Written by user xxJulietxx

"Shut up and drive."

"Whoa, hold on there. We don't want to start your morning by cursing, do we?" Clarissa, my best friend and my driver to school, says as she starts the engine and drives away from my house.

"That's what you get for sleeping on the wrong side of the bed." I roll my eyes. I could see houses passing by us fast as Clarissa hit the pedal of the car.

I don't really see why someone would say 'Good morning' when clearly the sky isn't that nice and most people are grumpy in the morning.

"Whose fault is it now?" Reese, my male best friend and my partner in crime, asks. He's sat comfortably in the back seat, taking up all the space by spreading out his whole body.

"That stup-" I was in the middle of answering Reese's question when I was cut off by Clarissa's cursing words.

"HOLY CHEESE STICK OVER MERCEDES BENZ!" Clarissa shrieks then stops the car unexpectedly which makes Reese and I jerk forward.

"Issa! If it weren't for the seat belts, we could have been thrown over the glass and probably ended up smashing our heads on that electric pole just like the girl in The Vow!" I lecture her while making my hands dance as I point at the things that I said.

"There was a cat running into the street out of nowhere!" Clarissa argues back. I glare at her as I put my hands over my heart, dramatically taking deep breaths.

"Girls, girls, as much as I love to be entertained by a cat fight, can we please proceed to school as we understand that it was only an accident and we are safe and so is the cat?" Reese questions, but it sounds more like a rhetorical question.

Clarissa and I both murmur our agreement. I mutter a quick sorry under my breath so they can't hear and make fun of me for apologizing. I rarely apologize for the things I do. Well, it's because I'm often right as much as I want to be humble about it. It's always the other person that apologizes. Not Cassidy Jones.

The conversation goes back to normal after the awkward talk Reese started by saying the weather's wonderful and the sun is very bright today, which I quietly corrected him by saying it's not. We are civil again as we reach the school. Clarissa parks her car near the gate and we all roll our eyes as we see Stella, the queen bee, and Josh, the quarterback of the football team, making out outside the school.

This is such a cliche moment.

"Could they be any more appropriate?" I scoff. We all walk to our lockers and greet our friends as we meet them after a long summer.

"So, how's your first day of school coming?" A girl behind me says as I open my locker.

"Oh, hi Beth! It's going fine, and yours?" I say as I recognize Beth from the math team; she is the leader this school year. I notice her braces are the color green and her short brown hair is now long and she has it in a ponytail which makes her look prettier.

"Fine, just preparing for the remedial later for Geometry," she says nonchalantly as if it were nothing. Of course, she would.

"You're doing another remedial again this year?" Clarissa asks as she puts her books from her locker beside me into her bag.

Our locker can easily be chosen, first come first serve. The last person to arrive on the first day of school gets stuck with the most unpleasant locker. It's a good thing we found three lockers vacant that are decent enough for us to endure for a whole school year.

"Yep. I can't leave my kids failing," she says proudly. Someone calls Beth and tells her to come over so she says her goodbyes to us and walks towards another group.

"Glad I didn't take her remedial," Reese mutters, not letting anyone hear it except for the three of us. The three of us have been best friends since the fourth grade. We are known as "the geeks" or "the outsiders" as the students of Desden High School would say. In this school, there's always drama going on every day; you name it. Romance, heartbreak, cat fight, jealousy, fighting over money, parties, and last but not least, bullying.

You've probably heard people saying that America's full of schools where they bully lower class kids. Well, you heard them right. There are always people, a.k.a. the populars, who would ask the outsiders to do their homework and give them lunch although they are already filthy rich, which I don't understand why they would want our food, and if we refuse to do what they say, there's trouble. I think that the populars just wants us to starve since they know we aren't as rich as them.

The worst thing that has ever happened to one of us was when James, a very nice dude, but more geek than anyone else in this school, committed a suicide because of them, or to be more specific, the populars. Ever since then, I got more aggressive and angry towards them and I started standing up for the bullied. Before, I was this shy, quiet girl who would lie to her parents about the scars she got from school. Now, I'm better than ever and I never felt any better for standing up for the kids. It's not being arrogant, I'd like to call it being confident.

People start giving me glares as I walk through our class. People who whether I talked back to or I embarrassed, specifically. Well, it's not my fault they got to be treated like how they treated others. One word for them, karma.

"I heard that we got a new teacher for Values Education," Clarissa says as we sit at our usual seats near the window on the left side where we can see the beautiful view of our school outside.

"I heard she's a hot chick." Reese smiles cheekily. I slap his very strong and muscular arm which he then grabs and tries to massage it. I can see faint red color appear where I slapped him, which earned me a dirty look from Reese.

"It hurts! You're a monster," Reese sarcastically says. Although he is acting like he's not hurt, he really is. After years of friendship with him, I know when he's lying or not. And he is definitely not lying.

"I was trying to take it easy on you," I say guiltily, rubbing my hands on my pants that have holes on my left knee and lower right leg.

"Cassy, seriously, if you don't get rid of those pants, I'm totally taking over your closet," Clarissa says as she watches us with an amused smirk.

"Hey! I like these jeans! They're comfortable unlike the skinny jeans that the other girls wear." I roll my eyes.

"Again, they're -" Reese cuts Clarissa off and proceeds to say things about 'fashion' and 'girl problems'.

"Anyway, where did you hear about the new teacher?" I raise my eyebrows.

"You know, I got a lot of sources," he replies back as he tries to put his arms at the back of his head and be cool.

Clarissa rolls her eyes. "Yeah, right," she says. I look at the people behind us as their voices get louder. It sounds like they are talking about something important.

"I'm calling dibs," One of the basketball players, Nick, says behind us. I watch them as they play 'dibs' on our new teacher. Rumors say that our teacher just graduated college and she's a brunette. Soon enough, the class is filled of rumors about our new teacher. Okay, I think I'm regretting listening to them talk about something 'important'.

We all go silent when we hear the screech of the whiteboard marker on the whiteboard.

"You're breaking our eardrums, Mrs. Peach," Xavier, the first person who's on my hate list, says as he covers both of his ears.

Mrs. Peach looks satisfied at her work and puts down her marker. "That's exactly what I will be doing if you all keep on chattering. Now, I am sure all of you are aware of the new rules at this school," she says as she roams around the class while holding a ruler and tapping it on her hand. Well, she is strict.

"I don't get it," Stella, the queen bee who we saw making out with Josh outside the school, says after she raises her hand.

I try to not roll my eyes as I tap my feet on the ground.

Tik tok. Tik tok. The clock is haunting me as I look at it slowly moving.

"Well, who would like to volunteer and explain it to this lovely lady?" Mrs. Peach says, which makes us roll our eyes due to her last two words. Lovely is the last thing you would use to describe Stella.

Beth suddenly raises her hand and Mrs. Peach smiles and nods her head at her, indicating her to speak.

"From this school year and on, we are not allowed to just mingle around the school during breaks in between classes, instead, we will wait for the next teacher to come into our class. This is because of the incident that happened last year," Beth explains. She's like a walking school handbook for a moment as she says her speech. Who am I kidding, she always is.

"Wait, like we're making the school rules like that of a private school?" Sheena, another wannabe of Stella, asks while she runs her fingers over her curly dirty blonde hair.

"Indeed." Mrs. Peach answers her.

I feel Clarissa moving near me as she whispers,"Psst. What happened last year that cost these changes? I don't remember anything."

I think hard about what happened. What was it? "I was thinking maybe the punching incident that happened while we were having our break and people started passing around words about the fight in the gym," I whisper back.

Before Clarissa can say anything back, Reese nudges us both to be quiet and looks at Mrs. Peach, which means that if we don't keep quiet, we'll be as good as dead considering it's just the first day of our junior year at high school.

"Sheila, would you mind giving out the schedules to your classmates?" Mrs. Peach asks as she looks at Sheila, the favorite student of every teacher in our school. And apparently to the new teacher who has just stepped into this classroom less than ten minutes ago.

Sheila smiles at Mrs. Peach and walks towards her desk. She starts passing the papers around and I tap my feet as I wait for the papers to arrive.

Tik tok. Tik tok.

When we receive our schedules, we notice that it isn't like the same old one we expected.

Monday : Biology, Trigonometry, English Literature, Values Ed., Social Studies

Tuesday : English Literature, French, Economics, Physical Education

The lists go on and on and we are all quiet as we absorb the new changes.

"Ma'am, where's the break between these classes? And how come we don't get to pick out our own subjects?" Sheila asks as she smiles sweetly, still standing up from the position of handing out the papers.

The questions go on and on like that until we hear the bell ring and we all quickly say goodbye to Mrs. Peach and head out. I feel a bit bad for Mrs. Peach as she tried to answer each question raised only to find another question being asked by another student.

I take my bag and stand up, finally grateful that our first class is over. "I can't believe it. No more escaping this school." Reese feigns horror.

I roll my eyes as we continue to walk. "No more meeting new girls." Clarissa joins Reese as they impersonate the popular guys. Soon enough, I join them as we laugh and walk towards the tree we always sit by. We all sit back behind the trunk of the big tree and I let out a big sigh.

We are all relaxing due to having no homework and stuff from the first day of school until we hear a lot of shouting coming from behind us. I turn around to find another victim of the popular guys. This time, it is a pretty girl. I try to look closely to determine what the fight is about. Soon enough, they try to destroy her bag by getting it away from her. She screams for help, but everyone just stands there and watches them. No one is brave enough to help and that's where I come in to the scene. Seriously, on the first day of school? Aren't they tired from partying all night when the summer ended? I mean, I expected them to be all hung-over and not mess around.

Maybe I expect too many cliches?

I glare at the scene and my mood just takes a turn for the worse. "Having fun?" I shout at the popular guys. They all turn to me, giving me familiar weird looks while the outsiders just give me encouraging smiles. I've been through a lot of fights like this, they always end up ugly when it is not handled properly. I don't think this one will turn out pretty, so might as well ruin the fun.

"Yeah, want to join us?" One of the dudes, I think his name is Connor, which I never learned their names anyway, says. I slowly walk towards them with my infamous smirk.

"How about you leave that girl alone and pay the damage you guys did like any decent guy would do." I walk slowly towards them and stop when we're one foot away from each other.

"Like any dork would do." the guy who I think is Connor smirks back at me. The guys give me 'burned' comments. It wasn't even that good of a comeback.

I cross my arms, unaffected. "Says someone who wants attention and has a very low content of happiness," I say as I raise an eyebrow at him.

More people are gathering around us as the air feels more tense. I can feel what's going to happen next already.

"Look, if you want to fight, just say it, this girl would love to join you here." Jack, who I think is Connor's best friend, says. I know his name because it is written on the top righthand side of his basketball jacket.

"I don't think you guys would enjoy it. I mean, look at you guys. And plus you'll just ruin my nails. I don't want to waste my time fighting with you guys. So, back off the girl and everyone's safe," I warn them. I look at my perfectly clean nails. Hmm, not bad. It looks prettier without all of that manicure stuff that's just like the make-up that goes on your face. No thanks. But I wish my nails had sharp edges that can hurt the arrogant people in front of me right now.

I see Jack scoff and look at me seriously. "You think we're easy, Ms. Try-to-look-tough?" Jack asks. My hands are tempting me to punch this dude but I control myself. I'm about to give them another comment, but we all turn around for the unmistakable whistle made by Mr. Ricarpo, a.k.a. the Principal.

All of the students scatter away quickly leaving me and the guys alone with Mr. Ricarpo. I notice that the poor girl quickly grabbed her things and ran off as an escape from them when the Principal whistled.

I try to look for Reese and Clarissa, also known as my friends, but both of them turn around and faced the lockers and pretend to chat. I roll my eyes at my oh so supportive friends as I listen to the guys making up a story for Mr. Ricarpo to listen to.

They are all doing a terrible at making up a story that connects to the other guy's stories.

Mr. Ricarpo looks at the guys as if they are all pregnant. "So you guys were searching for something and then found it and then she snatched it, so you guys were just asking her to give it back," he stops to take a breath and continues, "but she refused to and instead she threw it to the pond and that item meant so much to you guys that you ran to catch it before it got wet and she started cursing you guys and you tried to calm her down, but she started to drag a poor girl to the fight and she ruined her bag and shoved the things at you guys and threw the crying girl to you, finally turning the whole thing to you guys and making you guys get blamed for the fight?" Mr. Ricarpo gasps for air then quickly returns to being poised, or what people like Beth would say in order to make the word 'breathing' more scientific, inspiring.

Look it up in the dictionary, inspire means to breathe. I think I spend too much time with Beth.

"Exactly," the guy who I think really is Connor says with a smirk. No one says anything for a minute and I close my eyes as I try to keep calm.

"Alright, I want all of you to come with me." Mr. Ricarpo gives all of us stern looks.

I open my eyes quickly and look at our principal disbelievingly. "But Mr. Ricarpo, you never asked my side on what really happened." I tell him, but he was already walking away to his office.

Was there any way I could persuade him without those lying human beings? The guys with solemn looks follow him and I am left there all alone trying to cope with what just happened. I have never been in detention before. The fights always finish before any school administrators come. What would my parents say to me? I am about to graduate high school. I can't have this thing ruining my perfect record in this school next to Sheila, the most favorable student of all time.

"Well, looks like you'll just have to deal with us," A familiar voice whispers in my ear and I can feel his breath tickle my whole body. I can feel his chest behind me knowing that we were inches away. I can imagine his lips turning upwards making a smirk as he catches up with the guys.

That's when I notice a name written on the back of every basketball player's jacket.

Xavier Princeton.