Who We Are

I sat with my jaw locked and my arms folded over my chest. I didn't dare look back to Emily even though I knew she'd be in about the same posture as me.

At the end of PE class the teacher gave us time "to get to know each other" and I heard Emily clanking down the bleachers in her heels. I gnawed on my bottom lip as she got closer and closer to me. I turned to stare at her with a blank look as she huffed angry and looked right back at me.

"How could you say that to me, Katerina?" she questioned, glancing over my shoulder uneasily at who I assumed was Max and Ronnie.

I shrugged and looked into her eyes. "Because it's true."

"It is not!" Emily yelled as she stomped her foot on the wooden floor of the basketball court.

"Yes it is," I dead-panned, causing her to sigh and shift uneasily.

"Okay," she cried, "I'm a bitch but I don't mean to be! I was just raised differently than you!"

I stood up and walked away from her, not caring for her reason. I stood by the gym doors until the bell rang and then I checked my schedule before walking off towards Algebra Two, thankful for once that I had harder classes than Emily so that we wouldn't had to be stuck in a room together. When I entered the room was pretty much barren of any students, except the small group of two boys in the back.

I noticed that they looked up when I walked in. The one with longer hair smiled at me and ran his fingers through his bangs. I noticed that he was wearing red skinny jeans and a red and white jersey while his friend was wearing regular jeans and a polo shirt.

I took a random seat just like all my other classes and waited as people started piling into the room, desperate not to be late on the first day. Right before the bell rang Max Green came sauntering through the door and nodded to a long haired boy in the back, a boy named Robert who was always seen around with Ronnie, Max, and a few other boys who all ran with the same crowd.

"Nice spaz last period, Katerina," Max chuckled as he passed, shoving my shoulder lightly.

"Sod off, Max," I glared, not in the mood for his games.

Max rolled his eyes and turned to sit in the chair next to mine. He leaned forward in his desk so that he was closer to me, staring straight at me. I tried to ignore him but it became harder to do so as time passed.

"What do you want?" I questioned loudly, turning to face him and throwing my hands into the air with distress.

Max sat back in his chair and looked at me, then he asked, "When did somebody shove a stick up your ass?"

My jaw dropped as I stared at him blankly. "Go away," I demanded, "Leave me alone."

Max laughed as he stood up. "Aww, Kat, I thought we were friends?"

I glared. "You' were mistaken."

Max laughed and brushed it off before walking back to his friend Robert who asked what that was all about. "Nothing," Max replied, glancing back at me, "Just an old friend."

"Not," I mumbled under my breath, glaring a whole in a wall. I was relieved when the teacher walked in and began class. Even though I tried to to pay attention to what was going on in the front of class, I couldn't stop thinking about what Max had brought up again. When I was little, maybe five or six years old I used to play with Ronnie Radke and since he and Max were friends, Max too. My mother used to help Mr. Radke with the boys. She treated them like they were their own. She'd cook meals and invite them over at least twice a week, if not more. She'd help Riley with his homework since she was a school teacher and always seemed so intelligent.

Riley, Ronnie, and their basically adoptive brother Max, were always at my house playing with the toys that they didn't have at theirs. My mother was like the one they never had. When she died... everything fell apart between the Radkes and my family. We shut them out and they stopped trying to come around. As we grew older we each walked different paths. One trying to find the love that they never knew and the other trying to hold onto the memories and make her proud.

We became two entirely different people with two entirely different lives stuck in the same place with no where to go. Somedays Max seemed to hold it all against me. The fact that my mother died and the only chance Ronnie had at a happy life died with her. We had fought about this once before, Max and I had. He had told me things that I'd never thought about before in my life. He told me on how my mother had treated him well and shown him what a loving mother was supposed to be like. But it seemed that within ten years he had forgotten all about that feeling.

Ronnie wasn't out to fall in love or be loved. Ronnie was just trying to get out and everyone knew it. Whether it to graduate, to drop out, or to runaway, Ronnie would do it if he thought he could get away from his past.

"Thinking awfully hard there," Max murmured as he brushed past, "If you ever want to know what you're missing, feel free."

I blinked a couple times and looked around me, noticing that everyone was packing up their things and leaving. I sighed and grabbed my own bag before hurrying out of the door. I looked over and saw Emily and a boy named Sal chatting. She rested her hand on his arm and laughed. I shook my head at her and glanced around the hallway.

"Katerina!" Emily called when she saw me.

I looked back to her and then walked over there, waving 'hello' to Sal. "What?" I asked Emily, pursing my lips.

Emily chuckled, "Don't be so rude, Kat, this is Salvador, he's a junior," she told me with a warning look in her eyes.

I nodded. "I know. Sal was in my geometry class last year," I told her.

"Oh," she mumbled and then perked back up, "Do you want to hang out after school?" she questioned, glancing at Sal as if to tell me not to embarrass her in front of him.

I looked away uneasily and through the large glass windows that showed the outside lunch area. Max Green caught my eye as he rested against a tree, chatting with Ronnie and a few of his friends with a cigarette between his lips. He ran his fingers through his dirty brown hair and nodded at something someone was saying.

"Kat?" Emily called, poking me.

"What?" I asked as I looked back to her, being brought back to reality.

Emily gave me an odd look. "What is with you? I asked if you wanted to hang out at my house after school?"

I glanced back at Max and Ronnie and shook my head. "Why don't we go to my house instead?"

Emily's eyes grew wide. "But we never go to your house."

I shrugged, "Maybe this year we can."

Emily cleared her throat as Sal eyed her. "Sure," she stuttered, managing to nod her head as well, "I'll tell Dean."

I smiled and nodded my head before turning to walk away. Emily hadn't been my house since we were children, maybe eight years old, when I first met her and Dean. When Emily's parents realized the neighborhood that Emily was going to after school they stopped allowing her to ride the bus home with me and I started catching a ride with her nanny and her.

Emily's father owns half the casinos in town. Her mother never worked but also never had time to actually raise Emily or her older brother Nathaniel. They were raised by their nanny, Colette, who had been around since Nathaniel was a baby. Colette never had any children of her own but she loved Nate and Emily as if they were hers. I knew that Colette wouldn't mind if Emily came over but if her parents ever found out Emily would be in a lot of trouble.

I figured it was worth it. I'd finally have a chance for Emily to know that Ronnie Radke lived next door to me. She had only been over a few times when we were eight but that was after the Radkes split from my family. Emily knew that I lived in roughly the same neighborhood as Ronnie and Max but she never knew that we were neighbors our entire lives.

Emily always held such a high opinion of my family and I. As the years passed she became more and more judgmental towards everyone. If a person didn't live up to her standards then she automatically wasn't friends with them. I believed that if we were to meet for the first time nowadays, she would group me in with Ronnie and his crowd. She always used to say that it was lucky we met when we were young.

I walked into my next class and glanced around. I smiled when I noticed that Dean was sitting in the back at one of the paint covered tables. I walked over and sat next to him, dropped my bag on the floor. He looked up and grinned.

"I heard you and Em got into a fight," he told me with a laugh, "In the middle of gym class."

I gave him a blank look. "She was being pompous."

Dean just laughed and held his hands up in defense. "I don't care what you girls do. Just don't rip her head off."

"I wouldn't," I told him, "I'm not like that."

Dean laughed again and wrapped his arms over my shoulders. "You know," he chuckled, "You do have a mean side. You just like to pretend you don't."

I laughed sarcastically and pushed him off of me. "See!" he shouted, pointing at me, "That's your mean side!"

"We're going to my house after school," I told him, trying to change the subject.

"Wait," he stated, looking baffled, "To your house?"

I nodded and played it off like it was no big deal.

"Kat!" he shouted, "How did you get Emily to agree to go to your house? She never wants to go there!"

I laughed and nodded, leaning against him. "I asked her in front of Sal Smith."

"Evil," Dean said as he held his hand up for a high five.

I smacked his hand and then turned my attention to the teacher as she walked from her desk to the chalk board. She wrote her name on the board and then turned to face the class room.

"How well can you guys draw?" she questioned, folding her arms.

Kids yelled things out, causing the teacher to smile. "Alright, even if you can't draw at all you're going to have fun in this class," she pointed to the wall on the left, "Blank paper is over there as well as pencils and the sharpener. Everyone go get a piece of paper and pencil if you need it."

Once everyone was back in their seats with papers and writing utensils in front of them she continued. "I want you each to draw a picture that represents something that not a lot of people know about your life. If you can't draw, make it as simple as you can. I'm talking stick people and sketches. Do not put your name on it. When you're done I'll come around and collect them. You have fifteen minutes... Go."

I set off to draw two houses separated by a simple brown fence. In front of one more run-down house stood five little girls with happy faces as they were cradled by their loving father. The house was shabby but well taken care of. The drawing tried to show how close the house was to the school, how bad the neighborhood was. The tallest little girl was shielding her face as if she was hiding from a camera.

In front of the other house the same little girls stood proud. Their father was standing in the window of the house. It was a big house with flower pots and toys on the front lawn. All the girls were in fancy dresses and had their hair done up real nice. The word "FAKE" was drawn in the flower pot, each letter representing a flower. When you looked at the other house you could see the word "REAL" drawn in the window, representing cracks, a broken window.

My head snapped up as the teacher called for everyone to stop drawing and hand in what they drew. I glanced down at my pictures and studied the paper. When my teacher walked over she stopped and looked at it for a moment and then looked at me and smiled. I smiled back and handed the paper to her, watching as she mixed it into the pile she had in her hands.

"I"m going to hang each one of these up here," she said as she walked over to the pushpin wall. "I want you guys to study them and learn that not everyone is how they seem."

I looked at the pictures as she hung them up among the ones from earlier classes. Some were happy, some drawn with amazing likeness, and some were sad. The one that caught my eyes was a simple drawing of four guys. The page was drawn to make it looked like it was ripped in half, two boys on one side and two on the other.

Through out the rest of class I kept glancing back at the picture wishing I could know who had drawn it but I couldn't tell. There was no name and none of the guys in the picture had faces. I wasn't sure if that was because the artist didn't have time to finish or if he or she meant to do that.

"Have a good day!" the art teacher shouted as the class piled out of the door and soon out of the school, "Keep those photos in mind!"

Dean hopped up from his chair and grabbed his bag. "Which one is yours?" he asked as he walked beside me, looking at the wall of photos.

I looked up to him and stuck my tongue out. "None of your business," I told him as I looked back to the wall, to my own photo as it hung among the rest of the them.

"Hey!" Dean shouted as I hurried off, "That's not fair! I'm your best friend!"

"Not anymore!" I yelled back to him as I ran off into the crowd in the hallway.

I heard Dean yell after me, telling me that he'd meet me out front. I realized he wouldn't be able to hear my reply so I just waved my hand in the air and hurried off to my locker to grab my things before going to find Gwendolyn. When I walked over to the start of the freshman hall I saw my sister leaning against a locker with a boy standing in front of her, talking up a storm. There were two people next to them, one I recognized to be Kara Reese, a girl who had been friends with Gwen since they were little. Kara was attached by the lips to a dark-haired boy. I rolled my eyes and walked over there.

"Hey Gwen," I said as I walked up, causing her eyes to grow wide and her to nudge Kara in the back. Kara pulled away from the boy and smiled at me. "Hey Kat," she greeted as her fingers slipped in between the other boys.

"Hi Kara," I said in return before turning to Gwen. "Who's your friend?"

"This is Jaime," she said automatically, "He's in my english class."

I offered him a smile. "Hi."

"Hey," he said in return.

Kara piped in, her witty and bubbly tone still intact. "This is Bryce," she told me, "My boyfriend."

I nodded my head, "I think I figured that out, Kar."

She frowned but nodded her head. She looked to Gwen and tugged on her arm. They had a silent conversation with their eyes, causing me to look at them suspiciously. Then after a moment Gwendolyn groaned.

Gwendolyn turned to me with a pleading look on her face. "Are you going to Emily's?" she questioned.

I shook my head, "Nope. Dean and Em are coming over today."

Gwendolyn not only looked a little surprised but slightly crestfallen as well. Kara nudged her once again and she shot a glare in her direction. "Kat, Kara and I were wondering if Brice and Jaime could come over for a little while?"

"You know the rules," I stated, referring to the fact that Dad didn't allow boys over unless he was home.

Gwen pouted, "But Dean gets to come over!"

I rested my hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. "Gwen, remember when you were ten and told Dean that you had a crush on him, what did he say?"

Gwen glared at me and pushed my hands off of her shoulders. "I know he's gay," she growled, crossing her arms.

I looked over the boys that were standing there in front of me. They were entirely innocent looking, no tattoos, they didn't smell of smoke, and they were merely 14, 15 at most. I glanced back to my sister's face as she looked at me, her face was glum and I decided to give these boys a chance.

"Fine," I sighed, "They can come. But you stay down in the living room. No going in our room and no closing the doors."

Kara and Gwendolyn squealed and jumped to hug each other while the boys that were standing next to them laughed at the girls. I rolled my eyes and reached to yank Gwendolyn back, telling her that Emily and Dean were waiting outside.

"Lets go," I demanded, turning and walking off down the hall, knowing that the four of them were following behind me.