A/N: Hello, angel readers and Jackunzel fans! Thank you so much for all your support on my other two posts 'Raindrops' and 'Moonlight'. Here's another fic for you that I thought up. It's based off the song Ordinary Day by Vanessa Carlton from a Big Four video that was posted years ago, but I stumbled upon it again a few months ago and now here we are. Some of the elements in this story, I have also used in my other two Jackunzel fics, but they are not connected. This will be a multi-chapter story and I'm hoping to finish and post everything by Christmas! Disclaimer: The cover image is not mine, it's watermarked by someone with the name ALRICXFROST. I don't know what platform, I just found it on Google Images, and I think it's awesome so thanks whoever you are!

And now, without further ado...


Rapunzel I


It had started out just like any other day, just an ordinary day.

Rapunzel woke up to the sound of her alarm clock at 7 a.m., like she did every morning. Light was just starting to stream in through the skylight just above her bed. Her room, which she personally called 'The Tower', was in the attic of their little house in the woods. The only reason they lived there was because it was cheap. Her mother said, she'd chosen it because it was secluded and gave them 'privacy and room to think and breath', but Rapunzel knew it was because of the money. If her mother would stop spending so much money on nice things like her clothes and makeup and overly priced organic food, they might have enough for a small apartment in town. But Rapunzel never complained. Her skin turned purple when she did.

Rapunzel pressed the snooze button quickly, not wanting to wake her mother, whose bedroom was a floor beneath hers. She blinked her eyes awake and looked up through the skylight. The sky was clear, but the edges of her window were decorated in frosty tendrils. It had snowed the night before and Rapunzel didn't want to know what the streets looked like. She had to bike the eight miles to school, because they could only afford one car, which her mother always took to work. But biking was 'good exercise' as her mother put it so Rapunzel didn't complain, no matter the weather.

Rapunzel was lucky she even went to school. She'd been homeschooled until she was fourteen, if one could even call it that. In the beginning her mother had brought her with her to work, where she'd worked independently on the books her mother had been obliged to buy as a part of the homeschooling program. When she'd turned eight, her mother had started leaving her at home where she'd followed the same routine of reading over the books and completing the exercises to go with them. She'd enjoyed all the subjects except math and science, which had been a bit too technical for her to grasp on her own. But she'd loved English and History and especially Geography and spent hours on end pouring over the books. The walls in their home were filled of paintings and images she'd imagined in her head while reading. She'd painted landscapes and maps and scenes of war and love and disorder and peace.

And then came the moment, where her mother had decided to enroll her in high school in the middle of the school year, the reason being, she needed a diploma to ensure herself an actual future. It was a plausible reason and Rapunzel, at fifteen years old, had been ecstatic to go to public school and make friends so she hadn't questioned the sudden change in routine. She did now, however, but never out loud. She questioned a lot of her mother's rules. Like how she wasn't allowed to hang out with friends after school and needed to come straight home and do her homework and chores. It was these restraints that had prevented her from actually making close friends. Sure she had people at school to talk to during class and lunch, but her lack of a cell phone and lack of freedom refrained her from maintaining close friendships with her classmates. In the beginning they'd been interested in her—she'd been the new girl after all—, but her excuses of not being able to hang out had turned people off and then they stopped being interested. She'd become the loner art freak.

Even though she was practically friendless, Rapunzel tried her hardest to remain bright and bubbly and friendly to everyone she came into contact with. It was difficult at times. Mornings after fights with her mother or when the rainy weather froze her to the bone were particularly nasty, but she plastered the smile to her face and just tried to get by.

She looked over at the clock, and read 07:06 off the hands. She had 25 minutes before she had to leave for school. Maybe even 20, because of the weather. She sighed heavily and pushed back her blankets, shivering as the cold air hit her. The attic wasn't very isolated and in the winter she had to sleep with three thick blankets to keep the cold out. She got dressed quickly, pulling on warm tights underneath her worn skinny jeans and a long sleeved shirt under her light pink sweater. She braided her long blonde hair into a single braid and walked over to the glass cage in her room, where she kept her chameleon, Pascale. He was balancing on a wooden stick under the heat lamp, staring back at her, expecting food most likely.

"Good morning, Pascale," she cooed and picked up the container of worms next to the cage.

Pascale stuck out his tongue at her, which Rapunzel came to understand as him wanting something else other than worms.

"Sorry, bud," she said and uncapped the container. "I'll bring up something sweet, when I get back from school."

His expression remained unimpressed. At least that's how she interpreted it.

"I promise," she assured him and dropped some worms into the cage.

Pascale squeaked, seemingly in appreciation, and began to dine on his breakfast.

"Bon apetit," she laughed and grabbed her backpack, before climbing down the ladder into the upstairs of the house. It was definitely warmer down there and Rapunzel had to stop herself from glaring daggers at her mother's bedroom door.

After a few minutes in the bathroom and in the kitchen for a quick breakfast of dry, whole wheat toast, she left through the front door and locked it behind her. The world was covered in a blanket of snow. Rapunzel grimaced at the road leading up to their house. The snow wasn't terribly deep, but deep enough she'd have to walk her bike down to the main road, which would add another five minutes on her way to school.

She shrugged her shoulders up to her ears and tugged on her thick wool scarf and hat, which she'd knit herself. It was colder than she'd thought, but at least it wasn't snowing. She pulled her bike upright from its leaning position against the house and brushed off the snow, before trudging down the winding driveway to the main road. When she reached it, she started pedaling at a fast pace on the asphalt, the wind biting at her cheeks and whistling in her ears. She pumped her legs faster, trying to warm her body up in the frosty air.

She couldn't stop herself from admiring the winter wonderland around her. Left and right of the road, the woods were coated beautifully in snow and ice. Icicles hung from the branches and sparkled in the sunlight. She imagined painting the landscape somewhere at home, but where? Where was there room to paint? Rapunzel's walls were drowning in colors, but she was certain there was still room somewhere. Maybe on the ceiling, or she could paint her dresser or even paint over some things that were fading away anyway.

She'd been so immersed in thought that she noticed too late that a white fluffy bunny had hopped onto the road. She shrieked and pulled violently on the brakes. The bike swerved on the icy road and slipped out from underneath her. Her body slammed onto the asphalt and she skidded a few painful feet, before coming to a stop.

Rapunzel groaned in pain and pushed herself up, her subconscious telling her laying on the road wasn't a good idea. She crawled over to the shoulder and looked behind her. Her bike was lying in a heap, but the bunny was nowhere to be found. She sighed in relief. At least she hadn't hit the bunny.

A stinging pain on her hands and knees brought her back to reality. She looked down and winced at her bloody palms. She cursed loudly, which was something Rapunzel never did, and stood up shakily. The fabric over her right knee of both jeans and tights was torn and the skin beneath scraped.

"You alright?"

Rapunzel spun around quickly. She hadn't heard a car pull up. A boy stood in front of her. A boy she recognized. A boy she went to school with. Jackson Overland.

She didn't think she'd spoken more than a few words with him since her freshman year and whatever it had been about was most likely school related and forgettable. They didn't have anything in common, so it wasn't a mystery as to why they remained strangers. He had a knack for disobeying school rules and getting into trouble. From the gossip Rapunzel picked up in the hallways and classrooms and bathrooms, he went by 'Jack' or 'Frost', the latter because of his pale hair, and he was fun and outgoing, but very private. Not many people knew about his personal life and those who did, didn't blab. There were some scribbles about him on the bathroom stalls, mostly about his (extremely) good looks and his now ex-girlfriend Elsa.

Rapunzel remembered her. She was a pretty thing with pale blonde hair, porcelain skin and blue eyes. She'd been a year above them and from what Rapunzel could tell, they'd broken up, because they hadn't wanted to do long distance after she left for college, not that it was any of her business.

But in other words, Jack was just a boy. Just an ordinary boy, whose life consisted of ordinary things, like sports and jokes and fun and friends and teen romance.

"You alright?" he asked again, coming closer to her.

Rapunzel's breath rushed out and she could feel her body shaking. "Y-yeah. I just slipped on some ice."

"You hurt?" he asked and looked her up and down. His eyes widened slightly. "You're bleeding."

Rapunzel looked down at her hands. "I'm okay. It'll wash off."

"Your knee looks pretty bad," he said, gesturing to it.

"It's fine. I just need to get to school. I can't be late," Rapunzel said quickly and walked, or limped rather, to her bike. Panic surged up in her chest. What would Mother say or do if she found out Rapunzel had been late? She was supposed to be the perfect student with good grades and perfect attendance.

"I'm sure, they'll understand." Jack's voice was closer than she expected. "You're Rapunzel, right?"

She paused and turned around. "You know my name?"

Maybe it was a dumb question. She knew his after all. But she was a nobody, the loner art freak, who lived out in the woods with her mother. And he was a somebody. Everyone knew Jack.

He walked around her and picked up her bike. "Yeah. It's a hard name to forget." He grinned at her and she felt her cheeks heat up. She was glad they were probably already pink from the cold. "I'm Jack, by the way."

"I know," she said, before she could stop herself. His eyebrows lifted slightly and she quickly added, "Everyone knows you."

"Ah, bad reputation, huh?" he replied with a light chuckle.

"Only partly," she assured him.

His lips turned up in a smirk and he bent down to inspect her bike. His smile fell. "I don't think, you're gonna make it another 5 miles on this," he said, then looked up at her questionably. "Why are you biking in this weather anyway?"

"Bike or walk," she said simply.

His surprised expression remained as he studied her. Rapunzel had to fight off the urge to fidget under his blue gaze.

"You sure, it's broken?" she asked finally, tearing her eyes away from him, immediately wondering how much it would cost to repair it.

"Yeah. The chain ripped and these spokes here are bent. I can put it in the back of my truck and give you a ride to school if you still want to go."

Rapunzel looked over to the other side of the street, where a rusty, baby blue pickup truck was parked on the shoulder. What confused her, however, was that it was in fact on the other side of the street, facing away from school.

"If I still want to go?" she repeated and looked back at him.

"I don't think anyone could blame you for ditching after all this," he said and nodded to her current situation of bloody palms and a broken bike.

"Is that what you're doing?" she asked, an odd smile playing at her lips. "Ditching?"

A boyish grin spread on his face. "Maybe."

She raised her eyebrows. "Maybe?"

He shrugged, grin never faltering.

"Where are you going?"

"Why? You wanna come?"

Rapunzel faltered. Was he being serious? "Okay."

Wait, what?