A/N: I'm not sure how to do this, so I guess I'll start by introducing myself. Hey, I'm flawlesspeasant & I obviously write fanfiction. This is my first time writing Grey's Anatomy fanfiction, so I'm a little nervous and I'm still learning the ropes. I've written many stories before this one, mostly Camp Rock fanfiction. I'm nervous to expand my writing to such a larger fandom than I'm used to, and I'm still learning what Grey's fans like in stories and what they dislike in stories. I've been a fan of Grey's Anatomy since it first started. I was literally in third grade watching Grey's Anatomy, haha.

So I really hope you guys like this... and appreciate the first chapter. I'm fairly popular among my other readers, but I'm really trying to appeal to Grey's fans now. I'm a really nice person, so I do take suggestions. If you have any suggestions of what I should put in the story or take out, please let me know. You can leave suggestions in my PMs, in the reviews, and my name is lovaddington on twitter. Like I said, I'm new to this whole Grey's Anatomy fanfiction fandom, and I dont know exactly how this works.

So, um... about the story. I hope you guys like first person points of view! :) I won't let you in on who the narrator is just yet, but you'll find out SOON. (The narrator is my favorite Grey's character, aside from Meredith.)

Nice to meet you, I'm flawlesspeasant.

Disclaimer: I do not own Grey's Anatomy nor the characters in it. I wish I did, but I promise I don't.

I collapse down on the bench and put my face in my hands, breathing heavily. I used to play soccer back in grade school, but I really don't remember it being this strenuous. If we play again on Monday, I vow to myself that I will beg and beg and beg until somebody finally lets up, to be the goalie. At least goalies can use their hands and they don't have to run that much. Either I'm really out of shape or it was really exhausting today, because my legs are burning. Now that I think about it, I'm probably out of shape. The only sport I ever attempted to play was soccer and I gave it up after my first game. I was also enrolled in gymnastics for a year, because I had so much energy nobody knew what to do with me. I gave that up too. Sports aren't really my thing, which is why I'm totally against gym class.

Around me, the big locker room starts filling up with the other girls in my class. Immediately, they start stripping themselves free of their sweaty gym clothes, and one of them turns on the old radio that hangs on the wall. They chatter and gossip about how we always lose and the games are never fair. I don't understand why they care so much about who wins or loses. Our gym class is co-ed and our teacher always splits us into boys vs. girls. We're girls. We'll never win. Steph, one of my good friends, tampers with the volume on the radio and turns it up so loud that everyone in the locker room can hear it.

Seems like everybody's got a price; I wonder how they sleep at night, when the sale comes first and the truth comes second. Just stop for a minute and smile. Why is everybody so serious, acting so damn mysterious? Got shades on your eyes and your heels so high that you can't even have a good time. Everybody look to the left…everybody look to the right. Can you feel that, yeah? We're paying with love tonight.

"It's not about the money, money, money. We don't need your money, money, money. We just wanna make the world dance, forget about the price tag." I'm singing so low and monotonously that I don't even realize I'm actually singing. I honestly surprise myself when I know the lyrics to the crummy stuff that plays in here. I usually prefer songs darker and more "depressing" than the stuff that comes on the mainstream radio, but it doesn't mean I'm a dark and depressing person. I find that I've heard certain songs enough to catch onto the tune and memorize the lyrics; no matter if I like them or not. I'm not sure if there's any such thing as an "audiographic memory", but I clearly have it. It's kind of the opposite of a photographic memory, I think. I can't see things and memorize them instantly, but I can remember something I've heard with only seconds of hearing it. It's my "super-power", if that's what you want to call it.

Sighing, I stand up and pull my sweaty t-shirt over my head. I toss the sweaty shirt down on the bench next to my shoes and grab my deodorant. I'm not usually a heavy sweater, but today was just so strenuous that I couldn't help but sweat. Sweating makes me feel so disgusting and I'm usually too lazy to take a shower, so nine out of ten times I just deal with feeling gross. I pick up my purple Polo shirt and pull it over my head after I slip my arms through the armholes. I fold down the collar on it and make sure the breast-pocket is perfectly aligned.

I wish it wasn't against the dress code to walk around in shorts like the ones I'm wearing, because I really can't fathom putting on jeans right now. My legs are sticky and sweaty and I just don't feel like squeezing and wiggling my way into a pair of jeans. I sit back down on the bench and start dragging a brush through my long, dark brown hair. If I don't brush my hair after I've sweat the way I just did, it would get all wavy and gross looking and the entire two hours I spent straightening it last night would have gone to waste.

Next to me, Heather sits down and starts brushing her hair too. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I really think she's mocking me. Heather has short hair that just barely touches the nape of her neck. She dramatically goes through the motions of brushing her hair, dragging her arm down with the brush further, even after her hair stops. I'm not 100% sure that she's mimicking me, so I just brush it off. Whatever if she is.

"'Scuse my reach." Steph apologizes as she reaches across my nude body to switch the station on the rundown boom box. I don't necessarily mind Steph reaching across me to change the station as much as I mind the fact that she's nearly naked, donning only a black bra and yellow underwear. Being my closest friend, Steph knows that I'm already having trouble with the people in our grade thinking that I'm gay. I'm not gay, by the way. I'm not interested in boys nearly as much as I'm interested in getting good grades, but I'm not gay. I can just hear the rumors starting already, just by her reaching across my body like that. I have nothing—nothing at all against gay people. I do have two gay friends; one male and one female. I'm not gay though, and I don't exactly appreciate the rumors going around that I am what I'm not.

The new radio station kicks fast into gear and Heather stands up to turn it up. I guess she likes this song. I particularly don't like it, but again, I'm not partial to just one type of music.

We run things, things don't run we. We don't take nothin' from nobody and we can't stop… and we won't stop. Can't you see it's we who own the night? Can't you see it's we who're bout that life yeah.

Putting the thought of what Steph just did aside, I slide my size six blue jeans onto my lap and unsnap the button. "It's our party we can say what we want to! It's our party we can do what we want to!" Steph playfully sings the next line of the current song in my ear with a squeaky, high pitched voice and leans across my back as I attempt to shove my feet into the legs of my jeans. I can't help but laugh. Steph is undoubtedly my best friend. I tell her just about everything. I'm not her best friend, though. I'm nobody's best friend, except maybe Shane's, which is oddly fine with me. I don't even get considered for things like that. I don't really like to think of myself as "clique-y" or whatever, but I guess I am. I'll never fit in with Steph's clique, so I guess I'm just better off hanging out with her whenever it's convenient for her. I'm not at all upset that I'm not in the popular clique, either. Heather and Leah both dislike me, for reasons I don't know. Steph says that they just think I'm "weird", but if you've ever met Heather, you'd know that she is about ten pounds past weird on the weirdness scale

"I'd like to get dressed to go eat my lunch, if you don't mind." Mirroring Steph's playfulness, I shrug her off my back and stand up to pull my pants up. I button them around my waist and zip the zipper. Changing for gym class has to be the worst policy ever made. Seriously, what ever happened to the elementary days when we would take gym class in whatever our mothers (or grandmothers, in my case) dressed us in? At least back in elementary school, girls weren't so self-conscious about what they look like half-naked in front of their peers. Really, I'd change in one of the two stalls we have in our locker rooms, but the two heavier set girls in our class change in there.

I'm not heavy-set or anything like that, I'm just a bit… curvy, to say the least. My thighs touch and I don't have a thigh gap, my waist is a size six, my bust is somewhere between a high c-cup and a low d-cup and I stand at five foot, five inches tall. Leah is slightly taller than me, by like a couple inches or something, but she's also way thinner. She's so thin that she's the one that's thrown on top of the pyramids at pep-rallies. Heather is the shortest at like 5'3 or something like that and Steph is just perfectly average. They all have something that makes them special, then there's me; plain and uninteresting.

Steph has her dark brown skin, perfect physique, wildly curly hair and sophisticated black glasses to make her stand out. Leah's got dirty blonde hair and piercing dark grey eyes to set her off. She's blonde, that's all I've got to say. And Heather is so tiny and perfect, with her shorter, pixie-cut, light brown hair. Me? I've got brunette hair, slightly tanned, white skin and a rounded, pudgy figure. My eyes are pretty, I guess. They're the strangest mixture of green and brown; hazel almost. I can't be a cheerleader or anything like that, because I have the athletic ability of a turtle. I'm always picked last on the teams in gym class and that's fine with me. I know I'm un-athletic and what I lack in athletic ability I make up for with my scholarly talent. At least that's what my grandma always tells me.

"Steph, a bunch of us are coming to my house after the game tonight." The sound of Leah's voice breaks my quaint little thoughts as if she's directing her conversation to me. I don't try to, but I can't help but eavesdrop. It's not like Leah's voice is quiet or anything. She's naturally loud so I couldn't ignore her if I tried. "We're just gonna watch movies… maybe play a couple rounds of 21, with Heather's cards… you in or you out?" Leah's dark grey eyes glance over at me then fixate themselves back on Steph.

"Yeah, I'm totally in. What time?" Steph yanks her curly black hair out of the sloppy ponytail she had it in and starts dragging a comb through it. "Should I count on leaving the game early?"

"You can just come the game with me and Heather. My brother's driving us and we'll just make room for you. It's no biggie." My eyes instinctively squint at Leah's words and I can literally feel my cheeks flushing bright red. Sure, Steph can just go to the game with you and Heather, Leah. It's not like we made plans to go to the game together like we do EVERY away game. I can't help my sarcastic thoughts when it comes to Leah.

"I'm already going to the game with—"

"No, don't worry about it." I interrupt her before she even gets my name out of her mouth. When I think about it, Steph and I are with each other every single Friday night. She never gets the chance to hang out with Leah, Heather and the rest of her cheerleader friends on Fridays because she's always with me, especially when the games are away games. The cheerleaders don't cheer at away games, so Steph and I usually go to away games with her sister. "I'm just going to stay in and clean my room tonight anyway, Steph. Go on…" I wave her off and begin stuffing my dirty gym clothes in my drawstring bag so I can take them home and wash them. I use my fingers to comb through my hair to make it seem like it's really not a problem for Steph to go with Heather and Leah.

"Are you sure? We've gone to every home game together since eighth grade year. It's not a big deal for me to just go with them afterwards." Steph makes it almost impossible to get mad at her about ditching me. I don't ever take real offense to it, because it's not like she does it maliciously. She always asks me if I'm truly okay with it, I tell her yes and she ditches me. It doesn't really bother me too much. It used to, but now I don't really mind. As I got older, I realized that I probably wouldn't fit in much with the cheerleaders anyway.

"Yeah, I'm sure. My gram's been riding my back about cleaning my room and washing my clothes since last weekend, so I'll probably just sit in and do that. You go have fun. We're together every single Friday." I lazily slide my feet into my pair of white flip-flops and adjust my hair with my fingers again. I look up and meet Stephanie's eyes. She's looking at me like she's waiting for me to crack and tell her that I'm not okay with it. "Seriously, Steph...It's fine. Seriously."

"…Alright." She takes my word for it, leaving me with nothing more than a pet from the crown of my head to the middle of my back where my hair stops. When Steph gets bored, she almost always plays with my hair. She's always weaving some kind of braid into it. She claims that her hair isn't long enough to do much with it, and mine is, which is why she's always trying to do something "pretty" with mine.

Stephanie swears that I'm the prettiest girl in our entire grade, and I swear that she's out of her mind. She's just fascinated with the natural length and thickness of my hair, my hazel eyes and the beauty mark next to my mouth. Those are the only things that she finds "pretty" about me. According to her, the way I feel about myself is how others feel about me, but I think she's wrong about that. She thinks that I think I'm ugly and that's not true. Other people think don't really look my way, but I don't think I'm ugly. I could be worse looking, and actually, a lot of people (mostly older people) have told me that I've got a pretty face. So Steph's wrong about that.

I sling my drawstring bag over my shoulders and onto my back and start walking towards the door to go to lunch. I find myself blindly mouthing the lyrics to/singing along to the song that's playing on the radio again. "We're going down, down in an earlier round. Sugar we're going down swingin'. I'll be your number one with a bullet. A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it." I push open the heavy wooden door to the steps and sigh as I walk up to the lunch room.

"Oooh… they have tuna noodle casserole today." Shane snatches the tray I just picked up from the pile out of my hands and cuts me in line. "Wonder if they'll let me buy extra." He picks up a fruit cup and a pint of chocolate milk and slides the stolen tray down the line so the cafeteria workers can serve him. I just roll my eyes at him and give him a playful punch in the shoulder as I pick up another tray from the pile and load it with carrot sticks and a bottle of water.

I turn my nose up at him, just on instinct. "Yuck. I can't believe I actually have to watch you eat that crap." I load my own tray with just a single banana and a pint-sized bottle of water. I usually just give my water to Shane for him to drink, but I'm actually thirsty this time so I think I'll just keep it. I usually give it to him because he prefers water over milk and the water is way overpriced at the vending machines. Having a milk allergy permits me to get my water for free. I remember when my gram used to curse the cafeteria manager out because she kept charging me for water. Turns out the manager thought that I was lactose intolerant, which isn't the case. I have a literal milk allergy. I don't swell up or anything; my tongue just gets all bumpy and blistery and it sucks. I used to break out in a serious rash when I was a baby over it, so the tongue thing is a nice alternative. I do have an occasional ice cream cone, though.

"Cafeteria food actually isn't that bad. You wouldn't know because you never even give it a chance, Princess. You eat so many chicken nuggets, you're gonna turn into a chicken nugget." He sasses me back and lets the cashier ring him up for his lunch. I don't really understand why the cashier still has to ring him up even though he gets free lunches. Shane has two younger brothers and no father, so since his mother is the only income, he doesn't have to pay for school lunches. I still remember the day he found out his dad died. His mom came and picked him up from school and it was just really sad. He didn't speak to me for a week, but I understood.

I hand the cashier a ten dollar bill that should cover my lunch for the rest of the week and follow Shane over to our usual table, right next to the trashcans. I like sitting next to the garbage cans because I don't have to get up and walk far to the nearest one when I'm finished eating. "What'd I tell you about calling me 'Princess'? You hate it when I call you Shaney, and I don't do it. I should start though." Immediately after I sit down across from Shane, I dunk one of my five chicken nuggets into some ketchup and shove it in my mouth. "…What are you doing tonight?" I ask him, mouth full of chewed up chicken.

"Kelly works the graveyard shift tonight, so I'm on child duty." He eats a heaping spoonful of the crap that's on his tray and takes his time chewing it up. He and his mother must have had an argument this morning because the only time he calls his mom "Kelly" is when he's mad at her. "Speaking of…" Swallowing the food in his mouth, he reaches across the table with his bony, yet hefty hand to grab onto my wrist while I'm in the middle of putting another nugget in my mouth. I glare at him for that. "I have no idea how to make lasagna…"

The corners of my mouth turn up into a smile like they always do when I'm fighting to stay serious about something. "That sounds like a personal problem, Shaney." I shrug my wrist out of his grip and finish what I started by putting the chicken nugget in my mouth. If I had a nickel for every time someone assumed that Shane and I were dating, I'd be a billionaire by now. Sure, Shane and I are very close with one another and we do have a brother/sister relationship, but he is hopelessly in love with a senior that literally doesn't even know he exists. Me? I don't really like anyone in that way.

Shane's not ugly or anything like that, I just think it'd be awfully weird to date him. He is LITERALLY like my brother. He was the first person I met when I first came to live with my grandma. He lives three houses down from me and we used to play with each other a whole lot. I grew up rather tomboyish and Shane always had the newest HotWheels and Tonka trucks. We used to play "cops and robbers" together and we've had so many sleepovers, I've lost count. We've only had one major fight in our friendship, and we've known each other since we were five. When were seven, I got my first Barbie doll from my grandmother and I wanted to play Barbies with him. He wasn't into Barbies, of course, and he called me a "sissy" for wanting to play with girl toys. I kicked him in his shin and threw mud at him and he stuck a big wad of Bubblicious Bubble Gum in my hair. My grandma used a whole jar of peanut butter to get the gum out without having to cut it. She made me bake chocolate chip cookies (with her help) and take them to Shane to apologize for kicking him in the shin and throwing mud at him. Shane's mom told him that he HAD to invite me over to go swimming because gum is extremely hard to get out of hair. Shane ate my cookies, I swam in his pool and we've been best friends ever since.

"Come on, J." He looks at me with his brown eyes clearly begging. I know he's serious when he calls me by something that alludes to my actual name. With Shane, I'm usually "Princess", "Ponytail" or "Sis." He knows that I still feel really bad about his dad's death, and he plays on my sympathy an awful lot. I had only met Shane's dad once or twice. He was a truck driver, so he was hardly ever home. He seemed like a nice man both times I met him. "Matt and Nick used to love my dad's lasagna… I don't think I can even make it like he used to."

"…You're sick; using your dead father to get in my good graces!" Still smiling at him, I just shake my head. "Just make sure your door is open for me. I'll be over around five. You're so lucky I like you." I sit back in my chair and pick up my banana. "Oh crap… I can't, Shane. I really can't." I totally forgot about having to clean my room. "Unless you want to come to my house after school and help me clean my room, I probably won't be able to come over…"

"I'll help you clean."

"Are you serious?"

"As serious as a heart attack. I really need you to help me out tonight. I can handle it when she needs me to make hamburgers for dinner, or even hot dogs. But I can't make an entire pan of lasagna by myself." He swishes a fork around inside his fruit cup. "Plus, when you cook dinner for us, we always get dessert."

I roll my eyes hard at him. "Alright. I'll cook tonight, but you HAVE to help me clean up my room. If I don't get my room clean tonight, my gram is gonna have my head. She's been asking me for weeks to clean it up." I take a small bite of banana and rest my chin in the palm of my hand. "You should also thank Stephanie for blowing me off tonight. I was supposed to go to the basketball game tonight with her, but she's going with Leah and Heather instead."

"…That's screwed up! She really just ditched you?"

"It's not that big of a deal."

"Bull! She's always blowing you off to go with her other friends. It's messed up that she does that to you. It's like she's not even your friend when Leah and Heather come around. If she doesn't want to hang out with you, she shouldn't even make plans with you and act like she wants to. You're not her freakin' charity case." He turns himself around in his seat so he can see where Steph, Leah, Heather and all their other cheerleader friends whose names I don't know sit. "If you don't say anything to them, I will." He turns back to me. "Stephanie probably just hangs out with you because she feels sorry for you, then goes back and runs her mouth about you to Heather and Leah."

"If you don't calm down about it…" I stretch my leg out underneath the table and kick him. "I said it's not that big of a deal. I already know that I don't take priority when it comes to Steph. I know she'd rather hang out with the cheerleaders and I don't care. You're acting like it bothers me and it really, really doesn't. I'll never fit in with those girls and I don't want to. Steph actually isn't half bad when she's just with me." I tuck my hair behind my ears and sigh.

"I don't understand why you just let them walk all over you. You're not a doormat and they shouldn't treat you like one. Maybe you're just too naïve to see it, but they really do treat you like you're nothing. Why is it that every time Steph wants to invite you out with them, Leah has the final word? Like you're not cool enough for them or something. I don't know why it doesn't piss you off, but it should…"

"Because it's not worth me getting pissed off. Unlike you, I can control what bothers me and what doesn't. If I let it bother me the way it bothers you, I would have put Leah's head through a locker a long time ago, and that's not what I want. You of all people should know how it is when I get a little angry, Shane. I don't let them bother me. They don't have anything that I want… you know?"

"Oh, I do know what it's like when you get pissed off. My iPod didn't survive one of your pissed off moods. You don't have to tell me what it's like when you get pissed." He chuckles at that memory and I mouth "shut up" to him. "But I totally understand what you mean by not letting it bother you. It bothers me, though. To see them treat you like that, I mean. They'd be lucky to have you in their clique and they're missing out… I don't understand why you're not in that clique in the first place."

"Didn't you hear? There are rules to be in that clique."

"Rules?"

"Yeah." I nod at him. "Like rule number one: No nerds. If your GPA is higher than a 3.2, you're not allowed in." I laugh and Shane does too. "Oh, and you have to be super skinny. So skinny that you have to be at the top of the pyramid. You can't be a cow. And you CAN'T eat more than one thing at lunch, so a banana it would be. No greasy chicken nuggets."

"And you can't be prettier than any of them." He chimes in.

"Definitely not!"

"So that leaves you hopeless. Damn that 3.9 GPA you have! And curse the fact that you eat enough cookies for everyone in this school!" Shane laughs hysterically and I can't help but hold my sides while I laugh too. "And as if your study and eating habits weren't enough… you're prettier than every last one of them over there. Geez. You never had a chance, Ponytail."

"Thanks, but I can't compete with them."

"Why can't you?"

"I'm not ugly…. but I'm no Leah Murphy." I shake my head rapidly. "…Maybe if I dyed my hair blonde… and cut it shoulder length. You think I'd have a chance then?"

"Why would you want to? You'd be the only brunette one. You'd be the only one with green eyes… you'd be the only one with a guy's name. Why would you want to conform?"

"…Not the only brunette. There's a brunette sitting next to Heather. Who cares about my eyes? And they're hazel, not green. And really, Shane? My name?"

"I'm just thinking of all the reasons you shouldn't change to fit in with them. Just think. If you were in that clique, you wouldn't even talk to me."

"You're a football player, so that'd be grounds enough for me to date you. They only date athletes."

"Just promise me that you'll—" Shane stops talking abruptly, his attention caught by something else. His gaze is completely shifted, not even noticing I'm there any longer. I trace his eyes to see who—or what, for that matter, he's looking at. Oh, it's his hopeless senior crush. Let's watch while he drools over someone that doesn't know he's alive. I'm not sure of her name, because I never really pay attention to Shane when he gushes over her, but I guess she's not that ugly. She's kind of pretty, actually. She's quite skinny, not that busty and sort of tall. Her thick, curly hair rests in the middle of her back and her brown eyes glow as she approaches the table full of other seniors. I keep studying her face, trying to figure out if she's Chinese, Japanese or Korean.

"Close your mouth, Shaney." I mutter, scanning the rest of the seniors sitting at the table that Shane's crush sits at. There's a really tiny girl with messy dark blonde hair tied back into a careless ponytail. Her eyes are a pretty shade of blue and her eyebrows are perfectly waxed. She looks kind of mean from afar, but I'm sure she's pretty. Next to the tiny one, there's a redheaded girl with a bright smile. She seems really happy to be in school. Sitting across from the dirty blonde is a light-skinned boy with a shaved head and bright green eyes, and next to him is another guy with shaggy light brown hair. I can't see his face, but he seems bulky from behind. "…W…What are their names?" I wonder aloud to Shane, after I stop staring at them.

"I'm not really sure…" He admits.

"You don't know their names?! But you're crushing on the Asian one?!" I look at him with the most confused look I can give and just shake my head.

"There are over 7,000 kids in the high school alone, Jo. How am I supposed to keep up with everyone's names? The senior class has like 350 people in it."

"I'm just saying… how are you gonna have a crush on someone, and you don't even know their name?"

"I do know their names! I'm friends with all of them on Facebook. I just don't know who's who…" He subtly points over towards the group. "The redhead… I'm pretty sure her name's April. I think she's the ski-club president. The one next to her… is like Marilyn. I'm not sure what my babe's name is, but I hear them call her "Chris" a lot."

"You're pathetic, Shane. I'd be better off just going over there and introducing myself to them and asking them their names myself."

"Or you could ask your puppet master. I'm sure she'd know."

"My puppe—HEY! I am NOT Steph's puppet!"

"Yeah you are. It's okay, though. She's our connection to the senior world. In a world full of freshmen, you have to have connections to seniors. Stephanie Edwards is our connection."

"…Get a life. We are FRESHMEN. We're at the bottom of the food chain. We are the krill of high school. We're krill, the sophomores are the swordfish, the juniors are the sharks and the seniors are the whales. We suck, Shane."

"…Whales don't eat sharks, Jojo."

"WHATEVER. You get what I'm trying to say. Steph or no Steph, those seniors will never know who we are."

"Someday, we'll be the seniors that don't know who the freshmen are. You gotta dream big, Jojo. Dream big."

"Oh, I'm dreaming big alright." I roll my eyes at him again and throw my lunch tray away just as the bell to dismiss us to sixth period rings.