A/N: I do not condone self harm in any way, shape, or form. Please, if you are harming yourself, seek help. Whether professionally or from a friend.

I do not own the boys or characters from the show.

It's going to stay depressing for the next couple chapters, but should brighten significantly at chapter 5.

"Garcia?" Miss Collins called out.

"Here!" Carlos said enthusiastically.

"Knight?"

"Here."

"Langston?" There was no answer from the small class. "Alaina Langston?" Still no answer. "Alright, absent."

Alaina suddenly bursts through the door. "I'm here, Miss Collins. Sorry I'm late."

"Alright Alaina, sit down. Mitchell?"

"Present."

Alaina sat down in her seat just in front of Kendall, dreading his first words to her.

"Why so late? Have trouble covering up the ginger?" Kendall said with a smirk.

Alaina shuddered, but simply said, "Yeah, something like that."

Alaina had never considered herself a ginger before Kendall had started calling her that. Sure, she had the pale skin and the freckles, but her hair was more of an auburn than a red. She hated when he called her ginger. It made her insecure about her image - something that she had never been. She realized it was probably because she was much more visible now, as the star of this new movie, but Kendall wasn't helping matters.

"It'll never help, you know. Ginger isn't something that goes away."

Alaina looked pleadingly at Logan, but he was talking to Camille. She decided to take matters into her own hands. She turned around to face Kendall and said, "Maybe I like it. At least I'm not a dumb blonde."

That shut Kendall up. He had never heard her make a comeback of any kind. It surprised him. He even liked it a little? No, he could never like the hideous girl sitting in front of him. She was too... hideous.

"Alright class, we're going to be starting a new project. It will deal with creating your very own post-apocolyptic society, complete with it's own constitution. This project will be completed in pairs-" Everyone started turning to their friends, hopeful that they would be able to do their projects together. But Miss Collins wasn't finished. "-which I will be picking."

The entire class groaned. They hated having partners being picked for them. But for Alaina, it was music to her ears. She knew that that would be the only chance she got to work with Logan. She crossed her fingers under her desk and closed her eyes. "Please pair Logan and me. Please pair Logan and me," she whispered to herself over and over.

"Alright," Miss Collins called out over the disgruntled commotion. "No ammount of complaining will change this. And all pairings are final." The class groaned again. "Alright, Carlos, you're with James." The two boys high-fived. "Logan, you and Jennifer are a pair."

"Which one?" All three Jennifers and Logan said together.

Miss Collins sighed. "I don't care. Pick one, because the other two are together."

At once the Jennifers started fighting over who would have to be with Logan, none of them wanted to leave their group.

Miss Collins rolled her eyes and went back to reading off her list. "Alaina, you and Kendall will be working together."

Alaina froze. She didn't honestly think that she and Logan would be paired, but she didn't think her luck was so bad as to land Kendall as her partner.

He rested his hand on her shoulder. "Well, looks like it's just you and me."

She turned around, expecting to see a very smug look plastered across his face. But what she saw instead surprised her. He looked almost... Sympathetic? No, that can't be it. He's just bummed that he has to work with me. Yeah, that's it.

But he surprised her again. "Sorry you have to work with me. I'm not the best partner in the world. I know you take school really seriously, and you should be paired with Logan."

Alaina couldn't believe what she was hearing. This had to be a plot to just hurt her later. She decided to go with it for the time being, though. "Uh, well how about we start working on this tonight in my apartment? It will be nice and quiet, hopefully."

Kendall agreed, and they decided to meet at 7:00 that evening, after each of them was done in their respective studio, and had eaten dinner.

They parted ways after class, and Logan aproached Alaina. "I'm so sorry you're with Kendall. Do you want to work with Jennifer and me? Well, not with us, but at the same time and in the same place? Or do you think you'll be okay with just him? I mean-"

Alaina cut him off. "Logan, I'll be fine. He actually apologized for being paired with me for some reason. We're working together tonight, and I'll text you if anything goes wrong. Okay?"

"Okay..." Logan was hesitant to accept this answer. He knew Alaina's habits. "I'll talk to him though, okay? Just make sure he'll be nice and everything..."

She laughed. "Fine, if you think it's necessary. But you'd better go. You'll be late for Gustavo. You know how he hates when you guys are late."

"I'm going, I'm going." He gave Alaina a big hug. "Be sure to let me know if he tries to pull anything."

"I will! Now go." She smiled as he walked away, and sat down to wait for her car to take her to the studio.

"Alright. We've got quite a bit of time before this project is due, so let's just bang out the general idea of our society." Alaina said, exhausted after a day of filming.

Kendall, sitting on the couch next to her, looked just as exhausted as she felt. "You know, I don't even understand this project. What the hell is a 'post-apocalyptic society' anyway. Isn't the apocalypse supposed to be the end of humanity?"

"Well, yes. But in literature, it just means after most of the human race has been wiped out. It usually results in the formation of a distopia." Kendall looked at her with one eyebrow raised. Alaina sighed. "A distopia is a seemingly perfect society, a utopia, that has gone horribly wrong. Like in The Hunger Games. Corruption in the leaders, and poverty amongst the general public."

Kendall looked much less confused after Alaina's explanation. "Oh, so like if there was a group of people controling what everyone eats, who they marry, and whether or not they have children?"

Alaina smiled. "Sometimes. We can start with that premise though. That there's a group of leaders who view themselves as the parents of this tiny society, and make sure that each citizen gets the exact nutrients they need in every meal... Oh! What if they didn't believe in modern medicine, too?"

"Because the rest of the world had been wiped out by some disease that medicine couldn't help and these people just had a natural immunity!"

"Yes! This is good!"

Kendall looked at Alaina and smiled. "We make a good team, don't we?"

She smiled back. "Yeah, we do."

They fell into silence, each contemplating what had just happened.

Alaina was the one to break the silence. "So I have a question for you."

Kendall looked up, curious. "Shoot."

"Why are - or possibly were - you so mean to me all the time? You had to know that it really hurt me."

"I... Uh..." He was at a loss for words. A first for the smooth-talking speech-giving boy. He knew what he wanted to tell her, he just didn't know how.

And then it dawned on him. He knew why words were eluding him. Deciding to take a risk, he leaned in and kissed his project partner.

Alaina was taken completely by surprise, and pulled away almost instantly. "Whoa. What do you think you're doing? We had one nice moment. You don't just go around kissing everyone you have a nice moment with, do you?"

"No, I actually think you're really pretty." Kendall insisted.

Reeling, Alaina denied him. "No. No you don't. You're a complete asshole to me. We stopped doing the whole 'mean to the girl you like' thing in middle school!"

Kendall frowned. This was not going the way he planned. "Let me just-"

But Alaina couldn't accept it. "No. No, you need to leave now."

"But-"

"Please, Kendall. Just leave."

Kendall's old mindset was back. "Fine. Have fun doing this project by yourself. Get us an A." He sneered and left her apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Alaina pulled out her phone and texted Logan. He's lying. Whatever he tells you, he's lying.

She set her phone down and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. Pulling the blade out of her pocket, she went over the entire scene in her head. When she got to when Kendall kissed her, she put a nice deep cut in her abdomen, just above her belly button. I don't deserve to be liked like that. Then she got to the part where Kendall stormed out of her apartment, and delivered a long vertical cut to her left thigh. It's my fault he's angry now.

The pain and the blood helped her look at the situation again, a little more rationally this time. But she still cut herself upon thinking of each of those two events once more.

Deciding that enough was enough, she set the blade on her sink, and went to her room to crawl into bed.

Sleep eventually took over, but not before her mind went through the scenario once more, distorting each event into the nightmare she had that night.

Once again, I DO NOT CONDONE SELF HARM. IT IS DANGEROUS, AND POTENTIALLY LIFE-THREATENING.

If you need help, please call the suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255 (USA)

I care about all of my readers. If nothing else, message me via this, and I can talk to you.