Hey guys... sorry for the lack of updates. Here's Natalie in Middle School!

I really liked writing this age for her. Let me know if you like it, too, because it's a fun age to write. Everyone is awkward anyway, but with her... I liked writing her having the same worries as everyone else, and having to also deal with her life at home. Let me know if you like it, PLEASE. Especially this time, because this is kind of new for me.

Natalie walked home from the end of the block where the bus dropped her off, opened the door and dropped her backpack onto the floor.

"I'm home!" she called. As usual, no one answered. She didn't expect anything back, but it still felt good to yell that, as if someone actually cared.

She walked further into the house and saw her mom laying on the couch with a washcloth over her eyes.

"Hi, mom," Natalie said tentatively. "Are you... ok?"

"I have a headache," Diana said. Natalie sighed. Maybe this wasn't the best time to bring it up. But her mom removed the washcloth from her face and looked at her carefully. "Do you need something?"

"Um, kinda," Natalie said, shifting her feet. "See, it's like May 15th today and everything. And the eighth grade graduation is in two weeks, and all the girls are supposed to wear sun dresses. And I still need one."

"Don't you have that yellow one you wore to your cousin Steve's wedding?" her mom said.

"Mom... it doesn't fit anymore. That was a year ago, and I grew. Please? Danielle got a pretty light blue one and she showed it to me. And all the girls have nice dresses and clothes and they always look so pretty and I never do."

"You are pretty, Nat," Diana said distractedly.

Yeah, right,Natalie thought. Andrew, the boy she liked, never seemed to notice. He was always talking to the pretty girls whose breasts were already grown, their hair was always smooth and shiny and never frizzy, and who didn't have braces. They all looked so sure of themselves al the time, with their white teeth, laughing and saying witty things that seemed to out-of-reach for Natalie. She could never be cool like that. But she could try to be pretty. The other day, she'd stared at herself in the mirror, and realized she wasn't bad looking. As long as she put a little more effort in, maybe Andrew would notice.

"Mom," Natalie sighed. "Please?"

"OK," Diana said, smiling warmly. "How about we go to the mall on Saturday? We can go to Macy's and Nordstrom and go out to lunch after."

Natalie's face broke out into a huge smile. "Seriously?"

"Yep. It's a date."

All week, Natalie looked forward to spending Saturday with her mom. Though when her dad asked her if she was excited to go, she just shrugged and said, "Yeah. Sure, I guess. I mean, we're just buying a dress." But on the inside, she was counting down to Saturday. She even put it on her calender, circling the word "mom" twice.

For the rest of the week, Natalie washed her face extra carefully to get her skin clear and pretty like the other girls. By the time the graduation rolled around, her skin might be almost flawless. And if she smiled the right way, you could almost forget she had braces.

On Friday, she walked home from school instead of taking the bus so she could stop by the drugstore. She bought a hair straightener and this goopy cream to flatten out her frizz. She decided she'd get up extra early on Monday and make herself look like the other girls. She had her outfit all planned, too: her favorite, cute jeans, her new sandals for the summer, and a purple tshirt that made her eyes look extra brown and deep looking. They never had that much money for her to buy new clothes or anything because of all the medication and therapy her mom needed, but with some scrounging, she could look like the other cute girls.

On Saturday, she woke up and got ready. When she putting on her shorts, she even felt a few butterflies. What the heck? Natalie thought. I'm only going to hang out with my mom, for goodness' sake! I shouldn't be this excited.

She ran downstairs and quickly ate her cereal, then sat on the couch and watched some tv until it was ten o'clock, an acceptable to time to go the mall. She heard her parents talking upstairs, but no one came down. She tried to tune them out, and just concentrated on the cartoon on tv. But at eleven o'clock, she started getting antsy. Her mom had said they would go out to lunch- it was eleven, and they lived a good half hour from the mall. To go shopping, and then go to lunch, well... they'd have to leave soon, wouldn't they?

So she turned off the tv and walked upstairs.

"Mom?" she called. "Hey mom!"

But they didn't answer her- she reached the landing, and saw that the door to her parent's bedroom was ajar. She peaked inside, and saw her mom sitting on the ground in her nightgown, her hands bleeding, in tears. All around her was shattered glass. Nat looked closer, and saw a picture frame and a loose photograph scattered on the ground as well. She knew the photo well- it was of she, her mother, and her father, taken when she was about six. She had a big red velvet bow on her head in it.

"Di, here," her dad said, reaching to help her mom stand up amidst the glass.

"I...I..." her mother said, sobbing uncontrollably. "I can't be a part of this family anymore."

"Diana, I know things are hard. But I love you- Natalie loves you, we want you here-"

"No!" her mom cried, pushing him away. His shoes crushed more of the glass into the carpeting. "You don't understand what it's like, to go through life in this hellhole. I hate it here. I just hate it!"

Natalie stepped away from the door, and walked downstairs, blinking tears out of her eyes.

"I'm going for a walk!" she called to her dad, who she knew wasn't listening.

"What?" he called, distracted. Obviously.

"I said I'm going for a walk."

"Oh- ok honey," he said, and then she heard the low mumble of his voice, resuming his comforting of his wife.

Natalie opened the door, and left the house. She knew her mom didn't exactly mean what she'd said- she sometimes said things like that when she got angry with her dad. Natalie said horrible things when she got mad, too. It wasn't a good habit, but she knew lots of people did it. It wasn't that. Hearing her mom insult their family wasn't the worst part. She simply couldn't shake the image of her mother's bloody hands, sitting in the middle of a pile of broken glass. Somehow, she knew other family's arguments didn't have images like that.

An hour or so later when she returned home, she found her mom at the kitchen table, her hands bandaged. She didn't say anything about going to buy a dress, so neither did Natalie. Nat just pored herself a glass of lemonade and went up to her bedroom. She found that if she didn't quite breathe too much, she could zip up the yellow dress from her cousin's wedding. It was a little too short and it was too tight on the top pinching under the arms and creating a kind of muffin-top around the neckline and the back, but it would have to work.

On Monday, Natalie got up extra early like she told herself. She straightened her hair and made it pretty and shiny, and wore the outfit she'd picked out. She put on some lipgloss and even a touch of eyeshadow. Taking a last look at herself in the mirror, she smiled.

"You, Natalie, look pretty good," she told herself.

Before math class, she clutched her books excitedly. Andrew was in math with her, and he sat two seats in front of her. She had to pass by his seat to get to hers, and she could just imagine it- he'd double take, then pretend he didn't notice. But before long, he wouldn't be able to contain it, and he'd get up from his seat, kneel down next to her desk, and ask her to go to a movie. It would be perfect.

She assumed her best not-caring face, and walked into the room. Though it was hard, she refused to look at Andrew until the last possible second. She chanced a very blasé glance his way, but was disappointed. He wasn't even looking at her. He was talking to his friend, Eric or something. Natalie angry sat down, her stomach dropping.

Then, she realized there was, indeed, a God. Andrew dropped his pencil, which rolled right towards her desk. She leaned down at just the right moment and picked it up, giving her best charming, hiding-her-braces smile, before straightening up and giving it to him.

"Thanks," he said distractedly, without even much of a smile. Then he turned back around. Natalie's heart fell.

When she got home that day, she showered right away and let her hair go curly again. She'd never do something that stupid again. He was obviously an idiot and would never notice her.

No. He wasn't an idiot. She was just not very pretty, and there wasn't a reasonf or him to pay any attention to her. What was she thinking anyway? She must have been looking in a trick mirror or something, because when she looked again, she found herself to be quite ugly.

The next day when she walked into math, she didn't look at Andrew again. But this time, it wasn't because she wanted him to notice her ignoring him. It was because she didn't want to see him ignoring her. She opened her workbook to the page that their homework had been on, and started checking it with the answers on the board.

"Oh. You're hair's back to normal," she heard a voice behind her say.

"What?" she asked, turning around. This really skinny kid who never said a word- like, ever- was the one who'd spoken. He looked down immediately afterwards.

"Nothing. I just said... you're hair's all curly again. Like usual."

"Yeah? So what?" she asked rudely. She knew she wasn't exactly being nice, but did he really need to kick her when she was down? She knew that pretending to be pretty was a stupid idea- she just wasn't pretty. But who was this kid to have to point it out again? She'd gotten enough of an idea yesterday, thank you very much.

"Well. I don't know. It just was weird, straight and everything."

She glared at him and turned around.

Henry spent the entire week cursing himself after that. Why was he so stupid?

When she came into class with her hair straight, he'd immediately thought it looked dumb. In a cute way, but dumb. Her curly hair was so pretty. Why would she change it? Then he saw how she'd blushed when that jerk Andrew dropped his pencil. That's why. She wanted him to notice. And he didn't.

And so when it was back to normal, he'd planned what to say. 'Your hair looks so pretty like that.' He wanted her to see that he was cooler and nicer than Andrew- he noticed her every day. And he thought her hair looked much prettier when she didn't change it.

Instead, he'd just insulted her by accident. But when she looked at him like that, her gaze intense and lazar-like, it made his heart beat fast and he couldn't think. She scared him so much!

So he decided to keep his comments to himself for awhile.

Again, PLEASE REVIEW THIS CHAPTER. Let me know what you liked/didn't.

Thanks!