Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away I've got to
Get away
From the pain you drive into the heart of me
The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night

Once I ran to you
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
Oh...tainted love
Tainted love

~ Tainted Love- Soft Cell

"I hate my life." I ripped the brush through my tangled mess of a bedhead, staring at myself in the mirror. "Why Pepper?" I asked myself in a deep and masculine voice. Taking a washcloth and wetting it, I replied to no one, "Because I had unprotected sex with a guy I met only a few weeks ago." I cleaned my face with the ice cold washcloth, rubbing out the rest of my drowsiness.

"Well, gee, Pepper, why the hell did you do that?" As I reached into the medicine cabinet, I noticed the giant blue bags under my eyes. Sleeping had always come so easy to me, due to all of the energy I would waste in the daytime. Waking up from reacurring nightmares had robbed me of my precious sleep, and I was exhasuted.

"Because," I answered, grabbing my contacts. "He was seducing me. Have you ever been seduced?"

"Can't say I have."

I carefully placed one contact on the tip of my pointer finger. "Well, it was horrible. It was like he was mind controlling me. Maybe he was. Maybe he got some technology from A.I.M. and he sent telepathic messages to my subconcious telling me that..." I realized that I didn't have the energy to rant at myself, so I stopped.

My finger slowly made it's way to my eye, and I put in my left contact.

"Pepper, you are a stupid slut!" As strange as it sounds, I cringed at my own words. "What'll you do if you get pregnant? Huh! What will you tell you dad? Or Rhodey? Or TONY?"

I stared at myself in the mirror, not sure who I saw anymore. "I don't know..." I whispered.

Did I see Pepper? The happy-go-lucky teenage girl who was young at heart and had a crazy hyperactive side.

Or was I looking at Pepper? The girl who had disturbing nightmares of children burning in buildings, who would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, making her father swear not to tell anybody. The girl who willingly had sex with someone she had known for the shortest amount of time. The girl who might be pregnant. The girl who was in love with two people at once.

With a shaking hand, I reached for my other contact. I had almost gotten it in my eye when...

"PATRICIA POTTS!"

"AAAAH!" I jabbed my right eye with my finger, screaming again. The contact dropped to the floor with a quite plop! and I pressed my hand aginst my eye.

"WHAT DAD?"

"You're gonna be late for school!" He shouted through the door. "It's already seven fourty!"

I exploded out of the bathroom, clutching my eye. My dad staggered back a few feet. "Is everything okay...?"

I ran downstairs, pulled on a brown hoodie, grabbed my backpack and flew out of the house.

For the second time in three days I was running through New York like a wild animal. I had my hand pressed against the right side of my face, my backpack was jingling from all the key chains attached to it, and it wasn't until I reached The Tomorrow Academy that I realized my sweatshirt was on backwards.

The bell rang just as I ran into Spanish.

Mrs. Kollmer glanced up from her desk. "Good to see you made it in time, Patricia. Please take your seat." The fact that Mrs. Kollmer never actually spoke spanish didn't fail to irratate me, and I took my seat next to Happy. He immediately burst into his booming laughter, and he put his hand over one of his eyes and waved at me.

I couldn't help but smile, and I took my hand off.

Ohh boy.

I only had one contact in.

I forgot.

I dialed Tony's number again, but still, he was not answering his phone.

Mom had called me early this morning, saying that Tony was not going to school.

"Why?" I asked, images of Tony jumping out his bedroom window zooming threw my mind.

"I think he has the flu. He's just getting really sick, so I was wondering if maybe you could call Pepper and have her bring him something to eat later. See if he needs anything, just until I get back from work."

"No!" I said quickly. Too quickly. I could literally hear my mother's lawyer mind start to assess the situation.

"Why? What's wrong? Are the two of you upset with her or something...?"

"No..." If there was anything, anything I couldn't do, it was lie to my mother. And if there was anyone I was afraid of... it was her.

"She's sick too!" I blurted. "Yeah, umm, Tony probably got the flu from Pepper!" I laughed nervously.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. I held my breath, hoping she would buy it.

"Well... okay, I guess I can get out of work early. Just call him once and a while to see if he's okay-"

"Alright Mom! Bye!" I hung up.

Tony hadn't picked up the phone once.

I was extremely worried about him. Tony was hurt now, but later he would be pissed. I wasn't sure who he would direct his anger toward. Me, Pepper, or Blake.

I was angry with Blake. More angry than I had ever been at anyone in my entire life.

First, he had sex with my best friend. My female best friend. Pepper was like my sister, and everyone knows that there is nothing worse than knowing someone is screwing around with your sister.

Second, because he slept with Pepper, that caused Tony to lose his mind and his temper. I was positive he had broken the computer at this point (after a lot of thinking about how Tony would react to seeing what he saw, throwing a computer is the best answer I could come up with), and that was Blake's fault too.

Actually, now that I thought about it, ever since Blake had arrived at The Tomorrow Academy everything had gone downhill.

I sat up in bed at around 6:30 in the morning. With a tired yawn, I stretched my arms and rubbed my eyes. I swung my legs around and stood up.

What was I forgetting?

I felt this itch at the back of my conscience taht was telling me to lye back down- to just go back to bed. That getting ready for school wasn't even worth attempting.

I remembered when I stepped on a shard of metal from my computer.

A blast of memories from last nights events brought me crashing back down to hell- and then I felt it. This sick, disgusting feeling gurgling around in my stomache. It quickly made it's way up my throat, and I ran for the bathroom.

Roberta found me vomitting in the toilet ten minutes later. She brought me a glass of water and told me I wasn't going to school.

'Trust me,' I thought. 'I wasn't going anyways.'

Roberta stayed home an extra hour, but upon realizing that I wasn't leaving the bathroom and that she had an important buisness meeting, she told me to call her if I needed anything and left.

I didn't feel anything.

Not really. Nothing except the cold, slimy feeling in the pit of my stomache.

What was there to feel? Anger? That would come later. I had anger, just no one to direct it at yet. Betrayel. I hadn't been betrayed. Pepper wasn't my girlfriend. She was my friend- no, she was my sister.

But was she?

I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore. I didn't know if Blake had helped re-engineer technovore, I didn't know if I could run the company, I didn't know if Whitney and I- Ohh boy. Whitney.

She seemed like the least important thing in my life right now. What would I do about her?

I knew what I had to do, but I didn't like it.

When my waves of nausea finally ended, I collapsed on the bathroom floor and passed out.

Whitney Stane was just climbing into the back of her limo when her cell phone went off.

She shut the door behind her and rolled up the soundproof window between her and the limo driver.

"Who is it?" Asked the person sitting beside her. She held up a finger as she checked the collar ID.

She cleared her throat, practiced a few different ways to answer her phone, and then finally flipped it open. "Hi Tony, what's up? Why weren't you in school today?"

"I- err, I was sick..." Came the nervous reply on the other end of the line.

"Ohh," said Whitney. "How do you feel now?"

Tony hesitated, hearing the slight purr in her voice.

"Cause if you don't feel good," Whitney breathed into the reciever. "I could... come over help you get better." The person next to her gave her an incredolous glare.

Whitney heard an extremely long pause, and then Tony said, "Uhh... see, that's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about."

"I really can come over and we can talk at your place..."

"No," Tony said quickly. "I have to talk to you now."

Whitney blinked in surprise. "Ohh. Well, go ahead."

Static rippled through the line as Tony took a deep breath.

"Whitney, you and I have been going out for a few months now..."

"Yeah," Whitney said. "You know our three month aniversery is next week, right?"

An awkward laugh was heard. "Well, Whitney I think you're a great person,"

"I love you too!"

"You're very smart..."

"We looked so good together in Star Magazine!"

"And I really just want the best for you."

"I want the best for me too!"

"But I think we should break up."

"I think we should- wait, what?"

The line crackled again as Tony sighed. "Whitney, I really didn't want to do this over the phone. Trust me, I would have much rather done this in person. But, lately I have been..." Tony paused as he searched for the right words. "having feelings for a different person... It just didn't feel right going out with you anymore..."

The person next to Whitney snatched the phone away from her. "You said you were going to break up with him!" He shouted. "You said we wouldn't have to do this anymore!"

Whitney said calmly, "Gene, Tony just did it for me. Now, please, give me back my phone."

Gene reluctantly handed Whitney back her cell phone.

Whitney put her ear to the phone.

"... and I just really hope we can still be friends. Okay?"

"Yeah, it's totally cool."

Tony didn't say anything for a minute. "Really?"

"Uh-hu. I mean, no one's perfect. We all make mistakes." Whitney had started to inch her way closer and closer to Gene. "Just some are a bit more immature than others."

"I'm sorry, again Whitney. I know you would never to anything like this to me, and it just makes me feel guilty."

"I understand Tony. Now, let's leave this relationship like mature adults, and keep our pride." Whitney had reached Gene at this point, and he had rapped his arms around her.

"Yeah," Tony agreed thoughtfully. "Our pride."

"I'll see you in school then,"

"Okay, Whitney, thanks for taking this so well."

Whitney hung up the phone and threw herself at Gene Kahn.

"You were supposed to kill her!"

"Kill her! How was I supposed to do that!"

"You know you could have..."

Silence followed. The two men glared at each other with hostility. The young man straightened and he crossed his arms in front of himself.

"What you did though," Said the elder as he turned in his computer chair and faced the wall of monitors. "was genius enough that it sent Stark into a frenzy. I'm not sure how stable he is at this point."

In one of the monitors you could see a replaying image of the young genius smashing his desktop computer into bits and practically falling unconscious on his bed.

"Well," Snarled the teenager, "what will you have me do now?"

it's not that this story doesn't have flow, it just changes points of views a lot. if you can't deal with it, then go read a different story. there are at lest one hundred and forty of them now. so go, leave. but if there are more views on this chapter than reviews... someone, will die... goodbye.