(Chapter Two)

The bus stop was crowded, and Aurora approached it as if she were walking Death Row, her gaze down as she walked past a corner that women who barely wore anything were standing on. She stared holes into her shoes, feeling uncomfortable, awkward and afraid.

The muscular dark skinned guy was the first one to approach her. "What's yo name, girl?"

She tried to avoid eye contact, and pretend she was deaf, but it didn't work. He grabbed her wrists and said "I ask you a question, girl. What's yo name?"

"It's A-aurora."

"You retarded, Aurora?"

"No." Aurora said stiffly as she glared up at him, the anger rising from within relatively quickly, and pairing with the stress she already faced. "Are you an asshole?"

The guy raised a brow at her and then said "Name's Lavont. You fine, girl."

"Go to hell, Lavont." Aurora said calmly, and quietly, as she glared at him again. She hated guys like him, they treated her like she were something to own, not an actual human with actual feelings, an actual brain of her own.

"What you say, girl?"

" I said.. Go to hell, Lavont."

"Girl, I'll cut you." Lavont said angrily as he reached into his pocket. Aurora began to back away, and as her lousy luck would have it, she backed into someone else. And the guy spoke from behind her.

"Don't ya have crack to sling elsewhere you prick bastard?" Jonathan spoke calmly, stiffly as he stood behind the petite brunette from the next apartment. Lavont glared at him, challenging him openly. "No trouble, Good. Don't want no trouble with a crazy ass white boy."

"Good. Take your ass down the sidewalk then before a repeat of last time happens, you fucking shit." Jonathan said as he turned the girl around.

"You ain't real bright." he said calmly, his voice coming out calm and sort of cold, distant. "Don't expect me to keep showin up and savin your ass. I'm not some god damn knight in armor or something. We clear?" he asked as he looked down into her bright green eyes intently, studying her.

"Crystal clear. Since you obviously don't want anything more to do with me, why don't you just do us both a favor and fuck off, then?" Aurora asked, her voice equally frosty, but her eyes taking on this slightly hurt and bitter tint to them. She grabbed her bookbag and began to walk away, and he growled in frustration at himself.

Didn't he learn a god damn thing with the last bitch he dated? The one who pretended to love him, then walked away when he shot her precious dog? That she spent over 90 percent of her time bitching about barking all night?

This girl wasn't going to be any better for him, he was almost certain of it. And he didn't have the fucking time to waste, playing savior.

He still found himself falling in behind her, tapping her shoulder impatiently.

Aurora turned around and scowled, biting her full and pink glossed lower lip as she said quietly, coldly, "You? Again? I thought we established that you wanted nothing to do with me, so you could fuck off already. Look, thank you for intervening back there. But it's obvious you hate me, why I don't know.. So I'm gonna walk to school."

"yeah.. that'd be fine with me.. If you were going the right god damn way. The school is that way. Not this way." Jonathan replied with a smirk as he looked at her, and thought a moment. "It ain't that I don't like you.. It's just that I don't like people. At all."

" I clearly saw that, moments ago, at the bus stop. Now please, just let me go. I'd really rather walk to school."

"But you're new.. How you gonna know if you even came to the right building?"

"I'm not helpless, I think I can fucking manage. Feel free to walk away now."

"You didn't tell me ya name. Mine's Jon."

"My name's Aurora." Aurora said stiffly, as she popped a bubble with her gum, her head cocked to the side slightly, as she tried to figure out this guy.

He said and acted like he hated her, yet he was trying to chat him up. It was the damndest thing she'd ever seen, really. His eyes seemed.. Stormy, for lack of a better description, and she kept getting sucked into them.

Jonathan snapped his fingers at her and then asked, "You high?"

"No."

"Stop starin at me then, damn it."

"Could you please just go away and leave me alone?" Aurora asked quietly, as she bit her nail. She didn't want to make her first enemy, but apparently, this guy hated her for no apparent reason.

"Fine. Figured you were a bitch like all the other bitches here." Jonathan said stiffly as he smirked at her, turned on his heel and slunk off down the sidewalk. He didn't have time for her shit, he had to make sure his baby cousin was okay, that his damn pill popping whore of a mother actually remembered to get her up, get her ready for school.

He picked up his niece and held her, standing quietly, waiting on the bus to come.

"Why you look so mad, Jon?" his baby cousin asked from his arms.

"This girl she sorta made me mad just now."

"Oh . I sorry." his baby cousin Jane said quietly as she looked up at him then asked, "Can ya take me to the park tonight, Jon? I wanna go on the swingsets again."

"Sure. First I gotta go to the gym. Hey, you can come with me. Watch me and color or something."

His cousin nodded excitedly, and then said "I loves watchin you fight. You look happy when you fight."

"It's cause I am, kiddo."

The bus came and they got on. And during the ride, he found himself wondering if the new girl from next door had even managed to find her own way to school.

He burst into laughter at the mental scenarios he had going on of her getting lost in downtown and winding up on the blackmarket as a sex slave or something. Once his little cousin was in her class, and he'd explained why she missed school for two days earlier in the week, he jogged over to the high school campus.

And groaned when he smacked right into her. A scowl played across his face.

Aurora didn't look all that happy, either.

"You? Again?"

"Funny. I was thinkin the same about you." Jon muttered as he looked at her and raked his hand slowly through his hair, leaned against a locker in the hallway.

"Look, about before. I'm sorry if I sounded.. Bitchy, but you were being an asshole." Aurora muttered, trying to pull her eyes from his eyes, but failing miserably by now.

"Me? An asshole? I totally saved your ass back there, sweetheart. Some fuckin gratitude would be nice." Jon said as he found himself staring at her. He coughed and then said stiffly, "Just going to go now. Probably the best thing to do." before walking off, down the hallway.

What the fuck did she honestly think? That she could pop off to some ape like Lavont and not pay the price? Jon just hoped to hell she didn't think he was going to save her ass every single time it wound up in a sling.

But he couldn't get past the continuing look of hurt in her eyes when he spoke to her like he did back there. And this made him so damn angry at himself he couldn't think straight.

He punched his locker and it sprung open, leaving a fist sized indention in the door. He scowled as he shoved his books into his worn out book bag and shuffled off to his first class of the day.

And when he sat down in the lab, and the door opened, to reveal her standing there, he growled to himself. This was just fucking great. Since his incidents with the dog, with several other students, he'd become sort of an outcast, a bully and a fucking legend.

And he as a result, had no lab partner.

So, he knew that most likely, he'd wind up being her lab partner. And this unsettled him. He was on edge enough already, from earlier. Now, it appeared they'd have to work together as well as live side by side in the apartment building, and have run ins at the bus stop.

The teacher pointed Aurora to the empty chair next to him.. She bit her lip, almost started to protest, but made her way over, slowly. Without looking up she said "And we meet again. Look, I know you're not happy about this."

"I'll fuckin deal."

"So will I."

"Good." Aurora said as she looked up at him a moment. She almost asked him why he hated her so much, but she decided against. Instead, she set to work labeling a diagram of a nucleus or whatever it was, and left him be.

Jon watched her writing, and kept quiet. He almost asked her why she hated him, why she was such a damn bitch when he'd probably saved her fucking life back at the bus stop, but instead, he didn't.

The less they talked, the better off they'd both be.

But he couldn't stop just watching her. And this drove him crazy. The second the bell rang, he grabbed his books and bolted for the door.

Aurora watched him, biting her lip. So far, her first day of school here in Ohio was going nothing like she planned. And she was angry with herself because she wondered why it mattered so damn much that he was getting to her as he was.

Why she couldn't just write him off as an asshole, which he apparently was.