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CHAPTER ONE
Dalton
I walk into first period and slump down in my seat with a big thud, kicking my legs out in front of me and hitting the person sitting there. Trish—a girl I’ve had a relationship or two with—turns around to see what just hit her and gives me a shy smile when she sees it’s me.
With my ball cap tugged low, I give her a slight grin, wondering to myself if she’d be up for another go-around sometime soon, when Marcus—a guy who’s like a brother to me—kicks my foot out of the way as he walks by.
“Come on, bro,” I say with a questioning tone.
“Some of us need to get through. Stop taking up all the space around here,” he replies.
“That’s what happens when you’re my size and expected to sit in these tiny-ass desks, which I know you know nothing about,” I taunt back.
He flips me off as he sits down in an open seat a few rows up.
At five foot nine, Marcus might be small compared to my six-two, two-hundred-pound frame, but the guy can run like no one else on the football field, so he’s all good in my book.
I sit up in my chair, feeling every muscle ache after the ass-kicking we just got before school. Yes, it’s the first day of school, and our football coach still called for practice at six a.m.
Most players are worried about getting a scholarship to play, so it’s worth everything we have to do, but I already know I’m going to Stanford for college. It’s the same place my dad went, so I don’t really have a choice, which makes days like today extra pointless.
Even if I didn’t already make the team with a full-ride scholarship, my parents give the school so many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, so why would my tuition be any different? I’m sure the school just treated my scholarship as their thank-you for all they give.
Kind of stupid if you ask me, but no one ever really asks for my opinion, so what’s the point?
I knew—or I guess I should say, the school knew—I’d be going there from a very young age even though I live thousands of miles away in a small-ass town called Leighton River.
My parents started their tech company, TimeLand, with three friends from here after they all moved away for college. The company blew up—creating a gaming app that’s on every person’s phone nowadays—so theyall moved back to Montana because they didn’t want to raise their kids in California.
I ask all the time why I have to move there for college, but I get the same response from my father.
“Moving to California made us appreciate what we have here, so you will follow in my footsteps, go to Stanford, and prepare to take over this company one day.”
Blah, blah, blah.
What we have here in Leighton River is a whole bunch of nothing.
The bell rings, and I sigh with the beginning of another school year.
“Okay, class, everyone take your seat,” Mrs. Anderson says from the front of the classroom.
She goes over all the same boring shit we have to listen to every teacher say at the beginning of the year.
Yes, we get it.Turn in your work on time. No cheating. No plagiarism.
Thank God this is my senior year, and this is my last first day in this school.
I drop my head back, already bored as hell, and we’re only ten minutes in.
“Throughout this class, you will be assigned a class partner—and, yes, it will be the same person all semester long. Not only will you be checking in on each other, making sure they are turning in assignments, but you will also have projects that you will be finishing together,” Mrs. Anderson announces.
I sit back and watch as everyone looks around the room, trying to figure out who their partner will be. When Trish turns around to me with a simple raise of her eyebrows, my lips tilt up in a grin.
Well, maybe this semester is looking up after all.
“Now, don’t go trying to choose who your partner will be.” Mrs. Anderson raises her finger to make a point. “Just like in real life, we don’t get to choose who our co-workers are, so these assignments will be teaching you just as much about English as they are about learning how to work with people you might not know very well or even like very much.”
She grabs a bucket from her desk and holds it in the air. “Everyone will pick one number out of this bucket, and this will decide who your partner is.”
