Disclaimer- *Sob* Why won't you people just leave me alone, already? *sniffle* I said I'm not her!

Chapter 11- In a mad world only the mad are sane.

"I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. - Janeane Garofalo

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Wow.

I'm glad I'm not the intended recipient for that look.

I wonder if it actually hurts to have somebody glaring laser beams into the back of your skull. I'd imagine it'd have to smart a little.

Sara had just finished her lively retelling of the Paul incident from first period, and was too busy being annoyed with the sudden change in Paul's behavior to notice the death glare Tiffany was sending her way.

Ally and Tiff's initial reaction was complete disbelief. Sara had always been known to exaggerate a little bit.

Not to mention, it's hard to have to accept that every popular guy in school is a few cards short of a full deck.

Nonetheless, it was hard to argue with the facts. The facts being that I could vouch for Sara's retelling of the story, half the school was still abuzz with the sudden news (they, too, suspect drugs) and, of course, that Paul hadn't stopped staring at Sara since she sat down.

Needless to say, Tiffany is just thrilled with this new development. *Note the sarcasm here*

"Is he still staring?" Sara asked, ducking her head down over her plate of lettuce.

I looked back to where Paul had seated himself, alone and away from his usual group, and quickly faced forward again, "Yep." I said, popping the 'p'.

"I have to go." Tiffany suddenly announced, pushing away from the table and darting out the cafeteria doors.

Ally sighed heavily, before grabbing her bag and standing up, "I'll follow her."

Sara murmured a thanks before plopping her head down onto her crossed arms. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Paul straighten in his seat and look concerned.

Well, this is just great. Ally left me to care for the depressed. I'm no good at that! It's why I keep her around in the first place. Sheesh!

"This sucks." Sara mumbled from between her arms.

"It's not that bad," I consoled…or tried to anyway.

Sara snorted and lifted her head to stare at me in disbelief, "Not that bad? Paul Lansing is staring at me like he expects me to pull a super-man at any moment and go save the world from immanent doom. Would you be calling that 'not that bad' if it were happening to you."

I raised my eyebrows at her and cocked my head towards where I now knew for certain that Jared was sitting and staring at me intently while Amy and Shandra fluttered around him, trying to tear his attention away from yours truly.

Sara sighed, "I forgot," she mumbled before dropping her head down again.

"It really isn't that bad." I assured her, "I mean sure it's annoying, and you feel like you're always being watched which you are, and they pop out of every damn hallway you try to walk down, and you have to try and find new ways to get to your classes without seeing them which makes you late all the time, and then you have to deal with the swarm of tiny popular girls who are jealous and spreading rumors that you're in love with your would-be stalker and…"

"Kim!" Sara pulled her head away from her arms again to scowl at me, "Promise me that if I ever call you when I'm suicidal you'll transfer me to Ally."

Sara pulled her bag out from under the table and emptied her mostly full tray out into the trash can before mumbling a good-bye at me and heading out the cafeteria door. Paul quickly got up to follow her.

Jeez, when did everyone get so damn sensitive?

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"Hey, Kim!"

Eugene's voice greeted me, as enthusiastically as ever, as I made my way through the door to my chemistry classroom. The poor guy had been getting a lot of my residual anger from the whole Jared situation. Their sunny attitude and hopefulness were entirely too much alike for my taste.

I have to constantly remind myself that Eugene had never asked me out, made me be a bitch to my best friend, and stand me up at a school dance in front of everyone.

I pushed Jared out of my mind and pulled out my seat next to Eugene before greeting my lab partner, "Hey, Eugene."

"Are you going to enter the science fair, this year? First prize is a thousand bucks in scholarship money." Eugene asked, conversationally.

Wow, this poor little dude doesn't know me at all. I spend my weekends avoiding homework and watching reruns of bad TV shows while hanging with my friends. The only person I know, other than Eugene apparently, who would ever willingly enter into any sort of academic competition is Ally.

"No, I think I'm going to have to pass this year." I answered, with a polite smile.

Eugene deflated a little and mumbled out a disappointed sounding, "Ok."

Obviously he was hoping the science fair would be some sort of wonderful bonding experience for us. Shit. I'm going to have to find a way to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand.

How exactly do you tell someone whom you like that you just don't like them that way without it being totally awkward and ruining the wonderful lab-partner relationship you have? Especially when that 'lab-partner' relationship involves him doing most of the work and guaranteeing you an 'A'?

Any suggestions?…..Didn't think so.

Luckily Mrs. Turner came in and started the lesson, aiding me in my blatant procrastination of awkward conversations.

The lesson passed slowly, with Eugene throwing me what I'm sure he thought were very sneaky and well concealed glances as Mrs. Turner rambled on about why you should add acid to water instead of water to acid.

Very interesting, I can assure you.

I had started daydreaming about my lunch about halfway through.

Mmmm…egg salad.

Taking this into consideration it should come as no surprise that it took me a couple of minutes to realize that the teacher was calling my name.

"Kimberly?" Mrs. Turner said when I threw an apologetic glance her way, "Can I see you after class? I want to talk to you about the essay you turned in on Friday."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Turner, " I smothered a sigh and tried not to look completely annoyed. It was the end of a day. The last thing I want to do is hang around here and be subjected to writing criticism.

In case you haven't gone right ahead and guessed this already, I don't handle criticism very well. I mean, sure, I'll stand there and smile and nod politely but the whole time I'll be coming up with ways to hide the body in my head.

Eugene wished me luck while he grabbed his mount Rushmore sized backpack and hoisted in onto his scrawny little shoulder.

Come to think of it Amy and Eugene both have roughly similar body types.

Eugene just stared at me for a minute while I randomly burst out into giggles (I was imagining him in one of Amy's famous micro-mini skirts) before smiling at me nervously and rushing out of the room.

I pushed back my chair and looked expectantly towards Mrs. Turner, who had taken a phone call somewhere in the last two minutes and was chatting contentedly into the phone.

I cleared my throat loudly and her head shot up. Mrs. Turner shot me an annoyed look (like I had asked her to stay after class before taking what was obviously a personal call) and held up one finger in the classic wait-patiently-while-I-waste-your-time signal.

So I waited patiently.

For the first fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds.

For the next five minutes I started to pace back and forth hoping to draw her attention back to me.

She didn't even glance up as she broke into a loud cackle over something the apparently fascinating person on the phone had said.

I sighed loudly and decided to rudely interrupt the way your parents always told you not to but never followed themselves, "Mrs. Turner?"

She glanced up at me and made an extremely annoyed expression before telling the person on the phone who had so raptly held her attention for the past twenty minutes that she would call them back. Mrs. Turner placed her phone back into it's original position and straightened in her computer chair to face me.

She smiled tightly at me before pulling what appeared to be my essay from a stack of papers pilled high on her cluttered desk, "Kimberly. The essay you wrote is good but there were a few key points you failed to touch on."

Well, I could hide the body in the woods.

"I'm afraid you didn't describe the experiment as thoroughly as I would have liked you to…"

Burning it is always another option.

"…and I'd like you to check your results with you classmates before you turn in a paper…"

I could dump it in the lake.

"…It could also stand to be a little bit longer. You know, when you get to college…."

There is always the ever popular dismemberment option made famous by serial killers everywhere…

"Do you understand, Kimberly?"

We have so many wolves here, I could probably make it look like she was attacked…

"Kimberly?"

I started out of my daydreaming and smiled brightly at Mrs. Turner, "I understand. I'll try to do better next time."

"I look forward to your next essay. Have a nice day." She had already picked up the phone and started dialing again.

I glanced up at the clock on my way out the door. School had let out thirty minutes ago.

Damn, damn, damn.

I know what you're thinking. Why would I be panicking over thirty measly minutes?

Well, in freshman year Tiffany's constant flirting had kept us all waiting around the car for about an hour and half every day after school waiting for her to get her hormonal butt into the car. So I, having one of my frequent brilliant moments, had instated the first car-pool rule.

If you weren't at the car by thirty minutes after the bell your ass was getting left behind.

Of course, when I came up with this rule I was the picture of punctuality and never stopped to consider that it might affect me.

So, naturally, I started to haul ass down the hallway after realizing the time. It was looking a lot like hail and I so didn't want to walk the two and a half miles home.

I turned the corner to the math wing as break-neck pace and rammed my late ass directly into a brick wall.

Well, what felt like a brick wall anyway.

"Oh, god!" Jared's frantic voice reached my ears through all the chirping the pretty blue birds were making while flying in circles around my head, "Kim? Kim! Are you alright?"

I felt Jared's over-heated hands tugging on me until I shook my head to clear away my new feathered friends just in time to be pulled to me feet by my over-anxious stalker.

Jared's hands started to skim me over, first over my ribcage then my arms and legs, obviously checking for some sort of undetected injury.

"Hey!" I snapped when his hand roamed a little to close to the twins, "Watch the hands, buddy! You didn't even buy me dinner!"

I shoved his hands roughly off of me before I straightened my clothing and made evil eyes at him just to let him know I was on to him.

Jared held his hands up in surrender (or to let me know I was safe from them at the moment, couldn't quite tell which) "Sorry!" He looked flustered and ran his hands over his newly cut hair, "Are…are you ok?"

I nodded and bent down to retrieve my stuff only to find Jared already crouched down on the school's faded linoleum floors stacking my books into a neat pile.

Wow, he moves fast. Probably an important skill for a stalker.

"So, what were you running for anyway?" He asked while he handed me my things.

"Shit!" I cursed loudly, before taking off at a full sped run towards the double doors leading to the parking lot.

The same parking lot that was now empty, except for a few teachers cars and some detention frequenters.

Jared stopped next to me and looked around at the vacant concrete before turning and frowning at me, "What's wrong?"

"My friends left," I murmured, forgetting that I was trying to avoid any and all conversation with him.

Jared nodded slowly before his face broke out into a huge grin.

Uh-oh.

"So," he said hopefully, glancing at me speculatively, "You need a ride?"

God hates me. There's simply no other explanation for it.

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A/N- Sorry about the wait. I was trapped under the tight constrictions of my evil chemistry homework. Burn in hell, unit conversions!

By now you better know the drill. You shower me with reviews praising me for my exquisite brilliance and I'll reward you with another chapter. *sigh* It's a lovely little relationship we have, isn't it?