Hey. Sorry I haven't been updating. T^T. I've been having some problems lately. Hopefully these problems are all resolved now, but I'm still not quite sure.

Well, lest I begin moping, I should probably begin writing this chapter! (PS: today I was described by my English Professor as a Pyromaniac. I still don't know whether to take this as an insult or a compliment! XD!)

Lesley sat up on the bed, wiping the sides of her eyes, careful to avoid smudging her eyeliner. I turned around and gave her a warm smile, knowing that she needed it. I opened my mouth to say something comforting- although I had no idea what- when the intercom screeched on again.

"Attention Ladies," my Aunt addressed us, her voice made even more shrill by the screech of the speaker. "Etiquette begins in 2 minutes. Please report to room 4B."

I turned around to see Lesley full on. She was smiling. I opened my mouth to ask her what had made her so happy all the sudden, when only five minutes ago she had been a sobbing mess. As if she could hear my thoughts, she answered with a cock of her head. "I'm probably the best pretender in the world." she said in a perky voice. Although nothing looked wrong with her, there was something heart wrenching in the words.

I opened my mouth again, gaping for words like a fish out of water. What was I going to say anyways? 'Sorry my Aunts such a bitch?'

Possibly.

But I knew that that wasn't what she needed to hear right now. I didn't know what she needed to hear. All I knew is that I wasn't going to be the one to say it. I couldn't even solve my own problems. How could I solve hers?

We were interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. I jumped. A brunette head popped into the room. "Are you coming, Ley?" she said in a voice that seemed naturally sweet-sounding. It was immediately apparent that the girl was blatantly ignoring me. Lesley nodded, grinning. "Just give me a couple minutes, 'Kay?" she twanged.

The brunette girl narrowed her eyes at me, before pulling out of our room. I stared after her. "That's Carlise. " Lesley said as if that explained everything.

When I still looked confused, she continued. "She's-" Lesley broke off as if she had almost said something she wasn't supposed to. "She's…like that." Lesley continued with a dismissive wave. "I mean, only at first. You have to get to know her. Her bark's worse than her bite."

I nodded slowly. "Ya, I've heard that about rattle snakes, too."

Lesley blew out her breath, her bangs flowing out. "Don't be mean. She's nice!"

Just then another round of short, hard knocks came from the door. "Lesley! Get out here! Now! You've been in there way longer than a couple minutes!" Carlise's bell-like voice came from outside the door.

I gave Lesley a pointed look. "Give her a chance." Lesley whispered urgently as another round of firm knocks began. She slung her pink bag over her shoulder, motioning for me to follow.

The door opened, and Carlise peeked around it. She made eye contact with me before briskly looking away.

I felt like I'd been slapped.

"Thank-God you're ready, LeyLey! We're almost late!" she laughed sweetly. I didn't know how someone with such a sweet voice could be so obviously evil. She turned towards me, and I got a full view of her for the first time.

She was…beautiful. Even more beautiful than Lesley. I could already see that spending my time here was not doing anything for my self-esteem.

Carlise's face, like her voice, was misleading. She had a small build, and reminded me of a pixie. Something that you would see sitting on a sunflower in a child's story book. Her warm brown hair was cut into a smooth bob and fell around her face in a silky cap. She had intensely light eyes. Green iris's so light that unless you really looked at them, it was hard to tell they were there at all. Her skin had a kind of translucent, surreal quality, with her cheeks flaming a light pink against the alabaster. Rose petals against snow. That was the effect it had, anyway. Her face was round, small, and very sweet looking.

Maybe Lesley's right. Maybe she IS really nice. These thoughts jumped into my head upon looking at her. Maybe I judged her too soon.

Then she had to go and open her stupid mouth.

"Is that the new girl?" she asked Lesley. She didn't even bother to lower her voice, though I was standing right in front of her. "I can already tell she's going to have a tough time here. She doesn't fit in. It's something about the way she's built, I think. Too sturdy. She looks like she belongs at football practice, not at ladies etiquette school."

Carlise said this in one breath, and by the end Lesley was slack-jawed. "Carli!" she all but shrieked. "That's so mean! How could you say that!"

Then she turned to me. "Karin, I'm so sorry. She didn't mean it."

"What?" Carlise said, sounding truly confused. "I'm just telling the truth! Are you sure she didn't mistake this school for the sports academy in Northern Sussex?"

I sighed. I wished I were at the sports academy.

I brushed past the two girls with a heavy sigh, though I had no idea where the classroom was. The doors were numbered with random number and letter combinations in seemingly no order. I followed the general direction of the mass of girls, and soon found myself in front of two old fashioned wooden doors. The girls seemed to have congealed around the door, and I found myself crammed in among them. I was gradually pushed to the front, until my left cheek was pressed against the hard oak of the door. Just then, the great doors began opening, and the girls jumped into straight lines, hands at their sides, creating a passage for whoever was coming out.

Unfortunately, I was still slumped against the door. Unable to regain my balance when it began opening, I fell forward. I landed hard on my knees. I squeezed my eyes shut, muttering "Ow…" today was just NOT my day…not that yesterday had been, either. Or the day before…

When I opened them again, I found myself staring at a pair of polished, brown suede shoes. I looked up and found that they had a body attached to them. The body of a very handsome looking, brown haired, boy. "Uh…?" I said, making my grunt sound like a question. I could feel my face heating up. I was abruptly aware that there was a herd of boys behind this one, and all their eyes were on me. "Oh, Sorry!" I hopped up.

I swayed a bit on my feet, mostly from embarrassment, but the boy put his hand on my shoulder to steady me. Now that I was closer to him, I could see that he wasn't much older than me. Maybe the same age even.

I smiled, feeling a little punch drunk from light-headedness. I heard a throat clearing from somewhere behind the boy. A mousy little boy with glasses leaned around the brown haired boy. "Haru, don't you think we should," he cleared his throat again as he pushed the slipping glasses back up his nose. "Get going?"

Haru paused for a second, studying me, then nodded. "Goodbye," he said lightly.

"Uh…hu." I replied breathlessly, my face getting even redder. At least I knew why I was light-headed. All my blood must be in my cheeks by now.

I stopped myself before I could say anything else. 'Uhhu?' What the heck was that?

Haru and the mousy boy turned and walked away, Haru glancing back at me every once in a while. I set my hand to my burning forehead, before realizing that I was standing right in front of the other boys. They were impatiently tapping their feet, some of them whispering to each other. I took a step back, trying to merge in with the other girls. The boys walked by us in a straight line, some of them slowing down by me in order to get a better look. I met their questioning looks with a steady gaze. "Take a picture, it lasts longer!" I snapped at a blonde boy that took a particularly long look.

These probably weren't the wisest words, considering the next second, he pulled out a cell phone, snapped a picture of me, and ran back to his friends, laughing.

I groaned. Lesley came up behind me, and placed a tanned hand on my shoulder. "It's okay. You're the new girl. It's gonna be weird like that for a while."

"Oh….Uh…Okay…" I trailed off uncertainly, still thinking about the brown haired boy.

Lesley sighed. "Carlise is goin' to be pretty angry with you."

"Why?!"

"That nice looking kid -Haru- she's had her eye on him for a while. He's never thought twice about the poor girl, even with all her attempts." Lesley nodded towards the incoming ball of fury that was Carlise and placed her hand on my shoulder solemnly before leaving, a bit like giving me her last regards.

"Hey! Hey- wait!" I called after her as she made a hasty getaway, her blonde ringlets bouncing along behind her. I turned back just in time to see Carlise taking in a big breath, ready for screaming.

I had time to wince before the explosion of accusations, threats, and colourful vocabulary began. "I knew you were trouble! Right from the get go! You're probably here to ruin my reputation! My stepmother hired you, didn't she?" she enunciated each word with a step forward, until she had backed my into the wall.

"You probably think that I'm some pushover weakling, just because I spend more time painting my nails than I do pumping iron, don't you?" I opened my mouth to respond that 'actually, no, I was quite scared of her at the moment,' but she ploughed on. "Well, if that's what you think, than, girlfriend, have you ever got a surprise coming! I'm a bit like a lioness, see, I'm real territorial. You jump on my prey, I rip you to shreds. Is that what you want?"

After that, her one-way conversation kind of degenerated into mindless insults and swears, some of which I'd never heard of and suspected that she made up on the spot. Examples: 'Conny-Weiner,' 'Bubbling Bounty Hunter of Men,' and 'Mary-Jane-wearing-Ninny' (I neglected to point out that she, also, was wearing Mary-Jane's, as they wear required by the school uniform, for fear that it would hurt her pride. Besides, I was actually starting to enjoy her insults. Some of them were truly funny.)

When she was finally ran out of breath and was left huffing from lack of air, we sat in silence for a moment. "Are you finished?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Good," I said, getting louder, "Because there's a few things I'd like to say, too. First of all, I'm not here to ruin your reputation. Or- rather- lack of one. Because it seems to me that the only person who even knows your name around here is Lesley, and she's too nice to tell you the truth about the way you seem to see yourself. But me? Now, I'm not a nice person, so I'm going to say what you need to hear: You are acting like an incompetent, stuck-up idiot. I think it's time that you drop your whole 'holy-than-thou' charade, because it's not working."

Her face flushed. "Hey, you're the one that started it. You stole MY guy, and-"

"Ugh!" I interrupted. "He is not your guy! He's no one's guy! And I didn't steal him! I said 'Hi!' that's hardly stealing! So why don't you back off, and look at the big picture! Haru isn't interested In you!" I stopped short now, because her face was beat red with embarrassment. I realized that a crowd of whispering girls had circled around us, as if waiting for us to break out into a fistfight. Before I could say anything else, Carlise turned sharply towards the crowd of girls- who parted as if Carlise were Moses and they were the Red Sea- and stomped through them, head held up high.

Obviously, I hadn't hurt her pride. Which kind of made me feel a little better. A ball of guilt had been knotting it's way into my stomach, and it lessened it to know that I hadn't been too mean. I just wanted to give her something to think about. Not completely destroy her.

Lesley came through the gaggle of girls with a lot of 'excuse me's.' "Karin!" She said when she saw me.

"Did you hear the whole thing?" I asked half-heartedly. She nodded. "I feel a little guilty," I said after she had waved away the other students. She looked at me, surprised "Why?"

"I think I was too harsh."

"No you weren't. It will take way more than that to hurt Carlise. Besides, like you said, she needed to hear it."

I nodded solemnly. I wasn't sure. I had seen the hurt in Carlise's eyes.

We entered the Etiquettes class through the wooden doors - which gave me splinters- and sat in our seats. The room was expensive4 looking, in short. It had long pillars made out of red wood supporting the glass roof up above. The sun shone through, warming my skin. Whimsical carvings lined the walls - fairies, ogres, nymphs- which seemed out of place in such a strict school.

The designs made me optimistic. Maybe the teacher they had for this class wouldn't be strict. The room gave off more of a laidback, happy feeling.

I knew that all of my hopes were wrong when a tall, vulture-like woman walked stiffly to the front of the room, holding an old fashioned dictionary, and wooden pole.

By the middle of the class, I had neck cramps from holding the book on my head, and my back was aching from the 'posture pole.'

I made a fool of myself, falling - twice- and needing assistance to get up. The teacher was optimistic for my future, though. "You are hopeless," she told me in a thick Russian accent while helping me up from my second stumble, "You will never learn the true beauty of proper posture, and will certainly never possess it."

I sighed as I slumped back in my seat, just wanting the day to be over. That was when I heard a knocking sound, and my day started to go downhill. I glanced up, and saw Toshiro perched on the glass window. He was tapping the glass, and when he saw that he had my attention, he motioned grimly for me to come up. I stared at him for a moment, not believing that he was requesting me to sneak out of my very first class in this boarding school. If I screwed up this school, the only option left would be military camp. And I did not want to go there.

He began to knock more urgently. The students were all looking up by now, but they couldn't see Toshiro in his shinigami form. Fearing that he would break the glass, I jumped out of my seat. Before I could make me escape, the teacher looked down and noticed me. "Miss Kurosaki, where are you going? And what is that dreadful noise?"

I looked at toshiro for help. 'Improvise!' he mouthed.

"Um…um.. That's just….my stomach…" I said haltingly.

The teacher looked perplexed. "Your stomach…knocks." she stated as if she had misheard me.

I glanced up nervously again. Toshiro spun his hand in a circle, telling me to keep going.

"Uh…ya…I guess those burritos I had at lunch aren't sitting with me very well." I laughed nervously as I patted my abdomen. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Toshiro face palm. "Can I go to the bathroom?"

"Yes, please!" the teacher said, revolted.

I said a quick 'thank you' and raced out of the room. When I got to the hallway, I made a split second decision to take a left, and then continued up the staircase. After a few false turns, I finally made it to the roof.

For a moment, I was stunned. It was beautiful. The roof itself wasn't very remarkable, but the view was like the ninth wonder of the world.

You could see all the way down to the bay, where seagulls flew, and the sun was just setting, turning the sky into a work of art. The sun was reflected in the ocean, and the water was so light it caught almost all the colors the sky was. Oranges and reds and purples, all reflected in the sparkling water, creating the illusion that the sky went on into the water.

It kind of reminded me of the view back home, where Toshiro and me sat together so many years ago. Those memories seemed closer to me now than they ever had…

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I whirled to see Toshiro casually leaning against the door. I squeaked, for probably the first time in my life. "I…I was just thinking about you!" for some reason this was the first thing that sprung to my lips.

Toshiro was so shocked that he briefly came out of his eternally calm attitude. He looked taken aback, his eyes- the same colour as the sea (and don't ask me why I noticed that!)- widened.

"Never mind." I said quickly, flinging my hand to the side.

Something flew out of it, and I realized that I had accidentally taken the dictionary from the classroom with me. Mrs. What's-Her-Face-Vulture-Lady would not be happy.

The leather bound book slid to a stop by Toshiro's feet. He bent over to pick it up. "What's this?" he asked, turning it over in his hands.

"That," I said, taking it from him, "Is a mild form of torture. We had to use these today." I noted that the book was colder than it had been before he had touched it. His hands hadn't warmed it at all. I shivered.

Toshiro ignored my shiver, and continued talking. "You didn't look very good at it." he stated bluntly.

"Hey!" I yelled, stomping closer to him. "It's harder than it looks, okay!"

"You're just angry because you failed at it. It can't be more difficult than achieving bankai, and I managed to do that." he said, running a hand through his ivory hair.

I glared at him. "Fine then. If you're so good at it, then why don't you show me how to do it." I said, placing the book on his head, where it crushed his gravity-defying hair.

I took a step back, and crossed my arms. So far he seemed to be balancing it with no trouble. If he was amazing at this, too…I swear…

Then he took a step forward, the book wobbled on his head, and he leaned back and forth, trying to rebalance. Then it toppled over, along with him.

I put my hand over my mouth, trying to hide my grin. "Not such a smarty pants now, are we?" I asked him as my giggles dissolved into laughter. He glared at me from the ground, and I stuck out my hand. He took it grudgingly, allowing himself to be pulled up.

He began brushing himself off, still glaring. "If you tell anyone about this…" he trailed off.

"Come on!" I said, doubled over, "Lighten up!"

"It would help if you would stop laughing!" He yelled.

"Fine, fine." I wiped tears from under my eye. I straightened up, looking at him, which sent me into another round of giggles.

"What now!" he asked irritably. It was nice to see him lose his calm for once.

I pointed, not able to talk through my hysterics. "Your hair- it's-it's ridiculous!" I burst out laughing again.

He turned to look in the window at his reflection. Some pieces of hair stuck out at odd angles, while others were squashed completely flat. he began running his hands through his hair, quickly repairing the damage.

"You know," he began, "I did bring you up here for another reason besides having you make fun of me."

"Really?" I asked sarcastically. "I thought you were here solely for the purpose of entertainment. My own personal jester."

He glared at me with icy eyes seeming to go so deep that you could see his soul itself. Of course, this gesture was lost on me since I was still laughing. It probably wasn't as funny as I was making it, but I knew I wouldn't get another chance to laugh like this, so I was squeezing every ounce of humour out of it I could.

"I'm serious." he said. "You have to start controlling your powers."

I stopped laughing, and stared at him. "What do you mean? What powers?"

He looked like he wanted to smack his face with his hand again. "the powers that I've been telling you about for the last three days! Have you not listened to a word I've said!"

"Well, I've listened to the funny ones…" I mumbled.

"You still don't believe me, do you?" he asked mundanely. I shook my head. He sighed. "Fine. I'll show you." he grabbed my hand at the wrist, making me blush and instinctively recoil. His hand was absolutely freezing, like an icicle wrapping around my wrist. He pretended to not notice, but I felt his grip loosen.

He hauled me out the door, and down the stairs to the hallway where I was with Carlise before. "What are we doing-"

He stopped walking and pointed at the floorboards. They were splintered and cracked, right where Carlise had been standing before. "What did that?" I wondered aloud. Carlise didn't weigh that much.

He turned back towards me. "You."

I stared at him. "What? How could I have done that? I wasn't even standing close to there."

"You wanted to hurt that girl, and your reitsu responded. Could you have imagined what would have happened if she hadn't have ran away? What could have happened to her?"

I felt my eyes glaze over, imagining visions of the ground opening up and swallowing up Carlise, and even more terrible things that I don't want to mention.

Toshiro let go of me hand, blood returned to it painfully. He looked at me with those soulful eyes until I looked away, self conscious for some reason. I felt my face heating up. He took a small step closer to me, close enough that I could feel the cold radiating off his body. "Will you let me help you now?" he asked softly.

Anything bigger than a nod was beyond me.

He stepped back, and I took a deep breath.

"Then follow me."

………………………………

There! It is finished! One of my biggest chapters! Do you think it's long enough? Did you like it?

TELL ME!!!!! Please review and you will be my BEST friend forever and it will motivate me to get the next chapter out sooner!

And do I ever have some plot twists in store…*Evil laugh*

The next chapters after this are going to have wayyyy more fluff too!

(PS: sorry this one took so long to get out. There's just been so much going on…)

Love always, Serenity!