My life is severely lacking, something which I, nor my parents would ever expect me to be saying. I have two parents who give me everything I've ever wanted and love me more than anything in the world. Why do I feel so undernourished? Why do I feel so pained all the time? I feel as though there's a part of myself I'm missing. I'll be perfectly honest: I feel like I am merely half a man. Truly, how could it be that despite the huge televisions, laptops, smart phones, and iPods I still feel as though I may as well be a caged bird? I don't want to be the person I feel myself becoming, a person who does the same things day after day in a dream-like trance. What sort of life could that be for any person? I have the power and the will to change my life, to break the patterns and boring pathways, to smash down walls and create a much more beautiful right of passage...so...why don't I? I ask myself this question day after day, and truthfully it has become a pattern in its own right as well; however, I never answer it. I don't have the answer. I'm turning thirteen, but I still feel like I may as well be a toddler learning to take its first steps.

"Ciel, dear?" My mother calls from the other end of the dining table, "Is something the matter?"

"No." I answered a bit too quickly, and much too disrespectfully. Even I myself was shocked at my moods and my horrid manners in the recent past. I could tell that my mother was trying and failling to prevent her own mouth from slightly parting in her shock. I had never been that type of person, and especially never toward my parents.

I wiped my mouth despite having barely eaten any of my meal, stood up from the table and asked to be excused. Without commenting on my previous behaviour, my father thought for a few brief moments before allowing me to leave the table and head to my bedroom. I left quickly, and once I reached my bedroom I collapsed onto my bed and sighed. Staring up the ceiling I wondered what the hell was getting into myself.

My days were blurring together, leaving me a dazed yet bored, sighing, dissatisfied mess.

I could barely remember any of the lessons my instructors had taught me, and my attitude recently was causing my friend Elizabeth to stop visiting me nearly as often. She continued to come in hopeful fashion, but the visits were much fewer and far between. I'd noticed her staring in a concerned way in the hall way the few times we'd seen one another at school, and I'd also known she had expressed her concern to my parents as well. I knew that I didn't have a solution to my troublesome ways, but I could do without my childhood friend worrying so much.

I knew Elizabeth was used to my old ways, playing whole-heartedly, smiling and laughing, loving my parents, my perfect manners...but what if living that way was simply unappealing in recent days? Was that all? I wished I could believe that and put the matter to rest, but I knew I wasn't being truthful with myself. The problem wasn't that I didn't like smiling, laughing, playing with Elizabeth or having to be respectful towards the adults around me...there was just something missing from the picture. I laid back and wondered what it could possibly be...a pet? Another friend? New Clothes? New Haircut? "What is it!" I wondered to myself.

The last thing I remembered before waking up for school the next morning was wondering about the latest smart phone and whether or not I wanted one. I rubbed my eyes and yawned before swinging my legs over the edge of my bed and heading toward the dresser on the opposite side of my room to change out of my previous days' clothing. I usually never slept in my day-time clothing, but I hadn't expected to fall asleep.

I noticed a smudge on my mirror and cringed, noting that I would have to complain to my parents about the maid. Once I was sure about my appearance I left the room and headed to the kitchen were the breakfast which had been awaiting my arrival was ignored as I headed straight out the side door to a waiting car. It promptly dropped me off at the Highschool. I may have been a twelve year old who was soon to turn thirteen, but my parents had a private tutor educate me until I had absorbed enough to skip three grades.

My first class that day was, unfortunately Honors Algebra II, a class which was impossible for me to pass in the hazy state I had been stuck in the past few months. The teacher was the worst part of the class. She had a quite large false smile on her face at almost all times, her voice was kept in a falsetto and she had a history of randomly screaming about completely insignificant actions of my peers and I. When she went into these rants she also threw things, and threatened students with office or detention time when they had done nothing wrong. She had a long last name that no one could really pronounce, so we just addressed her as Angela.

Unfortunately she seemed today as though she would crack any moment.

"So class, we carried the 4, and then we placed it in a box below, and who wants to complete the next row for us...Hmmm, how about Ciel?" I perked up at her questioning voice, I had no idea what she had said before my name had been mentioned.

There was an awkward amount of silence before Angela's smile flickered and died, "Ciel?"

"I...wasn't paying attention?" I tried.

"Ciel Phantomhive!" She screamed and I sat with glaring eyes, "Oh. You weren't paying attention! Ha! Ciel, why do you think I'm here!? To baby sit you!? To waste my time!?"

There was another brief silence before she simply continued herself.

"Go to the office." She glared back at me, "Now." I stood up and stuck my chin out, not really caring all too much. I rolled my eyes remaining in Angela's view until I finished and then left swiftly, I was calm despite her screaming. When I was far enough from the math department I muttered to myself, "What a twat..."

I reached the office before sitting down in the waiting area beside another student. The room was all grey walls and elderly women, giving it a strange feel. There were a couple of cliched, common-sense educational posters on the tack-board beside the entrance which reminded me of a memory of a horrid visit to a doctor when I was seven.

The boy beside me was taller by as much as a foot and a quarter, and looked as though he must have been at least a junior. He had his feet up on the table in front of us, his arms behind his head, eyes closed, and a large quite coy smile was spread upon his lips. His black hair was plastered to his face by sweat as though he'd been running, and strangely enough he was humming a slow symphony. Suddenly I could no longer reign in my curiousity.

"Why are you here?"

The Junior jumped up suddenly as though he had just noticed my existence. Then his coy smile returned and he told me, "I chased down a freshman, held him down and painted him blue." It was then that I noticed that there were some blue streaks on the older boy's hands and across the cheek that I had been unable to see before the junior had turned his face toward me. Even more shocking were his red eyes, which had previously been lidded.

"Why?" I suddenly became even more inquisitive.

"Hazing for the weight lifting team." The boy sat back against the very back of his seat once again before reverting back completely to his previous position. "Why are you here, shorty?"

I jumped up from my own seat, "I am not short!"

"You are, just answer my question rather than continuing an argument you'll never win."

I thought before silently agreeing, sitting in my seat, and replying, "Crazy Angela."

"I see." He told me, "I myself have had my fair share of being sent to the office by Angela. Hard to believe the principal thinks Angela is such an angel."

"I know, right?" I replied quite quietly. It was then that the door to the principal's office opened and a blue freshman exited. The boy was three-quarters of a foot taller than Ciel and he had blonde hair.

"Don't worry Finian," The tall pale-skinned man told him as he pushed his glasses up, "Sebastian will be punished and your mother will be here in a few minutes to bring you home to clean up." He watched Finian take a seat on my opposite side before screaming, "Sebastian Michaelis, get in here!"

Sebastian cringed before beginning his progressingly slow journey to the door of the principal, "Wow, Claude, why the screaming?"

"Sebastian." I tried the name out for myself in a whisper too soft for anyone but myself to hear it. I didn't want anyone to hear that I cared that he had a strange name, or cared that he had the strangest eyes I had ever seen, or that maybe...just maybe I found those eyes the most attractive I'd seen as well.