Pop Songs for Us Rejects

Hey everyone! This is LetMeCry, working on yet another new project! Unfortunately. TheFutureFreaksMeOut has decided she's not going to write any more for Pop Songs, and this is a favorite fanfic of mine, so when she mentioned it was adoptable, I really couldn't help myself. The first three chapters are HER WRITING. NOT MINE. NEVA MINE. But she has allowed me to have them. Chapter four and onwards is my work though, so…enjoy?

I'll try to update my other fics, but they've been suffering a little thing called writers block. I'm sorry. :(

I hope the characters were okay…I don't like the way I did Sasuke, but it was worth a shot I suppose. Future can critique me. :)

Chapter Four: Detention!

Just let me ask you,
"Hey, have you heard of my religion?"
It's called the church of hot addiction,
and we believe that God is lust for everything.
Because now... the time has come for your devotion

(The Church of Hot Addiction – Cobra Starship)

Gaara's POV:

Lunch is ridiculously stereotypical. I'm standing in one of the lunch lines, rocking where I stand and quickly scanning over the cafeteria for an empty table, or one of those tables made for people who have no friends so it only seats one or two. There's an apple flying from palm to palm, forty cents in my jean pocket ready to pay for my meal, however abbreviated it may be. The tables are already stereotyped, as though someone had already prewritten where everyone is supposed to sit, even in a new school. Where the preps and the jocks and the nerds sat was already designated. God knows how. There aren't even any traditions yet; No stoner bathrooms or Freshman Fridays or Senior Skip days, none of that obligatory bullshit that is too common in the ordinary high school these days. Do people who are exactly alike just gravitate? Is that how they can know where to sit, who to sit with, and how to do it on the first day of a brand new building?

Or do I envy them? Maybe I need some friends. Kankurou told me I did, he's pretty lucky, he's managed to make friends, and he avoided coming to this school thanks to summer school. Graduated just in time to leave me alone, just like Temari. I sound so emo, I realize, nearly missing the toss of the fruit that could have sent shards of apple all over the new floor. I hate it when I sound like that, because I'm not that way. I'm not the person who looks as though he's going to fall apart every second of the day, not the one with a million scars or the one you find at three am, pills clogging their throat and a hazy expression in their eyes. That's not me. I am the one who makes good grades and spends his life as a surprisingly content outcast. I wonder, vaguely, if this is weird.

I pay for my apple and adjust the strap of my bag, which had curled awkwardly onto my shoulder, cutting with the weight of my new textbooks and hardly guarded by my bright blue tee shirt. I don't even bother looking for a seat, I know where to go after all, because every school has The Place where the ones socially discarded can linger, maybe even talk together, as they put unhealthy food into their easy to please systems. In this case, it's a patio outside the school, barely constituting the term 'on-campus' and nearly barren compared to the large cafeteria. The patio I surrounded by four-foot walls and a few trees, guaranteeing for an unsuspecting skulls to be crushed in a fall they hadn't seen coming.

My teeth puncture the dark red skin of the apple, flavor bursting from the fruit and into my mouth, a little saliva lingering in a corner of my lips before I suck it away. The air outside is hot and humid, an awkward, itchy contrast to the air-conditioned school. Glancing around, I could see this was the haven for the socially rejected, and 'The Cool Outcasts', whoever they were, sat on the wall, balancing on the foot's width of brick as they shoved French-fries into their bodies and laughed about god knows what. A twitch of a smile curves on my face as my gaze flicks to a figure sitting at a picnic table in the corner. Sasuke was hunched over his homework, the expression on his face one of discomfort and discontent more than anything else. Taking another bite of my apple, I take a table for myself, assuming no one will sit with me, which is a fairly safe assumption if last year meant anything. The ones who sat with me were the ones fighting with their current friends and desperate for a seat, or the ones who had no friends and hadn't discovered going to the library was the best idea. One of the popular rejects stares at me for a second, and I blink, flashing a cautious smile. He rolls his eyes and looks away. Lunch is too goddamn stereotypical.

My attentions return to Sasuke, and I'm sitting with a good, comfortable distance, putting on my expensive headphones and letting music drown out the buzz around me. Music was great like that. When I listen to my headphones, I can lose focus in everything around me, just close my eyes and drift away from what could be considered conceivable thought. Screw thinking, I want to relax, and this is the way I do it. I hope my lunch period is nice and long. My eyes don't close, they fix on Sasuke, rather solidly, and I decide that he's too pretty. My gaze flicks from him, to a storm drain, to the CD player in my lap insecurely. He's sitting there, holding a ballpoint pen and staring at his paper with that look on his face someone gets when in deep though. His lips would twitch or quiver ever so often, but he never blinked, and it was almost eerie. No food, no drinks, he wasn't even wearing his headphones. Nothing there to tourniquet him.

I turn up the volume of my CD player to the max level and close my eyes. The insides of my eyelids look kind of red, being outside and all, and I wonder, if only for a moment, why I didn't get blood on my eyes when I blink. Oh god. That's even stupider than the 'Why is the sky blue?' question. I rock in my seat to the music, bliss little grin on my face before stopping abruptly as how idiotic I must look hit me. People were probably watching. I wonder if Sasuke's watching, and then squirm a little at the thought. A blush bled onto my cheeks at the thought, and my eyes snap open as something hits me square in the forehead, right over the tattoo that glorified the part in my hair. A paper ball bounces into my lap. The popular outcasts are howling with laughter. Sasuke isn't looking.

Shikamaru's POV:

I run a few fingers through my ponytail as I eat into my slice of pizza, watching Kiba talk about all of the hot girls animatedly, speech almost incoherent over the roar of the cafeteria. I myself don't have anything interesting to say, as I slept through my first and second period and hadn't quite recovered from the drag, but Kiba is moving at a mile a minute. 'She's cute, she's not, she likes him, but she would never…' Something like that, too fast for me to keep up with and too trivial a subject for me to care about. Occasionally I would hear a name I recognized, making a face of approval or disapproval so it looked as though I wasn't completely out of it, but I hadn't been the busy one this morning. To my relief, it seemed two periods of class had blown off any tension between them and dissipated Kiba's nervousness. It had been awkward to see him in such a state this morning. (Cute had been the first thought, but one syllable was easy to ignore and forget.)

Lunch ended as quickly as it had begun, and soon enough a cafeteria full of students were tossing away crinkling wrappers, half-eaten lunches, and the little cartons of milk with the missing person's ad on the cover. Smart students had filed out early, but we didn't, waiting until the last thirty seconds before the bell to pull out of schedules. "What's your next class?" he asked, scratching his face at the base of a tribal mark and a secure grin on his face. "Algebra." I answer, boredly, promise of yet another textbook making my already stuffed backpack moan.

Kiba and I are close, and friends, and nothing else…really. But last year Kiba asked me to fail the Math standardized with him, meaning we would flunk Freshman Algebra. I would have passed the class if I took the test, and Kiba would have failed it, so I shrugged and slept through it. This year Kiba wanted me to help him more, which I'd do if he bothered to ask for it, but he never really does. He's not the type to ask for help. My face flushed immediately. I ought to stop doing him favors. "Remember? We failed."

"Score!" Kiba exclaimed, kind of loudly, though his tendencies to be louder than most didn't bother me. "I have it too next period, at least we have one class together!"

"Good, let's go, we're gonna be late." I squashed the pizza into my mouth, washing it down with the milk that had the strange, not-right taste all school milk had, and tossed my trash into the garbage can on my way out. We filed through students just as lost as ourselves as we pulled out our maps. After a few seconds, I traced the classroom and the fastest way there, and just as I opened my mouth the low, chiming bell erupted through the school. Kiba glanced at me. I glanced at him. "Run or walk?" he asked, checking his watch and pocketing his own map. "First day. Run."

And that was that. We must have looked so idiotic, two boys suddenly taking off down the halls, backpacks swinging wildly as we rounded corners and evaded trashcans, myself leading though Kiba was faster, the most exasperated expressions on our faces. Our feet pounded against the freshly waxed floor, filling the hallways with our presence as loudly as our weight could support. Heads poked out of doors, and I think there was a teacher behind me yelling 'DEMERIT! DEMERIT!' though we just kept running. Kiba was smiling, and I think I was smiling too, armed with too-heavy textbooks and deranged expressions on our stupid teenage faces. It was like a high. And if I was high, the look on our math-teacher's face when we walked in immediately sobered me.

"Detention!"

Sasuke's POV:

I watch a couple of kids stumble in with flushed faces, panting and sweating a story I would never be told that might've been able to keep me interested for a few minutes. My teacher is yelling at them, screaming her simplified-obscenities and watching them recoil with satisfaction. Detention's apparently the solution for everything. Late to class? Detention. Wandering the halls? Detention. Slitting your wrists in the school bathrooms with a razorblade you've had in your wallet to channel those moments when nothing matters anymore and there's only one pretty little answer for all of your problems. (DETENTION!)

My hands are shaking. I should have eaten something at lunch, I can feel my stomach screaming in protest as I deprive it further, and frankly, I don't give a shit. Maybe I can be a little token anorexic too. Then there'll be one more thing wrong with me, one more thing mommy-dearest has to cry about because her baby's too fucking sick for her to handle. Her baby's already taking oh so many of those pills, those little pills that are supposed to make him happy again. LOOK AT ME EVERYONE! I'm on Prozac and now I'm happy again! My world has now flaws and everything is wonderful and there will never, ever be any fucking problems.

Daddy-dearest would be so depressed to find out I have to take Algebra again. I was always so good with numbers, oh so good with my xs and ys, but oh no, not anymore, not when I suddenly had my little breaking point and everything stationary became as fickle as water. Not like blood. Blood is thick, dark, beautiful, little slits across my skin and then it's everywhere, starting in fat little bubbles that will eventually pop and the rush begins. Blood on the floor, in the carpet, in my eyes, everywhere, and IT'S EVERYWHERE! Hear that daddy-dearest? I'm screaming out to you. Can you hear me? You used to love hearing me scream. You used to glut on it as you ran your hands all over me and took my childhood away.

There's a sudden snap as the teacher whips her ruler across the blackboard, and my gaze is hazy as I snap out of my daze. I need to cut. I need to fucking get out of here, knock back pills, cut away everything that's wrong until I can go to sleep and then have to do it all over again. She's saying something, I can see her lips moving, and faintly I can hear the buzz of her words, but I'm too tired to think. I rest my head on the desk and close my eyes, scratching at my arms from under the plate of wood that supported me and my textbook. My eyes feel heavy, my headache hasn't lessened, and I feel ironically sane for a second or two. I dig my nails into a scabbed-over cut from under my sleeve, peeling it away oh so slowly and wincing as a sharp sting shot through my arm. I almost laugh at how good it felt. I feel a little blood on my fingernail, and I suck on it, the familiar metallic taste relaxing, before continuing to inflame the open wound.

If I was crying, I couldn't feel it.

I want to go home.