THE FIRST THING DEX DIZZNEE NOTICED that morning was that Marella Redek's normally frigid icy blue eyes were surrounded by dark circles, and rimmed with red, like she had been crying all night. He wanted to ask what happened but knew from experience that a crying girl was an extraordinarily dangerous animal, and not to be messed with, so he stayed silent. 

They were sitting in silence together at a table in the cafeteria, waiting for the buses so they could accompany Sophie Foster on her first full day of Foxfire High. Dex tapped his toes on the ground and stared up at the fluorescent lighting. 

"Marella! Why are you sitting with that loser! Sit over here!" 

Dex watched as Marella set her phone down, (which revealed that she was scrolling through an app called Wattpad) and headed over to the table of girls that were universally known as the popular girls. 

He caught words of their conversation, and of Stina rolling her eyes. Marella crossed her arms and talked to Stina in a dangerously calm tone, and Stina finally gestured back to the table, giving what Dex assumed was the 'okay to leave' hand. 

Marella sat back down and resumed looking at her phone. Dex stared at her curiously. Finally, he couldn't resist the temptation, and the question popped out of his mouth. 

"Why do you even hang out with them? They seem really rude, and they just boss you around all the time." 

He thought she wasn't going to acknowledge him, but in the end, she looked up from her phone and did. 

"I stay with them because they're my only friends and being alone in high school is kinda pitiful and just plain sad." She looked up at Dex. "No offense." 

"None taken." 

They sat in silence for a while, only interrupted by the occasional beep of Marella's phone, signaling a text. Dex fiddled with his fingers, trying to fight the urge to take out the old car engine from his backpack, but he assumed that Marella probably wouldn't like it. 

Finally, after what seemed like forever, Sophie Foster walked into the room. When she walked in, people turned their heads to face her. New kids were always very interesting, because of Foxfire's High very exclusive acceptance program. 

Dex noticed the two most popular guys in the school, Fitz Vacker, and Keefe Sencen, staring at her. Keefe had dropped his sandwich, the meat falling out and landing on Biana's shoe, and Fitz missed his toast, accidentally stabbed the table with his fork instead. 

He watched Biana Vacker rolling her eyes, and she grabbed the two boys by their shirt sleeves and dragged them to the other side of the room. Dex saw her face turn red with anger towards Sophie when she noticed Keefe continuing to look at her. 

Sophie sat down at their table, next to Dex, and (he noticed) as far away from Marella as possible. She nearly tripped over the chair leg and would have fallen over if it weren't for Marella kicking the chair leg away at the last possible second with the heel of her black boots. 

"You're here!" Dex said, turning to face her. She smiled up at him, tucking a piece of her blond hair behind her ear, and he felt his heartbeat quicken. 

"Finally," Marella remarked, and he felt his attention being drawn towards her again. She swung her legs back on the ground and stood up, dragging her backpack over her shoulders. "You really took your sweet time." 

"S-Sorry," she stuttered. She obviously shared the same view towards Marella as he did. 

Intimidating. 

"Come on, let's just get to class." 

They set off at a quick pace towards their first class of the day, one that the three of them shared, English Literature. Dex hated this class, one because he didn't understand classical literature, and two because the tables were so huge. 

There were four round tables around the entire room. with each table having the capacity of seven people. 

Why couldn't every class just have singular desks? That was a question he asked himself every single day when he walked into this class. 

The three of them settled down into the only table with three empty seats. There were two kids, one boy and one girl talking to each other in hushed voices across the table that he didn't recognize, but the other two he definitely did. 

Marella seemed to recognize the two other girls too, as she hissed softly when she saw one of them. 

Biana Vacker turned her head and stared right back, an utterly blank expression on her face. Then, her eyes skipped over Dex and fell on Sophie. Her face contorted into something unreadable, but he could see a glint of malice in her eyes. 

Marella very obviously said hello to Maruca, the other girl there, and said nothing to Biana at all, before sitting down in the furthest possible chair from her, which happened to be next to Dex. Dex recalled the paper he had seen about the therapist. Was this situation between the two of them involving that? 

He was so lost in thought that he hadn't noticed Sophie looking around uncomfortably. He hadn't realized that he and Marella were the only people she knew in the entire school, and now that he noticed, he saw that there were no empty chairs beside them. 

Sophie sighed and took a seat beside the dark-haired boy, who froze in his seat when she sat down next to him, and subtly scooted closer to the dark-haired girl, who now that Dex thought about it, bore an uncanny resemblance to the boy. 

The teacher, Ms. Belva, walked in, and her blue eyes searched the room, almost like she was hunting for somebody. Then, her eyes settled on Sophie and she smiled in the fake way that teachers always did. 

"Everybody! We have a new student joining us today! She just transferred here yesterday! Would you like to stand up and introduce yourself?!" she asked in her typical cheery voice. 

Sophie stood up hesitantly, as every student did when a teacher singled them out. Everyone turned to face her, and Dex cringed for her. "Um, I'm Sophie Foster. Um, I'm f-f-fifteen, and I, uh, um, I live with my adopted parents? And um, I ha-ha-have an h-hamster named Ik- I mean, Iggy? Sorry." She sat down quickly and tried to hide her bright red face. 

"Uh, how fascinating!" Ms. Belva commented, before quickly turning towards the blackboard to begin the lesson. 

Dex started to zone out of the lesson, catching words like Shakespeare, and Dickens, and tuned back in when she mentioned the words, "and this will be a really fun project for you guys!" 

"What's the project?" he whispered to Marella, who sat right next to him. 

"Shh, she hasn't said yet," Marella replied, not looking up from the board. 

"I thought you hated school," he teased.  

Marella rolled her eyes at him. "Well, I like theater, and this unit is on plays, and theatrical literature, like Romeo and Juliet, and a Midsummer's Night Dream. So shut up, I'm trying to listen," she whispered back. 

"You'll be working with your table group you are sitting at right now, to write a play! Then, you will personally perform your play for the class! Props and costumes are yours for the making! You can buy them, make them, or you could not have any at all!" 

"How long does it have to be?" somebody in the class moaned.   

"Can I switch tables? My best friend sits over there!" another asked desperately. 

"When is it due by?" the dark-haired boy asked, turning his head towards the teacher. I noticed that he had dyed the tips of his jagged bangs silver. 

"In exactly four weeks!" Ms. Belva answered, ignoring the tidal wave of complaints that shot through the classroom. 

The bell rang, and before everyone left the room, Ms. Belva clapped her hands and everyone turned to face her. 

"Share your phone numbers with the people in your group! You are very likely to have to work on this outside of school, so you may want to be able to contact the people in your group! Once you do that, you may go!" 

Dex stared at the people in his group, and they stared back, looking at each other warily. Eventually, Biana sighed and took out a piece of paper and and a shiny ballpoint pen. 

"We're stuck together now, for the next four weeks at least. Might as well work with it. Here, write your numbers down with your name beside it. It'll be more efficient, and we won't have to talk as much." 

"I'm all for not talking. Hand it over," the dark-haired boy with jagged bangs said. Biana handed it over to him, and he scribbled his phone number down on the paper. Dex leaned over and saw his handwriting was absurdly neat for the speed he has written at. 

"Linh, take it," he said, handing the paper to Linh, the dark-haired girl, who had silver tips at the end of her hair. 

She took it and wrote her name down in gentle cursive, before handing it to Dex. He took it and wrote his number down before handing it to the next person in line, and so on, before it reached Biana again, who set it down on the table. 

It was funny how different all their handwritings were. The dark-haired boy's (Tam) being jagged, but neat, Linh's gentle cursive, Dex's small cramped writing, Sophie's large letters, Marella's messy scribblings, Maruca's neat writing that looked straight from a typewriter, and Biana's neat, small print. 

Dex added all the numbers in his phone while trying not to freak out over the fact that he had acquired Sophie's number, and created a group chat called, 'Group Project'. 

Hi, he wrote.

Wow, the name is so original. I'm so impressed. 

Dex looked down at his phone and realized it was Marella. He couldn't help but roll his eyes and smile a little. 

I think it's nice, came another text. It was from the silver-tipped girl, Linh. 

Please tell me you're being sarcastic, was Marella's quick reply. 

Nope, she's always like that. Believe me, I would know, typed Tam. 

How?  Sophie asked. 

Twins typed Linh, Tam, and Biana at the exact same time. 

Lmaoo, couldn't you tell?  Maruca asked. 

Dex tucked his phone into his pocket and started heading towards his next class. He fingered the phone inside his pocket and heard the vibrations from texts, presumably from the group chat that was just created. 

He opened the phone again and was surprised to see a group FaceTime from Biana Vacker. A Vacker was Face Timing with him. He was going to FaceTime with a Vacker. 

He shoved in his hand-made earbuds and held the phone in his hand. Everyone's screens were moving around, because of the fact everyone was walking to their next class. 

"I texted the group chat my address. Is everyone free to come over to my house tomorrow on Saturday? I want to get a good start on the project." 

"Sure! What time do you want us to come over?!" Linh asked in her cheerful, bubbly voice. 

"Uhh, how about 11:00 am? Right before lunch? We can eat something nice before starting on it. What do you think?" 

"Food sounds great!" Sophie exclaimed. 

"If Linh's going, guess I am too," Tam said, shrugging. 

"Your house is really far from mine," Marella mentioned. "I don't think I'm going to be able to go to your house Biana. Oh darn. I'm so devastated." 

"I could drive you," Dex commented. "I know how to drive my Dad's old truck." 

Marella glared at him, and Dex realized his mistake. "I mean, uh, sorry, I don't think I can." 

"I could," Tam shrugged, running a hand through his hair while he thought about it. "I was planning on taking Linh on the motorbike, but I guess we could just take my Dad's car." 

"Sure!" Marella exclaimed a little too happily for Dex's liking. "So, I'll text you my address and you guys can pick me up!" 

"I'm pretty far away too, and my adopted parents are overprotective," Sophie sighed. "They won't really let anybody they don't know to drive me." 

"I'll drive you," Dex offered up, not being able to stop his face from turning pink again. 

"No, I just said they won't let anyone they don't know to-" 

"Oh," Dex sighed. "They'll know me."