A/N: Hey dears! Here's another chapter, be sure to let me know what you think of it! Constructive criticism is my favorite, so let me know, good, bad, really freaking horrible? I'm all ears.

~*~

I glared at the computer screen in front of me.

I was supposed to be writing a paper for history, the one about paying attention and not pissing teachers off, unfortunately I kept getting pissed off while writing it so I kept ending up with things like…

It's important to pay attention because some teachers have an incredibly low self esteem, because their mothers never listened to them as children and now are dependent on attention from those who are required to give them attention. It's tragic, as neurotics of this extreme are likely to die angry and alone.

I doubt Mr. Donavan would be impressed by my intense psychoanalytical study of him, even though I think it is pretty realistic.

So maybe I was overreacting… a little, but my mom grounded me for three weeks because of it! Three weeks! And that isn't even the worst part; she also threatened to have me moved out of history class, which is my only period, aside from lunch, that Jared and I share!

As an obsessive teenage girl, I think I have a right to overreact.

I closed the window and shut the computer off, I obviously was not about to get any more work done, at least not anything that I could actually turn it.

I turned to my pre-calculus homework instead, stared at it for about two seconds, and then decided that I should go make myself some pasta for dinner. Pasta is my favorite; it's quick, tastes good, and it's full of yummy carbs. Carbs are just about the best thing ever invented… though I'm sure I might change my mind in 10 years when they all catch up to me.

So I was downstairs, procrastinating, and eating carbs, like normal, when this really freaky thing happened.

I heard howling.

Now I know what you're thinking, Kim, you live in the freaking woods on a reservation in the middle of freaking no-where. Of course there are going to be animals outside, idiot.

But this wasn't normal howling, this wasn't any kind of howling I'd ever heard before. It was freaky. It was so loud and deep and just… weird. It was almost like it almost had a tone or a meaning.

Okay, so maybe my description sounds a tad crazy and very unhelpful… but it really was just so… not normal.

So of course I do what any sane person does when they hear weird awful howling outside their house. I went outside to go see what it was. It obviously was not one of my better ideas, the whole time I was walking to the door I was thinking about "survival of the fittest" and how appropriate my picture would be next to a definition of it in a textbook.

I mean who the heck goes out to look for something that just sounds like its huge and menacing? Someone who's way too curious, stupid, and bored, that's who.

So I'm on my front porch now, maneuvering my way around back. I say maneuvering because the sides of my house are all forest. I literally have no side yards, only a back and a front. I know it seems odd, but my house was built by my great-great-grandparents, who must have been completely wasted when they were planning it. I think they literally ran out into the woods, hacked down a few trees, built the house, and then hacked a little so there was some space in the back and the front for whatever people do in their back and front yards.

Anyway, so I have no side yards, just forest.

So I'm walking through the forest to the back and I have to cut around, away from the house a bit because the stuff close to the house is harder to get through, when I trip over some cloth on the ground. I bend over to pick up the offensive garment, and I realize that it was jean material. Was, of course, because it's completely shredded.

What crazy person was shredding their jeans outside of my house?

So here I am, holding a piece of torn denim, already a little freaked because of the howling, and the fact that some druggie/hobo/weirdo is probably hanging out in the woods by my house, when I see these huge freaking eyes.

I nearly peed my pants.

I almost think I imagined them because after I had blinked they were gone, and it was also kind of dark, and they were a bit far away… say 15 yards-ish. I thought it might have been one of those hallucination things, where you're scared and you can't see right so your mind makes up things that might make sense in the circumstances.

At least that's what I wanted to believe it was...

Otherwise there was a huge, howling beast shredding denim in the woods where I was supposed to have a side yard.

Okay, so hallucination it was.

I went back inside and ate my now cold pasta. I turned the TV on really loud and turned on all the lights in the house.

I know it was a silly, stupid, girly thing to do, but I really, really wanted to forget about those huge, haunting eyes.

~*~

I told Garrett about it at lunch the next day, and he laughed at me.

Freaking laughed.

How was this funny again?

He must have caught my anger because all the sudden he got quite and tried to look innocent. Hmph, like that will work on me, mister.

"Sorry, Kimmy, it's just… your face… and you said… 'and he had these huge freaking eyes that he just freaking stared at me with!'" said Garrett, he started chuckling a little again. He was insulting me, and calling me that annoying nickname?!

Jerk.

"He did!" I cried indignantly.

Garrett snorted. I pouted and poked around my lunch, how dare he laugh at me! I was either living right next to some huge scary beast or having hallucinations! This was serious business!

"You're probably just stressed from school and stuff, Kim." Garrett said, "and it was late and dark and you were freaked out. You probably just saw a funny shaped rock or something."

He was probably right, like always, but I couldn't let him win.

"What about the howling though?" I questioned.

"Probably some coyotes or something," he replied rationally. Garret was always rational; never considering the unordinary or unexplained. I know it's probably better, but isn't that a little… boring?

"Or maybe it wasn't." I glared, "maybe it was something different."

Somewhere across the cafeteria a tray hit the floor. The noise startled me, so I looked over to see what it was.

Paul, this annoyingly tall, really buff, angry kid who's in my grade, was standing next to where he normally sits with all the other annoyingly tall, really buff, angry, but less so than Paul, kids. It was like a requirement to being friends with them, because they all looked like NFL linebackers, only buffer. I was pretty sure they were all on steroids, just because I don't know how someone could be that huge without being on steroids, but Paul's girlfriends seemed to disagree. Not that I would know anything about that but I've just heard… so yeah.

Anyway, Paul had obviously been just about to sit down when he dropped his tray, and now he was just standing there staring at me. He wasn't glaring or anything, but he wasn't exactly smiling either. He was actually kind of looking at me like I had two heads. His other friends started staring at him, and then followed his sight to look at me. Now the entire group of NFL linebacker wannabees were looking at me funny.

Eeek!

I turned back around quickly and looked at Garrett who seemed pretty confused about the exchange, too. He should be; I mean what the heck had just happened?

Desperate to change the subject, desperate to get something going that wasn't about me I muttered stupidly "Er, so what about them Nicks?"

Garrett laughed, a little nervously, and started talking about some new video game. We were still tense though, and when I glanced over my shoulder ten minutes later Paul was now seated and still staring intently at my back. I didn't look over again for the rest of the period.

~*~

When I got home after school that day my mom was there. I know for most people that's normal, and stuff, and not really something worth mentioning, but for me it's a huge thing. See my mom is a psychiatrist, which is a fancy way of saying she's a doctor who spends most of her time working with really, really crazy people. The kinds of people who think they're superheroes, or who have imaginary friends they think are real. She has much less hectic hours than most of the doctors at the hospital because normally she has regular patients who she sees by appointments, but she's also the only psychiatrist in the area, so she's pretty much always on call.

At the moment I'm mad at her because of the whole grounding thing, but I can't help being super excited to see her. I love my mom, and not in the she's-my-mom-so-I'm-obligated-to-love-her love her, but she's really the funniest, most awesome, most amazing adult I know. I want to be just like her when I grow up, except I don't know if I want to work with the crazies all the time. I'm thinking about research psychology, actually. Less school, and you don't really have to interact with the people you observe.

"Hey sweet pea," she says smiling at me.

"Hey mom," I reply. "Why are you home so soon?"

"I thought I'd check on my favorite inmate," she joked. "I have to be back at work by six, but I thought we could eat dinner and you could tell me about your day."

"I was thinking chicken salad sandwiches, would that be acceptable, warden?"

I normally had to make dinner. Mom was a single parent, my dad died when I was in 7th grade, so we share most of the chores, except for the laundry and the cooking, which I do. It's really hard on her, having such a demanding job and having a kid too, so I try to help when I can. We normally treat each other more like friends or roomies than mom and daughter, that is when she's not busy grounding me.

"Sounds great," she chirped, "I'll set the table."

I had a feeling that this school discipline thing had her worried about me, and I was pretty sure her coming home for dinner was more a thinly veiled "we need to talk". She was pretty good at reading me, it is her job to read people well, after all, so I'm sure she'd seen how agitated I was about it. I really hated that she took off from work because of me though.

I was halfway through my sandwich, when she proved my theory right. We were chatting a little, and I told her about Paul's freak out at lunch, not about the scary eyes because I wasn't about to have her thinking I was crazy and needed therapy, when she used the opportunity to segue into a conversation about school in general before she asked about 'the incident'.

"So, honey, what's been going on with you lately in history?" she asked. "You've never had a problem with the subject before…"

I blushed, "er, well… actually… I guess I just get kinda distracted in there, and Mr. Donavan doesn't seem to appreciate it."

"What distracts you?" she asked. I'm pretty sure she already knows, because she knows about Jared, but she never implies anything when she interrogates me.

"Well, ah, Jared's in there…" I said. This is sooo embarrassing.

"Oh, I see." She says. "Have you ever considered telling him how you feel?"

Tell him how I feel?! Has all that time she's spent with psychopaths started to rub off on her?! Jared's way out of my league, that would be so… embarrassing!

"Mom! I can't, he's, he's… popular, and well, y'know, he's that boy!"

Mom laughed, and took a bite out of her sandwich before setting it down to reply, "so he's that boy then? And what does that mean to you?"

Was she trying to embarrass me now?

"Well, he's just, he's-" how even to explain it? "He's like, my dream guy. The guy that for most girls isn't even real. The guy that is so right he can't even possibly exist because it would be way too perfect and fairytale-ish."

"So you can't tell him how you feel because…" she trailed off.

"If he doesn't like me, which I'm sure he won't… then he won't be the perfect guy anymore…"

"Ah, so you're afraid," she said. "Let me tell you something dear, holding this inside of you will only accomplish you to fail history. You can never know how he feels without talking to him; so what if he's popular?! If he's as good of a guy as you say he is, he shouldn't care that you have different friends, he should like you for you. You are a sweet, pretty girl, and would be a catch for any guy, and if he can't see it he isn't worth your attention, and he certainly is not worth a week of detention and an awful grade."

I sighed, she was right, of course.

"I want you to try to talk to him," she said. "Think of it as a challenge. You don't even have to tell him you like him yet, just talk to him about something, anything, the weather if you want."

My eyes got huge and she laughed. She wanted me to talk to Jared? I would make a total idiot out of myself; I can't even talk around Jared!

"Just try it, sweet pea," she said. "What's the worst that could happen?"

~*~

A/N: So a little bit longer this time, and we got to meet Kim's awesome mommy! No Jared/Kim stuff yet, but no worries, I just want to give you a general picture of Kim and her life before I go and make a mess of it. Sorry if it's dreadfully dull right now, but I promise it will pick up! Pinky swear!

Someone asked me to explain Psych references so here's a few…

Neuroticism is a disorder in which a person tries to control every aspect of their lives, and sometimes also the lives of those around them, depending on how severe their neurosis is.

Psychoanalysis is literally when someone analyses a person's mind. It's an attempt to sum up why a person acts the way they do.

The whole "survival of the fittest" is more ecological than psychological, but Kim's basically saying that she's not "the fittest" as she's running outside where a possibly dangerous animal could be… the theory states that over time a more well adapted species will survive while a less well adaptive species will not. Obviously I'm using a very loose interpretation of it here.

Psychiatrists are doctors who specialize in psychological diseases and disorders. Because they're doctors they go through medical school and are highly trained, and can prescribe medicine. Psychologists normally have doctorates, and some see patients for counseling, while others can research behaviors or other aspects of normal or abnormal psychology.

Most of the stuff I know I'm getting from my college general psych class, so please correct me if I'm giving misleading or incorrect explanations. I don't assume to be an expert on it. [=

If I've forgotten anything let me know!

I love reviews, by the way. *hint hint wink wink*