Author's Notes: I quit watching the show before it was even cancelled, but I have had this idea for a fanfiction for quite sometime now, so I have finally decided to write it. This is my first Lizzie McGuire piece, so be gentle! And a fair warning: If you are at all against homosexuality, turn back now.

CHAPTER 1: Hello, My Lovely

I could feel the early morning sun greeting me through closed lids. I opened my eyes, just a crack, and was met with bright rays, commanding me to leave the warmth and comfort of my bed. An unpleasant groan escaped my sour-smelling breath, followed by a loud yawn. Reluctantly, I rose from bed and stretched, my muscles felt like I had just released them from years of imprisonment and now they were celebrating.

It was time for school.

I loathed school. I loathed it with a deep burning passion that spread to my limbs and made me clench my fists with anger. I suppose there was no real reason for my strong hatred of school. Well, at least no obvious one. To the casual observer, I pretty much had it made for a seventeen year old senior in high school: Straight As, wonderful friends, a loving family.

But I didn't have someone to love. I didn't have someone to love me. And I was alone. So very alone. I felt the emptiness inside, hollowing out my body until there was nothing left but a shell of a girl. There was no one at school who I was romantically interested in. I hadn't been interested in anyone since middle school.

I quietly laughed. Middle school. Seems like that was a million years ago.

But, in retrospect, those so-called "romantic interests" weren't really interests at all. I was desperately seeking the normality that is being a teenage girl and having a boyfriend. I wanted to be like everyone else; Have the boyfriend, the clothes, the popularity. But I wasn't like everyone else. There was something very different about me that I could never quite put my finger on. And it took me years to finally accept that.

Moving slowly, I made my way into the bathroom, my body feeling like jello. I stood in front of the mirror and carefully scanned my reflection; My long corn-silk locks fell haphazardly around my shoulders. My pores looked huge, like massive craters in some far away planet. My face was dotted with zits.

I shrugged.

"Nothing a comb and some cover-up can't fix."

I sauntered down the stairs and into the kitchen where my father was sitting at the table, his nose buried in the newspaper and a cup of piping hot coffee beside him.

My mother was leaning over the stove, focusing intently on flipping a pancake over on it's opposite side.

"Good morning," I said, rather cheerfully.

Dad just gave a small nod, acknowledging my presence without even looking away from the paper.

Mom, on the other hand, was always so attentive. She turned and looked in my direction, a big grin forming on her face. I watched as her eyes looked over my body, moving up and down.

I felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

"Lizzie, that is such a nice outfit! Oh, and your hair looks so good, too." she chirped.

I smiled and looked down at my clothing. A dark brown blouse with bell sleeves, dark blue jeans, and black flip-flops. Nothing special, mom. Just a simple outfit. Then I touched my hair, which was pulled halfway back. Nothing special there, either. Why does my mother always think I look so wonderful?

I thanked her and took a seat at the table.

"Do you want pancakes, sweetie?"

"You know it, mom."

Mom was an incredible woman. She was always being the dutiful wife and mother, cooking and cleaning and offering advice. And she never complained about any of her motherly obligations. She just went through with them with a smile on her face. She was always giving with out any expectations.

"So, this is your final year of high school," dad said, finally pulling his eyes away from the paper and looking at me.

I just nodded.

"You going to miss it when you graduate?"

I almost choked on my orange juice from letting out a small laugh at his ridiculous question.

"Hell no!" I exclaimed, my throat burning and my eyes watering from my brush with choking on the early morning beverage.

Dad laughed and shook his head.

"Hey, bitch face."

I looked up to see my younger brother, Matt, standing a few feet away from me with a wicked smile on his face.

"MATTHEW!" my mom's voice bellowed. "What did I tell you about using that kind of language?"

Matt stood there, looking like a deer caught in headlights. He began to whine.

"But you let Lizzie cuss all the time!"

My father corrected him. "Not THAT much, but she's older anyway. You are only fourteen."

"Yeah," Matt said, folding his arms across his chest, "But you obviously don't know how we freshmen let the obscenities fly out."

Mom put two pancakes on the empty plate in front of me. I grabbed the syrup and drenched the delicious fluffy circles in the sugary sweet goo. I picked up my fork and began poking at one.

God, this is going to be such a long day.

As I opened the double glass doors, I was hit with a suddengust of cool air.

The halls were crowded with bustling high school students. A sea of heads and elbows and hands and backpacks.

A few of them kept hitting into me, on accident I'm sure, but being jabbed in the chest by some sophomore's shoulder was enough to piss me off for an eternity.

"Watch your goddamn step," I shouted, pointing at the boy.

"Shut the hell up," he yelled while running away.

I stomped over to my locker where my two best friends, Gordo and Miranda were standing.

"You look mad," Miranda said.

I opened up my locker, grabbed my first four period books, and slammed it shut with a loud bang.

"Today just isn't my day, Miranda. I hate this place. I hate it so much."

"Relax!" Gordo said, touching my arm. "You're getting all worked up. We graduate in June anyway."

I huffed and leaned back against my locker. "Yeah, but it's only January right now."

Miranda and Gordo, as if on cue, both rolled their eyes at me.

Why do they have to be like that? Why can't they just try to understand? Sometimes they can be so insensitive.

As other students continued to pass, I watched as they stopped and said hi to Miranda. She was saying hello to them, smiling that pearly white smile, waving like a goddamn fake plastic beauty queen.

I couldn't believe how much she had changed.

Miranda, Gordo, and I had been best friends for years. We went through so much together. Miranda and I were always striving to be something better. We constantly sought out popularity and admiration from our peers. That is what we wanted.

Miranda got it.

I didn't.

The previous year, in eleventh grade, Miranda managed to find herself a boyfriend. Some guy named Jack, who Gordo and I appropriately nicknamed 'Jack Ass'. I didn't particularly like the boy from the first moment that I met him. He struck me as vulgar, careless, and shallow. He would tease anyone and everyone, pay other people to do his assignments, and skip classes to go outside to the parking lot and get high with his equally trashy friends. But Miranda was blind. She was convinced that he was some terrific guy.

They began having sex two months after they started dating. Two months. Talk about jumping the gun. And to make matters worse, she would share every detail of their sexual escapades with me.

It disgusted me, like a firm hand wrapping around my stomach and squeezing it.

I stood by her side though, continuing to play the role of the best friend, listening to her bitch about every single one of his obnoxious idiosyncrasies and supporting her through three false pregnancy scares.

It angered me. It frustrated me. Especially when she stopped spending time with Gordo and I and devoted every single hour to her precious dead-beat boyfriend. He took her to wild parties and introduced her to a social circle that both she and I had always dreamed of being a part of. It was as though she jumped into a convertible onto the fast road to popularity and left me standing behind in the dirt storm caused by the screeching tires.

And then it happened. Jack dumped her ass. And she ended up on my doorstep at eleven o'clock at night, broken hearted with mascara tear-stained cheeks.

I automatically went back to the role of the best friend without any hesitation. I helped her mend the wounds left by Jack, and I forgave her for most of what she did to me, but I still held a grudge against her. There was a distance between us after that that nothing could close - not even hours of phone conversations and confessed secrets. The friendship had been tainted. I had been tainted. I was used and pushed aside. She still remained friends with all of the 'popular' kids who she got to know while she was with Jack, and every time I saw her laughing with one of them or walking through the cafeteria chatting away with one of them, I felt a bitter stab of anger.

She was fake. Everyone was fake. Except for Gordo, who remained my closest friend and confidante throughout the trials and tribulations of high school.

The bell rang and everyone scurried to homeroom. I felt someone's elbow poke me in the back. I almost turned around and hollered at the culprit, but I decided to just let it go.

Screw it.

I was sitting in the library alone at a table, staring at a complicated Calculus problem. The numbers danced through my mind as I tried to figure out the equation. But the problem just kept getting blurrier and blurrier the longer I stared at it.

I slammed my book shut in a fit of anger and brought my fingers up to my temples, rubbing either side. Looking around the library, curious about what everyone else was up to, my eyes stopped on a girl standing over by the bookcases. This girl was new. I had never seen her before at school. She was leaning against one of the bookcases, a book in her hand.

I carefully studied her.

She was obviously engrossed by the book. Her brow was furrowed, and I saw her chestnut brown eyes moving over the words, taking each one in and locking it inside of a special place in her memory. Her light auburn hair fell down around her face and past her shoulders. It reminded me of the color of a leaf that you would see falling from a tree on a cool Autumn afternoon. Her skin was smooth and milky. Her body was thick and voluptuous – she was not overweight, but she had curves. She wore a fuzzy long-sleeved maroon sweater that flowed over her body, all the way down to her knees. She also had on black baggy dress slacks and black shiny boots.

There was something about her. Something that I found fascinating. I didn't know what it was, but I chalked it all up to the fact that I had never seen her before.

I found myself staring at her for the longest time. She must've felt my eyes on her because she slowly looked up and shyly smirked in my direction.

I felt my cheeks burning. I smirked back and quickly averted my gaze down to my Calculus book. I opened it back up and pretended that I was busy, when I was really trying to make myself look like someone who wasn't just staring at someone else!

As I attempted to scrunch my face up to make myself look confused at what was in the book, a faint smell of vanilla suddenly filled my nose, and I felt a presence at my side. I looked up to see two dark pools staring down at me.

"Hi," this mystery girl said softly, her auburn tresses framing her face.

"Hi," I said, smiling. "You can sit down, if you want."

She took a seat next to me and put her book down in front of her.

"The Catcher in the Rye," I said, motioning toward the book and reading the cover.

"Yeah," she said, bunching her shoulders up. "I think you saw me standing over there by the bookcases reading it."

Suddenly, I felt embarrassed.

Is she trying to say that she knows I was staring?

She must've seen the embarrassment in my face because she touched my wrist and asked what was wrong.

"Nothing," I said, trying to force a smile.

I looked into her face. There was something different about her, something that I had never seen before in another human being. She was very interesting to me.

"Are you new here?" I asked.

"Yes, this is my first day, actually."

"Oh wow. Well, welcome. My name is Lizzie McGuire."

"I'm Veronica. Veronica Royersbea."

Veronica. That is a very nice name.

"You look like a Veronica!" I said with a laugh.

She let out a soft chuckle.

What an interesting girl. She doesn't seem to be like anyone else from this school.