Alright so I guess this is the part of the story where I'm suppose to tell you about me, so here it is. My name is Lavinia Marilyn Hart Johnston. Yes I know it's a mouthful. My mom was a huge Marilyn Monroe fan. I'm 17 years old and I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada on a poker table. My mother went into labor while gambling, oh that's definitely a story for the grandkids. After I was born my parents went back home where they originally lived in Bayside, Virginia. I went to school, did guitar lessons, joined girl scouts, you know normal kid stuff, and then when I was about 6 years old my parents committed suicide. Yeah that's definitely not a story for the grandkids. I then got sent to an orphanage where I was then pretty much bought, but don't get me wrong the Johnston's are a nice couple. I love them with all my heart, out of all the stories I've heard in the orphanage about kids getting adopted and then abused I got a pretty good deal. I was then made fun of all through elementary school, from my glasses to my hair to my clothes. I'm not entirely sure why though, but it was their loss I was a pretty cool kid. I had a kick ass leaf collection. But there was this one kid who just none stop bullied me all day, like it was his sole purpose to make me miserable. That went on until 3rd grade when I ended up punching him in the face and getting suspended, but it was well worth it. I also left a small scar over his eyebrow. It was a lovely reminder of what I did to him. When I got back after 2 days he came up to me and said he was sorry, now 9 years later we're best friends. It's funny how life works. This best friend of mine that you're probably dying to know the name of is Jackson Michael Roberts. Now his parents named him after Michael Jackson, no lie. Most people see him as a man whore, player, bad boy, asshole, jerk face, no good, womanizer, with a perfect smile, and delicious abs, whose pretty much the hottie of the school. But those are just some of the things I've heard while walking in the halls. In all honesty behind that pretty face and arrogant attitude, is a scared ugly child. Ha, I'm totally kidding. Behind that pretty face and arrogant attitude is a sweet, funny, nerdy, teddy bear. Yeah he might party a lot and bone a good number of girls but he would never let me watch a Nicholas Sparks movie by myself. And it's normally him that suggests we watch it, what a loser. Because we're friends the teasing eased up a bit but after a couple years people started saying that the only reason he's friends with me is because I let him have sex with me when ever he wants. Yeah like that's ever going to happen. They think just because the player of the school is best friends with the nerd of the school that we're obviously doing the dirty. Are they serious? Have they never seen A Walk To Remember, oh wait they fell in love. Or It's A Boy Girl Thing, they fell in love too. Oh how about 10 Things I Hate About You, dammit they got together at the end. Well you know what I mean, I'm not sleeping with my best friend okay.

"Hello, Vini?" My mom says waving her hand in front of my face. I blink a couple times and turn to her. "You okay sweetie? You've been staring into space for almost 15 minutes, you haven't even touched your breakfast."

"Oh yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about something." I smiled at her. My mother is, what most would call it, a hippie sort of person and the same goes for my dad. They're into the whole eating healthy and respecting nature thing. Respecting nature I could do but eating healthy, no thanks. My mom has the whole look down too. She wears the long dresses, with the bandana, and charm brackets, then mix in her blond hair and blue eyes. She's gorgeous. My dad wears the long flowy pants, with mismatching shirts, and dread locks. Most of the time he's not home because he's either working at his record store or practicing with is 'band', they're not very good but he doesn't need to know that. If he enjoys playing music he should do it and there are people out there who actually really like it. My mom's with her gardening club most of the time so she's not really home much either. But the weekends are very sacred, they like to call it our 'family bonding days'. Where we have to do something as a family, if you had plans that weekend you would have to cancel them. If you didn't cancel your plans you would have to buy everyone frozen yogurt. Seems fair to me.

"Well if you're not going to eat then go upstairs and get ready for school. Jackson texted me since you're not answering your phone and said he'll be here to pick you up in 10 minutes." My mother said taking my bowl of fruit and putting an apple in her mouth. No matter how much my parents love nature and conserving energy they would never give up their electronics. We have no light bulbs, instead the whole house has candles scattered around it. Yet we have a giant TV, a PlayStation, and a million other things. If my parents friends, who are almost to the point of being Amish, knew they'd be horrified. They especially love their phones, it's worse than any teenager I've ever seen.

Taking a grape from my mom's hand, I pop it in my mouth and run upstairs to get ready. I pull out the first thing I see in my closet, which is a faded pair of skinny jeans and a black sweater since it's January. I grab my worn out converse and slip them on, then I walk over to my dresser and brush out my blond hair. I put it up into a ponytail and then put on my glasses. There, all done and under 10 minutes.

I grab my backpack and head back down stairs. When I reach the bottom step I find my dad by the front door getting ready to leave for work.

"Come here my little gypsy and give me a hug before I leave." I give him a hug and he bends down, kissing my head. My dad gave me the nickname 'little gypsy' when I went through a gypsy phase when I was 14. To be honest it was one of my favorite phases, I went through a lot more but that's for another time. "Alright I'll be home later on tonight, have fun at school and learn something."

"I will." I give him one last hug and watch him step out the door. I walk into the kitchen and start munching on an apple while waiting for Jackson. It's 5 minutes past 7 and he's still not here yet. School starts at 7:20 and it takes 12 minutes to get to school so if he isn't here in the next 2 minutes Mister Perfect will get his first tardy and detention. He's never been late before because he would rather die than get a tardy for being late for class. Believe it or not Jackson has never been absent from school, even when he got the flu. And everyone calls me the nerd.

"How long are you going to sit there and stare at that clock?" A voice speaks up from behind me. I turn around and find my best friend in all of his glory looking at me with his signature smirk. "Come on I don't want to be late for class."

I get up and follow him out the front door to his car.

"Bye mom!" I yell behind me. Turning to face Jackson, I finally get a good look at him. He's wearing black jeans, combat boots, a white v neck, and a leather jacket, typical 'bad boy' attire. Pretty much what he wears everyday. His dad gave him the leather jacket before he left 5 years ago and everyday Jackson wears it. The 4 years I knew Jackson's dad I would have never thought he would leave his mom, brother, and him. They seemed so happy. The day his dad left, Jackson ran away for almost 8 hours, to say we were all worried would be an understatement. I nearly went out looking for him myself, but he just popped back home who knows when and acted like nothing happened. After that day he never talked about his dad to anyone, he would bring him up to me from time to time but we never had a full on conversation about him.

"So when's your eye appointment?" Jackson asks, stealing a glance at me while he drives like a madman. I turn to look at him and find him eating a slice of pizza. I grab it out of his hand and take a bite.

"Tomorrow." I answer, wiping tomato sauce from the corner of my mouth. I'm finally getting rid of these stupid glasses and getting contacts. No more people calling me four eyes. Honestly couldn't they have picked a better insult, I mean that one is so overused.

"Did you want me to go with you?" Jackson offered taking the pizza back which is now only a piece of crust. He gives me a scowl and throws the crust in the backseat.

"No, it's not like I'm getting surgery. It's only a couple tests and then they give me my contacts." We finally reach the school with 8 minutes to spare, Jackson ran a couple red lights.

"Yeah but what if there's something wrong with your eyes and they have to do surgery on them, then they mess up and you go blind." Jackson rambles on. I roll my eyes and open the car door. "I'm serious, I think I should go with you."

"You have to take your brother to his soccer practice tomorrow, remember?" We walk together through the halls, passing by a group of girls that look at Jackson like he's a five course meal and look at me like I'm a piece of gum on the bottom of their shoe.

"I could find someone else to take him." Jackson offers throwing his arm around me. Now pretty much everyone in the hallway want to rip my hair out. The attention is flattering, really.

"No, you have to take him. I'll call you as soon as I get back." I promise. As soon as we walk into our first period the bell rings.

"Promise?"

"I promise, now go sit in your seat Mr. Goodie Goodie." I tease him while unwrapping his arm from around me.

"Hey, around here you're the goodie goodie." Jackson shoots back sitting in his seat.

"If only everyone knew the truth." I grin, sitting in my seat which was next to his. The rest of class went by fairly quickly. All I remember hearing was that we had a project to complete that was due next month, everyone and I mean everyone jumped up to be Jackson's partner, and he turned down all of them because he can't let anyone know that he's actually smart because then they'll make fun of him. He would also feel bad if he let another student do most of the work so I was his last choice. I mean god forbid someone who's popular actually has a brain. For the rest of class I just doodled and didn't pay attention, and I know Jackson's going to tease me about that later on.

The bell rings for next period and everyone gets up to leave. I pack my notebook back in my backpack and stand up to leave.

"Hey so what's the project about?" I ask Jackson as we walk out of the room. We have all of our classes together which can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Ever since 6th grade we've had every class together, you can only imagine how annoying that's been. The amount of girls who would kill to be in my position.

"You weren't paying attention, were you?" He raises his eyebrow.

"Oh come on, we're partners. Just tell me." I plead.

"We're each suppose to write an essay and draw a picture of our favorite moment from our childhood, then we both have to make a poster that represents both of our favorite moments." Jackson explained. Well that's going to be difficult, I have a lot of favorite moments. One time me and Jackson snuck out of our houses and went to Walmart. All we really did was walk around and act like fools but it was still awesome. Another time we had this science project and instead we rehearsed a song and dance routine and we got an A. I mean we were in 4th grade and the teacher was super nice but still it was fun. Oh and this other time Jackson took me to my first party and some dude spiked my drink and I got really drunk I stood up on a table and started dancing, then I jumped into a pool. A couple other things happened that night, like for instance the guy who spiked my drink started to get a bit handsy and to say he got the beating of a life time from Jackson would be an understatement. That was my first and last party I ever went to, Jackson banned me from going to anymore. It's not like I wanted to go to another one anyway, I had the worse headache the next morning.

You know I'm now noticing most of my favorite moments has Jackson in them, maybe I should choose one that doesn't include him. That would have to be a moment with my parents, my real parents. But I can't really remember much about them.

"Hey, watch it nerd." An obnoxious voice snapped at me that was just dripping with hatred. I somehow ended up on the floor looking up at the queen bitch of the school, Tiffany Olsen. Mix Mother Gothel from Tangled and Lindsey Lohan's looks and you have Ms. Popular. Or combine Ursala and Maleficent. Better yet just put together every Disney villain and that's what she's like.

"Sorry." I replied quietly and started picking up my books. So here's the deal, when I'm around Jackson or my parents I'm totally normal, funny, myself but when it comes to people at my school I immediately turn into a scared puppy. I'm not exactly sure why. It's always been like that, I have absolutely no self confidence when it comes to people pushing me around and it pisses me off. Because when I'm by myself I build up all of this courage and anger but when I'm faced with using it, it all goes down the drain.

"So Jackson, when are you going to ditch this loser and start hanging out with people more of your kind?" Tiffany asked, rolling a red lolly pop in her mouth seductively. It wasn't really that seductive, more like kind of gross. Spit was running down the stick, disgusting.

"My kind, don't compare me to you. I would rather run around the school, in a dress, singing the Y.M.C.A. then ditch Lavinia for 'your kind'." Jackson snaps while helping me up. "You're so lucky you're a girl." He mumbles to himself.

"Just wait Jackson, you'll want me!" Tiffany yells as we walk away. It's been 3 years since Tiffany moved into town, and it's been 3 years since she's been trying to get Jackson to be with her. Jackson has been with almost every girl in school and Tiffany isn't one of them, and that pisses her off. Jackson is a 'oh I'm going to have sex with you and then ignore you' kind of guy. But no matter how many times you tell these girls that, they just won't listen. They think if Jackson gets with them he'll realize that they're the one. Ha, like that would happen. He's not the type to settle down. He's the type of guy that's going to bang a whole bunch of girls in high school up until his early 30's, then the aging on his face will start to show and know one will want him. He'll realize that he shouldn't have been so caught up on having sex with women and he should have looked for a nice girl to have a family with so they can live happily ever after. Trust me I've seen it happen to plenty of people. Me on the other hand, I'm going to baking school, I'm going to find a husband, then we're going to open a cake shop, and have 3 kids. I have it all planned out, a bit weird but don't tell me you don't at least have an idea of what you want for your future.

"You know I hate how you can't stand up to her." Jackson speaks through clenched teeth. "I wish you would just punch her in the face like you did to me in 3rd grade, that would teach her."

"Yeah me too." I say with a sigh. The difference between 3rd grade and now is that Jackson didn't have the whole school wrapped around his finger, Tiffany does. Jackson was also the outcast when he was younger, he thought if he made fun of someone that the kids would start liking him but all it did was get him punched in the face. Around 5th grade people started noticing his looks and BAM! He's popular.

"You know what, this is our last year in high school. I don't want to leave and give Tiffany the satisfaction that she made fun of you and you couldn't do anything about it. You're going to stand up to her sometime before graduation." Jackson turns to me with a huge smile. "And maybe give her a couple smacks here and there. Maybe it'll even break out into a cat fight!"

"Okay, you're psychotic. I'm not doing that." I roll my eyes as we walk into our 2nd period. If I even tried to stand up to Tiffany I would die of embarrassment. But Jackson's right, which is very rare. I don't want to leave high school and give Tiffany the satisfaction, that just means she wins.

"Yes you are, and I'm going to help you. I have a plan." Jackson smirks, rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist. We both turn towards the front of the class as the bell rings and the teacher walks into the room. Great the last time I followed through with one of Jackson's plans we almost got arrested. This should be good.