A/N: The third story in the Magnolias In Bloom/Laws Of Attraction ficverse, featuring R/J! I actually started writing this an age ago, got distracted by other shiny things, and am now finally posting. So please bear with me! This story will refer to the characters and events in Magnolias In Bloom and Laws Of Attraction, but like the other two, can stand alone. This chapter is a prologue, and anyway, thanks for your patience and hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

The hallways were cinderblock and the throng of students milling about, stopping at their military-green lockers or rushing off towards their classrooms, seemed like a mass of chaos. To Raye Harcourt's eye, everything seemed loud, mismatched and almost garish in comparison to the homogeneous atmosphere of exclusive wealth characteristic of the all-girls' Notre Dame School.

Rachael Victoria Warrington-Harcourt, who preferred to go by Raye because it was so much more interesting and less pretentious-sounding, was fifteen years old and embarking on a new school year and a new life. It had been four months ago that her mother had finally succumbed after a three-year struggle with acute leukemia. The last six months of the battle had been in a hospice, and every weekend, it was Raye and her grandfather, not her father, who would visit the dying Victoria Harcourt. Senator B. Louis Harcourt III was busy with the details of his re-election campaign the coming fall. While the loss of his ladylike, gracious wife of seventeen years was certainly regrettable, it was the only sensible thing to do to resign himself to the inevitable and focus on the important matters of the future.

It fell to his daughter and his father-in-law to hold the dying woman's hands, one on each side, as she slowly faded away. When Victoria Harcourt breathed her last and closed her eyes for eternity, her husband was away on the golf course with several of Manhattan's wealthiest and most influential men cajoling for campaign funding. When the finality of it all hit Raye like a fist squeezing around her heart, and the first tears started to fall, it was in the arms of her grandfather that she grieved. By the time the tears had finally stopped, several hours had passed. Her father, whose octopus-like network of staff and assistants eventually relayed the message from the hospital staff, arrived only to look appropriately brave and mournful for the press. Senator Harcourt had directed his secretary to lend Raye some powder for her face so that her nose wouldn't be red when she appeared in front of the reporters camped outside. Pale and blank-faced, Raye had watched her father field questions and give the press his perfectly rehearsed, unctuously appropriate statement about his wife's death. When the questioning segued from personal to political, she'd retreated out of view and stumbled back down the hospital halls until she'd reached the comforting, solid figure of her grandfather. Eyes the colour of April violets, rimmed red and smudged underneath with dark shadows, met forthright brown ones reflecting the same heartbreak. No words had been necessary.

Raye only waited until her mother's burial to apprise her father of her decision. B. Louis Harcourt III made a token protest to the idea of her transplanting herself from the respectable environs of Greenwich Village and the privileged upbringing that befit her station to her grandfather's relatively modest Brooklyn row house and a public high school, but acquiesced easily enough. It was more than likely that he saw the benefits of enrolling his daughter in a school with the common people and establishing through such a rapport with the multitudinous middle class of New York and their electoral clout.

And so it was that over the summer, Raye moved out of the house that she'd been born in, and now for the first time in her life attended a public school. With innate pride and steely determination, she scanned the map of Madison High School's hallways like a general might have studied battle plans. She had no intention of getting lost like a typical feckless new student and arriving late to classes, and by dint of luck and force of will, she made through the day without any dramatic occurrences.

At least until she got to the parking lot of the school to wait for her grandfather's sturdy, ancient Lincoln to pull up and take her home.

It was a day of many firsts, and not wearing a school uniform had been one of them. Raye wasn't particularly into ostentation, but nevertheless she stood out amidst the other high school students, inky hair spilling down her back, aristocratic and perfectly put together from her Miu Miu cashmere sweater to her black Gucci pumps. Every look and gesture bespoke generations of wealth and breeding, and certainly it caught the attention of more than a few of the boys.

"Hey, hottie. What's your name?" A skinny, carrot-topped boy with a crooked incisor smirked at her as she waited sedately on the stone bench by the school entrance. "You're new here, aren't you?"

"Perhaps I am," Raye answered coolly. "And my name is Raye. You would be...?"

"Kyle Reed," he introduced himself in a rather smarmy voice. "I know I haven't seen you before. I'm pretty good at remembering the faces of good-looking girls." He was certainly not looking at her face when he said that, however, and Raye's eyes frosted over.

"I don't doubt that you do, but you needn't remember mine," she said in her haughtiest voice. "I'll make sure that you won't have anything more to do with it than see it passing by, hopefully not often, in the hallways."

"God, who shoved a stick up your ass? Oh wait... I think I know who you are. You're that prissy senator's daughter, aren't you? My friend said something about you deciding to slum it here. Whatever... it'd probably be like screwing a deep freeze anyway."

"Why don't you leave her alone?" A calm voice interjected just then, and a newcomer, eyes the colour of gunmetal staring through a fringe of pale blond hair, walked up to Raye's bench from the door just then. This boy was lean and unsmiling, sans Kyle Reed's oily expression. "A girl doesn't have to be 'slumming it' to not want anything to do with you, Reed."

"Fuck off, Ellis," Kyle Reed scowled. "Why don't you mind your own goddamn business?"

"I could ask the same of you," The one referred to as 'Ellis' raised an eyebrow. "Take the rejection of your rather uncreative come-on without resorting to a temper tantrum and run along."

"I said, FUCK OFF!" Kyle, freckly cheeks red with anger, made a rush at the other boy, fists clenched, and Raye sprang up, eyes firing with temper and intent on delivering a lethal kick to the boy's groin with the business end of a designer stiletto heel. She never had a chance, though, because Ellis simply stepped partially into the path of the punch and with an economical movement of his hands, twisted the other's arm and threw her accoster to the ground in an inglorious heap.

"Now will you leave her alone?" Ellis asked, barely winded as he stared down at the prone form of Kyle Reed. "She's bound not to have anything to do with you now, anyway."

Kyle Reed stumbled to his feet and slunk off, throwing a baleful glance over his shoulder but not willing to say anything that might result in even more humiliation. Raye took a deep breath and awarded her rescuer with a faint smile.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. I'm Kevin, by the way. Kevin Ellis. What's your name?"

"Raye. Raye Harcourt. It's nice to meet you." His handshake was firm, without the faux-enthusiastic pumping favoured by those in politics, and her smile grew minutely. "I guess people can tell I'm new here. I'm not trying to stand out or anything."

His face didn't seem like one that smiled often, but for a split second, his lips curved upward. "I wouldn't worry about it. Just do whatever you feel is best."

It echoed what she had decided would be the guiding principle of her new life, and he said it so matter-of-factly, without any of the expected fawning sympathy or pompousness. And on this day of new beginnings, even as she saw her grandfather's car pulling up to the stop light in front of the school in preparation to turn into the parking lot, Raye experienced another first.

Without lengthy consideration and further information and references, she decided to trust Kevin Ellis and consider him a friend. It was the first time she'd found someone to believe in who wasn't a relative.

It was an auspicious start to a new life of self-determination and personal freedom. It was also one of the best decisions she would ever make.