It's been about five minutes. Which, in any other case, may not seem like a long time, but when you're waiting on someone, five minutes seem like five hours. And that someone being Ryder makes these five minutes feel like five days.

The bathroom isn't that far, but I don't hear him talking. Is he whispering? Why did he even leave? It's just Ashely; he could've stayed. I wouldn't care if he talked to her in front of me. It is his girlfriend.

I continue to tap my pencil against the paper, anxiously counting the seconds that go past. I throw the paper down onto the table and head down the hall; I'll just check to see if he's okay. As I walk up to the bathroom door, I notice his feet moving back and forth from under the door. When I put my hand up to the door about to knock, I stop and put it back down.

Maybe I should just go back and wait for him; what if he's mad? What if he gets mad at me for rushing him?

Then again, he shouldn't get mad; this is my house. I get ready to knock on the door again, and before I can attempt to knock, the door flies open. His green eyes are filled with rage. I look down at his tattooed arm; his veins are showing through the black ink symbol. I've never seen a symbol like that before. I wonder what it means. "Are you okay?" I ask.

"I'm fine," he walks past me. I follow the tallboy down the hallway back into the living room.

"If you have to leave or you like... can't... be here, you can leave. I'll figure it out." I say.

"It's fine. Can we just get this done?" He sits back onto the couch.

...

"Okay, so we chose popular and unpopular; those are our modern-day Montague and Captures. So the million-dollar question. Why do we hate each other?"

He thinks and then says, "We hate each other because we come from two different worlds, I guess, and the unpopular hate us because they want to be us." He says with a light chuckle.

"And what makes you think that unpopular people wanna be like you?" I growl at his egotistic comment.

"I mean, who doesn't want to be popular? We are cool, rich, and good looking. And we throw kick-ass parties."

I squint my eyes. "You do realize that everything you just said makes you sound like an ass, right?"

"A popular ass." He throws back.

"You're right, and that's why the unpopular don't like you because none of you have substance or character," I explain. "You do whatever you want to whoever you want. And you guys don't understand how your actions affect everyone around you."

He looks at me and shrugs his shoulders. "I guess we don't." he simply says.

I shake my head and begin to write. The words are coming to me naturally. It's easy for me now because we have yet to get to the love part. I know that that will be the most difficult for me. But as for now, the words come to me naturally because I'm writing about the world I live in every day.

It's been about half an hour now, and I've written three chapters. Ryder reaches for the remote on the table and presses play on the movie. "What are you doing?" I ask him looking up from the paper.

"I'm watching a movie," he says.

I snatch the remote out of his hand and pause the movie back. "Uhh, we're working,"

"No, you're working. I'm not doing anything, and I'm bored." he reaches over and snatches the remote out of my hand again. I reach for the remote, but he moves it further away from me.

"Ryder!"

"What? I want to look at it. I've never seen it before." He says.

He must have got my house confused with a theater, "Well, you can go home and watch it on your own."

"What if I want to watch it with you?" he looks at me. Is he joking, maybe this works on Ashely and whoever else he's been with, but it won't work on me.

"I know this may be something you've never heard before...but I don't care what you want," I say. "You're not over here to watch movies. You're here because of the project and project only. And I'm not finished. All that movie is going to do is distract me."

He huffs aggressively and says, "Fine, well, do you have any food? I'm starving."

I roll my eyes. "No. We don't. You are welcomed to leave and go pick something up." I hope he leaves.

He frowns at my words. "I'll just do delivery." He stands up. "You want pizza?" He asks.

"Yes, whatever that's fine."

...

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rings. For a minute, I thought it was my parents. It's like eight something, and they're still not back; they can be back at any minute now, and I know my dad will be mad that Ryders here.

Ryder stands up from the couch. "I'll pay for it," I say. I get off the couch too.

He grabs my arm, stopping me, "You don't need to do that." He says I'm standing close to him. My head is by his chest.

I look at him into his green eyes. "It's my house,"

"And?" he scrunches his face together.

"And I wanna pay for it." I pull away from him. I need to spend that money, so my mom will know I ate. I can't tell her somebody ordered me food. I rush over to the kitchen table and grab the $50, then go to the door. I open it, and it is a familiar scrawny looking boy standing in front of me. He has on black glasses and has terrible acne. His brown hair is short. He smiles at me, and it reveals his silver braces. I remember who he is now. "Robert?"

"Ja-- Ja --Jayda," He stutters out.

I smile at him. "How are you?" I ask. I haven't seen him since tenth grade.

"I'm g-- go-- good." His stutter is familiar. I remember the kids used you to make fun of him because of his stuttering.

"What school do you go to now?" He left Crossland tenth-grade year.

"I -- I--I'm ho--homeschooled."

"Wow, really?!" That didn't even cross my mind; I haven't seen him since he left; I thought maybe he moved. "That's awesome. Why did you leave Crossland?"

"My m-- mom, she t--t--thought it wo--would be better for me." He looks so nervous. He doesn't even look me in the eyes while talking. I remember hearing he was in a huge fight involving him and some guys at school. After the fight, he never came back. I didn't know the two were connected.

"Do you like it? Being homeschooled?" I always wanted to be homeschooled.

"Y--yeah, its wa-- way better th-- than public school."

"Why is that?" I ask with a smile on my face. I don't have to ask; I know it has to be better learning at home than at school; there are too many distractions. Every day feels like a freaky reality show.

"Because I d-- don't have t--to deal w-- with--" He stops mid-sentence, and I wait for him to finish. I thought he was in the middle of a stutter until I felt a warm body behind me. Its Ryder; that's why he stopped.

I turn and look up at Ryder, who is staring Robert down. Robert looks straight at the ground.

"Th--That'll b--be 22.22," he says.

"Uhh, okay." I hand him the $50, and Ryder takes the box a little too forcefully out his hands. Robert flinches.

"Keep the change," Ryder says and closes the door in his face.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I snap. He walks into the kitchen and places the pizza on the island. He tries to open the box, but I slam my hand against it and keep it closed. "What was that for? He was scared of you. Do you even remember who he was?"

"Yeah, it was that punk Robert Koloski. I beat him up; that's why he was scared." He has the most disgusting look on his face.

Of course, he was the one that fought him. Ryder and his friends bullied him all the time. "No, no, if I remember correctly, you did more than beat him up. You bullied him every day. You bullied him so much that fighting was the last resort; that's why his mom pulled him out of school." I yell, putting together all the pieces.

"Okay yeah, I beat him up a couple of times; the guys and I messed with him," he admits. "So what, though? He looks fine to me. I did him a favor. Now he is homeschooled and doesnt have to get beaten up or bullied anymore." He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly.

"Are you kidding me right now? Did you not see the look on his face? He was terrified when he saw you. Yeah, he's physically fine, but did you ever stop to think how this boy felt every day after being bullied, after getting beat up?"

"To be honest, I didn't care." He says carelessly.

"Right because you're a popular ass. Who doesn't care about anybody but yourself?"

"Shut the hell up," he yells at me, slamming his hand on the island. I'm taken back by his aggression by his anger. "You don't know anything about me, so don't act as if you do." He growls.

" And you don't know anything about him or me; that's why you think that we are perfectly fine."

"You're fine!" he shouts, a small vein shows from the side of his neck. "Okay, we messed with that kid, but he's fine, he left, he ran from us like a bitch, but he's fine." he presses his lips together. "And yes, rumors were made about you, you don't have any friends, you're a loner, I get it, but you're fine." He says completely wrong. "People do shit to you all the time, but yet you seem fine."

Without thinking, I pull back my shirt sleeves. "This Ryder, this is how they affected me. This is how all of you guy's actions affected me" His eyes go wide, his forest green eyes rake over the cuts on my arms. So while everyone, including you, stood back and made fun of me and said all those horrible things about me, this is what I did when I came back home." I point to the deepest scars, the scars that I made trying to end it all. "And when I left in the middle of Junior year to get help, I had to come back to the same thing. Which led to these." I point at the little cuts, the newer one. Tears rush from my eyes and down my cheeks.

"Jayda, Im--"

No, get out!" I shout. "Don't you dare say you're sorry because you're not? You don't even know what you're sorry for. So just leave.

He moves closer to me and places his hand on my face forcing me to look at him. Please just go, I whisper out. He removes his hand and walks around me. The front door slams shut, and I jump a little at the loud impact. I lean against the island and just cry; I dont want to cut, I don't want to take my pills.

I just want to cry.

I scream as loud as I can to the top of my lungs.

(It took me like 2 hours to write this chapter. I hope you guys like it. )