beama- Thanks for your relentless support :)

Hana's father hadn't been particularly happy to open his front door to find her in the clutches of a policeman. It would be an understatement to say that he hadn't been very happy to find out what she had been up to either. Currently, she was under his (and the police's) strict probation exercise. He would call home every day after school finished to check that she was home instead of out with "punks".

So here she was now. Life was seemingly back to normal, back to before she'd become friends with Emily. Back to when she was a geek.

Except now it was worse. In the past she used to be invisible; no one used to notice her. Now people pointedly ignored her. There was a difference.

When she walked around in school, she would feel heads turn to stare at her, their gazes stabbing at her skin, causing it to flush. She would hear whispers low and hurried, like dry leaves swirling after her.

"Oh, look. There's Hana, that girl who used to be a geek, then joined a gang".

"A gang? Really?"

"Yeah, with Emily. You know, that creepy girl who smokes all the time".

"Ohhh...yeah, I remember her. Hey, isn't she in hospital now or something?"

When she turned around to stare these people down, to dare them to say more, they did the exact opposite. They shut up and turned away. It was all really frustrating, actually. Now she was worse than a social pariah. She was a social disease.

So now she just sighed and ignored them all, her head down. Perhaps to stay exactly the same for as long as possible, to stand perfectly still, wasn't such a bad thing after all. Her hair was back in its original two thick braids; one each to hide the vision from both sides of her face.

Ephram was scouring through his locker for his History textbook, sure he'd left it in there somewhere.

When he finally found it shoved somewhere near the back of the locker among loose sheets of paper and comics, he pulled it out quickly. He was going to be late if he didn't hurry up. But just then, one of the loose sheets of paper fell out from his locker and fluttered to the floor. It was lined; one of the pages torn out from his notebook.

He sighed in exasperation and stooped over to pick it up. He turned it over, and was surprised to see that it was an old drawing of his.

He'd done drawings of some people in class when he'd been bored. Anime-style drawings. This one was of Hana. She'd always intrigued him somewhat with her quiet ways. No one had known much about her, even though she'd been in the school for as long as everyone else. She'd always seemed nice enough, but cold, withdrawn, as if an invisible wall of ice blocked her off from the rest of the world.

In his drawing she was busy writing down notes at her desk. Her fingers gripped around her pen tightly, back hunched over almost as if she were going to immerse herself into her notes and literally drown. There was a slight frown to her eyes; focused, almost sub-human in their determination.

He wished he could figure her out.

Just when Hana thought things couldn't get any worse, she bumped into Ephram Brown in the hallway; the last person she ever wanted to see. She'd inanely convinced herself that she would be able to avoid him for the rest of high school. Of course, that wasn't possible.

Luckily for her though, he was bent over a piece of paper he'd picked up from the floor. Here was her chance to postpone an awkward discourse.

He didn't even glance up as she walked quickly past him and to her next class.

The piano wasn't helping today. Ephram had too many things on his mind. First of all, Colin's return, no, intrusion back into Amy's life. Which for reasons he didn't think he'd have to explain, was affecting his life too.

Every time Colin entered the same room Amy was in, she positively glowed, like a hundred-watt bulb. Her eyes would shine for him, stalking his every move, until he would unavoidably walk over to join her and her brother Bright.

So it was no surprise that Ephram didn't fit in anywhere into any of their plans at the moment. But what could he do? It was like time before Colin had returned had been just a phase, one that Amy and everyone else had moved on from.

He couldn't help feeling used. At first he had been her emotional trashbin; someone she'd leaned on throughout her confusion. He'd listened to her, comforted her, even after Bright had approached him to tell him that she was only using him to get to his father. Even though he liked her more than as just a friend.

So what was he now?

Hana wondered how Emily was doing that very moment. She couldn't help feeling (guiltily so) that Emily was lucky that she wasn't the one who had to face the school while Hana was the one in hospital.

Yeah, she wouldn't mind being the one in hospital right now. Anything but this. She had almost cut her last class that day. But in the end she'd sat through Mr Peters, braving through his many glances her way. Were they filled with disgust and loathing at her? She hadn't been brave enough to look. She had practically run out the moment the bell rang, even when she thought she'd heard him call out her name.

And guess where she was now for lack of better resources?

Yeap, you guessed it. The toilet cubicle.