Sorry for this mysterious chapter... I was meant to post this as chapter 10 to give you the readers a full depth on the awkward emotions between Mary Jane and Leon and possibly other girls (cause romantic interest can't just start in a flick of a wrist. C'mon Let's be realistic)... But my dumb as went ahead to publish that shitty shit before this masterpiece...
Mary Jane's POV – "The Red Fox Diaries"
Hello, my name is Mary Jane, and I consider myself a fierce red fox...
Because I'm slick and naughty~
But in all honesty? I had zero expectations that my boring high school life would ever change for the better because of one boy.
Lion—
I mean Leon Walter.
Our school's most hated prince.
How I got to know him is actually a funny story.
Well, I'll do you a favor and break it down in four simple parts.
---
*Part 1: Shattered Chairs and Broken Dreams*
It was the first day of high school... You know me—being the beautiful, gorgeous rockstar that I am—I strolled into the auditorium where we had our first assembly of the year.
I wore a simple red crop top, a black reinforced winter coat, and a flared skirt that stopped just below the knees. Not too flashy (Lies!)—but I walked in like a magnet through a field of iron dust. Goons and nerds alike began drooling almost immediately.
I took my seat in the third row, close to the stage, my aura practically radiating confidence and hormones. To my left sat Flash, and to his right, Xander was sprawled on the floor like an old mattress.
Sensing my gaze, Flash turned and gave me a smile. That smug, sleazy smile that screamed, "I've already imagined us married." Ugh. I could practically feel his ego throbbing.
Disgusting.
He stood up, clearly intending to strut his way over, when it happened. A blur tore through the crowd like a drunken tornado.
Crash! Boom! Thud!
Rows of students were taken out like bowling pins as a single figure slammed forward, his knee colliding directly with Flash's stomach.
Then—
BONK!
A headbutt. A brutal one. It echoed like two hollow coconuts smacking together.
And that's when I saw him—Leon Walter.
He had this adorably panicked expression as he groaned, accidentally pressing his knee deeper into Flash's gut, who had now turned a stunning shade of purple.
"Oh shit," Leon muttered. His face went sheet-white, his emerald green eyes darting across the room like a cornered rabbit.
He scrambled to his feet, his panic almost... cute. Clumsy but quick. Like a caffeinated squirrel in a minefield. For the briefest second, his eyes locked onto mine.
And I felt it.
Just a flicker—a spark. Like static. Like, "Uh oh, who the hell is this guy and why did my heart just skip a beat?"
Then he was gone. He mumbled something under his breath and bolted toward the nearest exit, leaving behind a trail of broken chairs, gossiping mouths, and pure secondhand embarrassment.
Flash was wheezing like he just fought God. Xander was helping him up, muttering something about lawsuits and vengeance.
But me?
I was stunned. Captivated.
That ridiculous, chaotic blur of a boy had just made the most dramatic entrance in our school's history. And something about it felt like a sign.
A delicious cocktail of madness and mayhem had just been poured right into my lap.
Maybe...
Just maybe...
This year wouldn't be so boring after all.
---
*Part 2: The Library Incident (or How Not to Flirt With a Book)*
A week passed since the Great Assembly Massacre (as I now call it), and despite the chaos, Leon Walter had somehow managed to avoid total social annihilation. Barely.
The school talked. Oh, did they talk.
"He tackled Flash!"
"He's a psycho!"
"He smells like cinnamon and trauma!"
I didn't contribute to the gossip. I just watched.
From afar.
From medium-close.
Okay—fine. I may have followed him into the library once or twice. For research purposes.
It was a quiet Thursday, the kind of gloomy overcast day where the school heaters barely worked and everything felt like a black-and-white indie film. I was supposed to be researching for a history paper on the Civil War. Instead, I was reading Rebel Hearts (a scandalous romance about a Union soldier and a confederate spy—don't judge me).
That's when I heard it: a crash from the back of the library.
I peeked over my book and saw him—Leon—kneeling in a tragic pile of fallen books, like a confused puppy buried under a landslide of encyclopedias.
One of the librarians glared daggers at him from the counter. "You break one more shelf, and I'm calling your mother!" she hissed.
He looked around, flustered, rubbing the back of his neck. I watched as he picked up a thick book and stared at it with the expression of someone trying to do calculus in ancient Greek.
"'Photosynthesis and the Colonial Revolution'... what the hell?" he muttered.
I snorted.
Loudly.
His head whipped toward me, and I swear he looked like he just got caught shoplifting dignity. For a second, we just stared. His hair was messier than usual, and he had this small paper cut on his cheek like he lost a fight with a textbook.
"Mary Jane, right?" he said, voice quiet.
"Depends. Are you about to crush another jock or flip a table?"
He blinked—then smirked.
I wasn't ready for that smirk.
It wasn't arrogant like Flash's. It was crooked, unsure, like he wasn't used to smiling and hadn't quite figured it out yet.
"Nah. Just trying to find something about black holes," he said, holding up a book on geology upside down.
I walked over, took it from his hand, flipped it right-side-up, and raised an eyebrow. "Unless you plan to dig one, I think you're in the wrong section."
He looked at the shelf, then back at me. "Oh. That explains the chapter on igneous rocks."
He was a disaster. An adorable, chaotic disaster.
"I could show you where the astrophysics section is," I offered, trying to sound casual.
He blinked again, surprised. "You... know where it is?"
I shrugged. "I know a lot of things. Like how you stole three granola bars from the vending machine Tuesday without paying."
His eyes widened. "You saw that?"
"Please. That machine's a known trap. I admire your bravery."
He laughed. Actually laughed.
And just like that...
Something shifted.
We didn't talk long. Just enough to get him the right books, crack a few jokes, and leave him red-eared when I called him "cute" by accident.
(Totally on purpose.)
But that moment? That library disaster? It stuck with me.
Because behind the chaotic entrances and unfiltered energy, there was something real about him. Something... lonely.
And maybe, just maybe, I wanted to be the first to see it.
---
*Part 3: Detention, Bubblegum, and Other Crimes of Passion*
Now, you'd think after our library flirt-fiasco, things would cool down, right?
Wrong.
Because fate—ever the messy little drama queen—decided to throw us into the same detention session a week later. I know. Classic teenage rom-com setup. But I promise you, it wasn't cute.
It was chaos.
See, I may or may not have started a minor verbal brawl in homeroom after some guy made a "redheads don't have souls" joke. I responded like any rational, well-adjusted young woman: by throwing a piece of chalk at his eye and quoting Satan.
The guy cried. I got detention. Worth it.
I walked into that sterile little classroom ready to serve my time with pride. That's when I saw him.
Leon Walter.
Sprawled across the desk like a sunbathing cat who'd given up on life. His hoodie was half-zipped, earbuds in, shoelaces undone like he'd just walked out of a 90s music video. He didn't even notice me at first—until I pulled out a chair right next to him.
He glanced up. Blinked. "Oh. It's you."
"Disappointed?" I said, tossing my bag down.
He gave me a sideways grin. "Mildly terrified."
I popped a piece of bubblegum into my mouth and leaned back like I owned the room. "You should be."
What followed was possibly the least productive detention in school history. The teacher left halfway through to yell at the basketball team for setting off a fire alarm. So we were alone. Just me, Leon, and two hours of unsupervised purgatory.
We talked. And I don't mean surface-level crap. I mean weird stuff.
Like—
His theory that school lunch meat is made of repressed dreams.
The time he punched a goose in middle school.
His favorite color being "whatever shade of blue guilt tastes like."
And how he secretly loved indie space documentaries because "stars are just dead things that still shine."
Yeah. He said that. Out loud. And not in a corny way. In a "this boy has depression and a poetry journal under his bed" kind of way.
And I remember thinking... Damn. He's kind of beautiful when he's not being a menace.
At one point, I offered him a piece of gum.
He took it. Popped it in his mouth. Then paused.
"This is strawberry."
"Yup."
"I'm allergic to strawberries."
I blinked. "Then why did you take it?!"
He gave me the most serene, deadpan look. "I thought dying dramatically might impress you."
I laughed so hard I snorted. He pretended to seize for a solid thirty seconds before we both collapsed into a fit of giggles that made the walls echo.
It was stupid. Pointless. And maybe the most fun I'd had all year.
When detention ended, and we walked out into the cool evening air, I remember our arms brushed. Just for a second.
And I felt it.
That pull again.
Like gravity—or fate—or whatever messed-up cosmic string was tying us together just tightened a little more.
I didn't know it yet...
But I was in trouble.
The kind with dimples, sarcasm, and eyes that saw too much.
*Part 4: The Space Between Us*
If this were a cheesy high school drama, this would be the part where the bad boy kisses the redhead rebel, and they ride off into the sunset on a stolen moped.
But life's not a drama.
It's a slow, grinding slap of reality—and for Leon, it hit harder than I ever expected.
After that detention, things changed.
We started... hanging out more. In little ways. Not full-blown dates or anything (God forbid we admit we liked each other). But moments. Shared lunches behind the gym. Swapping memes on cheap flip phones. Me calling him "bug boy" when he didn't trim his lashes, and him calling me "Satan's intern" when I threatened to set fire to the vending machine again.
And I saw it. The way people looked at him.
Before me, Leon was just weird. An accidental delinquent. He kept to himself. People didn't understand him, so they avoided him. Or whispered behind his back. Called him "freak," "cockroach," "roach prince." I thought it was stupid high school crap. Harmless.
Until it wasn't.
It started slow.
Flash and his circle would glare every time I sat beside Leon. Snide remarks. Loud scoffs. Whispers that were just loud enough for me to hear. Xander—always the puppetmaster—started telling others I was "slumming it for attention." That Leon had "gotten to me." That I was probably "crazy enough to date the human glitch."
I tried to brush it off. I told myself I didn't care.
But then... they turned on him harder.
Locker trashed. Shoes filled with soda. Someone carved "MJ's pet rat" on his desk.
And Leon—God, Leon—he just laughed it off.
He always laughed. Like it didn't matter. Like he was too used to pain to let it sting anymore. But I saw through it. I saw the way his eyes dimmed just a bit more each day. The way he started pulling away, skipping class, avoiding crowds.
And then came the final straw.
We were walking home together—just talking. Nothing romantic. I was holding my guitar case, and he was carrying that awful energy drink he swore gave him "brain powers." We passed by the senior lot, and someone—some absolute coward—chucked an open milk carton at us.
It hit him square in the face.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't even wipe it off. Just stood there, dripping, milk in his lashes. Silent.
And I—I couldn't take it.
I couldn't watch him be humiliated again.
So I did the worst thing I've ever done.
I left.
I stopped texting him. I stopped sitting with him. I started avoiding places I knew he'd be. And when he finally cornered me outside chem class, confused, hurt, and quietly hopeful—I said something cruel.
"Maybe we were just bored."
His face broke. Not dramatically. Not with tears or yelling.
It was worse than that.
It was like watching someone lock the last open door in their heart and throw away the key.
He nodded once.
Said nothing.
Walked away.
And just like that... we became strangers again.
People said he stopped talking to anyone after that. That he became even weirder. I heard rumors he got in fights. That he spent lunch in the tech lab. That he disappeared for weeks at a time.
And for a while, I convinced myself it was for the best. That I saved him from more pain.
But the truth?
I saved myself.
Because I was scared.
Not of them. Not of what they'd say.
I was scared of how much I needed him.
And how much it hurt to see him suffer for me.
---
Present Day
Funny how time pretends to heal things.
I told myself I moved on. That boys like Leon were just detours in the messy highway of high school. That I could go back to being the confident, flirty, untouchable MJ everyone expected.
But then he came back.
Not back back—he never truly left.
But Leon Walter, the boy who once ran face-first into Flash Thompson's abs, now walks like a controlled storm. Tall. Sharp. Unapologetically cocky. He grins like the world's a joke only he understands.
People still talk—but they don't mock him anymore.
They watch him.
Some admire. Some fear. Some… fantasize.
And me?
I can't stop staring.
I catch glimpses of the boy I left behind. The way his fingers still twitch when he's uncomfortable. The way he hums offbeat songs under his breath when no one's around. That old beat-up keychain still hanging from his bag—mine. I gave it to him. He never threw it away.
He forgot me. That's what I told myself.
But sometimes… I catch him looking.
Not with anger.
Not even sadness.
Just that quiet, unreadable calm.
Like he knows.
Knows that I regret it. That I want to speak. That I miss him.
That I miss us. I missed a friend. I missed... Leon.
But how do you walk up to a storm you abandoned and say, "Sorry I left you in the rain"?
How do you apologize to someone you broke not out of hate—but love?
I keep waiting for the perfect moment. Some big dramatic scene. Music playing. Wind in my hair.
But life isn't a movie.
Sometimes it's just seeing him laugh with Gwen across the hall.
And realizing I might've lost him forever if I don't take a step.