Sorry I Couldn't be Better 14- Childhood Memories

Aww thanks for all your support. I had a better week by a bit but I have work experience next week and won't see any of my friends for like, ten days. Toshi is sad now.

But OMG guys over one hundred reviews! Thank you all so much. I posted this story on a whim just because the first chapter came easily but now it's my favourite to write.

Also I was listening to Darlin' by Avril Lavigne whilst writing this, I think it really suits this fic.

Thanks go out to

Blonde-And-Quirky: Thanks for your support, glad you liked the chapter
Mjus: Those are some really good theories, all will be revealed soon. Maybe we could both have tea with the spiders

Nerdangel1600: Thanks! I have teachers who make things due when we're not even at school…hmmm
Dwmalove: Maka's story is also one I can relate too. I often sit alone because the few friends I have in my year level have better friends to hang with
sabrina bina: Aww I'm sorry you had a bad week too. Hope your cold got better! Parties are fun (except ones at evil cousin's houses where you end up inside chatting with her parents)
Phantom wish: Maka is a bit gloomy ne? She's a bit like me in the sense that I can't see the good in things sometimes…*sighs*
bottlecaps: *hugs back* Thanks for your support. And thanks for the praise *blushes* It makes me really happy

And all you lovely amazing people who favourite and follow, you are all totally ultra-awesome!

Disclaimer: I dis claim Soul Eater…is that how it works?


The party was over before Maka knew it and she was released back to her room, an injured animal running back to the wild. The presents she'd gotten included a few books, a photo of all the patients (there were some she didn't recognize)and a bouncy ball. Right now she was throwing said ball at the wall over and over again.

Thunk…

Thunk…

Her room seemed a bit homier now with another photo on the bedside table, a few books on the floating shelf and a wild picture painted on butchers paper (courtesy of Patty) stuck on the wall with grey blue tack.

The flower was standing tall and proud on the dresser next to the two photo. It had once been the only splash of colour in the white room but the painting had stopped that.

Thunk…

Thunk…

Smack!

Maka's gaze had drifted over to the photo she'd gotten and the ball had bounced back and smacked her in the face. Rubbing the painful area, the teen let the ball roll away and scooped up the picture, climbing onto her bed and crossing her legs. Once there, her eyes scanned the group of people staring out at her.

BlackStar stood out like a…well like a boy with electric blue hair. He had an arm around Soul and was flashing a peace sign at the camera, his mouth open in a wide grin. Soul looked a bit disgruntled in the picture but his trademark smirk was plastered over his face. Kid was next to Soul smiling shyly. Patty and Liz were crouched underneath the boys, grinning cheerfully. Patty looked like she was screaming and Liz was just smiling tolerantly. Tsubaki was standing a bit off to the side, her head tilted as she considered the group. Her smile was small and almost non-existent but it was there. Ox, Harvard, Kilik, Thunder, Fire, Kim, Jaqueline, Tami and Luke were either smiling or smirking though Thunder and Fire just looked strangely serious. There was another girl in the picture who Maka didn't recognize but she didn't dwell on it. Same went with the two other boys who grinned shyly out at her.

She chose to focus on the fact that they all seemed so happy and cheerful together. Something tugged at her chest, a feeling she was used to.

Envy, jealousy.

She was struck with the need to be in the picture with them, smiling happily or smirking. She wanted to have an arm around Liz or Tsubaki, be posing dramatically or giggling as someone else made themselves look ridiculous. Her friends had obviously meant well but all Maka felt right now was the pain of loneliness.

She placed the photo back on the bedside table, face down. Then she rolled over and tried to fall asleep.


"Maka, be a dear and don't exist."

"Maka daddy doesn't love you."

"Maka you're invisible."

"Maka? Who?"

"Is Maka here today? I can't see her."

"Little Miss Maka got bitten by the spider."

"Come play with us Maka. Let's play bullies."

"Maka wake up!"

"You can sit out. Yep, outside!"

"Maka it's breakfast time."

"Maka be a dear and die."

"Maka wake up!"

"Uh," Maka's eyes snapped open, giving her a lovely view of a blurry white roof. Blinking a few times, she sat up and stared at Liz who stood there pouting.

"You're a heavy sleeper." The teen complained. "Come on or BlackStar will eat all the bacon." Her eyes flickered over the room shiftily.

"Right," Maka stared down and realised she was still in her clothes, a red t-shirt and denim shorts. She slipped her feet into lace less flats and ran her hand through tangled hair. "I'm ready,"

Liz accepted this and dragged Maka out the room. She hooked a foot round the door and pulled it shut behind her.

"We have art first up after breakfast, the schedule's a bit random these days since they're trying to add a new activity in. At least that's what we've heard."

"Right," Maka said wearily, still tired. "When's group therapy?" She was not looking forward to that session.

"It's always in the afternoon no matter what. They'll probably tell us at breakfast the exact time. It changes sometimes." Liz shrugged. She paused briefly when the wind outside rattled a window but resumed moving, eyes scanning the halls like they always did. It was so normal now that Maka barely noticed Liz was doing it.

"Maka sit next to me!" BlackStar was in Maka's face the moment she entered the dining hall. "Did you like the bouncy ball?"

"Uh yeah," Maka was not very chatty this morning. She slumped in the seat next to BlackStar and watched as the boy shoved half of his bacon onto a plate for her.

"I saved you some." He said cheerily.

"What's with BlackStar?" Maka whispered to Soul who was on the other side. The boy in question was laughing with Patty and Kid as they stacked apples into a pyramid.

"He's on some new medication." Soul smirked, biting into a pastry. "It's making him kinda funny."

"I can tell." Maka said dryly, turning back to the others to offer her apple for the sake of the tower. Patty snatched it up with glee and then stole Liz's. The paranoid teen raised an eyebrow but made no comment.

The meal wasn't nearly as chaotic as the dinner they'd had the first night Maka was there and when it was time for morning announcements everyone was relaxing and chatting quietly.

"Attention!" Sid called as he stood at the front of the room. "It's art therapy straight after so if you don't want your clothes to get dirty, I advise changing. Group therapy is at three this afternoon. After art you'll have music. Private therapy will happen throughout these lessons. Then it's lunch. After lunch half of you will go outside with floor three to play games with them. The other half will do team building exorcises with floor five. We've been trying to organize activities with other floors for two months and we've finally been allowed to. That is all. Dismissed."

"Activities with other floors?" Soul echoed. "That's new."

"I wonder who will go where." Kid remarked as he got to his feet. "I don't want to go outside."

"You and Maka won't be allowed outside." Marie came up behind him. "Safety precaution. Now hurry along or you'll miss the start of art."

The therapist walked off in another direction and the kids trailed off to do whatever they were doing in art.

"We d-did pottery last time." Tsubaki said to Maka as they walked along the corridor. "B-but a clay fight broke out s-so we'll probably do something d-different."

"All thanks to BlackStar," Liz scowled. "I was having fun with pottery."

"It was Kilik's fault too." BlackStar protested. "He threw first."

"But you weren't meant to throw it back." Soul reminded him, nudging the wild boy. "Now we'll probably do something lame like weaving or knitting."

"Nu uh," Liz shook her head. "No knitting. Needles are pointy you idiot."

"Fine, weaving them." Soul didn't seem bothered by Liz shutting him down though he did shoot a lot to Maka who scowled back at him.

"Actually it's sketching," a cheery man with square glasses was standing at the door to the art room. Pencils were stuck behind his ears and he was sporting a tie covered in cartoon paintbrushes.

"Hey Mr Wolfe," Liz grumbled and marched straight past him. "Come on guys."

Upon stepping into the art room, Maka could only stand and stair. The room was the size of an average class room but the tables were very high off the ground and the chairs were the stools that spun around. Art covered the walls from ceiling to floor, sketches, paintings, lino printing, 3D canvases and wall hangings. Pottery and sculptures were placed here and there and hanging from the roof were numerous mobiles. Sinks ran along one side of the room and large cupboards on another side.

"I've already put paper and pencils on the tables." Mr Wolfe chipped in as everyone sat down, Maka still looking around the room in silent amazement. "I want you to sketch a childhood memory. It can be bad or good, simple of difficult. Talk about it with your friends. I'll play some music. Who wants to choose a song first?"

"Me!" Kim danced over to the teacher's desk and began to flick through an IPod. Maka stared down at her paper, not sure what to draw. She let her eyes scan the room again. She saw portraits of her friends, cats, flowers, beaches, forests. The room was a jumble of anything you could call art.

"I'm sketching when Patty and I lived on the streets for a bit." Liz declared, running her pencil along the bottom of her page. "It was a pretty bad time…that's why I'm so…paranoid you know." She finished awkwardly, hunching over her work whilst Patty patted her on the back and sucked on a pencil.

"I'm gonna do the time mum, dad and I went camping." BlackStar was scribbling on his page with intense concentration. "You know, when they were alive."

Maka stared at the blue haired boy in surprise. His parents were dead? But he was so happy all the time? Guess it just goes to show how much a person can hide below the surface.

"Me and the piano," Soul said shortly, his page still empty despite his knowledge of what he was drawing.

"U-um I think I'll d-draw me and my brother p-playing." Tsubaki joined in the conversation.

Maka frowned. She knew barely anything about her new friends. It seemed almost every time they spoke she learnt something new about them.

"What about you Maka?" Liz looked out from her drawing where an alley was slowly starting to form. "What are you going to draw?" She flinched as loud music filled the room and Jacqueline squeaked but the volume was immediately lowered and both girls relaxed.

"I don't really know," Maka twirled one of her pig tails that she done during breakfast. "I have really boring memories."

"Surely there's something you can draw." Kid said though his paper was still empty and he hadn't even touched his pencil.

"Reading I guess," Maka said uncomfortably, wanting to point out Kid wasn't drawing either but finding herself to shy to actually say it. "I could draw books."

"G-good idea," Tsubaki stammered as she began to draw too, shaping a slightly squashed head. She frowned at it and erased it, obviously seeing the problem that Maka had seen.

"Okay who wants to share what they're drawing?" Mr Wolfe asked, cutting off the music during a tedious rap.

"We have to share our feelings or something." Soul muttered. "That's why all the art we do focuses on ourselves and memories and stuff."

"I'm drawing me." Ox said. "Because I'm amazing and all my memories are about me."

"That's great," Mr Wolfe didn't even seem bothered. "Are you drawing anyone else?"

"No," Ox said innocently and then frowned as Mr Wolfe wrote something on a piece of paper.

"I'm drawing Christmas time at house." Jacqueline spoke up shyly.

"That's great!" My Wolfe repeated with a little more enthusiasm. "Anything you want to tell us about Christmas time?"

"This is just like group sessions." Maka whispered to Soul who shook his head.

"Maybe but at least people are more comfortable sharing here than in the group sessions." He whispered back. "Just, don't tell anyone I said that."

"Maka how about you." Mr Wolfe said cheerily and Maka resisted the urge to pull a face.

"I'm drawing books," she muttered instead. "Because I read a lot as a child and I still do."

"Awesome," Mr Wolfe seemed to latch onto her drawing. "What books do you like? Are you going to draw the books you liked as a child?"

"Um maybe," Maka frowned.

"Mr Wolfe can we just keep drawing?" Kim interrupted. "Or we'll run out of time."

Mr Wolfe seemed kind of flustered but he agreed and called Kid up to choose another song. Chatting resumed and the sound of too sharp pencils scraping on coarse paper filled the room again.

From what Maka could tell, everyone at her table was actually pretty good at drawing in their own way. Tsubaki's work looked like something out of an anime, BlackStar's was made of many lines, Soul's looked very real and Patty and Liz looked like they were drawing comics. Kid hadn't actually drawn anything apart from some stairs so Maka couldn't really tell his style. And why stairs? Maybe he liked jumping off them as a kid. Hehe Kid as a kid.

Come to think of it, hadn't Azusa said his name was Death the Kid? What kind of weirdo named their son that? Wasn't there a law about naming your kid something weird like that?

"Maka know any jokes?" BlackStar asked her as he drew even more lines.

"What? Why?" The depressed teen frowned at the random question.

"Because we're telling jokes." BlackStar sighed. "Duh,"

"Oh I must have zoned out, sorry." Maka apologised. "And no I don't. How long until art is over and we start music or whatever it was."

"Yeah music," Liz nodded, glancing up at the clock. "Not for another twenty minutes."

"Damn," Maka groaned, stretching. "I'm bored."

"Music isn't much better," Patty sighed, adding a giraffe to her picture. "They won't let me play the drums anymore."

"You smashed right through them last time." Kid reminded her. "And threw the drum sticks at the teacher."

"Because I was playing a rock song." Patty explained seriously. "I wasn't going to hit the drums lightly." Maka gave a nervous giggle at this and went back to lightly penciling in lines to create a stack of books.

"Patty the giraffe is not symmetrical." Kid fussed and the two began to playfully argue.

"What do you think?" BlackStar burst in, holding out his drawing of a family sitting round a fire in a clearing with a tent in the background.

"Very good," Soul said absently. Everyone else added their compliments, even Maka.

"That's very good BlackStar," Mr Wolfe swooped in. "Do you want me to hang it up?"

"Where?" The question left Maka's lips before she knew it. Mr Wolfe stared at her for a moment before laughing good naturedly.

"You're right, there isn't much room though I'm sure we can squeeze it in somewhere." He said brightly and took the sketch from BlackStar. "You're the first to finish buddy. Good job." BlackStar beamed proudly before peering over at everyone else's work to see how much they'd drawn.

Liz was now adding her and Patty to the picture, Liz leaning against the alley wall and Patty crouching down. Tsubaki hadn't drawn much, she was still working on the sky. Maka was adding titles to the books and Soul was shading his piano. Kid still had the stairs but now he had a shadow standing at the top. Maka shuddered and stared intently at her rather plain drawing.

"Maka be a dear and don't exist."

Where had that come from? The voice had sounded like her mother but...she'd never said that. Was it her fears again, manifesting themselves in bizarre ways. It was obviously referring to her; she'd been called by her name.

"Maka," Mr Wolfe said cheerily. "Marie's here to take you to a private session!"

Maka looked around and saw the bright therapist leaning against the doorway. She'd changed since breakfast, now clad in a skinny orange and black dress with a cute matching scarf.

"Coming Maka?" Marie smiled warmly at her. "You can finish your drawing another time."

"Yeah," Maka was glad to abandon the picture. Art was boring her. All it did was remind her how sad and pitiful her childhood had been. Her friends waved at her as she left, trailing after Marie.

"My office is near Azusa's." Marie chatted away. "Though I like to think mine is a lot nicer."

"Right," Maka wasn't really sure how to reply but she figured she should. "What are we going to talk about?"

"Well since Mr Wolfe has had you drawing childhood memories, I thought we'd discuss some of yours."

It was official. Today was going to suck majorly.

How I decided Jaqueline would draw Christmas. Lantern goes to something warm and homey…Christmas. Yay!

Please review! Or not. I mean I don't want to force you to do something you don't want to. Gah I'm so awkward. *runs away*