I should really learn to stick to a timetable. Sleeping late and waking up early was doing a very good job of pissing coach Horry off.

Today, he had me and Shirley do four sets of twenty extra push-ups for getting late in the morning for training.

What's the difference between yesterday and today?

Yesterday I went through school with my legs feeling like jelly, today I went through school with my arms feeling like jelly.

Shirley and I didn't mind jelly arms. What we did mind though, was letting Victor watch and snicker at us as coach Horry punished us when his back was turned around.

"Do you think anyone will mind if we corner and beat Victor up?" Shirley had to shout to be heard in the crowded entrance of our school.

"I don't think anyone will, except for 99% of the female population, coach Horry, coach Preston, his admirers, his parents, his friends and Sean." I yelled back.

She laughed as we pushed past the growing crowd of students in the entrance, accidentally stepping on a couple of feet.

"Sorry." I muttered to someone whose foot I'd just smashed into the ground due to my clumsiness.

Shirley didn't bother with mundane things like apologies and such, she simply barreled through people, flipping them off even if they so much as glared at her for crashing into them and probably dislocating their shoulders.

Rare are the times when Shirley shows her tender side.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" A guy who got trampled by Shirley snapped at us.

"Yes, but except for those people, the rest of us normal humans will be happy." She continued our conversation, as if she hadn't just barreled through a kid.

"The people who care about Victor being beaten are more than the people who don't." I pointed out.

There were 6 different kind of people who would care if anything happened to Victor.

1) The 99% of the female population which wanted to bang him.

2) Coach Horry and Coach Preston because he was their champion.

3) His admirers who made up most of the guys in school.

4) His parents for obvious reasons.

5) Sean, who loved Victor so much that he could considered another admirer, but was the only fan who had the honors of being accepted as Victor's friend. Sean was also in the boxing team.

6) His friends who were as much of assholes as he was.

"We're not only talking about people Em, we're talking about the safety of life on earth. Please broaden your outlook. Victor's very existence threatens to kill all that is important on earth." She said, her expression dramatic and her arms flailing around to emphasize the point and hitting a couple of faces in the process.

I smiled, Shirley's antics were not new to me. She had the habit of exaggerating everything, although, now that she was talking negatively about Victor, I wasn't sure if it was exaggeration.

"You're going a little over the top, don't you think? Victor's not so bad."

She looked at me with wide eyes as if I'd just committed a grave crime by taking his side."Not bad? You think complete and total destruction of earth is not bad?"

"And how exactly is he destroying earth with his existence?" We'd thankfully made to the lockers now, without damaging any more facial structures.

She shrugged."You know, the usual. One day his over-inflated ego is going to burst and release noxious gases which will destroy the ozone layer and let the sun's ultraviolet rays come in."

Opening my locker, I dumped most of my books in it and snorted."I'm glad you're paying attention in science class, but you're going to have to do better if you want me to help you beat up a guy and get detention."

"Damn, I was so hoping this argument would convince you to help me murder him."

"I'm already convinced, I just don't want to get caught while beating up the city's favorite kid."

"How's he the city's favorite?"

"I told you Shirley, he's mayor Watson's son."

"Oh." A thoughtful look came over her face as the bell rang, signalling the end of our conversation and the beginning of our everyday torture.

Shirley didn't move, she was still thinking."So, if I figure out a way to mess up his pretty face and not get caught, do you swear on every delicious chocolate brownie out there to help me?"

"I do." I said, trying my best to look solemn."And when are chocolate brownies not delicious?"

"Never". She agreed. The entire hallway was empty now, both of us would definitely get late to class."Then, my true friend, I shall do my very best to find a way to destroy the threat to life on earth which calls itself Victor as inconspicuously as possible, until then, goodbye."

She spun around and sprinted the other way, just for the effect.

"You're going the wrong way, my class is that way you idiot!" I shouted, already walking towards her.

She turned back around with a sheepish grin on her face."I kinda ruined the effect, didn't I?"

I nodded."And if you don't get going to class, it is your face which is going to get ruined."

She laughed and sprinted right past me. I watched her until she ran past a corner and almost slipped, when there were no sounds of pain coming from that general direction, I decided that she was safe for now and started off a sprint that resembled Shirley's in everything but the direction.

When I reached my class room, it was blatantly obvious that class had started more than fifteen minutes ago.

Bracing myself for an argument, I knocked and opened the door slowly.

"Late again Ms.Wilson?" The pot bellied, middle-aged, balding man, standing in front of the class asked, looking at me through his bushy eyebrows and huge glasses.

My face automatically turned into an awkward smile at my math teacher."Sorry, I'll be on time tomorrow Mr. Ellis."

I made my way into the class room and sat down on the first chair that was empty.

"That's what you say everyday Ms. Wilson, if this goes on, I will be forced to give you detention." He tried to threaten me. Tried being the key word. Students in Greeneville High didn't get threatened that easily, the last time a student got a detention was last year. Everyone had their own way of getting out of it, mine being never receiving it in the first place.

Getting out of detention became easier if you were into any sport. Even cheerleading gave you a special position.

I glanced at the clock hung high above his head and smiled. "I know, but today I came in 6 minutes earlier than yesterday, so that's some improvement right? If I keep this up, one day I'll even make it on time to class."

He narrowed his eyes at me and was momentarily blinded as his bushy eyebrows drew together and covered his glasses.

Taking off his glasses in frustration, he huffed. "I expect you to be on-"

What he wanted to say next, no one would know, because the reason for 'complete and total destruction of earth' , as Shirley put it, entered that very second.

Victor strolled in, looking perfect, as usual, his blonde hair gelled back, wearing a pair of dark jeans, a checked shirt and an annoying smirk on his face.

He wasn't a bad looking person, not at all. Boxing and good genes had given him a good profile. He was over six feet tall, had broad shoulders, blue eyes and a smile that could break a lot of girls' hearts, which he did frequently

Thankfully, I never found his smile remotely attractive, so that wasn't a problem. In fact, every time he smiled, I felt nauseous.

Since he was so perfect, he became a player, taking a different girl into his car and his bed a few days later each time he felt horny.

He walked in like he wasn't late and the rest of us were merely early.

The girl sitting beside me swooned, along with the rest of the girls, possibly even some guys.

Without bothering to acknowledge the fact that Victor was late, Mr. Ellis turned around and started writing on the white board. Did I mention that boxing and being the mayor's son gave you a special position?

Victor, still smirking, sauntered through the class room and settled in down on a seat right at the back of the class.

"Hey guys." He called out to his friends, without the least respect for the teacher.

His friends answered his call and then it got quiet except for when a girl he was sitting next to, probably his future bang-buddy giggled a couple of times.

Few minutes into the class, I was so bored that I couldn't help but wish Shirley were here. She would have given that girl something to giggle about. Shirley hated every one of Victor's admirers.

Unfortunately, she couldn't be in the same class with me because she was two years younger to me, which meant that we weren't even in the same grade.

In the entire school, Shirley was my only friend, she was the only person in the school who could get me, who knew everything about me and who I could relate to. The same went for her, she had zero friends apart from me.

The only thing she didn't know about me was my love for writing. Sure, she knew that I liked writing, but she didn't know how much I loved it and how I was already writing something now.

No one did.

There are not many times when you see two teenagers who are grades apart being such good friends, but I guess that's just how it worked for me and Shirley.

I opened my books with the intention of actually listening to Mr. Ellis and taking down notes like the good girl I was supposed to be.

It wasn't long before last night's missed sleep took over me, making me put my books right back into my bag and fall asleep on the desk.

I successfully slept through all the classes before lunch without getting caught, not unlike more than half of the other students in my classes.

-----------------

I sat alone at lunch, in the corner of the room, eating more green stuff produced in my mom's garden.

It wasn't the most delicious kind of food, but I didn't have many options. It was either the green stuff given by mom, or green stuff made by the school, which was infinitely more disgusting.

While most schools offered at least some sort of junk food in their cafeterias to their students, Greenville's idea of junk food was a bunch of peas and baked potatoes thrown together, we never had stuff like pizza, pasta or even some roasted chicken.

It wasn't always like this, I could still remember the days when Greeneville used to have greasy pizzas on their daily menu.

Our school's health drive could be blamed on coach Horry. About 7 years ago, when he started training boxers, he took a visit to our cafeteria. What he saw here almost gave him a heart attack, one week later, the cafeteria lady forgot the meaning of pizza. It was later found out that coach Horry and coach Preston got together and pulled every string they could to modify the school lunch.

So, yeah, here I was, eating gross leaves and wishing Shirley and I had the same lunch period.

In other schools, being the quarterback or cheerleader gave you a special place in its social ladder, in Greeneville, boxing gave you the same position.

Especially if you were a guy or a hot girl.

Sure, we had football players and cheerleaders just like any other school, but boxers were given the same importance for some reason.

Everyone in the boxing team was popular and well loved, except for me.

Maybe it had something to do with me not having all the qualifications required. I wasn't a guy who could box, and I wasn't a hot girl either.

It didn't bother me as much as Hannah thought it should.

We boxers even had a separate table reserved for us, which was mostly used by Hannah and Victor and his on and off girlfriend who broke up with him every time he cheated on her, and made up with him every time he wanted her to.

Most of the popular crowd went there for lunch, and if I wanted to, I could've sat there with them and tried to make more friends, but honestly, I was fine with the friends I had.

Stuffing the last of the leaves down my throat, I pulled out my headphones and adjusted it on my head.

Taylor Swift's Mine started playing on it, I put it on repeat, deciding that this would be the song of this week.

For some reason, I loved Taylor Swift.

'Song of the week' was something started doing years ago. I had a habit of falling in love with a song and sticking with it for one week before moving on to the next one.

The rest of the day passed quickly enough because I didn't have math or Victor to deal with. Math, as I'd mentioned earlier, was my worst subject and math was also the only class that Victor and I shared. So once all the math classes got over in the morning, the rest of the classes didn't feel so bad.

-------------------------

"Good afternoon coach." I greeted coach Preston, jogging around the room.

This was another example of how important boxing was in Greeneville, our small team even had a separate room built exclusively for us with three boxing rinks and four (because one was broken) punching bags.

Maybe it had something to do with the mayor's son being in the team.

Coach Preston nodded at my greeting and continued ticking people's names off as they entered the room. If anyone misses today, they'll hear about loud and clear tomorrow, coach Preston didn't have any inhibitions of expressing his opinion on people who missed class.

Which I did.

Just yesterday.

Once he had made sure that everyone was present, he shut his book with a thud and started pairing people off for practice. The ones who he didn't pair with someone would have to practice on the punching bag today.

I saw Shirley turn and smirk at me from around her punching bag, her bright eyes twinkling with anticipation of Preston's latest lecture on 'coming to class everyday' for me.

As if on cue, he shouted from across the room."Wilson! Why the hell did you skip class yesterday!"

"My ankle coach!" I shouted right back. Although I didn't enjoy shouting, standing close to Preston would definitely land him in prison and me in a morgue.

I was doing both of us a favour  by staying away.

Preston surprisingly didn't react that much, instead he said."How is it now?"

I'd expected him to do more than ask me how my ankle was, but I guess he was used to me skipping practice because of my injuries.

"Alright sir!" I yelled.

"Pair up with Hannah and start practicing the new move I taught you last week, then. And be careful with your ankle."

"Yes sir!" The sneaky little thing, he knew how much I hated Hannah, and was punishing me by pairing me up with her. He must have realized that shouting himself hoarse at me would only result in him losing his voice.

Which, by the way, won't be so bad.

Cursing my luck, I dragged my feet to the only empty rink and started exchanging blows with Hannah.

There's a good reason I hated boxing with Hannah, that girl played dirty. She did everything she could to make me look like a fool for the next two hours by tripping me up, kicking me, randomly showing me her back in the middle of an intense fight, taunting me and once she even tried to pull my glove off in the middle of another intense fight she was losing.

Everything she did was against boxing etiquette.

Most of the time, no one noticed it, and the few times someone did notice my situation, they just assumed it was because of my clumsiness.

I didn't know you could get kicked multiple times in your stomach by being clumsy while you aren't even kick-boxing.

Hannah's dirty play didn't effect me as much as I pretended it did, every time she cheated and hurt me, I made it a point to hurt her back the same way she did.

By the time we were done, Hannah's face was covered with bruises and my head filled with frustration.

Irritation.

Restlessness.

And every other emotion that makes you want to disfigure someone- in my case, Hannah. This was completely normal though, whenever Hannah and I partnered up, the result always included me wanting to cut her head off, she had an innate ability to screw up my practice session.

This was my last year in school and next year, in college, getting enough boxing practice would be impossible, so I wanted to make the best of what I had this year, and every time coach paired me the she-devil, it meant a screwed up practice.

"I really hate her, you know?" Pulling off my gloves and tape, I stuffed them in my bag, glad practice was over.

"I don't think it's possible to not hate her." Shirley said, copying my actions.

"She messed up my practice again."

"I know, just chill. I'll talk to Preston and convince him to partner me and you next time."

As much as Preston hated Shirley, she still was the most talented boxer in the team, he was even hoping to get her into boxing professionally before college, that was also why he took her to a lot more tournaments than he did us. If anyone could convince him not to torture me tomorrow, it had to be her.

Shirley and I didn't get kicked out of the team for very different reasons. If coach had found a replacement for me, I would've been out of the team In a blink, but Shirley was so talented and strong that she was irreplaceable, she was literally his prize student, the one who would make him proud sometime in the future.

Coach wasn't the only one who recognized her talent, practically everyone in school knew how talented she was and tried to suck up to her. But being who she was, she flipped anyone off if they so much as tried to suck up to her, nipping them in the bud.

And although she was very talented, she had a problem, the same one I did- mood swings, if she was in a lazy mood or a bad mood, she couldn't fight to save her life.

At least bad moods made her fight wildly, if she was feeling lazy, she might as well be a corpse in the rink.

"You'll do that?" I asked her.

"Sure, I can't have you looking like you ate a bad curry forever, don't worry about it. You coming for pizza today?" She asked.

Since all of us were forced to eat healthy food three meals a day, all of us in the team had started going to this pizza place opposite our school, it wasn't long before the entire place got filled with other students from Greeneville who were into sports. Boxers, football players, basket ball players, tennis players and any other athletes met up there whenever the physical exertion became too much.

It was the our safe haven where we could discuss our coaches' cruelty and not get caught.

We went there once or twice, sometimes even thrice every week. Apparently today was one of those days.

Although I badly wanted to go, I shook my head."No, I have to go home and study, I can't afford to get bad grades in the finals."

Shirley frowned at me, trying to understand what I was doing here, she obviously didn't believe me when I said I was going to miss pizza evening to go home and study.

"You're actually going to study."

I nodded."Mom's not happy with me."

"Okay, guess I'll just go home too." She was clearly disappointed. She didn't want to go for pizza alone.

"You can hang out with Cheryl." Cheryl was the only other bearable person in the team.

"Yeah, she's not bad is she?"

"Hey, you guys coming?" Cheryl called from the entrance eagerly.

"I'll see you tomorrow, go have fun." I said.

Shirley nodded in agreement."Having only one friend sucks."

"But I'm the best!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." She muttered, but smiled as she walked towards Cheryl.

Although I hated lying to her about studying, I wasn't sure if I was ready to tell her- or anyone my writing dream.

--------------------

When I went to Little Hearts cafe today, Ethan was nowhere to be seen

After spending fifteen minutes just sitting idly and twiddling my thumbs, I decided to check in the park.

I spotted him almost immediately, sitting on my usual spot and doing what he did everyday.

I watched the smoke rings floating upwards from his mouth before cursing my stupidity and scurrying out of the cafe and into the park.

He didn't notice me until I was right behind him, making me consider scaring him by pouncing at him from behind.

The idea was very appealing but a little too immature for people like me, so I simply tapped him on the shoulder.

He didn't turn around, so I tapped him again.

When he didn't react, I lost my patience and slapped him on the back, making him jump in his seat and spin around with a jerk.

I took one step, then a few more steps backwards when he showed me his face.

Because looking at me, his face twisted in irrational irritation, a smoke in his mouth and enough piercings to make him look like a fishing net, was not Ethan.

He looked a little like Ethan, especially from behind, but unless Ethan had decided to get a drastic plastic surgery done to his face, shaved off his eyebrows and pierced every available spot on his face, all in one night's time, this couldn't be him.

"What?" His tone said that he was ready to pummel me into the ground if the reason I'd disturbed his smoking didn't have enough importance. His voice was raspy, like it had been a long time since he last used his throat.

I took a few more steps back and readied myself to make a run for it. Those eyebrows or lack of eyebrows was scaring me.

Then, out of nowhere, or maybe from right behind me, came his voice.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

This time, there was no mistake, the voice could only be Mr. Grumpy's. And he sounded....well....Grumpy with a big 'G'.

Author's note- So, yeah, the 8 part. Thanks for reading please let me know what you think, I need feedback to improve, and I definitely need to improve.

But thanks anyway:)

Cyan