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I tried to see what she was looking at, but I didn’t have to wait long. The football players were surrounded by cheerleaders, all in their uniforms to start the year off with a bang. Football season would take over everything for the next few months.
“I have a feeling this year will be different,” I murmured, trying to believe the words as they came out of my mouth.
Hope raised her brows and stared at me like I’d lost my mind. And maybe I had. “Jesus, Aria. Is that why you wore your rainbow T-shirt?”
I shrugged. “Gotta think positive, right?”
She snorted and pushed off the wall. “Let’s see how long that lasts.”
We walked side by side, trying to be as invisible as possible, but as soon as we neared the footballers and cheerleaders, we realized it wasn’t going to happen.
“Hey, look! It’s Ghost and Carrot leading the way through the darkness.”
I wasn’t sure which one of them said it, but I had an inkling it was Harry—named after the Prince of England. He didn’t have ginger hair, but I was sure he was working an early serving bald patch. Served him right for being such a huge douche.
“Forty-nine seconds,” I announced to Hope as we walked up the steps and through the double doors. “It lasted forty-nine seconds.”
“New record?” she asked, gripping her backpack like it was a shield against all the looks burning our backs.
“Yep.”
We made it into the senior hall and to our lockers—just our luck, our lockers were on opposite ends. I wasn’t sure how they worked out who went where, but if it were alphabetical, that would mean…
“Great, I’m next to her,” a bitchy voice said.
I closed my eyes, took a breath, and gripped the lock in my hand. It was only a combination of three numbers, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what they were, not with Jasmine standing next to me.
“Jasmine,” I greeted, my voice cracking halfway through the one word. I glanced at her, taking in the perfectly curled blond hair and face of impeccable makeup. She didn’t even look like a high school senior. More like a twenty-five-year-old woman who was going out for the night.
Jasmine lifted her lip into a sneer and stepped toward her locker, shoulder barging me at the same time. A few echoes of laughter followed her move, causing my cheeks to burn. It looked more like a sunburn than an actual blush—another downside to having my hair color.
My fingers slid from around the unopened lock. I didn’t even need to put anything in there, not yet anyway. Hope’s black hair stood out in the crowd as she made her way back to me, and I decided to forgo the locker and head straight to class instead.
I ignored the comments from Jasmine’s little cheerleading minions as I stepped past them and walked toward Hope. “I don’t know why we always end up so far apart,” Hope whined when we met in the middle of the hallway. We both shuffled off to the side, knowing we now had to go in opposite directions. We’d studied each other’s schedules last night, and the only class we had together was PE on Friday afternoons—a subject Hope hated with a passion.
“Because the world is out to get us,” I said sarcastically, but part of me wondered why fate had chosen to throw the things at me that it had. Why couldn’t I have been one of the popular girls? It was day one of the school year, and I already wanted to go home and get back into my nice, comfy bed.
Hope nodded, agreeing with me, and then laughed. “Ugh. I hate school.”
“Feeling’s mutual.” I gazed around the senior hall, taking in all the greetings between friends who hadn’t seen each other over summer. I was glad Hope and I had managed to at least spend a few days together, plus our constant text messages.
“Meet you at lunch?” she asked, already stepping away from me to head to her first class.
“Yep. Bleachers?”
“You got it.”
We both nodded at each other, a silent, “good luck” of sorts, and headed off. My first class was AP English and went by like a breeze, along with chemistry, my second class. My third classroom was next to my locker, and I finally had salvation from the heavy books from my first two classes. At least this time, Jasmine was nowhere to be seen as I opened up my locker and stacked the books onto the top shelf.
The hallway was nearly empty by the time I managed to click the lock on my locker. Harry—the football player—was the first person I saw when I entered the classroom, and if his smirk was anything to go by, he’d spotted me too.
The layout of the room was pretty standard: five rows with five desks, jocks at the back, nerds at the front. There were only two seats left, and luckily for me, one of them was in a perfect position. I always headed for a middle-of-the-row seat: far enough away from the people in the back but not too close to the front—the invisible seats.
I settled into the third seat back on the second row in, closer to the teacher’s desk than I liked, but it was either this or be one desk in front of Harry.
The teacher wasn’t here yet which meant most of the students were being as loud as they could be, but as I dipped down to pull my notebook and pen out of my bag, it quieted to an eerie silence. There had been murmurings of a new teacher during my last class, but no one had mentioned their name. I just hoped it wasn’t—
“Good morning, students.”
