A/N: All the snow has a layer of freaking ice covering it and this makes me sad. I want snowball fights. I hope you have your snowball fights, beautiful people.

FASTFORWARD.

Lunch was filled with people asking me if I was alright, talking, laughing, and all the chocolate milk I could drink. Which, in the end, ended up to be about five small cartons, including the one the school is forced to give you. When we had gotten up to the line and he began putting carton upon carton onto his tray, I whispered to him that I was just joking, that he really didn't have to. First hot chocolate, now chocolate milk? That was way too much. But he shrugged me off, telling me it was fine when it really wasn't and continued getting his own lunch.

For those who could afford it, lunch was a salad, the main course(today it was meatball sub sandwiches), a fruit of their choice, a small snack side dish, and a fancy soda if they wanted. Unfortunately, I am not one of those few, so my lunch was smaller; the main course with a fruit, and a milk of my choice. The main course was hardly any good so most days, I would nibble on an apple or some kiwi. Rarely did they have oranges. I love oranges.

Once everything I could have for lunch was on the plain black, plastic tray I always seemed to get, I had begun walking out of the cafeteria. A few people glanced and gasped, asking if I was okay, did I need to go to the nurse, but I shrugged them off. Others began telling me that I deserved to get punched in the nose and that if I would just look normal for one fucking day, that people wouldn't hate me as much. I shrugged them off too, continuing my way toward the outside sitting area. That is, until Hiccup stopped me, grabbing my arm and bringing me over to a table far in the back that only one other person sat at. And here I thought he sat with an entire study group with books stuck to their noses. I stared at this other person, this boy, and smirked as the memory passed through my head. It was the little weirdo from the stairs. His jacket and hat was off, showing the weirdest little tuff of blond hair I had ever seen. It stuck up every which way and I sat down, staring at it more than anything else.

As the hour and a half went by, I learned many things; the guy's name was Chris but nearly everyone knew him as Fishlegs. He got the name when he was just a little kid and went on a class trip to the ocean. He ended up swimming father out than everybody else and a shark ended up biting his leg, causing bullies to come up with many rumors and stories. By the time he came back to school, everyone began calling him that. As he told his story and showed me the awesome scar he had from the accident, I couldn't help but think that it was odd how we all came from different elementary schools. Hiccup came from a religious school known for it's strict dress code, it's uniformed playground, and stone walls that surround everything. He even told a little story about how scared he was to write with his left hand but found out how most of the stereotypes weren't true about religious schools. Chris had come from a different, yet just as rich-type school. Uniforms were only needed for school trips, picture days, and formal events the school would be hosting. I decided to keep quiet about which elementary school I came from. It wasn't as nice as theirs but it wasn't a dump either. It was clean, it was nice. The teachers were decent enough and we always had a winter festival which was a day for nothing but games in the halls and classrooms. Yet, there were a lot of...'misbehaved' kids who ended up in correction facilities. Some just didn't get a good enough education because of the assumption that we all could read and write and do everything that was needed to learn everything.

When Chris finally started to relax, we all began cracking jokes. We made puns about things around us and made fun of teachers that we didn't care for very much. By the time the bell rang, my stomach hurt and throat was raw from trying to talk while laughing. We put our trays away and they marched to their classes. Before I walked my own way up to the third floor boy's bathroom, I turned and stared at the back of Hiccup's head. To anyone else, it sounded and even looked pathetic as I waited for him to turn around and wave. I don't know why I wanted or expected him to do it so bad, but I did and I stared until he was out of sight. Slowly, I made my own way up to the third floor bathroom and lit a cigarette, sitting at the window sill. For most of the rest of the day, I tried to think of reasons why I would want him to wave. Maybe it was because I had seen so many other people wave to their friends as they walked away and I wanted that sort of reassurance that yeah, we might actually be friends and we didn't just talk for this one time. Because talking to someone once and getting to know them a bit is nice but then not ever talking to them again was horrible. I sighed. Somehow, someway, my mom would find out I did more than just talk to him. I spent an entire lunch with the kid. If she found out, she'd be all over me, trying to pry details from my very soul.

I didn't think I would feel this way when the last bell rang and I didn't see him in the halls. The uniforms didn't help either; making everyone look like they are all the same person. I frowned and continued walking, making my way home. I had to face facts; I'm not going to make friends with people like him. We had one lunch together and that's all we'll ever have. We walked to school once and that might be all we'll ever get. It had happened many times before; I sit and talk with a partner for a project, a person at lunch, some random player on my team for gym, and I never see any of them again. Save for in the halls and what not. I look up as I walk and see people saying thank you for opening a door, telling others to have a nice day as they get out of a cab. They are only talking once. They'll never see that person again. Sometimes I wonder if it's better they don't or if it'd really help them if they did.

Emma, my sister, was sitting on the steps of our house when I turned the corner, poking at her Spiderman backpack. I could see the flickering lights in his head from here. "Hey, Em." I said, sitting next to her. "Why are you outside?"

"Felt like coming outside..." Sibling code for 'dad is having a fit and I didn't really want to hear it'.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, rubbing her arm in hopes to comfort her. "What started it?" I whispered, leaning my head against hers.

She shrugged. "He said you were corrupting me and got upset with mom when she came home with the rest of the stuff for my Captain America costume." Emma only watched and read Marvel superheros. DC was like acid to her.

"He wanted you to be a princess." I commented. My dad was one of those people where princesses were girls and superheros were boys and there was no changing it. The girl grows up beautifully and marries the man. The boy grows up strong and marries the lady. If anything else were dropped into the mess; men together, women together, one person growing up realizing they are placed in the wrong gender, it is wrong.

Emma nodded and hugged her backpack close, as if she was trying to hold onto the last real, true piece of her. She still loved barbies and princess things, but superheros were up there pretty high. "I think I'll just be a princess..."

"You don't have to be, Em."

"I want to. It's okay..."

My dad also had the nasty habit of scaring people in order to shape them into what he wanted them to be. I was meant to be a student with nothing but 'A's, having the same hair and eyes I've had since birth. My career was supposed to be leaning towards the doctor side of the tracks and I was to have a wife once I hit twenty-five. Possibly, with kids. When I realized how crazy it all sounded and how impossible it was for me, I decided to show that I wasn't going to be shaped by the fear he gave off anymore. I begged my mother for contacts. For hair dye and for piercings. I got her blessing for tattoos and soon, I felt like everything I wore was a type of shield.

She didn't have that kind of thought process. Appearance meant nothing to her. Her shield was on the inside; covering her heart, her head, everything. Being able to get through her walls was a long, delicate process that made you feel like one wrong move and it's back to square one. Which it was. And my dad, one of the few people who tried to get close to her, never even made it past square one.

I frowned. I could tell by the way she nuzzled her head into her backpack that she didn't really want to be a princess for Halloween. That it really effected her that dad was being so hard on her about it, not accepting that she wanted to be a hero, not a damsel. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug and stroked her hair, trying to get her to relax, to not feel so horrible about the world.

"Hey..." I said after a while, trying to put on my best smile. "Want to read to me? Afterward, I can take you to the park and we can play on the swings. How does that sound?"

Emma smiled and stood up, taking my hand and walking inside with me. When we opened the door, we noticed the house was quiet but you could still cut through the tension with a hot butter knife. It was silent torture, a calm before a huge storm. We walked as fast and as quietly as we could up the stairs and into her room. I always liked her room better than mine. While I had some nice stuff; a few posters, big bed, gaming system, she had whimsical decorations. I always made sure of it.

Her walls were a bright shade of purple, action figures and barbies alike scattering the floor. She walked over to her bookshelf while I sat in her window bay, curling up against the windows. Above me were little fairies we had made with sticks and paper and above them were glow in the dark stars. I looked up at them all and smiled. This bay, this sanctuary we have created was my favorite place in the house. I felt untouchable by the outside world and when she started to read our favorite story, Alice in Wonderland, I was in a completely different place.

Our mother would read this to me at night when I was little and then to Emma when she came along. It always made me wish that someday a white rabbit would come along and I'd follow it to a wonderland where there were no watching eyes, no judgments, no fathers. Just me, Emma, and my mom, painting roses red.

She smiled as she read to me and I just stared outside, zoning out and imagining my own little happy place. Who would be there? Would they like me? I smiled and pressed my forehead against the window more, enjoying the cold it brought to my forehead. A small breeze entered through a crack and tickled the bottom of my back, spreading the nice, cold feeling throughout my body. Worries about everything melted and I felt pumped to do anything right then. I could run a marathon or climb a mountain. Slowly but surely, it became darker. And as she finished, I tried to contain myself from dragging her out the door and toward the park. I looked over at her, watching her close the book and place it gently back into place.

"You know, Jack," she started. "you're going to have to learn how to read sometime."

My smile fell and I looked back outside. The street lights were already on. "I know, Em. I'll start learning tomorrow."

"You always say that." Emma muttered almost angrily. She was right, of course. I had to learn to read sometime. My mother tried to teach me once when I was very young. Sometimes, when she read to me, she would ask me to read a little bit with her. But by then, I was already pretending to fall asleep and make it into my wonderland as quickly as possible. Even at school, I would avoid reading aloud, saying that I had a sore throat. Not like the teachers cared enough to teach me anyways.

"I like it better when you read." I wanted to learn, but I was too scared to make a mistake. You make a mistake in this house, you might as well give up on whatever you were going to try. "Come on, let's go outside. The park, remember?"

She almost glared at me when she looked over but as soon as she saw my face, my crazy grin practically glowing, she let out a small giggle. "You and your stupid park." Sibling talk for 'let's get ready, already'.

I chuckled and ruffled her hair, quietly sneaking into my room as my dad screamed in his own, the sound of laser guns firing in the background. Stripping off my uniform, I put it back on its hanger and grabbed a regular pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and my favorite sneakers. I threw on my sweatshirt and hat a minute later, tip-toeing almost to Emma's room and lightly knocked on the door. She came bouncing out in a much thicker jacket, hat, and even mittens. With a smile, she tugged my sleeve and we began making our way downstairs. We peaked into the kitchen and quietly told our mother we'd be back soon, grabbed a cell phone that was pretty old but still usable, and left.

The wind blew against my hand, sending shivers up my spine. I hissed slightly, quickly covering it up with a chuckle before Emma could really notice. She always worried about every little thing; if I was sick, if she would die from a splinter. Once, she looked up on her school laptop to see what kind of illness she had and came into my room crying, scared she had throat cancer. It was actually just a sore throat from singing in her choir class and practicing for the winter concert.

With every corner we turned and every step we took, she seemed to be so far ahead of me. She stopped a few times to wait for me to hurry up and the whole walk to the park made me feel much older than I already was. When we finally got there, we challenged each other to a swinging contest. I ended up swinging all the way around, making her gasp and jump off, and making me laugh. Emma began telling me off as I fell off the swing, holding my side as my laughter became silent but there. I could barely hear her, but I knew that it was worried words; telling me never to do that again, that I worried her horribly, that I was a terrible brother. Opening my eyes, I looked over and saw Hiccup across the street, taking the trash out in a very uniformed looking autumn coat and hat. I sat up and waved slightly, my heart jumping from it's place and into my lungs. This was sort of it. The kind of wave, if he gave any, would show if we'd ever talk again or if that was just a one time thing. Slowly, he put his hand up and waved, giving off a soft grin, showing his crooked teeth.

My smile turned into a grin and I stood up, walking over to the sidewalk that surrounded the whole park. "Hey, wanna hang out? We're about to throw pine cones at each other." Emma and I were really into snow and snowball fights. But it was October and the world was a dick so this was what we had until the real stuff came. She started the game to cheer me up.

"That...sounds really unsanitary." Hiccup's grin became his sarcastic straight face, the same he used earlier today.

"We don't have any snowballs." I shrugged.

He groaned and scratched the space behind his right ear, frowning. His gaze reverted down and I sat there, my grin fading as the silence became deafening. Finally, he smiled and looked up at us, his hand falling to his side. "How about tag?"

I smiled softly, stuffing my hands into my pockets. "Sure."

PAUSE.

Gym class was the best class when I was a little kid. It was like play time. Red rover, cat and mouse, dodge ball. But tag was my favorite. The way we did tag in school was, we all started on one side of the gym. One person was It and the object for the other people was to cross to the other side without getting tagged. If you were tagged, you froze in place and you had to tag other people when they ran back across the room. I loved it because, when I was It, I dive bombed after people. If I knew I wouldn't be able to reach them by running, I'd sprint toward them and jump, diving and sometimes knocking them off their feet. I was sent to the nurse more times than I could count.

It had been years since I had played tag. Playing with two people wasn't as fun as playing with three or four. And as we played, I didn't feel like the world was that bad of a place. I felt like a child again, dive bombing at poor, unfortunate souls.

A/N: Gym class in elementary school was the best. - ADAM

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