Hollandaze was sending me DMs.

My phone beeped and I glanced at it, before separating another section of hair and smothering it in a slimy liquid that lifted colour. Angling my body toward the light I'd set up in my bathroom, I attempted to stop myself from acting on the urge to look at the message.

The DMs presented a problem; Holland was supposed to be leaving me alone.

The first message straight up confused me, and I ignored it mostly because I didn't know how to respond; I know you asked me to leave you alone, but I don't think I can. I can't get you out of my head. Like, what the heck?

The next message—from a second account—was oddly worse.

I'd begun filming the process of stripping the red from my hair to dye it blue, an attempt at distracting myself from my phone's beeping. As the task became more tedious, however, my mind wandered to what he was saying. Foiling the last bit of my hair, I set a timer and finally picked up my phone to look over the messages from both accounts.

Hollandayze: Let's keep it low key. No one needs to know we're talking. It'll be fun.

Hollandaze: I promise I'm not trying to kill you. Here's the rest of them. Followed by pictures of the rest of the notes Holland had received.

The one I'd found in my locker made my stomach churn the more I looked at it; was someone really looking to kill another student?

The second one made my blood run cold—all anyone sees is how sweet she is, but she's faker than fake. To bring it to light, we just have to drop a hint that she's not the girl they think.

Paired with the third note—I must say you've pushed the right buttons, good job on planting those bad seeds, keep going; have fun with it—the words made it harder to overlook the increasingly mean comments showing up on my Instagram posts for the past few days. Had they started before or after Friday? Was I the girl in the notes?

My alarm blared startling me; I'd been examining the notes that long? I slapped my colour drained face, gave myself a pep talk, pasted on a grin and clicked the camera back on.

"Okay! Time's up! So, I'm gonna test a little corner here to make sure the colour took—Aaaaand weee're good! See here? So, now I'ma wash this out and I'll be back with blue hair on the other side of this cute video of my friend's cat licking ice cream off her toes. Honestly, cutest thing ever!"

-.-

Eden- I

Cece- I

Ama-

"Amy-kins!"

I slapped my book shut quickly as Sophia wove between tables toward me. Her red-orange pigtails bobbed, a total clash with her pink Bulldogs sweater, a look that only worked on the endearingly sweet cheerleader.

"I am in desperate need of your help, Ames!" Sophia always needed help desperately for non-emergency emergencies.

Plastering a smile that mirrored Sophia's on my face, I hid my book under my arm. "What's up, Soph?"

Cheerleaders garnered attention wherever they went, so heads turning as Sophia sat was something I'd normally not notice. Except my eyes caught Holland, like a stereotypical boy, craning his neck to watch her. Eden and Sophia; he seemed to have a thing for boss girls.

"Amy! Did you hear me!?"

"Emergency?" I asked absently, holding Holland's gaze as he refused to look away.

"Amy!!!!" Holland mouthed in question as Sophia whined, and I might have laughed if not for the fact that I realised that he was watching me, not Sophia.

Turning away from him, I excused my distraction as worry for chemistry class.

"Oh that? I'll get Tara to help you. I need wardrobe advice, like, yesterday!" As she rambled on and on about wanting to make sure she had the perfect outfit to accentuate her looks for her date, I only half listened.

The other half of my brain returned to the list in my book. With the notes Holland sent me the night before swirling in my mind, I was trying to figure out who the target was. Since the first one, several girls, all popular, had been having awful days. I wasn't sure if it was all that abnormal or if I was only noticing because I had a reason to.

Eden's incident at the party had been particularly heinous. It started as an angry girlfriend of some guy from another school hurling nasty slurs at her and quickly escalated into a physical fight that Eden was not equipped to be part of. Cece fell victim to a vicious, but entirely untrue rumour that she was having a secret relationship with the soccer coach. Lacey's car was maliciously turned into someone's paint masterpiece.

I was on the list too; some anonymous troll was flooding my Instagram posts with startlingly rude comments. Someone out there hated me with a terrifying intensity and I couldn't know if it was some random online world troll, or real life person who was sharing the school hallways with me.

It was likely one of my former friends, blatantly jealous I'd gained popularity after they'd ditched me years ago for being "so edgy, I was trashy". Those girls were pieces of work, mad at me despite being the ones that hurt me when I didn't conform to the constraints of being their friend. They'd tried to tear me down once before by sharing my embarrassing secrets publicly.

Funny, I was the one holding them back, but I shot to popularity for being myself and they, with their intentional social climbing, hadn't made it very far. Their lack of popularity was evidently still a sore spot, if their bitterness after three years said much.

Or, I looked past Sophia, it could be Holland, who was doing a bad job of being inconspicuous in watching me. Every time I caught his eyes on me, the pit of worry in my stomach grew.

Whoever it was, I wasn't about to allow them to control my actions; I hadn't let my "friends" do it back then, and I certainly wasn't about to now. Straightening my posture, I refocused on Sophia, "Okay, I have an outfit in mind. I'll come by yours after Gem tonight."

"Ooh!" She danced beside me as we left the study hall. "You're the best!"

Of course, several people watched us leave, but only one of them made my hair stand on end. Holland's gaze as I passed him churned my insides, though I tried to shake it off. He was sharing the notes with me, which wouldn't make sense if he were in on it. Besides, if he was involved, I couldn't possibly be the target; we'd never met before the first note, so he couldn't have had a reason to hate me... could he?

I was tuning out the conversation around me, listening to music pumping into my ear through one earbud. Shan flicked it off, purposely catching my eye as she talked to someone else. I followed her gaze and saw Amara leaning against a nearby table. Her hair was straightened and ridiculously long, and she'd changed it from the sunburst thing she'd had going on to the colour of blue raspberry candies. Shan kicked me after catching my eyes lingering and I looked away. Damn. I'd just given her ammunition for teasing me more.

It's not like I hadn't noticed Amara pass us, but I was trying not to be creepy. Especially since she'd asked me to leave her alone, and I'd done exactly the opposite two nights ago when I DM'ed her. A stupid choice I regretted. She hadn't responded. And God! She looked so terrified yesterday when she caught me watching her leave study hall with that cheerleader.

"I don't get how she does it," Shan munched on a carrot stick.

I bit my tongue, refusing to rise to the bait and ask what she meant. Trey, half asleep on the table, did it for me. "Who does what?"

"Amara," Shan gestured as if we didn't know who she was. She'd been talking about the girl too much since the party, probably because she was hoping to convince me that the sun shone out Amara's ass. "She hangs out with everyone. I don't understand how she remembers half their names, and how she has time for herself."

It was obvious enough to anyone who had eyes; in the past week I witnessed her hanging out with at least five different friend groups. Today, it was the pop-punk kids, with their neon colours and excessive eye-liner.

It was odd for someone as popular as her. Popular kids usually had specific and fairly selective groups of friends—myself included. But Amara was an anomaly floating from group to group.

One of the boys swished the length of her hair as he said something about the colour, and as if she didn't realise he was attempting to flirt with her, she examined his hair. After a moment she announced it wasn't as fried as he thought and she'd dye it blue for him next Tuesday if he wanted. She dug around in her bag and handed him a tube, laughing that he might smell like a coconut for a while but it was so worth it, trust her!

"Apparently she's oblivious."

Shan snorted at me, smug at getting a response. "No, she knows. She's just not into him."

Her grin grew and I didn't even want to know what stupid thing she was about to do. Grabbing my phone back from her, I put his music on again just as she said, "Hey Amara!"

Trey sat up and grinned at Amara in the oddest way possible and I wished the ground would open up and swallow me whole.

To her credit, Amara didn't miss a beat. "Hi Shan! Hi Trey! You two are still cute as ever, I see!"

"What about the rest of us? Are we still cute?"

I sat on my hand so I wouldn't slap Heinz across the head, and tried to look uninterested in the fact that she stood beside me. 

Amara paused when her dark eyes washed over me, "Hi Holland. Hello Heinz." Her face lit up, gluing my gaze in place as she giggled, playfully tousling Heinz' hair. Like he was the only guy in the whole cafeteria with her. "I don't know that you were ever cute!"    

-.-

Scandal! Someone slid into someone's DMs! 

Let me know what you think ^-^