“Really, Amelia?” my mom says as she tears out of the school parking lot, her fingers tight on the steering wheel.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“It better not be. Do you really want to move again?”
I grind my teeth to stop myself from shouting at her. I know. I know all of this. I don’t need her to remind me.
“No.”
“Then remember what you promised. No boyfriends. No social media. No teams or clubs. You’re allowed to go to the gym and practice your jujitsu. I can’t stop you from making friends, but you need to be responsible.”
We’re silent for the rest of the ride to the hospital. I know what needs to be done. I have to keep my head down, at all costs.
2
Two weeks and a whole lot of painkillers later, I find myself back in the crowded halls of King City High School.
With basically nothing to do while I recovered from my newly bruised ribs, I made a point to decode the school map that, to me, seemed to be written in hieroglyphics. With freshly found confidence about where I’m going, I strut through the halls like I own them. I toss my loosely curled strawberry blond hair over my shoulder so that I’d look super hot if this were being filmed in slow motion.
As I’m walking down the hall, I feel a lot of eyes on me. I’d like to think it’s because of my cute outfit, but deep down, I know it’s not.
My fellow students are either looking at me because (1) technically, even though it’s mid-October, I’m still the new girl, and seeing as I didn’t even make it to my first class on my first day, many of these people still haven’t seen me, or (2) the less likely reason, and I’m praying it’s not this one, is because they’re still talking about my Aiden incident. But in a school this big, I’m sure more interesting things are bound to have happened these past two weeks.
I make it to room 341 and take a seat near the middle of the history classroom. There are a couple of other people here, but most students are still loitering in the halls, savoring their last few precious moments of freedom before suffering through mass education.
I pull my notebook out of my bag and occupy myself with dating the top of the page. I try to underline it in red pen but the ink doesn’t come out. Stupid pen. Doesn’t even work when I scribble on the side of the page. I’m so immersed in trying to get the pen to write that I’m taken off guard when a pair of hands slides over my eyes. Everything goes black for a moment.
It all happens so quickly, and I react automatically. My hands grab the wrists connected to the hands covering my face. Yanking them with a twist, I apply pressure, knowing that I could snap them if I twisted a little bit more. Jumping up out of my seat, I turn around and stand to face my assailant.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow.” Familiar chocolate-brown eyes. I quickly release his hands.
“Damn woman, no need to go all Karate Kid on me,” Mason says while rubbing his wrists.
“Sorry!” I tell him, embarrassed. “Next time don’t sneak up on a girl.”
Luckily the bell hasn’t rung yet, so only a few people are giving me curious glances; most of the kids in class are totally preoccupied with their phones anyway.
“You seriously have an iron grip. That’s so weird because you have such cute, teensy, little hands,” he teases, clearly being a good sport about it all.
I don’t really know much about Mason, but the kid’s kind of starting to grow on me. If only he wasn’t BFFs with jerk-face Aiden; I would’ve considered being friends with him. The bell rings, and instead of replying I stick my tongue out at him and turn around to sit back down in my seat.
“You could do way better,” a voice to my immediate left says.
A really pretty girl is sitting in the desk next to mine, giving me a disappointed look with her bright-blue eyes.
“Excuse me?” I ask, confused.
“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it,” she says, pushing curly, shoulder-length brown hair with caramel highlights over her shoulder. “Someone who’s as pretty and with as good fashion sense as you could do better than stooping as low as that player.”
Mason’s at the back of the room talking to Noah and some other boys. Almost every girl in the room (excluding the girl beside me) is gazing lovingly in their direction, seemingly in a trance.
“Oh, well, thanks. But me and Mason? Ew, like never. I don’t want anything to do with him and his jerk-face friends, especially that Aiden asshole.”
She looks at me and her blue eyes light up with recognition. “Oh my God! You’re the girl who told off Aiden a couple of weeks ago! I knew there was a reason I liked you when I first saw you, other than your cute shoes.”
“You saw?”
“I didn’t have too! Everyone was talking about it. What happened? Rumors were going around that you dropped out of school and moved to Antarctica out of fear he’d retaliate.”