Stupid fly.   and rolling over, I swatted the stupid six legged insect that was prodding my head incessantly with its protruding antenna.  

 

Goddamn it, that hurt like shizz.  I didn't recall flies being that huge.  Or hard.  Or poke-y.

 

Perhaps it was a mutant mosquito with a finger-sized proboscis.  

 

That made sense.

 

"C'mon lazyass, get up!"

 

Or not.  Last I checked, mosquitoes, mutant or not, couldn't talk.  And come to think of it, that annoying mosquito sounded very suspiciously like my equally annoying sister, Candace.  

 

So, being as smart as I was, I put two and two together, figured that I wasn't under a giant mutant mosquito attack, and jerked out of bed.

 

Oh, right.  First day of Highschool.  Laddidam.  We so excited.

 

A bucket of ice cold water, below zero degrees, downed me there and then.  My (now-drenched) sleepy bones jumped at the nasty shock.  Did someone just dump me, and my clothes, and my bed, and my bedroom floor, with ice effing water?  A grimace tainted my features as I watched the little swimming pool around me spread between my legs, the frosty fingers touching my you-know-what. 

 

That was it.  Screeching my declaration of war to Candace, I attempted to move my glutinous maximus from a seated position to a standing one.

 

Say your last words, seriel ice-dumper, because here I come.

 

My refused to budge.

 

Oh golly, I was getting a frost bite - and I had completely loss contact with my .  It was numb.  I couldn't even feel the icky, wet bed I was plopped down on.  It was  like my was no longer attached to my body, but to someone else's instead.

 

"Canny!" I hollered.  Hell hath no fury like a women scorned - I proceeded to throw my soggy pillow - a mixture of dissolved drool and water, at Candace, praying that it would at the very least, flatten her nose, or that the overwhelming stench of my drool would cause her permanent brain damage.  

 

Yeah.  Like things go the way we want them to.  If it did, I wouldn't be here.  I would be back at my old school, in Florida, intimidating the new kids that were joining this year.

 

Anyway, back to the story.  The pillow skimmed the top of the cheeky monkey's head.  Or a more accurate description would be: The pillow gave three pathetic bunny hops, at least ten feet from Clandace, before hoping its dying hop, and harmlessly falling flat on its face.

 

Oh. Well.

 

"Finally you're awake.  I thought you were dead or something," Candace grinned triumphantly at the doorway.  I felt like cutting that grin off her face.  With a penknife. Or a saw. Or better still, a rusty chainsaw dipped in horse urine.  Yes, that would be nice.

 

"Shoo," I sulked.  I would have re-cocooned myself with my soft, silky covers, but Candace had caused massive destruction to my heavenly habitat.  I didn't exactly fancy a damp blanket around me. "Go away," I told her childishly.  "No one likes you."

 

"It's the first day of school all over again!" She ignored me.  It seemed that nothing could dampen her spirits.  "A new place, a new school, all those new faces that we've yet to meet!  I'm bursting with joy at the very thought of it all!"

 

"New faces?" I mumbled, burying my head into my shivering hands.  "That's crazy depressing." I struggled to rise to my feet. "Now, excuse me for a sec while I hunt for a penknife to slit my wrist with."

 

"Oh, stop being melodramatic!" Candace chided.  "And hurry with washing up."

 

Rich, huh, after dousing me with a bucketful of icy water?  'Hurry with the washing up'? - haha, sure.  Now I had the sheets, the bed, the floor, and myself to clean up.  Common sense told me that I would be taking quite a while.

 

Bleh.

 

"And, oh!" Candace exclaimed.  "I made breakfast!  It's cheese toast. I can't have you having sweets for breakfast again." 

 

Now she'd gone and done it.  First, the witch had intentionally destroyed my snuggly habitat.  And now, she was meddling with my food source?  Was Candace trying to drive my species to extinction or something?  Someone as awesome as me was one of a kind, and really rare.  I wouldn't do that if I were her.

 

"Sorry to break it to you, but I'm allergic to cheese toast."

 

"Lies!" Candace sniffed out.  "You're lactose intolerant.  You're only allergic to milk."

 

"Well, genius," I said. "Unfortunately for you, God made it such that cheese contains milk."  I steadied myself with a hand on the dresser, taking a quick peek of myself in the mirror, only to have an image of a drenched dog staring back at me disgustedly.

 

Eww.  I had a lot of work to do before I could count as presentable.

 

Candace's kid-like bouncing immediately stilled.  A crestfallen look had overwritten that previous bubbly expression on her features.  I looked to her, slightly bugged at that abrupt change of demeanour.  I mean, sure, she'd just dumped a couple of liquidy cubes of ice down my back, which could have resulted in me getting hypotherma and all, but still, guilt blossomed in my chest like a flower.  

 

I felt like I'd just cut an infant through with a laser.

 

ARG, me and my stupid conscience.

 

"Okay, Canny, I'll eat your bloody cheese toast."  I threw my hands into the air exasperatedly.  "Hospital, needles, death - COME AT ME BRO!"

 

Candace beamed at my declaration.  "Good," She said, grinning like it was her birthday.  And like I was the clown invited to liven up her party.  

 

My eyes narrowed, and my evil radar began to beep non-stop.

 

It struck me.  Like a sledge-hammer.

 

"IT WAS AN ACT!" I yelled for the second time that morning.  "I'M GOING TO STRANGLE YOU, POOPHEAD!"  Candace, giggling like a school girl, did a disappearing trick round my door.  With an enraged bellow, I took after her shortly, like Tom after Jerry.

 

Oh, I loved that show by the way.

 

~0~

 

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...  Wherefore thou art?"

 

Oh, good lord.  Tell me I didn't just say that.

 

I didn't know why I said that.  It just slipped from my lips.  So sue me, I had set my sights on the highly coveted A, and had henceforth, been reading my literature text, Romeo and Juliet.  I supposed I had gotten into their little Shakespearean drama of 'thous' and 'thees', and their language had just sort of stuck like super glue on my tongue.

 

So these were the side effects of studying too hard.  I cringed.  Public humiliation just for an A?  So not worth it.

 

"What my sister meant was..." Candace shot a perplexed death glare at me.  "She likes you and wants to know your name."

 

"I do?" I asked.  Actually, I had intended to ask him what his business was on our porch.  But that worked fine too, I guess.

Candace nudged me.  In my ribs.  Hard.  

 

The stranger - he was a cutie, stared at both of us like we were aliens from the Planet Zzzyx.  I had a good mind to step right up to him, slap his face, and demand if his Mother ever taught him that 'staring was rude', but I figured that would completely destroy Candace's chances to assimilate into mainstream.  To not stand out as the freaks of all freaks.

 

"Um, hi." He enunciated the 'hi'.  He smiled shyly.  "I'm, well.... I'm Luhan."  

 

He ran his slender fingers through those gorgeous Topaz locks of his.

 

My hands - which were draped round my tummy to ease the earlier nudge, twitched in envy.  My hands felt jealous of his hand.  Why couldn't my hand be doing that!?!?!?

 

Oh, stop it, you ert!  

 

I shook off my erted desires, looking at the pixie-like guy before me with great appreciation.  "I'm Sophie," I replied, my smile matching his.  "And that girl behind me - she's my sister, Candace."

 

"W-What brings you here?"  The stutters were beginning to plague Candace.  She used to have speech impediment when she was little.  After a great deal of speech therapy, you couldn't actually tell Candace apart from a normal person.  Unless a cute guy showed up on her doorstep.  Like now.  

 

All the five thousand bucks worth of therapy sessions flew out of the window.

 

I was glad I wasn't the only one raging a battle against my hormones.

 

"Oh, I'm just welcoming the new kids to town." He shrugged like it was no big deal.  "My Mom actually baked you girls some cookies, but I sort of finished it on the way here."

 

"T-Thank y-y-you," Candace had to pull out the words stuck on her tongue.  "T-That's n-nice of you guys."

 

"Yeah," I agreed.  "Back at where we lived, people don't give a about who moves in and out.  I'm guessing that my neighbours' still haven't figured out that we've moved."

 

Luhan laughed.  His laugh was, for a lack of a better word, cute.  It reminded me of Carebear's laughter, just that much lower.  I felt like pulling his cheeks reaaaally hard, and letting them snap back together.

 

I inwardly faced palm.  From ert to sadist.  How wonderful.

 

I know most of you were looking for characteristics that pointed to 'y', but honestly, y was the last word I would use to describe this guy.  'Pretty'?  Possibly.  And cute?  He had that word written on every inch of his body, from the dark flecks of ebony in his irises, to those doll-like lips of his...

 

I could definitely see the appeal in cute.

 

Stop it, Soph, you're going overboard.

 

"Well, I guess this town's much smaller," Luhan smiled at me.  "And the people who live here are pretty... static.  We aren't migratory creatures, and most of our families have been living here for centuries already."

 

"Centuries?" I asked incredulously.  Luhan merely nodded.

 

"Yep," He said.  "And the Wus... I think they're bordering on the seventh century already.  It's crazy."

 

"Oh God!" I exclaimed.  "Don't they ever get tired of living in the same area?  Looking at the same tree outside your bedside window every morning; turning the same corners to get to school; waving to the same people on the way?  Life , man."

 

He flashed me a grin, one worthy of swoons.  "Precisely." Luhan's fingers curled around my wrists.  It was a chain reaction.  I simultaneously grasped hold of Candace's wrist.  

 

If he was going to haul me anywhere, Candace was coming along as well.

 

"Although," Luhan said playfully.  "There aren't any trees outside their mansion; they don't walk to school - they drive sports cars; and, they don't do waving.  Unless you've lived here longer than they did, you're just another ant on the side walk."

 

"They sound worse than Highschool es."

 

"In a way, yes."  Luhan tugged on my wrist.  I tugged on Candace's wrist in turn.  "I want to show you guys something," He suddenly said.  "It's just round the corner."

 

I tried to reason telepathically with Candace that 'school was starting in fifteen minutes', but she didn't seem to get the message.  She was currently doing a combination of a blush, a coy smile, and a head nod.  

 

I sighed.  Somehow, telepathy never worked between us.  And that , because that's supposed to be one of the perks of having a twin.

 

It's either me or Candace that's screwed up, and don't look at me.  

 

I'm the not the one who dumped a bucket of ice water on my sister this morning.

 

"Okay," I said to Luhan.  "But be quick."