Welcome to my story...I know that this whole high school fics where Max is the outcast tough girl and Fang is the player of the school is probably over-used and cliche, but I am hoping that you will still like it. I will try to make it as original as possible, even with such a cliché story.

Max POV

Why did he always have to do this?

Hit me.

Punch.

Kick.

Choke.

Name any physical violence that can be inflicted and my dad has done it. Burned, scratched. Hell, he's even bit me before...after a twelve pack of beer though.

God, it was becoming harder and harder to hide at school. Now he had bruised me in places that were hard to conceal with a half a bottle of concealer. There was only so much I could do to make a black eye appear as a make up haphazard mistake. But now that my forehead had a huge cut across the entire thing, the task of keeping my home life a secret seemed next to impossible.

I could ditch? No, I had already been absent seven days this month. Someone will start suspecting something and call the authorities. Last time that happened, my dad made up a bunch of lies about me hurting myself and the cops believed them because they didn't want to deal with a bunch of paper work, reporting. Plus, who would want to accuse a former marine of beating his daughter? No one in their right mind, that's who. There was no way out, no matter what I did.

The hat sitting on my dresser was my life saver today as I heard the bus rolling down my block, just about to halt at my stop. I thrust the beanie on over my head, snatched my bag and made my way outside. Running down the street, I reached the bus just in time so that the door didn't close on me. The bus driver, Ron, gave me his usual look of disapproval. I ignored it like always. Once something happens every day for a year, you get used to it, sometimes forgetting that it even happens to you from time to time.

Avoiding the stares of the kids in the back, I slipped into the third row, no one behind, in front or beside me.

As much as I attempted to avoid the attention of Fang and his posse, I somehow catch it on every inconvenient day, usually only once a week. But it's always that one day of the week they just have to make my life a living hell. They didn't exactly 'harass' me, but they didn't leave me alone, that was for sure. Just when I thought that maybe, just maybe, one of his gang members wouldn't pretend to flirt with me, Fang himself graced me with his presence. How very kind of the boy.

"How you doing?" He asked me, impersonating Joey from Friends. I have to admit that he did a pretty good job with it.

"Fine," I whispered, not trusting myself to speak at full volume without my voice breaking.

I could hear laughter from a few rows back. No, more like snickering.

"Why so shy?" He asked, putting his arm around me.

I tried to shrug it off, but he just held on to my shoulders even tighter. Ron looked back at us and rolled his eyes. He always let the guys mess with the girls until a certain point. Fang wasn't to that point just yet. But he was getting close, too close.

"Tired," I answered.

"What's up with the hat?" He asked, touching my hat with his other hand. "You're not one to wear hats."

My eyes widened in horror as I realized that he was going to pull off the hat. Before my hands could reach up to my head, he snatched the hat off my head, exposing the huge gash on my forehead. He looked at my hat and back to my head, trying to process what had just happened. Before anyone else could see what the cut, he put the hat back on my head as quickly as possible.

"What happened?" He asked, his voice hushed so that the rest of his stupid friends wouldn't hear what was going on. They had moved on to picking on another girl with braces anyways.

I hadn't exactly planned on excuse for a cut this bad, assuming that my hat would be on all day long. No one was supposed to yank it off. I could only imagine if Fang decided to follow up on this...I shuddered.

"I…" I should be a pro at coming up with excuses already, but when it mattered the most, my mind froze. No one needed to know about my life, but if there was one person in this world that I didn't want to know, it was Fang and his groupies.

"You're just klutz, aren't you, Max?" His voice was completely passive so I wasn't able to tell if he was being a smart-ass or just giving me a free pass for that day.

"Yeah," I agreed.

Without another word, he left.

"Really, a hat?" Nudge, my best friend asked. "You have the most beautiful hair and you hide it with a hat?"

I smiled. "Just felt like something different," I fibbed. "Besides, my goal in life is to not attract any attention in high school. So the hat is the perfect solution."

She rolled her eyes. I was almost afraid that she was going to pull it off as well, just like Fang had. But she didn't, just went on with gathering her books from her locker and checking her make up in her flower mirror on the side of her locker. I don't know why she wore make up in the first place, she was probably one of the prettiest girls in the school. Her foster home status, unfortunately, made her almost outcast materal.

"You're not hiding anything from me, right?" She asked me, suddenly turning serious and solemn. She knew -vaguely- that things weren't great at home, but she didn't know the extent to what my dad would do to me. She never told the authorities about me...she knew what it was like to be in a foster home, and she wasn't too sure that a foster home would be any better than what my situation was right now.

I smiled at her. "No, of course not."

She pursed her lips disapprovingly, "Uh-huh," she huffed, catching my lie as easy as she could breathe. I can't fool my best friend.

I smiled at her again, trying to prove my false innocence. Luckily the bell rang and we both had to go to first hour. Thank god, saved by the bell again. As much as I love Nudge, there's no denying that she had the attention span of a squirrel, meaning she will forget about our conversation and be talking about the student teacher in her French class the next time we see each other, right after second hour.

First hour is an English class that you don't actually do anything of any actual importance for your future life. Some rumor had it, though, that there might be something cool that the teacher had in store for us today. But honestly, I didn't want to get my hopes up, because the teacher's idea of 'fun' is also learning Romeo and Juliet by heart...which was something I already had to do as an eighth grader.

"Ladies and gentleman, you will be putting together a partner paper," Mr. Dawson announced to his first class, my class "I chose this partners very carefully to make sure that none of you will be writing about someone you already know really well."

The class seemed either repulsed or really interested by this idea of writing about someone new. If there were some people with actual depth to them, then I thought that there might be some appeal to this project, but there wasn't anyone of worth writing about in here. Hence, I was one of the disgusted ones. Besides, there wasn't anyone else that I needed to get all comfy with in here.

"First project partners," the teacher seemed to be doing a silent drum roll in his head. "Max Martinez and...Fang Rider."

Thanks for reading! Critiquing is just as welcomed as compliments!