Have you ever had a day where you feel like you're moving around in molasses and everyone else is just speeding along? I don't know what it was but that was happening to me, I had meant to pull my earphones out but had obviously not been fast enough for Ilyse.

If anyone was counting, it had taken around about five minutes for my legs to kick into action. My brain was screaming at me to move, to follow Ilyse and yell for her to stop but my legs and body were that far behind that Ilyse was off school grounds heading towards god only knew where.

When I caught up to her I put a hand on her shoulder, which made her jump a good few feet in the air. She spun on me and smacked my hand away, glaring at me with something close to strong dislike. I'd never really seen that level of dislike in anyones eyes before so it was a bit sobering to see it there in her eyes.

"I'm sorry...I seem to be apologizing a lot lately. But sorry, it's a slow day for my brain. Ya know? So, what did you have planned? Or are we still going with the flow thing?" I didn't really want to give Ilyse the option of telling me to get lost, I needed this thing to work out. Sure I could be trying a hell of a lot harder but it was hard to get going when you'd been standing still for so long.

"You're really starting to rub me the wrong way Keelan and no, you can't rub me the right way." I frowned, I wasn't even thinking about offering to rub Ilyse the right way. She wasn't my type by a long shot but I'd never said that out loud.

"Okay, that was random. Whatever. Can we just go?" I asked impatiently, the thought that Ilyse was even thinking that way while she was supposedly mentoring me was kinda disturbing.

We carried on walking in silence, I followed Ilyse as we walked along the quiet road that led back to the town center.

"So we don't actually have a structure or rules to how this mentoring thing works. We go with whatever we want to do and seeing as I seem to normalize people faster than most other people Mrs. Gasfell thinks that I get better results. So that's why we're sticking with this go with the flow thing, because it seems to work. I don't know what we're doing today, maybe we'll end up sitting in the park, maybe we'll end up near the beach or maybe we'll end up fighting again." I scoffed. We'd probably end up bickering again and then I'd storm off, because I hated being wrong around people who lorded the fact over your head.

"What? Do you have better suggestions? If you haven't noticed, we're doing things you don't like. Because everything you liked doing so far has landed you in deep shit, so why don't you give something new a try? You never know, you might actually end up being a nicer person." I took offense to what Ilyse had just said, I was a nice person. People were just too stupid to want to get to know me, I wasn't bad until someone pissed me off or just assumed the randomest sh*t about me or my family.

"How do you know what I do and don't like? It's not like we're best friends or anything." Ilyse gave me a knowing look, it was then I realized who had told Ilyse what I would have liked and what I actively avoided.

"God damn, why'd you ask my sister about me?" The guys had joked that once I got a girlfriend that I'd have to keep Nat's mouth glued shut. I thought they'd been joking about it but it seemed they were right, I wouldn't be so cruel as to glue her mouth shut but I was going to have to tell her to keep a lid on things. The last thing I wanted was Nat telling her 'best friend' things that I didn't want anyone outside of the family to know.

"Seriously? I can talk to the wall longer than I can talk to you...and conversation would probably be a lot better than it has been. Talking to you is like trying to get blood out of a rock, not to mention I'm still annoyed at you for the night at the fair." God, women were hard work. Had I not already apologized for that? I wondered briefly how long Ilyse would hold that against me, did I need to get on the ground and grovel at her feet?

The thought of begging for someones forgiveness was humiliating and there was no way anyone would catch me stooping that low for someones approval.

"No sh*t? Well guess what sunshine, you're not the most exciting person to talk to either? You're about as interesting as a wilted flower in a bunch of fresh roses. Nothing about you screams 'pick me' and I'm guessing that's what you scream nine times out of ten because everyone just walks by you and never, ever notices." The way Ilyse shut her mouth and narrowed her eyes made me wonder if I'd been right, it was then I realized I'd done it again.

I'd let my anger get the better of me, Ilyse hadn't attacked me directly. She'd commented on the interaction between the both of us, I'd taken it a step further and insulted her. Groaning inwardly I looked to the sky and silently asked for help from anyone watching, what the f*ck was I supposed to do with a girl who was mentoring me?

Again we lapsed back into silence, though I think it was more on Ilyses' part than mine. The longer it stayed quiet the longer I realized I was probably getting the silent treatment for my stupidity.

When we arrived at the local ice cream parlor I waited to see what Ilyse had to say but she didn't say anything. She went to the counter and ordered something off the menu before going to take a seat at one of the side booths. I ordered a bowl of ice cream with all the trimmings and slid into the booth opposite Ilyse, I was kinda nervous...had I really hit that big of a nerve?

Ilyse wouldn't look at me as we waited there for our order to be delivered.

"My dad killed my mom when I was young, I think I was eight or something. I came to live with the Poller's not long after that. I get pretty worked up around this time of year, it'll be nine years in a few weeks since my mom's been gone." That got Ilyse's attention, though there wasn't the same pity in her eyes that I usually saw in other peoples eyes whenever I told them that much.

"I'm sorry to hear that, it's obviously still a huge part of your life now. Is that what the fight with Brock was about? Nat never told me about that...all she said was that you were working through some things in your past and I never really asked because it's none of my business." Ilyse shrugged, she'd ordered a chocolate milkshake and was currently chugging it down like it was water. What I'd ordered couldn't be chugged or scoffed down so went to grab another spoon and held it out to Ilyse.

She took it reluctantly as I sat back down.

"You can have half of it, I thought you'd ordered a sundae too so I ordered one. I don't know that I can eat the whole thing, so you might as well help me out with it." I began digging in, truth be told I could have finished the whole thing but it would have been weird to eat the sundae in front of Ilyse while she sat there waiting.

I kind of watched out of the corner of my eye as Ilyse began tentatively eating her side of the ice cream, at first she barely touched it. But the more she ate the bigger her spoonfuls got until she was eating big bits of ice cream. I was going to warn her about eating too much too fast but the inevitable brain freeze beat me to it and Ilyse was soon clutching at her forehead while making odd noises.

"You might want to slow it down a bit, too much ice cream too fast leads to the sore head." I pipped up once Ilyse had gotten over the initial pain of her headache and began eating again but this time it was noticeably slower than when she'd started out.

"So, like no one knows about what happened with your parents and such?" I shook my head at the question, I think if people in this town knew what had happened between my parents all those years ago they'd call me worse names than what they actually called my right now.

"I mean, it's not like I cared that much about my dad anyway. He and my mom were getting divorced, he barely ever visited anyways and I'd only ever seen him a handful of times. But my mom, she deserved so much better than what she got. And that's how I ended up with the Poller's. They fostered me at first, I guess me and Nat just kinda clicked and I fell into place. Everything else after that was just formalities." It's weird talking about this to someone other than my family, it made me start realizing that I had grown so comfortable with my family that I'd taken them for granted.

"Do you ever hold what your biological father did against your adopted father?" When Ilyse asked the question, my first instinct was to deny any and all things regarding my feelings. But when I thought about it more I realized that in some ways I had held it against my adoptive father and in realizing that I also came to understand that it was why we weren't so close and why he didn't spend as much time with me as he used to.

"No sh*t Ilyse, Mrs. Gasfell was right...you're good at this." All the realizations that came in those few moments were enough to blow my mind. Had Ilyse set out to achieve this all along or was this how she worked? Was she even supposed to do this sort of stuff?

I didn't know and really didn't need to know the answers. But as we sat there eating ice cream I realized that she'd gotten me to think about my situation in a way that no one else had. She'd really, finally gotten me to look at my situation from where an outsider might stand and it made me truly, really understand that I'd been treating my family like sh*t.

A/N: I just realized that my work schedule is about to get ridiculous, so this might be my last update for the next month or so. I'll try to get an update in whenever I can (which might still be the same as usual) but, this is just a warning.