Ok, here's the second chapter. I know it took a while but, like I said, I only write in this when I have writer's block with my other stories. Which is the case right now, sort of. It's not actually writer's block, since I know what I want to write, I'm just not in the mood to write it. :p So, until then you guys get the second chapter of this fabulous story. :p

Thanx, once again, to Steph.

Enjoy. :)

Finally. Senior year. Roger hated school. And he had finally reached the last year he would ever have to sped in this Hell hole. This was also the last year he would have to spend at home. He had to admit, after leaving he was sure he would miss Rebecca and Marie, but he couldn't wait to get away from his parents.

Roger and Maureen were planning on going to New York University, while Mark and Benny were going to Brown University. They weren't exactly close to each other, but they were only about a three hours' drive away; close enough to visit each other on weekends. More importantly, they were away from Roger's parents. Roger was seriously looking forward to having his own place in the big city. Even if it was just the crappy two bedroom apartment he and Maureen were sharing.

"So, how's your second week been going so far?" an annoying and highly un-wanted voice spoke behind Roger. Brianna. Roger's ex-girlfriend. Although you would never guess that the way she acted. Brianna was convinced she and Roger were going to get back together and marry each other someday.

Roger blamed Kayla. Kayla was Roger's cousin, and Brianna's best friend. It was her idea that the two go out in the first place. Encouraged by his parents who thought they were a match made in heaven, Roger decided to go out with the girl just to appease them. He figured he could last a year and a half until he graduated and then make careful plans to never see the she-demon again.

But he had barely lasted half a year before breaking up with her before Summer break. And ever since, Kayla and Brianna tried their best to get the two back together. This plan consisted of following Roger around wherever he went. Like now. While Roger was trying to make his way to lunch. Looks like that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Sure enough, when Roger turned around there stood two teenage girls each with hair so blond it had to be fake.

"Hey, Bri. Kayla." Wrong thing to say. Brianna immediately smiled at the nickname Roger always used for her. To her it was a sign of affection. In reality it was just laziness. Roger didn't like pronouncing all the syllables.

"So, Rogey, how has your week been?" Brianna gushed, displaying her own sickening "affectionate" nickname she had dubbed Roger with. She wasn't a very original girl. Evil, yes. But not original.

"Well, it was going pretty well." She failed to notice the implication.

"Hide me!" Another teenage girl, this one with wild, curly brown hair shot out of nowhere and ducked behind Roger.

"Hello… Maureen." Kayla practically hissed the word.

For reasons Roger could never quite work out, Kayla and Brianna hated Maureen. Well, ok, so Roger could understand now. Maureen hated them and everything they stood for. Being rich, popular bitches who acted as if they (and in some instances did) ruled the school. But in her defense she only became this way after Kayla and Brianna started acting like bitches to her.

In their Freshmen year the two had stolen paint from the art room and arranged to have it dumped on Maureen in the middle of the lunchroom. They completely ruined Maureen's favorite shirt; it was one of the very few times Roger had seen Maureen cry. It was also one of the very, very few times he had ever seen Mark stand up for someone. But he did. He just stood up right in the middle of the lunchroom and screamed at the kid who had been convinced by the two demons to dump the paint on her. The fight quickly got physical and resulted in a black eye for Mark and a week of detention for them both. Ever since two things had been on-going: Maureen and Mark's now romantic relationship and Maureen's undeclared war on the B-squareds ("blond bitches").

Roger had suspicions for why the girls didn't like Maureen to begin with. He would never voice them out loud of course, since they sounded conceited, even to himself. He was pretty sure the two thought Maureen had feelings for Roger and/or vice-versa. Which was ridiculous. Roger had been best friends with Maureen since she moved in next door to him back in elementary school, but his feelings for her had only been strictly platonic. Mark was always the one who had the huge (and obvious to everyone except Maureen) crush.

"Roger, hide me!" she exclaimed again, ignoring Kayla's hiss.

"What did you do now?" Roger asked. It was only the second week and Maureen had apparently already managed to get herself into trouble. (A/N: The following is based on a true story. :p)

"Mrs. Sleepy," she said in barely a whisper, as if the teacher could hear her if she spoke the name loudly enough. "Mrs. Sleepy", of course, was not her real name. it was "Mrs. Bartrum", but practically the entire school called her "Mrs. Sleepy" behind her back. This was because she taught English, one of the most boring subjects in Roger's opinion, and she, apparently, shared Roger's thoughts on the subject as she fell asleep practically everyday in every hour. She would set the class to reading a story out loud and then good night, lights out. Sometimes she would lean on one hand and hold a pen in the other while looking down to make it look as if she were grading papers when, in fact, she was just sleeping.

"How did she find out it was you?" Roger asked, shocked. He, of course, knew what Maureen was talking about as soon as she mentioned who was after her. This was Roger, Mark, and Maureen's second year having Mrs. Sleepy and so they pretty much knew the routine. But Maureen noticed something new at the end of their first week back: one of the legs on Mrs. Sleepy's desk was pretty much broken. She discovered it when they had a sub and he accidentally bumped it, bending the leg in and sending the desk lurching foreword. The sub had caught it and was one of those cool ones, so he just laughed about it and got some students to help him fix it up so the desk stayed standing and no one would know it was broken.

Only Roger noticed the wheels turning in Maureen's head and feared what this meant. Then yesterday after Mrs. Sleepy had been asleep for a good ten minutes Maureen got up to sharpen her pencil and "accidentally" bumped the leg again. The result was about five to ten minutes of sheer hilarity and chaos. Mrs. Sleepy's head shot up as her pillow disappeared beneath her, spilling all of her papers onto the floor. The desk also managed to knock into several other students desks which sent their desks flying. The look on Mrs. Sleepy's face was truly priceless. Maureen had slunk back to her seat before anyone else could notice she had been up. (A/N: End True Story. :p)

So how the hell had she found her out?

"I don't know!" Maureen exclaimed, "Someone," on this she shot the B-squareds a dirty look, "Must have ratted me out to her." Of course. Why didn't Roger realize that? Both B-squareds were in their 2nd hour English class. If it weren't for the fact that Roger had all three of his best friends in that class as well it wouldn't be worth it and he would just skip. There were so many other better things he could be doing with his time.

"What? Us?" Kayla asked, putting on an innocent expression, "Why would we waste our valuable time talking to a practically comatose teacher just to get you into trouble? You really need to get over yourself, Maureen." She then smirked at Brianna, ruining the effect of her argument.

"For future reference, Kayla, once you're sure you've backed the enemy into a corner with denial you do not share your victory 'we totally got away with this' smirk until they can't see you," another voice said, joining them. Roger turned to find Mark and Benny heading toward them. Benny was the one who had spoken. This was one of the reasons Roger liked him so much. He was so good at using logic to totally shoot people down when they were acting all high and mighty and "We're better than you." Plus when he tried he could be one of the funniest guys Roger ever knew. "Because, you see, if you do it while they can still see you, you kind of end up giving yourself away."

"Hello, Benny," Kayla said, the smirk completely gone from her face. Kayla hated Benny almost as much as she hated Maureen, although she managed to not hiss his name. Roger honestly could not think of a single reason why Kayla would hate Benny. The only real faults Roger could find in Benny, like his over-ambitious view on getting as ahead as possible in life and everything else to the point that he sometimes became an annoying, selfish prick, were things Kayla both had and loved. Logically, the two should be best friends. But they weren't. It was one of the mysteries of the world.

"So, how have everybody's classes been?" Mark asked, his arm now around Maureen's waist. That was just like Mark. Every time things started to get interesting he did his best to dispel the hostility. Roger was never going to have any fun today.

"They're pretty good," Brianna butt in before anyone else could respond, "Except for this one girl. Ugh. I cannot stand her."

"Are you talking about the beaner?" Kayla asked, looking as disgusted as Brianna was. Roger was about to rip into Kayla for being so rude about a girl she barely knew when Maureen beat him to the punch.

"Oh, wow. Yeah, Kayla, that is just so like you. Be a total racist bitch to some girl the second week back. What the hell could she possibly have done to you?"

"She is so annoying!" Brianna exclaimed, "And she's such a little teacher's pet! She thinks she's all that because she's a little Freshman in our class. But she is totally not. I mean, she may look like she might be pretty and everything, but she wears, like, no make-up, her hair goes all over the place, and don't even get me started on her clothes. And she's such a little know-it-all. She answers all the questions in our class, she's gotten 100 on, like, everything we've done so far. Ugh! It's so annoying."

"Not to mention what a little freak she is," Kayla agreed, "She doesn't talk or do anything. She actually spends time in school, doing her homework. She obviously has no life whatsoever."

Roger couldn't believe his ears. Well, it was Kayla and Brianna so in a way he could, but still. It sounded to him like this girl was just smarter than Kayla and Brianna, she was a Freshman in a Junior class, after all, and they were Seniors who were held back in a Junior class. That was why they hated her? Roger was about to argue with them but before he, or Maureen who looked even angrier than he felt, could say anything Brianna was talking again.

"Oh my God! There she is!" she pointed down the hallway at a small Hispanic girl walking down the hall. She was carrying what appeared to be the entire contents of her locker in her arms and seemed to be lost in her own world, not paying any attention to the world around her.

Which was why she never saw Brianna stick her foot out in front of her.

Finally. Lunch. Mimi hated school. Once she made it to lunch that meant she was half-way through her day. The rest of the day was slightly easier. It was also easier to avoid her fellow classmates during lunch. She would just take the lunch she had packed for herself outside and sit down under one of the trees in the courtyard farthest away from the rest of the students. Then she got a nice, quiet half hour of eating lunch and doing homework. She had no idea what she would do when the whether got colder and it started snowing. She would probably just go out by the tree anyway. It was better than being stuck in the cafeteria with those demons.

Not that she planned on sticking around long enough for it to start snowing outside. She knew it would kill her mother, but she didn't care anymore. She had gotten past caring. Her life had gone straight to Hell and it just kept getting worse and worse as every day went by. Tony didn't make things any easier. Teasing her every chance he got and encouraging others to do the same. Weren't brothers supposed to look out for their younger sisters?

She wondered how everyone else would handle it. Her stepfather and stepbrother would probably just be pissed that there was no one around to do the housework for them. No one at school would care. She thought of those girls in her third hour Science class. Those two definitely wouldn't miss her. They seemed to take an instant dislike to her the second she walked through the classroom door.

But how would she explain this to her mother? Sorry Mami, you did a terrible job raising me in a home with no love and sticking me in a school that's even worse so I've given up? That didn't seem like the right thing to do at all. She would work out what she would say once she got home. First she had to make it through the rest of her school day. It shouldn't be too hard. She had already lasted two weeks. She could last another four hours.

Then there was the question of how she would do it. There were many different ways. All seemed painful. She was just contemplating whether downing a bunch of sleeping pills would be effective enough to not force her to slip into a coma or (even worse) survive completely when she felt something catch her leg.

She lurched forward, all of her books flying out of her hands and flying across the hallway. She slammed down on the ground, hard. She hadn't had enough time to break her impact completely, so she ended up slamming her knees, as well as the palms of her hands.

She could hear laughter all around her. The entire hall had stopped to watch the stupid Freshman going flying. Closest to her, Mimi could hear two unmistakable voices laughing. Brianna and Kayla. The girls who made her life Hell in Science. And every other chance they got. Like now. As Mimi attempted to push herself onto her knees she felt one of them kick at them, so she felt right back down again.

More laughter and now she could hear people muttering about the little freak who had fallen over. Mimi could feel hot tears stinging at her eyes and wanted to just die right there. She wouldn't wait until school got out, she would just go home right now, skip school, and…

"God, Bri, you don't have to be such a bitch." Mimi heard a different voice now. A guy's voice who, by the sound of his voice, was pissed. "Just because the girl's smarter than you is no reason to treat her like some second-class citizen."

Mimi looked up to see a boy a couple years older than her. He had short, dirty blond hair and the most amazing green eyes she had ever seen. Like the idiot that she was Mimi could only stare at him as he held out one of her books to her. He didn't look angry now. He looked sympathetic. Mimi took the book from him and tried to gather herself together enough to get up off the floor.

"Are you ok?" he asked, offering her his hand to help her up. Mimi took it wordlessly and let him pull her effortlessly to her feet.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she managed to mutter, before starting to look around for her scattered books. She saw them spread out as far as half-way down the hallway, but she didn't have to worry about picking them up. She could see three other teens, two boys and a girl spread out around the hallway, picking them up for her.

"I'm sorry about Brianna," he said. Mimi saw Brianna stalk off into the crowd, looking incredibly pissed of. Kayla ran behind her, trying to calm her down. Roger glared after them. "She can be a real bitch when she wants to be." He ran his hand through his hair and gave her a small smile. Mimi felt herself smile back at him in what she realized was the first genuine smile she had had in a long time.

"It's ok. I get stuff like that a lot," she looked away timidly, clutching her book closer to herself in reflex.

The others had come back with her books now and handed them wordlessly to her.

"Thank you," she mumbled quietly.

"No problem," the boy said and he smiled at her again, "So, I guess I'll see you around."

Mimi thought about that for a moment before another real smile lit her features.

"Yeah. Definitely."

The boy and his friends turned around ad walked back down the hallway, heading for the lunchroom. Mimi stared after them, a small smile playing on her lips. Maybe there were some things worth sticking around in this world for.

And there's the second chapter. Don't count on an update soon. I know exactly what I'm going tow rite for the next chapter, but I want to get to a certain part in my next chapter story in my series before I post it. :p