There is a social hierarchy in High Schools that cannot be denied. No matter how far you run or how well you hide, it will find you.

"One more year," my best friend Alyssa Douglas reminded me as she dropped her duffel on the bed opposite mine.

"Two more years," I supplied, glumly letting my bags drop to the floor.

"Technically. But we can start taking college credits Senior Year."

"Yippee."

"For someone with a hyperactivity disorder, you're unusually melancholy today."

"I don't have ADD," I shot back, turning to give her my best narrow eyed glare. "We've talked about this."

"I never said you had ADD."

"You implied it."

"I simply made a statement. How you construe it is entirely out of my control."

"You said disorder."

"But I never said ADD." Alyssa's lips were half-tilted up, which was a clear indication that she was having hysterics about our on-going argument.

It had started Freshman year. Our first day as roommates had gone great; she threatened to shove a sharpie up my nose and I'd promised to take a swan dive out the window to ensure that the prof's gave her straight A's with no consideration to her intelligence.

We'd both been mutually horrified by the others possible actions and had declared an uneasy truce.

"Figures," Alyssa had muttered sourly under her breath. "Out of all the possible Harvard scholars, I get stuck with the ADD kid."

"I don't have ADD," had been my scowled reply. Ever since I could talk, everybody has always accused me of having ADD. I've participated in every assessment known to mankind that tested for ADD. The point was, I didn't have ADD and I was getting tired of people attributing my hyperactivity and insatiable curiosity to some poor-mans disease used as an excuse to drug children so adults didn't have to deal with them in their natural states.

After primly and almost snottily delivering this well memorized and over verbalized lecture to Alyssa, she'd cocked her head to the side and blinked at me through narrow eyes.

"What's your IQ again?"

"160," I'd shot back. "Yours?"

"157." And thus, respect was born.

Sort of.

"You do anything interesting over the summer?"

"Nope. You?"

"I studied for the LSAT."

"You studied…for the LSAT." I shook my head as I stared at her. "I know better and yet, I am still surprised."

Alyssa smiled serenely in reply.

"Social interaction is an integral part of our lives as young adults. We would be remiss in our attitudes and denying the very culture that makes us today's youth if we didn't attend tonight's party."

"You've been reading the dictionary again, haven't you?" Alyssa flipped another page in her magazine, not bothering to look up from her perch on the bed as I fidgeted in front of our door.

"It's the only book that doesn't have a circular plot line that lets me guess the ending," I replied, shoving my hands into my back pockets as I put on my best pout face.

"Please?" The pout face leads to the pout voice which affects Alyssa like a sledgehammer to the gut, which was why I used it mercilessly to my advantage.

Alyssa tilted her head up and arched an eyebrow at me.

"You'll annoy me all night if we don't go, won't you?"

"Yes."

"Why don't you ask Tiffany down the hall? Her boyfriends got a car and she's nice enough to give you a ride."

"I don't want to go with Tiffany. I want to go with you."

"Why? Tiffany's a much better dancer than I am."

"She's also got grabby hands and isn't my best friend. Please?" Hands curled under my chin, I turned the puppy dog eyes full throttle, blinking innocently a few times for effect. "Pretty, pretty, please?"

Her face twitched, her cheek muscles creaked, and finally, almost reluctantly, her lips turned up at the corners and that icy veneer of cool intellect melted slightly from her eyes as she smiled at me.

Victory.

The Dells were awesome. I mean, flat out freakin' amazing.

The people, the music, the flashing lights and the bonfires…

"No."

"But, but…pretty!" I waggled my fingers towards the nearest towering stack of burning wood, biting my lip and pouting as Alyssa gently, but firmly, pulled me away.

"Angel! Baby! How's my favorite little firebug?"

"Zac!" I'm not really a touchy feely kind of person. Human contact to me is limited to the occasionally hug from family members and Alyssa, followed by the usual hand on arm dragging me from whatever trouble my curious little mind along with my curious little feet have dragged me towards.

But I wrapped myself like a spider monkey around Zac.

"Mmmmm," I moaned, inhaling his warm, gooey scent, my nose snugly buried where his shoulder met his neck.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" I half-mumbled into his clavicle, taking another deep inhaling breath.

"Cinnamon buns?" Alyssa hazarded a guess from somewhere behind me and to the left.

"Birthday cake," Zac corrected, shrugging his shoulders and dislodging me in the same motion.

"Yummy Birthday Cake," I pouted up at Zac who cross his arms and shook his head.

I sighed; no more spider monkey.

"So," Zac twisted his head to take in our surroundings. "See anybody you like wandering around lately?"

"They haven't gotten here yet." Alyssa had Serenity dialed in to a T. In the two years I've known her, I've never, never seen her have an emotional display beyond a lip twitch.

"I saw Caleb a few seconds ago," Zac stated, rubbing the back of his neck. "If the rest of them aren't here, they should be soon."

"Tyler?" Just the thought of the pretty blue eyed boy had me standing on my tip-toes, anxiously peering around for the brunette.

"Haven't seen him yet, but I'll be sure to keep an eye open."

My obsession with Tyler Simms had started way back in freshman year.

It'd been raining, I'd had water running down my back and sliding in uncomfortable places. I'd been distracted and hadn't been paying attention to where my feet were going so it came as quite a shock to me when my feet suddenly decided to go one way and the rest of me decided to go another.

My head had hit the concrete hard enough to make me bleed. So, lying there in a small pool of blood and a lot of rain water, I'd been swarmed by the concerned masses.

One of the most concerned faces had been a girl named Kate Tunney. Daughter of a wealthy construction tycoon, she, like me, was an incoming freshman and occupied the dorm room next to mine.

Her roommate was horrible; a stuck up bitch named Cindy Sue who, in addition to having the worst name possible, also happened to have the worst attitude…ever.

So Kate had taken to taking refuge in our room, which was upsetting to Alyssa and was the primary reason why I'd invited her to take refuge in the first place.

Annoying Alyssa had been the highlight of my days back in the beginning of our friendship.

Anyways, Kate had been hovering, talking to me in a frantic voice of which I could only hear every other word thanks to an annoying ringing in my ears.

Behind her, a crowd of students had assembled, some of them concerned, most of them just eager to get a glimpse of blood and carnage so they had a good story to share with the unfortunate masses who hadn't gotten a front row seat to my spectacular wipeout.

Concussed and bleeding, my eyes had traveled through the crowd until they landed on another incoming freshman.

His name was Aaron Abbott. He was tall, handsome, with hazelish eyes and a patrician nose.

I'd fallen head over heals in lust.

"Pretty," I'd managed to get out, practically gurgling the word since my mouth had suddenly decided to stop working.

"Oh God, she's seeing the light," Kate had whimpered from above me. Her hands gripped the lapels of my Spencers jacket and dragged me upwards with a frantic shake.

"Don't go into the light, Angel! Stay with me!" Quite frankly, at that moment, I didn't want to go anywhere with her. She was shaking me and my head was spinning and the world was tilting in the most nauseating ways.

"Jesus, Kate," someone spoke from the crowd. "Stop shaking her! She's got a concussion, for God's sake!"

And Zac stepped into the picture, looking like a pimply faced geek and smelling like heaven.

"Mmmm, cupcakes…" I'd mumbled.

"Huh?" Kate lowered me back to the floor with an expression caught between repentant and confused.

"Cupcake?" Aaron Abbott, my angel of Lust, spoke. "She calls you 'Cupcake?' Dude, how gay is that?"

I'd frowned; I didn't know much about angels, but weren't they supposed to be, well, nice?

"Fuck off, Abbott." Pimply faced or not, Zac was nobody's whipping boy. He didn't put up with bullshit which was a truly admirable trait for today's youth.

"Good," I'd patted his ankle, the only part of him I could reach, and offered him the vaguest of smiles before wincing.

"My head," I'd moaned, reaching up to touch the offending appendage.

My coordination, suspect at the best of times, must have been truly awful because instead of my head, I grabbed someone's leg.

"What the fuck?" I had enough time to think 'Nice voice' before something approximately my size and a good twenty pounds heavier landed on top of me.

I managed one wheezy breath, right in the face of the bluest eyes I'd ever seen before my world went hazy.

"Tyler!" A deep voice yelled above me, echoed by Kate's frantic screams.

" – asshole!" was all I heard of Kate stringent rant before the world went dark.

I'd woken up in the hospital with seven stitches in the back of my skull and two frantic brothers hovering anxiously over me.

"Pickle, Dill," I greeted them solemnly, licking dry lips as I frowned. "Is it Tuesday already?"

"Motherfuckerangel," Dylan breathed, running a hand through his off-blonde hair and glaring down at me, the two words said so fast they ran together to form a whole new word.

"You scared the shit out us, Troll." Parker crossed his arms over a chest identical to Dylan's, his scowl settling mostly around his mouth where Dylan's seemed to have a monopoly on his eyes.

It was one of the ways I'd learned to tell the difference between my two older brothers growing up. When Dylan got angry, his eyes snapped and his entire expression became livid. When Parker was mad, he was a lot like Alyssa. Stoic, quiet, and twitchy.

"How long was I out for?"

"Twelve hours," came the snarled reply.

"Eight," Parker corrected drolly.

"Nice." I was duly impressed. In my years of collecting head injuries, I'd learned that anything approaching double digits was to be awed about.

"Not nice," Parker corrected dryly. "Dad threw a fit, threatened to fly in from Tokyo."

Oohh, not good. Anything that got Dad out of Tokyo was not good.

"Dylan managed to talk him out of it."

In the oddities that are my familial life, amazingly it was Dylan whom my Dad trusted the most, particularly with regards to his only daughters physical and emotional well being.

"How long til I can blow this popsicle stand?"

"Another day of observation then you can either come with us for a week or return to the dorms and resume your regularly scheduled scholastic life."

I gave Parker a look.

"Dorms it is."

Fifteen minutes later, I had to pee. I'd been subtly trying to maneuver my brothers out of the room before figuring out that nothing short of brutal honesty was going to get them to leave.

"I have to pee."

"So go. That's what they give you a bedpan for, Trouble."

"I can walk, thank you." Parker flipped another page in his magazine and arched an eyebrow at me.

"So walk," Dyl snarked, tapping his fingers against his thighs as he leaned against the window of my oh-so-private room.

"I don't seem to be wearing any underwear."

"Oh, gross." Dyl was off like a shot, out of my room and dragging Parker along behind him.

Victory.

Ten minutes later I emerged from the bathroom blissfully free of what had felt like fifteen pounds of water weight to find a strange boy with familiar eyes standing in the center of the room, staring at the empty bed with an absolutely mystified expression and holding a handful of what looked like second-day Lilies.

"Hey, stranger," I greeted with a nod, causing the boy to jerk around and stare at me.

"Wow you move…quietly."

"Like a mouse." I agreed, staring into his eyes.

Pretty, pretty eyes…

And strangely, familiar.

"Do I know you?"

"Um, yeah, sort of. I'm the guy who fell on top of you."

"Tyler, right?" Bits and pieces of memories flooded back, along with the realization that I had him to thank for my journey into unconsciousness.

Having been concussed on multiple occasions before, I half-fell in love with him at that realization. Head injuries are an absolute bitch when you're awake to feel them.

"Yeah, me. I was just…I wanted to…" He sighed and thrust the flowers at me. "Kate told me I need to apologize and Pogue threatened me if I didn't listen to her, so I bought you flowers and some chocolate."

I didn't give a rats piss about the flowers but candy…

"What kind?"

"Expresso flavored from Godiva."

And that's when I fell. Completely and utterly, without a doubt, in lust with Tyler Simms.

"I love you."

"You must really like chocolate." He seemed to relax under my apparent banner of forgiveness.

Little did he know I was serious.

As far as stalkers went, I was fairly benign. I watched from afar, but avoided up close encounters like the plague.

"You're a horrible stalker," Alyssa informed me as my head darted around, frantically searching for the object of my lusts.

"I'm still in training," I replied, giving her a bright smile.

"In training for what?" Zac jerked in surprise as Kate made a sudden appearance next to him.

"Don't fucking do that," he hissed, hand splayed flat over his heart and eyes wide with the remnants of absolute terror.

"Do what?" Kate was confused.

Zac was a default friend for her, meaning since he was friends with us and we were friends with her they were friends by default. She didn't know his personality quirks like we did.

"What's up, Kate?" Alyssa asked, nodding her greeting to the cinnamon skinned girl.

"Nothing much. Pogue's supposed to be here any minute now."

"Pogue?" Pogue's real name is Christopher, but everybody calls him Pogue. I don't know why and neither does Kate though I've pestered her often enough to find out.

"Yeah, you know. 6'0"? Big, muscular guy? My boyfriend since freshman year?"

In addition to my lust-inspired obsession with Tyler (which had reason to new heights after I'd gotten to know Aaron Abbott more and realized that Tyler knocking me unconscious had quite possibly saved me from a lifetime of mooning after the class dick), Kate and Pogue's relationship status had emerged from my head injury.

Apparently Pogue dug half-hysterical drama queens with half the sense God gave a ninny.

Not that Kate's a horrible person; Kate's Kate, which isn't necessarily always a good thing.

I was willing to forgive her for her faults, though, since her hanging out with Pogue provided me with contact with Tyler.

"Fair warning, Ang, Tyler's bringing a girl."

Kate things that Tyler and I are destined soulmates or some hogwash like that. The first time she'd uttered that inane theory to me I'd stared at her in absolute horror.

"Tyler and me? Are you insane?" I'd sputtered, reaching for a napkin to mop up the saliva and coffee I'd sprayed all over the table via my nose as I gaped at her in disbelief.

"What the hell, Angela? I mean, you only obsess about him every fucking time I see you! What the hell am I supposed to think?"

"I'm stalking him, Kate. It's a fantasy, not reality. I can't date him! It'd ruin everything!"

"What?" Anger gave way to mystification as Kate looked at me, mouth ajar.

"Angel likes to Pretend," Alyssa had informed Kate levelly. "It makes her happy."

"And reality?"

"Exists purely as a form of torture and disappointment."

The entire conversation seemed to have made no significant impact on Kate's idea that me and Tyler were destined to be together, like Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Isolde.

"What kind of girl?" I asked eagerly, turning to Kate like a puppy eager for instruction.

She took a step back, away from me and my manic ways.

"Uh, brunette, five four. Her name's Shirley, she's from Pilgree High School."

Oh! Public schools!

I'd seen kids from them, even talked to a few, but I've never actually attended one.

"Cool," I breathed, eyes shiny with anticipation.

Twenty minutes later, my anticipation had dwindled significantly.

Shirley, it turned out, was the daughter of a priest. An honest-to-God Priest.

"I don't get out much," she had mumbled shyly as she brushed some of her tawny hair out of her eyes and behind her ear.

Quiet, demure, and so lamb-to-the-slaughter like in appearance, I wasn't the only one who was staring in dumbfounded shock.

"Hey," Tyler gave the group as a whole a nod before turning his attention to Shirley. "I found Rob over by the punch. You still want to talk to him?"

Shirley nodded and with a timid smile to the rest of us, she took Tyler's offered hand and followed him into the crowd.

"Well." Zac was the first to break the silence.

"I know." Caleb agreed. Zac and Caleb go way back. They've been in the same schools together since daycare. When they were three, Zac shoved Caleb in a mud puddle, ruining a three hundred dollar cashmere sweater set his mother had bought the boy under the mistaken impression that little boys stayed clean.

When they were five, Caleb got even by poking holes in the bottom of Zac's juice boxes for an entire week, thereby permanently staining Zac's two hundred dollar jeans.

Their shenanigans continued into puberty, with property damage totaling in the tens of thousands at least.

Somehow, though, with puberty came an odd sort of maturity. Personal attacks morphed into a mellow sort of friendship.

Being friends with Caleb meant a certain level of friendship and familiarity with each of the other sons as well.

"He met her…in church." It was a question disguised as a disbelieving statement. Next to Pogue, Kate shifted uncomfortably, staring at me. She opened her mouth to say something – no doubt an additional commentary in favor of the poor girl. Though Kate pressures on a constant basis for me to cross the fantasy/reality threshold with Tyler, she's realized, over the years, that I am weird. So, on occasion when Tyler finds a girl he likes enough to date (or have sex with; the night he lost his virginity, Kate called me) she does her best to promote said girl in the eyes of the Sons in the vain hope to deter me from my stalking tendancies.

"Yep. Freaky, isn't it?" Caleb shot Reid a warning look at that statement, but I was still too stuck in the land of disbelief to really notice.

"She's so…"

"Virginal?" Trust Reid to relate everything back to sex.

"Reid!" Pogue snapped that one out before his girlfriend could make a comment. I'd give him that; Pogue was damn good. He could read Kate's moods like a freakin' psychic. I bet he had some gypsy in his bloodline; he was that good.

"Sweet." The word came to me in a vaguely disgusted tone.

"Yeah."

"That's it."

"Totally."

The other Sons agreed with heartfelt appreciation at my awesome summarizing capabilities.

"I wonder if he meant Rob Kazinsky," Alyssa murmured quietly, more to herself than anybody else as she continued to stare off into the direction they'd wandered off into.

"Kazinsky?" Reid choked next to me, stumbling closer a few steps and reaching out to grab my shoulder for support as he swung his head around my body to stare at Alyssa. "Are you shitting me?"

Rob Kazinsky was going places. Everybody at Spencer knew this.

They were debate, though, as to where.

Wall Street and Prison were currently the top two slots, with Chicago and Disneyland duking it out for third and fourth places, respectively.

Me? I was more of the LA persuasion myself. I'd been watching TLC over the summer and they'd been showing reruns of LA Ink.

See, Rob liked to draw. He liked to draw big things, little things, profound things, and perverted things. He mostly stuck to keeping his designs on paper, but occasionally he liked to draw on people.

He was the go-to guy at Spencer for tattoos. While only an idgit with half a brain would let the slightly overweight and anxiety ridden teenager within five feet of them with a needle and chemicals that could potentially kill you, the smart kids knew that a hundred bucks could buy you a bitchin' design you could take down to the local shops and get inked on.

"You don't think she's going to get a tattoo, do you?" Kate doesn't mind tattoo's; she's got one on her ankle of an om, and a couple others in various places on her body, but her tone made it abundantly clear she wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of Tyler's sweet virgin getting inked.

"Shirley?" Reid's eyebrows skyrocketed once more, his grip on my shoulder tightening spastically before dropping to my waist.

"It's unlikely." But Caleb was frowning, probably thinking about how much trouble Tyler would be in if he brought his girlfriend back to her God-loving clan with the devils mark permanently branded into her skin.

Caleb was oddly cool like that; the caretaker and protector of the odd little band of four that called themselves the Sons of Ipswich.

I was rapidly losing interest in this line of conversation; either Shirley got a tattoo or she didn't. As long as her temporary bought of stupidity didn't get Tyler killed or irrevocably harmed in some way, she was welcome to a moment of dumb decision making. Hey, all of us have to have them at some point in our lives.

My primary concern right then was Reid. And his hand…which was sliding down from my waist to lower portions of my anatomy.

"Hey Reid," I murmured, catching the blonde's attention with a saccharine smile that had him blinking, distracted. I can be charming when I want to be.

"Yeah?" His gaze was fixated on my lips, his wandering hand taking up position about an inch above my ass.

"Do you like the position of your hand?"

Reid's lips arched slightly, as did his eyebrow.

"What position would that be, sweetheart?"

"Attached."

Reid's hand dropped from my waist as his smile widened.

I've never really understood the blondest member of the Sons. In my two years of obsessive Tyler watching, I've gotten the distinct impression that the blonde was aware of my proclivities and was taking some sort of sick amusement out of watching me watch his best friend.

See, Reid was odd, sort of like me, only not.

Creepy would be a good word to describe him.

Sexy would be another.

Dickish would be almost as good.

The Sons were like a personality rainbow; Caleb was steady like a rock, Pogue was silent as a stone, Tyler was as quiet as a pebble, and Reid…Reid was a fucking avalanche. He bowled over anything and everything that got in his way.

And strangely enough he seemed to like me.

The jury was still out on my overall feelings towards him, however.

"You guys going to class tomorrow?" Zac broke the silence again. Zac was a natural born silence breaker, the perfect conversationalist. He could fill the awkward pauses in conversations like nobody's business, which was part of the reason we kept him around.

He also happened to work at Marge's, only the best bakery in town, and routinely came into our room smelling like heaven and tasting like it too. I know; I licked him once to find out if he tasted as good as he smelled.

He'd taken a thirty-minute shower in response and told me that if I ever did that again he was going to quit his job and move to Alaska where real men smelled like fish and drank beer all day.

"Of course," I answered for me and Alyssa. I'd go because I had nothing better to do; Alyssa would go because Alyssa had perfect attendance and had never skipped a day of school in her life, not even in pre-school.

"Yes," Caleb answered, rubbing the back of his neck. Caleb wanted to get into Harvard like Alyssa, so he kept his skipping to a bare minimum.

"Don't know," was Pogue's answer as he smiled down at Kate. "Depends on what I'm doing tonight."

Kate smiled up at him, the two of them lost in one of those couples moments that I'd always found mystifying.

"Probably not," was Reid's predictable reply.

"Okay."

The conversation was pretty much dead by this point and miracle worker or not, even Zac was starting to wan under the pressure of a twelve hour shift at the bakery and classes tomorrow.

"You drive?" I asked him, taking careful note of his exhaustion.

"Caught a ride with some friends," Zac answered after shaking his head in answer.

"Come on, then. Alyssa can drive us back."

Placid as a pond on a windless day, Alyssa accepted our desire to leave by simply turning and heading towards the car.

"Later," Zac nodded to Caleb who nodded back.

"Later," Reid replied out loud, his eyes following us for a brief moment before being distracted by a frilly purple skirt and the thighs it was brushing against.

"You don't really think she's getting a tattoo, do you?" Zac's tone was one of morbid curiosity.

"It's highly unlikely," Alyssa replied drolly.

"Yeah, what she said."