I decided that going to bed early that night was probably essential to my health. For nights in a row I wouldn't feel tired in the least at four in the morning and then the next night I'll be falling asleep where I'm stand at eight p.m. That night was a night of the latter.

The next morning I actually woke up when my alarm clock went off, which was a step up for me. It's supposed to go off at seven, but then I wake up at eight thirty... right when school should be starting.

I felt really rested, and actually a little good. My mood only got better when I saw all the comments on my new song. I'd posted at 6:58, so I guess it wasn't that surprising that I'd gotten so many comments in one day. Usually I post them in the middle of the night. The first person to comment was some girl named "bloodRED_pigtails". Pigtails, huh? I looked at the time the comment was posted—three minutes after seven. Would that be enough time for the girl yesterday to get to a computer? I mean, she was in a library—

Wait, where is this coming from? Maybe that girl just recognized the style or something.

You know what, why should I care? Sigh doesn't exist, so he doesn't have to worry about what people think of him, or who those people are.

I'm doing it again. Sigh and I are the same. Sigh is just to keep the haters from hating directly. People would probably drop the idea of dubstep if they found out it was me, but not before throwing it at a cement wall. I wish they would just find out they'll never be good enough instead of constantly wasting energy trying to impress others. I have.

I'll save you a sob story and just skip to the part where I got to school on time and had breakfast, both a first in a while. To be honest I'm not really sure why I go to school. When I sit down and think about it, it's because I want to be able to think of myself as independent. So far I haven't done a very good job, relying of the money my parents give me for my apartment. I've barley even poked at the thought of getting a job, but I guessed I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't find one soon. I though breifly about working at a fast food place, but they only accept people with their high school degree, so that was out of the question. I guessed I should probably check, anyways. Since when was I in the loop? In elementary school they didn't have one, and after that I stopped trying to talk to other people, since the topic was always on my brother.

Let's not go there.

Okay. Back to something much less interesting that everyone my age dreaded—high school. And don't even get me started about how much people hate actually being there. Thinking about it is enough.

Unsurprisingly, I found that even if I did go to the first class of the day, it's boring and without purpose. I guess even getting a good night's sleep for once had its cons. Well, now I knew.

I never ate lunch, because 1) I hate school lunches, and 2) I'm never hungry. I just pig out on the couch at home and I'm fine. Probably not the best eating habit, but at least I ate breakfast that day.

So, all I really do during lunch is wander around the campus, which is surprisingly big. The ceiling's really high and there's always these extra credit assignments being posted on this bulletin that people take all the time. I'd heard some are really hard, not that I would know from first-hand experience. This one kid, Kid, and his two sisters always do the hardest ones. I'll never understand why his sisters hang out around him, since he's always running around either yelling at someone for being unsymmetrical or banging his fist on the ground because of his hair. But I've also heard they're not actually related. Not in the loop, remember?

"Soul Eater Evans?" I froze at the use of my full name, and then turned around on my heels. No one ever used my full name, as if they couldn't believe I was related to the people it implied. It was that one weird teacher, the one teaching science for smart people or something. The screw on his head had always made me twitch, and I wasn't sure whether he knew that just because he's a science teacher doesn't mean he has to wear a lab coat all the time. And I could never see his eyes, as if the light was always glinting off of his glasses perfectly.

"Yeah?"

"I need to talk to you. Follow me."

I had no idea where that was, so I didn't know how long I'd be walking for. It was right around the corner, and then I remembered this is the hallway where all the honor roll students go. Before we walked in, I could hear a loud, obnoxious voice say something and a quiet, calming voice cut in every once in a while. We opened the door to an old, unused classroom with some vines growing through the cracks in the windows in the middle of their conversation.

"—worth a big star like me, not some stupid make-up work for a guy like…" he searched for a word and saw me, then zeroed in and pointed at me yelling, "him!"

Oh, it was that guy. Black Star's annoying voice practically carried around the whole school because he was so loud. He and that girl were always together except for the times when he was up on the roof yelling at people to clap for him. One time he got too close to the edge of something and the tip broke off. Then Kid started freaking out about how it wasn't symmetrical anymore. Black Star said (well, yelled) that wimps like him could never beat the "almighty Black Star". It ended with Black Star twitching on the ground in a pile of smoke. I'm not kidding; I think there were explosions at one point.

"Please excuse him. He doesn't mean it, he's just upset." Really? The girl was apologizing for him? That's so uncool.

"Are you his girlfriend or something?" She started blushing and saying that no, she wasn't. I wondered more than before why she hung around with him to begin with.

"Settle down. Let's get to what I brought you in here for. Tsubaki, can you please step outside for a moment?" The girl who I now knew as Tsubaki smiled warmly at him, bowed slightly, and stepped out. I took a seat at one of the front desks next to Black Star who had his arms crossed and was pouting, staring out the window. I sunk back into the seat like I always did.

"Alright, let's get started. I know that both of you are having trouble with your grades, and I've suggested something to bring up both of your averages to the school board."

"I already do extra credit!"

"You try, Black Star, but you've never actually succeeded at any of them. You might be able to if you would only pick an easy one."

"No way am I letting Kid do better than me!"

"Moving on," he continued, ignoring Black Star who was obviously not happy. "I'm Professor Stein, all-subjects teacher for gifted students. What I recommended was that, since you can't pick up your grades this late in the school year, you can join my class. If you survive, you graduate."

I didn't even know what my grades were, but if they were as bad as the guy over to my left then I knew it was probably a stroke of luck for me. Just to clarify what I had to do, I asked, "So, we need a C or above?"

"Oh, no, you quite literally need to survive. My tasks can be rather difficult for the average person." I swear I saw his glasses glint a little more than usual when he said that. I guess in this case it bites to be average. It seemed a little strange that the school board would agree to something like that, though. I reasoned that if they accepted it, then it must not have been that dangerous.

Black Star guffawed next to me. "This won't be a problem for the great Black Star! I will conquer the gods one day, as I'm sure you already know!"

"Black Star, please get off the top of your desk." When I looked, he was standing on the desk doing some weird pose and I could almost hear the sparkles. My hand flew to my mouth and I turned away as I tried to cover up my laugh. Is this guy for real? I thought.

"Hey, what are you looking at? Bask in my glory while you can, peasant! You're lucky to breathe the same air as me!" Then I heard this maniac, loud laugh.

Unfortunately, I realized that yes, he was for real.

I heard Professor Stein sigh and call for Tsubaki. She rushed in apologizing and then tried to get Black Star to calm down, but she was drowned out by his ranting until she finally gave up and listened with me to Professor Stein.

"Tsubaki, can you just tell him that he needs to be in room seven hundred tomorrow morning? He's giving me a headache," Professor Stein explained, rubbing his temples. I couldn't blame him—one of the muscles in my forehead was starting to twitch at that point. I'll really have to be in the same class as Black Star? I thought. He makes surviving Professor Stein's class seem to have more cons by the second.

Tsubaki nodded with a grim expression this time and then dragged Black Star out by the ear. His shouts of "ow" could be heard for a while after I walked outside without a goodbye to or from Professor Stein as he leaned forward in his chair he was sitting on backwards and turned the screw in his head, apparently lost in thought.

I figured I'd go home. I was going to try to be more independent or whatever, but it doesn't really matter whether I stay or not after what Professor Stein said, right? I'm sure it won't exactly give the teachers a heart attack to see that I'm absent.

On my way home I was thinking about how Professor Stein's class was an all-subject thing. It sounded like elementary school to have to stay in one boring classroom all day. I also heard that since it's only one class there are a bunch of kids in one room. I wonder how big the room will be, if I'm even right. I heard yelling, which wasn't really abnormal in the city, but this didn't sound like the usual calls of some group of teenage boys playing penis.

"Then why did you cheat on her, huh?! If you love her so much to go around constantly telling me about it!"

"But it's true! Papa loved you and your mama so much! I still do! Come back! Maka!" A girl in a coat came around the corner but was stopped when the man I'm assuming was talking to her grabbed her arm before she roughly pulled hers away.

"I hate you! I'm absolutely disgusted by you! I will never so forgive you, so stop apologizing!" By this point I'd stopped in my tracks.

The girl turned around from the stunned man and started walking stiffly and quickly in my direction, her head down and using her sleeve to wipe her nose. When she noticed me, via my feet, she finally looked up and I recognized her by her emerald eyes. They used to be clear and bright, but now they looked ready to shatter with none of the confidence that they had before. She blushed, looked down, and kept walking, but I grabbed her arm when she was walking by and didn't fight when she shook it off.

"What was that about?" I asked, walking next to her.

"Why do you care?" You could tell from the way she talked that she was on the verge of sobbing. I answered truthfully.

"I don't know." She started walking faster, but so did I.

"Listen, if you think you're going to get a good gossip story out of this, think again. Everyone has a backstory, and some aren't picture perfect." Her voice seemed steadier now.

"I can't argue with that." Especially being me and all. "Does someone at least know?"

"No. You're the first to get this far. Congratulations."

"You should at least talk to someone."

"Who, you? You're some stranger I pissed off at the library. And how would you know, anyways?" I thought for a second; that's a good question. How would I know? What made me think to say that of all things? It's not exactly like I'm reaching out to people at the moment.

"I guess I don't," I finally said. She didn't say anything else, but she glanced up at me and then back down like she was confused about something. When we were back at the school she stuck her hand out at me.

"I'm Maka Albarn." I hesitantly took her hand.

"Soul Eater." Her face screwed up in confusion.

"'Eater'?" She echoed.

I don't know what possessed me to say this, but I guess I was thinking that she wouldn't care. I took my hand back and put it in my pocket to match the other one. "Giving out my last name would mean giving out my backstory." After all, she was the one who said that not all of them are picture perfect.

She looked like she wasn't expecting that. Since she obviously wasn't going to be any use with her mouth opening and closing like that, I turned around and started heading towards the class I was supposed to be in. I figured I shouldn't say things like that to people I just met.

So. It's only been eight months.

Yeah, I'm a bitch. I kept telling myself, "Rachel, you're going to go home and write more MSWM or Megan and the Burnouts," and it never happened. I had writers block for the longest time, and before that, I'd never had writers block. I would be able to sit down and write for hours for three years and then silence. Woops, my bottomless well has run out of water. Whatever shall we do.

I figured it was just cruel and irrational to keep telling myself I was going to do it, so for now, my two other stories are discontinued. In all honesty, I screwed up Megan and the Burnouts. Badly. Maybe one day I'll rewrite it, and one day I'll continue MSWM. But today is not that day. For now, this is my solution.

Okay. I'm going to type this, right now, to hold myself to this.

I've dragged this out as long as possible, and that in itself bitch. At this point, I shouldn't have followers from the other stories, because I'm a dick and this is what happens to dicks. I haven't touched fanfiction in the longest time, and I have no idea where all the stories I followed are at this point. Something is wrong with my account, because I haven't even gotten emails for new chapters for idk, what feels like a year but I know isn't that long.

What I'm getting at is that me doing this is something I should take responsibility for. I am going to update at least once every two weeks (I'm saying this because I know once every week is just I can't). Since I already have the next part typed up, expect it Saturday. Carry on with your life.