At the risk of sounding like a stalker, I noticed that quite a lot of people added this story to their alerts list in the past few months but did not review. Just know that this makes me sad.

And I AM NOT GIVING UP ON THIS STORY, I SWEAR TO GOD. I have opened this document practically every day, and it has been a nightmare to get it right, and it still feels completely wrong now, but it will have to do. Basically I had to write something, anything, and that's what I did for most of this.

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You Can Do Better Than Me

Despite my promise, I don't go to homeroom the next morning. Instead I go to the nurse's office and tell her I feel sick and I'm on my period; Phoebe uses it all the time to get out of gym and it works okay for her. I will talk to him, I just want to delay it a bit…or for as long as possible.

Unfortunately as long as possible turns out to be not very long at all, because when I refuse pointblank to go home, the nurse decides I can't be that ill and therefore have no right to be hanging around in her office. Still, I manage to avoid him until lunch, when I know that inevitably he will be there. But I still sit with Tom.

"Friday, after the game, I'm having a little get together, a few close friends, you know…" Tom smiles.

"You're having a victory party," I say, smirking at his arrogance.

"Exactly," Tom says, smirking back at me. "You'll come, right?"

"Sure, if you win." I'm just grateful things are okay between us after homecoming.

"Prue, I'm playing. Of course we'll win."

"We'll see…" I trail off. Andy's come in, and any second he's going to see me.

"I have to go," I mutter, standing up. "See you later."

I head over to Andy, aware that Tom is watching me after my abrupt exit, and that he'll be pissed that I left him for someone like Andy.

I stop a few feet away from him. "Hi."

"Where were you in homeroom?" He asks, frowning. He looks irritated.

"Nurse's office."

"Oh. Right. Are you okay?"

"Fine."

"Good." He starts making his way to a table, and I assume he wants me to follow him.

"So do you want to tell me why you've been ignoring me yet?"

"Look, I didn't mean to be such…a bitch…but it's just my grandmother wanted me to invite you over so she could meet you, and I just couldn't let that happen…"

I see the expression on his face. "That came out wrong."

"I just don't get you at all," he says. "Sometimes you're funny and interesting and fun to be around, and other times, you're just like all the others." He looks over to Tom and everybody. "Which one of them is really you?"

I don't know. "The first one, of course! It's not that I don't want my grandmother to meet you, it's that I don't want you to meet her."

"What has your grandmother got to do with everything anyway?"

"My parents are dead."

"Oh god, I'm sorry," he says, looking appalled with himself. Then I feel appalled with myself for blurting it out like that.

"Well my mom is, my father's just a bastard," I correct myself. "He's as good as dead. And my grandmother's very…protective." Psychotic more like.

"Yeah, but why does that mean I can't meet her? Surely-"

"Prue!" I turn around to face Piper, who looks flushed and slightly disheveled as if she's run here.

"What?!" I snap loudly in exasperation.

"I…" Her voice falters, and she glances at Andy.

"Go away, Piper," I tell her, and Piper's face falls, but I don't care, I feel like being mean. That's how I feel like being all the time these days. I turn back to Andy, who's staring at me, possibly in disgust.

"But Prue," Piper presses.

"Shut up! I don't care, Piper!"

"Maybe you should go with your sister," Andy begins, but Piper cuts him off.

"Prue, you have to come now. Phoebe-"

I push my tray away furiously and stand up to face her, snatching up my bag.

"What?! What has she done now?"

"She's with Principal O'Connor," Piper says in an undertone.

"Why?" I demand. "No, wait, don't tell me. I don't care. This is not my responsibility! She doesn't care about me, why should I care about her?"

"Prue, Phoebe asked for you."

Great. Just great. Now I seem like the most heartless person in the world.

"Fine. This is just fine." Without even bothering to look back, I mutter, "I'll talk to you later," to Andy and head to the principal's office with Piper following behind.

"What's she done?" I mutter as we walk.

"I don't know, they wouldn't tell me, and neither would she. She just kept saying she wanted you to come, so in the end the secretary told me I could get you."

We stop outside the secretary's office.

"I'm not suppose to go in," Piper tells me.

"Oh." I don't want to go in alone. I don't want to go in at all. I can't face my sister.

"I'll see you after school," Piper says, and pushes me forward.

With a sigh, I go in.

Phoebe is crying. Properly crying. I stop several feet away from her and stare until she looks up at me.

"Prue," she says through her tears, wiping her eyes. "I'm really sorry."

"What for?" I ask, hesitant to sit next to her, preferring to keep the distance between us until I know exactly what she's done.

"Grams is going to be so angry, and she'll blame you too, but I didn't mean to. I wish I'd never done it."

"Done what?" I ask as calmly as I can.

"They suspended me."

Seeing as she's not answering me, I don't bother to ask for the third time exactly why she's here, but it can't be good if they suspended her.

"Cole had…he had some stuff that he wanted to look after for him, just for a little while. They were going to search his locker, and-"

"How stupid are you?!" I interrupt. "Stuff? For god's sake, Phoebe, he says jump and you say how high, is that it?"

"No! He didn't think they'd ever check my locker, or he wouldn't have done it."

"Oh sure he wouldn't," I mutter. "What stuff?"

"Just some weed that he needed to-"

"Why would you do it?" I ask, aghast.

"I don't know! It seemed like a good idea at the time! Not a good idea," she backtracks at my expression, "I mean…he asked, and I…I couldn't say no."

She continues to look at me, blinking back her tears fruitlessly while I stare at her rather coldly.

"Say something," she says finally.

"Like what? What is it you want me to say?"

"I don't know, I-"

"Phoebe Halliwell!" I close my eyes, not bothering to turn around. When I open them again, Grams is standing by Phoebe, glaring at her with one of the most frightening expressions I've ever seen on her face.

"How could you?" Grams hisses, and Phoebe doesn't reply, looking terrified. Then Grams rounds on me.

"And you…" I decide not to say anything. Arguing is pointless.

"Come on, Phoebe," Grams says, taking hold of her arm, pulling her up and steering her towards the door. "I'll deal with you later," she tells me over her shoulder.

"Can't wait!" I call sarcastically after her.

Sometimes I just want to die, but then I think about how selfish that is. All afternoon I was waiting for it to get around that Phoebe was some sort of drug-addict, because that's the way everyone would tell it. It's what everyone would assume. And nothing else went right. I was late for my first afternoon class because of Phoebe, and I didn't have a late pass, but thankfully Mr. Oakes let me off, I hadn't done the English homework because I hadn't even realized there was any, and at the last bell I realize I've left my uniform in my car.

Still, I'm grateful for practice after school, because it means postponing seeing Grams for another hour and a half, and right now I wouldn't be sorry if I could put that off forever.

Miserably I make my way to my car, and dump my books in the passenger seat, then retrieve the rather crumpled uniform from the back.

"Prue…" I try to stand up quickly, forgetting that I'm half in my car and hit my head.

"Fuck," I mutter furiously as I get out properly, rubbing the top of my head.

"Are you okay?" Andy asks in concern.

"Oh, I'm great," I say.

"Can we talk?"

"I've got practice…" I say, trailing off.

"Right, well I guess we can always talk another time," he says, but he doesn't move. I just stand there too, holding my skirt limply in one hand.

"I don't want to go to practice," I say eventually.

"So don't," he suggests in a nonchalant tone, but he looks slightly brighter.

"Okay," I say, swallowing hard. I've never cut practice before.

We carry on staring until he demands, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Oh, right…" I open my car and throw the skirt back in.

I feel bad for cutting practice, and even worse for not going straight home, and I know Grams will be furious as it is, but I don't care.

We sit in the shade under a nearby tree.

"What was wrong with Phoebe earlier?" He asks.

"Oh." I hesitate. I don't want to tell him, I don't want to tell anyone. Maybe that way I can stop everyone from finding out.

He catches my hesitation. "You don't have to tell me."

"She hid drugs in her locker for Cole," I mutter with a sigh.

He stares at me.

"It's not my fault," I add hurriedly, and his expression changes to one of confusion.

"I didn't say it was. Why would it be?"

"Well she's my sister…"

"Yeah, she's not you. You don't control her actions."

I think back to Phoebe at lunch, and her tears. Her frightened expression. I shouldn't be here right now. If I'm going to cut practice then it should be to go home for Phoebe.

"I shouldn't be here," I mutter, and risk glancing at him. He doesn't look angry. "I need to be with Phoebe."

He simply nods, and I can only think about how he could do so much better than me.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Right, I feel ill because my friends and I inadvertently had a swine flu party (we did not realize that a friend who had just got back from vacation had it) and now I have it, it is very late here, middle-of-the-night-getting-light-soon kind of late, and I basically feel like crap, so please brighten up my life with a review if you're feeling nice. (Even though I really hate this chapter.)