OH MY FREAKIN GOSH! I LOVE YOU PEOPLE!!!!! 

I have hit OVER A HUNDRED VIEWS!!! I'm so freaking happy, I just--I can't! Thank you all for reading and commenting! I'm glad people are enjoying my story! :) I'm not kidding, I'm beaming so wide right now, you have no idea! XD

Anyways, with that said, I AM SO SORRY! I meant to update for the last couple weeks, but school has been chaos for me! You know how it gets near the end of the year... :'(

But... :)

I've decided to try out a writing schedule. 

Hopefully, that'll help with my weird updating. XP I've never had a writing schedule before, so I'm none too sure how well this will all work out, but, hey, it's worth a shot! 

Soooo, I've decided that I'm going to try and update every...

*DRUMROLL*

Monday!

I chose Monday just because I know how everyone feels about it and how people think it's the worst day of the week, and I honestly don't blame them. At all. Because I often times find myself thinking the same exact thing, but then I realized... If we don't give Monday the chance to be great, it never will be great! So why not give it a chance? What does anyone have to loose?

So, there we go! Bam! Updates on Monday. :)

I hope this makes Monday a little brighter for those of you with similar views of Garfield the cat. XD

Anyway, just a heads up, I may or may not update in the next two weeks. I know, I know. 'Why on earth would you talk about a new writing schedule if you're not going to stick to it right off the bat?!' And I hope I have a reasonable answer for that. 

Finals. As a freshman in high school, I've never experienced finals at the end of the year quite like this, and I'm honestly quite nervous, so I might be devoting most of my time in the next couple weeks studying. I might be able to update, and I might not. I'm super sorry about that. :(

But, hey, bright side of the rainbow, after the twenty-fourth, school is over for me and I'll have the whole summer to bring you guys updates! :D

So, please be patient with me everyone. :)

Now, with all that said, whatcha reading this still for? Go ahead and get to the chapter! It is why you're here, isn't it? :P

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She was in a deep heck of an amount of trouble. She was dead. So dead, she didn't even exist anymore.

It was her freaking first day of school, and she broke a kid's nose already. Why did trouble insist on following her everywhere? She just had to let her anger explode, didn't she? She should have just walked away! But she didn't, and now she needed to face the consequences. She desperately hoped it didn't involve a phone call to her parents, but, judging by her luck, it most definitely did. Which was absolutely perfect.

Trailing behind Mr. Lancer, her mind brewing up a storm strong enough to be classified as a class five hurricane, Sam grumpily crossed her arms over her chest. There were about a million things she'd rather be doing right now than following her strange, book-swearing, over-weight English teacher to his classroom of doom to face her sentence of death. Though, the death wouldn't be from her teacher, oh no. Her death would be from her parents. If she were to get suspended, or worse, expelled, all on the first day of school, then she might as well be dead.

Upon reaching the door to his classroom, Mr. Lancer opened the door and held it wide for her to enter before him. As he did so, Sam briefly wondered if he wasn't doing it to be a gentleman. It was probably just to make sure she didn't try to run away and escape when he wasn't looking. At the sudden thought, Sam couldn't help but wonder how many runners the teacher usually got. He seemed like the kind to give unreasonable punishments to misbehaving students, especially with his bored, monotone voice. It almost seemed as if he didn't care about anything! Which was obviously untrue, seeing as Sam wouldn't be in her punishment jam in the first place if he didn't care.

Sighing loudly, Sam reluctantly looked behind her at the open hallway before entering the dimly lit classroom. As Lancer followed behind her and flipped on a switch to illuminate the room, Sam almost jumped out of her skin when the door slammed shut, its resonating click seeming to be a metaphor for her sealed fate and soon demise. Of course, that only made her more nervous.

"Ms. Manson, would you care to take a seat?" Lancer asked, his voice somehow seeming bored, yet commanding, all at the same time. He gestured nonchalantly towards his desk where, directly in front of it, out of place among all the other desks, was a singular chair placed perfectly in view of Mr. Lancer's side of the desk. It weirded Sam out beyond measure. That was not there when she was in class before. It was almost as if...it had been waiting for her? No, that was ridiculous.

Even so, with the judging stare she was receiving from her teacher as he waited for her answer and the evil look to the chair placed perfectly in front of the desk, Sam wanted nothing more than to scream 'NEVER!' at the top of her lungs and jump out the first-story window, but she quickly restrained herself. She didn't need to get in any more trouble than she already was.

"Uh, sure..." Sam uncertainly answered as she moved to the chair, sitting down in it carefully as if one wrong move would cause it to explode.  

Once she was settled, the pot-bellied teacher moved to the desk and proceeded to simply stand behind it instead of sitting down in the swivel chair provided, which Sam thought was a real shame. Those chairs were a lot of fun to spin around in, and to deny sitting in it felt like a crime. Though, Sam found wisdom in him standing, too. 

After all, with him standing and her sitting, he towered above her, the perfect placement for some well deserved intimidation. It was probably actually what the teacher was going for, but Sam couldn't really feel intimidated by him. Sure, he could seem kind of scary, and his whole room appeared quite frightening right now, bathed in shadows, but his whole effect was quite ruined with the way his stomach jiggled as he walked. Sam did her best to hold in a sudden snort when all the Christmas poems she learned as a child about Santa Clause suddenly popped in her head. Shoving the sensation down, Sam met her disappointed teacher's eyes.

"It's not even your first day here and you've already wound yourself up in heap of trouble, young lady." He frowned in disapproval. Turning his back to her for a moment, he reached into a file cabinet full of folders. Sam managed to catch a slight glance of the tabbed files before the teacher found the particular file he had been searching for and closed the drawer. File in hand, he faced Sam once more, showing her the papers protected within the folder. "You've marred your blank slate already, and I don't want this to become a usual occurrence."

Curious, Sam looked at the papers she was being shown and cocked a wary eyebrow. It was a file with her name on it and a picture of her sulking face. When she looked under the offenses section, she found it blank, which would undoubtedly be updated by the next day. Sam felt slightly wistful, wishing it was indeed blank, but there was no way to change what had happened. What's done is done.

So, instead, she decided to wonder what on earth Mr. Lancer was doing with a file cabinet of student records in his classroom. Wasn't that what the principals were supposed to have? Oh, well. Maybe Lancer just liked being up to date with the ongoings of his students.

Suddenly, Lancer spoke, breaking Sam from her thoughts.

"We here at Casper High don't feel as if we're really asking of much; we just insist you keep your hands to yourself. That includes punching the first person to get on your bad side." He continued sternly, cutting off Sam every time she opened her mouth indignantly in protest. Huffing in defeat, Sam sagged into her chair and shifted in it, doing her best to get comfortable, even with the cold plastic of the chair seeping through her clothes.

"Therefore, I have decided what your punishment should be." Lancer said as he solemnly stacked the papers back together and placed the file back inside the cabinet before turning on Sam.

Sam couldn't help the gulp that escaped her throat as she shrank under his gaze. She desperately hoped she could make it through this with her life, but she wondered if that was too much to ask for.

"Since it is only your first day here, and your actions today could easily pass for a sudden lapse of judgment, I've decided to go easy on you. Today after school, you will be serving detention. Meet in my classroom, and once all the detentionees have gathered, we'll be cleaning the gym."

Sam sighed with undeniable relief. One detention wasn't so bad. Her parents couldn't get too mad over that, and, if they did, she could always easily whip out the stories her grandmother liked to tell her about her Dad's detention days. Lucky for her, her Dad had attended many detentions in his high school years, and they were easy to use to her advantage. 

Plus, it WAS only one detention. They couldn't be all that angry about that, right?

It might be super boring, but hopefully the half-an-hour would pass by in a blink, and then everything could return to normal.

__________~le linebreak~__________

"I should've jumped out that window when I had the chance." Sam grumbled into her hand, her cheek resting in her palm as she boredly stared straight ahead.

Sam hated detention. No, she loathed detention. She was pretty sure she wanted the person who first came up with it to go jump off a cliff. They were NOT on good terms with her at the moment.

Sam had been to detention before a couple times at her last school, but most of them were for accidental tardies(She couldn't help herself sometimes; if she saw trash lying around on the ground, she was going to pick it up. Her teachers really should have been thanking her, she was trying to help save their planet!), but that was just because she never really got into that many fights in Virginia. She had lived there her whole life; the boys there knew not to mess with her.

That, however, was not the case here, and she just had to wound herself up in one of her least favorite places in the world.

Besides her mother's wardrobe.

She was fairly certain more than half of the eye-numbingly bright clothing in that closet of death were in colors that could be only seen by bees and art students. She shuddered at the thought.

Forcing the sensation down, Sam returned her attention to the clock. After all her other classes had ended, Sam had made her way over to Mr. Lancer's room where detention was supposed to meet. And she was still here. Eight minutes had already passed! When were all the other students going to arrive? She couldn't stand this for much longer! It was driving her insane! Were kids always this late to detention here? Sam was becoming increasingly impatient.

Of course, she wasn't eager to go and clean the gym, but she still considered it better to just go and get it done and over with. Then she could go home. Sitting here and just waiting was the exact opposite of that, and she was sure any second now she would snap. All her time was being wasted! Nothing was more irritating than that.

Letting out an exasperated growl, Sam glared at the clock accusingly, as if the cursed ticker was the root of all her problems, before briefly glancing over her shoulder. The instant she made eye-contact and confirmed it, Sam shot her head back around to the front of the room so hard, it nearly gave her whiplash.

There was one more reason why Sam wanted to get this whole ordeal over with.

And his name was Dash Baxter.

The blonde jock was sitting behind her, casually leaning back in his chair as he, too, stared at the clock. Although, Sam also caught a couple times when his blue eyes glanced at her, just as hers occasionally did. Neither of them meant to do it, but... What do you do when you're stuck in a room with the person you were recently in a fight with?

Not much, apparently, except sit in awkward silence.

Then, suddenly, Dash spoke up and addressed her, "Hey, Banson."

Startled, Sam turned her head slightly back to where Dash was seated. Almost immediately afterwards, she had to duck her head as a paper airplane whizzed past her, nearly hitting her on it's way across the room. Some of the detention kids, the ones who undoubtedly were the owners of the airborne projectile, snickered as Sam sent them a glowering glare. They must have been just as bored as she was waiting for the other students to arrive if they had resorted to throwing crafted airplanes at people.

Rolling her eyes slightly, Sam turned back to Dash just in time to see him laughing at her. Unamused herself, she simply watched and waited for him to finally stop his sputtering and gasping chortles, giving him a pointed stare. She was beginning to feel quite done with the immaturity of some people.

"What do you want Dash?" Sam asked in a monotone voice, but she didn't ask it like a question, instead preferring to state it, demanding an answer.

Dash managed to stop his laughter as he fell into a  brief coughing fit, grinning at her as if her surprised face only moments before had been the funniest thing in the world.

This, of course, only served to irritate Sam further.

"Oh, nodhing, just undering whad you were ub to." He waved off nonchalantly, obviously having called her name just to annoy her. 

However, now was Sam's turn to smile and laugh, even if she only did it in her head. The way he had been talking confused her at first, but then she slowly realized he was speaking so irregularly on her part. She, after all, was the one who wailed him right in the nose. And, now, despite his nose being fixed back into place by the school nurse, his voice had a nasal air to it as he continued attempting to talk past his congested nose. To Sam, though, nothing else could have been funnier.

Doing her best to hold in her snorts of laughter, knowing they wouldn't help the situation, the ebony-haired teen pondered what her best approach to a reply should be(if she replied at all). Suddenly, it dawned on her that Dash was acting increasingly calm, as if nothing had happened and he were greeting an old friend, which didn't happen to be the case. It would seem Mr. 'Cool guy' from before was back. He probably just didn't want the other kids in the room to see himself, little top jock, lose it. Typical.

"So, how long are you serving detention for?" Sam decided to calmly ask. If he was going to act like nothing happened, then so was she. The last thing she needed right now was to start another fight. Besides, she was also generally curious about the answer, so why not?

"Oh, jusd today." He waved it off, leaning back in his chair as its front legs lifted in the air.

"Really?" Sam cocked an eyebrow. "Same here. Though, Lancer said he usually wasn't so forgiving with these types of things. What saved your butt?"

"Well, whad sabed yours?" He lightly returned the question, though Sam could see the curiosity in his eyes.

"Eh, something about me being the new student, and all." Sam did her best to shrug nonchalantly. If she was being honest, the entire exchange was beginning to unsettle her slightly. Nothing like being forced in the same room and talking with the guy you punched to freshen up your afternoon, right?

"Ah." Dash responded to her answer, nodding his head slightly in understanding. "Mages sense."

"You?" Sam spoke up. She just gave him an answer, and she sure as heck wanted one in return.

"Lancer usually leds me off easy, somedhing aboud me being the star quarderbag, or somedhing." The blond-haired jock grinned at her, mockingly responding in the same format as she had moments before.

She rolled her eyes. She took everything back. She didn't loathe detention. She despised it with every burning fiber of her being. This was the worst punishment anyone could ever possibly receive, and she wasn't sure if she could handle it for much longer. Where on earth were those other kids?! 

As if on cue, the straggling students finally entered the classroom, being led by Principal Ishiyama, who whispered to Mr. Lancer about how the troublesome teens had tried to avoid detention, or something like that, before she exited right back out again. Sam couldn't care less about what had happened, though, she was just relieved that soon, they could clean the gym and she could leave. That in itself was bliss, and she jumped up out of her seat in anticipation for them to move out.

But, of course, Mr. Lancer needed to take roll and make sure everyone was there in his loooong, bored voice. Sam wanted to yell at him that he could do that when they got to the gym, but she figured it was best not to say anything. She didn't need to add talking back to teachers on her record.

When they had finally arrived at the gym, the destination they were supposed to have been at fifteen minutes ago, Sam waited anxiously to be assigned her task. However, all her thoughts of finishing fast and going home were wiped from her mind with the cold, sticky sensation of dread that pooled in the pit of her stomach. She did not like the way Mr. Lancer was looking at her as he told each student what they would be doing.

"Ms. Manson," his voice called out to her, "You will be mopping the floors. I expect to be able to see my face shining in them when you're done."

Sam let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Taking a deep breath and containing the retort that she so wanted to release from her lips, Sam wondered where the dread was coming from. Nothing bad had happened yet. Mopping wasn't too bad; in fact, it was one of the easier jobs compared to what the escapee students were being forced to do. At least she didn't have to clean one of the shower rooms, or something like that.

However, her relief came much too soon.

"You will be partnered with Dash. I expect the two of you to make this floor spotless." Then, before she(or Dash) could protest, the teacher moved on to assigning jobs to other students, much to Sam's horror.

This had to be the worst day of her life.

After she managed to get her feet to move from where they had frozen in place, she reluctantly made her way to the supplies closet and grabbed two mops and a bucket of watery soap suds. Trying to hide her displeasure, she handed one of the mops to her 'mopping partner' and instantly got to work, ferociously scrubbing at the gym floor and trying to avoid any more conversation as Dash joined her. Oh, why couldn't this day end?

The area then filled with silence, besides other teenagers working on their own respective tasks and the sound of wet rags slapping against the floor, and Sam reveled in it. It was so calm and quiet, she never wanted it to end. But, of course, like all the best things in life, it had to come to an end sometime.

"Hey, whad aboud that house scares you?" Dash suddenly spoke up, his voice still stuffy as he casually leaned on his mop's handle. 

Confused by the sudden question, it took a few moments for Sam to take in and process what had been asked of her, and when recognition finally lit in her eyes, she scowled deeply at the infuriating reminder. He was talking about the Dead House. The house that had been taunting her ever since she had arrived, and made her skin crawl with sensations she still couldn't fully understand. The house that Sam wished didn't exist.

That house.

Growling under her breath, Sam could see the jock was enjoying her reaction. Of course he remembered what had blown her top off; a bully would never forget such useful information. Knowing there wasn't much else she could do, Sam went on the offensive.

"What house? Oh, you mean that house? The one on my street? I'm not afraid of that old thing,  now about the condition of your jacket, though, that is debatable." The violet-eyed teen sniffed, waving off any idea of her turmoil emotions about the abandoned building possibly being fear. 

That struck a chord, she could tell. It seemed his football coat was very precious to him, and with the state it was currently in, covered in dried blood from their meeting before, it was a sore subject, too. By merely mentioning it, he had begun glaring daggers at her angrily, still leaning on the mop but not nearly as casually as before.

Deciding against using any more scathing remarks, lest she start up another tussle, Sam decided to simply wrap her words up. "Afraid of a house? Yeah right. I've watched horror movies with more adrenaline-pumping suspense and haven't been phased. I'm not afraid of any of that kind of stuff." She declared, driving her point through to get past his thick skull.

Positive she had made herself quite clear, she continued on working, ignoring the pair of intense blue eyes that were most definitely boring into her back.

"Alright, prove id."

"Huh?" Sam turned back around, not expecting the answer.

"Prove id. Prove thad house doesn'd scare you. Tonight, at two 'o clog, come to the house. We'll be waiding, and then we'll see how long you can last inside. I bed you won't last two hours." Dash folded his arms across his chest, glaring at her, challenging her. It was a silent test, to see if her claims were as true as she fought for them to be.

For a moment, Sam was speechless. She wasn't sure what to do. If she agreed, she would have to sneak out of her house without her parents catching her, not to mention then having to actually go inside the one place that had been creeping her out for weeks. It certainly wasn't an appealing idea, but... If she didn't, Dash and his little jock gang would tease her relentlessly about how much of a coward she was. How afraid she was of that stupid house. Which she wasn't! It was just her mixed up emotions; it was nothing. This whole dare would be a cinch. She could do this.

With that, she made up her mind in a split-second decision.

"I'll be there." Sam said after a moment. Quickly continuing, she added, " But if I win, you have to leave me alone."

Dash grinned at her triumphantly, his smile taunting her, telling her that she was going to lose.

"Agreed."

~XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX~

Well, there it is! :)

I hope you all enjoyed! I quite enjoyed writing it, but I'm more excited for the next chapter. That one's gonna be fun! XD

Anyway, I hope you liked the extra long chapter, and I hoped it slightly made up for the past couple weeks of no updates... ^-^'

Have a wonderful day/night! :)

~Doodleroo1234