He sat in the hard plastic chair, waiting. His fingers drummed on his knee, and his heart rammed against his ribcage. He had been hoping and praying for this very moment to happen ever since the accident, and now that it was here he was a nervous as an outlaw in a police lineup. Sweat ran down the back of his neck, sending a chill through his spine. Who knew something as simple as this could make someone so fidgety? He was never one to get too stressed over something, but he had often found himself pulling his blonde hair out over the months over something as simple as this. It was just high school, right? Nothing too drastic or dramatic. If it was anything like the movies, it should have been a breeze, right? Wrong. He hadn't even been there for an hour and he already knew it was far different than the picture movie producers planted in the mind of poor naïve juveniles. There wasn't a nice secretary waiting for you behind a desk eager to give you a tour of the school. There wasn't a swarm of students who crowded you and asked you questions about where you came from and what made you decide to move there. Instead, there was an impatient secretary who say they are far too busy to deal with you right now. People cast you once glance and thought they already know everything there is to know about you. It wasn't nice place filled with rainbows, ponies, and an unlimited supply of ramen. He felt like an idiot for believing that it would be easy in the first place. The few patience he had before began to wear thin, and if the secretary hadn't called his name, he was pretty sure he would have exploded.

"You're Naruto, right?" the secretary questioned politely, studying the boy from behind her deep red glasses. "Namikaze Naruto?"

Naruto nodded and smiled. "Yes, ma'am. Is my schedule all ready?"

She handed him a piece of paper as a reply. "It's been ready, I haven't been." Though she sounded serious, Naruto could spot the humorous gleam in her washed-out eyes. He nodded thankfully, threw his backpack over his shoulder, and headed towards the two doors that would lead outside to the school campus.

Naruto shivered as a cool blast of October air smacked him in the face when he opened the doors. In an odd way, it was a relieve to feel the fresh air instead of the stiff and stuffy office air. Unlike most Japanese high schools, Hiruzen High was an open campus school, having their buildings separate from each other instead of just one massive building. Down the two sets of three concrete steps that stretched from one of the brick plant pots to other Naruto walked, taking in all of the campus circle and its surroundings. It was, arguably, one of the best school campuses Naruto had seen, which was one of the reasons why he had choose to attend it (the other was the girls' school uniforms, but that was irrelevant at this point of time). Across the campus circle was the huge library, and to the right of the library was the history buildings, the math buildings to the left. To the left of the administrative building was the computer lab and a few other rooms that had to deal with computers. On the right of the administrative building was the cafeteria, which looking surprisingly huge when it was empty. (When Naruto had taken his tour of the campus a few days before, the cafeteria was overflowing with students, causing it to look too small.)

Worried he would miss his first class, Naruto glanced down at his schedule and saw he had Chemistry with Mitarashi Anko. He practically sprinted to the science buildings located behind the math buildings. By the time he reached the door he was panting from walking so fast. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door with a tentative hand, and the class fell silence once the door shut behind him. Even though the heater was on full blast, the chill of the October air had followed the poor blonde into the classroom. A woman with plum hair that was haphazardously styled in long, punk-ish spikes and cold brown eyes. Her expression suggested that she was annoyed with Naruto for interrupting her lesson, and her tone confirmed that.

"Who are you?" she snapped. She looked like a mother whose child had knocked over a vase and was trying to blame it on their hamster: annoyed and skeptical.

"Naruto…," Naruto replied slowly. "Namikaze Naruto."

She wrinkled her nose. "So, you're the fresh meat, huh?"

Naruto didn't know what to say, so he resorted to nodding.

"Alright, take a seat next to Inuzuka. He'll tell you what I was teaching before I was interrupted." She narrowed her eyes in an accusatory manner.

If Mitarashi-sensei wasn't a woman or a teacher, Naruto would have punched her so hard she would be having tea with the Mad Hatter in Wonderland. Naruto reluctantly sat on the stool next to a boy with his hair spiked in the same messy fashion as Naruto, except his brown hair was shorter. His brown eyes looked like two slits, much like a wolf's eyes. The tie around his neck was loosened carelessly, and his white dress shirt wasn't tucked in. The first few buttons of the shirt were unbuttoned, showing off some of his chest. He made the school uniform look like a casually messy fashion statement.

"Where are you comin' from?" he asked Naruto, not caring if the teacher found out if he wasn't following her directions.

Naruto stared at him questionably. "What do you mean?"

"What school did you go to before?"

Naruto instantly felt stupid. Of course that was what he had meant! What else could he have meant? The Inuzuka kid probably already thought he was an idiot. "Oh, erm, I was home-schooled."

Inuzuka's eyes widened and he grinned, making his resemblance to a wolf that much stronger. "Really?"

Naruto nodded.

"Man, I wish I were home schooled. That way I wouldn't have to deal with the stupid teachers," he said, folding his hands behind his head and glaring at the woman standing in front of the class. "Name's Kiba, by the way. I've been going to this dump since freshman year."

"It doesn't seem too bad here," Naruto responded. "The campus and classrooms are nice."

Kiba chuckled at the boy's innocence. "Just wait until you start getting involved in all of the drama that goes on around here. You won't be sayin' that then."

Naruto opened his mouth to ask him what he had meant, but Mitarashi-sensei had cruelly interrupted him. "Inuzuka," she barked, "didn't I tell you to tell Namikaze what I was teaching?"

"Must've slipped my mind," Kiba replied with a daring smirk.

She slanted her eyes in a glare powerful enough to cut through steel. "Better not slip your mind again."

A flash of blonde was visible through the small window on the door, and soon that flash of blonde was standing in the classroom, panting heavily and trying desperately to catch her breath. Even though the evidence of her run was clear, she still managed to look stunning. Her curves were highly visible under her white school shirt, her red skirt was a little too short and showed off her well-tones thighs, and her make-up managed to stay intact. Honestly, Naruto wouldn't normally find a girl that was willing to show that much of her attractive, but his stupid adolescent hormones would like to beg to differ. She noticed him looking at her and smiled flirtatiously before taking the stool across from him. He gulped nervously.

One of the down sides of being home-schooled was you were far too busy with your studies at home to see the outside world. Naruto never really had the chance to develop any real friendships, save the fellow gamers he talked to during his many Xbox Live sessions, but those usually ended up in a trash-talking contest. The closest thing to a friend he had before the accident was his father, and sometimes they even fought and refused to talk to each other for a while. What was having a friend like? Were they a lot of trouble like the movies make them out to be? Was it better being friendless? No, it wasn't; he already knew that from experience.

"What's your name?" the blonde girl purred, twisting her fluffy pink pen in her ash blonde hair.

"Namikaze Naruto," he stated. "Yours?"

"Yamanaka Ino," she replied with an excited glint in her blue bell eyes. "Tell me, Naruto, where are you coming from?"

He was about to ask what she meant but remembered he made the exact same mistake with Kiba and refused to look like an idiot again, especially now that he was talking to a cute girl. "I was home-schooled before."

Ino pouted her pale rosy lips. "That must've sucked. I would hate to be crammed in my house all the time with no one to talk to. It must get lonely."

He just shrugged despite the heavy anchor that took place in his stomach. "It was okay. I could still talk to people through the Internet. Plus, I had my dad to keep me company." Ouch. Bad move. Why did he just mention his father even though the wound was still fresh? It took a lot of strength and willpower to hold back the tears that quickly formed in his eyes, but he refused to looked like a pansy. Crying was for the weak and he wasn't weak. He was strong. He had to be strong. What other choice did he have to be anything but strong?

"What did your dad do?" Ino asked with a peaked interest.

Now he was digging himself a hold. "He was the CEO of a major car dealership and had a degree in teaching. He did a lot of subbing before I was born."

"So, you're dad was successful and had brains?"

He nodded.

"Awesome! What did your mom do?"

Thankfully, the bell for the end of class rang, sparing Naruto the burden of explaining that he never knew his mother. All he knew was what his father had told him, and according to his father, his mother was a beautiful woman with a wonderful personality—stubborn, intelligent, headstrong, determined, caring, thoughtful, and witty. She was the reason her husband was so successful. Everything he had accomplished was with the aid of her never-ending support. It was a relationship like his parents' that made Naruto eager to find that special girl, that one girl whose very existence was his reason for breathing. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone. It was too mushy and gushy, totally not masculine.

His next class was Algebra 2 with Jiraiya-sensei. Perfect! Mathematics was Naruto's specialty. Numbers were a breeze to work with as long as you knew what you were doing. Plus, there was one answer and one answer only (except for maybe absolute value problems in which there were two possible answers, one being the answer with the regular equation and one being with the negative equation), unlike English where there were too many possible answers to count. It just required a little bit of writing, brain power, and erasing the few mistakes you made in the process, and boom, there's your answer. It was just too simple to think about! The ironic thing was, while Naruto found the subject as easy as breathing, the very thought of math left his father frustrated and cursing it to the deepest pits of Hell. The man had often complained that there were just too many formulas to memorize and too many numbers in the world. It also helped that the math teacher just so happened to be one of Naruto's father's closest friends, so Naruto should be able to pass the class with flying colors. It was like the universe was finally being nice to the blonde boy and offering him something good! He felt far more confident than before as he strode in the math class, heading straight to the empty desk behind a chubby boy with brown hair.

Jiraiya sat behind the brown desk that sat next to the whiteboard, his feet propped up and crossed at the ankles, a book in his hand. He seemed to be oblivious to the chattering students and continued to read his little orange book as if he were deaf. However, as soon as the late bell rang, the book was shut, he was not longer sitting in his black leather chair, and he had his full attention on the class. Everyone fell silent as the teacher scanned the room with his dark eyes. He seemed to be looking for something, and that something was Naruto. As soon as he saw the teenager he smiled warmly but distantly. Odd, Jiraiya always grinned, teeth and all, whenever he saw Naruto, and always gave him the biggest bear hugs that left the boy with a sore back. But everything had changed. The radiant look in his eye that always shone when they were together was gone and replaced with a look of curiosity. His smile wasn't welcoming at all. If anything, it looked forced and practiced. His posture was straight and stout, the exact opposite of the relaxed and hunched posture Naruto was used to seeing. He behaved as if they were strangers. Naruto's one and only friend acted like he had no idea who he was.

"You're the new student, right?" Jiraiya-sensei asked.

"Yes, sensei," Naruto replied, a dumbfounded look on his face.

"What's your name?"

Naruto just sat in his chair with the same stupid expression. What was Jiraiya doing? They were friends, right? Friends didn't act so uptight and professional around each other. Friends acted familiar and warm around each other. So why wasn't his friend acting familiar and warm around him?

"Excuse me," Jiraiya-sensei called, pulling Naruto out of his thoughts. "Your name, young man? What is it?"

Naruto blinked a few times. It was the only thing he could do to keep the ground under his feet steady. "Namikaze Naruto," he finally answered. "My name is Namikaze Naruto, sensei."

Jiraiya-sensei stared at him a few moments longer as if he were reading his mind, and then instructed everyone to turn to page three-hundred sixty five of their textbooks and do problems one through ten for warm-ups. Just as Naruto had opened his textbook and got his pencil ready to distract himself from the current situation with magnificent math, Jiraiya asked if he could have a word with him.

"Of course, sensei," Naruto muttered and reluctantly walked over to the desk.

Jiraiya sat in his chair with his hands folded in front of him, a strained look on his face. He looked like he was in an immense amount of pain and Naruto was the source of it. "Look, kid, I'm sorry for not being all buddy-buddy with you back there. As a teacher I can't show favoritism just because of my personal relationships outside of the classroom. Inside the classroom you're just another one of my students. You can talk with me all you want after class, in the halls, or wherever you see me, but right now I have to maintain a teacher-student relationship with you and not a friendship. Understand?"

Naruto nodded obediently.

Jiraiya's wonderfully familiar smile returned to his lips, and his lightly socked Naruto in the arm. "Good. Now go do your warm ups like the good student I except you to be."

Naruto went back to his desk, feeling more at ease than ever. Maybe it wasn't so bad here. He already had two friends here so he wouldn't have to worry about being lonely. As long as he kept his grades up (and he had a feeling he would be able to) this should be a breeze.

I'm so sorry this chapter is so short! I fail. T.T I hope you choose to review and add to your story subscription list anyway! :D

Much love,
Krislyn