(EDIT, MARCH 2012: I'M EDITING THIS STORY A BIT TO POLISH IT , AND KEEP IT UP WITH MY CURRENT WRITING STYLE. NO PLOT CHANGES, JUST CLEANUP.)

(EDIT, DECEMBER 2013, I'M DOING IT AGAIN)

I had a poll months ago about which high School-themed two-or-threeshot you readers would prefer, a TobiSaku in which Sakura kills her abusive parents and Tobi is the only one who suspects her, or a DeiSaku in which soccer-playing Sakura has to deal with the romantic advances of her art teacher. The DeiSaku won and I'm kind of glad about it. I've never done Tobi before, and if that story had won, it would be the goofball Tobi I wrote about, not the "Madara/evil overlord persona" Tobi.

This three-shot shall be told in Sakura's diary entries, which mean a lot less detail than my normal writing style requires (Yeah, right…well, I'll try) but a lot less writing for me, which is good for author and reader both. The diary entry thing is something I got off a book I read this past year and really enjoyed, calledLife As We Knew It, which chronicles the life of a teenage girl after the moon is shoved closer to Earth, causing volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, riots, worldwide starvation and general suffering. It's pretty powerful.

One more thing: slight Ino bashing. I'm sorry. I like the gal just fine, but I wanted a placeholder for the "jerk rival" slot, and I would prefer to do this with Karin, but I wrote this story before she was even introduced in the manga. Ino stays in her position as the bratty cheerleader.

Within the Diary of one Sakura Haruno

Tuesday, August 25th

Bonjour! Me again, writing in my yearly diary. I fill up a book for every school year, you know (for myself, when I'm retired and bored in my nursing home) ever since Naruto got me a Pokemon diary for my eighth birthday with a Blastoise on it. I haven't touched Pokemon at all in years, but I have such a soft spot for the whole Squirtle line today. Blastoise and his giant cannons will be cool forever. Okay, anyhow...

I use littler diaries for summer vacations and all my diaries are stored in a digital lock safe in my closet. So if anyone ever breaks into my house and sees my safe and somehow opens it, expecting a family fortune or something…well, that sucks for them! And me.

My tradition is to start each with an introduction of myself, since I theorize that one day I'll read all these and observe how my view of myself changes year by year. I'm Sakura Haruno, Japanese immigrant, ambidextrous, French-speaking (halfway to fluent), a strong player on my high school soccer team since freshman year and in the top five grade percentage of my school. But that's very objective, you know!

Subjectively, I think I'm one of the few teenagers who is comfortable in her own skin, and actually gives a damn about good behavior and kindness, though thankfully the latter part IS more common :) My dream is to make it into the medical field, and make a splash in it. I don't want to be just another nurse giving flu shots. I want to be a surgeon, or a diagnostician. Someone powerful and knowledgeable who can heal and recognize as many illnesses as possible. For this reason, Greg House is sort of my idol, even though his TV show ended a good while ago. Plus, I think he's amazingly attractive. He and Daniel Radcliffe are just...just perfect. Hey, eighty-year-old self, do you remember expecto patronum?

Well, better start about this year before I get carried away. It's the first day of school, or rather the evening after the first day of school, and I already have some history homework (it's not so bad, though). My core classes like math and chemistry are advanced as usual, I'm starting my third year of French, my third year of soccer (that is, the school's varsity team!) and my third of art. I love learning in general because I'm more studious-persistent-braniac-nerd-loser than anything else, but soccer and Pottery III and sometimes French III are what make me really delighted to spend the day at school. Here's why:

Soccer because I love running, kicking and winning (...I'm still a nice person! Even though I kick stuff...) and the artful combination of these elements into one glorious sport is just awesome.

Side Note: that Frosted Flakes commercials where they sing "We are tigers, mighty, mighty tigers!" actually give me goosebumps, and gives me a little rush of pride to be on a team like mine. During a couple of games in the past, they've actually chanted it to inspire us to win. That's how you know we kick ass: our school sings cereal commercials.

French is just wonderful in my opinion, because, firstly, it sounds gorgeous to the ear, and the country itself, all of Europe really, has a kind of beauty that much of America just can't touch. I don't know if I'll ever move or live over there, but I definitely plan to vacation there as much as I can possibly pay for it and if I can speak the language I won't have to have a tour guide parading me around the cities, all but holding up an invisible sign that says "LOOK AT THIS STUPID AMERICAN LET'S THROW BAGUETTES AT HER HAHAHA"

Oh also, I like the ongoing war we have with the German classes. Last year, the French V kids, all of whom are seniors of course, drove their truck behind the German truck in the homecoming parade and kept rear-ending them. It was hilarious. The only time French people ever started a fight. YES I WENT THERE!

Hmm. This makes me think of middle school days when I probably would have thought a sight like that was barbaric or so below me or something. Gosh, I was a brat then. Better than some kids, sure, but...hooray that I'm sixteen now and I have the good luck to have my bratty "ugh you guys are so dumb and I am so great" days behind me. Mostly. Um. Yes. Moving on. Art!

Now, art is one of the biggest outlets of expressing yourself, ever, and the fact that there are so many ways to do it wows me every time, but I do have to admit the more shallow reason I like my pottery class so much, and that's because of the teacher there. My freshman year, Mr. Shodai was the "real" teacher but he was gone caring for his cancer-stricken wife almost the entire year and we had a sub four days out of five.

This sub was not actually a teacher, I don't think. He was still a college student, and his name was Mr. Iwa. Some people actually called him by his first name, Deidara. He's just one of many Japanese people in our high school. We have quite a high percentage of Japanese people in this town and subsequently in all the schools. There's me, Hinata, Naruto, Ino, Mr. Iwa, Shikamaru, Shogo, Daisuke, Matsuri who's from the other high school and tons more. But now we're talking about Mr. Iwa.

He's deserving of a whole paragraph, maybe two, but after this I've got to finish my Renaissance worksheet. In a nutshell Mr. Iwa is the coolest guy to ever enter a classroom, maybe because he's not technically an adult, being a college student and still has a teenage persona and sense of humor that makes everyone our age just adore him. He'll probably have that attitude and approach to life even when he's eighty and losing his memory. And now I have to start a new paragraph just for his sense of style. You ready for this? Next paragraph is gonna have some faaabulous shit, pardon my French.

Firstly, his hair. Oh, that man's hair! Oh my god...gorgeous! It's unlike anything I've ever seen before, and lots of us girls have little jealous fits when his hair is always so perfect looking. This man does not do bad hair days. They are forbidden. Once you get past his hair, you move on to his clothes. He's impeccably stylish and sometimes you walk into his class, look at what he's wearing and suddenly feel like your mother dressed you this morning in comparison. Not good for the self-esteem of anyone our age. At the least, he often wears jeans like most of us mere mortals (even though allegedly teachers can only wear jeans on Fridays; I don't know if he's ignoring that rule or is truly unaware) but he can't just leave these normal clothes be, oh no. Mr. Iwa draws or paints on most of his pants. His best ones are the pair on which he hand-painted a red-and-yellow phoenix with half-spread wings and a fanning tail, and it's so breathtaking and not that it makes you stare at his bum or anything but it's just a darn cool pair of pants.

He paints and doodles on his shirts, too, but that's less notable than just the fact that he wears whatever goddamn shirts he wants and these are not typical teacher shirts. Notable examples include his Adventure Time shirt, straight out of Hot Topic, the one with a mushroom cloud on it, the greysish one that always requires him to wear like four evil-looking necklaces to complement it, and that one Hurley top that even Naruto was jealous of, so much that he actually went and bought the same shirt soon after. And yes, all the girls continue to stare and drool.

Oh, he even paints his nails, which you'd think would earn him some mockery. I thought it would. But it's just the opposite, he literally started a new fashion trend for both boys and girls. By the end of his first semester here, a good quarter of the school was doing it at the least. A VERY interesting social experiment, that.

I can't accurately describe Mr. Iwa without telling about the time last year, my sophomore year, he came to school two hours early just to TP the entire art room and just...just didn't say anything! He left it that way all day for his students to wade around in like idiots. Or ducks. I felt more like an idiot than a duck since I don't usually trip over toilet paper walls on any given day. And he was just like "yeah whatevs you guys you have fun swimming" and sat at his TP-covered little desk. It was just a very funny day that day, trust me. Especially when the superintendent, Mrs. Chavez, came in, looked at the room and just...walked out.

Earlier that same year he shot a rubber band at Terry (that annoying, loud kid you want to stick with a tranquilizer dart) whenever he talked when he wasn't supposed to. He brought a boombox into class freshmen year and played his favorite songs so loud the gym teacher from down the hall came to complain. There's a ton of other, just...really amusing, really impressive little acts he's done just for the hell of it ever since he came here, I can't list them all at once. I can say that sometime during these very fun times, maybe in between my laughing at his antics and trying to get work done at the same time (difficult combination, but I persevere!) he's become just as much a friend as an art teacher and we can chat about anything while classwork is going on. He's really helped my artistic abilities, that's for sure. I can sketch fairly well but that's it. I have trouble with blending colors with a paintbrush, or smoothing a clay sculpture or anything that's not a pencil sketch. And he knew it, and he helped me. He showed me how to use my hands on pottery wheels and to shape clay and to hold paintbrushes and move them just so. It's fascinating to think he's so crazy and so articulate in some areas.

Some people are just amazing enigmas like him, and that he would take time out of his schedule of art and badassery to compliment my work or my outfit or anything about me just makes me so happy. I'm glad to be worth something to a guy like him. Even more so when he'll step down from his Throne of Awesome and have very intriguing, intelligent conversations with me that can start out with interpretations of the newest Lost episode or this one sect of philosophy he hates, or really anything, and it'll swiftly fall into a rhythm like we have done this for years.

ARRRGH LACTIC ACID BUILDUP IN MY HAND HURT MUCH

Okay, I've switched hands. (Yes, ambidextrous people can write with both hands, bitch) Feel a lot better now. I really didn't mean to write that much, but Mr. Iwa's stories and "incidents" are just so fun! I love rethinking them an reliving them in my mind and I bet I will for years. But still, that IS enough for now, and I better get to my homework now.

But wait I didn't even say anything about the first day of my junior year! Okay, I have the same French teacher, soccer coach and art teacher (Deidara will graduate in spring so he's just "assistant teacher" until Mr. Shodai comes back…if ever…) and that means it should be a good year.

Sincerely Yours, Sakura, who wants some newer soccer cleats for Christmas

Wednesday, August 26th

Did I forget to mention art class is 7th period for me, last class of the day, same as it was last year? Mr. Iwa said we're his favorite class. Again. I have lunch half an hour later this year but I won't complain. I have vending machines to sate my hunger if I need them. And school lunch isn't nearly as bad as television portrays it as. Or do we just have very skilled lunchladies in the cafeteria? The chicken fried steak is the greatest, I must say, even if it looks like a greasy slab of...something. It's tasty and hecka popular.

Future-self do you know (or...remember) what a Smartboard is? Well, the only one who will ever read this is me so…you/me should. Basically a computer-chalkboard that can be hooked up to laptops to show movies and PowerPoints and everything else you want. Ms. Frank got one in her classroom this year, at last. I have advanced chemistry in that room, and it seemed like she never got instructed on how to use it before the school year started.

I was trying to tell her "Do the 20-point Orientation!" but she wouldn't listen, and she kept telling whoever was talking to sit down and not say anything. Christian was telling her to do the circle tap, which is an erasing technique so I don't know why he thought that would be potentially helpful. It was pretty loud in there, honestly just because Ms. Frank insisted on trying to do everything herself. Everything was all,

"Ms. Frank, the 20-point Orientation will make it do this that, etc,"

"This thing's not a Smartboard, it's a Dumbboard!"

"Operator error!"

"James, shut up!"

And there was a lot of laughing in between, because it was a lot funnier when it actually happened, but then again, so many things are. Like last year when Naruto and I were insisting to everyone before 1st period that the clock in the cafeteria read Ninety-two o' clock. But that took place before sunrise, on a Monday, right after spring break, so I can't imagine our brain activity was up to proper speed. Anyway.

My first soccer practice of the year is next week! I can't wait!

Tuesday, September 2nd

I'm surprised how many teachers have learned our names already. I'm not surprised that most of them memorized mine (And they will soon learn that my hair is not dyed. When will people fucking LEARN!) but other random kids as well. We have a smart batch of teachers this year. Good thing. Good teachers will give me good knowledge, which gets me into a good college which gets me into a good career field which gets me good pay which means I can afford to have a pool in my backyard. And if being a good doctor is my main goal in life, getting a pool in my backyard takes second place. (My second-place goal when I was little was to own a beautiful white horse named Kingdom Come. I don't know if I actually will.)

Hm, what else? Hinata was over today. We walked home together instead of taking our separate buses. We shared my iPod on the walk back and listened to some sad, beautiful songs. Hinata is very much a fan of all beautiful and even melancholy music, regardless of genre or artist, and I'm so glad that influence from her has spread to me. She's shown me Enya and Nightwish, and right now my earbud is letting me hear the Land Before Time soundtrack that she gifted me with two years ago. We're always silent when we listen to it. This is a kind of music you should bow your head to. James Horner, you've broken my heart and made me shed tears of joy. Thank you for this experience. What was it like to be in the theaters in 1988, when that movie was still new, when no one expected to have to watch a baby dinosaur watch his mother die in front of him?

I think I will find my old stuffed Cera plushie and hug her while I do my chemistry homework. Suddenly I feel awfully sad, like something in me is being stretched downwards. Oh god, I need to go find Cera, brb...

(break, about 20 minutes?)

Got Cera! She was under my bed.

Anyway, when Hinata and I got to my house, she turned on the TV and found my mom's Lost DVDs and we watched a few more of those. Hinata and I were in middle school when the show came out, and on the rare occasion she glimpsed it on TV, it scared her and she quickly looked away. Years later, here we are, she's now convinced it's one of the greatest television shows ever! She adores the mystery, the drama, every little thing about it.

My mom really likes Hinata. She always gives her a blanket when it's cold or something to drink, anything to make her comfortable. I asked her once (in the freshmen year diary, I think?) why she likes her so much.

"She's almost as cute as you!" My mom said in one of her gushy moments. My mom can be like a teenager sometimes in how she gushes over cute things. I'm not quite as prone to sappiness as she is. Anger, hells yeah, but not nearly as much sappiness. "She's always has this expression like a sleepy kitten. You used to look like that, too. Now you only have that look when you're actually sleepy." That is totally word for word.

(I look like a sleepy kitten?

...awww?)

Then Hinata walked home and I ate dinner so...I guess I'll go online or something. Find a new Enya song. Don't have anything else to do. Except change Zolei's litterbox.

Yes, I named my cat after the pronunciation for the French "Soleil". Problem? No? I thought so.

Agh no wait I have the chemistry homework. Cera, guide me through the mole calculations!

Thursday, September 4th

I had SO much fun at soccer practice oh my God! I didn't care that we were there so late the sun was setting when I finally came home. The sweat, the workout, the pride and the energy, it was all worth it. If I ever fall into depression or something, I have no worries I'll turn to drugs or something else bad, I'll just eat chocolate and play more soccer.

Maybe I should do a school recap. Limestone, South Dakota is probably too big to be called a "small town". Or is it? What does a population of fifteen thousand constitute, small or medium? Our town's pretty nice looking with a lot of small businesses that fit the "quaint downtown" archetype that a lot of novelists try to portray, and I like to think it's a very safe town, too. Not that we don't have our share of criminals or rapists, I'm sure there are some...but Limestone is pretty nice. And no, for God's sake, we don't talk like those police officers from Fargo.

There are two smallish but neat high schools, the delightfully creative Limestone High School and Redstone High School, which compete against each other a ton in sports tournaments a lot because it takes a month or two before regional or state-wide tournaments open up, so we spend our time beating each other up until other opponents are available.

Oh, quick note, I just have to put this down, I love it so: freshman year, I was on the debate team, for one reason. Some people believe it was because I'm good at arguing/threatening, but really it was for the T-shirt you got for being on the team. After two or so meetings, everyone on the team would pitch an idea and we'd vote. Due to a dare I made just before eighth grade ended, I pitched a rather…suggestive idea, but the debate captain was blind enough not to realize it. I still own that shirt and enjoy wearing it:

On the front, with bold black letters on a green background, "We're on LSD!" And on the back, "Limestone Debate, Yes, It's True!" so you know it's the debate team we're on. Not the drug. If it's the drug you think we're talking about, I'm disappointed and I have to kick your ignorant teeth in.

But I still won fifty bucks for getting that shirt made. It was my first actual bet and it was about a drug joke, and we all loved it. Of course, if anyone on that team was actually using LSD, let's just say they would "not be tolerated, and would be ceremonially skinned by their parents once I told them and anyone else I could tell in order to make them regret doing drugs c: "

Now Mom's calling me for dinner. We're watching House tonight with some pizza and I don't want to miss it! I'll just say that Coach Kent is still hardcore and loud, Tenten Ama is still our team's fave goalie, and I'm still the kickass offense player I was born to be.

It may be that time of the month for me right now, but the new school year is going so pleasantly I just don't give a damn about Mother Nature punching me in the uterus. Peace out.

Friday, September 5th

There was a pep assembly today. There's one every year, to make the freshman feel school spirit now that they are high schoolers, and inspired by the upperclassmen and all that jazz. I thought it was pretty cool when I first saw it but most people just describe it as "gay". Pisses me off that that's the default word for "stupid". If someone says it in front of me in the next three days or so, I can shove their back against a wall and step on their nuts, and use the good old PMS excuse. I've always wanted to ACTUALLY do that.

A large portion of the assembly was dancing cheerleaders, which gave me more Ino Yamanaka than I really needed today. The cheerleader uniforms have been slightly modified this year so they are about fifteen percent less slutty than they were before, so that was a small gift. Otherwise it was just Ino parading around and showing herself off with sexual subliminal messaging as usual. And right in front of two hundred little freshmen, geez! At least a dozen confused young men probably had to hide their erections thanks to her. Ino you are not fucking helping teenage boys feel better about themselves.

After the assembly, it was my lunch shift so I waltzed on down to the cafeteria and found the table that Naruto claimed for us this year, and we talked about the Hunger Games, which Naruto never read and is finally now considering after the brilliance the films are dazzling him with. Hinata would have liked this conversation, but she left early today for a dental checkup. She might be getting a cavity filled, I think. This would be as close to...I don't know, "naughtiness" that Hinata ever got.

After that was fifth period, math for me, but today everyone in the school spent their fifth period staring at their classroom's Smartboard to watch a video the Broadcast Journalism kids had set up for the school. And the opening credits made sure we didn't forget that they had made it.

Our Smartboard was refusing to cooperate, so we all just had to crowd around the teacher's laptop in a most awkward and silly pileup to see the video, which was showcasing all the different classes and courses the school had to offer. I think it would make more sense to show such a thing in April, when you choose your classes for the following year, and I can't begin to guess why they showed it now, but...I guess that's why I don't want to take a broadcast journalism class. Illogical nonsense all around.

There was one segment about the art classes available. Mr. Iwa, one of only two art teachers, stole the show from Mrs. Kara, who's...nice, definitely, from the little I've seen of her. But I also know she's super camera-shy. She's probably only about ten percent more outgoing than Hinata is. So this segment was totally available for stealing by Mr. Iwa.

There was some footage of kids in the Foundations of Drawing class, and the pottery classes, one of which was my own (I saw myself in my blue Aeropostale shirt and my little white hairclip I like a lot) and the Advanced Painting class. They were actually edited together pretty well, and I bet Zac had something to do with that. Zac Harris, not Rumo. In the middle of the segment Mr. Iwa got interviewed. He had his usual partial-ponytail-and-covering-the-left-eye gig going on, and he was even wearing the T-shirt he'd bought at last year's Rockfest. He really did not look like a teacher, and it made me smile to see his typical look.

"What are the benefits of taking an art class?" asked an off-screen voice while the question glowed orange on a black background.

"It's fun," Mr. Iwa said, when his head and torso suddenly came into view. His painting class, his 1st period, I believe, was working behind him. "Where else can you go in a school and pretty much do make whatever you want? Art is all about you, and if you're not being you and enjoying yourself in my class, your butt is outta here, yeah." Oh, did I not mention his "yeah" speech habit? It sometimes switches to "mm" also. It's...unique. "I came from Kyoto, and I went to a pretty big school, but even there, they had only one art class and it was for talented, snotty people only. I hated how judgmental they were about anything that didn't look picture-perfect. I came over here to study abroad, found that American public schools are way more open about it than my country, and I want to keep that style going, mm. HEY!"

Mr. Iwa turned around and the camera followed his eyes. There was a short kid in a hoodie waving his arms stupidly; he stopped just the second before the camera settled completely on him, but it's not like anybody missed him looking like a insane squirrel on camera. "What's wrong, Cameron, you got something to say, yeah? Bring it on, little boy, I'll embarrass you in front of all your friends!"

And the video had static for a minute, and then that "Please Stand By" with the multi-colored screen and then there was a brief segment about something I didn't hear about. Me and a couple other kids laughed so hard we drowned out all the computer's noise. The Journalism kids had totally played the ending of that interview of their advantage.

Once I got home, I found that my mother bought me strawberry ice cream while shopping today. I had a delicious, orgasmic bowl of it right before bed, when it tastes the best. I went to bed with a full tummy. And if I have a full tummy, nothing short of my mother's death or Hinata crying can bother me.

Friday, September 11th

Today I had an argument with Sai Marek. He's a year my junior and has been annoying the hell out of me since middle school with tons of pranks and remarks ranging from petty to outrageous to racist. He says his family is from the Czech Republic, and his name does sound like just that nationality, but he's lied a lot before so I am inclined to think he's trying to force himself into the caterory of "foreign kid" to get some attention, I REALLY would not put it past him.

His assaults on me began four years ago when I jogged a mile away to his house on the night of Fourth of July and lit a firecracker in his direction. It chased him halfway down the street, and I mean chased him. It followed his every stride and turn and I loved it. Maybe it was truly guided by the hand of God, who wanted that hurtful bully to taste some of his own medicine. I lit that firecracker for revenge, after all. This feud is his fault.

The bastard kicked my cat. That is equivalent to kicking my child.

I wonder what the hell happened to Sai in his childhood that would make him think nothing of kicking animals. Should I sympathize with him? Should I try to find out what's wrong? Maybe. But I'm afraid I won't for a long time, because it'll be a VERY long time before I forgive that little shit for kicking my Zolei.

Of course, he had to love art, a class I liked as well, and he was one of three sophomores in this pottery class this year that was made up mostly of juniors. Our first project of the year was to make a set of blocks and paint a bunch of made-up symbols on the sides. Mr. Iwa said we would play a game with them in about two weeks and he promised laughter and awesomeness but at 2:23 PM on that day, even though the bell to leave was just minutes away, I felt no awesomeness or laughter. Sai had deliberately jabbed a hole in my cube as he walked past, and one of his friends who sat next to him laughed.

I went over to his table, frowning but not saying anything, and jabbed a hole in his. "Hey!" he said like he didn't expect it.

"Do we really need to do this fourth-grade revenge routine again?" I spat.

"Um what?" his possibly-girlfriend, Kin, asked, like I was some freak who'd come up to start a fight for no reason. The truth is I WAS there for a fight, but it was for a good reason and you know it.

I held my cube up to his face. "This, moron! What is this passive-aggressive crap! If you want to insult or hurt me, you can insult or hurt me, but no, we have to do it the Special Sai way. If you have a problem with me, why don't you just address it? Say it?"

"Why do you have to stab holes in people's art projects?" he said almost flatly, (HIS FLAT, STUPID VOICE, UGH!) gesturing confusedly to his own cube.

"Why do you have to lie like a backstabbing—"

Mr. Iwa interrupted us then by turning on his boombox to full blast and everyone in the room got a vicious earful of "DON'T STOP! BE-LIEEE-VIINNN'!"

"Both of you, shut up! You guys want to go on a date?" That silenced the whole room. Random comments have that power. "How 'bout we go on one right now? You guys and me and the hallway, it'll be so hot. Come on." And we both went, everyone staring after us and Miranda hissing, "Oooooh!" Mr. Iwa led held the door open like a very polite gentleman, then followed us out into the hall and slammed it so hard me and Sai both flinched and pinched our eyes shut. I'm sure other people who were in the hall or nearby rooms heard it.

There was a lecture with lots of "yeahs" and Mr. Iwa's finger in my face asking me if I could just ignore the stupidity Sai was pushing on me, please, and then pointing at Sai telling him he needed to stop starting shit when he knew retaliation would happen and fights would start. He told us both we were immature brats and he was embarrassed to be standing here having this talk.

Sai got his two cents in, I guess, by saying I was a vicious, temperamental bitch who should get a week of detention for screaming at him, and he also alluded to the fact that I held a secret life as both a stripper and was taking out my self-resentment on him and by God, I have to wonder what book or movie he stole that from. I worked to hold tight to my temper but glared at him, tried to make the force of it cut into him and hurt him. We went back into the art room and the bell rang, I rode the bus home and listened to random songs the whole way home on full blast. My bare legs were curled up close and I crushed my water bottle flat in my hand.

I could stand Naruto talking to himself for forty minutes, I can stand being hit in the head with a hiking boot, and I can stand studying a single page of notes till my eyes ache. I could barely stand Mr. Iwa thinking bad of me.

Sai's such a bastard. Most of this entry is about my hatred for him and that's wrong and ignorant. AND it's wrong and ignorant to say it's all his fault. Whether he angered me today or not, I could have been using my time to say a prayer for the people and the families whose lives were ruined on 9/11. Pissed off as I am, I can at least know I'm a good and decent American. Someday, we'll heal, but never will we forget. Once I'm done here, I think I'll sit down and pray for the people who were hurt by this day. They deserve it, and always will.

If my future children forget, I'll slam it into their heads myself.

Monday, October 5th

I had a terrible nightmare last night. After I finish writing this I have to get straight to bed. I've already stayed up an extra hour and a half, staring at the walls. I need my sleep but my posters of the French and Japanese flags and the little magazine poster of MLP and several drawings I'd made in my few years just aren't comforting me like they always do.

Sunday night I dreamed that I was just…I need to elaborate first. (Well, what else is new?) Once in a while, I like hiding. Like a cat or little mouse or something. When I was little I loved hiding in couch cushion forts or under the table, anyplace where I could hide and giggle about how no one could find me or get me. Snow forts, too, I loved, and that was what my dream centered on. It felt like it was mocking me with something I loved. Sunday night, I dreamed that an elementary-age, long-haired version of me was sitting in a show fort. It must have been light outside, because I could see the black silhouettes of creatures that stood outside the structure.

The little me in the dream couldn't decide if they were strange creatures or strange people, but that didn't matter, really. They were muttering and growling as they poked and slapped my fort walls. They wanted to get in and get me. Eat me, kill me, cut me open. The little dream-me didn't think of rape at the time, but perhaps the assailants wanted to do that, too. But little me did know that the fort walls were not that strong. The things would get in eventually and grab me and that would be my end. I knew I would die soon. I was just nine or ten, and I would die.

I told Hinata about this dream at lunch today. She didn't say anything, just gave me a hug, and I knew how much sympathy she was offering me. For Hinata, it was massive, and it meant so much. I felt warm inside, not just with pride for her being able to do that.

She's such a sweet friend. I'm lucky to know her, and that she likes and wants to be friends with someone like me.

And I even told the story to Mr. Iwa, when he remarked on my expression as I worked. Apparently I looked pale and more than a little scared. Telling my art teacher about a dream I had seemed odd on the surface, but I felt comfortable around him, like there would really be nothing odd here, so I went ahead and relayed the dream to him, too, and he sat on the edge of my table and listened. Vanessa, my seat neighbor, also heard it, but that didn't bother me.

When the story was done, the first thing the teacher did was lean down and kind of...hug me with one arm, and it was just 'aww.' Since I'm a stuffy rule-follower, the first thing that went through my head was a flash of "Inappropriate conduct!" but that faded quickly. This was Deidara Iwa. A hug from him was nice.

"That's scary shit to happen to a little kid. It's done now." he muttered. "If you were one of those people who could control what you dream, you should have dreamed me or your ADHD friend to beat up those things. The walls would still be busted through, but I'd get you and take you away, not them." That he mentioned Naruto made me giggle.

"That'd be nice, but I'm one of those sorceror-people who can lucid-dream." And I one-arm hugged him back, because that's what you're supposed to do when a friend hugs you. "Thank you, anyway. Bad thoughts are all gone now."

"Yeah, I know."

I know that's gonna make me sleep better tonight. Mr. Iwa always makes the day better. Note, Jan 6, (four months later) I SHOULD HAVE SUSPECTED THAT MOMENT FROM THE BEGINNING!

Tuesday, October 20th

Our first big game against Redstone was today. ("Was tonight," actually. 'Cause it's about midnight right now) My legs and torso hurt like hell. I haven't played a serious game since last spring against Grain Park, a school two hour's drive away. I'll need more practice if a game against little Redstone makes me sore. Maybe it's because me and the other team's offensive player went for the ball at the same time and our legs knocked together like clashing swords. If you say it was not an epic moment, I will mess you up.

I snuck into Sai's home and put a tarantula in his sock drawer at age fourteen. I can mess you up if it so pleases me.

And more news on Mr. Iwa (he fills up pages like nothing else!) from earlier in the day, too: We're doing a new project now. It's a contest between us and Ms. Kara's Foundations of Drawing class next door. Who can take photos of animals and turn them into shaded, accurately drawn pictures the best? I think it's LOL-worthy that we're doing drawings in a pottery class, but...well...that's how it is. Anyhow, I had just started shading the nose of my Dalmatian. Vanessa, who sits next to me, leaned over and said, "Aww, it's so cute, Sakura!"

Vanessa laughs a lot, and I mean a lot, but she rarely gives compliments so I gave some generous thanks. But then she leaned over her chair and said, "Hey, Mr. Iwa! Come see Sakura's!" He came quickly, holding a can of some beverage in his left hand and wearing a jacket that showed off just how skinny he was. (I have to make at least a small mention of it. I like when men are lean…not as much as me, though! Can't have a guy as lean as a female soccer player or we'd have an anorexic on our hands. Whoa, shit, rambling alert!)

"It's cute like Sakura, isn't it?" Vanessa said with an odd calm.

"M'afraid Sakura's probably cuter than a Dalmatian puppy." And he put his hand in my hair like…well, like plenty of adults did when I was younger, and some still did. "Sakura's cute enough to date." I turned around a bit to look up at him. In the process I moved my foot accidentally kicked my messenger bag over. He must have thought that was funny, since he grinned and laughed at me. It seemed like a quieter laugh, I guess is the word, than his usual ones. It was a little odd to listen to.

I don't think it's the first time he's called me cute (he's called a lot of things and a lot of people cute) but it definitely has been awhile. And he didn't say it with the fact he was wearing right then. "You think I'm cute? Since when?"

"Since the first day of freshman year, yeah. Probably before that, too." he replied easily. He blinked the blink that everyone blinks when they get a new idea. (I'm familiar with this blink, you see.) "Would you date me if I asked?"

By now about half the room was watching. The guy's fingers were still in my hair. "Sure," I said without thinking. "That'd be really nice to see you outside the classroom. Someplace besides the grocery story, I mean." I feel like I could have said more here. But his question left me at quite a loss. I'm not sure what to do here or what he's really asking, or...if he was talking seriously.

"Cool, we'll see something, Friday at four. Oh, the dog—below the right nostril, it needs to be darker, yeah. There's not enough contrast." And he just went off to his desk, and started to pick pieces off a slab of cookie dough, and mock Joel for not being able to have any. Back to regular behavior.

I should write down the date of the date (?) in here so I can look back later in the week and know I didn't actually daydream today's class period.

Friday, October 23rd, at four in the afternoon, at the movies, I will have a date with my twenty-two-year-old art teacher.

He doesn't need to know it'll be my first.

Oh, Deidara, you subtle flirter, you! Asking out a high school girl in front of all her classmates! I'm sure the OOC-ness is radiating off Deidara in tidal waves. But that's the way I like it.

If Deidara is twenty-one now, we are to assume he was nineteen, tops, when he first came as an assistant teacher to Sakura's high school when she was a freshman. Let's pretend that's realistic, okay? This shall be a two-or-threeshot but of course I'll find a way to incorporate my favorite themes into it: the generic male possessiveness, Sakura being (physically) hurt or going missing, and random foreign languages inserted in random places. And that last one I've already managed to put in: Sakura speaks French, which makes me a little sad inside, since I'm a born German and my class is always dissing the French. We have a great record of kicking their butts in a yearly dodgeball game.

I like this story idea quite a lot. Expect fairly-timed updates for it.

(EDIT, DECEMBER 2013: You know now that I'm giving this chapter a light edit/polishing, I am somewhat less enchanted and more "questioning" at the idea of high school junior Sakura dating a college-age Deidara. When I first wrote this I was 16 myself. Now that I'm 20, almost Deidara's given age here, the idea of someone my age dating a high school junior seems rather ludicrous. Also illegal.

Do bear in mind that this is a FANFICTION and it's just an elaborate, nicely dressed romantic fantasy and were this reality, and people knew Deidara was trying to date a 16-year-old girl, he would in the BEST case scenario, be asked to resign from his job. But we're in FanficLand so it's chill.)