It took me a while, but, as promised, I'm gonna start the spin-off to Tastes like gall now. I haven't really decided, yet, if I'm gonna write the whole story in Alex's perspective or if I just pick what I think is really interesting. If you have a wish for a special scene or chapter to be written in Alex's POV you can tell me and I'll try.

The chapters will probably not be in chronological order but I'll make sure that you can always sort it into the storyline.

Furthermore this is not a try to excuse any of Alex's actions, most of those chapters and scenes that I will publish I had already partly written or had them in my head while writing Tastes like gall. They were meant for me to understand my own characters, but now I want to write them down and share them with you. I hope you'll enjoy :)

Alex's side of Chapter 1

Alex was looking at her sister in disgust. She hated seeing her bullying younger or weaker students, especially this one.

The way Nicky's disciples followed her like lemmings would have been funny, if it hadn't been so pathetic and now they gathered around in a circle like spectators of a car accident. Alex prefered to stay out of the drama and not look when some random poor kid was getting harrassed, she couldn't stand it.

Instead she stood apart, leaned her back against a locker and kept reading in the book she found on a garage sale. She had become pretty good in playing blind and deaf to anything going on around her, avoiding the feeling of her own deficiency when it came to having balls and standing up for others.

She stayed there, preteding to read even after Nicky an the others had left for class, her eyes wandered from her book to the blonde girl that had started collecting her notes and books from the floor, and who's hair looked like she had been running through a typhoon. That girl had the nervous habit to run her hands through her hair, especially when she was stressed or when Nicky was around. It was kind of adorable, though Alex didn't think that Piper even noticed that she was doing it.

The raven haired girl's hands started tingleing, she wanted to help the girl, wanted to sit down beside her to collect her notes and maybe accidently, unintentionaly touch her hand, but at the same time she was embarrassed by her own thoughts and feelings. She had no idea what was wrong with her lately.

Luckily for her, before she could do anything stupid right here in public this guy stepped in, preventing the blonde from getting burried under a stack of schoolbooks.

She threw a last look at them, saw Piper's grateful though also awkward smile and felt a little sting in her heart. This was not normal anymore and she turned away to leave the hallways and go to class, angry with her own stupid heart.

She had had these kind of strange feelings quite for a while now and she didn't even know why, because Piper was surely not a kind of girl that Alex would normaly spend her time with, a spoiled rich girl who had no clue how it was to live up to the lowest possible expectations in a world where money is short and the oppotunities are rare.

The girls Alex normally hooked up with were highschool dropouts or girls that lived their live just like she did. And never ever before had she cared about who the girl was that she was spending the night with.

Piper was being late, but other than herself nobody seemed to notice.

When she finally came in she looked so uncomfortable that Alex had to turn her face, instead she kept on reading Hesse's 'Demian', at least she tried to, but the words didn't reach her mind.

Normally she managed to ignore Piper throughout the lesson, but today her voice rang in her head quite too often. Healy didn't stopp tortuting the poor girl and it made Alex hate him even more than she already did. He was a homophobic idiot who kept trying to forbid gay relationships on campus and there had been more than one bad breakup in this school because the old angry teacher had outed students to their parents.

„Miss Chapman'"

Piper looked like her heart was dropping to her kneepits, her eyes widenen but she kept staring on the floor like she hadn't heard him saying her name, but clearly she had and Alex felt a little bit guilty.

„Miss Chapman, please come to my desk. You too." Healy nodded towards her seat while she had put her feet on the table, playing the hardcore badass that couldn't care less about being almost alone in a room with the blonde shy beauty. It took her all her strength to walk towards the front of the classroom as slow and bored as possible.

The fear in Piper's eyes, hit Alex like a bulldozer, of course she could understand why Piper must feel this way about her, but she still didn't want to see the Horror was rising in Piper's eyes. She didn't want to be the reason for this.

'Miss Chapman!' Healy barked impatiently when Piper hadn't moved a bit yet. She slowly walked through the now empty classroom towards the front desk and Alex kept playing cool, she smirked at the girl, trying to communicate with her, trying to tell her how annoying this Healy guy was. Standing next to this petit girl made her incredibly nervous. But she had trained to hide her feelings, no matter what they were, for all her life and she was incredibly good at it.

Mr. Healy turned his gaze towards Piper, waiting before he started to speak, as if he wanted to intesify the tension on dramatic purpose.

„Miss Chapman, I've been told you've been taking part in the highly recommended tutoring programm in our local middle school. You're one of my best students"

Alex rolled her eyes, she knew that Piper was good in class and that she was going to be visiting one of the elite colleges and even though that was something she could now profit from, it still was frustrating to be reminded of the lack of her own opportunities in life.

Piper had seen her rolling her eyes and Alex felt immediatley sorry.

„And since your grades are always remarkable and you are experienced in tutoring and Miss Vause here is struggling right now not to fail class'"

Alex took her glasses of her nose, trying to keep her hands busy and trying to pretend like all of this couldn't be less interesting to her. While in fact she had been the one who had asked Healy to arrange the tutoring lessons with Piper, not because she really wanted tutoring, she just needed to get to know this girl, for whatever this meant.

„Wait. What? No." Ouch. It hit Alex like a fist in the stomach and from living with her sister she knew exactly how that felt.

„Miss Chapman. Your attitude leaves a lot to be desired right now and I really don't think your behaviour is appropropriate for a future Harvard student. At Harvard they expect more from their students than good grades, I guess you are aware of that fact.'"

Piper didn't answer anymore, while Alex hadn't said a single word, yet.

After a few seconds Healy clapped in his stupid hands, as if he needed even more attention. Alex hated his guts, the way he talked with Piper, like he was her father, was making her fume on the inside, especially since Piper looked really agonized.

„Ladies, may I consider this problem as solved now? Miss Vause?" he gazed at her with his ugly grimace that he always had when he tried to be taken seriously, he was such a wuss. Alex just smirked, she wanted to provokate him, but he just ignored it.

„Miss Chapman?"

„Yes, Mr. Healy." Piper mumbled and Alex felt kind of bad for forcing her into this, but at least Healy hadn't revealed who's idea this whole thing had really been.

Now they were alone, standing in the hallway and Alex's chance to talk with her, privatly, without spectators had finally come. What should she say now? She normally wasn't someone who was at a loss of words, but now words were failing her.

„So it's you and me, I guess." she said stupidly, her voice coming out surprisingly chill and she was so glad that she was able to keep it together.

Out of a sudden Piper started running, stumlbing into the bathroom and the door shut close behind her. Alex wanted to follow, wanted to talk to her but when she reached the door she heard the sound of Piper vomiting and figured that nobody was very fond of being watched puking by some stranger and so she decided to go to the cafeteria and join her sister's gang before Nicky started asking questions.

But of course Nicky asked questions, she was a nosy, control addicted person, who rarely did things go by unquestioned. She always claimed it was because she loved her little sister and wanted to keep an eye on her, but Alex was sure that Nicky was just really afraid of Alex turning her back on her some day, because underneath her coldhearted mean girl surface she was just a scared, lonely teen.

„Where have you been?" Nicky whispered, when the taller girl sat down beside her, of course she didn't let anybody hear her. Nicky had to keep her front upright, she could not risk seeming weak by worrying or controlling her little sister. Actually there were very little people who even knew about their relatedness.

„Healy wanted something." Alex whispered honestly, not looking Nicky in the eye.

„This sicko? Did he want … huh?!" Nicky widened her eyes, rising her eyebrows, like they both had learned from their mum.

The thought alone grossed Alex out, she shook herself in digust „Ew, no. He wanted me to get tutoring lessons."

But in Nicky's eyes tutoring lessons were nearly as bad as the other thing she was thinking about it seemed. Her grades in school were just as bad as Alex's, but other than her Nicky really didn't care.

„Tutoring lessons. By whom?"

„Nobody we know." Alex lied, while digging her fork into the strange looking fries on the plate in front of her. At least Nicky had brought her food.

Nicky scrunched her nose „Such a bullshit. You won't do it, right?" she asked sceptically.

Shrugging her shoulders, Alex began to eat. „I guess I will, mum will be happy about it."

In that second Nicky's most faithful follower who always stared at her and followed her everywhere, tried to catch her attention.
„What are the two of you whispering about?" she aksed. But Nicky, who barely was ever nice to Tricia got pissed immediately.
„Worry about your own stuff. I'm sure you'll have enough to do with that."

During the last lesson of the day it wasn't any easier to resist staring at Piper. She loved the way Piper ran her fingers through her hair and everytime she did it, you could see the tiny little hair in her neck.

Loved? Woah. Alex shook her head over herself, she never used the word love, because love is stupid and pathetic, but she really did like watching Piper during class, the only problem was that today Piper kept nearly catching her staring.

Every few minutes Piper turned her head inconspiciously in her direction, pretending like her neck hurt or she had to look at the clock on the back wall, nobody noticed, but Alex did and she hardly managed to turn her gaze in time, staring in her book or just simply closing her eyes. Gosh, this was getting ridiculous and it was only a question of time until Nicky found out if she didn't try to be a little more careful.