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Chapter 1: New Kid

I once told my best friend: Don't ever think that you will never find love. Love is not something that just miraculously happens nor is it a predestined path. Love is what happens when you find a person that you can connect with on a different level than anyone else you know. A person who can mutually accept the fact that no one is perfect, and learn to or already accepts the abnormalities you may have. This was an important day for me, as I had came up with that on the spot. I had just answered all the doubting questions I had ever experienced in my love life. It has been years since that day and now with the world having such a high divorce rate, it is even clearer to me that I must search for love in people with whom I can connect and actually care about. For instance, growing up I never thought I would ever put myself in the line of fire for anyone, or risk imprisonment just to stay with someone. That all changed the day I met...her.

I woke up very early, not quite yet dawn. I looked at my alarm clock. It was only 5:13, but I needed to get to school. Today was going to be a new experience for me, I had just moved here from my home town of Truinston and I was also entering the 9th grade at my new school: Ponyville High.

I stayed in bed and waited for my alarm to go off at 6. When it did I was jolted to full consciousness by the death-metal that started playing through my iPod. My brother must have been messing with it before we moved and put more music on it that he downloaded off the internet. Mom would never have let him PAY for music that she said would make our ears bleed.

I quickly turned off the excessive music before I woke up the whole house, half getting out of bed in the process. Rolling over to reach my socks at the foot of my bed, I realized I had neglected to do the laundry the night before.

I swore under my breath to myself for being so lazy the day before school started.

"Whatever, I can just wear sandals." I said to nobody in particular while sliding them out from under my bed. I crawled into my bathroom and took a fairly long shower. When I got out I stood in front of the mirror for nearly five minutes trying to fix my hair, finally giving in to the anti-gravity my hair seemed to release after showering and just let it hang.

After getting dressed I made some toast and ran out to the bus stop at the front gate. I looked around at our yard. The driveway curved around the garden and took a fairly tight turn into the 2-door garage where our Yukon was parked. It was a quaint little plot of land for the price dad paid for it.

Just then I heard a low rumble from behind me. I turned around to see the bus, in all its Twinkie like features, pulling up and stopping to let me on parked on our brand new mailbox. The door opened to reveal a quite overweight man in short shorts and a grey beard to be the driver. He turned and stared at me as I climbed aboard. There was only one open spot left to sit, halfway down the bus. I walked back and sat next to a girl with pink hair. She turned in my direction immediately.

"Hi! You look new, my name's Pinkie Pie!" she said with a huge smile.

"Hi, I umm...yeah I just moved here 2 days ago. My name's Jason." I smiled back. "Also, why is Santa Claus driving us to school in short shorts in the middle of winter?"

Pinkie Pie giggled. "That's Mr. Kringle silly!"

I shook my head in disbelief.

"So new guy, why the move?"

"My father...he...sued my mother for custody. I barely even know him..."

"Oh, I'm sorry Jason. Do you and your parents get along well?"

I lowered my head and got lost in thought. My mother and I grew up in the small town of Truinston, a mostly agricultural town with only about 900 residents. Suffice to say I knew everyone by name within a few years. She was a very humble woman, she gave others time and help and never put her own safety or financial situation before the needs of the townsfolk. I learned quickly to be a nice person. But every story has something bad in the background.

When I was 7 years old my mother and I were in a terrible car accident that caused severe head trauma, mild schizophrenia, and a loss of long term memory in my mother. From that point she barely recognized me, nor did she even know I was her son. For the next 7 years I spent most of my time sleeping over at a friend's house, not wanting to see my mother call the cops to report a small boy breaking into her house again. Most of my friends understood my pain, and let me settle with them for a few months. On my 14th birthday my dickhead of a father came for a "Visitation." Little did he know that my mother was bat shit crazy. We had a brief discussion about where I had been living and he left. Three hours later I was picked up by two CPS agents and put into a temporary foster home for two days. When my father came to get me, he didn't call me Jason or even son...he called me kid. That might as well have been a smack in the face to not dignify addressing your own son with at least his name or some witty nickname like "Sport" or "Pal" or at least "Kido." No, he called me kid.

I looked up at Pinkie pie with tears in my eyes, "Not really..."

Pinkie Pie's quite curly hair started to droop, "I'm sorry, maybe you can meet some of my friends and we can have a party or something!"

I smiled a bit, with still shining eyes refracting my vision into a spectrum of distorted pinks. The rest of the ride to school was silent, aside from Pinkie talking to herself about what to do for the after-school party she was planning for me.

When we finally got to the school I was taken aback from its appearance. The school is laid back from the main highway that runs past it, with a small oval driveway running from the highway around the back and ends looping around to the front and reconnecting to the highway. But what really shocked me was the state of the school.

The huge front lawn was more like desert shrubbery. Crispy, dying blades of a graying brown were strewn across a field of mud and clay that had, at one point, been a lush and fluffy sea of green. The paint that covered all but the windows was chipped, and in some places non-existent. I could see three cracked and broken windows on the front of the school alone. As the bus pulled into the driveway and drove into the back parking lot, I got a first-hand experience as to the number of gaping potholes.

"Wo...AH!" Pinkie Pie giggled, falling on me from the force of the first pothole. Several other students had similar issues, including a few in the back that I heard hit the roof with a comical thump-thump.

"WHY?" one shouted as he returned to Earth after a brief moment of free fall, rubbing his head where the bus assaulted him.

"I don't wanna ride this bus anymore..." cried a small Catholic school girl that had been thrown into the isle on top of a Senior boy, who merely grunted and refused to get up until the bus was motionless.

I turned to Pinkie Pie. "What happened to the school, I thought it was just recently remodeled?"

Pinkie giggled. "Yeah, they started ripping up flooring in the whole school like two years ago until the school ran out of money and couldn't pay for the demo anymore. It still has no floor tiles."

The bus came to a full stop next to a huge oak tree, shading us from the little light that came through the overcast. The driver stood up and turned around, stumbling and making strange grunts in the process.

"Alright kids remember, in the morning I drive 93-D and in the afternoon I drive 93-F. I'm always parked here so you should find me easily enough." the plump Christmas figure look-alike yelled into the back seats, and with that, he sat down in his seat. The springs groaned and whined in protest. He reached over and pushed on the broom handle that served as a door opener and locking mechanism and let us off.

"Pinkie! What are you doing?" I demanded, muffled through a mouthful of backpack as she crawled over me.

"Trying to get out before Francis silly!" she turned and gestured towards an older boy in the back row of the bus.

I looked back expecting to see some hulking tank of a man and was stunned. This boy was handsome in every aspect of the word, from his perfectly trimmed nails and chiseled jaw to his slim, muscular body and flowing white-blonde hair. He was everything a girl could ask for, and he was looking right at Pinkie Pie. She looked away blushing, still laying across my lap trying to get out. I stood up, helping her off the bus and walked towards the school's cracked concrete and gravel sidewalk.

"You like him!" I accused her, smiling and chuckling.

"No! Well...yes...but...it's complicated. You wouldn't understand." her hair drooped again.

"I'll take your word for it, Pinkie."

Opening the front door, Pinkie grabbed my hand and gave me a tour of the school's lounge gesturing wildly at the lights on the ceiling that had about a third of its lights missing or broken.

"It's so sad, this school used to be so nice! I wish there was some way they could spruce it up or something!" Pinkie moaned, keeping her eyes on the floor.

"Maybe I can help."

"How? The school's broke and they're thinking of firing a whole bunch of teachers this year. For all we know the school might close and we'd have to go somewhere else!"

"My father could donate some money to the school. He owns a bunch of oil refineries, and makes plenty of money. I might even be able to get him to hire the renovators himself! Who knows, maybe we can make the whole school pink or something!"

Pinkie looked off into space and started to show a huge smile. "That's a good idea!"

We walked into a small room with windows that looked into the hallways. It had a few sofas littered about, many missing a cushion or two and most had stained or ripped upholstery. The thing that grabbed my attention though was the group of girls that were sitting on a wraparound couch that dominated the center of the room. Pinkie squealed and rushed over to them, jumping and landing sideways on the ottoman sending it flying towards the wall leaving a decent dent in the drywall.

"Don't worry, happens all the time." she said, dismissing the look of horror I gave her for the blatant disregard for her own safety. One of the girls turned around, facing me.

"So Pinkie, why did you bring a boy into the girl's lounge?" asked the girl with a full head of perfectly placed bluish purple curls. "I mean, come on, Pinkie!"

"Rarity, stop being so mean. He's new here and I wanted him to meet you guys! Which reminds me..." she handed me a folded piece of paper, "That's my cell number and directions to get to my house."

"Pinkie, do you even know him?" I heard a strong voice ask from somewhere on the couch. A girl stood up and I was shocked, but not really that surprised, that she had a rainbow pattern in her hair. I stood there looking like an idiot, still somewhat stunned by the vivid colors.

"Umm...can I help you?" she asked in an irritated voice, clearly not used to new people. Another girl, this one with orange hair and a southern accent, stood up and started to give me a funny look as well.

"Not really, I'll just leave." I turned and started walking towards the door.

"Wait!" I heard Pinkie plead from her upside down position on the floor. I turned to see her roll over and take a sip of something that was on the table. By now the whole group was standing and arguing about me, besides one girl. She also had pink hair, and was sitting alone off to the side, silently crying while looking at the floor. I couldn't quite see her face, but I saw the tears that were dropping from her face onto the carpet. No one else seemed to have noticed her solitary sorrow. I cautiously walked over and sat next to her slowly, never even attracting the attention of the group behind me. I put my arm around her and tried my best to calm her down.

"Hey...it's okay." I crooned, giving her an assuring pat on the shoulder. She choked on her sobs, which seemed to get her friends attention, turning there heads to see what was wrong

"Fluttershy, what's wrong sugarcube?" the girl with orange hair asked in her southern accent.

"You guys always fight...and...you never..." she sobbed. With a glance over at her friends to see who was fighting, she turned and looked up at me showing her face from under her veil-like hair.

At first I thought I had passed out and was floating away on a dreaming cloud of bliss. She was so beautiful, her eyes a perfect oval the color of the sky, her eyelashes covered in tears that made the color even more vivid. I had just enough courage to say two words.

"What's wrong?"

"Ohh!" she cried, standing and running from the room. I stood up as well to follow her, hoping she wouldn't hide in the girl's bathroom where I could not follow her. My dreams were dashed (HA!) when the girl with rainbow hair stepped in front of me, stopping me before I even took my first step.

"What did you do? Why is Fluttershy crying?" she accused me, grabbing my shirt collar and getting in my face.

"I didn't do anything. If you had been listening, she said it was because YOU were all fighting. Besides, she almost seemed scared more than upset." I windmilled my left arm counterclockwise to remove her hand from my shirt.

"Dashie, why don't ya just find Twilight so y'all can get ready for Gym?" the one with orange hair asked.

"May I ask your names at the very least?" I piped up before I got more confused. The one with orange hair stepped forward.

"Ah'm Applejack, you can call me AJ if you like, this 'un here is Rainbow Dash," she gestured to the one with rainbow hair...duh, who saluted AJ with the most serious face I've seen on a girl before.

"Y'all already met Pinkie Pie," AJ pointed towards the floor, "Fluttershy is the one that ran off crying, and Twilight. She's off somewhere at the moment, probably talking to teachers or something."

"Is she like a nerdy girl or something?" I assumed. After all, I used to be into nerdy girls.

"You could say that." Pinkie Pie chimed in.

"And I think you might want to go find out what your classes are Jason. Go up to the library to the center desk, they're still passing them out." she pointed her pink curls in the direction of the door that Fluttershy poofed from the room through. And with that, I was out of the lounge and on my way to the library. I walked maybe twenty feet when I realized I just passed the door. Walking in it was exactly what I thought it'd be: Brightly lit and cluttered with shelves smelling of must, dust, books of old, and a hint of mold.

I started walking towards what seemed like the center of the library when I heard a familiar voice. I stopped in the aisle I was in and listened, hiding amongst the mystery novels. I could hear another voice as well, much louder than the other, they must only be in the next aisle over.

"I...I can't stand them sometimes. Why do they always have to fight?" I heard Fluttershy sob quietly, "And now, Jason probably hates me for all the fighting and me running away from him."

"You like him don't you?" the other voice, who must have been Twilight, chortled.

"I do," she admitted with a soft sigh, " But I don't think he likes me, he must think I'm crazy."

"Why do you like him? Is he tall, dark, and handsome? Or does he drive a motorcycle and wear a leather jacket to school?" Twilight started listing off her own fantasies with more and more vigor as she went.

"Well..he was really nice and a bit shy too. Oh, and he has the most gorgeous golden eyes. I've never seen someone with gold irises before. I was stunned when he first looked at me, they almost glow."

"So why don't you go talk to him if you like him so much? You do actually like him right? You aren't just making something up to make me hopeful that my best friend might have a crush on the curtest boy in school are you?" Twilight asked her in a fairly rough tone.

"Well of course I like him, its just..he might think I'm weird or something. We only just met five minutes ago and the only thing I did was cry and run away. And you know I would never lie to you Twilight." she countered.

At this point, I realized I should stop eavesdropping and go get my schedule. I walked up to the center desk under a skylight with a tarp over it, and asked the wizened old librarian for my schedule.

"What's that you say sonny, you want your sketch book?"

"No, ma'am. I would like to get my class schedule. My name's Jason Merdeu." I handed her my school ID.

"Well why didn't you say so." she handed me an official-looking document folded into three with my name on the top. I opened it and looked at my class list. I had just seen that Algebra was my first class when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fluttershy peek around the corner of a bookshelf at me.

I looked up just as she moved out of sight. Hmm, I wonder. I walked towards where she was hiding, sneaking past a sleeping senior, and literally ran into her as she again rounded the corner trying to spy on me again. She lost her balance, tripping on my left sandal and ended up nearly crashing into the bookcase full of encyclopedias. I caught her around the waist and picked her up a bit, setting her down right in front of me. Fluttershy's face was only an inch from mine, mouth slightly open and her perfectly beautiful sky blue eyes searching mine, hoping for something...

Silence and stillness flowed from us and made our close proximity seem like it lasted forever, even though it was only mere seconds. I opened my mouth to take a breath, trying to ask if she was alright, but I lost my thoughts immediately with that first gulp of sweet scented air that seemed to emanate from her like an endless rush of sunlight.

I coughed a bit, trying to regain my train of thought. Immediately Fluttershy looked taken aback and started to tear up, most likely thinking something was wrong.

"Shh, shh-shh. It's okay, they aren't fighting anymore." I crooned, putting a finger to her lips, soft against my finger. I leaned forward, giving her a gentle hug. She sighed, breathing through her mouth, fanning her sweet aromatic aura towards me.

After a few seconds I was surprised to find her hugging me back, her hands clenched against my back like she was trying not to cry still. And so we just sat there, giving each other comfort when we needed it without ever needing to ask for it. I had my face buried in her long pink hair and could smell nothing but lavender and chamomile, my favorite combination of aromatic herbs.

When the moment had passed, I looker up to see her smiling and blushing a bit. I knew why, but I didn't say anything for risk of messing up the plan I was developing.

"I'll see you at Pinkie's party then?" I asked her with an optimistic demeanor.

"Sure, if you'd like me to go. I have to go to class soon though." She gave me another hug, this one tighter and more meaningful, "See you later Jason." she walked away blushing.

I waved at the pink-haired, shy girl I'd been searching for my

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