Some days, Alex really needs to just get out of the house.

Lately, he has been attempting to engage in physical activities that leave him exhausted and unable to think. Part of him hopes that he will be so tired that his sleep will be dreamless; however, this does not appear to be a possibility for the teenager, who has been finding that the harder he tries not to dreamwalk, the less success he has.

Alex is something of an aberration amongst his peers. For all purposes, he is a jock. He has played on the varsity soccer team for the last three years and has met great success with sports. However, he doesn’t drink and usually finds himself acting as the designated driver whenever his girlfriend convinces him to attend the parties that his teammates throw. He is also unfailingly polite and a complete and utter mama’s boy, which has earned him a reputation as being something of a pushover, preppy brown-noser.

For now, he has been running for about an hour, dribbling a soccer ball around and around this field. His gray shirt is soaked with sweat and he has rolled the sleeves back to reveal tanned arms. He is panting a bit, but otherwise is in good form. With frustration he realizes that he’s not exhausted yet – after-school practices have gotten him into such good shape that he has a hard time figuring out ways to shut down his body.

He finds the building that houses the dirty public restrooms and begins simply kicking the shit out of his soccer ball. He knocks it against the wall, harder and harder, chasing after it when it bounces back, only to repeat the process. There is something angry about his kicking, something oddly violent and infuriated. His hair is soaked and plastered to his forehead, sticking up every-which-way.

It’s odd to find Alexander Morantides in such a foul mood. It’s even odder to find him like this, alone and apart from his friends, venting his rage against a brick wall.

Shoeless as usual and and with a burning cigarette between her fingers, Jennifer walked through the park looking for a good place to sit and write. Her usual place was occupied, so that was out of the question. Apparently, some Bible study group had agreed it was a good place for meetings. Pricks.

As she came around a bend, she heard someone kicking a ball against a wall. The wall of a brick building, in fact. They looked pissed. She paid him no nevermind. She found a good spot a short distance away and ignored the noise of the angry soccer player as she slumped against a tree. She took a drag on her cigarette and opened up her notebook to begin writing.

It isn't long before Alex loses control of the soccer ball. After a particularly hard kick, it ricochets off of the brick wall and flies over his head. He chases after it, panting hard, feeling that wonderful iron pain in the back of his throat that indicates he's nearly exhausted himself.

"Sorry! Heads up!" He shouts, to warn some girl under a tree that there is a soccer ball about to hit her in the feet.

He jogs over, sweaty and uncertain, and gives her a good look. She's a familiar face, one that he's seen countless times in the hallways at school but never really had the chance to speak with.

"Uh. Jen, right?" He pants, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the bottom of his shirt and exposing several inches of tanned, fit skin. The action is unintentional and he stands before her, trying to catch his breath, looking politely out of place.

"If you wanna die."

She took another drag on her cigarette as she wrote, her left hand flowing across the page like water running down a ball left too long in the rain. Finally, she finished a paragraph and looked up at him. He was kinda cute, she supposed. But sweat didn't do it for her. Truthfully? It was a turn-off. As in, eww. Yuck. Gross.

"It's Jennifer. Do I know you?"

She'd probably seen him somewhere, but she couldn't place him at the moment. Maybe he was on the school's soccer team or something. She only really paid attention to pro games on the tube.

And yes, she meant tube. She was one of those people that still had an old TV with a picture tube.

"Sorry. Jennifer. Uh, yeah, I think we go to school together." For some reason he's always had a bit of difficulty talking to strangers that are his own age.

Alex is staring at her tattoos and piercings with a sort of bewildered look. He retrieves his soccer ball with some fancy footwork and stops it under one foot, fighting the urge to dribble it as he speaks.

He sort of does smell.

"I'm Alex," The teenager says with a polite smile, offering a sweaty hand for her to shake. It's at a bit of an odd angle, considering that he's pretty tall and she is on the ground.

She glanced at the hand. Eew. This why she didn't like athletes. Pro soccer was one thing, but she'd never had to shake a bunch of sweaty guys' hands and get their sweat and dirt and grime from the game all over her. She wasn't about to start now.

She looked back up to him.

"Alex."

She took a puff on her cigarette. She supposed some people might have thought her a bit simple from that repetition of his name, but oh well. Let them think what they would. They could go to hell for all she cared.

"So, Alex. What grade are you in?"

Hey, she might as well make conversation with the guy. He was obviously not going anywhere for a while. She was a junior herself. She was supposed to be a sophomore, but she'd done so well in her English classes that they'd bumped her up a year. Plus she'd passed everything else with flying colors, of course. But she was a writer; it was what she did. And she was good at it. So, she was a year ahead of most others around her. Hell, she'd probably graduate next year - which was just fine in her opinion. One less year to have to deal with opinionated bullshit teachers that thought they knew everything. She knew far more than her history teacher did - probably because she'd actually read better books than he had. Or maybe more. And her English teacher, blonde bitch that she was, sucked. Mrs. Paulson was a typical dumb blonde and a terrible teacher besides. A fifth grader with mental problems could have taught the class better.

She went back to her writing as she talked with him, multitasking her writing and her conversation. She was good at that, too.

He leaves the hand extended for a few awkward moments and then drops it with a puzzled quirk of an eyebrow. He tries not to look as though he minds this slight or the cigarette smoke in his face. He isn't quite as bothered by the first annoyance as the second; it honestly takes a great deal of effort for him to refrain from waving the smoke away. There are better ways to die than of second-hand smoke.

"I'm going to be a senior next year," Alex replies, holding his breath as best he can, "What about you?"

He hopes that this girl isn't going to be a junior. If she is, then she probably knows his girlfriend, and he knows from past experience that people tend to judge you by who you date. This worries him because he is almost certain that Jen and his girlfriend would never get along. His girlfriend, Amy, is a skinny blonde tennis player with a big mouth and an obsession with the color pink. She’s sweet when it’s just the two of them, but lately Alex has been seeing more and more of her uglier, cattier side. He'd been thinking about breaking up with her, but his mother adores the girl and would be devastated.

Still, Amy is one of the complications in his life that has driven him to pound a soccer ball against a wall for over an hour.

He watches Jen smoke, write, and speak at the same time, impressed with her multi-tasking skills. He often has a great deal of difficulty carrying on a conversation while doing anything else, a fact that annoys both his girlfriend and mother to no end. He finds it a little odd that this girl is scribbling away at a piece of paper, but he doesn't comment on in - that would be rude, after all.

"Junior," Jennifer said between puffs.

His worst nightmare, though she didn't know it. How could she? Jennifer didn't even recognize the guy. She didn't pay much attention to jocks.

"So, you're soccer player. You gonna go pro?"

Alex looks rather flattered by this question. "Me? Naw. I mean, I'd like to, but - well, I want to play at college. Professionally, though? Probably not."

It's just that he doesn't think his parents would be so keen on the idea of choosing sports as a professional career. His father likes to say that athletes are paid a ridiculous amount of money for doing very little. And his mother? Well, he knows that she wouldn't approve. She would probably be horrified by the very suggestion and resort to lecturing him on the dangers of steroids, one of her favorite topics of conversation.

"What about you? D'you want to be a writer?" He gestures at her pen and paper, using this opportunity to wave away some of the smoke from his face.

She had to grin at his question. It was mocking laughter more than anything else, like a bully laughing at the little guy on the team.

"I'm am a writer. Eventually I'll put my work into a book or something, though," she said, her grin fading. She was still almost smirking, though. Being a writer wasn't something you came by as a career. You were either born a writer, or you weren't. Plain and simple. Most people just didn't get that, especially jocks.

"Cool," Alex comments, trying not to look annoyed with the mocking laughter. He's sure that he really hasn't said anything that funny.

"What are you writing about?" He asks, though his attention has begun to wander. He's starting to lose the tired feeling in the core of his body and that worries him. He hasn't successfully managed to avoid dreamwalking yet but he's sure that tonight's the night. If he's exhaused, maybe he'll be able to defy those who call out to him.

It's a long shot, but as this point, he's desperate.

When it comes down to it, Alex just wants to be a normal, average kid. He's a little too uptight to fit that definition but he manages to come remarkably close, dreamwalking aside. He isn't sure if talking for a prolonged amount of time with this tattoo and piercing-ridden girl is helping.