by Gemma Weir
“We should get in there. The school won’t rule itself now, will it?” I say, plastering on some fake enthusiasm. I know she can probably tell I’m full of shit; my peppy attitude is as much of an illusion as I am, but she doesn’t call me on it. Instead, she lets me pull her up the steps and into school.
The moment we enter the senior hall, a huge sign hanging from the ceiling captures my attention, ‘Welcome Seniors’. Swallowing down a sense of dread, I grip her tighter, walking further into the hall. The kids that are already at their lockers move to the side, making a path for us to walk, and I hear Emmy’s amused scoff.
It’s ironic that both Emmy and I are revered in these halls and neither of us really wants to be. The beautiful, quiet, intelligent girl at my side just wants to read her books and blend into the background, but she’s too beautiful and too popular to ever be overlooked.
And me?
I’m the fake girl. The last four years I’ve been playing the role I was assigned and desperately hoping that no one ever figures out I’m not the bitchy mean girl I pretend to be. Maybe the truth is worse than the act, because I’m the crazy girl, who looks like the princess. Cliché or what?
When you’re on a pedestal, the people looking up only ever see what they want to see. Pretending might be how I survive, how I protect myself, but this is the role they gave me.
Emmy and I have lockers in the same block and she pulls away from me as she reaches hers, unlocking it and sliding her books out of her backpack and placing them into her locker. I follow suit, opening the freshly painted gray locker and sliding all of the stuff from my huge purse except for the essentials I need for my first class.
An arm appears above me and I know without looking who it is. “Kyle, what do you want?” I ask, not even glancing over my shoulder.
His hand drops from beside my head, and his arm bands around my waist, pulling my back into his chest. His body is firm behind me and I feel the warmth of his breath as he leans down and talks against my ear. “I want you, baby. Same way I always do.”
I scoff, the sound low and bitter. “Do you know what else is the same?”
“What’s that, baby?” he coos.
“I still don’t want you. I’ve never wanted you, Kyle. Now I suggest you get your hands off what you’ll never be able to afford,” I say, my voice hard and detached.
A small crowd has formed around us and at my words a low hum of, “Ohhhh,” fizzles through the group of eager teenagers.
Kyles arm releases me and I feel him move away. “You’re a cold fucking bitch, Nova.”
“So I’m told,” I reply tersely, never turning to look at him and shutting my locker with a decisive click. I hear the sound of his retreating footsteps and finally turn back to Emmy.
“Maybe you could be nicer to Kyle?” Emmy starts to say.
“Kyle is a slimy little dickweed. He’s been hitting on me forever and even though I’ve told him that I’m not interested in every nice way possible, he still won’t leave me alone. He deserves for me to be mean to him,” I insist.
“He is a creep,” she concedes. “Right, I need to get to class. I’ll see you later.”
“Are you…” I trail off, unsure if I should even ask. “Are you sitting with us at lunch today?”
Emmy’s eyes soften and she lurches forward and throws her arms around my neck hugging me. “Yes, sweetie. I’m eating with you today.”
When she releases me, I smile sheepishly. “Love you, Emmy Lou,” I say, calling her by the silly nickname I used when we were little.
“Love you too, supernova,” she says, pulling her backpack over her shoulders as she heads off in the direction of her first class.
I watch her go for a minute, then pick up my purse from the floor, hang it over my shoulder and force my face into a bitchy sneer. The moment I move forward, the guys at their lockers opposite mine all turn to watch me, smiling in greeting. Ignoring them all, I lift my chin into the air haughtily and walk purposefully to my first class, never slowing my pace, just expecting anyone in my way to move.
When I reach homeroom, I slide into my usual seat in the middle row, two desks from the back and pull out my cell. Holding my phone above me, I pose and take a selfie, uploading it to Facebook with the tagline #senioryearbitches #onequeen. Just as I’m opening up Snapchat, the desk next to mine scrapes across the floor and Zeke’s huge frame slides into the seat.
“More selfies, Sis, really?” He asks mockingly, dropping his bag to the floor and slouching forward to rest his head against his desk.
Lowering my cell to my desk, I turn to look at my brother and smirk. “Too lazy to make your own coffee this morning?”
“Gah,” he grunts.
“If you’d gotten up a bit earlier, I would have made you one.” I singsong, lifting my cell again and seeing my picture already has thirty likes, at least ten of which are kids sitting in this room with me.
“Uhhhh,” he says.
“You want me to text Brit and ask her to pick you one up? You know she never gets here until a minute before the bell.”
His head moves up and down and I roll my eyes, quickly typing out a text to Brit asking her to pull into the drive-thru coffee place on her way to school if she has time. The classroom gradually fills, and just as expected, a moment before the bell rings, Brit sashays into the room carrying a to-go drinks holder with three huge cups in it.
Zeke’s head pops up the moment the aroma of coffee fills the room and he smiles at Brit like she’s an angel sent from God.
“Here you go,” she says, offering one of the cups to Zeke and then another to me.
“Fuck, Brit, I love you,” he says, pulling a bill from his pocket and passing it to her, before he lifts the cup to his lips and takes a long pull. When he lowers it back down to the desk, his tense shoulders soften and he exhales happily.
Amused, I watch my brother and take a sip from my own cup, enjoying the sweet latte as I wait for our teacher to arrive. Mrs. Andrews is a ditsy, scatter-brained woman, in her later forties with messy hair and an omnipresent smile. Perpetually late, she doesn’t care if we drink coffee or have our cell phones out in class. She basically lets us all get away with murder as long as we don’t get too loud or disrupt any of the other classes.
“Holy shit,” Brit says excitedly, tapping my arm like an overeager toddler. “Did you see the new kid? I just passed him in the hall getting the tour from the principal.”
I look pointedly at her hand that’s still tapping me, then up at her. She stops, pulling it away sheepishly. I try to look as disinterested as possible, picking up my cell and scrolling through Facebook, not wanting her to know that I know exactly who the new kid is.
I wish I could forget him, but Valentine Miller’s intense, invasive eyes haunted my dreams last night. Seeing him at the party, even for that brief moment, had shocked me. Zeke had invited him, but when he hadn’t come with us, I’d assumed he wasn’t coming. Maybe I imagined seeing him. I’m sure if Zeke had known he was going, he would have told me.
“Nova, bitch, are you even listening to me?” Brit whines.
“Hot new kid. I heard you, Brit. I’m just not sure why I should be interested. He’s probably a junior or something.”
“No way. He was huge and oh my god, so sexy. He had this whole brooding bad boy thing going on and you know how I love a bad boy,” she says excitedly.
“You do like the ones who make poor life decisions,” I say absentmindedly, holding my hands out in front of me and studying my manicure, as she tells me about how hot Valentine is. As if I need her to tell me how beautiful he is.
When the door opens, I already know who’s about to walk through. Mrs. Andrews marches in first, her arms full to overflowing with papers, then comes Principal Gerard, and finally Valentine, still wearing his black hoodie, the hood hanging down between his shoulders.
Our senior class has less than a hundred kids, so there were only four homerooms he could have been put in. But why did i
t have to be mine? His assessing eyes scan the room. When they land on me, his lips twitch into a scowl and his eyes narrow for a second before he dismisses me and continues his perusal.
Swallowing thickly, I try to ignore his presence. I don’t know what it is about his disdainful looks that make me so aware of my body, but even the most innocuous of glances has me squirming beneath his scrutiny. Principal Gerard introduces him to the rest of the class, and I desperately try not to look at him as he skirts past my desk and sinks into the seat behind me.
Brit is practically vibrating with glee, as she silently screams her excitement, turning in her seat to talk to him. “Hi. I’m Brit.”
I keep my eyes fixed firmly forward, but I notice that he doesn’t respond to her introduction. When I feel his fingers run through the length of my hair, all of the air is sucked from my lungs and I wait stock still, frozen by his touch.
“You want to shift all your fucking hair, Princess? It’s covering my desk and you’re molting like a fucking dog,” he snarls.
Zeke chuckles and a few others gasp. People here don’t say shit like that to me, ever. Turning around, I glare at him with my best ice queen death stare. I raise my middle finger to him with a mocking smirk, then without saying a word I twist back to face the front of the class. Feeling his eyes on me, a tingle of fear runs across the back of my neck, so I reach behind me and scoop my hair up, twisting it into a messy bun on the top of my head.
I’m grateful when Principal Gerard leaves and Mrs. Andrews starts her welcome back speech. She jabbers on about how important this year will be and how this is the first year of the rest of our lives and blah, blah, blah.
“Wow, you really must be as dumb as you look, Princess.” Valentine taunts from behind me. “You seem to be listening pretty fucking hard to the teacher’s ‘the future is yours’ bullshit.”
I ignore him, lifting my coffee cup to my lips and drinking the sweet, hot liquid.
“It’s rude to ignore people, or didn’t they teach you that at stuck-up bitch class?”
Inhaling slowly, I promise myself that I won’t respond to his infantile barbs. I have no idea why he’s being a dick, but I don’t need to react. I never bite back at anyone. Why would I? They’re all beneath me anyway; or at least that’s what I let them think I believe.
“Wow. Do. I. Need. To. Talk. Slower. So. You. Can. Understand. Me?” He enunciates, saying each word as slowly and obnoxiously as possible.
I move before my brain can stop me and spinning around in my chair, I snarl at him. “What the fuck is your problem? I was nice to you the other day and you’ve been nothing but a dick to me.” I’m talking a little louder than I should and garnering the attention of more people, all of which are no doubt hanging off my every word.
“My problem is you. Spoilt little rich girl who thinks her shit doesn’t fucking stink. I hate bitches like you, who walk around thinking the world owes you something and that everyone should bow down at your expensive fucking shoes.”
His outburst pulls even more attention from the rest of the class and I glance at Brit only to find her staring at us, her mouth hanging open. No one has ever confronted me like this before. I know there are kids in our year who don’t like how popular I am, but no one is ever this openly hostile to me. I think years ago they were scared what my dad would do, but now it’s social suicide to piss me off, or a death sentence if Zeke were to find out and decide to defend me.
Panic surges to life inside of me and I have no idea what to do. I can feel more and more eyes on me and the need to run, to get away from all the onlookers is almost at boiling point. But my anxiety is warring with a need to fight back, to call him on his cliché brooding bad boy bullshit.
My skin crawls with energy and I stand from my seat. I don’t know if I plan to run from the room or confront the asshole boy sitting behind me, but I know that I can’t do nothing. I can feel the meltdown that’s festering barely below my surface. I’m used to people looking at me, it comes with the territory, but right now they’re not seeing the me I show them. With my heart beating like it’s going to jump from my chest and my eyes wide and angry, my mask has slipped and a slither of the mess I actually am is showing.
He did this. Valentine caused all of this with his obnoxious assumptions and barbs. The need to run and hide is strong, but so is the desire to launch myself at him and scream that he has no idea who I am and how dare he judge me.
As I open my mouth, Zeke steps in front of me. I hadn’t even realized that he’d gotten out of his chair, but in the blink of an eye he’s blocking me from Valentine, leaning down and talking to him in a tone that’s so low I can’t make out the words. Then he straightens, runs his narrowed eyes over everyone in the room and finally looks to me.
“Not worth it,” Zeke says, before he lowers himself into his seat and looks at me pointedly to do the same.
Inhaling, I force down the bubbling panic and plaster on my most haughty glare, mimicking my brother’s scan of the room, before I lower myself back into my seat and lift my coffee to my lips. I hope I’m the only one that notices just how badly my hand is shaking.
The rest of the morning goes agonizingly slowly, with each teacher echoing the welcome back speech and waxing lyrically about how important this year is for our futures. I’m not Emmy smart, but I’ve maintained a decent 3.7 GPA for the last couple of years and I scored a 1300 on my SATs. I don’t plan to apply to any Ivy League colleges, so I’m not hugely worried that I won’t get into at least one of my top five schools.
When I push through the doors of the cafeteria, I’m seriously considering skipping the rest of the day and coming back tomorrow, when we might learn something apart from what the teachers did during their summer break.
I grab a bottle of water and a salad box and quickly pay for it. Spotting Emmy, I make my way through the tables of kids and sit down next to her on our regular table near the windows that overlook the football field. “Hey, how’s your morning been?” I ask.
“Actually, really quite interesting. Mr. Lorenzo talked us through the college application process for the main Ivy League schools. He thinks I might have a shot,” she says coyly.
“Of course you have a shot. You’re the smartest person I know and that includes all of the adults. You’re a shoe in for an Ivy League school and whichever one you pick out of all the acceptance letters you’ll receive will be lucky to have you,” I say passionately, meaning every single word.
Her cheeks turn pink and she looks down at her plate.
“I’m serious, Em.” I say, lowering my voice and reaching out to squeeze her arm.
She nods but doesn’t reply, and for a minute we don’t say anything, just simply sit side by side.
“Oh my god, Nova.” Brit cries, as she drops down into the chair on my other side.
“What?” I ask, flipping the lid off my salad and poking at the limp lettuce leaves.
“What do you mean ‘what’? Are you crazy? What the hell happened in class this morning and what are we going to do to the hottie new kid?”
“Brit, I seriously have no idea what you’re going on about. Did you drink too many energy drinks again?” I say, not wanting to talk about what happened with Valentine. His words have replayed over and over in my head all morning. My overactive mind is swirling thoughts around like a whirlpool, all of them centering on the far too beautiful boy who apparently despises me.
Why does he hate me so much?
How do I stop him?
Why do I care?
“Nova,” Brit whines, when I don’t immediately respond.
“Oh, whatever, Brit. I don’t plan to do anything. The new kid isn’t of any interest and I don’t care what he thinks of me,” I say in my practiced I-don’t-give-a-damn voice.
As the words leave my mouth, my skin prickles and somehow I know he just walked into the room. Sinking my teeth into my lower lip, I force myself not to look for him.
“Oh my god, he’s coming this way.” B
rit squeals excitedly.
Blinking slowly, I lift my head just in time to catch his gaze on me as he moves purposefully across the room. When our eyes lock, his narrow ever so slightly and a sly grin twitches at the edge of his full mouth.
My lips part, my teeth releasing the skin as he places his tray on the table and sits himself down in the chair opposite me. His eyes rake over me and I feel my nipples tighten and pebble in response to his assessing look.
“Hey, I’m Brit.” Brit says, introducing herself again, even though she already told him her name. She smiles brightly and I watch her discreetly pull down the hem of her shirt so her neckline pulls, revealing even more cleavage.
“Hey,” Valentine says dismissively.
“I’m Emmy. Auntie Brandi introduced us the other day, but I doubt you’ll remember. You met so many people that day.” Emmy says, her voice sweet and small.
“No, I remember.” Valentine acknowledges pleasantly.
“How’s your first day at Archer’s Creek High so far?” Brit asks, leaning forward so her tits are practically resting on the table.
“Fine,” Valentine replies curtly, dropping his gaze to his tray of food and lifting his burger to his mouth to take a huge bite.
I try to ignore him, picking up my cell and browsing through Facebook, while I root through my salad, wishing I’d had a burger.
“Wow, you really are a walking fucking cliché, aren’t you?” Valentine says a moment later, his voice a condescending taunt.
Keeping my expression neutral and disinterested, I lift my eyes to look at him, finding his lips curled into a barely contained snarl. “Dumb and starving yourself. Gotta keep those looks, especially when you haven’t got anything else going for you,” he says, motioning to my face, then my chest.
“This isn’t your table,” I say coldly.