Hiiii everybody! Wow, only a handful of chapters in and I almost abandon my poor fic-y :( Ah well, least I got back to it! I actually started re-writing it five weeks ago, but I got bored again (confounded adolescent attention span), and just a few days ago my computer blew up. Not literally (though that would have been pretty damned awesome); I had a bunch of corrupted registry entries which were causing every web-page I visit to be littered with Vimax ads, so I delete the entries... and boom, no more computer for me! And I couldn't really back anything up because 1) I wasn't expecting that to happen, and 2) reformatting Windows means deleting the "My Documents" folder, so everything got taken away with that... That kind of inspired me to pick this up again, because now I have a reason to start over, and I don't wanna be one of those people that comes up with a decent plot and then stops writing! No one wants to be in suspense forever .
Excuses out of the way, I present to you the new-and-improved fic! With a new beginning, new title, and a new prologue which I will write... eventually...

Chapter 1: Love Letters

- Eric -

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. There is no sound I find more annoying than the sound of my alarm every morning. With a grunt, I roll over and find myself face-to-face with the floor. After dragging myself off to have the coldest shower of my life, I went down to the kitchen to fetch myself a bowl of Fruit Loops.

"Cheer up a little, Eric! It's the last day of your second-last week of school!" Mom says. Not like I was trying to hide my exasperated look. "I called the AC repairman last night, and he said he would have cool air back in circulation in three days."

"Three days?!? Mom, we've been living in this furnace for over a week now! Why can't he just come over right now?" I reply. We may be a farming family with barely any money to boot, but in the middle of Summer, it's a good idea to call the air-conditioner repair-guy the instant the AC goes down.

"They were going to charge extra for coming early. Remember Eric, it's summer, and a lot of other people need repairs done as well. But they can afford to have a spot early in the agenda..."

"Whatever. I'm going right to school after I feed the cattle." Shoving the last few spoonfuls into my mouth and nearly throwing my bowl into the sink, I grab my backpack and open the front door to take a breath of the fresh morning air.

My life's pretty simple for your average farm guy. I'm fourteen years old, I'm in grade eight and going to graduate from elementary school next week. I have a small class, a fair amount of friends, and I'm an Aquarius. I have five classmates my age in my class, and only one of them is a girl. I respect her for being able to survive the whole year when her friends are in other classes. Need I say more?

After I finished filling up the cows' feeding bins, I took a second to check my watch. 7:35 ALREADY?!? I'm gonna miss the bus!

- Sasha -

"Good morning, miss Sasha!" Alfonse says as I climb into the Lamborghini.

"Hey Al!... where's Charlie?" I ask. Charles is my most dependable chauffeur; 364 out of 365 days a year, he'd be here in the Lamborghini my parents order to pick me up and drive me somewhere. This was the third day in a row he hadn't shown up.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, Miss Sasha, but Charles is... dead," Alfonse replied, a rather bleak look on his face, from what I could see in the front mirror. "Heart attack, the poor man. Which means I'll be driving you for the remainder of the two school weeks."

My usually happy-peppy summer mood worn out with this news, Alfonse shifts the gear to "reverse" and scoots out of our massive driveway to take me to school.

I honestly don't understand why my parents are so against me going to private school. Let alone get me some private tutors or something! My father was the rich one and he married a "common" woman, and now he insists that I should have the full experience a normal kid should have. Don't get me wrong, my mother is a wonderful person, it's just that I don't particularly enjoy being the rich girl in such a poor school. Everyone insists on going to your place, having the party at your place, etc. What's worse is that I really don't care for most of the kids that demand they be my friend; they only like me for my money.

I'm just glad my classmates aren't so bad when it comes to the topic of money. They don't really envy me, which is nice. They don't take advantage of me either, which is even better. Instead, they've taken to annoying me, the only girl in grade eight in our class. The rest of the girls are in grade seven and tend to keep to themselves. Yes, the four pains in my butt have been... well, pains in my butt, but they've also been really fun to be around this past year. I'll really miss Eric, Vincent, Louis and Gavin when we split off to go to different high schools.

Even though there's only one week left of my grade-eight life after this Friday, there's still a group of kids that stick around the school's driveway to gawk as I step out of the Lambo. I say a quick "thanks, Al!" before my only real, non-materialistic friend greets me: Rebeca.

- Gavin -

"It's official!" I announce to my small group of friends as I step into the small field beside the school. "Since I can't announce my love for her, I will write a letter!"

"Aw, not again!" my best friend Travis says. He's been strongly opposed to my massive crush on Sasha since day 1... which was in October. Now it's June, we're about to graduate from Elementary school and I still haven't confessed my love to Sasha yet. Long as she doesn't know, it'll be all the better when I tell her...

"Come on, man, you know that she already knows you like her," Travis says, interjecting my thoughts.

"I'm not writing the letter for you this time," my other friend, Leah, speaks up. "The last fifteen times you chickened out and recycled the letters. Even after I put so much work into them!"

"I'll pay you twenty bucks," that bribe worked twelve times before, it should now.

"You drive a hard bargain..." Leah says, looking pensive. "Deal. What style you want this time; do you want me to compare her to celebrities or natural stuff?"

"I'll go for the natural," I reply. Sure, I'd used that one a few times before, but it's not like Sasha ever got to reading the letters... right?

- Vincent -

"Remember that time we took the letter out of the recycling bin and gave it to Sasha to read? That was hilarious!" I say as Eric joins Louis and I. "Hey, Eric! We were just basking in the old times..."

"Remember that time we took the letter out of the recycling bin and gave it to Sasha to read?" Louis repeats, directing the question at Eric.

"Ya. That seriously wasn't cool of you guys. Expressing someone else's feelings isn't fair to-"

"And the lover boy speaks!" I interrupt. "Come on, just ask her out already. Gavin's been too scared to for the past 8 months."

"I don't think it's fair to move in on someone else's territory," Eric replies.

"Please, that territory might as well be vacant," Louis interjects.

RIIIIING. RIIIIIIING. The morning bell goes off.

"Whoot! Off to homeroom!" I say with sarcastic enthusiasm. I could tell that simply because this was the last day of education that this was going to be a long day. A very, very, long day...

- Louis -

Could class possibly be any more boring? I've been spending the last ten minutes having a stare-down with the clock. I mean, it's the second-last Friday of school, and the French teacher insists on teaching us stuff we already know! As she starts re-explaining why these French verbs end in whatever, and those French verbs end in another whatever, I keep staring at the clock.

It's sort of shaped like a pizza... I wonder what's for dinner tonight? I hope we have pizza. I like pizza. But not with mushrooms, because cooked mushrooms taste weird... I wonder why Mario gets super powers by eating mushrooms. That's some pretty weird fungus, that's what I think. What the hell are Goombas really, anyways? They're shaped like mushrooms, and they move... they have no arms either. It would suck to have no arms. I wonder-

My random thoughts are interrupted by the phone ringing. The teacher walks over and picks up the phone.

"Mlle Martineau!" she says in her chime-like, French-accented voice, a grin on her face. After a few seconds, her smile fades. "Sasha, c'est pour toi," she says.

Puzzled, Sasha gets up and takes the receiver from the teacher.

- Sasha -

"Your house is blazing and your parents are stuck inside."

TO BE CONTINUED (Dun dun dun!)

So... that was a better read, right? I decided to get rid of the villain's pasts because it beats-around-the-bush too much and I could just as easily put those into another fic. Since I only just rewrote this, the next few chapters could take a while. The first time I tried to write them, my ideas got all garbled up and I ended up with a few very awkward chapters. But I know what I'll write this time, and I'll make it worth all the time I left you guys hanging!

~L.L.