall!" Ayame said referring to the principle, who just so happened to be in that corridor talking to the junior English teacher, the teacher they had for first period. Ayame was very quick in her movements, her nose suddenly became itchy by her nose ring and she bit the post of the stud in her mouth, pulling in the gem of the piercing on her face. It was all a common thing she did when she walked by the principle or he came in the room she was in.

When they finally got past the principle and teacher, she pushed the gem back out and stopped scratching her nose.

"You're getting good at that." Rin commented.

"Its either that or wear a band aid over them, which looks ridiculous. Then I'd be even more or a red head freak"

"You are not, now stop with that." Rin said rolling her eyes at what they went through almost every morning

They walked into the class and got their senior project folders out of the bin in front of the room. After getting their folders, they separated to their seats. Somehow, Rin was in the last seat of the last row and Ayame was in the third seat of the fourth row. After taking their seats, the girls looked at their outlines for the research paper that went along with their senior projects. Rin had finished her outline this morning, but Ayame had completely forgot about it.

"Shit!" she stage whispered to herself then turned around to look at Rin. "Why didn't you remind me to do the outline?"

"Because I forgot to do it too until this morning. I did it when I planned to be fixing my nail polish." Rin said referring to her unusually plain fingers. "Thank you graduation requirements." she added sarcastically. "Just write some crap down."

"Yeah, I B.S. my way through most of my classes anyway." Ayame said beginning to write down things that seemed vaguely similar to her topic.

Forty minutes later, the bell rang signaling the end of first period and the rush to get to the next class within the two minutes allotted time. Rin pushed her way past hordes of seventh graders in a desperate attempt to get into the biology room. Not only did she want to get in there to resume her rat dissection, she had to ask Kagome about coming over. Finally, she broke through the flow of students and crossed the hallway to enter the classroom. She looked toward her seat and saw Kagome already there.

"Hey Kag, my parents are celebrating their eternal love anniversary this weekend, want to come over?"

"Sure! Its been almost a week since I slept in your house." Kagome answered in her typical way.

"Great." Rin said getting up. "Come on, let's go get Nancy Grace and study the inside of her." she said talking about their rat.

Soon the bell rang and it meant it was time for French. A class all four of them had together. After doing what the teacher assigned them, there were ten minutes left to the class. This happened often so the girls knew what to do, talk about their plans for the weekend and think of some good things to do. Again, the bell rang and since today was an even day in the school's six day schedule, the girls had gym.

They were always late for this class, but that didn't matter since it was only gym and the teacher gave them ten minutes to change out of their classroom uniforms and into the gym uniforms. Once they were changed and in the gym, the teacher told them had two weeks of soccer to look forward to. The teams were made and the girls were split up. Kagome and Ayame on one team and Sango and Rin on the other. The girls never really took gym seriously and prided themselves on angering the girls who did. There had been times that they sat down on the floor during kickball games and skipped around during flag football. Soccer was a slightly more challenging thing to mess up so they just yelled to each other across the width of the three basketball court gym. Once they had their twenty minutes of physical education in, the teacher blew her whistle signaling they had ten minutes to get changed back into their classroom uniforms. The girls made the most effort during this part of the class. They ran into the locker room, got changed and started goofing around in their row of lockers. When the bell rang, they rushed out of the locker room and headed for their lockers to switch their morning books for their afternoon books. Somewhere in the hallway, Koga and Miroku popped up. Koga walked to Ayame and grabbed her hand before she even noticed he was there. Miroku was slightly more sneaky and wrapped his arm around Sango's shoulders to pull her into him.

"Holy cow! I think I've just been startled!' Ayame said when Koga took her hand.

"Yeah, same here." Sango said slightly pushing Miroku away from her and taking his hand instead.

"You're both dweebs." Kagome said before taking a hold of what seemed to be a random hand and pulling the owner along.

"And you're not?" Rin asked. "You practically just kidnapped your boyfriend from his locker."

"Like you haven't done the same."

"I'm not saying I haven't , you just set yourself up for it."

"Uh huh, go find Sess." Kagome said when she got to her locker.

"Will do." Rin said as she walked to her locker.

Once she had everything she needed, Rin rejoined her group of friends and began walking to the cafeteria. The were halfway to the cafeteria when someone grabbed Rin's hand and pulled her into the arts corridor. Somewhere between the industrial arts room and the senior high art room, Rin was pushed against the wall and kissed.

Giggling, Rin pulled away and looked at her boyfriend. "You should come over this weekend . My parents are going to be gone."

"Really?" he asked interested.

"Yep, and the girls are coming over which means the guys probably are too."

"You have a knack for killing the mood."

"It's a gift I was born with." Rin said shrugging. "Let's go, I'm starving. Gym was very physically demanding today."

"Yeah, I saw you and Sango yelling to Kagome and Ayame."

"It's a pretty big gym." Rin mused. "How did you see us though, I didn't see the guy's class at all."

"We were in the weight room, getting buff and stuff. You just weren't on the right side of the gym to see us." he said. "Well, that and you hardly pay any attention to what's going on around you." he added

By now the duo had entered the cafeteria and were already at the rectangular table. They sat down and quickly were engaged in conversations between members of the same gender.

After lunch, the day flew by. Soon, Rin found herself driving to Kagome's house with Kagome sitting next to her singing along to the songs Rin had on her iPod. Kagome had the device in her left hand and was looking through the songs.

"Oh man, I love this song." she said as she quickly touched the screen on the song title

and began to sing along again.

Rin listened to the beginning of the song and recognized it as 'The Ides of March', one of

her favorite songs by Silverstein. She smiled and began to sing with Kagome but suddenly she stopped when she was filled with a sense of dread. She had listened to the song on repeat so many times before and the lyrics never had this effect on her. She knew that the meaning of the song was way different than what she was making it out to be right now, but still she couldn't help but to feel uneasy as the words to first verse sunk in.

Tie me up with sheets, and hang me from your tree

I'll stay out here all night, it doesn't even matter

As long as I can see, into your room and feel

Like I'm inside your life, I'll follow you forever

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She went through the rest of the day feeling that way. She eventually concluded that she was being irrational and pushed the feeling to the back of her head. After all, there were only two more hours left of Thursday, then it would be Friday and she was not letting something so silly bother her and ruin her weekend.

Chapter 1 of "Dark" is complete. Let me know what you think. Thanks!