Lily sighed quietly as she put her pencil down. She walked to the front of the classroom and placed her test on the teacher's desk. Another day, another easy math test. She sat at her seat, patiently waiting for her best friend, Adrienne, to finish her test so she could quietly have a conversation with her. Other people always seemed to take so long to finish tests. It was, in fact, only Algebra II, and they were allowed to use their calculators, so there was no reason for Adrienne to take an entire thirty-eight minutes to finish the test, especially since Adrienne did posses a fair amount of intelligence. Sometimes, it seems, people are just very slow at taking tests. Some tests are understandable. They're actually difficult. This test, however, would've been better placed in a fourth grade curriculum, not ninth grade. After what seemed to be an unbearable amount of time, Adrienne finally completed her test and handed it in to the teacher.

"Pst," Lily whispered across the row. No response. "Psst," she whispered, a tad louder this time. Still nothing. "Adrienne," she whisper-shouted. Her teacher glared at her from across to room, but she knew the teacher wouldn't say anything as she was entirely convinced that Lily was a true genius and absolutely adored her. Yes, Lily was smart, but she wasn't that smart. Just your average really smart person that doesn't quite qualify for the title of genius. Despite her teacher's fondness of her, Lily did make an effort to be a tad bit quieter next time she attempted to gain Adrienne's attention.

After a few more failed efforts, Adrienne finally managed to look up from the book she had somehow managed to become deeply engaged in despite the constant, overbearing whirring of the air conditioning unit that didn't seem to be producing any effects as well as Lily's continual attempts to grasp her attention. "Yes?" she whispered.

"Would it kill you to put your book down and pay attention to me?" Lily asked mockingly. While it is true that Adrienne does have a tendency to read a tad bit too much when Lily attempts to engage her in conversation, she also is always very willing to be engaged in conversation at the ungodly hours of the night, so long as she is, in fact, awake, and not happily dreaming of pancakes and more books. Every now and then however, she will become so enraptured by the plot of her book that you could tell her the building was on fire and she wouldn't hear it.

"What's so important that it validates your interrupting me in the middle of a chapter, and at the climax, at that?" She slipped her bookmark carefully in between the pages of her book and placed it down on the desk, giving her full attention to Lily. Lily smiled at her triumph over the wonderful tale of yet another oppressed teenage girl that will, inevitably, save her dystopian society from whatever poorly written oppressor they managed to come up with for this very original young adult novel.

"I understand that some of us may finish faster than others," the teacher said brightly, "but others are still attempting to finish their tests and I would greatly appreciate it if everyone could be silent so I don't have to move anyone's seats."

"Sorry," Lily mumbled, "I'll make an effort to keep it down." Adrienne laughed. They both knew full well that that was not going to happen.

"Thanks!" Her teacher replied cheerfully, returning to her unending stare at her laptop that made it quite impossible to ask a question by raising one's hand. Lily had observed this trait in many of her teachers. It seemed awfully inefficient.

"Now, what were we talking about?" Lily whispered to Adrienne. Her teacher gave her a moderately exasperated look. Lily just shrugged her shoulders in a "you knew it was going to happen and we both know you don't care" sort of manner.

"You thought something was so important that it was worth having me put my book down," she said, sounding moderately annoyed, yet also curious as to what it was that Lily was going to tell her.

"Ah, yes, right," Lily smiled mischievously. "It is absolutely necessary that we discuss our after school plans for today. As you know, today is a very special day as it is the last early dismissal we have all school year-"

"Can't this wait until later?" Adrienne groaned. "I just got to the good part. Maxon and America were about to-"

"Don't care." Lily interrupted. "Karen and I already know exactly what we're going to do and it would be such a pity for us to have to go over what's happening after school, thus wasting important activity time. Besides, you know better than anyone that I'm far to lazy to waste time on that sort of stuff."

"Can't we just make it a surprise for me?" Adrienne begged.

"Fine," I groaned, moderately dissapointed.

To make the best of our final early dismissal, Adrienne, Karen, and I were going to head over to my house at the end of block five, which was conveniently math class for me and Adrienne, because who doesn't love having to think at the end of the day after getting four hours of sleep the night before because you were too busy watching Thirteen Reasons Why to bother going to sleep at a reasonable hour. Upon arrival at my house, we were going to have a wonderful marathon of Naruto to bring back all the memories of our wonderful seventh grade anime phase that had yet to entirely die out.

Adrienne picked up her book and began reading again. Being her best friend for the past three years, Lily had become quite accustomed to her reading speed. She glanced over to at her book so as to gauge the font size and spacing of this particular book. Once she had deemed that she would be around halfway through her page, she promptly interrupted Adrienne's reading to continue her constant nagging.

"You need to at least play chopsticks with me." She stated firmly. Chopsticks, for those who are unaware, is the most glorious game ever, in which two (or more if one so desires) players hold up there hands with one finger on each hand pointing out. The player who goes first will tap one hand of their opponent. That player then must raise one finger on said hand. That player can then choose to tap the opponent with either the hand that has one or the hand that has two. If they choose to utilize the hand the has one finger, the other person must raise one finger, however, if they choose to use the hand that has two fingers, the other person must raise two fingers. The game continues in this manner until a player reaches five fingers on one hand. Once they reach that point, said hand is out. When both of a person's hands are out, the game is over and that person loses. Although chopsticks is one of Lily's favorite games, Adrienne isn't all that fond of it.

"Ughh," Adrienne groaned. She seemed to ponder her options for a moment before choosing which was the lesser of two evils. "So, what are our plans?'

Lily smiled greatly and began to divulge the plans to Adrienne.

~*~

Lily half-skipped half-walked through the school upon the end of class. She was partially partaking in this strange method of transportation out of excitement, but also out of a desire to get to the orchestra room before the halls became to crowded to go anywhere. She grabbed her violin as quickly as possible so as to avoid having to speak to people she didn't like, then rushed out of the building and walked over to the tree where she had agreed to meet with Adrienne and Karen.

It was the middle of spring, so normally the trees would've already finished blooming for the summer, but warm weather had come late that year, so the tree was covered in beautiful light pink flowers. Lily picked one of the flowers and smelled it. It was rather disappointing. Kind of like when you smell a rose for the first time and it's just kind of there; nothing special about it whatsoever. Lily shrugged and placed the flower in her short, blond hair that she had chopped of the year before. She kind of missed her long hair and was actively in the process of growing it back out. This process occasionally became quite hard as short hair can be quite tempting, however she told herself that she was doing it in honor of Carrie Fischer and that always seemed to make it easier.

As Lily approached the tree, she saw that Adrienne was already there and had also placed a flower in her chin length , dark brown hair. Her flower, however, was blue , so Lily assumed that it must have come from the neighboring tree. Lily was about to approach her when she noticed that Adrienne was actively involved in a conversation with this kid Daniel that Lily didn't particularly feel any strong desire to talk to, as he was immensely annoying. Lily instead decided to attempt to make a smooth transition over to the other tree with the blue flowers when she accidentally tripped over a rock- I swear it was a rock and not her own two feet- and nearly fell flat on her face.

"Nothing happened," she announced to those around her that had started staring at her. Something had happened, though. Daniel had noticed her.

"Ah, Lily," he said nonchalantly, "I didn't see you there, why don't you come over here and talk with us." Lily begrudgingly walked over to where the two of them stood. She looked over at Adrienne who was attempting to hide her mocking smile. "This is Adrienne," Daniel told Lily. "She's in orchestra with me. I don't know if you know her."

"Nope, definitely know her." Lily said bluntly. "She's actually my girlfriend and we were actually about to go make out at my place if you could-" Lily shooed him away.

"Ah, I see." Daniel stated casually as he walked away.

Adrienne elbowed Lily. "Why'd you tell him that, we were having a nice conversation. "

"It used to be true," Lily retorted. "Besides, I just saved both of our asses from his dreadful flirtations. I know you may not quite realize, but he was flirting just now." Lily continued to express to Adrienne how much she owed her for her services until eventually Karen walked over to them.

"Sorry it took me so long, I got caught in hallway traffic," She smiled a wide grin. Karen was always a very positive person. Even when she was sad, she still somehow managed to remain happy. It was crazy. "Anyway, shall we go? We should probably hurry, it looks like it might rain soon." Lily looked up at the sky.

"We should be fine. There's no rain in the forecast, so even if it does rain, it won't be much. A little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now."

Karen grinned widely at Lily's Les Mis reference. Adrienne just seemed kind of confused as the two of them giggled for a bit about Eddie Redmayne's amazingness. "I still think it's gonna rain." Karen announced.

"Trust me," Lily told her. "It's not going to rain. If it does, I'll change my name to Hotaru and kiss Sasuke.

Adrienne and Karen both gasped. They knew how much Lily hated Sasuke, so they both concluded that Lily must have been very confident that it was not going to rain. The three of them began their walk to Lily's house, taking the less common, yet faster route. Once they were approximately halfway to Lily's house, that little fall of rain did, indeed, begin to fall.

"Frick," Lily thought, "I don't really mind changing my name, but I really don't want to kiss Sasuke."

"Um, Lily," Adrienne said, "We're not going to make you kiss Sasuke. That would be quite rude."

"That's good. There are some characters I wouldn't mind kissing, like Shikamaru, or Tobi, but I don't particularly want to kiss Sasuke. That wouldn't be very fun..." Lily continued to think about the many different members of the Naruto universe, deciding who she would kiss, who she wouldn't kiss, what she would want to do if she were to enter the Naruto universe... She decieded that she would quite like to join the Akatsuki at some point. She also concluded that she would most likely end up spending a lot of time at Ichiraku...

"Lily!" Adrienne screamed. Adrienne can tend to overreacting. It was as if Lily's life was in danger or something. "Be more careful, you almost got hit by freaking lightning, man!" Perhaps Lily's life was, in fact, in danger. Oops. Lily looked around her and realized that during her day dreaming, the little fall of rain had turned into a giant ass fall of rain.

"Oh, ship," she announced. "We should probably run now. "

The three of them started running as fast as they could, but they didn't seem to get any closer to Lily's house. It actually kind of seemed as if the house kept getting farther and farther away. Lily began crying at her futile attempts to save her life. Lightning kept crashing down around her, and it was honestly quite terrifying.

There was a giant flash of light that seemed to encompass the whole town. Suddenly, everything went black.