(I've decided to just put a disclaimer before every chapter, just in case.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or any of its characters. Natalie, however, is mine :)

Chapter Two
Natalie

I grabbed my messenger bag and slung it over my shoulder after checking my makeup one more time. I grabbed my cell phone from the dresser and shoved it into my bag that had already been filled to the max with books, pens, and my laptop.

I threw open my bedroom door, slamming it behind me. I was already half-way down the stairs when I realized I hadn't bothered to put my hair back. I hesitated and glanced at my closed door. If I went back into my room, Mom would probably decide to go give me another lecture… and then I'd be totally screwed because I'd be late for school. I shook my head and ran down the rest of the stairs, pushing my wild hair out of my face.

"I'll be back later tonight, Mom," I called as I opened the front door. "Don't worry about dinner. Danielle's parents invited me to eat with them." I didn't even wait for her response, but I knew it would have been something like We're going to talk when you get home, you know. Hopefully I could get out of that, too.

Divorce. The word rang repeatedly in my head. How could this happen? Even though my parents used to fight a lot when I was a kid, I hadn't heard them fight for months. They'd been to marriage counseling. They'd been to family counseling. They'd been to just about every flipping counseling that was offered in this town and they still couldn't work out their problems.

They never did apologize for making me listen to all the yelling when I was little... I was getting even more pissed off at little things that didn't technically have anything to do with the current situation. That was always what happened when I got angry. Somehow my memory would conjure up everything that had made me angry over the past years, every feeling that I had kept bottled up inside, and the horrible memories and the pain that came with them would crash down on me like a tidal wave. It always happened, even when I told myself it wouldn't.

Stop it, I mentally scolded myself, as I often did when I was annoyed. Don't let your mind go off to anything else. Focus on what's pissing you off now, not what made you angry when you were nine. ... I sound like a therapist.

Okay, so the current situation… my parents were getting divorced. Divorced. They wouldn't be together anymore. Ever, most likely. I could understand something temporary… maybe Dad would move out for a few months, and then move back in and he and Mom would be happy again. I could understand that… but a divorce?

It's probably my fault, I thought to myself. I'm never really around anymore. We never do anything together. Never. Because I'm not around. Talk about a pathetic daughter. I sighed as I opened my car door. Dad just doesn't want to deal with me anymore.

I threw my messenger bag into the car and was just about to step into it when I stopped, an idea forming in my head. I glanced at my watch. Classes wouldn't start for another hour, and my school was only a fifteen-minute-long car ride away. I hadn't realized, what with Mom's lecture and my flurry of emotion, that I had been leaving home way too early.

I leaned into my car and grabbed my bag again, searching for my iPod in the side compartment. Once I found it and put my earbuds in I slammed the door and locked the car and took off at a jog down the road.

Running had always calmed me down when I was mad, ever since I was younger. Whenever I was angry I would take a jog for an hour or two, and then come back home feeling better and finding that Mom and Dad had made up, which put me in an even better mood…

No. Don't think about that now. Don't think about any of that.

I started playing Caramelldansen, the stupid little song that always managed to cheer me up. As the techno melody and Swedish lyrics reached my ears I put everything else out of my mind and concentrated on the music.

~*~

I lost track of time when I arrived at school, so I checked my watch. It had taken about a half hour to get here. Panting, I ran up the steps to the double doors and pulled one open. I ran up to the door to my first class, even though I was positive I wouldn't be late. Class wouldn't start for at least fifteen minutes. I yanked open the door and went inside, breathing in the smell of fresh chalk as I did so.

I spotted Danielle, one of my friends, sitting in her usual seat. I went up to mine, which was next to hers.

"Hey," I greeted Danielle as I laid my bag on the floor and sat down.

"Hello," she said, not looking up from her graphic novel. I picked up the cover with my finger to see what she was reading.

"Fruits Basket again?" I shook my head and leaned back in my seat. "What is your obsession with that series?"

"It's interesting," she mumbled as she skipped ahead a few pages. "Hah. I knew it." I rolled my eyes and she closed her book and stuck it into her backpack.

"Hey, do you have a rubber band or something I could borrow?" I was trying to comb through my hair with my fingers, hoping I could at least make it stop falling into my eyes, but it wasn't exactly working.

"Um…" I heard Danielle search through her bag. "Yay, found it," she said, holding up a dark, overused rubber band as evidence. I took it from her and began to tie my hair back with it.

"No! What are you doing?!" Danielle asked.

"…Putting my hair back?" I finished with my hair and flipped my ponytail over my shoulder.

"No!" Danielle repeated. "Don't use that!" She lunged for my hair and swiftly pulled out the rubber band, thus ruining my ponytail.

"What the hell–? I need that, give it back!" I told her, but she was already stuffing the rubber band back into her pack.

"You can't use a rubber band!" she scolded me. "It's bad for your hair!"

"It's convenient," I retorted. "I'll get something better when I get home. Besides, my hair isn't going to get much worse anyway."

Danielle huffed. "A rubber band, honestly. And to think I let you do my makeovers. Here," she said, stuffing a headband into my face. "Use this, please." It was then that I noticed she was covering her eyes with her arm like she was afraid to see what I'd do with the headband.

I took the headband from her and examined it. It was black and spotted with white. I decided it wasn't that bad so I put it in my hair.

"Hey, guys," Nikki, our other friend, greeted us. She sat down at the desk to my left. "What's up?"

"Natalie's been neglecting her hair again," Danielle said haughtily. "She actually tried to use a rubber band to put it back! Can you believe it, Nikki?"

Nikki fake-gasped. "Oh, gosh, no. I can't believe that, Danielle. Why would you do something so horrible?!" she added to me and slammed her fist on the desk. "Haven't we told you multiple times not to do that?"

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, fiddling with the headband. "Yeah, well… shut up," I said when I couldn't come up with a good enough comeback. Nikki chuckled quietly and opened her notebook.

"What are we working on today?" she asked as she flipped through pages.

"Um, Pride and Prejudice, I think." I opened my own notebook to confirm this. "Yeah, we were supposed to have read three chapters for this morning."

"Aw, crap," Nikki moaned. "I thought we had to do that by tomorrow. I only read one chapter."

"And I've been reading manga," Danielle said. "Which reminds me, you guys have got to check out this new series that I found."

"I don't read manga," I said, rolling my eyes. "And am I the only one who actually does the homework?"

"Yes," Nikki and Danielle said simultaneously.

"By the way, what's that series called?" Nikki asked Danielle, and then they spent the next ten minutes discussing manga and Japanese culture and using hard-to-pronounce character names. I tried to tune this out, along with the rest of the chatter going on in the room, as I cracked open Pride and Prejudice and started on the next chapter. I was still reading when our English teacher came into the room and scolded everyone for their "incessant chatter". And thus, the school day began.

~*~

When Danielle, Nikki and I went to sit at our usual lunch table, we found that the rest of our cafeteria friends were already there, and, not surprisingly, they were arguing.

"It was not after Christmas!" Lacey was saying, jabbing her fork at Shawn to emphasize her words.

"It was actually a couple weeks after Christmas," Shawn answered calmly. "After we came back from break."

"What are you guys talking about?" Nikki asked as we sat down in our usual seats. I crossed my legs and started to tear apart my bread, trying to satisfy my restless fingers.

"That uber-cheesy play that we did last year," Lacey explained. "The play that was held approximately a week before Christmas."

"After Christmas," Shawn mumbled.

"I can't side with anyone on this," Matthew added. "I've been trying to block that horrid excuse for a play out of my mind."

"So you guys are all wondering whether the play was before or after Christmas," Danielle verified as she opened her pudding cup. "You know what to do, Natalie."

Everyone looked toward me expectantly and I rolled my eyes. "Fine, fine. Okay, that play last year, the weird one. Ooh, was that the one where Michelle almost fell off the stage?" Nods of affirmation from the crowd. "That's what I thought. I sat next to Danielle and Lacey during that one. Lacey was wearing that cute little white dress with the ballet flats. I loved that outfit, by the way. Nikki was complaining about breaking her cell phone. Shawn was being an idiot, as usual. Danielle was talking my ear off about her upcoming Christmas plans. Also, I just remembered, Lacey was wearing mistletoe earrings. Why would anyone wear mistletoe earrings after Christmas?" I heard a little "yes!" from Lacey and a "damn!" from Shawn and smiled. "So Lacey's correct, the play was held before Christmas."

"Told you!" Lacey said smugly, sticking her tongue out at Shawn. "Once again, Natalie's freakishly good memory turns the odds in my favor and confirms that I am more intellectually gifted than you."

"Being more intellectually gifted than Shawn isn't exactly a feat," Nikki deadpanned.

Shawn punched her in the shoulder playfully. "I could say the same about you, Miss Failing-Math-Because-Of-An-Internet-Obsession."

Nikki made a humphing noise before she started ripping her food apart. She had a bad habit of tearing things to shreds when she became annoyed, which is why Shawn and I scooted our chairs away from her slightly.

"So anyway," Danielle started, shooting a brief, anxious glance at Nikki, "my b-day is on Friday. Just four more days!"

"Oh, really?" Lacey was playing cap-ball with Matthew – a stupid game where they flicked a bottle cap back and forth at each other – but looked up when Danielle spoke. "We didn't realize that you've been telling us for the past few weeks."

"Past few months is more like it," Matthew said under his breath before Lacey flicked the bottle cap at him. He just barely caught it with his index finger and pushed it back to her. "How old are you going to be anyway? Like, fifteen?"

"Seventeen!" Danielle hollered at him. "Seventeen! Where the hell did you get fifteen?!"

"I don't know," Matthew responded brilliantly, missing the oncoming bottle cap and cursing under his breath. It rolled past him and under a table behind us, which was filled with football jocks.

Danielle rolled her eyes at him. "Anyway," she started, "do you guys know what I would love more than anything for my birthday?"

"A BMW?" Shawn guessed, eyeing Nikki's occupied hands and the pizza that they were tearing.

"Well, yes. But no. That's not what I was going to say." She twisted the cap off her lemonade and laid it down in front of her. Matthew quickly snatched it up. She stared at him with her mouth hung open. "W-T-F was that about?"

"I'm not asking those jocks to give me back that other bottle cap," he said as he flicked his new bottle cap at Lacey. "And I am not losing this game."

There was a slight pause, and then everyone said "I just lost the game" at once.

"Weren't we on the topic of birthdays…?" I prompted Danielle. Sometimes our group could get so distracted it wasn't even funny.

"Yeah." Danielle smiled widely. "Okay, well, I was thinking that we could go camping after my birthday party!"

This statement was met with loud groans of disapproval, mostly from Nikki, who wasn't exactly an outdoors-y person.

"Oh, come on, guys!" Danielle complained. "It would mean a lot to me!"

"I'm not going to be stuck in a tent with Nikki," Lacey said. "All she'll do is complain about her lack of cell phone reception."

"And seeing as I'm a guy," Matthew added, "I don't think I'm allowed to come."

"Well…" Danielle pondered. "Probably not. Actually, my mom would probably kill me for that."

"Shawn could come, though," Nikki said when she was finished tearing her food. "'Cause he's already as close to a girl as any guy could be."

"Ooh, burn," Lacey said.

"Nikki, cut it out." I rolled my eyes. "Shawn probably doesn't like to be picked on for his feminine qualities." Shawn started to say something, but I cut him off. "We're on the topic of birthdays. Well, camping now. But we're not discussing anyone's femininity here!" I turned to Danielle. "I'll go camping with you. It'll give me an excuse to get out of the house." And away from my problems, I added mentally.

"Yay!" Danielle hugged me with one arm. "Thank you, Natalie! Now, why can't any of you be as good a friend as Natalie?" she asked, pouting.

"Ugh," Nikki groaned. "I guess I have to go now."

Everyone stared at Lacey, waiting for her response.

"I would go, and complain about doing so, if I didn't have to spend 'quality time' with my family, which should mostly consist of me and my sister picking on each other," she said. "I'm sorry, Danielle."

"It's fine," she mumbled, then perked up slightly. "At least two of my buddies can come." She clapped her hands together, looking utterly thrilled that she would be spending all night around a campfire with me and a girl who couldn't keep her hands off of electronics. Sometimes I admired her enthusiasm. But most of the time it just got annoying.

"We'll have fun," I promised her, trying to ignore Matthew's cursing and holler of "she hit me in the frickin' eye with that thing!"

I laughed quietly. Maybe it wasn't so bad that my family would be separated soon.

I'd always have this quirky, upbeat family.

A/N: Today was a good writing day for me, so I also completed chapter three! I'll be posting it (hopefully) by the end of the weekend, after I go through it and do some editing.

I'm sorry that this chapter was made up entirely of OCs, but I felt like I had to switch points of view. I'm sorry if I confused you with anything, but you can probably guess whose point of view this chapter is from. And if you can't, just PM me and I'll tell you!

--Becky