+Updating again, although I wish I could be doing my SYOT… dammit I need characters.

I'm rereading the Gone series, and I'm on Lies, and I forgot that Caine eats Panda's dead body… nasty.

Yup. Soooooo

Drake woke up with his alarm at 6:30 in the morning. Coates Academy started at 7:42 AM every day, the warning bell ringing at 7:37. Drake had been woken up by the warning bell a few times, and had to miss breakfast on those days. "Oblivious days", he called them.

He rolled out of bed and onto the floor, the cool air of the dorm waking him up. The cold carpet reminded him of his episode with Diana last night. He tried to shove it down in his mind; he didn't need that right now. He had some school to go to.

Caine was already awake, buttoning up his Coates blazer. It was an ugly shade of maroon, as always, and had the Coates crest emblazoned on the left side.

"Come on Drake, do you want breakfast or not?" asked Caine impatiently. Drake got up off of the floor and took off his shirt and jeans, sliding into his tan pants, white button down, blazer, and tie. He tugged at the tie.

"I forgot how annoying these things were." He muttered, stepping into his black converse. Well, that was something. This year they stopped making students buy special shoes, because the Academy didn't want to order all those pairs of shoes anymore, and it was the number one thing kids grew out of.

His dorm mate whisking out the door, Drake grabbed his already packed backpack and stumbled out behind Caine.

They met a snappy, tired Diana in the cafeteria, already eating a plate of eggs. She was wearing her pleated skirt, calf-high socks, blazer, white shirt, and tie, like every other girl in the room. She had on some black eyeliner, meant to hide her tired eyes, but anyone could see that Diana was just about asleep.

"Hullo." She mumbled as the two boys slid in next to and across from her. Drake picked up a fork and started shoveling eggs and sausage into his mouth. Caine looked at him in disgust and ate much more neatly.

"Hey." Drake said with his mouth full. At Diana's repulsed look, he swallowed. "You look nice today."

She rolled her eyes, suddenly remembering the contest they had going. "As do you. Maroon fits you."

"Thankyou."

Caine looked at them, his eyes widening.

"Okay… Okay…. What time is it?" He checked a gold watch on his wrist. "We have two minutes, guys."

"Crap!" Diana shouted, getting a few weird looks from the younger students. "My locker is way far away from here. I've gotta go. Bye Guys." She whisked away, her hair flying out behind her.

Caine sighed. Drake punched him in the arm and his head jerked up.

"Stop playing Lover Boy. We've got a school to rule." He said. It sounded stupid to even his psychopathic ears, but Caine looked genuinely hurt by the comment, so it made an impact, anyway. Both boys stood up and took their separate ways to their lockers.

Diana spun the little black thing on her locker, looking at the code on her hand. 32, all the way around to 45, right to 17… She tried to memorize her combination. There was a fifth grader above her, which was stupid since she was way taller than him, and he was trying to figure out how to open the locker.

"Will you help me?" He asked, pushing his thick glasses up his nose.

Diana was about to refuse, but the boy was so tiny that she felt she might as well agree. "Sure, whatever." She replied, "What's your combination?"

"24, 34, 4." The little boy said. She put in the combo and opened up his locker. "Thanks!" He said gratefully. "I'm Jack, by the way."

"Cool. I'm Diana." She replied before grabbing her math binder and gliding away to the other side of the Academy, up a flight of stairs, down the math hallway, and into room 211, which had a small black sign that read Corey Arbin.

She entered the door, and saw her teacher. He was a middle aged man who was tall with greyish brown hair and dark eyes. He had a few wrinkles, but he didn't seem too old, maybe 47 or so.

"Name?" He asked her.

She stared at him. "Diana Ladris." He nodded, put a checkmark on the list in his lap, and pointed to a seat in the middle of the room. "Sit there."

She walked over and sat herself in the chair that he pointed to. Most of the seats were already filled by 11th graders and a few kids a little younger, maybe 9th or 10th grade. Diana seemed to be the youngest there, except for a boy in the front row who might have just been a short 10th grader.

When the bell rang, jumped up from his desk. Every seat in the room was filled now except for one in the far corner of the first row. A boy opened the door and ran to the remaining seat, Mr. Arbin checking his name off of the class list.

"Welcome to 11th grade trigonometry!" The teacher announced. "My name is , and I have been teaching for 7 years. I used to teach 6th grade, but now I prefer the older kids.

The boy next to Diana snickered. She looked at him; he had short blond hair and brown eyes, along with thick eyebrows and pale skin. He wasn't heavy set, but not the skinniest boy she'd ever seen, either. He must have been and eleventh grader. She rolled her eyes and looked up at Mr. Arbin.

"I see I have some younger students in here." He observed, his eyes scanning the classroom. "Raise your hand if you are an eleventh grader."

About 20 of the thirty kids put their hands up.

"Hands down, now put your hand up if you are a tenth grader."

Five hands.

"ninth?"

3 hands.

"Eighth?"

Diana was the only person that raised their hand.

"Any younger than eighth?" Mr. Arbin made is clear that no student in his class was ever under eighth grade.

But the small boy in the front row raised his hand.

"What grade are you in?" asked, confused.

"F-fith, sir." The boy responded. Kids around the room shared glances. Then the boy turned and Diana saw his face. It was Jack, the boy who had the locker above her.

"Seriously?" Muttered the boy next to Diana.

"I know, right?" Diana whispered back. The boy turned to look at Diana. His eyes widened while taking in her striking features. He smiled.

"Yeah. I'm Evan, by the way."

"Diana," Diana replied, smiling back at him. He looked so innocent, so stupid. She could have him wrapped around her little finger in seven minutes, easily.

"Well, Jack, thanks for introducing yourself. Why don't we all do that?" The teacher asked.

So the kids went around and said their names in bored voices. When it was Diana's turn, she flipped her dark hair over her shoulder, catching the girl behind her in the face. "I'm Diana." She said loudly, with a little flair of arrogance. She heard Evan sigh a little bit. Just a little bit. But Diana smiled anyway.

"Evan," he said simply on his turn. Mr. Arbin nodded and looked at the next girl, who had thick greenish glasses and pink braces that clashed terribly with her Coates blazer.

After the whole class had introduced themselves to their peers who didn't really care one way or another, Mr. Arbin cleared his throat.

"And now, of course, it's time for a little pretest." And the whole class groaned on cue.

The older man passed out a test to each student in the room. When Diana received her test, she took one look at it and sighed. It was a very difficult looking test, with lots of variables and triangles on it. She got to work, using her pencil to scratch out the work that she did on her calculator, and eventually the answers.

Finally, she was done. She hadn't realized that she hadn't looked up from the test once during the time she was working. How long had it been? Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty? Fifty?

Evan was already finished, staring up at the ceiling. He was chewing a piece of gum, she noticed. Surprisingly, nobody had asked for any. Yet.

"Alright everybody! Please pass your tests all the way to the right." Mr. Arbin called when the last student, a boy with bad acne and black hair who looked too stupid to be in this class, had put down his pencil. Diana gave test to the girl on her right, named Keelie, who had blond hair and big blue eyes with a freckled face.

The bell rang.

Diana hopped up from her desk and whisked out the door, checking her schedule to see what was next. Science. This one with Drake, too. She had marked every class that she had with Drake with a little red "D" on it. Just so she could be prepared.

After stopping at her locker again, she made her way over to room 1286, the room that was belonging to the infamous Mrs. Rowan. Everybody said that she was the weirdest teacher in the Academy, and that she used to be one of the students. Most teachers were never students here, as you could imagine, seeing as people that went to the Academy usually ended up as drug dealers or construction workers or pool boys or serving sentences in jail.

As Diana headed into the room, a big sign on the front whiteboard read to look at the seating chart and find yourself on it. Diana scanned the chart, and found herself near the front, off to the right side, next to a boy named Vladimir. Nice name.

Meanwhile, Drake struggled against the flow of kids. It always seemed to him that every student was going the exact opposite way that he was going, and they all were trying to thwart him from getting to his class. He knew he was a little paranoid, but he was a pretty messed up kid anyway, so it didn't matter.

This particular crowd were mostly fifth and sixth graders, kids who weren't afraid of Drake yet. They didn't know any better. It was time for that to change, Drake thought as he kicked a girl, hard. She fell to the ground, clutching her shin. He blew passed her and started pulling kids hair to get them out of his way. They looked up at him painfully, as if they didn't know that anybody could enjoy doing this to people. But Drake had a smile on his face, there was no doubt about it.

When he pushed his way through the doors of the science classroom, Drake had his creepy shark smile plastered on his face. He made a few kids take a step back. Most kids had heard about Drake from others, or had observed his "evil" ways, which were really more sadistic than evil, anyway, and were scared of him. But that was unfair, is his opinion, because there were a few other sadists in the school, he was just the only one that happened to be best friends from the school Overlord.

Stupid Caine. Everything could be traced back to him, if you think about it. This brought another smaller smile to Drake's lips, not his usual shark grin, but a smaller, shyer smile that did more for his looks than baring his teeth and lighting up his eyes.

Drake checked the seating plan: He was near the front of the room, in the very middle. Next to a girl called Amelia, who was already sitting in her seat. He came and sat next to her, throwing his binder down on the table and slumping in the seat. Drake was aware, even though he couldn't see it, of her eyes on her. They probed him, a little scared, but he ignored her to the best of his ability.

A groan to his left. He turned. A girl, at the table directly to his left, had grown. Her body was pretty, he noticed that, and then he studied her face.

Diana! It's Diana, and he was just thinking she was pretty! This was insane! Drake put his head in his hands as Mrs. Rowan started to take roll.

"Hey Drake." Diana said, absentmindedly, while taking out a pencil.

"Hi," Drake replied, trying to refrain from hitting the girl next to him, which was the first thing he wanted to do. But he had learned the hard way that when you do that, you have to go see the counselor, whom he didn't really like. was an annoying woman, someone who Drake wouldn't mind hitting. Or maybe worse than hitting.

"Ladris, Diana?" Rowan called.

Diana raised her hand. "Here!" she said back, batting her eyelashes. The boy next to her sighed. He actually sighed. Diana rolled her eyes and smiled at Drake, as if to say can you believe him? But that would require them to be friends and they weren't friends, what they had was anything but friendship.

Only then did Drake actually hear Rowan calling "Merwin, Drake? Drake Merwin?" over and over again.

"Oh, yeah. Here." Drake said, roughly shooting his hand up.

Diana giggled. Why was she acting like this? Oh, yeah. The contest. To be nice to each other. She was trying to make him crack. And it was working.

It wouldn't work now that he was totally aware of what she was doing.

"Hey Diana," He prompted.

"Mmmmm?" She turned lazily in her seat.

"How was first period?"

"It was okay, how was yours?"

"Alright. But I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd get to see your beautiful face for second period." He almost gagged. But he didn't. Come on Drake, he thought, you can do this.

Diana forced a smile. "Well now you're with me, Drakey." She winked.

"What the Hell?" The girl next to Drake said loudly, overhearing their conversation.